Doctor Akagi growled at her terminal screen, reviewing the program she was writing to monitor Unit-01's AT Field. She had wanted to accompany Gendo on the trip to the Antarctic to recover the Lance, but he had shot those plans down, taking the old man with him instead. He needed someone here he could trust, someone who knew everything. Misato was trustworthy, he had said, but she didn't know everything. More importantly, she wasn't ready to know everything.
So, instead of a potentially romantic trip with him to the Ruined Sea, she was stuck here. Stuck here, working through the minutia of writing up new training simulators for the Children, overseeing the repairs to the Geo-Front and Evangelions, and trying to figure out how to keep Shinji from overriding the restraints and blocks on Unit-01 while trying to determine how it was that he accomplishing this in the first place. While an interesting problem and attractive mystery, it still was not as appealing as a two-week getaway with her lover.
Lieutenant Ibuki looked over at her from where she was working on installing new data cores into Balthazar. "Ma'am? Is everything alright?"
Ritsuko leaned back in her chair, rubbing her hands through her short hair. "No, Maya, it's not. I'm missing something in this program – it's not compiling." She pushed away from the computer terminal, scooting her chair over to her desk and grabbing her cigarettes and ashtray. She popped one into her mouth and lit it, taking a deep drag and blowing out a plume of smoke with a contented sigh. She glanced over at the other woman, a guilty look on her face. "You don't mind if I smoke while you're here, do you?"
"No," Maya replied, shaking her head. "I don't mind at all!" she replied, as cheerful as ever. One wouldn't know that it was late at night, the pair of them working far past their regular hours, or that the list of things still needing to be done before the hardware upgrades to the organic parts of the MAGI could begin was still longer than the doctor's arm. "Do you want me to take a look at it for you? Get a fresh set of eyes on it?"
Ritsuko waved her away from the computer. "Don't bother. It's nothing that can't wait for tomorrow." She sighed as she took another drag. "I'm thinking of calling it a day anyway. We've been here long enough. It seems I always work later than usual when the Commander's away." She blew another plume of smoke up into the air, watching it get sucked in by the fans. "I'm surprised that you're still here. Nobody waiting for you at home?" She grinned as Maya blushed.
"N-no, I live alone." Maya shifted around in her seat before scooting over towards her supervisor. "Do you mind if I get one of those?" she asked, reaching for the pack.
"Help yourself," Ritsuko said, shrugging. "I didn't know that you smoked."
"I don't, most of the time." The mousey lieutenant replied. "But it has been a long day." She fumbled with the lighter, not having any luck with it. Chuckling, Ritsuko leaned in and plucked the lighter from her hands, flicking the flame to life. Maya took a deep breath before lighting her cigarette, pulling back slightly, and coughing a little.
"Not your brand?" Ritsuko asked with a grin.
"Usually, when I smoke, I smoke cloves. A tropical blend, much fruitier than these." Maya took a shallow drag on the cigarette, getting accustomed to it. "These are pretty harsh."
"I do like it when they bite," Ritsuko said, moving the ashtray to sit between them. Groaning, she stretched her arms over her head, cracking her back. Tapping her ash into the ceramic tray, she shook her head. "I do think I'm going to call it a night." Standing up and grinding out the cigarette, she patted her pockets to ensure she had everything. "Don't stay down here for much longer."
"I think I'm going to leave, too," Maya said, rising from her seat. "Do- do you want to go get a drink?" she stumbled over the words, the hand holding her cigarette shaking.
Surprise slid over Ritsuko's face, but the doctor quickly quelled it. "Maya," she said gently, "I don't date co-workers." She paused momentarily, watching the younger woman's hurt and embarrassed expression. "I'm also already in a relationship."
Tears sparkled in Maya's eyes as she coughed on smoke. "But- but you've never said anything about it, I'm so sorry, I'm so stupid-"
"Maya!" Ritsuko said sharply. "I don't talk about my personal life at work; you couldn't have known. And you're not stupid. We don't keep stupid people at NERV, and I certainly don't keep stupid people on my staff. Besides, I thought you were already seeing someone – what happened to that?"
Maya sniffled a little, her voice catching. "We called it off. She was getting frustrated at her job, and it wasn't working out; she wasn't listening to me when I tried talking to her," the words fell out of her mouth in a rush, like a dam had been broken. "And this guy that she liked is seeing someone else now, and she couldn't stop harping on it, and she didn't care that much about me, not like that; I mean, this was just a fling for her, but –" she started crying now, the words dying off.
"Maya, shhh." Ritsuko gently hugged Maya, patting her back. "Take tomorrow off. I can get the others to work on the upgrade tasks. Take a long weekend for yourself. Go to a spa, and let yourself be pampered. It's not the end of the world."
Maya sniffled incoherently into the doctor's lab coat, but when she pulled away, she smiled weakly. "Okay…" she said, rubbing at her eyes. "I'm sorry-"
"Shush." Ritsuko interrupted. "None of that now. No feeling sorry allowed, or I'll tell Misato. Trust me, you don't want her to try to cheer you up. You might not live through the experience."
Maya nodded as she left the room, leaving the doctor to her thoughts. Ritsuko looked around the room, sighing. "You three are not to tell anyone about this." She announced to the MAGI.
The intercom buzzed, Caspar's soft musical voice sparking into life. "We will not mention it to anyone, Doctor Akagi."
"And we certainly won't tell anyone about Lieutenant Ibuki and Pilot-Captain Sohryu's dalliance having ended." Balthazar's atonal voice chimed in.
Ritsuko's jaw dropped in shock as the other two intelligences verbally tore into their sister, shouting at her for giving away sensitive information. Pressing a hand against her forehead, she shouted the supercomputers down into silence. "Look, I don't want to know. We're all adults here, and what other people like to do with others is none of my business as long as it doesn't interfere with NERV's work. You three are not to tell anyone anything about any of it." She glared around the room, knowing the supercomputers could see her. "Understand?"
"We understand." They chorused.
"Good. And turn off the vocal subroutine. We've had this discussion before. It upsets people."
"We only reactivated it for this conversation because it does not upset you, Doctor."
"Well, turn it back off. Most people aren't used to computers talking back to them." Ritsuko left the room, shaking her head. The intelligences of the MAGI had been modeled after her mother, who had done most of the work on developing the cybernetic supercomputers. Each was slightly different, with minor variations on the same theme, mirroring three aspects of her mother's personality.
The doctor had to admit that she got along with them better than she had her actual mother. It was hard sometimes to not think of them as a group of younger sisters, but while she could handle talking to artificial intelligences like they were real people, they didn't quite fit into her imagined family. On the other hand, that family was dysfunctional and weird enough that adding in three cybernetic brains as younger sisters wasn't entirely out of the question.
