Crisis Event, Part 2

Please Read and Review. I'd like to know what I'm doing right (to keep doing it), and what I am doing wrong (to correct it).

Nowhere and Nowhen

"Who was that? Mari who?" Asuka asked without hesitation, "She was piloting an Evangelion! And judging by how she caught the blond guy, she has actual EVA training, if that was the future, she must have gone there with Unit-04."

The Phantom Stranger stood in the white demi-plane that was his domain between appearances in the regular world. He raised a hand, asking for a moment. His mouth set in a determined gesture.

Asuka and Shinji exchanged a look, and both nodded. They kept silent, waiting for their guide to finish his thoughts. She crossed her arms, and though the movements were not visible beyond the contractions of the muscles in her leg, she was tapping her toes inside her shoe.

Meanwhile, Shinji simply stood next to her, relaxing his muscles, and controlling his breathing like Wildcat had taught him.

Finally, the Stranger raised his head. "I need to check her past, go backwards from the NERV-2 site. If she jumped to a Hypertime branch where Third Impact is a reality, our plans might not have been enough to stop it."

Both pilots shuddered. It was Shinji who put words to their thoughts. "What about Rei? Could we get her on our side?"

The Stranger shook his head sadly, "She is not ready. She is close, and the opportunity will present itself soon. Gendo Ikari's manipulations have lost most of their power over her."

"I see," Shinji said, "Toji might be a better option then, don't you think?"

The Stranger turned to him, "It seems there is some new developments I am not privy to, Shinji. My most recent news are that Unit-03 will be sent to Tokyo-3, but nothing about the chosen pilot."

"Toji was chosen," he said. "He told us Dr. Akagi had offered to arrange for his sister's therapy bills to be paid by NERV."

"Big carrot there." Asuka observed. "And right on time for Unit-03's test, don't you think?"

"Certainly suspicious." The Stranger agreed. "If I have interpreted correctly the meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls about the next Angel, it will manifest soon. It will need to take control if the most powerful organism available. Without an active, overt, metahuman presence on Earth, that would mean an Evangelion Unit. With a novice pilot, Unit-03 would be the ideal target."

Asuka began to pace around, thinking. Suddenly, she stopped. "There is something else nagging me. When we went to the circus, Madame Xanadu read the cards for Hikari and me. She told me you," she looked at the Stranger, "would guide me."

"Her readings are very accurate." The mysterious man admitted.

"Yeah…" Asuka nodded, "and that's exactly what worries me. She only told me about you two. And before you ask, Wonder Boy, what she told me about you stays unsaid." Shinji had opened his mouth to talk, but seeing her smirk, closed it without a word.

Asuka continued, "Thing is, she told Hikari that she and her lover would face, and I quote 'great danger and tribulations' and 'hardships', I didn't think much of it at the moment, just regular fortune teller stuff, I thought. Scare the customer for a deeper, more expensive reading. But she dropped it to read the cards for me. And after watching her cards change when doing my reading, and all that has happened since, now I think she meant it. That she meant Toji." She exhaled, "And that it will be soon."

The Stranger looked thoughtful. "Madame Xanadu's readings are always right, something I learned at a cost." (1)

"Can they be… Argh!" She growled in frustration, before continuing, "I don't know the right word in Japanese; changed, thwarted, stopped?" She waved her hands around, looking for the correct word. "Ah, got it; circumvented?"

"Her predictions are warnings and advice. They tend to happen one way or another, especially to those who actively resist them."

Shinji raised a finger, "The recipients, I think you mean. But we are not directly involved."

"Good point, Boy Wonder." Asuka nodded her approval. "SOP dictates that the first tests of a device, especially something as complex as an Evangelion, should be done by a veteran, somebody already familiar with the general type of machine tested, or something close to it; so they can detect, evaluate, and correct any problems. Or at least describe them to the ground crew in case they don't make it out alive. Right now, we three are it. I get that the EVAs are new tech, so, that was not possible with our EVA Units. Both Wonder Girl and I had to learn as the systems were developed." Shinji raised a hand, she put hers over it, and softly made him lower his hand. "Special case, Boy Wonder, you were thrown off the deep end. My point is, Jock Stooge is a total noob, we all agree that something smells bad about this Unit-03 stuff, and we got a warning from Madame Xanadu. If the next Angel is about to attack, taking over Unit-03 would be its best bet. It deprives us of one of our resources, and puts us in great psychological disadvantage with a Hostage Situation. Toji is really annoying, but I wouldn't want to hurt him. Not with an EVA."

