Thousand Shinji (NGE crossover)

[Academia Nut]

Oh, trust me, I've known about the Old Ones and the First Progenitor Race since before I started writing, and there will be mention of both, but that would be spoiling things. Trust me though when I say that I know how this is all going to play out, and you should find the end mind-blowing. In the good way though, not the "what the fuck just happened?" from the end of the series.

[Utah Jak]

Well, holy shit. That was awesome. Love the ROTJ Palp reference. Fan-fucking-tastic as always

[FA Xerrik]

Really good stuff, if quite a departure in attitude from the canon Kaworu. Still I'm sure that's to be expected given the radical differences in the brief dynamic between the two characters. Is Shinji really going to lump Fuyutsuki in with Gendo and SEELE? I always had a bit of a soft spot for the guy, and felt like he was really very much innocent of much of the 2nd and 3rd Impact schemes. Perhaps I'm wrong, but is there any chance of even the smallest shred of mercy left in Shinji?

[Sidewinder]

Perhaps I'm wrong, but is there any chance of even the smallest shred of mercy left in Shinji?

Quoting from the 'Star Wars: Clone Wars' comics, "In [Count Dooku's] hands, even mercy can be a weapon." Shinji will be merciful to those he can manipulate to serve his will. He will be merciless to those he can't.

[KlavoHunter]

This is way better than that pamby-namby homoerotic bullshit between Shinji and Kaworu in the original series.

I expect Kaoru's experiences to influence the behavior of his clones, i.e., the Mass Production Evangelions' dummy plugs. Or are clones of Rei being used instead?

I hope to god they're using Kaworu, because otherwise I suspect that Rei's multiple personality disorder is going to kick in right as they try to turn on the Dummy Plugs, and then we have Rei simultaneously controlling a whole fuckload of EVAs...

... But to hell with that, we need an epic battle to cap things off with before Shinji... well, does whatever he had in mind. Uber MP-Evas versus Shinji and Asuka in their own Uber-Evas sounds nice.

[Trogdor]

Well damn, that was kickass. I look forward to the epic conclusion.

One question, though, I thought that Kaworu was the Fifth Child, but you have him as the Sixth. Did I miss something or this a set up for another surprise?

[KlavoHunter]

Well damn, that was kickass. I look forward to the epic conclusion.

One question, though, I thought that Kaworu was the Fifth Child, but you have him as the Sixth. Did I miss something or this a set up for another surprise?

Hikari was the Fifth Child in this iteration of NGE. Or Hikari was the Fourth Child, and Toji the Fifth.

“In transit, another Angel struck, infecting Unit 03. Upon initial activation, it took over and destroyed the testing facility outside Tokyo-3. It disabled the still inactive Unit 04, critically wounding the pilot, before it began to advance on the city. We were scrambled, but I was practically useless, unable to concentrate upon the mission because of my jealousy and loathing of Asuka. Upon initial contact I was quickly disabled,” Rei tells him.

So he could just watch as Unit 02 brought its chain-axe down into the poorly armoured flesh of Unit 03. It had not received the upgrades of the ones in Tokyo-3 yet, and despite the Angel’s upgrades, it was insufficient to withstand a berserker Unit 02 in full L-Type Equipment wielding the most advanced weaponry available to man. Asuka screamed in horror and fury at this abuse of her Eva, forced to watch up close as Unit 03 was hacked into bloody pieces.

Gendo did not power the Eva down until all that was left was a steaming corpse, the entry plug hacked to pieces by the chain-axe. The corpse of the pilot was almost too mangled to tell its identity.

Shinji’s heart broke in two as Asuka’s shrill screaming filled the air.

Hikari’s head rolled out of the remains.

[Chris OFarrell]

Hikari was also chosen as a child along with Toji, for units 3 and 4. So Kaworu is the 6th.

*Was* the 6th

This battle doesn't get old as you re-read it, not at all...

[KlavoHunter]

Hikari was also chosen as a child along with Toji, for units 3 and 4. So Kaworu is the 6th.

*Was* the 6th

This battle doesn't get old as you re-read it, not at all...

It sounded like Kensuke was on the way to being the Sixth Child, if they had an Eva for him, and if Kaworu didn't come along.

[Academia Nut]

Since Hikari and Toji were made pilots at the same time, and since Hikari got the lower numbered Eva, she was indeed the Fourth Child while Toji was the Fifth, simply by dint of arbitrary assignment.

You probably won't see any more updates until the weekend though. I've got four assignments due on Thursday and Friday, so writing will be slowed down until then.

[Academia Nut]

Call that no updates for the better part of a month. Sorry, a combination of illness, school, and writer's block decided to gang up on me and steal my ability to write. I got it back, but I only managed to knock out one of the bastards while the other two are still kicking me.

For Chris: 'voider' is indeed an actual word, but I was using it wrong, and Asuka is indeed a gamer, as seen in the series during the whole Fourth Child arc.

Enjoy.

---

Shinji took a deep breath as he focused his mind for what was to come, the lights flickering as the gathering of Warp energies disrupted the flow of electricity in the room slightly. The machines Asuka was hooked up to switched over to battery power for a millisecond before continuing, not long enough to trip any alarms.