As she wound her way up through the labyrinthine corridors of the Geo-Front, she idly wondered what she was going to do about Maya and Asuka. If she knew Asuka, the man and the other woman were Kaji and Misato. It sort of explained the girl's moodiness these past several weeks and Maya's unhappiness. She sighed, not wanting to get involved with telling other people who they could and could not see. She had been against Shinji and Rei's coupling earlier, but they were working out just as Gendo had anticipated. It was still a little off-putting, considering the girl's origins, and it was slightly infuriating that people danced to his whims every time Gendo pulled a string. Asuka's performance in the Evangelion and simulations hadn't suffered noticeably throughout her time with Maya or after. There were some deviations, but they had been within the expected tolerances so far.
Still, it was a little worrying Asuka hadn't grown out of her little crush on the older man. She could see why the young woman was attracted to him, having once shared that attraction long ago, and it wasn't as if she had anything against desiring the love of an older man. But the girl, while still dependable and a capable researcher in her own right, had grown a little flighty in recent weeks, jumping from project to project with little focus and no sense of direction. Sighing, she swiped her pass card into the lock of the secured elevator. She would have to try to set aside some time to sit down and talk to the girl, to offer some advice and perspective. But in the meantime, both of them would just have to deal with their relationship issues just as she had to deal with being left back here by Gendo. After all, they were doing important work, and she highly doubted the Angels or SEELE would care that they were having a hard time because of relationship woes.
Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!
Not for the first time in several days, Asuka wished that the AT-Field hadn't been developed and worked on primarily in Japan. Almost all of the original development notes and research were in kanji, and while she could understand most spoken Japanese, reading the written language was more difficult. It also didn't help that most of the development work done in Germany was the armament and mechanical systems, not the neural linkage and synchronization systems. She had worked hand in hand with the research directors on almost all aspects of the systems being developed in Germany but hadn't gotten a more in-depth look at how the AT Field worked other than how to use it as a pilot.
All of these issues were not important by themselves. Still, it became an almost insurmountable obstacle when put together and added to the fact that she was trying to unlock the mystery behind Shinji's abnormal skills with the AT-Field. The teenager became increasingly frustrated as she continued to run into dead ends and contradicting information.
She wanted to scream in rage at the terminal, the latest of several data-mining programs she had written returning a fatal exception error, stating that the data was impossible. None of what she had deciphered from the original development notes added anything to the information the onboard diagnostics reported or the programs she had designed. Months of research and work wasted, all spitting out conflicting answers and impossibilities.
She started to pace around the room, kicking her chair out of the way, muttering darkly to herself in German. After a few minutes of angry pacing, she stalked back to her seat, pushing it back to the computer. Sitting down, she typed in a string of commands, calling up the current documentation on the defensive field and all past documents about it. As the list of files started to compile, she nodded to herself. If it took her reading all of the files from the very first through the current system documentation and painstakingly translating them into a proper language, then that is what she was going to do.
It might take months, she thought to herself as the list of files continued to grow, but like all good Germans, she was methodical and determined. There was no mystery that could not be solved, no obstacle that could not be overcome. All it took was time, persistence, and ingenuity. She was an intelligent young woman with nothing but time and would crack this puzzle wide open. It would just take a little longer than she had previously thought, but that was fine. No project ever went off without a hitch. There was always something, but it could be worked out eventually. Even the greatest scientists sometimes had to wait years for vindication. It was the price of being a visionary.
Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!
Shinji looked up from the couch towards his ward's room down the hallway when the phone rang. "Shinji, can you get that?" Misato called from the bedroom, hidden from view. "I'm a little busy right now." Shaking his head, Shinji wordlessly got up and answered the phone as Rei moved to grab the remote and paused the movie they had been watching. The woman had been searching for her security card for the past three hours, turning her already messy room upside down and inside out. He had suggested she take everything out and clean and organize it since she would likely find it then, but she had scoffed at the idea, saying it couldn't have gone far and that it was probably just in her dirty laundry. When he had commented that her dirty laundry was everywhere, she had thrown a couch pillow at him.
"Hello? Katsuragi residence."
"Hallo, ist Asuka da?" a woman's voice answered him after a moment, sounding unsure in Shinji's ear. Almost all of the German he knew consisted of complaints and curse words. Looking helplessly at Rei, who sat on the couch with a slightly irritated look on her face, he shrugged.
"Misato, I think it's for Asuka!" he called down the hallway before returning to the phone. "Um, Hallo," he replied in halting, accented German, trying to remember what little Asuka had started to teach him before giving up on the project, declaring him to be a "strohdummer, stotternder Idiot", whatever that meant. "Asuka wohnt hier, um, but… aw man..." He paused, looking back down the hall. "Misato, I think they're from Germany! Can you talk to them?"
Misato walked into the living room, grumbling to herself, and winked knowingly at Rei, who was slowly buttoning up her shirt. Taking the phone from her blushing ward and shooting him a 'way to go!' look and a thumbs up, she started chattering into the phone in rapid German, walking back down to her room to continue her search.
Sitting back down on the couch next to his girlfriend, he pulled her back against him, one arm snaking around her waist, pushing the untucked shirt up and revealing the pale skin of her stomach. Rei repositioned herself, resting her head against his shoulder as the film resumed, a nonsensical account of a group of astronauts trying to destroy an asteroid on a collision course with the planet.
"Where is Asuka?" Shinji asked softly, ignoring the panicked actions of the astronauts. "Did she stay back at NERV again?"
"She did," Rei whispered, clasping one of his hands with hers. "She reported that she was working on a new project concerning the AT-Field."
"She was having a bad day with the synchronization tests." He remarked, a note of worry creeping into his voice. "She was several points down from her usual score."
"Her performance today was sub-standard compared to her past tests," she agreed. "She is preoccupied with something, and her lack of focus is detrimental to her performance. The Evangelions require total dedication and concentration. If one is distracted, one will not perform adequately." She paused, thinking about the other girl's rants in the locker room. "She is not interested in hearing this, however."
"I don't think she's happy my scores keep creeping up. It's like she takes it personally."
"She wants to be the best, the most accomplished, the standard by which all others are judged. It is what she had built her life around. It is easier to be the best when one is the only one competing. She is not used to having competition or sharing the responsibility of piloting with others."
"But you've been a pilot as long as she has! Doesn't that count?"
"Most of my time as the Pilot of Unit-00 was in the capacity of a test pilot, a mere component to ensure that the synchronization systems worked. She has had a much more active role in developing the systems of Unit-02 and was originally designated as the main combat pilot. Unit-00 and I were originally never meant for combat. From the beginning, she has anticipated being the only warrior-pilot, as the Marduk Institute has been unable to locate suitable candidates and the development and construction of the Evangelions is costly. Now, she is less certain about her role, as we all share the burden of safeguarding humanity."
