Thousand Shinji (NGE crossover)

[Academia Nut]

Good news everyone! As soon as Chris finishes betaing, there will be a new chapter up, and I'm almost finished writing up the chapter after that as well, after which I have two more chapters planned. I... I think I may finally finish off a story! And I can assure you that the end will blow your mind.

[LadyTevar]

So when's Chris posting a new chapter of HIS story?

[Academia Nut]

He will be ready when he is ready, which should hopefully be soon.

I on the other hand am ready now.

---

I’m bored out of my skull… or rather I would be if I weren’t already out of my skull for other, unrelated reasons. Well, somewhat unrelated reasons. The boredom and the being out of my skull are independent consequences of the same root cause…

Yup, definitely bored, playing word games with myself just to try and get some perspective.

For perhaps the third time in that hour/day/week/eon I snap at the daemon. “Are you just going to play with it for the next ten thousand years? Am I going to have to figure out a way to tell Asuka to hook me up to life support and start offering sacrifices to keep me going?”

“Must you be so crude?” The daemon sighs, looking up from the ministrations on its plaything.

“Hmmm… considering all the damage control I have to do when I get back -thanks to you incidentally- I feel justified in my impatience,” I tell the creature in annoyance.

“And I thought you Tzeentchian schemers were so patient,” the daemon sneers with a cruel grin on its bovine face.

“That’s because we’re usually in control of the situation and have the luxury of smug arrogance and waiting for things to unfold. When it’s not like that we’re quite hard working and irritably impatient at the slightest distraction. This goes beyond a ‘slight distraction’ by several orders of magnitude,” I point out.

“Yes, well this is…” the daemon begins.

“…‘all going according to plan’. Yes, well, remind me to knee my god in the balls next time I see Him,” I note with dry sarcasm.

“Oh my, crude and flippant young one, your mind is so-” the daemon begins before I cut it off.

“Look, if Tzeentch were to actually appear before me after all this in a form with balls to knee instead of some sort of gibbering, tentacled monstrosity capable of driving lesser beings mad with the merest glimpse, then I think it is fair to say that He is asking for the patella to connect with the groin. It will probably even be part of one of His plans, so I honestly won’t feel bad at all,” I explain with bitter annoyance at being underestimated, again.

The daemon is silent for a time. Or rather, its mind is still, for silence implies the possibility of sound, which in turn requires some sort of transmission medium. Considering that my mind was cast adrift in the Warp, transmission mediums capable of supporting sound waves were in short supply.

Finally the daemon just sighs. “You are quite irritating. Do you know that?”

“It’s why I was chosen, wasn’t it?” I ask rhetorically.

“No, you were raised annoying, your selection was merely an accident of birth, you know that,” the daemon chides.

“Yes, because you go over the plan every twelve hours!” I spit back angrily.

“Come now, you know the necessity of this. The odds of you remembering any specific section are low,” the daemon reminds him.

“Yes, that’s part of the same damn debriefing I keep hearing. Incidentally, isn’t there some way to give me laser guided amnesia instead of just wiping out the past three months when we’re done here?” I ask for the hundredth time. With any luck I’ll only remember the first version of this debriefing when it was still shocking and intriguing instead of the thousandth when I was already ready to go.

“Sadly, the mental bastions of your mind are not a gift that is revoked, nor something that can be consciously suppressed to that level. In order to affect your memory loss a chainsword will be required rather than a scalpel. A pity, your mind would be so much fun to play with,” the daemon notes while idly going back to its plaything.

Leaning on the armrest of my throne, such as was possible in this mad realm of thought, I note, “When I remember this, I do believe I will have to give myself a thorough scrubbing to get the memory of you out. I can already hear your voice echoing sarcastically in the future.”

Well that’s a relief… I think.

You think. Good job monkey.

“Ha! Like I would let you go that easily young one. I will be busy with other things, but I can assure you that my memory will remain with you for a long time. If the architects of this grand scenario had not already returned their support I would still be playing with you and your Khornate toy,” the daemon cackles.

Growling, I say, “You will not address Asuka like that.”

“Fine. I would still be playing with you and your cum-guzzling whore,” the daemon says mockingly.

The strike is fast and straight at the daemon’s weakest point: its pride. Before it knows what has happened the plaything is out of its clawed hands and safely next to me, within the bubble of invulnerable thought that protected me from the same tender mercies inflicted upon the damned soul now cowering at my ‘feet’.

The daemon’s face gaped open for a moment before it screamed in a rage that rocked the very fabric of the warp around them, “GIVE THAT BACK!”

I consider the request for a long, pregnant moment before stating, “No.”

Snarling, the daemon lashes a clawed hand against my barriers only for it to be repelled by a shower of crackling, iridescent light. I look upon it with boredom while it rages against my barriers, examining my non existent shirt for non existent lint as it spits insults and curses at me. Finally it just stops and sulks, saying, “You know you’re just making it worse when you have to let me in.”

“Oh I know, but this moment is sweet enough that I think it will be quite worth the price. You can hurt me, but you can’t cripple me, can’t do anything worse than petty cosmetic damage. You wouldn’t survive the backlash if you did anything more,” I state smugly.

The daemon growls and finally says, “Fine, I won’t tell you the secret to repairing your lady.” It practically hisses with false politeness on the last word.

Motherfucker.

“You never were planning on doing such a thing anyway; you just told me that to annoy me. Anything you would tell me would probably be so filtered through all those wonderful Freudian psychosexual hang-ups you Slaaneshi types have that it would be useless to me should I actually try and use it,” I note dryly.

Harrumphing, the daemon finally says “Okay, if you’re going to be like that, I’ll just go play with something else.”

“Going to make the long, dangerous, multi-light year trek to find another toy like this one?” I ask, gesturing to the pathetic Eldar soul grovelling at my feet.

“Nah, good specimens of that species are so hard to find these days, it’s not even worth it. The first trip was hard enough and I only found that toy by chance, I won’t bother looking for another. I’ll just find a human or two to play with,” the daemon says with a slow, delicious sing-song cadence towards the end.

“Back to Misato and Kaji is it?” I ask with an undercurrent of hatred clear in my voice.

“Oh, you know about that do you?” The daemon asks, somewhat disappointed that its secret is out.

“I figured it out a couple of sessions ago. For lack of a better word, you ‘smell’ of Misato whenever you come back, carrying hints of her mental signature on you after what must be wonderful mind fucking session. Of course, there is nothing I can do to stop you,” I note with infinite disgust.

The daemon runs a long, practically prehensile tongue over its razor sharp teeth before smiling lustily and saying, “What do you think of me raping her dreams wearing your guise tonight? You could not hide your lusts from me during the time when I was allowed free rein in your mind; I know that there is a part of you that wants to do such awful, wonderful things to her.”

Glaring impassively at the daemon, I say, “That is the best you can throw at me? Those are the terrible Secrets you Keep? That I’m a horny fourteen year old living with a sexually aggressive and experienced woman and I wouldn’t mind getting in her pants? By the Warp, this shocking revelation changes everything. Quick, call up the Gods; we have to get this critical piece of information to them in time!”

“Sarcasm suits you, you know?” The daemon notes in annoyance.

“It’s a Tzeentchian thing, although in that instance I decided that the subtlest instrument in my linguistic tool kit was a 2X4. Now, on other subjects, can I cut a deal with you, or will you have to limit your mind fucking to the rather difficult task of influencing a non-psyker?” I ask.

“Oh, and what can you give me that I don’t already have?” The daemon notes with the slightest smirk in its tone…

Shrugging, I tilt my head to the damned soul, who begins to cry and sob and beg for mercy. “I can give this one back to you in exchange for not using my likeness to haunt Misato’s dreams.”