Exhaling, Shinji sent his consciousness into the Astral Plane, diving towards Asuka’s mind. Now that he saw the full extent of the damage, he knew that things would be trickier than he had at first assumed. Asuka’s psyche was like a jigsaw puzzle caught in a vortex, thoughts and memories swirling about, combining randomly before flying apart again.

Fortunately, the mind was more resilient than most people suspected, at least when you looked at it the way Shinji did. When there were no other forces at work, it would tend to mend itself. The trouble was that most people could not see the clash of ideas occurring within their souls, could not see the internal stresses and how to relieve them. Shinji could for everyone but himself, something that was currently frustrating him.

In any case, the first order of business was to slow down, then stop the crippling maelstrom that was currently incapacitating Asuka. The trick was that the chaos of her mind was being caused by her having no foundation to ground her thoughts. Analogously, if her mind was a puzzle in a vortex, then if Shinji could fit enough pieces together then the drag would slow everything down just enough to allow the greater whole to assemble automatically.

He would start at the periphery, where the memories were the freshest. Towards the core of Asuka’s being were her earliest, most primal memories, and there was already a great deal of damage there. If Shinji tried to fit those pieces together to serve as the base, it would be an exercise in futility, like trying to lash together a life raft out of shards of glass.

Moving in closer, Shinji waited until he saw a large, continuous block of surface thoughts, before snatching out a mental probe to catch it. He had intended to pull it up to the forefront of Asuka’s mind and analyze it before finding a piece that would fit with it, but instead he found his mind inexorably drawn into the memory. He might have been able to pull out at the cost of causing more damage, but since that ran counter to his intentions, he metaphorically grit his teeth and went along with the pull, diving in.


The Twelfth Angel, a floating ball of banded black and white floating above Tokyo-3, serene and seemingly inoffensive. Its enigmatic nature was not enough to cover up the deadly threat it presented, especially as it had simply appeared above the city, and nowhere else had it ever been detected.

The city was quiet except for the low rumble of the Evas skulking about the skyscrapers, trying to get a good look at the target, determine its form and abilities. Shinji had his bolter with underslung melta and the shoulder mounted missile pods, I had my bolt pistol and chain-axe, and Rei was backing them up with the positron rifle.

The bitch was still mad at me, but let her stew over the fact that Shinji is mine and I’m not going to share with some dirty little Nurgle whore. Slut was lucky she could pull off that back from the dead trick, and she should be happy that I let the issue drop with the last incarnation.

Finally, after ten minutes of doing nothing but using the buildings for cover, Misato finally said over the radio, “Alright, we still have no idea what this thing is. Asuka, fire a three round burst and then return to cover, we want to see how it will react.”

“Affirmative,” I say, longing to activate the motor to the chain-axe and leap at the Angel while screaming ‘Blood for the Blood God!’, but that would be reckless and imprudent, and I learned my lesson after the Seventh Angel. First figure out if the target will fall to the berserker approach, then go nuts on it.

Moving my Eva with the ease born from a decade’s worth of practice, I break from cover and line up the shot beautifully. In less than a second the enormous rounds are away and…

Son of a bitch! Bastard just vanished-

“Look out!” Someone yelled over the radio, but by then it is too late. Through my connection with the Eva, I feel my feet suddenly go cold, as if they were dunked in ice water. I try to pull away, but the sensation of tar sucking at my feet, dragging me deeper, is all I can feel.

Looking down, I find a black void spread out beneath me, everything it touches sinking into it. Void truly is the correct name for it, for the blackness is not simply the absence of all light, but the consumption of all light. If Crayola were to name this colour, it would be Hawking Black, for this was the colour of the event horizon of a black hole. This was an event horizon.

I hear various panicked orders being bandied about, but I comprehend none of them, so focused am I on attempting to escape from this slow, sucking fate. I point the pistol down at the void sea that has drawn me in up to the knees and unload the rest of the magazine into it, each shell disappearing beneath the surface with nary a ripple. Thumbing my chain-axe to life, I hack at the thing, only to have the axe ripped out of my hands by the spinning teeth. One way only it seems.

Before I can give in to panic or despair another hand grips mine, a barrage of missiles joining my rapidly dwindling supply of bolter rounds. Shinji has leapt atop one of the collapsing buildings and grabbed a hold of Unit 02’s, my, free hand and trying to haul me out.

He’s saying something; I can’t hear what he’s saying.

Hold on Asuka, hold on.

I’m down to my chest in this thing. Half my body is numb, one of my arms is caught in the tar, and with a sinking horror I realize that the entry plug has sunk beneath the surface. I am in this cold oblivion now. I should have ejected, should have escaped before it came to this, but I had to be an idiot and keep fighting.

The building Shinji is using for support is collapsing around his feet, the strain tearing it apart. He’s switched to a two handed grip, but as his footing disintegrates around him, my hand is starting to slip from his.

He says something again, and again I fail to comprehend the meaning behind the sounds.

I’m not letting you go Asuka! I’m not letting you go!