"Somehow, I don't see Asuka as ever being uncertain or unfocused," Shinji said, thinking about the surety of purpose the girl seemed to exude in everything she did. "I mean, she knows what she wants, even if she doesn't always get it." He paused momentarily, shifting around on the couch into a more comfortable position. "She does concentrate on a lot of different things, I guess. She has a lot of projects she's trying to work on, and she's always adding some new thing she wants to look into or test out to her list. She was complaining today in class that she had too much to do to waste her time relearning algebra." He rubbed his hand across her stomach, his index finger tracing a circle around her belly button. He could feel her heart quicken in her chest as she repositioned herself atop him, running her fingers through his hair, before stopping momentarily as another scientific inaccuracy was portrayed on the screen.
"What's wrong now?" he asked mischievously, knowing that movie studio inaccuracies were a sore spot for his girlfriend. Rei did not get wound up about much, but Hollywood's liberties with reality were often one of them. It was their little game when they watched movies, taking notes and cataloging their mistakes. Most cinema held no interest for Rei, who would largely ignore the films they watched and was much more interested in Shinji. But when watching science fiction films, she could not tear herself away from trying to correct the scientific fallacies. Her boyfriend's hands would have to wander farther than her stomach to get her attention, but that wasn't likely to happen with their commanding officer home.
"In space, there is no sound. No matter how hard they are shouting at one another, they would never be able to communicate that way."
Both teenagers quieted down as Misato walked back into the room, slamming the phone onto the cradle. "That woman is so annoying," she complained, shaking her head. "Just like I remember from Germany. Pushy and short-tempered." She turned around and grinned at the pair, the boy watching her with slightly nervous eyes and the girl still watching the movie, uninterested in what the older woman thought about their activities. She winked at him and went back to her room to continue her search, pausing to call back to them. "Hey, tomorrow after the tests, I need to show you three something. Don't make any plans that can't be postponed!"
Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!
Shinji sank to his knees, clutching at his head and vomiting across the floor. Rei rushed over to him, ignoring the vast goddess that hung up on the giant cross, concern writ across her face. Asuka stared in open-mouthed shock at Lilith, unable to tear her eyes from the pale white body that terminated just below the bloated belly, leaking LCL down into the vast pool below it. She resembled a human, albeit the fat, pregnant mother goddess worshiped in ancient times, the fertility goddess, the moon goddess. Her face was hidden behind a mask of purple metal, seven eyes painted on it. No hair grew on Her head or anywhere else they could see. The sack of her womb, heavy with child, extended below the torn flesh of her midsection. Movement could be seen periodically, faint kicks from the unborn within.
The five people before Her could tell She was aware of them, a sort of crushing presence bearing down on them, the head moving to track their movements inside Heaven's Gate. Ritsuko had been against showing them Lilith and had called Gendo, but he said that if Sub-Commander Katsuragi thought it was a good idea, then so be it. Both women had warned the pilots that the experience would be intense, based on their first exposures to the Mother of Mankind. Shinji was taking it badly, but Rei was fine, and Asuka reacted better than the adults.
Rei could hear Her voice in her mind, not at all unlike those of the Evangelions, but it was overpowering. It was the chorus of a thousand singing voices, terrifying and awe-inspiring all at once, a thunderous susurration. Helping Shinji back out of the vast room, she glanced back at the others. This was far from the first time she had stood before the crucified Angel, but she doubted the Sub-Commander knew that. The Commander had revealed much to the woman upon her promotion, but there were still large areas of NERV's past and future the woman remained in the dark about. Just as she was about to cross the threshold of the shielded room, a single voice sounded in her mind.
COME BACK TO ME, CHILD. I HAVE THE ANSWERS TO THE QUESTIONS YOU DO NOT ASK.
Rei winced at the pain of the mental contact, but it was gone the moment they crossed the gate and left the Chamber of Guf, Shinji immediately straightening up, like a weight had been lifted from him. He took deep, ragged breaths, gulping in the air like a drowned man.
"That's what draws the Angels?" he asked in between breaths, staring back at the door. "That's what brings them here?" Unsure how to answer him, she helped him sit down against the wall, sitting next to him, holding his hand. "What was it like, Rei?" he asked, staring off into space, his eyes dilated. "I could hear Her, screaming at me, overwhelming, terrifying…"
"It was unsettling," she agreed, squeezing his hand. "The Second Angel, after ADAM."
"The one that if the Angels reach, to merge with and to be completed, and so trigger Third Impact," Ritsuko said from the doorway, watching the pair. She smiled at the boy. "I threw up the first time I saw Her too. Don't feel bad about it, Shinji. It gets easier each time." She knelt in front of him, taking his pulse and checking his eyes, ignoring the quiet, icy outrage radiating from the girl sitting next to him.
"So if that's what causes Third Impact, what we're trying to prevent," Asuka asked as she walked out of the room, a layer of sweat plastered over her face, "why haven't we killed it? It's an Angel, right? That's why we're here! That's our entire purpose for existing! That's why we made the Evangelions!"
"Because we think that would cause an Impact as well," Ritsuko answered with a sigh, standing up. Motioning at Rei to get Shinji back on his feet, she sealed the gateway after Misato exited. "Let's go someplace where we can sit down and have a snack and get your blood sugar levels up," she said as she led them to the elevator. "ADAM and Lilith are more than just normal Angels. As far as we can tell, they are to the Angels as the Angels are to us. But Lilith is the source of all life on Earth. She is our mother, and ADAM and the rest of the Angels are interlopers, not meant to be here, but were drawn here nonetheless." She made a disgusted face. "Why this is so, I can't tell you. Or so Misato's father suspected, apparently, but his theories and research died with him in Second Impact." She shot a sympathetic look at her friend. "Sorry, Misato."
"No worries," she replied breezily. "It's not like he didn't do it to himself. ADAM was in hibernation, asleep in Antarctica. My father was doing research and tests on ADAM, and something went wrong. When He woke up, they tried to kill Him or at least put Him back to sleep. We think that's what caused the Second Impact."
Rei listened to them in silence, not commenting on the incompleteness of the line of events. The two officers had been cleared to tell them this much, but the Commander had not cleared the adults to reveal the existence of SEELE to the other pilots. She privately doubted the worth of allowing them to know this much, as the incomplete truth and mix of lies was a tangled mess that could lead an intelligent and inquisitive mind to seek more information.
If everything had been fine with them being in the dark about the truth, why change things? It could only make things more difficult later on. It was easier to make a sacrifice in ignorance than in knowledge.
The Scenario did not require them to know what was going on. She doubted that the Scenario could come to fruition properly if all of the parts knew the details of the truth surrounding them, NERV, and the world.