“Oh, but you already do. Your absorption into your Eva and now this coma has left her quite haunted by you. It’s actually something of a tangled form of what you humans so amusingly call an Oedipus complex. She has such abandonment issues with her father, and everyone else who died in Second Impact, but since she can’t have him, she now lusts after her surrogate son. It’s all very lovely for me,” the daemon gloats.

“Yes, yes, well you don’t need to make it worse you know,” I point out.

“Where is the fun in that?” The daemon whines falsely.

“Oh, no fun. It’s just that I’ll make sure that it would be less fun for you otherwise,” I explain.

“Or what, you’ll keep my toy from me? You have a week left here, that’s nothing in comparison to the eternity I will have to play afterwards,” the daemon points out smugly, sneering at its play toy which pathetically cringed backwards, even behind the invulnerable barrier.

“Yes, but I can make sure that the next week is absolute misery for you. You have to come back to explain the plan to be sure of things on a regular basis, you can’t avoid me for the next week. And every time you’re here, I’ll make sure that I’m the one ‘playing’,” I growl threateningly. My right ‘hand’ then morphs into a long, grasping tentacle that I use to wrap around the ‘throat’ of the damned Eldar. Mental self image in this plane is so malleable to one such as me.

“You know I like to watch,” the daemon sneers, but there is a hint of fear in its tone.

“While I’m sure ‘practice’ for when I get back to Asuka would be useful, this alien is indeed a comely female specimen, I have other plans,” I tell the daemon, drawing the last word out into a malicious hiss.

“I am a follower of the Lord of Change… I wonder what it would take to alter a dead Eldar soul into a form beyond sensation… beyond acknowledgement of your ministrations. Such a dissection and reconstruction would be a glorious achievement to offer to Tzeentch, don’t you think?” I sneer.

“You… you… you wouldn’t dare!” The daemon screams.

“Oh, I would dare, and I think you know I would. I know that you are more bored than I, your vast mind trapped in this empty, dull place with so few things to torment, and you have been here for a decade compared to the paltry month I have suffered through. I know that should I truly take your toy away, that would hurt you. So do us both a favour, and instead of being a petty dickhead like you usually are, bargain with me on this one thing. You leave Misato alone; I leave your fuck toy alone, got that?” I offer up generously.

“Fine,” the daemon hisses.

“Swear it. I don’t want to shove this whore through my barriers only for you to prance off and screw with Misato anyway,” I demand. “Swear it on your secrets and it is yours to do with as you will.”

It snarled in response to his impudence. For a Keeper of Secrets to swear on those Secrets meant it was beholden to reveal them should it break its half of the bargain. And as the Greater Daemon was in part an avatar of its God, he was in effect poking Slaanesh in the ribs.

It wasn’t quite kicking Tzeentch in the balls, but it was something…

The daemon growled before rattling off several dozen syllables unpronounceable by the human tongue before saying, “There, I just swore I would leave Misato alone in exchange for that Eldar’s soul.”

“So be it” I declare before casually tossing the struggling, weeping alien outside my barriers where the daemon gleefully pounces upon it.

I sit back and watch, as I have for the past three weeks. I don’t know why the stupid thing thought I was there to save it, I had not been moved by its pathetic screams when I first saw it, and I wasn’t about to have a sudden fit of compassion for a dead alien I had never met in life.

I watch and take notes for the thousandth time. Who knows what parts of my memory would return to me and when? The daemon did know a lot about sex, and I was always looking to learn new things.


Shinji awoke from the shared dream, his mind pulled from the chaotic swirl of memories by that memory of the daemon. Fortunately Asuka had not been pulled into that experience. Shinji knew now that the commentary had come from his mind, from the part of him tainted by contact with the Keeper of Secrets sent to move things along according to plan.

It deeply disturbed him however that a greater daemon of Slaanesh was taking orders from Tzeentch… somehow, and for some reason. He knew the full plan had been explained to him, he just could not remember the details, yet.

…xtne’wulpvo’b’go’dstiilzafraztz’intchi’vilgazz’no’malre’iglegugluga’sukhon’nawalm’isla’atoptyxoqist’nelbaa…

Damn it! He knew the words, knew that they were important, for they had told him the identity of the last Angel, but he could not remember how to translate them into something meaningful, something he could understand.

Until that happened, he was working on his own.

He had the dread feeling however, that this was all still going just as planned anyway. He managed to swallow his bitterness though. This was the sort of thing to expect from Tzeentch. There was nothing worth crying over, although he would kick the bastard’s ass if given the opportunity. As he had told the daemon, if Tzeentch presented you with an opportunity that you wanted, you were best off taking it because that was probably just another part of His plans.

Also, unlike Gendo, Shinji didn’t intend to try to kill Tzeentch, just rough Him up a little, maybe take a couple of hits in return, let Him know how Shinji felt about the whole deal. It was a bonding experience in Shinji’s mind.

Because the Gods only knew that a distant, alien, manipulative, daemon god who was almost certainly using him for His own designs was still a better role model than Gendo.

Setting aside his concerns for the future, Shinji turned his attention back to Asuka’s mind, first smiling then frowning at what has occurred. So far he had managed to reconstruct about 90% of her mind, or rather, he had established the conditions for the majority to reform on its own. The problem now was that the remaining damage was still in critical locations.

One analogy for description would be to look down at a smooth, flat disc, a CD or hard disk if you will, although those were purely storage devices in comparison to the active processing capacity of a living mind. In active mode, it would spin very fast, thoughts and memories linking and joining, producing a complete person. Unfortunately at the moment, there was an arc stretching from the outer edge of the disk to its core that had been shattered. Shards of pure thought drifted in the wound like bits of pulverized flesh in a bullet track, terminating in an ugly hole in the centre of the disc.

If the ‘disc’ tried to spin at any great speed, especially without its centre, it would simply tear itself apart, and all of Shinji’s work would be undone. Asuka’s mind knew this too, and it would not let her awaken from her coma until the damage was repaired.

This final scar was the wound that the Angel had inflicted, the genesis for the collapse of her mind.

It would need to be dealt with.

Shinji plunged back in.


The rain reflected the foul mood of the inhabitants of Tokyo-3. Shinji had been hauled out of Unit 01 two weeks ago, but still there was no sign of his recovery. I had been released from protective custody a few days ago, after it became obvious I wasn’t suicidal…and after it had become obvious that I would start killing my way out if they kept me caged much longer.

Misato was a bundle of nerves more high strung than the old Golden Gate Bridge on a mixture of methamphetamines and crack cocaine. She had not been sleeping well for months, her dreams haunted by nightmares of things she barely understood mocking her pain. I knew how that felt, but for all that I wanted to reach out to her, to cling to her, I couldn’t.

There was a wall between us these days. Misato was becoming increasingly self-absorbed in her own pain, while I was venting it nightly on the blood soaked streets. I thirsted for violence, she thirsted for alcohol and who knew what other chemical intoxicants… and other things.

Up until a few nights ago, Kaji had been coming over frequently. The sounds they made… they drove me insane, or at least more insane than typical. My body longed to be touched in that way by Shinji again, and I would often find myself growling in sympathy to the grunts and moans coming through the walls. And I hated her for that.

A part of me still pined for Kaji, even though I knew that it could never be as good as Shinji seeing as it was physically impossible for a normal human to stimulate every erogenous zone simultaneously the way a skilled telekinetic like Shinji could. More so though, they made me absolutely furious, not that such a thing was difficult these days, in the way they were so self-absorbed.

The bitch had to have known that Shinji and I were sexually active, had to have known that Shinji meant the world to me, that his touch had completed me, and they had to have know what Kaji meant before Shinji arrived in my life. For them to fuck like rabbits every night where I could hear them… it smacked of such arrogant self-absorption that it took every fibre of my rather limited self control not to storm out of my room and into whatever room they were using for their filthy lusts and add their heads to the growing pile.

