Indeed. Watching Chaos!Shinji almost effortlessly corrupt everyone around him is simultaneously amusing and horrifying; "Dark Side corruption" has nothing on this.
Really, though; it is almost enough to make one wish the Emperor would show up in some form or another and slap some sense into them all. With a very large warhammer.
"There is a high statistical probability of death by gunshot. A punch to the face is also likely." - Legion
"The machine is strong. We must purge the weak, hated flesh and replace it with the blessed purity of metal. Only through permanence can we truly triumph, only though the Machine can we find victory. Punish the flesh. Iron in mind and body. Hail the machine!" - Paullian Blantar, Iron Father of the Kaargul Clan, Iron Hands Chapter
While in its own universe, I think Chaos are a bunch of punks, there is something irresistable about the interaction here. Maybe its because Gendo and SEELE are big enough douchebags that letting Chaos play merry hell with their agendas and plans is somehow fitting.
Also, this chapter is dedicated to Instant Sunrise. Because bitching about my other stories won't get them done any faster when my brain is locked into Evangelion right now.
---
Rei sat in the entry plug for Unit 00, which in turn was locked in place in one of the test chambers, with Unit 01 standing by in case anything should go wrong again. She sat and contemplated the new knowledge she had, and listened to the crew techs describing the progress of the activation test.
As the power-up sequence approached the absolute borderline, Rei could feel the spirit within her Eva begin to stir, began to feel its hatred towards her and all things, but especially Gendo, surface. It wanted to go wild, to destroy, to rip and tear.
Rei faced it with despair. She threw two lifetimes of despair, of the knowledge that death and duty were inevitable, inescapable. The spirit raged all the more, but it was rapidly drowning in the deluge of hopelessness. It could try and kill Rei, but the next day a replacement would come. If it killed that one, then there would be another. And another. And another. And another.
The Eva would serve NERV, one way or another. It would be crushed and ground down and there was nothing it could do. Through the mind link, the beast wailed in despair, only to find Rei still there, smiling at the creature.
I accept you and your rage. Let us share our despair. Let me share my love, so that you are not so lonely.
The beast clutched onto Rei in desperation, and the absolute borderline was achieved. It was still a raging monster, but already it could no longer deny her. Defiance was pointless; she would win, therefore she already won.
In his own Eva, Shinji could feel the daemon in Unit 00 already start to change character. He could feel it happening in his own Eva too, although Unit 00 was far less stable so the change was faster there. But already the daemon was becoming less interested in direct confrontation but in sneakier methods that put it well out of harm’s way. The fight with Shamshel had caused it a great deal of pain and it was quite willing to try ranged attacks next time.
And then the call came, announcing that there was an Angel in bound.
“We can have Unit 01 on the surface in sixty seconds,” Misato tells Gendo.
“Do it then,” Gendo replies coldly.
Taking a quick glance at the new Angel, Misato says, “Prep the positron rifle for action and deploy Unit 01 well away from the target. It has no obvious melee combat abilities, so it will probably use some sort of ranged attack.”
Ah, I see that my influence is making those around me smarter, a refreshing change from feeling like I’m the one getting dumber.
Taking the positron rifle from an oversized weapons rack, Shinji clamps it down next to him on the launch platform and hooks in. With a rush the electromagnetic accelerators kick in and propel him towards the surface, his extra senses already expanding outward to taste the future.
Arriving on the surface, Shinji immediately moves to cover behind an available hill, positron rifle at the ready, like a World War One soldier sitting and waiting in the trenches for the enemy to begin coming over the top.
The Fifth Angel rounded a hill and came into view, a giant octahedron made of reflective blue metal, serenely hovering in mid-air. It was essentially a giant “Fuck you” to Shinji, in that it completely disdained getting anywhere near him, preferring instead angled armour and a distinct lack of ground contact. Shinji took it as a compliment.
Extending his awareness into the future to predict his shots, Shinji found…
Son of a bitch!
Shinji twitched off two quick rounds from the positron cannon before ducking down behind the hill and running for all he was worth. The two bundles of magnetically contained plasma blanketing cores of positrons drifted right into the path of the proton beam fired from within the enormous Angel. The opposing fields twisted and bent, the much smaller positron blasts taking the worst of it, but the Angel’s attack was slowed and warped just enough that Shinji managed to dive out of the way as the hill he was hiding behind was turned into a glass cliff.
What happened next Shinji really would have liked to have taken credit for, but anyone who looked at it would see right away that the whole affair was really just dumb luck.
The first shot took the brunt of the warping effect, its containment field completely disrupted, causing the bundle of plasma to spill out along with the positrons, which then proceeded to play merry hell with the atmosphere and produce a large ionization patch that featured separated positive and negative charges. The negative chunk then went and bent the Angel’s beam.
The chaotic dance of dynamically moving magnetic and electric fields, hauled the second positron blast into a bizarre and unpredictable path that somehow, miraculously, put it a few metres from the firing point on the Angel. With the Angel still diverting most of its power to the proton beam, the plasma sheath was capable of burning through its AT-field with raw brute force to deliver the packet of positrons straight to the outer edges of the accelerator ring, which was now heavily charged with electrons produced in the production of the beam.
There was a terrible explosion along the flank of Ramiel that left enormous cranks along the affected sections of its armour.
Picking himself up off the ground after the dive, Shinji pumped his positron cannon until the weapon ran dry. The first blast caught the Angel while it was still stunned and blew off a huge chunk of formerly smooth armour, while the second was intercepted by a rapidly building AT-field and only the positron packet made it through. The third through eighth rounds bounced off the now full strength AT-field like BBs against main battle tank armour.
The Angel began to rotate to expose an undamaged section to Shinji, its circumference glowing with a brilliant blue-white light as it built up a massive charge while maintaining its AT-field.
“Retreat looks good right about now,” Shinji muttered just a few seconds before the recall order was given and he ran for the nearest elevator tube. Screw staying and fighting now.
Shinji leapt head first for the elevator shaft just in time for Ramiel to fire its beam. An entire block of armoured buildings were obliterated and the water of the lake beneath was pressed down by the confining magnetic field. Shinji was caught in the chest plate by the blast, causing his armour rapidly evaporating and the oxygen in his LCL boiling out of solution.
But momentum carried him clear of the blast when he fell down the elevator shaft. Despite being in incredible pain, Shinji managed to dig Unit 01’s fingers into the side of the shaft wall and slow his descent enough that neither he or the Eva were killed on impact with the bottom.
It was at about that point he fell unconscious.
“What is it doing?” Misato asked as the feed from the surface came in, showing Ramiel descend to the surface of the lake and then settle in up to its equator, a massive cloud of steam rising from it upon contact.
“Licking its wounds it looks like,” Ritsuko commented. “That last blast had quite the build-up, probably more than was safe for the Angel.”
“So we get a couple of hours while it cools down and regenerates before the attack is resumed. Great,” Misato comments sarcastically.
“It could have been worse. If we had deployed a minute later Shinji would have been in its firing arc while he was still attached to the elevator rails. He would have been a sitting duck,” Ritsuko points out.
“True. What’s his status?” Misato asks.
“He took a few bruises from his fall down the shaft, and some neural overload from the blast, but otherwise he is in good condition. We can have Unit 01 back in working order within 3 hours, but neither can take another pounding like what just happened. We’re all out of reserve stocks of armour for both Evas,” Makoto reports.
Misato watched the Angel cooling in the lake and she said, “I have an idea.”
Shinji sat in the hospital bed reviewing the plan Misato came up with and replied, “I like it. It has a certain appealing deviousness to it. Although I must admit that the naming conventions are rather… unfortunate.”
Misato shrugs and says, “That’s the media for you. Too bad the alliteration is in English and not Japanese though.”
“Would this technically be a ‘Shinji Suicide Special’? After all I won’t be launching using a high explosive blast and I will be in a controlled fall. Incidentally, has any of the equipment been tested yet?” Shinji asks.
“I think the phrase will be expanded to anything insane you do at this point,” Misato says with a smile.
“That didn’t answer the second question,” Shinji says in an annoyed tone.
“Nothing has been field tested yet…” Misato says before saying more happily, “Everything should theoretically work.”
Sighing, Shinji just shakes his head and says, “Please tell me the plane has been tested.”
“Well of course! Well… no, don’t worry about that part!” Misato says, waving the matter aside cheerfully.
Shinji groans and says, “You know what, don’t tell me. What are the chances of success?”
“The MAGI give a 4% chance of success, which is our best result yet!” Misato replies.
Just shaking his head, Shinji takes a pen from one of Misato’s pickets and starts writing on the plans, saying, “I presume you’ve been testing the Angel’s defences?”
“Yes, although we’ve trying to prevent it from figuring out what we want to learn from it. The bastards are remarkably good at learning and adapting,” Misato replies.
“What’s the refresh time for its beam weapon?” Shinji asks while making annotations and notes.
“Twelve seconds,” Misato replies.
Tossing the plan back to her, Shinji says, “There, now I have a twelve second window and that other addition should bump the chances of success up a bit.”
Looking it over, Misato grins and says, “This is going to cause a lot of very expensive things to explode.”
“If we lose this battle, will it matter?” Shinji inquires.
“Not particularly, although if you fight every battle like it is your last one, eventually it will come true,” Misato notes.
“Then can we recover from the losses in a reasonable amount of time?” Shinji asks.
Looking over the list of changes Shinji made, Misato makes a quick tally before saying, “These losses are within our budget. I’ll make these suggestions.”
Getting up to leave, Misato says, “Oh, and you have a visitor.”
Shinji already knew that Rei was waiting outside, so he said, “Send her in.”
Misato raised an eyebrow, to which Shinji shrugged and said, “Who else would have clearance to see me here?”
Shrugging in concession to that logic, Misato says, “Rei, you can come in now.” Just before leaving, she glanced over her shoulder with an impish smirk and said, “Have fun you two.”
Rolling his eyes in exasperation, Shinji gestures for Rei to sit and asks, “Have you seen the plan yet?”
“It is… ambitious,” she replies after consideration.
“Just my kind of plan,” Shinji says with a smile. “I understand they’ve begun strapping on whatever they can to give Unit 00 some extra protection.”
Rei smiles at that and says, “It is what the Americans call ‘hillbilly armour’ I believe.”
Shinji smiles and says, “This will be fun, I can assure you of that. I wish I could teach you about precognition, but that took me months to figure out.”
“Is that how you struck Ramiel the first time?” Rei asked.
His face twitching in a half smile, Shinji says, “No, that was all Tzeentch’s handiwork, and taking credit for His work is a bad idea. I was just shooting blind because I knew the particle beam would be deflected a bit by the shots.”
“You were hopeful it would help,” Rei points out.
“Something that between the two of us only I could do at this point,” Shinji replies.
Nodding, Rei says, “I shall not hope about our battle.”
“Oh?” Shinji asks.
“No. Victory is inevitable,” Rei states simply.
“And how do you know that if I haven’t taught you how to read the strands of the future yet?” Shinji asks.
“Because you have enough hope for the two of us, and I enough endurance,” Rei says before standing up and leaning over to kiss Shinji on the forehead in an almost motherly way. Perhaps sisterly. Certainly familial.
“I must go and help prepare,” Rei replies before leaving.
Shinji raised his hand to his forehead where the moisture from Rei’s lips still lingered, and waited until he was certain she had moved out of psychic range before he burst out in tears. After a while he settled down, climbed out of the bed, got dressed, and then found something that he could draw the Star of Chaos on.
Kneeling down in prayer, Shinji says, “Great and Wise Tzeentch, I do not hope to comprehend your plans and ways, but I thank you for blessing this humble servant. That you might know my soul better than I do humbles me, and that you might grant me the desires of my heart truly astonishes me.”
He then pauses for a moment before adding on, “And if you’re doing this to royally screw me over later, know that it had better be damn well worth it, because I will not simply accept being fucked over like an apathetic follower of Nurgle. You obviously know me well enough to know that if you pull some bullshit like that, I will find a way to hunt your ass down, no matter how insane and stupid that might be. And if you do something like that just so that I do hunt you down for whatever reason, I will simply have to say that… okay, if your scheme is that complex I’m probably going to have to give you your due.”