The Stranger nodded slowly; "Such a confrontation would benefit Commander Ikari's plan. We are about to enter the final stage of the Angel War, the time when having the pilots subjected to multiple trauma, especially psychological trauma, becomes a priority. Though there is still the need to balance trauma with efficiency, with each battle, the balance will change."

Both pilots paled. "Asuka?"

"I'm thinking the same,Boy Wonder." She sighed. "Jock Stooge would be a sitting duck in Unit-03."

"You or me?" He asked.

"I'll have to give some thought to the pros and cons, Wonder Boy. And I demand you add your own points. On second thought, you make your points first. I'd rather have more angles to work with." She turned to the Stranger, "How long do we have before going back to Tokyo-3? Can we skip to the end of this slideshow, or would it be better to get a rain check?"

The Stranger nodded slowly. "I think it will be best to review the hidden side of this event. So far, what I have shown you is, or rather, was, relatively known. Though the human capacity for denial has dulled its remembrance."

"Waaait a minute…" Asuka exclaimed, "You say you are much older than you look."

Shinji got her meaning. "Wildcat says he met you back in the 1950s!"

Once again, they synced, "Where were you during the Crisis?"

"In a way, I'm ageless. I'm… stuck at the age I was when I received my mission, though I was not aware of that for a long time. But I digress, back to your question, I have been present for all Crisis level events, sometimes in the sidelines, encouraging or advising; or in the middle of things, directly fighting. I go where I'm needed the most, such is my gift. While the best-known heroes fought the visible effects of the Crisis; I, along with a very select and secretive group fought in a different terrain. For the Anti-Monitor attack not only threatened the world you can see, it had consequences the Anti-Monitor couldn't have foreseen, or if he had done so, wouldn't have mattered to him, as they would only help him realize his goal. The erasing of a myriad hypertimelines also threatened to topple the arcane side of reality. For though Magic is greatly diminished in this era, it is still an integral part of the world, the universe. Even the Multiverse. Everything is held together by magic. Without the last iota of magic, the universe as we understand, cannot exist. It becomes just… machinery. Sentience and souls can't exist without magic, for all three are made from the same stuff."

Shinji fell in a deep silence, his brow furrowed in concentration, Asuka looked at him with a strange expression in her face. A few seconds later, he snapped back. "Then, manipulating the AT Field… is using magic?"

Asuka snorted, until the Phantom Stranger nodded gravely. "It is. Not a spell, but direct manipulation of the frontier of the soul. The Angels possess power and will enough to manifest AT Fields outside their bodies. A human soul, by itself, lacks the raw power to do the same without an additional source of energy; while Evangelion Units do have the required energy, but lack the will. As pilots, you provide the will to manifest the AT Field of the Evangelion Units."

"You mean, the AT Fields are like the shield and force bubbles Green Lantern used to make." Shinji ventured.

"Indeed. There is great potential in the ATF, not only as a shield, but as a weapon."

"Asuka, we need to know more about Green Lantern, either of them."

"Yeah," She nodded slowly, "later on. Meanwhile," she turned back towards the Stranger, "back to the show."

"The Anti-Monitor succeeded for the most part, only a few timelines remained, thanks to the sacrifice of many heroes, some were remembered. Some were forgotten by everybody but a few. The only way to preserve the timelines was to fuse them into a single one, right at the very beginning of time." A swipe of his hand later, and the trio stood in an infinite white expanse.

Dawn of Time
Before the Big Bang

"Look!" Shinji pointed, "It's the Spectre again!"

There was no sense of scale to the scene, but somehow, both teenagers felt very, very small indeed.

The Spectre grappled the hands of a powerful creature. The entity's appearance reminiscent of the Monitor. But his whole presence was cold, hateful… inimical. His unblinking eyes were unable of any expression, except for a cold, eternal, hate. He couldn't be anything but the Anti-Monitor.

Their eyes wide open and their jaws hanging down, Asuka and Shinji watched as the Spectre and the Anti-Monitor fought. One to protect the nascent universe, the other to destroy it.

The Spectre's bloodless face glistened with drops of sweat, his teeth clenched with the titanic effort. "MORE POWER! I NEED MORE POWER!" He rumbled, as incomprehensibly big energy discharges surrounded the two. Between them, an even bigger hand, held a galaxy in its palm.