The authorities were still blind to stop me, to catch me. Every night my dread harvest grew, and I took a minimum of eight skulls each night. The axes I was summoning were also changing, evolving from simple, modern hatchets into large, bronze battle-axes that evoked memories of a more ancient, primitive and brutal, time. Despite the change in materials, the weapons were getting sharper and stronger. With my growing daemonic strength, I could easily cleave through both arms and the upper torso of a full grown, heavily built man with ease… and leave a gouge mark in the concrete wall behind him.

I truly am a monster, and I would kill anything that got in my way.

Thus I practically had an orgasm when the announcement came that an Angel had been detected in low-Earth orbit. The coward would probably not engage in close quarters combat where I could frolic in the shower of blood pattering against the armour of my Eva, but killing was killing, and I needed to kill an Angel to even the score after Zeruel.

I was in Unit 02 before the order to scramble was even given, having made for the holding bays the instant the first alarms went off. I was already through the power up sequence when Misato’s ragged face appeared on the monitor.

“Asuka-san, you are ordered to stand by and support Rei-san against the Angel,” Misato told me.

I growled as I began entering the catapult overrides. “Fuck you bitch if you think you can keep me here.”

Misato just looked hurt as the connection was cut by me turning off the line as the EM-pulse of the rail launcher kicked Unit 02 up to the surface of Tokyo-3. It was stupid of me, but I just had no respect left for Misato, so I simply didn’t give a flying fuck. At least Misato had the good grace to send me up the last functional long range weapon we had left in our stocks.

With the destruction of the positron rifle, the only major long range weapon the Evas had left was the “Davy Crockett”. I didn’t bother remembering the actual name, just the joke name given to it after an old American weapons platform from the Cold War. It was basically a large launch tube loaded up with a large missile and a high yield N2 mine. The range was crap in comparison to the ballistic missiles of old, but the Evas needed a stop gap for their lack of a long range weapon until a new positron rifle could be built from scratch. The JSSDF’s weapon had already been claimed months ago to be used in construction of the last one, so there was a dearth of mostly built weapons available.

Shouldering the large weapon, I began to go through the long process of acquiring a lock on the Angel orbiting above. The shot was a long one, requiring the MAGI to run some complex calculations to work out the ideal point and time to pull the trigger. Happily, the Angel was holding a precise orbital distance from Tokyo-3 and not moving, making the calculations an order of magnitude easier, reducing the number of key variables significantly. One of which was when to detonate the N2 mine. If the missile could not reach high enough, there was still the chance that a detonation would be able to swat the Angel out of the sky if I was nullifying its AT-field.

The targeting reticules were slowly aligning as the MAGI calculated the final firing solution when a ghastly golden light punched down through the cloud cover, slamming into my head like white hot iron spikes being driven into my eyes.

I screamed.

My mental barriers had held against the initial assault… barely. The attacking Angel had no finesse, just raw power, but it unfortunately had a fuck load of power at its disposal.

LCL boiled with psychic backlash my body went into spasms with the bleed off of the initial psychic attack, although fortunately I had the good sense and training not to have my finger on the trigger of a multi-kiloton weapon before I had a firing solution. The results would have been unpleasant otherwise. The N2 mine probably wouldn’t have armed, but it was still loaded on to a rather large rocket.

I vaguely heard the annoyed tone of the lock on being broken by my Eva jerking and shuddering about with the mental noise being generated by the Angel attack, but I was too busy trying to reinforce my mental defences to care.

If my mind was like a vast iron fortress with a barrier wall of solid, armoured metal three metres thick, an imposing, impregnable point that only allowed entrance to invited guests, then the Fifteenth Angel’s psychic attack was the equivalent of one of Ramiel’s beams. The armour had not been penetrated in the first strike, but there was now a glowing melt point where the wall had almost been breached.

And the white hot lance of psychic power was already charging up for its next strike.

The LCL, always tasting of blood, now was an even more pungent flavour to it as I realize I have bit my own tongue. I sub-vocalize, “For the Blood God,” before gritting my teeth and preparing for the next big assault.

The Angel slammed its psychic probe through my defences, cracking the armour, and as fast as that, it was in, predatory and hungry. The being had no idea what it was looking for, just that it would know it when it found it. It was looking for memories of pain, of suffering, weapons to use against me, to break me.

This was a rape of the mind.

Shinji, or any other sufficient powerful follower of Tzeentch, would have ensnared this Angel twelve different ways already, their labyrinthine minds designed to capture and rip apart such childishly simplistic attacks, like soldiers caught in rolls of razor wire, the Angels own raw power would have sawed it apart.

A follower of Nurgle would have simply overwhelmed such a mental attack with wave upon wave of apathetic despair. There was no pain they could not endure, and to fight with them was to court catching the contagions they carried.

A follower of Slaanesh… well, by definition, you can’t rape the willing. Such a mind would probably revel in such an attack to the point where the attacker would be the one being mind raped by the depraved thoughts it found by the end.

For me, a follower of Khorne, the Blood God, the Skull Lord, I had but one course of action open to me in such a situation.

Straining against the psychic pressure, I begin to raise the Davy Crockett back up into position, the crosshairs and firing solution closing…and closing…and closing, focusing everything that I am or ever will be on getting a lock…

I make it halfway before the Angel finally finds what it has been looking for.

A point of pain.

And it presses. Hard.


My whole body ached with sobbing, my face red and swollen with the total expenditure of every tear in my body. Every nerve ending screamed in fire and pain, a chorus of physical agony to accompany the wails and cries in the mind now that the throat could no longer vocalize the pain.

The image of Hikari’s head dropping, almost mockingly, out of the savaged remains of Unit 03 haunted her every time she closed her eyes, and yet the physical pain forced them tightly shut. The phantoms of her actions howled in her mind, taunted her.

‘I killed my best friend’ was the only thing that played through her mind.

I could still see her face so clearly, so afraid, so shocked, so betrayed by my actions. Did Hikari still see through the eyes of her Eva when the Angel possessed it? Did she see us standing there and assume that we were there to save her?

When I started hacking her apart with my chain-axe, did she think that I had been given the mission because I was a bloodthirsty monster willing to turn on her like some rabid dog seeking a fight?

I had already given myself the epithet of Asuka the Betrayer.

A part of my rational mind tries to tell me to get over it, that I was not in control of the time of such an atrocity, but what say had reason in such an emotional storm.

What happened next…

He should not have lingered.

Somehow, I looked up to find Shinji waiting at my door, looking in at me wearing an expression of deep but well controlled anger, and concern. He was dressed for a journey, wearing a jacket and with a bag slung over one shoulder. He was clearly leaving.

Leaving me.

Alone.

In some reservoir I found more tears to cry. Already the heavy hand of loneliness and agony was settling over me.

The bed creaked as Shinji lay down next to me, enveloping me in his arms. There were no erotic undertones to this despite all the times we had shared a bed, or the floor, or a bath tub, or a table, or a wall, or…

He was just holding me to hold me.

His body was cool in comparison to my heightened metabolism, but at that moment he was like purest sunshine on my skin, a point of hope and warmth in my dark, unforgiving world.

“Don’t go,” I beg of him.

“I must. I must repay this crime a thousand fold, but for that I must know who to punish a thousand times, and who merely a hundred,” Shinji whispers while holding her closer.

“Please… don’t go. I need you Shinji-kun,” I whimper.

“And I need you Asuka-chan, which is why I must go. You are the most precious thing in my life, and to see you hurt like this… this must be avenged,” Shinji tells her while gently brushing a lock of hair out of her face and wiping away her tears.

“If you go, it will hurt more,” I tell him.

“I know,” Shinji agrees.

“So why must you go?” I demand pathetically.

“Because if I don’t let the world know that it will not hurt us under pain of unspeakable torture and death, it will keep doing this. When hit, we must hit back harder, or the pain will not stop. I must go, but I promise I will be back,” Shinji tells her.

“Promise?” I ask.