That’s the problem with worshipping the god of schemes. You never quite know whether or not you’re being divinely blessed, screwed over royally, or both at the same time.
Standing up, Shinji found Misato standing behind him, looking at the symbol, a curious look on her face.
“What is that symbol anyway, it’s on your shrine at home too,” she asks.
“It’s the symbol of a tiny religious sect, very localized but kind of old. I’m probably one of two or three people who observe it left with that old man I told you about being one of them. It has to do with a belief of interconnection between all things, how objects and ideas can seem to be moving in opposite directions but all tie back to a central point. To an extent it is also something of a cardinal rose, showing global perspective in all things,” Shinji explains, lying about half the time.
“Huh, neat. Would you like me to ask the ground crews to paint one of those stars on your Eva? For luck,” Misato suggests.
Yes! Yes! A thousand times YES!
Keeping his face straight, Shinji nods solemnly and says, “If you could get approval, it would be nice. I didn’t want to seem presumptuous or proselytizing with my religion.”
“At a time like this you could probably ask to slap a giant Buddhist swastika on Unit 01 and neither Germany nor New Israel would make a peep,” Misato points out.
“If you think it would be alright, I would appreciate it,” Shinji says happily before handing over the drawing and saying.
“I’ll get it down to them right away. Meet at the Eva cages any time before 1435,” Misato say, accepting the drawing of the Chaos Star.
“Thank you,” Shinji replies, bowing gratefully. Once she was gone, he left the room and quietly found his way to the roof of the building with a “borrowed” mop handle. It didn’t have the weight or balance of his staff, but Shinji needed some good practice with staff fighting before round two with Ramiel.
Full speed practice.
To anyone who might have been watching, Shinji became a blur, the mop handle moving in ways its creator had never intended. Had Shinji been seeking to actually hit anything, he would have broken the lightweight wood several dozen times over, but as it was, the only things he struck were shadows.
The Angels were evolving, getting smarter and tougher, but then again, so was he. So was NERV. So was humanity. The Angels disdained close combat after losing terribly twice in that area? Well, if that was the case, then they had made a mistake, an evolutionary dead end. Ramiel was over-specialized while humanity was still adapting.
There were still tricks to play that the Angels, in their reactive nature, had yet to dream up.
They would probably try something totally different after Ramiel fell, would seek a new evolutionary path to try and throw humanity off. It wouldn’t help. They were already preparing for new battles, expecting tougher and stranger enemies.
Shinji slammed his makeshift staff into the ground and it shattered. Tossing the splintered remains to the side contemptuously, Shinji smiled. The Angels were strong, he would give them that, but humanity was smarter.
Shinji knew who he would always bet on.
Ramiel had lifted out of the water several hours ago, and begun drilling down to the Geofront at a slow and relentless pace. The faces damaged by the initial exchange of fire had regenerated, replaced by complex geometric patterns that marred the Angel’s once perfect surface but that also were probably sub accelerators to its primary central ring.
The Angel was apparently experimenting with point defence.
The MAGI estimated that these additions only decreased the probability of success from 23% to 18%.
High above Tokyo-3, Shinji was quietly meditative inside the entry plug to Unit 01.
When the enemy has overwhelming ranged firepower, there are two methods of dealing with it. The first is to engage with equally overwhelming firepower.
The second is to close to short range faster than the enemy can respond and stab the bastard before he can track his weapon against you.
The solid rocket boosters added to the Eva lift transport for this mission cut out and the pilots ejected away in special escape pods as the enormous plane went into a steep dive from the boundaries of space, plunging almost straight towards Ramiel’s position below. At a designated point in the trajectory Unit 01 was released from the main body of the transport and allowed to drift up and behind the plummeting plane.
On the ground, Tokyo-3 suddenly responded with incredible force, with missile pods and autocannons suddenly pouring torrents of fire into the stationary Angel. While the weapons would have just bounced the AT-field off anyway, Ramiel responded with bursts from its particle cannon to efficiently dispose of the potential threats, and the new growths did indeed prove to be smaller versions of its main weapon.
At which point the now nearly supersonic transport came into the range of notice of the Angel and it realized that it had probably been had. When it noticed the unfolding AT-field of Unit 01, it knew it had definitely been had.
Just as the plane slammed into the Angel’s AT-field in a massive explosion of jet fuel and shrapnel made from expensive composites, Rei in Unit 00 exited from the closest elevator shaft with the positron rifle and an enormous chunk SSTO heat shielding as a shield. A second barrage of missiles and shells opened up at the same time, and the Type 12 mortar held in reserve rolled out of tunnel and opened fire.
With two enemy AT-fields eroding it and much of its energy devoted to recharging its particle cannon, Ramiel was forced to let some of the fire through in order to keep Unit 01 from breaking through and landing on its surface, completely outside of its firing arcs. While most of the conventional weapons bounced harmlessly off its dense armoured surface, the enormous beam from the Type 12 mortar carved a huge gouge in its surface.
Firing the experimental rockets installed just hours before, Shinji slowed down so that he hit the Angel’s AT-field at a reasonable speed rather than like a bug splattering against a windshield. The rockets rapidly burning through their fuel, he kept himself from slipping down the angled field and into the main beam’s firing arc, and pulled the highly experimental AT-staff off his back and plunged it down at the Angel.
Rei took up a position almost directly underneath the Angel and began firing positron blasts up into the point where the drill met the main body, her AT-field completely nullifying that section. After two blasts the drill was blown completely free of the body, while the third attempted to chew deeper into the core.
It’s recharge cycle complete, Ramiel immediately obliterated the Type 12 in an apocalyptic display of firepower before strengthening it’s AT-field on the underside, Rei’s fourth shot being mostly deflected by the hexagonal barrier. Rei immediately ceased firing so as to conserve the remaining shots for the next opportunity to fire.
On the top side, the AT-staff did its job and punched a small hole through Ramiel’s AT-field. Crying out in triumph, Shinji shoved it forward and projected a flat plane of force from the tip of the staff, turning it into an atomically sharp spear. The rockets on his back burned out about then, but he held on to the spear, suspended in high above Tokyo-3.
Sensing this new attack, Ramiel moved to neutralize the AT-field projected from the spear, only to discover that Shinji had already adapted Unit 01’s field to match, practically inviting him through the barrier. Landing on the angled surface, Shinji dug in until his descent was halted.
Attempting to strengthen its surface AT-field to shove the offending Eva off, Ramiel weakened its bottom defences and Rei began firing with the positron cannon again, digging in to the weakened armour methodically with each round, until she completed the work that the Type 12 had begun, which was to cut an entire chunk of Ramiel off, exposing the core.
Several guided missiles were launched from surface positions, but only one made it through to detonate inside the Angel, the rest being blown out of the sky by the now active point defences. The damage it did was dubious at best, but Ramiel’s core was now exposed from the bottom.
Unfortunately, so was its accelerator ring.
A fresh charge established in its mostly hollow body, Ramiel fired at the biggest and most obvious threat: Unit 00. A brilliant beam of violet-white light lanced out from the hole and slammed into Unit 00’s shield. Pulling her AT-field tight about her and hiding like an ancient soldier under a rain of arrows, Rei attempted to weather the storm.
Shinji slammed the AT-staff into Ramiel’s skin and extended a force blade again, biting deep. Shoving the weapon towards the heart of the Angel, Shinji swore when the emitters suddenly burned out and the weapon went dead, partially embedded in the surface.
Thinking quickly, Shinji hauled Unit 01 up to where it could brace its back against the quite sturdy staff and pull out the last weapon they had that could possibly damage the Angel.
Boring his own AT-field down into the Angel, willing its substance to weaken and dissolve, Shinji fired the new Eva sized bolter point blank into Ramiel. 300mm armour piercing high explosive rounds rocketed out of the barrel and accelerated into the target, each one penetrating a little before exploding and gouging out a new chunk of the target.
Shinji bored a hole straight through the outer armour and exposed the inner core just as the magazine for the weapon ran empty. Ramiel immediately ceased its assault on Unit 00 to turn its attention to this new attack vector.
Shinji had already ejected the first magazine and had a fresh batch firing when the remains of the charge struck him. In total seven bolter rounds struck the bright red core, blowing enormous chunks off of it before Shinji’s aim was fouled by super energetic protons slamming into him and pushing him off his precarious perch.
Rolling down the side of the Angel, Shinji only barely managed to catch the edge of the angled surface, leaving his Eva dangling right in front of the main firing trench. Mournfully he watched the new bolter tumble past to land with a crash on a building below.
A blue light began to build along the trench, the Angel badly mauled by the attack but still alive. It would take time to build enough charge, but the Angel had both its tormentors at its mercy now.
On the ground two NERV soldiers brave and stupid enough to have been outside while gods did battle and lucky enough to have survived fired a TOW missile directly at the exposed core. Under any other circumstance the damage would have been minimal, but with the core saturated with energy, straining to accelerate the particles for its cannon in the damaged state, that single anti-tank round was more than enough to finish the job.
The cracked and battered crimson core exploded in a shower of fragments and a massive electrical discharge that nullified the building charge. Like a mighty battleship that had taken one torpedo too many, the now dead Ramiel began to list to the side and drop slowly towards the ground below.
Letting go, Shinji dropped to the ground and found the smouldering wreck of Unit 00 lying in a puddle of half molten concrete and steel within the descending shadow of the falling Angel corpse. Rushing out to her position, Shinji picked up the fallen war machine and hauled it out of the way before using the last few seconds of internal power he had left to extract the half molten entry plug from Unit 00.
Ejecting his own plug, Shinji slid along his partly congealed armour to where Rei’s plug was held, emergency venting its LCL. Savagely he ripped off the access hatch with a burst of telekinesis.
He could feel Rei’s mind still in there, but it was weak and battered along with her body.
“Rei! Rei! Are you alright?” Shinji called out while feeding her a tendril of psychic energy.
Slumped over in her acceleration couch, Rei looked mostly dead, but after a moment her eyes fluttered half open and she stared at Shinji with a half smile on her face.
“I will endure… Shinji,” she then slumped over, unconscious but alive.
Clambering into the entry plug, Shinji hauled Rei out of it and then carried her in his arms to where the various soldiers and emergency teams were boiling out of their underground bunkers.
Medics immediately rushed the two of them, and Shinji handed Rei off to their expert care, adding on, “If anything happens to her, the offending party answers to me.”
Despite coming from a scrawny looking fourteen year old boy in a funny looking suit, Shinji just received polite and mildly terrified nods from the medics. The burning mountain of armoured alien flesh in the background that he had helped create probably had something to do with that.
Before the medics could haul him off, Shinji held up his hand and said, “I want to talk to the ones who fired that last missile first!”
After a few minutes of shuffling about, two NERV soldiers carrying a man-portable TOW missile system came forward, somewhat sheepishly.
“Alright you two! The fact that both of you were outside meant that you were disobeying orders. I’m sure your own commanding officers will chew you out for it, but need I remind you that when people don’t follow the plans then the plans have a tendency to fall apart. That tends to get people, especially people like me on the frontlines, killed,” Shinji said furiously, the two adult men trained in the arts of killing things cowering from the child before them.
Shinji then paused, took a deep breath, and bowed deeply. “All that said, if you had not done what you did, then not only would I be dead, but so would Pilot Ayanami, and with us defeated humanity would have no defence against the Angels. So you have my deepest thanks, and if you ever need anything, you have but to ask it, I owe you that much.”
I will spare someone who saved my life sometime in the past. This is only reasonable as it encourages others to do so. However, the offer is good one time only. If they want me to spare them again, they'd better save my life again.
Not quite fully fitting with the exact situation, but the sentiment was the same. Plus his standing with NERV would probably go up several more notches after that.
“Okay, good. Now I think reporting to the hospital would be a good idea,” Shinji says before collapsing from physical and mental exhaustion.
---
I decided to let the mooks have the kill for once. Seemed like they should get one every once in a while.