Only the arm Shinji is holding on to and the face of Unit 02 remain above the surface. The last thing I see is the last of Shinji’s footing give way and him forced to leap free. Everything goes to oblivion as my face sinks beneath the surface.

I am alone.

I scream.

I am trapped in this dark place, no hope of escape or rescue. I will be stuck here in the silence on minimum power as my LCL thickens to sludge, the oxygen content becoming progressively lower as the carbon dioxide levels increase dangerously.

There is no escape…

No! Remember the rest! Remember Asuka! Remember what happens next! Remember what you learn later.

Later? There is no later. I’m going to die down here…

This is a memory! You survived this! And you weren’t alone.


Asuka had all but sunk beneath the surface of this insane, bizarre Angel, only the single hand I had held on to remaining above the surface. I can already picture her terrified screams in my mind. She’s still so very afraid of being alone.

I make the choice. I grab a hold of her even as I fall into the ensnaring influence of the Twelfth Angel. I won’t abandon her. She is too precious to let go so easily. As I go I say over the radio, “I’ll be back,” and the last of my Eva seen disappearing beneath the surface is the hand not grasping Asuka held high in a thumbs-up.

Cheesy, I know, but that sort of brash confidence is what is expected of me these days and I would be a fool not to capitalize on it. Plus that kind of arrogant nonchalance helps keep me strong in normally sanity crushing situations. Like this one.

I don’t remember this.

It’s not your memory.

On the other side of the event horizon there is nothing, the absolute sort of nothing that can drive lesser being insane. I hope Asuka is strong enough to handle this. Energy seeps from Unit 01 slowly but surely, and I quickly switch over to minimal life support to conserve power. Soon I am alone in the Entry Plug, but I can feel a residue of touch from my Eva, the single point of contact between Unit 01 and 02. I hope Asuka can feel this too.

I… I remember that. I remember a tingling in my palm, a single source of warmth in the cloying cold.

I try to reach out to her with my mind, but this pocket of the void created by the Angel interferes. I cannot find her to make contact, even when I can still feel her presence physically.

So I begin to explore this place. It is a twisting maze in many dimensions. The Angel is folded in upon itself in a twelve dimensional fractal. My brain struggles to comprehend it, and only my experience with dealing with this sort of thing gives me any chance at all to decipher the form of the Angel. It is warped, but then again, so am I, with a capital ‘W’ too.

Minutes pass, then hours, as I work out what is going on. From within the Eva, it seems like nothing is happening, that we interlopers are simply floating motionlessly in an infinite void, but slowly I discern that we are in fact moving, ever so slowly, towards the heart of the Angel. What we will find there I have no clue, but somehow I doubt we will last that long once we get there, either through malign intent or simple neglect as we run out of power.

As I continue to explore, to study this alien place, I can feel a buzzing, a flicker upon the edges of my psyche. At first I think it is merely internal, psychic noise generated by my own frustration with trying to comprehend this impossible place, but as we draw closer to the core, I realize that it is the mind of the Angel.

Not like other. Not closed.

Who is this?

It is the memory of the Angel’s mind, as filtered through human, or at least near-human, perceptions.

It has a voice but no voice, my mind giving it speech despite the fact that all I receive from it are thoughts. Simple thoughts too, the fumbling stuttering of a child whose head has yet to clear with the absorption of knowledge and language. Even the simplest of dullards had grander dreams than this animal endowed with power above its station.

The ‘other’ as you call her is the master of the world of physical combat, something you disdain, but are you powerful enough to take me, a master of the mind?

In retrospect perhaps such taunting was a bad idea if Rei’s commentary on the method of attack used by the Fifteenth Angel is correct.

Idiot!

Hey! I had no idea the situation would evolve like this!

The Angel is confused by my declaration, for it is a babe who has yet to grasp simple concepts like linear time trying to listen to a quantum physicist with affection for Zen koans trying to explain the Schrödinger Equation.

It is here that I come to the ultimate conclusion that the Angels are doomed. They have a certain feral instinct coupled to the ability to learn, but for all their power, they cannot know. They cannot know anything beyond themselves, beyond their experiences. It is more than a lack of imagination; it is the fundamental inability to grasp the ideas of another. Their advancements are reactionary rather than proactive.

A human may die, but they live on in the minds of others. The poet may no longer have a tongue with which to recite his works, but the tongues of others will serve as vehicles for his art just fine. Brains, stone, paint, ink, steel, glass, and light, these are the media through which humanity has achieved immortality.

The Angels are doomed, for they fight alone when an entire world is arrayed against them, the sum total of all humanity, past and present, dead and alive, bent towards their destruction.

I hide my powers, I counsel Rei and Asuka to hide theirs, and my master hid his very existence for we all know that no matter what our strength, to face such a force was the height of folly.

We hide because all the might of humanity turned towards a single goal is unstoppable.

Profound.

Technically untrue, although damn close. I wasn’t exactly myself at the time for some reason.

Oxygen content getting low?

I was thinking more long term, but that could be a contributing factor.

The Angel continues its incessant buzzing, trying to talk to a human mind but failing on a fundamental level. Without the ability access my subconscious thoughts, it has no base point to relate to, no calibration to test against, so, ignoring it, I continue my exploration of the Angel’s structure.