“By all the Gods, I promise to return to you Asuka-chan. I promise to return, and then we will have our harvest of the skulls of our enemies. The whole world will tremble before us, and world leaders will grovel before us just for the chance to kiss your dainty feet… not that I would let them touch my precious Asuka-chan, but you get the point. We will finish off the Angels, and then we shall own this world for now and ever more, nothing capable of hurting us,” Shinji promises her before getting up to go.

“Shinji-kun?” I ask.

“Yes?” He asks.

“Stay with me for the night… just hold me… will you?” I plead.

“I… I will be gone by morning or I will never leave. Can you bear to wake up to that?” He asks.

“Yes,” I lie.

I need him next to me; I need his sun bright warmth to fall asleep because the primary source of my agony is not that I killed my best friend.

The biggest source of my agony is that I enjoyed it on some level. To kill, to kill anything, even those I loved, excited and thrilled me, while simultaneously sickening me.

And when I woke up, Shinji was gone…and it hurt ten times as much as before.

I wish he had not lingered.

I wish he had not made a promise he couldn’t keep.

I wish…


Struggling against the rush of anguish and sorrow, I succeed in raising the missile launcher another fraction of a degree at the prompting of the MAGI as they continue to work out a firing solution. My limbs are shaking as they simultaneously freeze and burn and the feedback is affecting all of Unit 02, throwing off my aim, but from somewhere, I find the strength adjust my aim.

Just…another…inch…

The Angel continuing to violate my mind stumbles across a bloody, raw emotional scab in its search, easily deflecting away my desperate attempts to push it away.

Without hesitation, it rips it open.


It was all her fault. If not for that bitch Rei, Shinji never would have had to leave; he could have simply killed his father and dealt with the Fourteenth Angel at his leisure instead of having to rush in at the last moment and become the Big Damn Hero.

And getting sucked into his Eva doing it.

There would be blood for this. I had killed Rei once, I could do it again.

And again.

And again.

Until the bitch was gone from our lives forever.

I ascend the filthy stairs of Rei’s otherwise abandoned apartment, wrinkling my nose in disdain of the disgusting hovel that only a follower of Nurgle would want. As I climb higher, I stop even trying to identify the various kinds of mould on the walls, trusting in the changes to my body and Khorne’s blessing to keep me safe from this toxic environment.

Finally I reach the apartment, no longer even caring about the stomach curdling smell, my rage at Rei for all of this powering me onward when most people would have run screaming to find the nearest bottle of Lysol by now. I don’t even bother trying the corroded handle; I simply kick in the door, the rotted wood disintegrating under the force of my foot.

A wave of putrid miasma washes over me, and I recoil back for an instant before peering into the dark cesspit that is Rei’s apartment, ready to unleash a terrifying vengeance at the source of my misery.

But hanging there is the one thing that can still terrify me.

Rei is suspended from the ceiling, an extension cord wrapped about her throat, her head lolling at an uncomfortable if not unnatural angle. She had hung herself, and it had been messy. She did not have enough of a drop to snap her neck, so she had strangled to death. Her porcelain face was a deep blue-purple, blending in unpleasantly with her greasy pale blue hair, while her tongue is swollen and sticking out of her mouth. Foam flecks at her lips while nail marks gouge at her throat in an attempt to open up her airway. Sometime during or after the process she had soiled herself, the filth still running down her legs to drip in puddle at her feet.

The worst bit though was the fact that she had neatly taken off her clothes and laid them in a pile on her bed. She had killed herself, and even then she was still being polite to the next iteration in not soiling her clothing to point where people would ask questions.

I scream and run to get away from that awful, taunting thing hanging like strange fruit from the ceiling.

The thing that will now wear my mother’s face forevermore.

Mother did not die clean, but at least her neck broke from her drop. There was none of the struggle and pain evident on Rei’s face and body from the end. Now though… now I would never be able to get the superimposition of those two dread images out of her mind.

The doll had hung herself, and she didn’t even care. She had set aside all of her things in anticipation of death and a new copy would be along shortly to claim the life that the last had vacated.

I kept running until even my enhanced muscles burned with fatigue on the far side of Tokyo-3, collapsing in a heap in a darkened alleyway, puking my guts out just to try and purge my body of something as my mind cannot purge the horrors now lurking within… and the horrors that had been lurking for the past ten years.


“I'm not a child! I'm going to grow up quickly”

“So look at me.”

“Please, Asuka, die with me.”

“No! I'm not your doll.”

“I'm going to think for myself and live for myself.”

“That girl over there.”

“Mom! Please, don't quit being my mom.”

“Mom! Mom! I've been chosen.”

“I'm an elite pilot, chosen to protect all of mankind.”

“I'm the best in the world.”

“It's supposed to be a secret! But I'll tell you anyway! Just for you.”

“Everyone will be nice to us from now on.”

“So, we won't be lonely anymore.”

“So, we'll be fine, even without Dad around.”

“We won't be lonely anymore.”

“So, look! Look at me.”

“Come on, Mom…Mom…Mom?”


My screams are echoing across Tokyo-3, picked up by my Eva and roared for all to hear and cower before. I can feel my mind slipping away under the onslaught. The outer walls of my mind had been swept of defenders, and the inner courtyard had fallen. All that was left was the final inner keep where the defenders were putting up a last minute holding action, desperately trying to sell their lives for just… one… shot…

And Khorne be praised, the targeting system blared with the glorious tone indicating that a firing solution had been successfully calculated by the MAGI.

My finger twitches over the trigger, caressing it. The entire Eva shudders from the recoil of the missile leaving its tube, carrying its deadly payload skyward on a pillar of smoke and fire.

The defenders of my mind, Khornate berserkers to the last, leap from their fortified position and land on the tendrils of the Angel’s psychic assault. It wanted pain… it will get pain.

All that mental anguish and torment… that was nothing!

Your brother denied me Shinji, the first person who understood me, the first person who knew how to take the pain away simply by being!

Die!

DIE!

DIE!

The Angel struggled with the sudden onslaught of rage as it tried to retreat out of Asuka’s mind, but it discovered that age old maxim that a position that was impossible to get into was also impossible to get out of.

Its mind was ensnared in a cage built of fury and pain and countless other thoughts and emotions alien to its being. All of the rage and despair, the loneliness and the hate, the frustration and the terror, all the emotions I had worn like chains for weeks now was let loose in a single, fantastic wave of raw human emotion that tied the child of Adam to me; too much to comprehend, too much to deal with in too little time-

The missile reached the limit of its burn, ejecting the payload with an explosive bang to give the deadly N2 mine a final bit of impulse. The missile had not been designed to hit something this high up, but the MAGI had figured out a way to make it work.

The mine drifted higher on a ballistic arc, slowing down as gravity began to reclaim this unsuccessful escape attempt.

The mine reached the top of its trajectory.

Directly beneath the Angel.

The Angel shrieked in terror, perhaps for the first and last time in its existence understanding the emotion, its AT-field trapped in offensive mode by the sudden turn around in the assault. It could not disengage to form a shield.

In a flash of impossibly bright light the Fifteenth Angel disappeared, reduced to a puff of vapour and a lingering scream in the minds of those who could hear such things. It was the thirteenth such scream in the better part of a year.

My eyes roll up in my head as the psychic backlash of holding on to the Angel’s mind as it dies rolls over me. Just as my thoughts are alien to it, so are its thoughts to mine and all I can feel is a profound sense of loneliness and loss.

Is this what it means to be an Angel? To be utterly alone in the universe, not even understanding why you fight the tiny things at your feet?

My mind is imploding, I can feel it. All those memories of isolation and loneliness are flooding forth, the containment I have about them utterly shattered by the attack. They drown me in my own suffering. My own prison.

Everything is going dark…

Shinji, where are you?

Why aren’t you here for me?