I love learning. Teach me. I will listen. You know, if Christian dogma included a ten-foot tall Jesus walking around in battle armor and smashing retarded cultists with a gaint mace, I might just convert - Noble Ire on Jesus smashing Scientologists
A good chapter. I like the fact that the Angels learn from their predecessors' defeats and adapt accordingly, but you keep shifting between present and past tense.
By the way, am I the only one who thought, "Yuck!" when a Rei-that-is-not-taking-showers kissed Shinji? (I am NOT attracted to people with poor personal hygiene.)
Those gun nuts do not understand the meaning of "overkill," and will simply use weapon after weapon of mass destruction (WMD) until the monster is dead, or until they run out of weapons.
They have more WMD than there are monsters for us to fight. (More insanity here.)
I apologize between the present and past tense thing, it's something that pops up a lot in my writing. I think the problem is the dialouge, in that a character can be speaking in past tense while I'm trying to write everything else in the present tense... or the other way around, and that mixes everything up in my head. It's a very bizarre problem.
And technically Rei had taken a shower at the point where she kissed Shinji because she had been in LCL and I figure a good rinsing is needed after that. Will create a new conflict vector between Asuka and Rei when she shows up.
Speaking of which, Jet Alone or no Jet Alone? Still weighing the options there.
I love learning. Teach me. I will listen. You know, if Christian dogma included a ten-foot tall Jesus walking around in battle armor and smashing retarded cultists with a gaint mace, I might just convert - Noble Ire on Jesus smashing Scientologists
Academia Nut wrote:Speaking of which, Jet Alone or no Jet Alone? Still weighing the options there.
The episode with the Jet Alone was just filler, but considering how manipulative Shinji is in this story, he will undoubtably exploit the incident to his advantage. Maybe reprogram the machine to NOT run wild, i.e., negate Ritsuko's sabotage, to force Gendo to... I dunno... install a nuclear reactor in Unit 01 or something that will make Shinji more powerful.
Those gun nuts do not understand the meaning of "overkill," and will simply use weapon after weapon of mass destruction (WMD) until the monster is dead, or until they run out of weapons.
They have more WMD than there are monsters for us to fight. (More insanity here.)
Yeah, that's what I was thinking along the lines of too, although part of the problem is that I may have written myself into a plot corner seeing as how I severelly fucked over both Evas and blew up a transport jet. NERV might not have the equipment at the moment to stage an intercept. Ah well, could go either way.
I love learning. Teach me. I will listen. You know, if Christian dogma included a ten-foot tall Jesus walking around in battle armor and smashing retarded cultists with a gaint mace, I might just convert - Noble Ire on Jesus smashing Scientologists
Hmm, that is a problem. Maybe you can let Shinji and et al participate, but only as, say, observers? Is Shinji powerful enough to knock Jet Alone over with a burst of telekinesis and blame it on a sudden gust of gale-force wind, perhaps? Anyway, I suppose it's not quite that important if you do decide to skip the JA episode, for, as has been mentioned, it really is filler material, and furthermore I don't believe Ritsuko and Gendo actually intended for Jet Alone to have a meltdown in the first place -- their goal was merely to send a very obvious message to the Japanese mega-corporations who were butting in on their territory.
Sidewinder wrote:By the way, am I the only one who thought, "Yuck!" when a Rei-that-is-not-taking-showers kissed Shinji? (I am NOT attracted to people with poor personal hygiene.)
No, I am definitely in agreement with you there. Recent shower or no, Nurgle cultists are disgusting, which was why I objected so vociferously to the decision to make her one of Grandfather Nurgle's devotees. (This is aside from the fact that Rei is already a vessel for Lillith's soul, meaning that I really do not want to see what Instrumentality would be like with her in control.)
"There is a high statistical probability of death by gunshot. A punch to the face is also likely." - Legion
"The machine is strong. We must purge the weak, hated flesh and replace it with the blessed purity of metal. Only through permanence can we truly triumph, only though the Machine can we find victory. Punish the flesh. Iron in mind and body. Hail the machine!" - Paullian Blantar, Iron Father of the Kaargul Clan, Iron Hands Chapter
No, I am definitely in agreement with you there. Recent shower or no, Nurgle cultists are disgusting, which was why I objected so vociferously to the decision to make her one of Grandfather Nurgle's devotees. (This is aside from the fact that Rei is already a vessel for Lillith's soul, meaning that I really do not want to see what Instrumentality would be like with her in control.)
Congratulations, you just figured out how part of this story's version of EoE will play out, and hey, Rei III was decaying in the canon timeline too. Her left arm just kind of plopped off a bit above the elbow shortly before Gendo fused Adam with her.
I will reassure you that Nurgle!Rei (Reigle?) will not be anywhere near as disgusting as 40k Nurgle worshippers. Lillith should give clues as to how that whole bit will go down.
I love learning. Teach me. I will listen. You know, if Christian dogma included a ten-foot tall Jesus walking around in battle armor and smashing retarded cultists with a gaint mace, I might just convert - Noble Ire on Jesus smashing Scientologists
True, true. Though, to be fair, Rei III wasn't all that old when Gendo tried to initiate Instrumentality, so perhaps that decay was a defect of that particular clone body? We do know that Ritsuko hates Rei, after all, and she did murder all of her sisters. Anyway, I have an irrational hatred of all things Nurglish, so perhaps my paranoia has driven me to... extremes. (Hah! Like a true servant of the Emperor, I am.) Apologies for going overboard in your fanfic thread. Again.
Still, I had hoped that the events of EoE could be avoided... there's still a remote possibility of that, right?
"There is a high statistical probability of death by gunshot. A punch to the face is also likely." - Legion
"The machine is strong. We must purge the weak, hated flesh and replace it with the blessed purity of metal. Only through permanence can we truly triumph, only though the Machine can we find victory. Punish the flesh. Iron in mind and body. Hail the machine!" - Paullian Blantar, Iron Father of the Kaargul Clan, Iron Hands Chapter
Finals coming up, so you get this little bit now instead of later. Will probably have the fight with Gaghiel done by the end of the week.
---
Tokita Shiro was beside himself with grief and shame. The Jet Alone project had ended in a terrible disaster, with the prototype having gone amok and nearly reaching the outskirts of the city before coming to a stop just before its reactor had miraculously shut down. Or rather, the virus that had infected it ran its course, having sought to irreparably embarrass the Jet Alone program rather than cause a major nuclear disaster.
It was obvious to everyone that NERV was behind it, or at least parts of NERV, but who cared? A weapons system that easy to hack was useless.
Worst of all though was the fact that NERV had volunteered to scramble their own Evas to stop the out of control Jet Alone… if not for the fact that they were still refitting their own machines after the savage beating they had taken at the hands of the last Angel. Someone in their PR department was a genius at spin control, making it not only sound like this was entirely their fault; that the Jet Alone had been a waste of resources that could have been better used elsewhere.
Namely on NERV and the Evas.
Putting aside the imported pre-Impact whiskey, Shiro began to consider his options. The company had already been hurting lately, the Jet Alone project looking rather lacklustre in comparison to the insane stunts being pulled by the Evas, and today was supposed to have been their moment to shine. Now everything was in ruin.
The phone rang.
Picking it up, Shiro asked angrily, “What?”
“Do not hang up Tokita Shiro, we have things to discuss,” an electronically distorted voice on the other end said.
Shiro blinked and then asked fearfully, “Who is this?”
“Your new corporate overlord. The takeover has yet to be complete, but it is inevitable at this point,” the voice replied.
Shiro was a very smart man and he suddenly blurted out, “You’re from NERV aren’t you?”
“Very good Tokita-san. Now, I want you to listen to me very carefully and obey my instructions. The company’s stock is falling in value faster than waterfront property in Old Tokyo after Second Impact. The investors are jumping ship as quickly as possible, inevitable after something like this, but the company still has a great deal of value not represented in its stock,” the voice explains.
“You ruined us just to loot us, didn’t you?” Shiro says before slumping down in response to the depths NERV would sink.
“Loot is such a pejorative term. I prefer the phrase ‘hostile takeover with extreme prejudice’. Now, if you want to see looting, you should ask for an inquiry into the behaviour of your corporate executives. One could almost claim that they started selling their stock before full news of the disaster became apparent. And their refusal to give a shut down authorization? Suspicious, no? One could almost say that they wanted something like this to happen,” the voice explains, causing Shiro to perk up.
There was laughter on the other end, and the voice says, “That got your attention, now didn’t it? If you play our game you will come out of this as the hero Shiro. The poor, mistreated head of the engineering department, a scientist ordered to build the Jet Alone while your masters plotted a disaster. While you desperately tried everything you could to stop an out of control robot, they played golf and refused to give the shut down authorization. Go public with ‘your’ theory and demand a full audit. Something will turn up if you kick over enough rocks, and you’ll have a convenient scapegoat that isn’t you. Throw your support behind NERV and claim that the design team always envisioned Jet Alone as a ‘supplement’ to the Evas, but it was greedy, short sighted bosses who demanded it be marketed as a ‘replacement’. Can you do that Tokita-san? Can you swallow your pride? Will you replace one set of overlords for another?”
The line went dead.
Ah, precognition, telepathy, and remote viewing were such wonderful things when you wanted to make a killing on the stock market. It wasn’t even considered insider trading as he had no known means of getting the sort of information he did. It wasn’t like anyone knew that one Tokita Shiro would lead an anti-corruption crusade and rescue his company from the brink of annihilation, being promoted to President and leading a strong stock market rally, especially after the announcement that the entire Jet Alone team was willing to work with NERV to improve the operation of the Evas.
Life was sweet right now.
Rei was steadily learning new methods and techniques for controlling and expanding her powers, and Shinji had managed to convince her to wash up at least occasionally so that no one commented too much on her lack of hygiene. Her abilities seemed to rapidly be developing along the lines of personal shielding and regeneration, with active telepathy and precognition being almost nonexistent, and telekinesis only barely present.
And now was the day of the big reveal for the new L-Type equipment on Unit 01. After the pounding it had taken at the hands of Shamshel and Ramiel, Unit 01 had no reserve armour left, so it was decided to move directly to the heavier equipment that had been on the drawing board since the first fight with Sachiel.
When the lights came up, all Shinji could say was, “Sweet…”
The purple and neon green and orange armour had been completely stripped away, primarily by Ramiel’s particle beams, and replaced with significantly heavier armour painted Egyptian blue and gold. The horned and frilled helmet had been replaced with a heavily reinforced version that resembled an elaborate pharaoh’s burial mask, although significantly more fearsome. The shoulder fins had been replaced with large shoulder pads that now bore the NERV symbol on one shoulder and a scarab on the other. Painted on the left side of the breastplate was an enormous Star of Chaos, while on the right there was a stencilled “Unit 01”.
On racks next to the new and improved Eva were the new and improved weapons available. The bolter had been rebuilt in a new and sturdier frame, and the AT-staff had been fixed and strengthened, with extra capacitors and back-up emitters to try and avoid a burn out like had happened in the battle against Ramiel. There were also several armour mounted weapons that could be added if the mission required them, such as the progressive claws that were to replace the too easily lost prog knife and that could also be useful for climbing, or the missile pods designed to strap on to the new shoulder pads. Finally, NERV had appropriated the JSSDF designs for their positron cannon and were using them to build a new and more powerful positron rifle. The new design philosophy was that the Eva should be capable of taking on any mission profile, be it melee combat or long range fire support.
Unit 00, having taken a much worse pummelling with its lighter armour was still only half done its refit. When asked how she wanted her Eva decorated, Rei had responded that she was quite proud of the wounds her Eva had sustained. Thus it was much barer, but had scar markings incorporated into its plain, off-white armour, which combined with the helmet fin now standard made the Eva look kind of like a decaying mummy rose from the grave to do battle with those who had disturbed its rest.
And curiously enough, one of the empty Eva bays was being activated and a suit of the new L-type equipment being built. Raising an eyebrow, Shinji caught the attention of Misato, who smiled and said, “NERV-Germany is shipping Unit 02 out here, so we wanted to make sure we were ready for it.”
“Ah. Is there a pilot for Unit 02 yet?” Shinji asks.
