(Guilt)
Food, festivity and merrymaking were now the furthest possible things from any of our minds.
That is all there was to say to that.
Our school uniforms were left behind in our lockers to be replaced by our plugsuits.
Blindsided as they had been, NERV did not even bother with any kind of briefing or planning meeting. The staff ushered us straight from the surface to the cages in the straightest possible lines. The EVAs themselves, once manned, went right up the deployment chutes.
In the time that this had taken, headquarters had been able to confirm an unidentified object moving about near the blast site – no doubt the pattern orange signal from before.
But as long as the readings remained disparate from those of a typical angel, the technicians in central dogma remained apprehensive, lacking any way to predict what trickery may be awaiting us.
There was no Dr. Akagi to speculate on what we may be up against, nor did we have Major Katsuragi ready to begin hatching any bold, ingenious plans in response.
We were fitted with rifles and placed along the target's predicted path, hiding ourselves behind mountains as if they were barricades.
There was some hope that the Second Child and I might be able to snipe whatever was coming with our blasters from a distance, without having to get close enough to receive intimate carnal knowledge of whatever unpredictable destructive abilities that this new angel may call xir own – If there had been a common denominator between the children of Adam thus far, it was that nothing good befell those who allowed themselves to be surprised by them.
The first one to engage had often paid dearly – which may well have been the reason of why Unit One had been held back and stationed towards the end of the mountain pass, where the angel might be intercepted if xir should make it past us;
Commander Ikari may well have been expecting that possibility, and chosen to hold back his trump card to avoid a repetition of the first encounter with Ramiel – thus my mission, as I understood it, would be chiefly to provoke the angel into displaying xier abilities, if the initial plan of sniping xem didn't work out.
For now, we were still awaiting the enemy in the uncomfortable anticipatory silence of rising tension.
Laid out before us was a mountainous landscape, dotted with power lines, fields and rice paddies across its flatter portions. Black birds sat in thick flocks along the high structures of wire and metal, croaking sounds among themselves, greeting our arrival like a dark omen, though they had not fled as of yet.
This same kind of drawn out, orange sunset with it's all-pervading, tinted light had seemed an accessory to bliss in the days before – now it was doing exactly the same thing, unfolding as a physical phenomenon regardless of whatever sentiments the we may be tempted to project onto it, reflecting only our own souls.
To an uninvolved stranger, the red tint at the horizon may not have seemed all that ominous, nor would a picture of it out of context probably have evoked recollections of fresh blood spreading through clear water.
What may seem to us like a premonition was simply the product of our intuition, itself fed by our experiences.
Fear is only in our minds, and utterly meaningless and insubstantial outside of them.
But as beings that existed within human minds, this shapeless, faceless thing still stood a very good chance at becoming the dominant impression within our consciousnesses.
Much like a vacuum, the silence pulled on anything that could possibly fill it, and so it was not long before some sounds were produced into its suffocating expanse – Ikari-kun had been the last to be collected, since he had been en route to my residence on foot. I never met up with him. Instead, it appeared that he was not quite caught up to the events by the time EVA 01 joined us on the surface…
Or rather, I think he was mostly asking for reassurances because he was more nervous than anyone: "Have they heard anything from Misato-san and the rest yet?"
Now more than ever, he must have longed for the reassuring presence of his caretaker.
I tried my best to answer him, but I could not give him any reassurance that would have been a lie: "The rescue team has still not been able to reach them."
On the screens of my entry plug, his likeness in the intercom window was beginning to look rather lost – most likely, he had come to see the Major as the one support he could lean on, particularly in the heat of combat. She could not help him, but her voice must have represented at least some psychological reassurance that he was now left without:
"But then… what are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to do this on our own?"
The Second promptly popped up in her own little intercom window:
"Oh, just quit your whining!"
As always, she was quick to pounce on any show of vulnerability without mercy… or perhaps, she resented that hearing such doubts voiced made it ever so slightly harder for her to eject them from consciousness.
Whatever her reasons, she did little but increase the look of misery on Ikari-kun's face.
Even so, it did not change that what she said next was not without merit:
"Worrying isn't going to do anybody good now. The sooner we find this thing and kick its ass, the sooner it'll be safe for the cleanup crew to get closer."
We had no choice but to face what was ahead.
Whatever would happen would happen.
I too held my own gaze firmly fixed straight ahead.
Though, on some level, there was something comforting about hearing Ikari-kun's concern for the possible victims. If it were me I think I would be glad to know that at least someone had spent thoughts and feelings on me, if only in passing.
The Second wasn't going to lose any sleep over a handful of dead technicians, and I had seen before that she would not terribly mind if one of her roommates were swallowed up by an eldritch creature, so I would not expect her to be all too concerned about Major Katsuragi…
...actually, no.