Please… help…

help…

help… me…

please…

help…



A memory in stereo, or perhaps quadraphonic, surfaced, one half from Shinji, the other from Asuka, mingling and entwining, as they had the night it had been made. For each it was already a confused, wondrous memory, each having let down their outer barriers just for that the other, thoughts of the one mixing with thoughts of the other.

It was the night after they had slain the Thirteenth Angel; the night after Shinji had refused to abandon Asuka to the inky blackness. They had been having sex for over a month now, but nothing like this. Their minds had been open, but there had still been guards at the borders.

This was the equivalent of the Berlin Wall coming down at last and the celebration of that incredible time.

Thoughts and sensations echoed between them, every touch felt at least four times between the two of them. Once by the person doing the touching, once by the person touched, once by the person doing the touching feeling the thoughts of the person being touched, and once by the person being touched feeling the thoughts of the person touching. It was an incredible tangle of thoughts and emotions.

There were no boundaries. There were no limits. There was no need for words. There was just heat and pressure and sweat and breathing and the explosion of nerve clusters in patterns of sensation beyond description.

With their minds so linked, feeding back upon each other, it was little surprise that it all ended at the same moment, like twin Tsar Bombs going off within a deep mountain valley, the echoes of the noise bouncing back and forth between them long after the fireball faded.

All that was left was to gaze into the eyes of the other, and to see your own eyes superimposed from their point of view. It was incredible, both of them very nearly glowing in the visible spectrum with the energy cascading off them as they lay spent and exhausted in the aftermath.

“I love you Asuka.”


The mirror shattered under the impact, countless spider web cracks radiating out of the point where my fist made contact, little bits of glass falling out as the remains of the tremors faded. Chunks of mirror were embedded in my knuckles, but that was nothing compared to the visceral twisting of my guts or the hollow emptiness of my heart.

Tears of blood dripped from my face into the sink, further proof of my inhumanity. I could not cry like a normal person.

“Damn it all… if I can’t have him back… can’t I just have a piece of him? A fragment, a memento to carry with me into the future?” I ask bitterly.

Damn him.

Damn him for being so responsible.

Damn him for not being here.

Damn him for forcing me to mature, to realize that I was a child pretending to be an adult… and thus to become an adult anyway.

Damn him.

Damn him.

I sink to the floor of the washroom and cry.

Why me?

Why…

Something bubbles up within me and I remember Shinji’s words. I refuse to give in. I refuse to stop fighting.

I will get him back.

I will-


Shinji was forced out of Asuka’s mind as it abruptly stopped at the edge of whatever realization it had been at. It was now 99% complete, if still damaged and scarred from years of trauma. Already it was starting to move again, for complete thoughts to flow, memories in complete, uninterrupted segments allowing for the conduction of ideas.

Shinji could not leave the job half done though, not at all. There was still one piece at the core that still needed to be fitted into place. It had an odd texture from the others though, almost as if it were not a memory but something more profound and primal.

Shinji refused to allow this last piece to go unexplored, unrealized, so he plunged it.


He was right, it was not a memory; it was something different. It was something more archetypal, an ideal rather than an idea. It was a piece of Asuka’s heart she hid even from herself, the motivation that drove her onward, that made her doing the things she did, even when she did not realize them.

The thought was fuzzy, hazy, only barely realized, and from the third person perspective rather than first person. It was Asuka looking in on herself rather than looking out.

An exhausted looking woman, her face blurred out until it was undistinguishable, was lying in a hospital bed while cradling a tiny bundle in her arms staring down proudly at what she held. A man in a business suit, his own face blurred out, had a hand on her shoulder, beaming at her.

Is this her first memory? Her mother holding her just after her birth in the hospital?

Is it even possible to remember something like this?

From the shadows about the scene, eyes began to open, glowing in the gloom, growling hungrily for the happy family within the light.

The babe began to wail in fear of the things lurking in the dark.

Is this what she wants? A family to protect her from the monsters within and without. Does she…

Shinji’s musing was abruptly interrupted by the young woman pulling a large battle-axe out of nowhere and slamming it into the darkness, causing an outraged squeal of pain that died off into a gurgling death rattle. The mother than carefully rocked her child back to sleep as the monsters in the dark retreated in terror.

The father then loosened up his joints and extended a hand out into the darkness, no doubt preparing to unleash hell on whatever had threatened his family.

Wait a second! I understand now, she wants-


Shinji was hurled backwards by the backlash of his spell abruptly ending due to an emergency recall trigger, his Space Marine guardians already forming in small tornadoes of swirling sand as he tried to get his bearings.

It took a moment to understand what was happening, but the sound clued him in. Once you heard that noise, you could never forget.

Someone had detonated a nuclear weapon or N2 mine on the remains of the city above, definitely the sort of thing that would kick him out of his astral projection.

Scrambling to his feet as the Marines materialized fully into existence, weapons at the ready, Shinji rushed to Asuka’s side to see what the backlash had done to her.

She was having a seizure.

[Sidewinder]

I'm surprised at how similar Asuka's counterattack against Arael is to my idea for Shinji succumbing to his own dark side and physically and mentally raping Arael.

I'm also curious as to what a child of a Khornate berserker and a Tzeentchian sorcerer will look like. Wouldn't Chaos cause such horrid mutations that the child will not look human? Or will the child be able to control its body and change its form, to look as human or demonic as it pleases?

[LadyTevar]

Awwwwwwwwwwww... Asuka wants Shinji's baby.

[Academia Nut]

Yes... but there is in fact a slight subtlety involved as well that adds an extra layer of meaning and depth if you want to do some extra thinking. It actually relates pretty much directly to the original series, although considering how that turned out you could probably construct anything out of NGE from the pieces.

And well, if you hunt really, really hard, and I mean obsessively hard through this chapter a few others like it, you will get your answer Sidewinder, or anyone else who is interested. If you think you find it though, please do keep it to yourself or PM me if you think you've found something and really want to be spoiled.

[FA Xerrik]

All this timefuckery and mindfuckery is not user-friendly when you're hungover. Shame on me for trying. I hope their baby is Cthulhu

[Academia Nut]

Well I sent a chapter to Chris and I'm working on the next one at the moment, which features the MP Eva fight.

I recommend Engel by Rammstein and Das Omen by E Nomine, although other ass kicking music is a good idea. Some Blutengel may be appropriate depending on the song.

Basically when that scene comes up, it may be a good idea to have some evil sounding, high energy German music on standby.

[Academia Nut]

Latest chapter. Only two more to the end, and I'm half done the next one. I may be able to have this story done by the weekend. Prepare for ass kicking.

---

This was bad, this was very bad. Shinji had been right at the core of her being when he had been yanked out by the detonation, and while there were safeguards in place, those mostly protected him from psychic backlash. Worst case scenario he should have been yanked clear and whatever damage his abrupt exit caused would have been repairable.

Unfortunately, her mind was already starting up and he had done enough repair work that her psychic defences were now manifesting themselves. He couldn’t access her mind to soothe over the distress he had caused with his abrupt departure, and he couldn’t use his psychic abilities to try and calm the electrochemical storm raging across her brain.

He had to find some way to restrain her or she was going to thrash herself to death, but there wasn’t anything strong enough to contain her warp-fuelled muscles, and he couldn’t use his telekinesis on her without her permission, something she couldn’t give in her current state.

A sudden burst of realization came over him as he realized that while he couldn’t use his telekinesis directly, he could apply force to an intermediate object to restrain her. Of course, there was the danger of accidentally crushing her as the feedback from such a situation was far less fine than a direct application.

Unless…

Dismissing the risks to himself, Shinji slammed his hand down on her sternum, holding her torso down as she shook to keep her from breaking her own spine with convulsions, his telekinesis applied to his arm.

It hurt.

A lot.

He was subjecting his body to stresses it wasn’t meant to endure, and then holding the bones and flesh together with nothing but the power of his will, when by all rights they should have shattered from the massive compression he was subjecting them to.