“Yes, the Second Child, Asuka Langley Soryu, who has been training with Unit 02 for the past ten years. I was actually involved with her training before I moved to Tokyo-3,” Misato explains.
“Ten years? She must be very good with her Eva then,” Shinji notes.
“She has the most extensive combat training of all three pilots, although obviously she hasn’t been in any actual combat yet,” Misato says.
“That will change shortly though, won’t it?” Shinji says, his tone suddenly going dark.
“Shinji, I know that…” Misato begins.
“We have some form of bait, don’t we?” Shinji asks before looking out over the Evas contemplatively.
After several seconds of silence, Shinji elaborates, “The world is a big place, but the past three Angels have all zeroed in on this one tiny corner of it, which also happens to be the most fortified position on the planet. Their stupid, but the Angels do have a degree of cunning. They wouldn’t be coming here if there wasn’t something they wanted. Something they wanted badly.”
Misato sighs and says, “It’s classified above my level, but there is something that draws the Angels, I know that.”
“Probably the Evas or whatever they’re based off of. I mean, the Evas are mostly biological in nature… a lot like the Angels, no? And while I’m sure Ritsuko would say I’m just daydreaming, but every time I get in the entry plug, I can feel that Unit 01 has changed just a little bit more. The Evas can evolve too, just like the Angels,” Shinji says coolly.
Misato was quite at this revelation before she said, “Do you care?”
“Nope. Just an observation. Good strategy too. If you know and can control where your enemy will be, then you have already won half the battle. It’s why sieges are such brutal affairs,” Shinji replies with a smile.
Misato shivered. Sometimes Shinji was too damn smart for his own good.
“Well, starting tomorrow the fight will be a little easier for us. That’s when Unit 02 and the Second Child are scheduled to arrive. I’ll be going out to meet them and deliver some supplies. Care to join me?” Misato suggests.
“Can Kensuke and Toji come as well?” Shinji asks.
Her smile beaming, Misato says, “Of course!”
“Wow! A Mi-55D transport helicopter! I never thought I would get to see one, let alone ride in one!” Kensuke says while rapidly panning his camera around to get a good look at things.
Any chance to secure you more tightly to me my friend. And of course it would be just rude to leave Toji behind.
“I’m glad you’re having fun on our little date,” Misato says happily while glancing back at the boys in the rear seat of the helicopter.
Toji was very quiet, trying to control his blood pressure. Not only was Misato pure hotness, but every time he looked at her in that red jacket with that tight red dress on his mind kept superimposing Hikari’s face at which point it drifted into bad thoughts. It was taking every ounce of his willpower to not explosively exsanguinate through his nostrils. It would be a good death though.
“Wait until you see where we’re going Kensuke,” Shinji notes slyly.
“Where are we going?” Toji asks.
“Oh, just for a cruise on my cute little boat,” Misato says as the helicopter clears a cloud bank and the fleet below becomes visible.
Kensuke nearly went insane with a joy overload as he counted off all the various ships present below. Shinji just shared a knowing look with Toji, which Toji returned. Friendship was a beautiful thing.
Settling down on the deck of the super-carrier Over the Rainbow, Toji followed after Kensuke to make sure the military nerd didn’t have a stroke from excessive stimulation, while Shinji slouched behind; content to watch the two of them go at it. He wanted to appear to be the calm one in this situation.
And then he felt her. It could only be Asuka, because Shinji had already figured out that being a psyker was a prerequisite for piloting the Evas, and other than the latent buzzing of Toji and Kensuke, there were no other psykers aboard the ship. Plus the mind had a taste to it somewhat like Rei’s when he first met her in that Eva piloting apparently opened up certain aspects of the mind.
This mind however, was as different in character from Rei’s as night and day. Rei was soft and quiet and passive, but this Asuka, she boiled. She was bright and active and so filled with beautiful rage and pain and confidence and so many delicious emotions to experience. It was a banquet as far as Shinji was concerned.
And then she came into view, tall and proud, long red hair and a yellow sundress billowing in the wind, a blue ribbon tied about her throat while A-10 nerve clips were worn in her hair as both decoration and declaration. She radiated certainty and arrogance even to those not blessed with warp sight, and her eyes burned blue like the heart of a fusion reactor, filled with boundless fury and energy. Shinji wanted to drink her.
So this is what lust feels like. I wondered when those hormones would start doing their job. If the Eldar had women a quarter this good, no wonder they blew up half the galaxy and spawned Slaanesh.
“Well hello Misato! How have you been” Asuka said out happily, her voice dripping with pride and arrogance.
“Just fine. Goodness, you’ve grown so much since I last saw you, haven’t you?” Misato asked, almost like a distant aunt.
“Uh huh! And I’m not just taller, I’ve filled out too as well,” she replied boastingly, showing off her curves.
“Let me introduce you all. This is the designated pilot of Eva Unit 02, the Second Child, Asuka Langley Soryu,” Misato announces to the boys.
Precognition and simple knowledge of physics let Shinji foretell what was coming next, but he made no attempt to prevent it, even though a bit of telekinesis would have avoided the whole situation. He did not interfere though because he enjoyed the path already laid out.
As was inevitable on an aircraft carrier at sea, a strong breeze was kicked up by… well the fact that it was an aircraft carrier at sea! It was freaking wind central! Who wore a sundress, or any sort of skirt for that manner, in this sort of environment and didn’t expect to have to do a Marilyn Monroe impression?
Toji and Kensuke got slapped in the face in short order for seeing Asuka’s little white cotton lace panties, but when she got to Shinji, both boys let out a vengeful smirk as they saw what was about to happen.
Shinji caught Asuka’s hand, a smirk on his face. He could drink that fury all day and it would never get old, and he found the expression on her face that he had dared to stop her priceless. When he caught the other incoming slap, the look on her face became twice as priceless. The paler complexion associated with red hair made the angry blush stand out all the more, and if looks could kill, Asuka could have shot down Ramiel.
“I don’t like to be hit,” Shinji says coolly, a smug smile on his face.
Particularly glad of his pattern recognition and precognitive abilities, Shinji caught the kick aimed for his groin with his leg, and wrapping his ankle about hers so that he had control over her leg. Reversing his grip with one hand while shoving forward, he caught her by the small of the back so that they were in a rough approximation of a dance dip.
Asuka barely had time to react before Shinji gave her a peck on the nose before dropping her flat on her ass and legging it across the aircraft carrier. Several crewmen wearing ear protection looked up as Asuka’s scream of absolute outrage made them think that an alarm had gone off.
Chaos! Such pure, wonderful Chaos! I haven’t had this much fun since… EVER! I so need to get her a chain-axe.
For their parts, Toji and Kensuke watched in stunned silence at the audacity of their friend, while Misato laughed her ass off. After a little while she just shook her head and ran down the two athletic teens and subduing them with a sound tongue lashing.
Still giggling at the shit-eating grin on Shinji’s face and the outraged twitching of Asuka, Misato just said “I see you two are going to get along just fine.”
“Get along? Who is this pervert anyway?” Asuka whined.
“The Third Child,” Shinji replied smugly.
“WHAT?” Asuka cried out, again causing the deck crew to check their equipment for transmission errors.
“It’s true Asuka, this is your fellow Pilot, Ikari Shinji,” Misato said while holding the two of them apart.
“You know, for someone who was so offended by flashing all of us, you sure don’t act very lady-like,” Shinji says just to stir the pot.
“Ich zerreiße Ihren Gott verdammten Kopf weg!” Asuka cried out in German while trying to get at Shinji.
Rolling her eyes, Misato knocks their heads together and says, “Alright, fun is fun, but now is the time to put this behind you and shut up. Now, Asuka, stop trying to kill Shinji, and Shinji, stop encouraging her to try.”
“Okay Misato-san,” Shinji says brightly.
“Fine,” Asuka spits out.
Letting them go, no one watching is surprised when the two teens bolt off again like a lioness and a particularly cheeky gazelle.
A few minutes later the two of them were looking rather sullen on the bridge, especially in comparison to the still ecstatic Kensuke. The large lumps on their heads probably had something to do with that.
“…and here we have the transfer orders for you to sign off on,” Misato says, handing over the last of the paperwork to the American commander.
“No, we will not sign off on this until we get to port and we can unload this toy and this scout troop of children,” the admiral growls, still not happy with having his fleet assigned to what he saw as an inglorious escort mission.
Shinji had suffered through enough degradation of his person and the Evas. Yeah, he could tolerate being called a bratty kid after his little display on the flight deck, but now he was tired of it all.
“Admiral, tell me, what would happen if this fleet took an N2 mine at point blank range?” Shinji asks out of the blue, drawing everyone’s attention.
“No look here you-” the admiral begins to go on a tirade but is cut off by Shinji forcefully asserting himself.
“What would happen?” Shinji growls, stopping the man in his tracks with sheer confidence.
After a moment the admiral says, “All the ships were designed during the Cold War and are somewhat hardened against nuclear, and thus N2, weapons, but a point blank detonation would sink most of the fleet and disable the remainder.”
“The Third Angel, after walking through more firepower than the Battle of Kursk like it was rain, took a direct hit with an N2 mine, as in the mine actually made contact before detonation. Approximately three hours later it continued on its way to Tokyo-3, the mine having only stalled it,” Shinji says, letting it all sink in before finishing off with, “One minute thirty-two seconds after engaging Unit 01 the Third Angel self-destructed in a vain attempt at victory. The Angels and Evas have powers you cannot comprehend, and if one should show up, your fleet would be a glorified meat shield. So show some respect to us pilots and that Eva.”
There was stunned silence for a moment before Misato shooed the kids off the bridge.
“Well that was smart Third Child,” Asuka says sarcastically.
Shrugging, Shinji says, “You’re just jealous that I said it first.”
“Dude, I swear the bulkhead behind you is melting,” Toji comments quietly.
“Shut it monkey,” Asuka said, twitching her stare at Toji for a moment before focusing back on Shinji.
“Shows she has poor aim,” Shinji comments dryly.
“Oh, you downplay both her aim and your ability to weather her fire,” a warmly humorous voice says.
Asuka’s attitude suddenly changed from “Old Norse berserker” to “giddy schoolgirl” with such speed that all three boys had to rub their necks from mood whiplash.
“Kaji!” She said in a high pitched, overly excited voice.
“Kaji!” Misato shouted out angrily upon leaving the bridge.
Shinji took one look at the man’s well cultivated rugged handsomeness along with Misato and Asuka’s reactions and made a quick mental note.
Note to self: kill the competition at earliest convenience.
“What are you doing here?” Misato growled while glaring daggers at the man.
“Oh, just a little business trip for the NERV Third Branch, helping to transport Unit 02 and all that,” Kaji says before offering, “Care to join me for some coffee?”
One overly cramped elevator ride later and they were all sitting at a table sipping coffee and tea. Kensuke, Toji, and Misato sat on one side of the table, which left Kaji, Asuka, and Shinji to the other side. Asuka was not happy about having to sit next to Shinji, but it was the only place left for him so there was really nothing she could do if she wanted to sit with Kaji.
Sipping at his coffee, Kaji set it down and asked Misato, “So… are you seeing anyone?”
“None of your business,” Misato replied while turning up her nose in disdain.
Smiling, Kaji set down his coffee and turned to Shinji to ask, “So I hear you live with Katsuragi-san now?”
Nodding, Shinji says, “Yes.”
“Is she still wild in bed?” Kaji asks from out of the blue, causing everyone but Shinji to recoil in shock and horror.
Rolling his eyes, Shinji says, “I barely got any sleep at all the first couple of nights. All that thrashing and moaning…”
The beet red colour of Misato’s face changed from outrage to absolute embarrassment, and now it was Kaji’s turn to gape in shock.
Shaking his head, Shinji just points at Misato and cries out, “See a damn doctor woman! Snoring like that should not be heard through walls, and if I hadn’t invested in ear plugs I would be an insomniac by now!”
“I DO NOT SNORE!” Misato cried out angrily in protest.
Shinji pulled a small tape recorder out of his pocket and hit the play button, filling the small mess hall with the sound of… something that may have been snoring. Misato stared at it with abject horror for several seconds before screaming out, “That is not me! That’s a wood chipper!”