Hours more pass. The Angel’s ‘voice’ is getting stronger, even if it is learning little from me or Asuka, as we are drawn closer to its core, a child throwing a temper tantrum at being ignored, but this motion is giving me the clues I need for navigation, like an active sonar pulse in the darkness.

I find Asuka’s chain-axe and begin to tug on it, drawing it back to us. An hour later I have it in Unit 02’s free hand, telekinetically closing the fingers about the handle for preparation of what is to come.

I… remember this part now…

Oh fuck here we go again…


Fight. Fight for me. Fight for you. Fight for us. Your soul blazes with such fury and passion, is it any wonder I was attracted to you in the first place, like a moth to a candle? So long as you fight, I can guide my way by the light of your soul. Fight, it was what you were born for.


Memories entwine and uncoil, two minds complimenting each other for a time, thoughts and emotions in stereo, the same and different, two unique perspectives on the same event. It is as the infinite dance of life, strands of DNA opening and closing.

For the briefest of moments both Shinji and Asuka get a glimpse of something… beyond, before the memory resumes.


I was trapped.

Alone.

The Entry Plug would be my coffin.

I was curled up tightly, scared nearly catatonic, my mind playing tricks on her. I swore I could hear the shovels tossing the dirt over the lid of the coffin already.

Only some twinge of rational thought had forced me to go into power conservation mode all those hours ago. I wanted to thrash and wail, to claw at my grave, to dig my way to the surface, to find the fresh air I craved. The LCL had grown cloudy, murky, and I wanted to expel it all from my lungs, but there was no air out there. There was nothing. It the depths of space had nothing on this sort of void.

At least space had the stars for comfort.

Fight, it was what you were born for.

The thought came from outside me… and from within as well. An echo of a memory, a promise made…

Thank you.

This… wasn’t me…

The chain-axe in my hand leapt to life, AT-field exploding outwards in unison with Shinji, with me the entire time, nullifying the reality bending space of the Angel. Once ethereal membranes closed off to them became solid and yielding. Flesh parted, and the Evas exploded out from the core of the Angel, dropping to the ground of Tokyo-3 in a torrent of blood as the Angel imploded, its extra-dimensional flesh not meant to be subjected to such strains.

The Twelfth Angel died with a whimper, evaporating away, the damage taken less than even the relatively pathetic Ninth Angel until you realize that in its twisted, warped nature its core was its body.

Both Evas had a moment to roar their triumph before the last of the power gave out and emergency response teams had to scramble to get the pilots out of the entry plugs before the lack of life support caused permanent damage.

Thank you for what you did.

It… it wasn’t me at the end. There was something… something else…


The man was nailed to the wall with whatever was available at the time, mostly pens and chair legs, but other appropriately shaped objects had been used as necessary. The witnesses were still dripping off the ceiling and any exposed surface, while it would probably be easier and cheaper to mine and process new materials than try and salvage the heaps of electronics turned to slag.

That was for Hikari and Toji. Revenge however would be incomplete until I had Gendo’s head on a pike and the skulls of SEELE stacked up in a nice neat pile.

And they would dare to call me a monster after what they have done?

THEY had done this. Done this to me. Done this to Asuka. Done this to Hikari. Done this to Toji. Done this to them all.

Malicious aforethought would have been preferable, but this monstrosity was so much worse. It treated them all as things, simple tools without thoughts or emotions. Did they think we would not care for the cruel indignities placed upon us, even the secret, bitterly ironic ones? Even I understood to hide the evidence more carefully than this for fear of the retaliation of my victims.

They had sown the wind, now it was time to reap the whirlwind.

I walk out of the remains of the building before mentally setting it on fire to cover my tracks. Warp energy seethes off me, my fury barely contained. The plants around me blossomed and evolved in a riot of life before crumbling and dissolving into multi-coloured slurries. For kilometres in every direction the air became charged and excited with energy. Lakes and rivers began to boil away, feeding into the enormous thunderstorm building, clouds as black as the Twelfth Angel’s body soaring tens of thousands of feet into the air as the perfect day was covered in darkness for tens of kilometres in all directions.

Had there been survivors, they surely would have commented on the strangeness of this, but the area was already devoid of life.

A storm was coming to Tokyo-3.

A storm by the name of Ikari Shinji.

I let the rain come though it does not wet me; let the wind come, though it does not ruffle my clothes; let them pick me up and carry me off to my destination. Lightning and thunder boom about me, the pennant and war drums of a furious sky god of old, demanding human sacrifice in appeasement for the insults given by the mere existence of the puny mortals.

Damn, whatever you found must have been huge!

Fuck, I wasn’t even this pissed when I woke up yesterday and everything had gone to Hell. What did I find?

I race across the landscape, Odin leading the Wild Hunt, lightning whip cracking against the flanks of my zephyr horses while banshees and Valkyries wail at my sides. As I near my destination though, the sounds of my thunder are drowned out by the thunder of man.