Much more than that, I think now that she tended to cope with challenging situations by focusing on what she could do about it with her own hands. A futile thing, objectively speaking, because there will always be situations where one will simply reach the limits of one's possibilities, but if I recall correctly I do think it has been shown that the same adversity might be subjectively experienced as less traumatic if one could convince oneself of having sense of agency or control, so there could well be some subjective benefits to it. It was a coping mechanism like any other…
It works better for some than it does for others, depending on their constitutional sensitivities and endowments.
For Ikari-kun, this turned out to be something he found it rather difficult to have faith in:
"Maybe you're right… but still, how are we supposed to take on an angel all on our own?"
I thought it best to bring it to his attention how he may have been catastrophizing a little, after all, it is not as if we were utterly cut off from headquarters:
"There won't be any problems with the chain of command. Commander Ikari will be personally directing the operation."
"Father will…?"
His voice trailed off. Patently enough, hearing this did not have the usual effect that one would expect from the presence of a parent. The look on his face was rather ambivalent.
Regrettable as this may be, for all that the Commander wasn't much of a comforting presence, I trusted him to make whatever needed to be done in order to complete this operation successfully.
We would all just have to grin and bear it...
We still had no idea yet how this fight would turn out very different from all the ones we had faced before.
The last thing we'd heard from headquarters were that they would try to locate the angel by requesting footage from some nearby observatories, but if they managed to find it, they must not have learned anything useful, at least nothing that would have lead them to change their orders.
We were still to stay put and wait until we got a chance to ambush the enemy – The Second and I were each crouching with a positron rifle to the left and the right of the valley, whereas Ikari-kun was waiting near its end armed with physical ammunition.
Our formation, our weapons, our use of the terrain… none of it ended up mattering in the end.
Not in the face of what we were about to realize just as a transmission from headquarters informed us that the target was approaching: "All units, prepare for ground engagement!"
Before Lt. Hyuuga was even done speaking, the unyielding, thundering steps of an enormous colossus could be heard off in the distance.
A large, dark silhouette emerged from the horizon, blotting out the crimson sun.
In the past, we had seen the resourceful children of Adam taking on all manner of disparate forms, some strange and bizarre, others bestial and animalic, each different from the other…
But the shape in which Bardiel now descended upon us should prove more terrible than any other ever taken by xir brethren, though it was not one that would have been especially unusual or confusing to look upon.
Thus were the angels avenged upon us for making them fight a misshapen likeness of the very progenitor they longed for: In payment for assailing the angels armored in the flesh of Adam, we were now made to face of one of them clad in the guise of one of our own.
I think all of us must have immediately realized what this meant, including Ikari-kun.
He just didn't want to understand it.
"No way – That's the angel? Can that… can that really be an angel?"
as may be expected, Commander Ikari was blunt and dispassionate in his answer:
"Correct. That is your target."
There were indeed no two ways about it, though Ikari-kun was pleading, half-despairing, for the answer to be anything else:
"Our target? But… isn't that's an EVA?"
It was.
Shambling towards us was EVA Unit Three, the newest production model, once the pride of NERV's Third Branch in Massachusetts. The skill of the engineers was best shown in the way that they managed to have this one produce exactly two eyes, coming closer to forming a proper human face than any other Adam-based EVA.
Its pitch-black paintjob was once meant to contrast with the white of EVA 04, which had of course been destroyed before the units could ever be deployed together, and now it seems like the sister-units had both proven ill-fated in their maiden voyages –
For EVA or not, it was coming straight at us, unrelenting, implacable, stopping for nothing and no one.
The Second Child was not quite so invested in refusing to understand, so she was quick to voice the obvious conclusion: "Unbelievable – the angel must have taken it over somehow…"
There was no trace in her voice of her usual cocky arrogance, however.
The sight shocked her as well.
No one, however, seemed more disquieted than Ikari-kun, who at once stricken by one obvious, unavoidable implication:
"But… doesn't that mean there could still be someone in there? A kid just like us?"
There might very well be.
I saw no use in speculating about it.
There was little reason to suppose that the angel had not done with Suzuhara exactly what xir did with the flesh of his EVA. Even if his heart was still beating, he may have become transfigured into something that no longer much resembled a human being – the best we could hope for at this point is that he's already dead. Even in the theoretical best case scenario that she shell of the entry plug had protected him, we should scarcely be able to extract him intact while also fighting the angel.
I saw something very admirable in Ikari-kun's concern for what he believed to be a total stranger even without knowing who he is, but realistically speaking, it would be the best for everyone involved to treat Suzuhara as deceased.
I saw no possibility of an improved outcome in telling Ikari-kun who it was in mid-battle.
The Second, however, didn't seem to have thought that far:
"What?! You still don't know?! The pilot of Unit Three is-"
The visual feed cut out at once.