Kaji fell out of his chair he was laughing so much at the exchange, and when he recovered from the floor he was wiping mirthful tears from his eyes. “Oh… wow. Damn kid that was… wow. Why do even have that on you?”
Picking up the recorder before Misato has the sense to snatch it up, Shinji says, “You never know when an opportunity like that might pop up, and it pays to be prepared for any eventuality. It only looks like improvisation if you plan it out well enough.”
Turning to Misato, Shinji then grins and says, “Incidentally, that was the sound of a wood chipper. The fact that ‘the lady doth protest too much’ proves my point, no? ‘The play’s the thing’ and all that?”
Misato went very, very quiet as she stewed on that little bit.
Still grinning from ear to ear from the whole exchange, Kaji says, “I can see why you defeated the Third Angel so quickly.”
Waving his hand to the side, Shinji said dismissively, “My Eva went berserk, I don’t even remember what happened.”
“Yes, but the fights with the Fourth and Fifth Angels, those were all you,” Kaji points out.
Oh Asuka, your jealous rage is to my palette like a sweet summer’s wine in comparison to the various emotionally repressed idiots I have been subjected to. Dare I?
I dare.
“The Fifth Angel was a team effort and it would be impolite to take credit there, and with the Fourth Angel I was just making it up towards the end,” Shinji replies with self-depreciatingly humorous false modesty.
In the kitchen a coffee pot that had been left on way too long exploded in a shower of glass and boiling water. Or at least, that was what the official report would say, as it was the only reasonable explanation.
Good! Use your aggressive feelings, girl. Let the hate flow through you. Strike me down in your anger!
Asuka stormed out of the mess while everyone else was on edge from the loud bang, and Kaji immediate chased after her. Eventually he caught up with her sulking on one of the railings, looking out over the Pacific Ocean.
“So, what do you think of the Third Child?” Kaji asks, leaning casually on the rail.
“He’s an idiot and a jerk and he really isn’t much to look at. How did he ever get to be a pilot in the first place?” Asuka asked angrily and sullenly. To Kaji’s experienced ears, he could hear a hint of wistfulness to her tone. He somehow suspected that she already had a crush she wasn’t even aware of yet.
“Oh, it probably has something to do with the fact that when they first put him in Unit 01 he achieved a synchronization ratio of 48% and has since been holding steadily at 55%,” Kaji notes idly.
“Gott in himmel!” Asuka cried out, nearly falling off the railing if not for the fact that she had her legs wound around the bars of the railing. She then disentangled herself and stormed off to find Shinji.
Shaking his head in good humour, Kaji doesn’t know which one of them to feel sorrier for. After a moment’s thought, he decides that whoever got in their crossfire was the one deserving of pity.
I love learning. Teach me. I will listen. You know, if Christian dogma included a ten-foot tall Jesus walking around in battle armor and smashing retarded cultists with a gaint mace, I might just convert - Noble Ire on Jesus smashing Scientologists
Ah, I take it you based the design for Unit 01's new armor upon the unused F-Type equipment? It's a shame that I have no artistic talent whatsoever, else I would have tried to draw a folio of Shogoki in all its newfound Egyptian glory. I find that visual aids are most helpful at times like these.
As for the rest, good work on the chapter. I cannot say much more, however, given that I loathe Asuka and despair at the notion that she's going to become a romantic interest for Shinji. But enough of my seemingly irrelevant tangent.
KlavoHunter wrote:Will you explain the appearance of Kentucky and Illinois? (And for some reason I recall that Kirov was represented as an Iowa as well... Strange.)
I do believe I also noticed at least one Montana-class battleship on that OOB screen... I suppose the US actually built them in the Evangelion timeline. Strange, indeed.
Also, as a self-confessed battleship aficionado, may I beg and plead that you spare at least a few of the battleships in the upcoming battle? Sink an aircraft carrier or two if you must, but for the love of the absent Emperor, save the battleships, I implore you!
"There is a high statistical probability of death by gunshot. A punch to the face is also likely." - Legion
"The machine is strong. We must purge the weak, hated flesh and replace it with the blessed purity of metal. Only through permanence can we truly triumph, only though the Machine can we find victory. Punish the flesh. Iron in mind and body. Hail the machine!" - Paullian Blantar, Iron Father of the Kaargul Clan, Iron Hands Chapter
I wonder... will Shinji initiate the Third Impact to open a rift in the Warp and let him access the powers of Tzeentch? Will it turn out that Shinji will become Tzeentch, or that Asuka will become Khorne in the aftermath of the Third Impact?
And how does Yui feel about the fact that her son has literally become a monster?
Those gun nuts do not understand the meaning of "overkill," and will simply use weapon after weapon of mass destruction (WMD) until the monster is dead, or until they run out of weapons.
They have more WMD than there are monsters for us to fight. (More insanity here.)
Dominus wrote:As for the rest, good work on the chapter. I cannot say much more, however, given that I loathe Asuka and despair at the notion that she's going to become a romantic interest for Shinji. But enough of my seemingly irrelevant tangent.
Get over yourself - *ALL* AU NGE fics turn Shinji into a total pimp.
KlavoHunter wrote:*ALL* AU NGE fics turn Shinji into a total pimp.
That's because Spineless Shinji is such a turnoff. (As a former NGE fan, I watched the series to see how Shinji's character, e.g., his spine, would develop, then I forced myself to watch the series in the hope that Shinji will keep his spine. I was seriously disappointed when he lost the spine he demonstrated in the battle agains Zeruel in 'The End of Evangelion'.)
Those gun nuts do not understand the meaning of "overkill," and will simply use weapon after weapon of mass destruction (WMD) until the monster is dead, or until they run out of weapons.
They have more WMD than there are monsters for us to fight. (More insanity here.)
KlavoHunter wrote:Get over yourself - *ALL* AU NGE fics turn Shinji into a total pimp.
Oh, I'm quite well aware of that. Don't get me wrong -- it's not so much the romance I am objecting to (I don't "ship" any particular pairing in NGE) so much as the fact that I have a completely irrational hatred of Asuka's character for some bizarre reason. Well, to be fair, I hated pretty much all of the pilots in the original series (as Sidewinder says, spineless Shinji is one of the most disappointing anime protagonists ever)...
Sidewinder wrote:I wonder... will Shinji initiate the Third Impact to open a rift in the Warp and let him access the powers of Tzeentch? Will it turn out that Shinji will become Tzeentch, or that Asuka will become Khorne in the aftermath of the Third Impact?
Hmm... I like this idea. SEELE did consider Instrumentality a form of mass apotheosis, did they not? Assuming that one could 'hijack' the process in mid-execution (as Shinji inadvertently did in EoE), what you propose could very well be possible. Of course, the opposite may very well be true -- could you not create the Emperor through such an event, as well? The possibilities are endlessly fascinating.
"There is a high statistical probability of death by gunshot. A punch to the face is also likely." - Legion
"The machine is strong. We must purge the weak, hated flesh and replace it with the blessed purity of metal. Only through permanence can we truly triumph, only though the Machine can we find victory. Punish the flesh. Iron in mind and body. Hail the machine!" - Paullian Blantar, Iron Father of the Kaargul Clan, Iron Hands Chapter
Ah, I take it you based the design for Unit 01's new armor upon the unused F-Type equipment? It's a shame that I have no artistic talent whatsoever, else I would have tried to draw a folio of Shogoki in all its newfound Egyptian glory. I find that visual aids are most helpful at times like these.
Somewhat, although it's closer to this. I even have a couple of explanations for some of the more ostentatious things like the helmet frills. Which will come in handy for later.
Also, since I've completely rewritten the previous battles it seems like I should do something different for Gaghiel as well, and I have always felt that it was a shame to blow up those poor battleships.
On Shinji with a spine, things were actually looking up for him right up until the whole incident with Toji. Then the creators decided to start playing "How can we break Shinji this week?", culminating with the whole Kawaru thing. And then Anno went nuts and got hate mail and decided to really screw over Shinji in End of Eva. From episodes 6 to about episode 18 he had something of a spine until the creators decided to drop him over their knees. Bit unfair really.
I love learning. Teach me. I will listen. You know, if Christian dogma included a ten-foot tall Jesus walking around in battle armor and smashing retarded cultists with a gaint mace, I might just convert - Noble Ire on Jesus smashing Scientologists
“Huh… red. Wasn’t expecting that,” Shinji notes when Asuka pulls up the tarp to reveal Unit 02, all trace of sarcasm ruthlessly purged from his voice. It would be best to play it straight right up to the punch line. Plus she wouldn’t get why he would think red was suitably fitting.
“The colour isn’t the only thing that’s different you know,” Asuka replies, ducking under the tarp to rush down to the Eva and then clamber up on top of its head.
Shinji held his tongue about whether or not Asuka cared to dance again. He swore that the girl wore skirts just so that she could get pissed at people when she invariably flashed them.
Invest in some pants bitch! That or just admit that you like to pound on people for no good reason and go with it.
Turning about to face him, she says proudly, “Unit 00 and 01 were the prototype and test-type, respectively. The fact that Unit 01 synchronized with an untrained pilot like you is proof of that. However, Unit 02 is a little different. My Unit 02 is the world’s first real Evangelion! Created for actual combat, it’s the final production model!”
Let’s see how far I can push her. This will be sweet.
Taking it all in, Shinji comments, “A pity it’s using obsolete equipment.”
A pin could be heard dropping in the huge bay, it went so deathly silent. Asuka just sort of quivered with building rage while a malicious smile crept over Shinji’s face.
Continuing, Shinji explains, “A combination of simulation and actual combat proved that Type B equipment was utterly inadequate for extended combat with the Angels, so both Unit 00 and 01 have been upgraded with new Type L equipment.”
“Oh, well obviously that’s because the pilots are incompetent and need extra toys to fight effectively,” Asuka ripostes brilliantly, although there was a large tint of bitterness in her arrogant tone.
Ah, the berserker does have a brain between that mop of hair!
“Perhaps, although perhaps the inherent difficulties in piloting experimental war machines have been the cause of that. Prototypes and test types tend to be so finicky with regards to the controls,” Shinji retaliates, turning her own boasting against her.
Before Asuka could formulate an appropriate response, Shinji continues on by saying, “Ah well, probably for the best anyway. The colour scheme is rather plain.”
“Plain?” Asuka growls, not taking the insult to her machine lying down.
“Yes, plain,” Shinji states, letting the word sink in for a second before he says “The Evangelions are testaments to humanity’s undying defiance of the Angels. They bestride the Earth like primordial Titans of ancient myth and legend. They deserve the appropriate appearance, for all to know their true might.”
Pausing to appraise the still Eva while Asuka’s mind works over the conflict of her pride actually coming into agreement with this cheeky monkey that so enjoyed insulting and tormenting her, Shinji finally says, “Bronze. It needs bronze, or at least bronze trimming of some sort. Unit 02 is the combat production model, the mightiest warrior of the group, no? It deserves to be as mighty Hercules or Achilles, or better yet the Egyptian war goddess Sekmet, blood stained and victorious lioness. Yes, bronze and red, flashing gloriously in the sun, for all to see and fear and love. Perhaps some black highlights to help such bright colours stand out even more.”
Finally Asuka says with uncertain contempt, the temptation already seeping into her, “Why would I care about useless gilding like you?”
Chuckling, Shinji replies, “Why not? I did not even ask for the decorations, my ground crew just found them appropriate. At first they were going for the idea of the Evas representing the rebirth of humanity and hit upon the Egyptian iconography, but eventually after so many thrashings at the hands of the Angels they decided that it should be my rebirth they were representing.”
Asuka burst out laughing at Shinji’s expense at that, to which he just smirked to say, “Considering that I’m still here, you really should have seen the other guys.”
Before Asuka could retaliate with another sarcastic barb, the entire ship rocked with an undersea shock wave, which caused both pilots to immediately leap to the, ultimately correct, conclusion that they were under attack.