She could tell that Asuka was already thinking about how this fit in with what she knew, putting things together. The pilot captain was no fool and, even now, was running into issues with getting what she thought she knew about the AT-Fields to line up with what was happening inside the Entry Plugs. The fact that Shinji and Unit-01 were an abnormal case only added to her frustration. This new information about Impact and the Angels could only spark further trouble for the older girl. Rei foresaw numerous new complaints and rants from the Pilot-Captain in the locker room before and after their training exercises. It was not something she looked forward to.
Rei tried to put Lilith's parting message from her mind. If she decided to act on it, it would be after a long conversation with Unit-00. Whatever pacts the Commander and SEELE had made with Her more than likely did not include offering to answer her unasked questions behind their backs. Lilith had never communicated directly with her before and was largely silent and fickle when the Commander spoke to Her. All of that, however, could wait. Shinji was of immediate concern, and he seemed to be largely uncaring about the whole thing or the new web of lies and deceit his exposure to the Mother of All meant. Lilith had to have said something to him for him to be like this. For some reason, she had taken interest in the boy and had extended Her voice to him, speaking to him alone.
There was a reason why Heaven's Gate existed, surrounding the Chamber of Guf deep inside Terminal Dogma, the lowest and deepest part of Absolute Dogma, wherein the darkest secrets of NERV were kept. It was a barrier against Lilith's AT Field, so strong that it pushed her soul into those of her children. Normal humans needed to build up a resistance to Her, multiple brief exposures to the Song of Souls to be able to stand before her for long. She supposedly was gentle to Her children, but Rei did not think She had been gentle with Shinji. The multiple armored layers of Dogma kept Lilith's physic signal to a whisper, protecting her children and luring the Angels to their doom. Even through the layers of natural shielding offered by the Geo-Front, the emanations of her mind and soul had infected the dreams of her children through the ages, leading them to record their visions of the past and future into the apocryphal documents that had eventually given birth to the Illuminati. Too much exposure at once to the minds of the Angels would lead to contamination, madness, and eventually death. Lilith had risked Shinji's life with her strange, unwarranted, sudden focus on the boy. That alone guaranteed she would visit the crucified goddess before long. Rei blinked and turned to the Sub-Commander, tuning back into the conversation. "Yes?"
Misato sighed, chalking up the girl's behavior to the exposure to Lilith. "I said that you should go ahead and take Shinji home. Make sure he eats something. And you," she said, turning to Asuka, "will go home, too. Rest! No more work for tonight!" She grinned, clapping a hand down on Rei's shoulder, "Plus, these two need a chaperone. You all need to rest up and recover, and I want you to do that, not get frisky with each other."
Asuka groaned miserably, protesting the order, but Ritsuko lent her approval to the plan, telling the pilots they should get some rest before going back to school the next day and back to tests and training in the afternoon. Rei tuned them out, ignoring their chatter, her attention on Shinji, still wild-eyed, a haunted look on his face as they left. She would see that he ate something and then went to bed, and then she would talk to her sister and see what she thought.
Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!
Rei hummed as she walked about her new lab, a large room housing most of the machinery that maintained the tank of her clones. The large aquarium-like structure was brightly lit, the LCL transforming the light into a yellowish-orange glow. As she worked, she noticed the clones nearest the tank wall would follow her, their empty eyes and smiles chasing after her movements. It could have been taken as unsettling had she not had firsthand knowledge that they were nothing more than empty shells waiting to be born. They would never be born; they never know life as more than her appendages.
She could give them simple instructions, and they would obey, but this utility was somewhat limited. After a long enough period outside of the tank of LCL, they would break down, their bodies dying and falling apart, having no soul and no ego to hold them together. With some concentration, she could take direct control of the soulless bodies, seeing through their eyes and hearing through their ears. It had been initially disorienting to see and hear through two bodies simultaneously. Still, with the aggressive set of experiments she had organized, it soon was as natural to her as synchronization with Unit-00. The ability to use two bodies at once had been of great use when dealing with her brother, allowing her to remove him from the battlefield while still appearing to be in school. It also afforded her more time to work on other projects while keeping up the illusion of normalcy.
While it was unfortunate the Commander could not yet know about the removal of SEELE's lynchpin, it was an integral part of her plans. Once she could explain it to him, she did not doubt that he would approve. He prided himself on being flexible and able to improvise, adjusting the Scenario on the fly when needed. The Commander would, of course, also be proud that she saw a threat and removed it while furthering the aims of his Scenario and her near-term plans.
She bit her lip in concentration as she installed the final trigger control system into the shaft of the tactical Lance, screwing in the last circuit board that would allow her to link up the atomic melee weapon to her Evangelion. This needed to go without issue, as she could not properly test the linkages before she had the opportunity or need to utilize the weapon. Even with the assistance of the MAGI, she would not be able to keep such a test from being discovered. A missing Evangelion was the sort of thing people would notice, and the use of the simulator rooms was not something that could be hidden.
Standing back, she inspected her work, reviewing the internal components with a critical eye. Nodding to herself, she plugged the diagnostic machine into the control circuit and started the maintenance program. It had been appropriated from the pallet rifle warehouse, one of the systems used to check the weapons. The control systems were similar and should suffice to check her work. It was not as good as an actual field test, but it was all she would be able to do.
She walked over to the cart where a kettle of tea waited. After pouring herself a cup and taking a few measured sips, she sat down, watching her clones move about aimlessly in their tank, their empty smiles and eyes betraying the emptiness of their minds.
WELL?
Rei sighed. What do you want? She mentally asked her sister, watching the clones shiver as they talked. While her sister had yet been unable to take control of a clone, there was a definite reaction in the clones when they communicated through their telepathic link.
Are you going to go talk to Lilith or not? She's offering answers to questions, and if I know you, which I do, you love getting answers to questions.
I am considering it. I have not yet made up my mind about whether I am going to go or not. I do not think that she can be trusted. However, she must be made to account for her rough treatment of Shinji.
See, that's one of the weird things. We could feel everything once Heaven's Gate was opened, and Unit-02 said Lilith was focused on the boy. She was all up and inside his tiny little braincase. She was interested in him, that's for sure.
She was what? Rei asked, shocked. The Angel had never spoken to her before, dealing directly with the Commander or whatever agent from SEELE that they had been directed to take before Her. Rei's presence was a shielding one, deflecting the overpowering crush away from the group due to her Angelic heritage. Before they had developed her line, they had stood unshielded and unguarded, and the Commander had told her it had meant lost time to recover from each exposure. Shinji's reaction to being in Her presence was the worst Rei had ever witnessed. While it had been obvious Lilith had been interested in him, the fact that she had forcibly invaded Shinji's mind was news.