The audio lingered on for a little longer, but all that could be heard over the intercom was the anguished shrieking of Unit Two's pilot.
Ikari-kun kept helplessly shouting her name at the buzzing static on the screen, until that was rendered non-functional as well.
Moments later, reports were coming in from headquarters that Unit Two had been rendered inactive and unresponsive.
The pilot had ejected. The recovery team was on its way, but still unable to get close while the enemy was at large and capable of crushing a typical helicopter or truck as if it were a child's toy.
The one saving grace was that I didn't think I heard anything about any significant injuries.
Our nominally best-trained, most accomplished pilot had just been incapacitated in the blink of an eye.
Just like that.
Worse yet, the enemy marched on undeterred without so much as a single scratch on xem.
There could be no mistaking about the situation that we found ourselves in.
I, in particular, couldn't afford to misunderstand this, for the foe was closing in on my position.
Off to the side, I could hear the Commander's rough voice, dispensing orders concerning the changed situation, level-headed as ever:
"Rei, keep the target occupied, but avoid close-range combat. I'll send you Unit One as backup."
"Yes, Sir."
I had my orders.
But Unit Zero was concealed behind a hill and a passing highway.
Thus hidden, I could observe the target as it seemed to pass me by, advancing forward with thundering steps.
The best course of action would be to attempt shooting xem before xir had the chance to notice me, waiting just long enough to minimize the chance of close-range engagement.
As the EVA-turned angel passed me by, I could see xier back – and noticed that the entry hatch was open.
Of course.
Naturally, they would have at least had tried to eject the plug – however, once I zoomed in, I became a firsthand eyewitness to why this had not worked… and was able to get the first look at what must be Bardiel proper.
How ironic.
Just the other day, I had been wondered why so many angels had resembled animals when they should have shared just as much kinship with plants and fungi.
Now, I couldn't mistake the resemblance between what was seeing beyond that hatch and the slimy, white delicate strings of mycelium hyphae, surrounding a bulge that must have been the half-protruding entry plug.
There was no way to really confirm this it from within my plug, but I was certain that had I been able to get closer, the biomass would have stunk. Perhaps not quite like decay, but rather like athlete's foot growing in living, human-like tissues.
If Bardiel resembled fungi not just in appearance, but in capability, then it was easy to imagine that it must have done to EVA 03 what gibberella did to rice plans or what cordyceps did to insects.
It was just what I had feared, no, foreseen after our encounter with Iruel: Another corrosion type angel, this one having no need to content xemself with such lowly targets as the simulation bodies of the wetware components of the Magi.
Instead, Bardiel hat hit the jackpot, allowing xir to take over the EVAs combat capabilities, allowing xem to fight back at us with the very power that had vanquished xier brethen, all while remaining safely hidden behind the cyborg's armor plates…
Except for the bits exposed by the open hatch.
From my current position, I should be able to shoot right into it.
The angel might be cooked right inside xir stolen armor.
I reached forward to activate the computerized aiming assistance, waiting for it to lock in.
This would only work if I didn't miss…
Obviously, if I did this, whatever remained of Suzuhara-kun would be vaporized.
The entry plug would be right in the path of an energy beam hot enough to have a chance at killing an angel. Anything that would superheat an angels' core must needs melt the plug into slag, by the very same forces of physics.
I had known this all along.
I had understood, from the beginning, that Suzuhara was a good as dead, though I knew also that his demise had not been confirmed yet.
And yet somehow, the realization it might well be my pulling of this trigger that would lead directly to the cessation of his life constricted the breath out of my chest and throat.
Somewhere on the control levels, my hands and fingers were twisted.
I felt my facial features twisting, ever so slightly, in the approximate direction of a grim expression.
The feeling inside of me was… not good… really not good… to the extent that it was genuinely distracted.
I hated this.
I didn't want to do this.
I knew it must be done, I knew this was what the Commander expected from me, I had known, from the beginning, that my entire reason for being would include separating every single human from their present form.
Never before had I truly hesitated to execute an order.
But this was the first time that I actually had to do this, with my own hands.
It shouldn't make a difference whether it was my hands or anybody elses's, but-
This was someone I knew.
Someone who was doomed, and whom I should hardly be doing a favor to in prolonging his suffering, but -
He was my friend.
He was Ikari-kuns's best friend, and the person Hikari likes…
For the longest second of my life so far, I tried to steel myself to pull the trigger.
In the next second, I realized immediately that I had made a crucial error against an opponent who permitted none.
I had waited for long.
Thus far, Bardiel had moved in a passable imitation of human motion, but in one instant to the next, that ceased, and EVA 03's violated frame creaked and twisted under the pull warping it in unnatural directions.
There was a flash of light that could have been a halo before it lifted off the ground and sped straight at me with unbelievable speed.