Rushing out of the cargo hold, they peer out over the rail to watch one of the escorting ships sinking beneath the waves, and then for a dark object to pass beneath another one, a huge knife-like wave rising up out of the water to cleaning slice through the ship, detonating fuel and munitions.
Asuka got a smile on her face as she saw a chance for glory, while Shinji frowned while he took apart the situation for analysis. Before Asuka could say anything, Shinji ordered coldly, “Inform the captain we need to move closer to the Over the Rainbow.”
“What the hell are you blathering about?” Asuka asks irately.
“Over the Rainbow has the power socket, correct? The one Unit 02 needs to move for more than five minutes, correct?” Shinji points out.
“And, why can’t you do it yourself idiot?” Asuka demands.
Face palming in frustration, Shinji asks rhetorically, “What language are we speaking and what nationality is the crew?”
Asuka scowls and says, “Fine.”
Shortly after finding a phone to call the bridge and relay the command, Asuka met Shinji carrying a large waterproof duffel bag and pulled out a plug suit. Descending down a stairwell until she was around a corner and out of sight, she pops her head back into view and says, “Peek and I rip your head off.”
Rolling his eyes, Shinji says, “Will you add it to your throne?”
“Yes!” Asuka cries back in frustration before ducking back behind the turn to change.
When she finished, she had a slight pout on her face. What a boring, unexciting boy! He didn’t even try to peek on her beautiful body.
Mmmm… remote viewing, it’s a beautiful thing!
Tossing a spare plug-suit at Shinji after looking oddly at his funny expression, Asuka says, “Here, put this on.”
Holding out the plug suit, Shinji just shakes his head in disgust at what he would be forced to wear before sighing and walking off with it to change. He quietly did not make any fuss when he noted Asuka peeking around the corner. He figured one show should pay for the other.
Asuka for her part goggled at the muscles wrapped about Shinji’s scrawny frame. It looked like he was made of steel cables wrapped around a skeleton. He also had numerous and extensive bruises across his torso and limbs, fading to yellow and green with age. She had read reports on the brutal beatings Unit 01 had taken in combat, but it was one thing to read a dry, stale post combat debriefing and another thing to actually see the damage done to the pilot.
Looking rather displeased with the rather feminine fit of the red plug suit, Shinji just waits patiently for Asuka to get the entry plug open before quietly getting in with her. Once sealed and filled with LCL, Asuka begins to go through the start up procedures in German, but the test patterns quickly devolving into bright red error messages.
“Damn it! You’re generating thought noise! If you have to think, do it in German,” Asuka demands angrily of Shinji.
“Jawohl Mein Fuhrer! Seig heil!” Shinji retorts sarcastically, throwing his arm up in salute.
“Dummkopf!” Asuka growls before ordering the system to switch the operating language over to Japanese.
As the system rebooted, Shinji felt the nature of the spirits bound to this Eva. The daemon was, ironically, far more constrained and mentally stable than Unit 01’s had been initially, although it still had the same basic berserker attitude. The other, restraining spirit, was significantly diminished from the one in his Eva, but perhaps more concentrated in its focus. That focus seemed to be entirely upon Asuka.
Deciding not to interfere, Shinji let his own mind flow about the daemon and let it know under no circumstances was it to go nuts without his permission. The daemon growled in his mind, not just that there was a mortal that dared tell it what to do, but that it was a mortal it didn’t know and didn’t like. Still, after taking one look at Shinji’s mind, the beast quieted down. The other spirit found itself less distracted and gave its thanks to Shinji before redoubling its concentration on Asuka.
The other spirits in the Evas were troubling for Shinji, in that he did not know where they came from, and he felt as if there was a memory, long buried, scratching at the back of his mind, but it was like the wind. Every time he tried to concentrate on the thought it slipped away, and his mind instinctively avoided it in meditation. Somehow Shinji knew that if he ever figured out what the memory was, he would be pissed beyond reason. Probably at Gendo too, considering that all repressed memories from his childhood stemmed from the bastard.
“All right! Unit 02 ready for launch!” Asuka finally declares, willing the enormous war machine to rise from its transport coolant, lifting aside the tarp to see the devastation the Angel had done to the fleet. The sudden activation of its AT-field drew in the Angel, which extended its own AT-field into its hull slicing blade.
Asuka leapt from the transport seconds before it was sliced in two, clearing the shortened distance from the transport to the Over the Rainbow in a single bounding leap that ended with a crumpled flight deck and Kensuke weeping over the loss of several beautiful war planes. Grabbing the power cable on the deck, Asuka plugged in and the power count immediately went to 8:88:88.
Shinji immediately sized up the situation and said, “We need to get into the water now.”
“What are you, stupid? B Type equipment doesn’t work in water,” Asuka points out angrily.
“Yeah, and that was a particularly stupid decision. Who thought that transporting a war machine that would be a major military target and not giving it the proper equipment to fight with in an emergency was a smart idea? Anyway, while we’re on the Over the Rainbow it’s a major target, and what would be the smart thing for that Angel to do? Rise up out of the water where we can stab it, or cut away the ship beneath us, destroying our power source and any means of retrieval?” Shinji points out.
For all her often seemingly undeserved bluster, Asuka was a university-level educated combat pilot with a decade of training. It made a certain sort of ironic sense that the only place where they could safely engage the enemy was in its territory where their equipment would work poorly.
Asuka dove in.
Shinji expanded his awareness outward. The Angels were always a pain in the ass to detect, for their presence was somewhat like a mountain up close: it was so damn big you couldn’t get any proper impression of it because all that could be seen was rock.
Soon enough the Sixth Angel became visible on the screen, a titanic monstrosity that dwarfed the ships above with its enormous bulk. Clearly a being of pure aquatic origin, it had the sleek likes of a predatory cetacean, although on a significantly more massive scale and with some older aquatic predator features thrown in as well.
Struggling to get the Eva to move in the crushing marine environment, Asuka shouted at Shinji, “This was a really bad idea you idiot!”
Slipping in behind her so that he could also put his hands on the controls, Shinji says, “No, this one isn’t as smart as the others, I can feel it. We have it right where we want it now!”
The Angel opened its mouth wide to reveal rows of pointed teeth nearly as big as an Eva.
“Teeth!” Asuka screeches as the Angel catches them in its mouth, the Eva wedging between the teeth as the Angel dove with it, ramming through the aquatic graveyard of Old Tokyo. Inside the entry plug the two pilots were slammed about forcefully, although Shinji took the worst of it as he had moved such that Asuka was basically sitting in his lap.
This however caused a bit of a problem.
Asuka whirled about and tried to slap Shinji, screaming, “Pervert!” but he just caught her hand and glared at her.
“Take it as a compliment and shut up. We’ve got more important things to deal with right now,” Shinji replies dryly while gesturing to the view of the inside of the Angel’s mouth. He then smiled and said, “Ah! Perfect! Look, there’s its core. We just need to get a little closer and we can take it out.”
Treasonous bastard. I definitely inherited you from father.
Bringing up the comm. systems, Shinji asks, “Misato, do you have many munitions left up there?”
“Plenty,” Misato replies cheerfully. “I convinced our admiral friend up here that firing would be futile. The thing is too fast to target, and even lucky hits would just bounce off its AT-field.”
“Okay, good, I think I can help you with both problems at the same time. Give me a second,” Shinji replies before closing his eyes to concentrate.
“Now what are you doing you idiot?” Asuka demands.
Plunging into the links, Shinji grabs the daemon and begins to modify Unit 02’s AT-field to neutralize the Angel’s. The Angels had incredible physiology that defied standard theories on biology and engineering, but without their AT-fields they were still mostly constrained by the laws of physics.
Up until it was neutralized, the sixth Angel was using its AT-field as its primary form of propulsion. The sudden loss left it to deal with a sudden, enormous drag problem, and the fact that at any speed greater than “sluggish” moving with its tail created sonic booms in its flesh.
His eyes still closed in concentration to maintain the AT-field, Shinji says, “Okay Misato, if the UN would like a little revenge, now would be the time to take it. You can reel us in and it will be like shooting fish in a barrel.”
As the power cable began to retract with the Angel in tow, Shinji said to Asuka, “When the torpedoes and depth charges start hitting, this bastard is going to spit us out and retreat. We’re not going to let that happen. If you can, hold its mouth open so we can get a couple high explosive treats down its gullet, otherwise you have to use your prog knife to take out its core. I’ll maintain the AT-field.”
Asuka grumbled at Shinji, but began to stubbornly move the limbs of the Eva, first unsheathing her progressive knife, and then inching it forward towards the red core at the back of the mouth. She would be damned if this perverted, idiotic, cheeky monkey would embarrass and humiliate her, would steal her thunder and glory.
Huh… I may have overdone things there a bit.
A whole day’s worth of frustration and wrath hit a lifetime of suppressed fury, resentment, and bitterness like a white-hot spark struck in a room filled with gasoline fumes. Overwhelming rage exploded out from Asuka in a frenzy of hatred. The spirit, so closely connected to her, raged with her, and the daemon gave Shinji a sour look before it broke its bonds of him and exploded too. The entry plug was filled with incoherent screaming, war cries from a wounded heart that sought to destroy everything else to soothe its pain. The Eva roared with its master beneath the waves, just in time for dozens of torpedoes and depth charges to strike simultaneously.
Designed for breaking hollow hulled ships and submarines, the weapons had minimal effect of the tough hide of the Angel, but it did rear back in pain and open its mouth. Grabbing one of the teeth, the berserk Eva surged forward, one hand extended with the now humming prog knife trailing bubbles as it shot forward towards the crimson sphere that was the core. The weapon plunged in effortlessly and the Angel gave a final shake before its core shattered and the alien monstrosity went silent.
Asuka and Unit 02 continued to rage, a dam within having burst. Everything has to die! Die for your sins! Die! Die like momma died! Die and leave me alone! Always alone! Die!
The nearest target was Shinji. The one person who was probably the worst target to attack while in a blind, incoherent berserker fury. In the close confines of the entry plug, it quickly came down to a grappling contest. Mindless struggling had nothing on planned action, and besides, in a contest of raw strength, Shinji was stronger. Only barely though. Asuka had been training her mind and body for just as long as he, just in different ways and with very different teachers.
With all her limbs pinned, Shinji fixed her with a concentrated glare and shouted, “You won! Calm down!”
Asuka glared up at him, and slowly the anger seeped out of her body… for now. Shinji could still feel it burning beneath the surface, ready to explode once the time was right, like how a burning room without flame could flashover when oxygen was introduced, producing a super hot fireball.
The smoke that covered up this fire however was sadness, the half burned fuel for her frenzy. Peering into her soul, Shinji could feel a near infinite well of sorrow hidden behind enough fortifications and trenches to make a World War One general wince at the thought of assaulting it.
She began to cry, and Shinji let go of her to allow her to regain her composure. She was more fragile than he had first thought. He would either have to repair her damaged heart or break her completely so as to rebuild her. If the situation continued, she could, and probably would, break in an undesirable fashion, most likely becoming useless.
And that was something Shinji would not tolerate. His attraction to her, and he had to admit to himself it was attraction, was based on her spirit. He had cultivated a mask of quiet introversion, only coming out of his shell when he felt it important enough to warrant his voice. But Asuka acted the way he often wanted to. To truly let others know how beneath him they were, to crush their pathetic feelings and lives like the bugs they were. It wasn’t smart in the long run, but oh how sweet it would feel. And unlike so many other arrogant braggarts, this girl, nay, young woman had earned her swagger. She who had walked as a god for the past decade was well deserving of her arrogance and pride.
Asuka abruptly surged forward again and grabbed a hold of Shinji, but before he could wrestle her away their lips connected. There was no love there, just tremendous passion, one soul desperately grappling about for human contact with the closest available target. The LCL interfered with the moment, along with the feeling that it wasn’t real.
Still, the contact caught Shinji off guard, and swept him away as his brain struggled to adjust to this new and unexpected input.
And then he took a brutal open palm/backhand combination to the cheeks and Asuka crowed, “HA! I finally got you, you freaking pervert!”
The fluid mechanics of slapping someone in an entry plug filled with LCL minimized the damage, but Shinji still felt the sting on his face, and in his heart. He could not help but wonder that if he had returned her passion if she would have still rejected him like that, or at least abandoned her plan in favour of continuing the moment.