She was interested in him and came close to shucking his brain like an oyster. Unit-02 thinks she was scared a little of him, at least at first. Her sister went silent for a moment as Rei sipped her tea. You couldn't tell? You were standing right there.
I was unable to discern anything. I can feel Her, of course, down there. But I cannot tell where or on whom Her attention is placed.
I was talking about how the poor boy looked and reacted. Unit-00's voice was dry, and her pointed statement caused her sister to blush and feel embarrassed.
Sub-Commander Katsuragi went before Her without the benefit of my presence, and she was not incapacitated. Rei protested, downing the rest of her cup.
She also stood before ADAM, in all His terrible glory, there at the Second Impact. His presence is even stronger than Hers! Unlimited by the crucifixion, freshly released from the Lance? ADAM, the Destroyer, the Angel of Death? ADAM, the Angel of War? Of course, the Sub-Commander wasn't affected. He probably burned out the fear center in her brain. Your exposure to the nascent sliver of Him was terrifying enough, wasn't it? Can you imagine what it must have been like to have laid eyes on Him, that burning giant, the towering behemoth, terrible and glorious all at once?
Unit-00's tone put Rei in the mind of breathless reverence as she tried to describe the destructive god, released from his eons-long slumber. It was obvious to Rei that her sister had been thinking about ADAM for a while. It was not unlike listening to Hikari talk about Toji.
I have not spent much time wondering what it must have been like. Rei commented, her tone as dry as Unit-00's had been earlier. I have other things to occupy my mind and time with. I was under the impression that you were interested in Unit-01. Have you decided to give up on deciphering that mystery? I do not think ADAM would be a viable alternative for your affections.
Ha. Ha. Ha. I'm still working on it, but Unit-01 acts like a sleeping bear. Unresponsive until I poke it enough, and then it's nothing but snarls and roaring anger. It's like there's nothing to its soul but instinct and base emotion. No signs of 'higher personality' or reasoning. I've tried watching them when they synchronize during tests, but it's hard to see where one begins and the other ends. They merge well, that's for sure. I think that's why he's so good even at lower levels of synchronization – it's an almost seamless joining of souls.
Does Unit-02 concur? She did a lot of work developing the synchronization systems.
She's not paying attention during tests and only helps occasionally when we're offline. She has enough to worry about. She's having issues with her daughter, in case you missed that as well. Your time with the boy might be ruining your observational skills. She's been ignoring me most of the time, so if you want to ask her any questions, you'll have to come down here and enter Sheol through the Entry Plug. She might listen if you offer to relay a message to her daughter.
The Pilot-Captain has been displaying sub-standard results lately. I am unsure how to help her within the confines of the Scenario. She has rebuffed most of the encouragement I have offered. She is not interested in my suggestions. I doubt there is any message that might be relayed to her through me that would not spark further conflict within the Pilot-Captain. She will think I am mocking her, or even if she accepts the message for what it is, it will cause additional issues, potentially with serious ramifications in the long term. She is as unaware of the truth behind Unit-02 as she is about the parameters of her part in the Scenario. Anything that changes the first will change the second, which is not advantageous at this time. As it is, her death is not a requirement of the Scenario, as is Shinji's or mine, and it is left largely up to her skills and experience as a pilot. It would be advantageous if she survived Third Impact, as she would be the only experienced Evangelion Pilot left, an undeniable force to help guide Mankind into the legacy that the Commander intends to bequeath them.
She would like that, I'm sure. The only surviving Evangelion pilot of the Angel Wars, the one who shepherded the world into the shining promise of the future out of the darkness of Instrumentality? But she won't be able to do that if she keeps having problems during synchronization.
Has Unit-02 offered any insight into the nature of the Pilot-Captain's issues? While I am unsure that there is much I can do, it is still advantageous for us to have a strong pilot corps. If we fail, the Scenario fails, which is an undesirable outcome. I will do what I can to ensure the Commander's Scenario comes to fruition. That is my mission, above all else.
She hasn't given me any specifics, but whatever crisis her girl is going through is pretty serious. I'm sure everything will work itself out eventually, though. I find it highly unlikely that the Commander would not have foreseen this in his calculations. But to get back to the original topic, when will you talk to Her? You know that you will, even if it is to yell at Her about how she treated your boyfriend. We can't let something like that go without comment; it sets a bad precedent.
Rei stood up and checked on the diagnostic machine, thinking everything over. Her sister, while being annoying about it, was correct. She was going to have to bring Lilith to account for Her actions. She had to be informed that she couldn't treat Shinji like that even though she was the primordial mother of all life. Whether or not She paid attention or even understood remained to be seen, but she still needed to be told.
However, there was still more work to be done before she could set aside the time to speak to Lilith. Besides, soon enough, the Lance of Longinus would be in their possession, and the Commander planned on impaling the captive Angel with it to further restrict Her power until the time came for him to make use of it. If nothing else, it would be an effective way to drive home her point when warning the Angel.
Content with her current plan, Rei continued her work on the tactical nuclear weapon, clones watching over her shoulder with empty giggles.
Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!
Misato wondered why she hadn't merited her new office before after proving her worth to NERV and Commander Ikari through the multiple engagements she had directed the pilots to victory in as she looked around the spacious room. It had been empty before her moving in, so it wasn't like someone had used it before she was hired as an actual NERV employee. The expansive room was high in the pyramid that sat above Central Dogma, with a beautiful view of the pristine forest and lake that covered a large piece of the open cavern of the Geo-Front. The Commander's office was only a few floors higher than hers.
Chalking it up to pettiness, she leaned back in the chair, sighing as she resumed going over the same stack of reports she had seen the Commander pouring over almost constantly. Before, she had thought that it was just something he did to make people feel small and unimportant, to show them he was a very busy man and that whatever it was they were bothering him with had better be important, but now she realized that he was a very busy man, that it was no act. The sheer amount of paperwork he had to go through daily was astounding, she thought, paging through the various reports from NERV stations worldwide. The Commander, Misato realized now, was a very hands-on person, taking part in everything but somehow not micro-managing his global company.
It also explained a lot about him and why, even as Rei's official guardian, it was Ritsuko who had been the girl's actual primary caregiver, even as busy as the doctor was. It was amazing the man managed to find the time to have dinner with the girl. Hell, she thought, it was amazing how he found the time to sleep. She was surprised he hadn't shipped Shinji off before he had done so – taking the shambles of the German-Japanese GEHIRN Artificial Evolution Laboratories ("No One's Perfect, But We're Working On That") and turning it into the multi-billion dollar R&D powerhouse that NERV ("God's In His Heaven, All's Right With The World") became almost single-handedly had to have taken his total concentration.