The heavy duty bed frame collapsed, but Shinji caught the comforter with his telekinesis, not that it was doing much good as the springs were rapidly being crushed into a useless mass.

And then Shinji noted to his horror that Asuka was snapping her jaw open and shut spastically. She was going to bite her own tongue off and drown in her own blood if he didn’t intervene.

The irony of a Khornate berserker dying like was not lost on him.

He needed to do something quickly before the situation degenerated to the point of no return. He couldn’t think of anything strong enough to…
With his telekinesis he had maintained the integrity of his arm when steel had given way. Mentally preparing himself, he put his left hand between the super human teeth snapping away and threatening to take off Asuka’s tongue. He grunted in pain at first, but his plan appeared to work, to keep Asuka steady and stable, when…

Shinji screamed as his telekinesis failed and Asuka’s teeth sliced through the meat and bones of his left hand, her titanium infused bones slicing like a jagged saw through his all too human flesh. He contained the mess though, ruthlessly crushing his own blood vessels to prevent from bleeding out into her mouth and yanking the severed portion of his pinkie finger and left hand up with telekinesis so that she did not choke on it.

Fortunately he did not need to sacrifice any more appendages to her maw as the seizure began to die down, Asuka relaxing into a deep sleep.

Withdrawing his now smashed left hand, Shinji gritted his teeth to keep from crying out more than he already had as he turned his awareness inward, using micro-fine control over his abilities to cauterize the vicious wound that has left him short a finger. Wrapping his whole hand in a bit of bed sheet, Shinji then tucked his agonized left hand close to his body and stumbled out of the room to try and find out what was going on.

Out in the halls there was a massive buzzing of activity as people tried to figure out where they needed to go, the sound of the explosions that grew ever closer hastening their movements, but confusion had not mutated into panic. Yet.

And then Shinji saw a face he recognized. He had only seen it once, but he never forgot the face of anyone he owed a favour to.

It was one of the NERV soldiers that had fired the TOW missile that had slain Ramiel all those months ago. It looked like Shinji was about to increase his debt a little.

“You!” Shinji cried out, imparting a bit of telepathic command to his voice, causing the soldier to freeze. “What is going on here?”

Confused by the compulsion to stop, the man then looked at Shinji and recognition flowed over his face. “Pilot Ikari-san! They’re looking for you on the bridge! The JSSDF has attacked us and we’re scrambling all remaining assets!”

Hmm… that would explain the N2 mine. I had better get on this.

First priority; make sure Asuka is safe.

Shinji frowned. “Whatever you were doing before, you have a new mission.”

“I…” the man starts to protest, but the eight foot tall monstrosities kicking down the wall from the room Shinji just came out of cut his protests off in mid sentence, one of the figures gingerly cradling Asuka in its enormous gauntleted hands.

Gesturing with a hand to allow the man to understand that the force that was moving him forward was coming from him, Shinji glares at him and says, “Your new mission is to get this girl to…”

What’s the safest place in NERV right now?

“…to her Evangelion. I don’t care what you have to do, what rules you have to break, what you have to steal, who you have to kill, you will get her there. Do I make myself clear?” Shinji says while holding up a hand crackling with fell lightning, letting the power of the Warp sink into his eyes and voice to accentuate his point.

“Uh… actually I was sent down here to retrieve you two…” the man replies in confusion and fear. While he had the balls to stand outside and fire a TOW missile at an Angel’s core, this was a little outside context for him.

Grinning, Shinji says, “Then I have made your job considerably easier. Get her there. I will follow once I have concluded my business.”

The man looked ready to protest, but instead he just took Asuka and called over several others to follow him, retreating away from the psychosis occurring around him.

Second priority; slow the invasion down.

Telekinetically summoning his staff, Shinji expands his mind outward, using the special resonance crystal contained at the core of the metal staff to amplify his powers. Just before he detached his psyche from his body, he tells his Marines, “Oh, do give warning before you start killing anyone, there are some people I don’t want dead.”

“Yes Lord,” the Rubric Marines intone in their strangely loud whispers, falling into a protective circular formation around him.

Letting his mind fly from his body, Shinji quickly ascends up through the hole punched in the roof the Geofront, watching as the remains of the lake that had occupied the remains of the city poured down, raining upon Central Dogma far below. Tokyo-3 was complete scrap now.

He tasted the emotions of the soldiers advancing forward. There was a great deal of anger and resentment, but there was also an enormous undercurrent of fear tinged with a grim dark resolve to do whatever needed to be done. They had ordered the bombardment with the N2 mine before their main advance, terrified of what NERV could do. They had seen what the Evas were capable of, and they weren’t taking any chances. They wanted the enemy citadel open to direct fire as quickly as possible.

A pity. If they had begun with a conventional attack, Shinji might not have been roused so soon. Then again, he was almost done with the process of healing Asuka, so it was somewhat moot. Of course, they were so deliciously vulnerable at the moment.

Ah! There is the mind of their commander!

The general of the operation was an old veteran of the Post Second Impact Wars and all the horrors that had occurred during them. He was a hard man who accepted no compromises from his men or from the enemy. He was the perfect man to lead the purging of NERV.

His mind held off Shinji for all of three milliseconds.

The second and third in command of the entire operation were dead before anyone had realized that the general had drawn his side arm and shot them point blank in the head. By the time the guards had started to respond, 80% of the senior command staff for the entire operation were dead or wounded, and then they blew away their commanding officer.

There was a stunned, awful silence in the mobile command vehicle as everyone still alive tried to come to terms with what had just happened. The man who had planned and was executing this operation had suddenly just gone insane and killed as much of the upper ranks of the chain of command as quickly as he could, ignoring the more dangerous threat of the guards just to put another bullet in someone important.

Elsewhere in the command segment, Shinji was having a merry old time with the senior communications officer and the various communications protocols he had ripped out of the general’s mind before he had died.

Let’s see… communications are now scrambled, IFF codes have been set to random walk, and for good measure let’s start shooting up the primary communications gear.

In all of a hundred seconds Shinji had decapitated the JSSDF assault force and fried their ability to effectively communicate between units and with the outside world. For probably the next ten minutes to an hour the entire situation would be an uncontrolled cluster fuck waiting to happen.

A flight of gunships pounced on a column of hostile armour crawling into the city, a barrage of Hellfire anti-tank missiles decimating the better part of a battalion in a matter of seconds. The fact that NERV did not actually own any tanks never entered the pilots’ minds… especially with Shinji psychically fucking around with them. Their IFF said they were hostile, they received no ‘wave off!’ communications from the vehicles and the pilots gleefully pulled theirs triggers.

Seconds later, the gunships were swatted from the sky by another flight, pouncing on the apparent NERV aircraft as they engaged the tanks, before a SAM battery opened up and indiscriminately engaged every aircraft it could see, its targeting screen suddenly flooded with confirmed hostile targets.

A tank unit on one side of the valley raked a its brothers on the other side and generated fierce counter battery fire in response, green tracer shells arcing back and forth in an impressive display of firepower as suddenly cut off and surrounded units fought desperately for their lives.

Here, an infantry platoon scrambled for cover as a pattern of mortars dropped into their positions from their own fire support.

There a Machine gun squad tore into the backs of an assault team, who found what cover they could and poured fire back into the suddenly terrifying ‘NERV’ defence.

It was all so easy too. A subtle prod here, a blurred perception there, and before the forces arrayed against NERV knew what was happening they were shooting at one another.

Within five minutes Shinji had 75% of the invading army shooting at itself. With the upper echelons dead, communications scrambled, and IFFs randomly switching between friendly and enemy, paranoia rapidly took over. No one knew who or what they were shooting at, or what was shooting at them, so they simply moved to defend themselves.