Cresting a final hill, I find myself looking at Tokyo-3 firing away with everything in its arsenal, trying desperately to slow down the advance of the Fourteenth Angel. It is all one long, continuous roar of guns and explosions bouncing off the AT-field like spit balls against Chobham armour.

And then, with a single, contemptuous swat, the Angel annihilates half the defenders before punching a hole in the armour, making its way down towards the heart of the city.

While the storm I have stirred will take time to die, I none the less let it slip away. I must make it to my Eva! Gendo and SEELE can wait a few minutes!

Making the best compromise of speed against drawing attention to my position from the Angel, and incidentally everything else as all attention is focused upon said Angel, I make it to Central Dogma just in time to see the end of the fight between the Angel and Unit 02.

Asuka!


Tokyo-3 was a clean, modern city firmly under the control of NERV… or at least it had been until Shinji and Zeruel had put several large, gaping holes in it and severely damaged its capacity to affect self repair. They were still working to bring the electricity back on in some places.

Into that power vacuum had flood all manner of scum and villainy, hoping to capitalize on the ruin and despair left by the battles with the Angels. Profiteering was the least of the ills that had sprung up like mushrooms in the cracks of a poorly maintained manure processing plant. With a rich supply of those too broken and destitute -or ensnared by NERV- to leave the city, drug use had sky rocketed in the past three weeks. And as inevitably as Tokyo-3 attracted the Angels, with the drugs came the violence.

And with the violence, came the predators.

The smell of gun oil and leather, the smell of conflict, draws me. A tiny part of my mind wonders at just how much I have changed to be able to track such smells.

Tell me about it.

Quiet! This is hard enough to follow already!

It is dark out, and yet my eyes see the world as if it were day. Sight, hearing, smell, touch, even taste had taken on a new sharpness, of the sort that can only be experienced to be understood. I perceive the world in a way that no human can comprehend. The only person who I could have related this to is not here. He is trapped in his Eva, his corporeal form dissolved away.

I was always with you in spirit.

My nose picks up the scents of conflict, of blood spilt, and I am drawn like a shark to a wounded seal, following the winds, my bare feet slapping against the asphalt, concrete and corrugated metal of the warehouse roofs I run across in search of prey. Stopping at the edge of one, I peer down.

I see five men standing in a circle around a young woman. One of them has a knife out, dripping with blood, the woman holding her right arm in pain, obviously wounded. The only light aside from the city’s background glow is from a single yellow source in a metal cage above a warehouse door.

I pull out one of my hatchets. I don’t even know where I get them anymore, they just come to me when I need them and vanish when they become ‘evidence’. Shinji would know more about this but…

Such thoughts drain away. Shinji was right all those months ago, Chaos truly is free from angst, at least when used properly. When I am fighting, time slows down my focus on the moment is so great. There is no room for superfluous thoughts, for anything at all but purest rage and bloodlust. This is why I hunt; this is why I fight, to forget.

That’s the psychotic berserker I feel in love with.

I am already falling through the air as the hatchet impacts against the light. The prey does not have time to even acknowledge that the light is gone before I am upon them, literally in the case of the one holding the knife. The impact from my fall is dissipated into his body, breaking bones and compressing organs, mostly in the shoulders and spine as that is where my feet make contact.

Springing off him and landing adroitly on the ground, I extend a hand and catch the hatchet I had thrown, the last light from the sparks illuminating me for just the briefest of moments, the blade of the hatchet catching the light of the last embers and illuminating like hellfire for just a moment before it catches flesh.

What little light left to the alley there is will no longer reflect off the blade as it is now covered in blood, along with most of the scene as the man’s heart, not knowing he was dead, still pumped a few times, squirting blood out of the major arteries in his neck that were now open to air.

His head hit the ground with a dull thump not dissimilar to a cantaloupe.

My breathing quickens at the sight of the slaughter I have wrought, charged with adrenaline and other, stranger chemicals, products of a body I no longer understand, gifts from my ferocious god.

“BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!” The words escape from my lips as if on their own, a savage cry that echoes through the alley, deafening the still stunned prey. Continuing the arc that decapitated the first man, I whip the hatchet around so that it catches a second just bellow the sternum, ripping his whole chest cavity apart.

It’s raining blood now. The air tastes of copper and iron, the sweetest scents I now know. I can count the individual drops as they fall, my senses and reactions are so tuned in. I know that I am drooling, long ropey cords of spittle that trail from the edge of my mouth, turning to foam as I proceed.

I am insane.

I reach out, my fingers punching through skin and muscle like butter, only stopping to wrap around bone. I yank. With a wet slurping noise and the cracking of bones, cartilage, and ligaments, I tear one of the prey’s heads off along with a chunk of spinal column.

I am inhuman.

“SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!” I roar. I relish the unimaginable violence I unleash. I am a destroyer, a conqueror, a bloodthirsty monster.

I love it.

There is but one combatant left. The one I landed in on is still moving, but that is simply post mortem twitching. I can hear the fact that his heart has already stopped beating. Not that he was a threat anyway after I broke his shoulders and paralyzed him.

The last man is just getting out his knife when I strike. The hatchet released from my hand, it spins through the air, shedding blood in long arcs before striking the hand wielding the weapon, breaking bones and cutting off his thumb. He does not even have the time to scream in pain before I am on him, slamming into him hard enough to drive the air from his lungs.