"Th-th-that…" Shinji stuttered, pointing feebly at the fight.

"That's the universe. The whole universe is about to be born. When the Hand releases that Galaxy-shaped construct, the Big Bang will happen. The Anti-Monitor only has to destroy it, and his ultimate goal will be realized. Absolute anihilation of Everything."

"But…" Shinji recovered a bit, "the Spectre is supposed to be the most powerful entity!"

"He is not. There are a few entities that can overpower him. But they rarely intervene directly in mundane affairs."

"I'm the pilot of a giant cyborg powered by the soul of my dead mother, and I'm watching a giant dead man fighting an incarnation of nihilism at the dawn of time, Stranger! (2)" Asuka hissed, raising her hands in an exasperated gesture, "Gott! Who could be more powerful than this guy?"

"You have answered your own question, Miss Soryu." The Stranger said, a respectful tone in his voice. He raised his head, prompting the pilots to watch the scene again. Behind the Spectre a human chain floated. They recognized a few of its members, Dr. Fate from the JSA, Zatanna, in the blue and white uniform she wore when the JLA was based in Detroit. Was that Madame Xanadu? Even the Phantom Stranger was there, the effort of feeding power to the Astral Avenger clearly seen in his face.

Shinji grabbed Asuka's hand, as the magical heroes fed more and more power to the Spectre, until both he and the Anti-Monitor exploded!

The whole of creation unfolded before their eyes! Fragments of worlds that could have been flashed before their eyes. Reality broke into jagged pieces all around them, and in turn, the fragments broke into smaller pieces, until all that remained was dust.

Even the dust disappeared after a minute. Only the hand holding the Galaxy remained.

The Galaxy lit from inside. And exploded. The Phantom Stranger's shielded the pilots from the light and sound of a universe being born.

"This is the moment when four timelines fused into one. A new sequence of events that incorporated elements from all four. And as an accidental consequence, Hypertime was implicit in the timeline."

"Wait a moment." Asuka asked, as the whiteness around them became the familiar blackness of space, and the glow of the first stars dotted the darkness. "What's the difference between Multiverse and Hypertime? So far, I think they are functionally the same thing." (3)

The Stranger began to walk, prompting the pilots to follow him. "Without going into abstract mathematics, think of the Multiverse as a pack of cards. Each card is a different, separate universe, 52 in total. (4) They can have things in common, like number or suit, but they are still different parts of the same deck."

"So, the universes represented by the Two of Spades and the Five of Spades have more things in common than the Two of Spades and the Jack of Hearts universes?"

"Exactly, Miss Soryu." The Stranger nodded. "Hypertime, in the other hand, is a series of connected possibilities, they branch from each other, and though they tend to share common elements, like the broad strokes of history, they can also have similar elements in very different contexts, or wildly divergent histories."

"Like what?" Shinji asked.

"There are some elements that resonate across Hypertime, and appear again and again (5). Like Superman, Batman, the Justice League, and others. Sometimes they manifest in other times or countries. Imagine Superman as a Medieval Knight (6) or as a Soviet hero (7); or Batman in the late 1800s (8), or turned into a vampire (9). Sometimes Hypertime manifests as what could have been, like a Superman who withdraws from the world, leaving a new generation of meta humans to redefine heroes as simple brawling (10)."

Shinji thought on the Stranger's words. "Then, which timeline is the real one?"

The Stranger looked at him from the shadows hiding his eyes. "All of them and none of them, if you want an absolute answer. None of the timelines is more valid than the others. From a simpler point of view, it's this timeline we are in, because it is the one we are in. All others are just alternate versions of history, that don't affect us directly, so they can be discounted, or considered simple thought experiments."

"Can we see one of them?"

"We already have. We saw Unit-03 in a possible timeline. One where humans are, with very few exceptions, unthinking animals, and intelligent animals rule instead. That is a possible future, one that could come to be if we are unable to stop Third Impact."

"I see…" Asuka whispered. "What happens to that timeline if we do stop Third Impact? Does it get erased?"