This went beyond a simple cluster fuck, this transcended into the realm where future generations of soldiers would refer to a situation this badly screwed up that they would have to call such scenarios ‘Tokyo-3’. Military historians could make entire careers on writing books on how everything went south all at once.

Entire special weeks on the History channel would be devoted this single battle!

That however left the light infantry, spearheaded Special Forces that had already infiltrated Headquarters. They had quickly moved to a self-imposed communications black out and they were in close enough quarters that they would be able to tell who was firing on them by visual inspection. More then that however, they were trained to fight in situations of poor communications and confusion, thus making them less reliant on the technology that was the doom of the pilots and tankers on the surface. Shinji could take them apart one squad at a time, but that would take a great deal of time, allowing the enemy to get into the various critical systems of NERV.

Plus their spearhead appeared to be moving down a primary access route that would take them right through the main detention block where Misato was presumably being held…a fact he confirmed after quick inspection.

Third priority; get Misato out of there.

Returning to his own body, Shinji nodded to his Marines. “Let’s roll boys, we’ve got killing to do.”


Resistance had been light so far, the guards on the surface completely unprepared for an attack and still reeling from the unexpected bombardment with the N2 mine. The massive security doors had been a pain in the ass to deal with, taking up a lot of explosives or time with specialized equipment to get through, but with no one defending them it wasn’t like they became natural kill points.

There were screaming, panicking civvies all around, but orders were to wipe out anything that moved, with special emphasis on the three Children capable of pilot the monstrous Eva Units. If those fuckers were actually allowed to get into their war machines, then it could very well be the end of the world as they knew it.

Best to just shoot first and never ask questions.

The lead squad that entered the access tunnels into Central Dogma first must have thought it was their lucky day when they saw a young kid in expensive looking purple and blue clothing and a walking stick just stroll right into their crosshairs. They opened fire without giving it a second thought.

The kid just turned and smirked at them as he failed to die. For a few seconds the firing continued until the soldiers noticed that there was a wall forming in front of him of… of…

Of bullets…

“Bored now,” Shinji noted while flicking his wrist. The soldiers simply came apart as their bullets returned to them at hypersonic velocities in a tsunami of copper jacketed lead.

Motioning for his Marines to come into view, Shinji gave them a simple order, “Hold the tunnels while I do my business.”

“Yes Lord,” the soul bound suits of armour note while fanning out into ideal defensive positions learned from millennia of war.

For a moment Shinji almost pitied the JSSDF forces coming down this way. He knew that their main thrust was going to try and punch through in this location simply by locating the densest concentrations of minds. Light infantry hitting four Rubric Marines in defensive positions while in confined quarters? Oh, and Shinji had ensured that their heavy support would never arrive as it was busy killing itself up above. It would not go well for those soldiers.

Still, they had invaded his domain, and ignorance of a dragon’s lair was no excuse when you were about to be eaten.

While ripping the security doors of the detention block open on his way towards freeing Misato, Shinji heard the harsh bark of bolters firing psychically charged inferno bolts and the screams that followed, and it brought a smirk to his face.

A few rather nervous looking NERV guards moved up to intercept him, but Shinji just glared at them and said, “There are some rather unpleasant soldiers that way who may, in fact probably will, kill you if you fight them,” he pre-empted their challenge, pointing to a second door on the far side of the room. “That way leads to the defensive positions the rest of the facility are now forming. The way you are headed right now, which is to say ‘in my way’ ends with certain death at my hands after considerable amounts of fire and screaming. I suggest you make a good decision.”

Having seen him open the blast doors, the guards nod in a panic and run deeper into Central Dogma, away from the advancing army and the psychotic child with powers they did not understand.

Strolling leisurely down the detention block cells, Shinji stops before the one with Misato on the other side and casually gestured with his hand, wrenching the heavy door open to find Misato huddled up in one corner, her fingernails broken off from clawing at the walls and her own flesh. She looked up at Shinji with wild, frightened eyes, before she shook her head and turned away from him.

Shinji growled in barely contained fury. That Keeper of Secrets was going to pay for this. Gendo was going to pay too for not even trying to give her the basic attention of a straitjacket, but honestly at this point Gendo could probably kill everyone else on the planet and it wouldn’t particular increase the suffering he would experience at Shinji’s hands. He’d kind of plateaued on the crimes thing a while back.

“Misato-san, please don’t be afraid, you’re not dreaming, its really me here, and I haven’t come to do anything atrocious to you,” Shinji said gently while squatting down at the edge of the door to avoid towering over her.

“No… no… you can’t be real… can’t be…” Misato mutters while continuing to avoid eye contact.

Reaching out his hand, Shinji says, “Touch me then, feel that I’m real. I know you can still feel, right?” A daemon of Slaanesh would never take that sort of thing away. Sanity, yes; the ability to feel, never.

Misato glanced up at Shinji’s hand before looking away and mumbling, “Makes it look so real… not real… not really real…”

“Misato-san, the daemon isn’t here right now, I can tell, and I won’t let it harm you again. I know it was doing terrible things to you, telling you truths you were better off not knowing…” Shinji begins.

“It told me who killed Kaji,” Misato exploded, before idly pulling another bloody clump of hair out of her now thinned out scalp.

“Who? I’ll bring them here and we can butcher them together, maybe bring in Asuka and Rei too, be one big psychotic family,” Shinji says far too warmly for the content.

“Too late,” Misato intones in a sing-song voice while considering the scrap of hair and skin in her hands.

Shinji went quiet for a moment before saying, “So Ritsuko did it, huh?”

“Kaji… Kaji was investigating NERV. Trying to find out all the dirty, dirty little secrets. He managed to slip down to the lowest levels, to find out what is sitting at the bottom of Terminal Dogma… but he had bad timing… bad timing… someone was already there… she knew, knew… and then… and then… and then… BANG! Ahahhahahahahaha!” Misato ripped apart the blood scrap in her hands at the exclamation, gibbering maniacally before trailing off into sobs.

“Ritsuko couldn’t get me out of Unit 01 fast enough, couldn’t make me wake up, she shot the love of your life, and then to top it all off she started belittling you for the disintegration of your family that she caused. You couldn’t let that stand, could you?” Shinji asks quietly, trying to see if he could follow her twisted logic. Just because his logic was warped didn’t necessarily mean it was warped in the same way as hers.

Nodding profusely and excessively, Misato says, “Yeah! I… I wanted to kill her so bad, wanted to let her suffer the way I suffered… wanted to make her suffer the way I suffered… maybe cut up that fawning little Maya bitch in front of her… maybe violate her physically the way she violated my soul… maybe…”

Cutting off the growing rant, Shinji says, “But you didn’t. You snapped.”

“I… I… thoughts not mine… Ritsuko my… friend? I… I didn’t want to believe… fed up with her… fed up… had to hit that bitch. Had to hit that bitch! Feel her flesh crumple beneath my fist… yeah, just hit her, just make her shut up. Shut up! Shut up!” Misato screams, clutching her head and adding fresh marks on top of the numerous weeping wounds and scars she had accumulated during her incarceration.

The fact that none of them were infected was rather telling.

“And then she pulled the gun,” Shinji says quietly.

“Yes, The gun, the one she used to gun down Kaji… she’s not a very good shot… she bungled it… not quick… not clean… made him suffer before he died. The gun is proof! She killed Kaji! She had to die!” Misato wails.

“And she’s dead now,” Shinji tells her.

“Yes… yes… but… but… every time I stabbed her… it… it… it whispered another crime… so many… so many! Oh Shinji!” Misato bawls, before lunging out and grabbing on to Shinji, burying her face into his shoulder to cry it all out.

Feeling distinctly uncomfortable and distinctly angry at what had been done to one of the few precious people in his life, Shinji could only pat her on the back and wait for her to get it out of her system.

“They killed your mother…” Misato mumbled into him, her voice muffled by his clothes and flesh, but the meaning still there.