I am a fourteen year old girl and I out mass a fully grown man in a violent profession by at least half his mass. I pin him to the wall and then drive him to his knees so that I can get a good angle at his throat. If this were Shinji, what I do next would be much more gentle and affectionate, and he would be better able to withstand it.

I am glad you think of me when killing people.

It was for you.

I know.

My mouth fills with blood as my teeth penetrate flesh. Hot, sticky, and sweet, it is like honey on my tongue, the ultimate sacrament. Khorne needs no transubstantiation bullshit.

Without Shinji, killing is sex for me. Considering the fact that Shinji is telepathic, telekinetic, and has mapped the human nervous system with the powers of his mind, that puts killing somewhere above some hypothetical mixture of heroin and chocolate on the scale of ‘good shit’.

I really wish I could remember that.

I bet you do.

What?

When I can no longer even suck the blood from the dry blood vessels I have punctured, I drop the corpse to the ground. In this alley, only two hearts remain beating: mine and the prey’s prey. My heartbeat is slowing to a regular, steady beat now that the fury of the moment is passing, but the girl remains frantic and somewhat irregular with terror.

She has collapsed to the ground, still clutching the wound on her arm, but now she is tainted with the harsh ammonia smell of urine and the unpleasant stench of tears mixing with mucus as she cries in terror.

She is not worth my time. Picking up my hatchet, I hack off the heads of those not already decapitated and then gather them up, leaving the alley behind. I know that there will be no witnesses, not even evidence, that Asuka Langley Soryu killed those men.

Half an hour of travel through the labyrinth of service tunnels running beneath the streets of Tokyo-3 brings me to my lair, the charnel house I have dedicated to Khorne, a portion of the dead zone created by Shinji’s battles. It will be months before the reconstruction reaches here, and I suspect it will remain unmolested even then. The gods seem to protect the sanctity of their shrines in this city, as evidenced by the continued secret existence of Rei’s bone yard.

My chapel to Khorne is what would be expected. Skulls from the past two weeks of work are piled up in a great stack, dozens of them human but hundreds from other, lesser species, the spoils of my apostles. Spartacus had brought in several dead cats already, the blood on their fur and on his muzzle showing how they had ended up dead. Already the old bulldog was working at ripping their heads off to add them to pile.

Or rather; The Throne. Sinking luxuriously into the skull throne I have crafted in imitation of Khorne’s, I pick up one of the skulls and begin the task of cleaning it to make suitable for addition to the throne.

That task however requires a bit more light, so I strike a match, the phosphor flaring brilliantly in the darkness before subsiding to the yellow-orange glow of burning wood. I light two candles, crafted from the rendered flesh of those I have killed.

I work on the five skulls quickly and efficiently, having them cleaned and added to the throne in about an hour. My own internal sense of time tells me that I still have an hour before I need to be back at the apartment before Misato rouses from her latest drunken stupor. I can get there in forty-five minutes if I run at full speed.

I can make better time than the trains most of the time.

I consider snuffing out the candles and leaving immediately, but I pause to consider my reflection in the mirror that had been part of this room’s original purpose.

No one would ever suspect Asuka Langley Soryu of the killing spree that was haunting Tokyo-3 because the creature staring back at me from the mirror looked nothing like her the majority of the time. Naked except for a blood-stained tarp, I was only vaguely human as all the proportions for her limbs were wrong, a by-product of the alteration of her skeleton for more efficient attachment of the muscles that rippled across my body, barely contained by my skin.

My red skin. As in brilliant crimson, the colour of arterial blood flowing from a fresh wound, before clotting has kicked in. It was the sort of colour more associated with paints than with the spectrum of human flesh tones. It was unnatural and terrifying with its ultimate wrongness for it had not the same quality as painted skin either.

The same went for my hair. While copper was an accepted hair colour, mine was bronze. Again, it wasn’t so much the colour in of itself that was wrong, it was the fact that it was on a human, because it didn’t look like some strange admixture of blonde and red that might arise in nature, but it looked like it was made out of actual strands of metal. It just subtly did not look right.

Of course, the horns jutting out of my forehead pretty much guaranteed that the police would never catch me. Any eye witnesses would either be considered too traumatized to be giving a correct report or they would assume that the horns were a prop.

I gazed at the mirror for a time, staring at the daemon looking back at me before asking, “What more do you want?”

I pace in frustration back and forth for a time before shifting my features back to normal, the procedure quick and painless despite the cracking of bones and the shifting of flesh. The fact that my hair changes colour too despite the fact that it is dead shows just how altered my contact with Chaos has left me.

I stare at myself, the only thing unchanged about me being my eyes, as they were already marked by Khorne months ago. I grind my teeth in rage. I need Shinji back; I don’t need more strength and power. He is my strength and power. In fact, he is probably the reason I haven’t been caught yet.

Nope.

What’s with the negativity all of a sudden?

That’s not you?