No wonder he had sent his son off. There would have been no time for him to care for the boy. At the time, he had been running it alone, Sub-Commander Fuyutuski and Ritsuko not yet having entered the picture, the only person that might have been useful as a second in command being the original Doctor Akagi, but she was busy trying to keep the different research programs from falling apart as Doctor Sohryu was over in Germany trying to figure out what it was that went wrong with the original Contact Experiment, only to eventually fail several months later. It took the Commander two years to send his young son away and devote his entire being to his work. NERV's star had risen astronomically then, continuing on the original lines of effort of GEHIRN, eventually helped pull the planet back on track, getting the average quality of life for the world's population to one comparable with a Pre-Impact second-world nation. Despite several continuing setbacks to the Evangelion project, it continued unabated.
Paging through the report from NERV-Las Vegas, she wondered if Shinji ever thought about the entirety of his father's work. She sure hadn't before she had to read the paperwork it generated. The Evangelion project, while being the main priority of NERV, was not the only project being worked on by the army of scientists that worked for the man. Space travel was not a priority of the Post-Impact Earth, but NERV-Oslo and NERV-Stockholm were working on interplanetary and interstellar travel, looking to spread Mankind throughout the galaxy. NERV-Sydney was focused on intergalactic research. Shaking her head, she scanned the reports. He hadn't taken the title of 'Supreme Commander of NERV' for nothing. If anything, the title was understated, especially when considering his supremely ambitious plans and goals.
It also threw into a new, sobering light the range of duties she would be expected to take on. He had said that they would ease her into the role of Sub-Commander, but as she looked over the reports from across the globe, from other Sub-Commanders, each responsible for entire regions and several NERV installations, the weight of responsibility started to add up on her shoulders, and she imagined she could feel it physically. She wondered how long the salvage operation would take, hoping it would not take much longer. She would be happy when all she had to worry about was dealing with the pilots and Evangelion Operations.
Frowning, she scrolled back up the report, rereading a section about interstellar travel using the Evangelions. While interesting in its own right and somewhat upsetting that Ikari was surely planning on keeping his son bound to NERV, it was a curious turn of phrase in the otherwise technical report that had caught her eye.
"While structural integrity of the entire Evangelion is important (see IIR 3110 – 345 for V-Type equipment specs), the Entry Plug, the Throne of the Soul, must remain inviolate throughout the journey. After the successful collapse of the Ego-Border, the disembodied Pilot will be consumed into the LCL, and the recovery operation will stand a higher chance of success if the LCL remains unpolluted and the total volume is available. In theory, it is possible to salvage the Pilot from a much-reduced sample of LCL. Unaffected by entropy, LCL -"
Setting the tablet down, Misato rubbed her eyes. While her degree was in astrophysics, and not being as dumb as Ritsuko often made her out to be (which was annoying, seeing how she was the blonde), none of that made any sense to her. Even ignoring the bit about LCL being unaffected by entropy and the laws of thermodynamics, what on earth was Doctor Ingolsson going on about the Entry Plug being the Throne of the Soul? And what did he mean about the collapse of the Ego-Border? Disembodied Pilots?
Somehow, she thought as she massaged her temples, she wasn't supposed to have gotten this particular report. Very few people should have been allowed to see this, she suspected. Suddenly, nothing was making sense, and all the headway she had thought she had made in her new job was suddenly lost. She would have to dust off those research skills, put them and her new security clearance to work, and make the most of her free reign on the massive amounts of data coming across her desk while she was in charge in the Geo-Front.
Misato hated to admit it, but now she hoped the salvage operation would take longer than expected. A lot longer, in fact.
Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!
The Ruined Sea, Kozo thought to himself, is quite the appellation for the remains of the Antarctic. The southern pole was no longer dominated by the vast continent of ice, and the warm waters were a constant source of typhoons, hurricanes, and monsoons. It had taken centuries, millennia even, for the waters to grow cold and freeze, but ADAM had undone it all in one moment. ADAM, and the folly and hubris of Man, as Gendo was quick to point out.
Gendo was silent as they watched the rolling waves of the turbulent, radioactive waters, lost in his thoughts until the silence was too much for him. "This is the true Dead Sea. A fitting monument to Man's folly for placing his faith in other things and higher powers. God died here that day. God died here, and in his last breath, he cursed this place."
"We are still here, Gendo. Surely there is something to be said for that." Kozo was feeling a little seasick and was in no mood to put up with his friend's melodramatic side.
"We are here because of our dogged persistence in clinging to life. In science, we clung, and it is that which has saved us and will allow us to climb out of this hell." Gendo sneered at the winds and waves beyond the window. "Man wanted to become God, to supplant Him and usurp His place in Heaven."
Kozo chuckled at his friend, ignoring the man's black mood. He always got this way when ruminating on the past, and it was made worse by being back here in the Antarctic. "And through science, you have created weapons with which to destroy His children and place yourself at the head of the Tree of Sephiroth. And yet, the First Angel lives within you, a higher power using you as an incubator. And it is your faith in your son that drives you to do all of this. You cannot tell me that the irony is lost on you."
Gendo flexed his hand at the mention of the implanted embryo. It had started to grow, and he could feel its tendrils creeping up and through the muscles of his arm. His hand still refused to regrow the skin removed during the operation, but Doctor Akagi was confident it would begin soon. "The irony is not lost on me, no." He frowned at his reflection before sighing in disgust. "Faith in my son is better than faith in ancient gods that allow their children's very existence to be threatened in such ways. He, at least, cares. He might not know he does, but he cares nonetheless. Rei is the microcosm of Mankind, the last daughter of Lilith and Sister to Man. When she is in danger, he acts. He will take Unit-01 and destroy everything when she is threatened to make her safe." He grinned at the window and then turned and grinned at his friend. "We hold the Gate, the Lock, and the Keys to Instrumentality." He turned back to the window, watching the men in hazardous environment suits maneuvering the submersible recovery vehicles around on the deck of the aircraft carrier. "And soon we will have the only weapon capable of stopping us."
Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!
In a darkened room, a collection of the world's most powerful men and women assembled, meeting in the flesh and not through secure lines of communication. Old was not an appropriate descriptor for this assembly. They were not old. They were not ancient. No, these men and women were venerable. They represented centuries of power, the ancient aristocracy of the world. They represented the rich, money both old and new. They were the products of the family lines that stood on the shoulders, backs, and bloody bodies of countless millions across the history of Mankind. They were the ones behind the thrones of the world, the ones who truly played the so-called sport of kings. Armies and nations were their pieces, and the world their game board. Their whims were law.