It did not look like a human jumping at all, but rather resembled something being dragged, a ragdoll pulled up by its center.
Bardiel was not a humanoid creature by nature. Xir had only put it on as I may wear my suit.
I gasped in shock, then winced in pain –
Before I knew it, I was face down on the ground, masterfully dominated by the angel, which sat on top of me, restraining me with a hand pressed onto the neck of EVA 00.
I felt her helmet digging into the flesh of her face, squeezed into it by the concrete of the street beneath that filled my entire field of vision.
I did not even register where the power cable ended up, but it was certainly no longer plugged into my EVA's back.
No wonder that EVA 02 and its pilot had been so easily defeated – the power of an EVA combined with the might of an S2 engine was terrifying indeed.
I was completely at the enemy's mercy.
Bardiel must have known this as well. Accordingly, xir used this opportunity to do a thing that would later make me wonder how much of the original EVA 03 had even remained at this point.
Xir held our xier other arm, the one that was not engaged in pinning me down, over that of EVA 02.
I heard the sound of something slime-like dripping, flowing, creeping in a slime-mold fashion, moments before my arm was engulfed in unbearable pain.
There was no room left for anything in my consciousness but to clutch at my shoulder. Any attention I could muster was consumed by the sensation of flesh warping, puckering, bulging obscenely with infection.
The fingers began to twitch without my intention.
According to the frenzied exclamations coming from headquarters, EVA 00's nerve ganglia were being invaded.
If nothing was done, Unit Zero would share the fate of her black-clad sibling…
Fortunately, Commander Ikari still had his presence of mind about him even in this circumstance.
He must have been the only one who did, considering the lapse that had allowed me to get into this position in the first place.
He called at once for the EVA's arm to be amputated.
I knew what this would mean, and I accepted it, even as Lt. Hyuuga protested.
I knew that risking the wait it would take to do this painlessly might end up doing me the opposite of a favor, not to speak of the rest of humanity.
I and any pain I might feel was of secondary importance here anyway.
Even so, though I had meant to grin and bear it as best as I could, I could not restrain the pained cry that escape me as EVA 00's arm was violently severed from its root in a smoking, sparking explosion.
Bardiel had reacted at once and jumped out of range, yet here I still lay prone, glancing up at xem, immobilized by pain.
My odds of fighting back any further were beyond dismal.
Bardiel would be able to do with me what xir pleased, and there would be little I could do to prevent it –
...but it seems xir didn't want to.
I cannot say if this was some expression of mercy, an accurate, pragmatic choice by an intelligence not given to such human foibles as sadism, or a simple loss of interest, but whatever interpretation once might impose on it, Bardiel simply turned around and continued xier pilgrimage toward Neo Tokyo-3 with the same colossal, thunderous steps as before, still without a single scratch.
I followed it with my eyes until the power cut out, trembling and gritting my teeth in agony.
It was not long before the entry plug went dark.
The pain in my shoulder, not so much.
Attempts to make my left hand produce purposeful movements yielded only errant twitches.
All I could do now was to wait for the rescue crew.
I had lost my chance for good.
Actually, I had lost my chance in so many, many ways, only some of which were directly related to this battle.
Going with the OG series design for Bardiel here (besides the halo), this is the one that wins out over its rebuild counterpart – it's more viscerally gross if it looks closer to actual fungus/decay.
This scene is a great example of something that ppl imho always get wrong about Rei is that her chief character flaw is nihilistic resignation, not blind obedience. Not only does she show more concern about her fellow pilots than anyone else, the one time she's flat out told to kill a man, she explicitly gets her ass kicked because she doesn't just coldly execute him. (though it is of course perfectly realistic how different characters such as Asuka may come off assuming that she doesn't care due to her lack of expressiveness – that's a fairly common misunderstanding IRL, after all.)
The guy from Aeon Natum Engel came closer to nailing this about Rei than 80% of stuff out there despite being a huge crossover AU, but he got the spirit in some important ways, maybe just by virtue of being just the right kind of nuts.
I cannot express in words how jelly I am of that guy's writing skills.
It's got to be appreciated how the narrative conspires to ensure that things go to hell by having Misato be out of commission & having Asuka get taken out first – precisely the ones who may have been more likely to hatch an impromptu plan like "you guys hold him down & I pull out the plug" or something like that, compared to the less proactive characters like Shinji, Rei and the bridge bunnies. Asuka has no compunctions with killing people that are attacking her & doesn't tend to be morally conflicted about her actions the way Shinji is, but I also think she'd have at least tried not to kill Toji if she could at all help it, if the roles were switched – she gets lowkey attached to ppl quickly just from their presence, and she knew Hikari liked him. (with Hikari being the closest that OG series Asuka goes to having a healthy, positive, uncomplicated relationship) - ironally, she could have made a big difference right where she starts getting the impression that her presence doesnt matter.