On a sudden impulse I pick up one of the numerous bladed implements scattered about and consider it. Obviously my offerings haven’t been enough for the Blood God to return Shinji to me yet. It looked like it was time to up the ante. I could either start killing more people, probably not the best of ideas as my Eva was still being repaired and had a limited power supply, and large calibre bullets could still give me problems.

Or I could start making an offering that was actually from the self.

The cutting edge bit into my skin, between the breasts and above the heart. The damage was superficial, but already the blood had started flowing in contrast to the sluggishness it usually exhibited these days. This was a sacrifice in the truest sense of the word, the giving of my blood. When she finished, she had the emblem of Khorne carved into my skin just above my sternum. The pain was meaningless, something for Slaaneshi fanatics, only the blood mattered.

So crude.

Stop that!

It’s not me!

Who then?

I don’t know! I don’t even know who I am right now!

These are all memories you know.

This is blood freely given. Blood to pay for my failure that day.

Get out the popcorn. This is going to be fun.

Who are you?

Scene change.

Wha-


I could feel the concussive thump of the armoured roof of the Geofront being breached even through the LCL of my Eva. It was a huge blast to punch all the way through with only two shots. Following shortly afterwards in the wake of the explosion at a sedate pace that belied its ferocious power, was the Fourteenth Angel, Zeruel. It was a blocky sort, basically just a giant torso with a skull-like face at the top and two short, stubby legs at the bottom that it didn’t really need with its levitation powers. It had shoulders but no real arms, just truncated, little squares where arms should be.

It was essentially a black, beige and orange ball of ugly that had so far demonstrated the most firepower ever for an Angel. I like it. It is a simple killer, something I could understand.

A brilliant blue-white beam sprang up from Unit 00’s location, intercepting the Angel as it descended, but the energy just splashed harmlessly off its AT-field. Rotating slowly to face this distraction, its eyes flashed and suddenly Unit 00 was consumed in fire. Blown backwards by the energy unleashed, Unit 00 bounced several times before coming to rest in one of the underground forests. The positron rifle and the power pack then exploded, immolating everything around the fallen Unit 00.

The indicators declared Unit 00 intact but inoperable.

Snorting derisively, I say to the Angel despite the fact that I know it can’t hear me, “Nice, you got the bitch. I would buy you a beer, but unfortunately I’m underage and, more importantly, I’m going to kill you now.”

I depress the trigger and a stream of rounds bursts forth from my bolter to explode harmlessly against Zeruel’s AT-field. It ignores me.

Big mistake.

I continue to fire off bursts of bolter fire as I advance, the ground quaking beneath my feet as I push my Eva up to a full run. The Angel continues to ignore me as it searches for… something. I do not know what, and I do not really care.

I begin priming the underslung melta on my bolter.

The sudden power build-up attracts the Angel. It turns towards me, eyes flashing.

I am already moving too fast, my reactions accelerated beyond what a human should be able to do. I side-step the attack, my eyes picking up the near invisible shimmer of the energy distorting the air as it passes by to strike the far end of the Geofront.

Seven.

The Angel’s face contorts into the image of simple-minded confusion. How did it miss?

I dodged retard.

Sassy.

Whoever you are, could you cut out the commentary, we both have a rather confused concept of self and time right now and you’re not helping.

Shh! We’re almost to the good part.

Six.

The Angel fires again, and once more I dodge, although just barely this time. I can feel the crackle of energy along the skin-tight AT-field I have erected, but the majority of the blast impacts close to where the first one hit. I idly note that the atmosphere in the Geofront is rapidly being polluted by various nitrous chemicals and a great deal of ozone. Lot of energy being thrown around.

Five.

I’m about to throw about more.

Four.

Cluing in, the Angel ceases targeting my centre of mass and aims for the ground in front of me, knowing that I’ll be caught by the blast. I leap into the air just as it fires, and then steal a page from Shinji’s playbook. I erect a wall with my AT-field beneath my feet after the blast strikes the ground and use it to ride the explosion into the air while gingerly cradling the weapon in my hands to avoid setting off the now touchy melta.

Three.

I flip over the Angel, erecting an AT-field in open space to push off of so that I avoid travelling too far, before landing adroitly, for a thousand ton war machine anyway, on the ground.

Two.

Zeruel turns to face me slowly as I begin to erode its AT-field with my own. Something is happening with its arms, as if they are unfolding like pieces of paper.

One.

“Too late motherfucker,” I note before shoving the melta right up against its core.

Zero.

Sensing the danger, at the last instant something folds around Zeruel’s core right as I fire the melta. The whole world goes white and the entire bolter/melta weapon’s platform is ripped from my hand by improper bracing against the tremendous recoil. It doesn’t matter though because…

Because…

Motherfucker! Somehow the Angel managed to survive all of that. True, its flesh was blackened and charred, but it was somehow intact and regenerating. And moving.

Its arms were fully unfolded now, great sheet-like things that had a mobility that should not have been possible. I know from looking at them though that they are an extension and enhancement of the energy-whip idea utilized by the Fourth Angel. It probably used its AT-field to make them cut at least as well as a progressive blade. The fact that I had not vaporized it indicated that it could somehow maintain both the typical ‘wall’ style AT-field and some sort of structural version.