"Not exactly. The possibility is folded into the new branch. Before Second Impact caused chronal interference, there were visits from time travelers coming from incompatible futures. For example, Booster Gold comes from a version of the XXVth Century that couldn't be true for the future we saw Unit-03 in. In that future XXVIst Century, New York has been a ruin for far longer than a mere century. Booster Gold and Kamandi exist in different branches of Hypertime, but both have a common past in our present. There will be a point in the future, where one of those futures will be the only one to keep on existing, and the other one will become just a What If (11), an unrealized possibility."

Asuka massaged her temples, "You know what? I've had enough. I need to sit down, get my breath back, digest all this you have shown us. And think what can we do about Jock Stooge and Unit-03. We can't let him in Unit-03's cockpit, that's for sure. Take us back to Tokyo-3."

The Phantom Stranger nodded. "Very well, Miss Soryu. I'll return you both to your dwelling, and check on our mysterious pilot's past."

A moment later, they were back in Misato's apartment. The Stranger wasn't there, surely gone to the former site of the Second Branch of NERV.

Asuka checked the clock in the wall, then her wrist watch. "Okay, we were gone about 6 minutes. Your thoughts on how we convince the guys in charge to not put Suzuhara in Unit-03 for the test."

Shinji sat on one of the kitchen chairs.

"Well… you did point out the SOP, I think we should comment on that. To Misato. She's not a fool and I think she will get things moving."

"Good, good. That's what I thought, there's hope for you. Though I had thought on talking to Akagi. She's the one in charge of the test itself, and is supposed to have final choice."

"Commander Ikari might overrule her." Shinji grimaced.

"Yeah." Asuka agreed, "I think I should be the one in Unit-03's plug, I'm more familiar with the systems than you."

"No." Shinji took her hands and squeezed softly. "I will do it. You don't have any really compelling reason to do this. Toji is my friend, so it will look more credible if I volunteer to do the test instead of him." He shook his head. "And if the worst happens, I couldn't fight you for real. I'd hesitate."

Asuka argued her point until they arrived to school, but Shinji held firm. Though she was annoyed, Shinji's determination to put himself at risk and his trust in her actually pleased her.

Author Notes

1. The Phantom Stranger is referring to Madame Xanadu's warning, about how his plan to pit the Spectre vs Eclipso to weaken both, would in her words, "not only fail, but fail spectacularly." This happened in The Spectre issue 17 (Apr 1994).

2. Paraphrasing YourBlandestNightmare's review for Chapter 81. I had to do something similar!

3. Editorially, they are the same thing, though at the time Hypertime was introduced, there was no explanation of how it worked, beyond "alternate timelines". This is my own interpretation how both ideas could be different from each other.

4. Because of course, there has to be a 52 involved!

5. Most of them, as part of the Elsewords imprint.

6. Superman: Kal, one shot (Mar, 1995)

7. Superman: Red Son, three issues miniseries (Jun to Aug 2003)

8. Gotham by Gaslight, one shot (Jan 1990), and Batman: Master of the Future (One shot, Feb 1992). Although Gotham by Gaslight doesn't carry the actual imprint, it is considered the first Elseworlds story. The first official Elseworlds story is Batman: Holy Terror (Nov 1991), with a Batman who fights against an oppressive theocracy. It has absolutely nothing to do with Frank Miller's Holy Terror, originally pitched as a Batman story.

9. Batman & Dracula, Red Rain, one shot (Feb 1992), Batman; Bloodstorm one shot (Jan 1995), and Batman; Crimson Mist, one shot (Feb 1999)

10. Probably the most famous of the Elseworlds stories, Kingdom Come, four issue miniseries (May to Aug 1996). It was followed by The Kingdom two issues miniseries (both cover dated Feb 1999). The Kingdom included a prelude, Gog (Feb 1998) and five one shots, all cover dated Feb 1999, all of these fit between issues 1 and 2 of the miniseries. They are The Kingdom: Son of the Bat, The Kingdom: Nightstar; The Kingdom: Offspring; The Kingdom: Kid Flash, and The Kingdom: Planet Krypton. Also, the Superman from Kingdom Come guest starred in the JSA title for a while, from JSA issue 9 (Sept 2007) to 22 (Feb 2009)

11. Marvel Comics has its own imprint of alternate stories, however, theirs is focused on exploring what could have happened if events in the mainstream continuity had gone a different way, like Spider-Man joining the Fantastic Four early in their careers (he did try to join the FF back in Spider-Man issue 1, cover dated Mar, 1963; the What If issue he joins the FF is, appropriately, What If…? Issue 1, Feb 1977)