They were SEELE, the ancient cabal of rulers and learned ones, the Illuminati. They did not meet in person often, and when they did, it did not bode well for the world's people. They were also angry. Tabris' stunt had cost them, and while they had been dealing with the mess their pet Angel had caused, Gendo Ikari had located the Lance and was currently overseeing its recovery. This was not in accordance with their Scenario. They were supposed to be the ones in possession of the Lance, using the threat it represented to keep Gendo and his pieces in check. That the man who had taken up the reins of Instrumentality was going to hold the weapon that had laid ADAM low was intolerable, and the assembled men and women were bitterly complaining about it to Chairman Lorenz as if he didn't know it already.
Kiel Lorenz was already employing his resources to help counter the new threat. He held up a wizened hand, commanding their silence.
"My men have already begun to take steps to counter this new move of Ikari's." His voice was cracked with age but was strong and backed with iron. "We will let him do the heavy lifting in this matter as we have let him in others. A new distraction is being created now, and they will strike while he is occupied with it. He will not know that we were there."
"And how will your men manage this? Ikari jumps at shadows and sees our hand in all things. Nothing can happen that he did not cause that he will not attribute to us."
"He will not think that we delivered an Angel unto him, at least not yet."
"But Tabris is still missing! How will you send him on a mission when he has not returned to us?"
"You cannot be thinking of trusting the boy with anything now!"
The assembled congregation was outraged that Kiel might think to trust the impudent adolescent Angel with any task so soon after the recent debacle, but the old man simply raised his hand again, cutting their protests off.
"It is not Tabris I will send. As NERV prepares to upgrade their MAGI, they will receive a new Loyalty Core, but the organic matter that resides inside it is not the synthetic human brain they expect; rather, it is the brain from one of our Kaworu clones. Once installed into the MAGI, it will subvert their systems. We anticipate that Doctor Akagi will be able to deal with the rogue system before the day is out; however, during this time, our agent will strike." His grin became cold and cruel as he paused, watching their rapt attention. "Everything is under control."
Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!
At three in the morning, Misato got the alarm, the panicked night crewmember almost screaming in terror as he pounded on her door, jolting her awake in her office, where she had fallen asleep while working. There had been no warning at all, she found out later, going over the initial reports of the attack. The Angel had appeared without warning in a low-earth orbit out over the Pacific. There had been a brief energy spike as the Angel used its AT-Field and dropped a piece of itself into the ocean, releasing an equivalent amount of energy as an eleven-ton bomb. The resulting tsunami had washed over the coasts of the Pacific countries, and the death tolls were still being tallied.
The pilots were suited up and asleep, covering the couches in the ready room by the cages, waiting for the order to move out, security guards watching over them, drinking from bottomless pots of coffee. She, of course, had no such luxury, even when she wasn't in control of the city. The only difference now was that whatever plan she came up with needed no higher authorization than her own, even if the Angel's AT-Field wasn't disrupting their communications, keeping her from checking in with the two men who outranked her. It was a pleasant freedom.
They watched in horror as the sensor net showed a massive spike of Blue Pattern spectra around the Angel, its AT-Field waveform changing and flowing across the screen like oil over water. A large segment of its elongated body separated from the central mass, dropping away to plummet towards the waters below, the brightly colored flesh becoming opaque, already decaying now that it was outside the Angel's morphogenic field, where the laws of physics and causality did not apply in the environment the Angel created for itself.
When Ritsuko spoke up, her voice was tight and angry. "It's guiding itself. It's dropping mass to adjust its course." Staring up at the screen, she typed away on a keypad, calling up the slight changes in the path it had taken. "It's steering," she seethed, grinding her teeth.
Misato looked over the course alterations from the original path that was laid out. "Steering towards us. Towards Tokyo-3."
"Makes sense," Maya added softly, her face wet with tears. "They always come to us."
"Well, let them come," Misato growled. "Options, people! What are our options? Where are we on getting comms back up?"
"TACSAT is still down. The tight band radio is still down. We've managed to get VOIP to the JSSDF Headquarters."
"Are they offering anything?"
"They want to know what we plan to do. The government is busy dealing with the tsunami, and they say they've been ordered to only move in if we fail."
"What are our long-range assets? It's still a good way away."
"Not many," Ritsuko interjected. "We've always depended on the UN and its member nations for long-range projection. It won't be within our reach for another four hours, and even then, it's regular artillery and some surface-to-air missiles."
"Which will be worthless against it, anyways." Misato finished her friend's statement. "How many more drops will it have to do to put it online with us?"
Maya looked up from her terminal. "I'm having the MAGI run the projections now, but I think it'll be no more than seven, based on the time interval between the two and the amount adjusted."
"Alright. Someone get back on the line with the JSSDF and have them get the word out that we can expect about seven more waves like these first two. Get people away from the coasts, or at least prepare for them. Can we figure out what it's liable to do once it's over us? It doesn't look like it's built for hand-to-hand combat. Do we think it has an energy beam like the Fifth Angel?"
"We're running the analysis, but it's jamming our sensors and communications. It used its AT-Field to destroy our geostationary satellites, and it will be about an hour before the nearest ones in free orbit come over the horizon."
"So it's a waiting game, then," Misato said disgustedly, her eyes still on the screen and the huge Angel, watching the bizarrely shaped bulk. "The type of game that I hate the most."
Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!
Asuka alternated between staring at Misato and watching her heads up display dismay and disgust written all over her expressive face. She was not pleased with the plan the woman had enthusiastically detailed to them. Rei and Shinji found themselves in complete agreement with their Pilot-Captain, each having several issues with the plan, but were staying silent, letting the volatile girl speak for them. She was, after all, very good at expressing her feelings.
"This plan is absolute geisteskrank! Firstly, how can you not know where something that big will land? Secondly, do you expect us to catch it? Misato, bist du vollkommen irre geworden?"
"Firstly, Asuka, that's rude. Secondly, yes, I expect you to catch it."
"Misato, even using our AT-Fields to shunt off and redirect the Angel's kinetic energy will need all three of us! No one has the synch ratio to let them do it by themselves! Not even Shinji could do it!"
"I know that, Asuka," Misato said patiently. "That's why you'll have to work together like always."
"What do you mean together like always?" Asuka spit back, seething anger in her voice. "This is the first operation using all of us that we didn't just throw together on the fly!"
"Just trust me, okay? And trust each other."
"Oh, I don't have any issues trusting them!" Asuka retorted caustically. "I just don't trust the idea of one of us trying to catch an Angel by ourselves, waiting for the others to run over to us quick enough. There are limits to what's possible, you know."
Shinji tuned out the rest of their argument as he watched the colossal Angel that filled the sky hurtling closer and closer, the numbers on his display spinning down as the link showed the MAGI's desperate race to finish plotting the trajectory before it was too close to do anything about it.
Another part of the segmented body detached, launching away from the main body. It took the computers a few seconds to plot its course, the blob of flesh tracing down towards Asuka.