Bugger.

Dodging under the first swipe I pull my trusty pistol and chain-axe off my back, bringing them to bear. Sidestepping the second attack, I parry a third with my chain-axe. The whirring progressive teeth war with the AT-field empowered mono-edge of the appendage for a moment before the two mighty weapons recoil away from each other with a shower of sparks. For the brief moment where they clash the Angel is open and I pump two rounds into its core. The armour piercing high explosive bolts detonate at the surface, doing little to no damage.

We dance like that for a time, the Angel and I, neither one capable of getting a solid hit on the other, even as our tempo and pace increase to insane levels. I don’t care though, laughing in my Entry Plug at the thrill of the fight. My synch ratio is probably over a hundred right now, as if such numbers matter, and I am one with the fight. I am my Eva and my Eva is me.

Not quite.

Shut up!

Oh fine, but really the sarcastic commentary is the best part.

And then in an instant, everything changes. One of the blade arms cuts through part of the sensor vane on my helmet, but I gladly sacrifice it just for the chance to get an opening. The Angel screams in pain as my chain-axe connects with the base of its right arm, sawing through the weaker flesh there. Brutally kicking it to the ground I shove my bolt pistol right into the wound and empty it, splashing purple blood all across my red armour.

I raise my chain-axe high for the killing stroke…

00:00:00

My power cord had been cut in the blast that sent my skyward and I had not noticed, so caught up in the moment. I am out of power. In hindsight I think Misato was trying to warn me of that, but I had not noticed.

“FUCKING BULLSHIT!” I scream at the unfairness of this snatching of defeat from the jaws of victory.

Not wasting any time, the Angel then cuts off Unit 02’s head and hurls the rest of the Eva back and far away with a blast from its eye beams. The armour barely holds. It shouldn’t have held I am told later, but somehow, miraculously I survive.

I do not however remain conscious after impact with the ground at the end of my ballistic arc. Considering all the upgrades to my body that says something about the violence of the event.

Bravo! Bravo! Encore! Encore!

Would you kindly tell us who the fuck you are?

Shinji knows already.

No I… this is one of those things I forgot about, right?

Yes. I think it is also time he remembers what I told him and the Secrets I Keep.

---

I do believe this deserves a "MWUAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA!", don't you?

[KlavoHunter]

Oh, Emperor, who could THAT be?

[Aranfan]

Interesting. I was wondering when the Eldar god of Hedonism would get involved. Is that Misato by any chance?

[FA Xerrik]

So wait... there was another mind in there with Asuka during the fight? Or is this someone who came in with Shinji? You had to go and make things all confusing didn't you...

[Academia Nut]

Well I was intentionally trying to channel some of the mindfuckery of the last two episodes and the later half of End of Eva there in that even I don't know who exactly was talking at some points, but the next chapter should explain things a bit more.

You may suddenly have insight into the uncharacteristic behaviour from before the time skip though.

[Sidewinder]

So Slaanesh is now playing with Shinji and Asuka's mind? That can't be good.

By the way, good job on the battle scenes from Asuka's memory. I'm surprised she has the ability to transform, though. Can Shinji do the same?

[KlavoHunter]

Of course! Slaanesh didn't have any psyker-kiddy of his own, so he just nudged Shinji and Asuka into fucking like bunny rabbits.

[LadyTevar]

I think you need to go edit a bit, the italics are screwed up and made it even harder to understand.

But, my vote on the new voice is Shinji's Sensei.

[KlavoHunter]

But, my vote on the new voice is Shinji's Sensei.

He was a worshipper of Tzeentch,not Slaanesh.

[Academia Nut]

Nope, I checked, the italics are all exactly where they're supposed to be. Any difficulty you may have had in try to understand what the fuck is going on was entirely intentional.

[Singular Quartet]

Nope, I checked, the italics are all exactly where they're supposed to be. Any difficulty you may have had in try to understand what the fuck is going on was entirely intentional.

You are a gigantic bastard. I approve.

[FA Xerrik]

Even if the italics are all where they're meant to be, there are some closing tags scattered throughout the text. They don't seem to change anything, but it's distracting when you've got enough voices going as it is.

[Academia Nut]

Whoops. So there were formatting errors. Sorry, my eyes have been rather droopy lately and I know where everything is supposed to be, so I missed those bits. The formatting on FF.net tends to give me less guff so if you ever have problems like that again there might be more clarity there.

For note, I am planning one more chapter of mind screwing, two or three to cover End of Eva, and then one for an epilogue. I'm going to have so much fun with the EoE arc and I am hopeful that I will be able to cause awesome-related brain aneurysms (or ARBA as I like to think about it [note: not really]).

[FA Xerrik]

Didn't mean to come off like a tool about the formatting, my bad. If it's brainfuckery you're offering, then bring it on. In the immortal words of Luke Skywalker, I am NOT afraid!

[Academia Nut]

Nah, you were pointing out a legitimate problem and I was being a bit flippant. I really didn't look as hard as I should have when LadyTevar first mentioned it. Of course, the fact that the formatting was a bit weird made it harder to find.

And you shall learn the meaning of fear young padawan.