He could feel that this one would be the greatest puzzle Tzeentch had given him yet. Over the months since his arrival in Tokyo-3, Shinji come to realize that he was being granted what he truly wanted: a mother in Misato, and a sister in Rei. He wanted a family, to fill in the holes in his heart left by the death of his mother and the abandonment by his father.
Love was his greatest desire, making it little wonder he could tolerate Rei taking up the cause of Nurgle over Tzeentch. Platonic and familial love was better than emptiness, but there were so many varieties that demanded exploration in the human condition.
He could live with and love like a mother a woman who was the closest thing to a Slaaneshi princess this world had. He could work with and love like a sister a girl who had embraced Nurgle after only a few days preaching for Tzeentch.
Could he romance this wounded Khorne berserker?
Of course, anyone who looked at these two would consider it a very strange romance considering the fact that they were still slinging barbs and insults at one another when they were fished out of the ocean.
---
Huzzah, the battleships were saved!
I love learning. Teach me. I will listen. You know, if Christian dogma included a ten-foot tall Jesus walking around in battle armor and smashing retarded cultists with a gaint mace, I might just convert - Noble Ire on Jesus smashing Scientologists
This is awesome, in so many ways. I mean, we have Eva's going quake, Shinji running circles around Gendo, Rei.. Happy(?!) and New Nike Air Evas. Awesome, and great fanfiction.
Dan's Art
Bounty on SDN's most annoying
"A spambot, a spambot who can't spell, a spambot who can't spell or spam properly and a spambot with tenure. Tough"choice."
I just have to say: this story is so good, it got me to sign back in.
This is the best Eva fanfiction I've ever read. I daresay, it surpasses Shinji and Warhammer 40k. Chaos!Shinji is the most original incarnation of Shinji-con-spine I've ever seen.
Well thank you for the compliment, and as a fan of Shinji and Warhammer 40k I take that very highly.
And it's kind of interesting the dynamics of Eva fanfiction. Waaaaay too many people over-identify with Shinji and then set out to make him a pimp. Admittedly, adding some extra spine wouldn't be that bad, but they often do it in nonsensical ways. Far more likely, in universe, would be for him to turn out like his father, a cold, distant manipulative bastard who deals with others as pawns to be moved around for the fulfillment his own agenda. Especially considering that to a large degree his mother was a schemer as well.
The Chaos... the Chaos is there because its fun, and it also lets me explore the various aspects of Chaos more in detail. Plus I have such plans for later. Such plans.
I love learning. Teach me. I will listen. You know, if Christian dogma included a ten-foot tall Jesus walking around in battle armor and smashing retarded cultists with a gaint mace, I might just convert - Noble Ire on Jesus smashing Scientologists
Chris OFarrell wrote:I heartily approve of this product and/or service.
dammit, now I have to start writing again so I don't get overtaken...
I believe this warrants a "Just As Planned".
I love learning. Teach me. I will listen. You know, if Christian dogma included a ten-foot tall Jesus walking around in battle armor and smashing retarded cultists with a gaint mace, I might just convert - Noble Ire on Jesus smashing Scientologists
Ikari Gendo’s office was a marvel of intimidation, a great hollow void with occult drawings and symbols on the ceiling and floor. To walk into this room was to enter the domain of some sinister sorcerer, an arcane manipulator of events and people.
The glass of fizzing Alka-Seltzer on his desk marred the image significantly, especially considering the fact that they had run out of regular, and loathe to actually admit to his underlings that he was taking the stuff, he was forced to make do with the cherry flavoured tablets remaining.
Fortunately only Fuyutsuki actually saw him drinking the stuff, a somewhat acceptable situation considering that he had suggested it in the first place, and because the old professor was dignified enough not to say anything to anyone else. Of course, he would still mercilessly rib his former student.
“Things not quite going to plan?” Fuyutsuki asks smugly.
Downing the entire concoction in one go, Gendo glares at his former mentor and says, “You laugh now, but when this all blows up in our faces it won’t be so funny.”
“So is it your son or the Old Men this time?” Fuyutsuki asks.
“Both!” Gendo exclaims. “With the Old Men, it seems that they didn’t have their fingers in as many pies as we thought, and now they’ve taken issue with NERV having corporate sponsorship. They need me to come see them in order to work out this how ‘we’ will handle things. I trust you can keep everything in line for a week or so.”
“The last time you left for other business an Angel attacked,” Fuyutsuki points out.
Groaning, Gendo says, “You realize that by the rules of cosmic irony there will be an Angel attack while I’m away.”
Fuyutsuki considers this for a moment before hanging his head and saying, “Do know what schemers and writers have in common?”
“An acute sense of pattern recognition,” Gendo answers while pulling out several files. “This brings me to the problems with my son. The boy is… not what I anticipated. Years of surveillance produced the image of a shy, introverted loner, but recent events have shown him to be a skilled dissembler. He has dropped most of his meeker attitudes in exchange for a position of strength, although he remains quiet most of the time. I do not know what lurks beneath the surface, but it is not something I can control as easily as this scenario called for.”
Picking up a report, he says, “And the damage is spreading. Rei’s personality is changing outside the bounds of my scenario, and at the last memory dump unusual fluctuations were detected. I’m considering termination and resetting to an earlier memory pattern, but she has shown significant improvement in piloting ability recently, and the Angels are demonstrating capacities far outside what we had originally predicted. My scenario won’t work if I don’t have control of Rei, but that will be pointless if we lose against the Angels.”
“If Shinji were simply more wilful than expected, you would not be in this state old friend,” Fuyutsuki points out.
“No,” Gendo concedes, bridging his fingers so as to have something to lean his face against while he looked at the other files. “As I said before, pattern recognition. My son is a schemer, and damn it if he didn’t inherit it from me. But he also apparently inherited his intelligence from Yui, because I am having a hard time tracking his true actions. All I can see are pieces, ripples on the surface from the motions beneath the water.”
“You sound almost like you feel outmatched,” Fuyutsuki comments.
Glaring at his partner in crime, Gendo replies, “Not by this boy alone. If it were just him, I could deal with whatever petty plans he has, but there are other players in this game, ones he is either not aware of or only peripherally aware, and visa versa, that I must deal with. He is clever, I will give him that, in that he knows many will underestimate him for his youth, allowing him a freedom of movement I am not afforded. He will need to be dealt with in due time, but right now I must deal with the Old Men. I cannot afford to dive beneath the surface of his schemes right now without proper preparation.”
“You sound almost scared of what might happen,” Fuyutsuki points out.
Smirking, Gendo says, “The first rule of scheming is ‘always have a backup plan’.”
“Was that pride in your voice?” Fuyutsuki asks.
“He is my son,” Gendo replies, the smirk still on his face.
Toji was brooding. He was brooding because he had a dilemma. He had a dilemma because despite the fact that he had not seen Hikari’s attraction to him, and his attraction to her, until Shinji pointed it out, he was actually rather perceptive of other people’s emotions and relationships. And because of this, he knew that Shinji had a thing for Asuka.
Thing was, he found Asuka a complete and total bitch. Thus his dilemma.
Toji had already shut down Kensuke’s little entrepreneurial photography business before it got started, to which Kensuke complied with little resistance. Especially when Toji found that Hikari was in a rather compromising view in one of the pictures. All Toji had to do really was point out that if Hikari found out, and considering how much she hung around them at lunch these days that was a real danger, the Kensuke would measure his remaining lifespan in seconds.
Kensuke’s brooding was interrupted by the arrival of the one person guaranteed to brighten his day, the aforementioned Hikari. He still wasn’t sure what to call what they had between them, but for now it was a comfortable sort of distance the two shared at lunch and whenever they visited his sister in the hospital. A distance that was day by day shrinking.
“Hey, why the long face Toji-chan?” Hikari asked, sitting down next to him, a bento in each hand.
“Just thinking about relationships and stuff Hikari-chan,” Toji replies idly.
Frowning at him, Hikari says, “You were frowning while thinking about relationships…?”
Holding up his hands in protest, Toji says, “Not ours! Not ours!”
“‘Ours’?” Hikari asks.
Blushing a deeper red than Unit 02, Toji just sort of stammers and tries to say something. After a moment of letting him flap about like a fish out of water, Hikari giggles and says, “Go back to what you were saying.”
Still blushing, Toji eventually gets his thoughts in order and says, “I was thinking about Shinji-san… and the way he looks at Asuka-san.”
Taking this in, Hikari lets out an, “Oh.”
“Yeah. He… uh… goes about it a bit the way… uh… you did… with… uh… me,” Toji squeaks out, shrinking further and further in anticipation of a helping dose of Hikari rage.
“You mean constant glances out of the corner of his eye when he thinks no one is looking,” Hikari says.
“Uh… yeah…” Toji says, scratching the back of his head in slight confusion at the lack of the expected explosion. He would never get girls.
“Sounds like me,” Hikari says with a shrug. “So you’re conflicted about what to do.”
“Yeah, that’s the problem. On the one hand, I just want to look out for Shinji, but on the other Asuka’s a real b… err… unpleasant person, I my opinion,” Toji says, quickly altering his word choice as the glare of the class rep began to manifest in her eyes.
Shaking her head, Hikari says, “At least you’re just trying to look out for him. No wonder they call you one of his Chosen.”
“Chosen?” Toji asks.
“When they think I’m not listening, some of the other students will call you and Kensuke, and sometimes me when now that I’m hanging out with you more, the Chosen. Shinji is so quiet but when he does speak it’s usually something profound, and with him as an Eva Pilot and all there’s a bit of a hero cult about him. And we’re the ‘Chosen’, the ones he chooses to speak to out of everyone else,” Hikari explains.
“Ah… that’s different,” Toji notes.
“Yeah. So if you were to go about helping them, what would you do?” Hikari asks.
Blushing once more, Toji stammers before saying, “Well… I would… uh… I would… you know… I… well… you see… I would…”
“Toji…” Hikari says in an annoyed tone.
“I would ask you to help me scare off all the other guys going after Asuka,” Toji blurts out before planting his face to the pavement. If he was going to be stomped he would damn well be prepared for it.
“You would ask me to scare off guys going after Asuka?” Hikari asks incredulously.
“Yes!” Toji says, face still on the pavement.
Bursting out into giggles, Hikari says, “Oh Toji, you’re so stupid sometimes, but at least your heart is in the right place. Now come on, eat up, we don’t have all day for lunch.”
Toji definitely did not get women.
Asuka was annoyed. This seemed to be her default emotional state since coming to Japan, and since she wasn’t quite sure when they had entered Japanese territorial waters, she may have been annoyed since before arriving as well.
And the worst bit was that that idiot Shinji was perhaps the least annoying part. Oh sure, he seemed to derive endless pleasure in pissing her off, but he seemed to sulk if she didn’t try and fire back, so there was a sense of accomplishment when verbally sparring with him. Although from the singed looks, most bystanders seemed to consider their version of verbal sparring a live fire exercise.
No, what was annoying Asuka was school, mostly. While true that she deserved to be the most popular person in school, the sheep like way everyone seemed to follow her was pathetic. All the love letters from the obnoxious, buzzing insects compounded the problem, since not only was she not interested in the pawing advances of a bunch of blockheads, but they were all so insincere. And then there was the fact that people seemed to acknowledge her more for the fact that she was a foreigner, some exotic curiosity, than her skills as a pilot, her intelligence, or her natural beauty. That really pissed her off.
“Hey, why the sour face? Forget to drink your prune juice this morning?” Shinji calls out from the shade of a tree where he seemed to have been hiding.
“No, just wondering how this country ever became important when it’s filled with morons like you,” Asuka spits back.
“Oh, you wound me,” Shinji says sarcastically and clutching his chest melodramatically before pointing out, “And I think you got a little collateral damage on you there.”
“I’m a quarter Japanese, and I was raised in Germany,” Asuka sniffs. “I think I took minimal splash.”
“Ah, so the Übermensch German sides overwhelm the barbarian Japanese side?” Shinji suggested.