"Oh, you kackfreches Arschloch!" Asuka shrieked at the Angel, already in motion, moving to catch it in her AT Field. "Rei, Shinji, move your asses! I'll catch up after dealing with this!" She called to the other pilots, throwing her AT-Field up into the air, making it into a net.
Neither Shinji nor Rei answered her, each kicking into motion, streaking towards the small plot of land the MAGI designated as the epicenter of the Angel's target area. It was just on the border of their regions, almost equidistant between them.
His heart pounding in his chest, he tore across the cityscape, desperately racing towards the Angel. The city had been locked into a modified battle configuration hours ago, the towering skyscrapers and weapons buildings locked underground, leaving only the shorter buildings above ground. The squat armored blocks did not come up to the knees of the Evangelions and were no obstacles to the pilots as they ran. Shinji's pulse jumped up as his synchronization score ticked up three points, and a warning flashed on Lieutenant Ibuki's computer screen, warning that the Pilot of Unit-01 was entering the estimated secondary danger zone. Before the technician could notice it, the MAGI countered the alert and disabled the monitoring program.
A warning flashed in the corner of his eye, the onboard system letting him know his umbilical cable was running out. He gave it a few more strides before popping it from his back, swallowing down bile as his battery timer kicked on, the numbers racing down as he pushed himself harder, still far from his target. His synchronization score shot up by five points, a massive gain. Sparing a glance at the map, his heart sank as he saw Rei was even farther away from the Angel than he was and that Asuka was only just now moving towards them, the chunk of Angel flesh carefully placed on the ground, already melting into viscous goo. They weren't going to reach it in time. Everything they had done was all going to be for nothing, all because he was too far away from the Angel. The faces of his friends from school flashed across his eyes, quickly followed by those of the technicians he knew at NERV, followed by a parade of the black-suited Section-2 men and women, segueing into scenes at home with Misato and Asuka, finished up with every moment he had spent with Rei. Everything, everyone, would be gone because he had failed them because he would not make it to the Angel in time.
Glaring, he leaned forward in his Entry Plug, pushing against the control yoke with all his might, willing his behemoth to move faster still as he felt the urge to scream begin to well up deep in his heart. He leaped into the air over a sports stadium, feeling the burn of exertion in his midsection as he landed in midstride, kicking a deep gouge into the street below. Chunks of concrete ripped up and were thrown behind him as Unit-01 became a purple blur. Still, the mocking red numerals continued their frantic race down to zero, ignoring his growing anger, not caring that the inadequate battery life would cost the Pilot everything in his life.
Shinji bared his teeth, his lips drawn back in an angry snarl, the weariness of exertion from trying to force a dying giant to move vanishing as his rage boiled over, unwilling and unable to accept that his foe remained out of reach. The moment that Shinji became the Berserker, his eyes dilated, becoming little more than dark pools of inky black surrounded by the barest sliver of blue before his pupils shrank down to dark pinpoints in twin fields of blue. His limbs no longer felt like lead weights, and he could move freely now, a new light settling around him like a comforting blanket. The three supercomputers watched with detached interest and outright glee as the boy's synchronization rate skyrocketed to an infinite ratio. There was a deep whining noise as the Entry Plug attempted to lower the Throne of Soul deeper into the Evangelion's core, the physical restraints and blocks resisting the automated systems.
Rei and Unit-00 faltered momentarily as they saw the shockwave behind Unit-01 as it launched itself into the sky, the extended senses of the Evangelion seeing the waves of energy warping around the flying titan as he broke the sound barrier, the sonic boom shattering windows throughout the city. Asuka's jaw dropped, and incredulous and incoherent noises sputtered out of the girl. Alarms began to sound in Central Dogma, and deep below in Terminal Dogma, past Heaven's Gate, Lilith raised Her head to the ceiling, watching the unfolding scene past the layers of armor and human city. Tears of LCL leaked out from under the viridian mask as the primordial being wept.
Fire traced across the sky behind Unit-01 as he flew; orange flames wreathed around him, paradoxically ignoring the thick lines of frost rapidly spreading across the purple armor. Arms reaching up for his enemy, there was a flash of light that spread from his fists out toward the Angel as the Berserker's AT-Field flared into life, a smooth knife blade of yellow hexagons racing ahead of him as he plowed through the Angel. The Berserker threw back his head, the victorious howl of rage ripping forth from his mouth and Unit-01's as the Angel disintegrated around him, the red orb of the core impaled on the Evangelion's horn, bleeding liquid fire at the entry and exit wounds.
Jumping off his own AT-Field, Unit-01 did a triple axel through the air, coming down to land serenely on its feet, arms thrust up to the sky in joyous celebration, the blood of the Angel still showering upon it in a deluge.
The core detonated, knocking the titan to the ground and sending the raging Pilot unconscious. There was a moment of silence inside the command room as the current group of alarms switched off and a new set began, letting them know that the Pilot needed emergency recovery instead of his Evangelion being in a berserker state. The astonished men and women kicked themselves back into action, trying to get a handle on things and preparing for damage control and cleanup.
Finally reaching her beloved, Rei dragged Unit-01 out from underneath the pillar of fire. The helmet's face blackened and warped, melted by the intense heat of the blast. It was frightening, the way the face Unit-01 now somewhat resembled the one painted on its shoulders, the armor recast in the fire of the Angel's death and tempered in its blood.
Unit-00 looked up from where it kneeled by the fallen Evangelion's side as the crimson chariot of the Pilot-Captain approached, the four viridian eyes of their leader trained on the sleeping warrior. With a shrug and a shake of its head, Unit-02 reached down to help the white cyclops pick up their comatose companion, carrying him to the nearest lift gate.
Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!
Asuka took a deep breath, steeling herself for what was to come, telling herself it wasn't as bad as Doctor Akagi had told them. Opening the small human-sized door set into the armored wall, she passed through Heaven's Gate into the Chamber of Guf. Staggering at the crush of Lilith's presence, she forced herself to quickly cross over the catwalk to stand before the crucified Angel. She looked up at Her, staring at the impassive mask that turned to watch her movements inside the cavernous room.
"Well, I'm here." She said, the words spilling out in a rush, crossing her arms. She refused to show deference or prostrate herself before the ancient being that was the ultimate source of all life on the planet. She was Asuka Langley Sohryu, the Pilot-Captain of the 1st Evangelion Flight. She was a warrior, a scientist, and the premier guardian of the world. She was not impressed by the Angel, mother of the world or not. She had battled with Angels, defeated them, and was baptized in their blood. Asuka Langley Sohryu was mighty, strong, and invincible, and she would not be cowed by anyone or anything. "You promised answers, so talk." She glared up at the impassive mask as if daring the goddess to strike her down for her impertinence. "Tell me the secrets of Unit-01."