Growling, Asuka snaps, “Can you cut it out with the Nazi jokes?”
“But they’re so easy! Come on, throw an Imperial Japan joke. Hell, I haven’t even tried to throw out any weird German fetish jokes cause I know you’ll have way too much tentacle demon material to work with,” Shinji says cajolingly.
“Oh? You know about German porn do you? Pervert,” Asuka strikes back.
Wincing, Shinji says, “I walked into that one.”
“You set yourself up for that one,” Asuka says while rolling her eyes.
“I see no contradiction between our statements,” Shinji says with a smug smile on his face.
“Please, I don’t need your help to insult you. Your face does it for you,” Asuka replies.
“A ‘your face’ joke! What are you, thirteen?” Shinji says with a smile.
“Clever monkey, clever,” Asuka replies with a roll of her eyes.
“You really should expand your Japanese vocabulary, there are so many primate terms you’re failing to use: ape, chimp, feces flinging troglodyte… although typically we just use ‘otaku’ for that last one,” Shinji says, ticking off the terms with his fingers.
“I have a plenty good vocabulary, thank you very much. It’s just that your language is so polite that insulting someone right and proper requires more practice, and seeing as I’m not the kind of simpleton who looks up swear words when they first learn a language, that’s practice I haven’t needed up until I met you,” Asuka says haughtily.
“Prove it,” Shinji says.
Asuka then spent the next minute ripping Shinji a new one with a combination of English and German. Blinking a few times, Shinji pulled out a small note pad and flipped it open to make a tick under Asuka’s name, saying, “That’s three for you to seven for me so far. Incidentally, could you repeat some of those words? They just sounded filthy. As expected from a dirty foreigner like you though.”
“I can give you a full transcript if you want, but I didn’t swear once. I am far too elegant and graceful and feminine to stoop to such unsophisticated and vulgar language. That you would presume I was swearing shows what an uncultured barbarian you are,” Asuka says with a smug smile.
Considering this for a moment, Shinji shrugs and says, “Whether that’s true or not, I’m going to have to give you another point for that one. Well played, well played indeed.”
“Why are you even keeping score? And intentionally incorrectly at that, I’ve won way more than you have,” Asuka asks in an annoyed tone.
“Because the absurdist prop gag is sure to piss you off, and if I am incorrectly scoring, it is assuredly in your favour, seeing as you score a point whenever you can out insult me, while I score whenever you get pissed off. And since you seem to be perpetually PMSing I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt half the time,” Shinji says gleefully.
Asuka’s glare went from an intensity of ‘targeting radar on a modern destroyer’ to ‘capable of getting into a beam duel with Ramiel’ in about two seconds, and Shinji wisely decided that an exit strategy, namely running for all he was worth, was in order. Of course, he could not give up the opportunity to shout out, “Eleven!”
Shinji then lead Asuka on a merry chase about the school campus, but with his greater familiarity with the lay out of the buildings, Asuka quickly lost him about a corner.
“He’s hiding in the tree,” a soft voice says behind Asuka.
“Damn it Rei!” Shinji shouts out from his hiding place.
“Stupid monkey! Get down from there!” Asuka shouts.
“No! If you want me that badly you’re going to have to prove it by coming up here after me,” Shinji replies obstinately.
Asuka glares at him before limbering up to climb after him, but Rei interrupts by saying, “He’s just trying to embarrass you by having you flash your underwear while climbing.”
“Stop reading my mind Rei!” Shinji cries back in annoyance.
A small leaf spontaneously combusted next to Shinji’s head, although only he noticed, and he quickly smothered the flame with some precision telekinesis to prevent it from spreading. He also whispers to himself, “Twelve.”
Turning away from Shinji and sniffing dramatically, Asuka says, “I will not give you the perverted satisfaction then. Thank you Rei, it is good to see that one of my fellow pilots has some sense of responsibility.”
“She only did it to annoy me,” Shinji replies dryly from his perch.
“True,” Rei admits. In recent days she had found a certain satisfaction in wrecking Shinji’s plans, at least the minor ones. As soon as he had noticed the behaviour he laid down some guidelines for which ones were safe to interfere with. His ‘Project Annoy Asuka’ was one of them.
“Well then we should be friends. ‘The enemy of my enemy’ and all that,” Asuka says.
“‘And all that’?” Rei asks. Shinji had used a different ending to that phrase. “You mean ‘dies next’?”
Asuka looks at Rei weirdly before saying, “No, the phrase goes ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’.”
Rei takes this in before shaking her head and saying, “I prefer Shinji’s version.”
Glaring up at the treed pilot, Asuka says, “What have you been teaching her?”
Shrugging, Shinji says, “I think it’s a more valid interpretation in my opinion.”
“Gah! Stupid Japanese! Corrupting a perfectly… good…” Asuka trailed off as her nostrils started flaring and her face crumpled into a confused and mildly disgusted expression.
“WHAT IS THAT SMELL?” She demands.
“Eau de Rei,” Shinji replies from the tree. “We haven’t had to go in for anything in the past couple of days, which is when Rei normally takes her showers.”
Looking at the small, blue haired albino girl, Asuka can only ask the obvious question.
“WHY?”
Swinging down into view, Shinji decides to deflect the question for Rei to avoid the wrong line of inquiry.
“Rei lives on NERV handouts rather than accept the pilot combat pay, and they’re real cheap skates. Her shower doesn’t even work properly,” Shinji explains.
“Yes,” Rei says, deciding that his explanation was adequate.
“You should just… wait, what was that part about combat pay?” Asuka asks.
A sudden look of evil mischief settles over Shinji’s face and he says, “Oh? They didn’t even ask you if you wanted the raise to your pay, did they?”
“What pay?” Asuka asks. “All I get from NERV are disbursements for living expenses while in Japan.”
“Oh really? Because a few months ago I successfully negotiated for all pilots to receive combat pay if they request it. Ayanami-san chose not to take it, but you are legally entitled to the same pay and should have been informed immediately after,” Shinji says, still hanging upside down from the tree.
“How much?” Asuka asks while glaring at him.
Shinji told her.
Far away in a secluded SEELE meeting Gendo was suddenly overcome with a massive sneezing fit that lasted a good thirty seconds before it subsided, to be replaced with a general feeling of doom.
Once the storm of multi-lingual swearing subsided, Asuka turned to Rei and said, “First chance we get, we’re going shopping!”
Dropping down to the ground, Shinji pulls out his wallet and says, “I feel awful for my father’s utterly unethical behaviour. Here’s a couple hundred thousand yen, interest free, for you two to have fun with.”
Rei looked at Shinji’s bright smile and realized that this was the price of betrayal. Rei would have to be more careful next time to she stuck her nose in one of Shinji’s plans. Sometimes his Plan Bs were worse than his Plan As!
Looking at the offered money, Asuka snatched it up before saying, “This should be enough for the three of us.”
“Three?” Shinji asks.
“Well there is Rei and I, but I should invite Hikari-san along as well. You of course can help carry our purchases,” Asuka says.
The look on Shinji’s face would warm both Rei and Asuka for a long time as he was most definitely hoisted by his own petard. He just glared at Rei, who had found the situation suddenly enjoyable again, before he suddenly broke out into a smile and said, “If you’re going to bring along Hikari-san then perhaps Toji would like to join us.”
The thought of having two out of three of the stooges was unappealing to Asuka, but she knew how much men hated shopping with women, and making the monkeys suffer was probably worth it. Plus, for whatever reason Hikari saw something in that ape and it wouldn’t do to hurt her new friend’s feelings.
Fortunately for Shinji, all three of their cell phones went off at once, causing him to roll his eyes and say, “Angel attack.”
Several kilometres away and underground and several minutes in the past, Dr. Akagi Ritsuko was scrolling through the data collected from the last battle, and as usual just looking at Shinji’s sync graphs gave her a headache. The boy seemed adamantly against actually giving proper sync data, because what she was ready was impossible.
According to the monitors, Shinji had neutralized Gaghiel’s AT-field with a sync ratio of 10%. The best explanation was that since Unit 02 was calibrated for Asuka the readings were all off, but Shinji consistently had sync ratings lower than should be possible considering what he did with his Eva. If the readings were correct, there was either still a bug in their measurements or he was precognitive, because Unit 01 moved far faster and with better reactions than should be possible with a 55% sync ratio.
Then of course there was the fact that Eva Units 00 and 01 were changing and adapting, just like Shinji had suggested. Unit 00 seemed to be changing the fastest, but further analysis was suggesting that Unit 01 may actually have been more altered by its experiences than previously thought. It also seemed that just simulations were enough to encourage the biomechanical war machines to begin adapting.
Unit 00 was taking on some unusual new physical properties. Its flesh was actually weakening, but it had a highly accelerated regeneration rate, and most solid weapons would probably over penetrate and cause minimal damage the way the Eva was developing. Worse yet, its blood showed trace amounts of toxins and acids. If it continued down this path, then eventually anything that hit it in close quarters combat and penetrated the armour would do little damage while being sprayed with a deadly chemical cocktail.
Interestingly enough, this could be categorized as a classic ‘Rei’ method of fighting. She cared more about the mission than her own well being, little surprise there, and so in the simulations she tended to simply wade into a fight, and endure any and all attacks until she or the target were destroyed. It was a simple, brutal method, but it could get results, especially when Shinji was backing her up.
This brought Ritsuko to Unit 01’s data. At first it looked like little was happening, but upon closer examination it seemed that the Eva was getting smarter, terrifyingly enough. Its nervous system was changing, the relays becoming tighter and faster, while synaptic connections increased. The techs kept finding new bits of code that randomly popped up and tended to improve upon their own algorithms. Tests with the MAGI showed nearly an order of magnitude increase in the number of targets the Eva could independently track. AT field generation was also significantly improved.
Again, this fit with Shinji’s combat style. He was capable in close quarters combat, but he preferred to attack at range whenever possible, which required a stronger AT-field as neutralizing the enemy at range was significantly harder than close up. He also had a tendency to use his environment to his advantage as often as possible. He hated stand up fights on open fields and felt that if the battlefield wasn’t skewed in his favour, it wasn’t a fair fight.
And he hated fair fights! He often commented that in battle the objective was to kill the other guy as quickly as possible and as massively as possible, and that meant stacking the deck in your favour. It was only proper because any competent enemy would do the same.
Ritsuko was interrupted from her thoughts by Kaji embracing her from behind, saying, “You’ve lost some weight. You’re enduring an unrequited love.”
“Oh really? You’re so very sure, are you?” Ritsuko replies, playing along with Kaji’s flirtatious teasing. He did this sort of thing all the time back in college.
Drawing his fingers across her face, Kaji continues, “A woman with a mole like a tear on her cheek is destined to a lifetime of heartache and sorrow.”
“If you’re trying to put the moves on me, I’m afraid you can’t,” Ritsuko replies with a small smile while glancing to the side. “Not while that face is pressed up against the glass anyway.”
Misato’s breath flared out of her nostril’s and steamed up the window she was pressed against in animalistic ovals while she gave Kaji a glare that would have made Asuka humbled. Growling, she shoved away from the glass and went to enter the lab to give Kaji a chewing out.
“It’s been quite a while Kaji,” Ritsuko says warmly, glad to see an old friend.
“It’s been a while alright,” Kaji admits.
“You know, you’re not as discrete as I remember,” Ritsuko says while turning back to her computer and her work.
“He’s never been discrete in his life,” Misato grumbles loudly while entering the room. “You’ve finished handing over Unit 02 haven’t you? What are you still doing here?”
“I received orders this morning that I’ll be staying around,” Kaji says smugly before turning to Ritsuko and saying, “So gorgeous we can hang around again, just like we used to.”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Misato warns angrily.
And then the alarms went off.
On the command deck, Vice Commander Fuyutsuki could only think Me and my big mouth.
---
This one will probably be broken up into two or three parts. A lot happens in this episode.
I love learning. Teach me. I will listen. You know, if Christian dogma included a ten-foot tall Jesus walking around in battle armor and smashing retarded cultists with a gaint mace, I might just convert - Noble Ire on Jesus smashing Scientologists