That piece of shrapnel that had been twisting about in Shinji’s mind for so long suddenly moved like it had been caught in the magnetic field of an active MRI machine.

Shinji began to shudder with emotions he had not even known he had been building up since he had arrived here. Now he remembered. Now he remembered that day over ten years ago when he had watched his mother climb into Unit 01, and never climb back out…

She had been absorbed into Unit 01, body disintegrated into LCL and soul bound to the Eva.

Yet somehow they had been able to reverse the process for him…

“They… they needed a person’s soul to bond with the Eva, to control it, so they… they… oh Shinji-chan, I can’t believe I had you climb into the one that killed your mother…” Misato told him miserably, not noticing as Shinji’s face became increasingly expressionless.


High above, the JSSDF was slowly reassembling itself. Quick thinking by sub-unit commanders who had survived the brutally Darwinian battle had forced a cease fire, survivors linking into loose ad-hoc platoon and company sized units, junior officers trying to consider their options in the horrific situation fifteen minutes of self destruction had caused. Under any other circumstance they would have withdrawn, but they had been told quite clearly that time was of the essence and they could not afford the luxury of retreat. Not that they could afford the catastrophic losses they had taken to friendly fire, nor the loss of their entire command and control network and its associated senior officers, but already anything that had a reasonable chance of making it there in time was being deployed to reinforce the badly mauled group…

And then things got weird.

For the first time in over fifteen years, it dropped below freezing in Japan. Hoar frost began to spontaneously spread across all available surfaces, while the sky above began to take on an unnatural tone. Weather satellites high above watched as the seas about Japan boiled, feeding enormous amounts of water vapour that flowed into impossible supersonic airstreams that flowed straight for Tokyo-3.

Despite the positively Antarctic, original not modern, conditions on the ground, the skies above began to roil with energy. It was -30C on the ground and 50C a kilometre above. At the interface point between these two radically different layers of air, bad things started to happen. The sky turned green just before the clouds shut off all light in the valley that had once housed Tokyo-3.

The soldiers began to panic as this utterly unnatural storm formed above their heads. Their hate and anger towards NERV had been fuelled by the story that NERV had betrayed humanity and was preparing to end the world…and at ground zero, it now looked very much like the madmen at NERV had succeeded after all.

Even the members of SEELE, the madman who –from a certain point of view- were trying to end the world were confused as none of their instrumentation was showing what they expected of Third Impact, but there was nothing else to explain what was happening; to explain why there was a blizzard with hurricane force winds and lightning powerful enough to detonate an attack gunship in a single strike. The turbulence at all levels around the city was so catastrophically bad that it was actually physically impossible in some places, given atmospheric density against the laws of physics.

Their only hope was that this was some sort of prelude to the end, and that the Mass Production models almost on site would be able to make it there in time. Their transports were desperately fighting for altitude to escape the forming hurricane, already inserting the Dummy Plugs to power them up and preparing to release them. They weren’t suicidal enough to get much closer than they already were to the monster storm above Tokyo-3.


Down below, Shinji was barely aware of the effects of his emotions pouring out into the Warp as he just remained where he was trembling with fury, Misato clutching on to him for dear life while she continued to tell him what she had learned from the whispers of the daemon.

“The… the souls couldn’t be just anybody though… they… they had to want to work with the Pilots, to protect them… they had to be the mothers of the Children,” Misato tells him.

Now he remembered what he had found in the ruins of the testing site for Units 03 and 04. Not only had they known, in fact encouraged, the infection of Unit 03 by the Thirteenth Angel, but they had done something far, far worse when the Evas arrived.

“How. Many. Tanks. Do. They. Have?” Shinji grits out between his teeth while seeing red.

“Fifty. They have fifty women in suspended animation, all of them mothers of your classmates, in the event that they decide to use them as Pilots,” Misato tells him.

Shinji threw his head back and opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out in the physical world.

Across the planet animals began to panic, those in cages thrashing at the bars to escape. Most people suddenly felt shivers up and down their spines, while more sensitive types winced in momentary pain or even suffered from minor nosebleeds. Dozens of light years away Eldar looked up in fear and confusion for a second.

Tears were streaming down his face. Two thirds of his life Shinji had lived without his mother. Two thirds of Asuka’s life she had been tormented not just by the loss of her mother, but from seeing her dead body hanging from the rafters. Toji and Hikari and Kensuke… all the friends he had made here, they had been made to suffer the loss of a parent because they were special and a group of old men desired to harness powers they did not understand to their own benefit.

Shinji had been mad the first time he learned this, learned what that other presence in the Eva truly was. But now… now after having suffered so much more, having seen how the machinations of those responsible for this had inflicted so much more suffering on the ones he loved the most, after having already thought that he had reached the point where there was that could make the situation worse… now…

Now he had transcended anger.

A strange calm and clarity washed over him. He would not get mad.

He would get even.

Shinji stroked the remains of Misato’s hair, telling her, “It’s all right Misato-chan, they tricked me too. They tricked me too. I don’t blame you; you were just another dupe like I was. We’re going to make them pay. But I need your help. We’re under attack by the JSSDF and the forces of SEELE. I managed to use a few tricks to stall them for a time, but I don’t have your tactical brilliance. I need your help. Can you help me Misato-chan? Can you help me make them all pay?”

Misato looked up at Shinji and smiled. She said, “It is really is you Shinji.”

Ironically, while she was seeing him as real and not a fantasy drudged up by a deranged mind, his eyes were actually crackling with blue lambent light bleeding off from the massive amount of warp energy he was channelling. He was a dread figure of doom. He was unstoppable.

He was Shinji.

“Yeah, it’s me Misato-san. Come on, we need to go kick some ass,” Shinji says while standing, offering a hand to help her up.

When Misato took his hand and stood up, Shinji knew that it was going to be all right. Misato would be able to rally the defenders of NERV while Shinji used his Marines and powers to rip the throat out of any attack sent their way. Hell, give him some radar telemetry and he could rip the detonators out of any nukes sent their way.

And with the Evas…

The world was theirs for the taking.

Just as Shinji was about to turn about to gesture for them to leave the cell, Misato’s eyes snapped wide open with fear. Shinji should have been precognitively fast, but he was caught unaware and flat footed. Misato was faster than him, tackling him to the ground, turning him to the side.

He felt the impact of the bullets into her body.

You really shouldn’t have fucked with me! Did you know there was a ‘secret’ maintenance tunnel that can be used to bypass that little kill zone you set up? Or that you’re using up so much psychic energy right now you forgot to assign some to precog?

There was no cry of anguish, no bellow of outrage, just surprised blinking as Shinji’s brain tried, and failed, to process this sudden turn of events. It was like there was some sadistic puppet master that enjoyed seeing the things he loved in life taken from him.

Oh wait…

There will be words later daemon, but for now…

To the untrained eye, the soldiers that had fired the shots appeared to simply vanish with wet popping noises. What actually happened was that they were crushed into microscopic dots of degenerate matter and then hurled into the Warp through tiny rifts where they promptly detonated.

Shinji had more important things to worry about than making faceless, nameless minions suffer, as tempting and as pleasant a diversion as it might be.

Gently lowering Misato to the ground, Shinji took a look at the wounds with his mind and eyes. She had taken five bullets, all to the centre of mass. One had struck her left shoulder blade and shattered the bone. One had hit her in right lung before bouncing off a rib and travelling out of her body. One had travelled through her body at an odd glancing angle caused by the way she had tackled Shinji, “only” shredding a kidney. One struck her spine at an odd angle and went spinning through her liver and intestines. And one had played bone pinball, bouncing off three ribs before coming to rest just next to her heart.

Everything was shredded. It was a miracle she was still semi-conscious.

“Shinji, I…” Misato said weakly with only about half a functional lung. She reached up to place a bloody hand on his cheek.

“Save your strength Misato,” Shinji urgently commanded her while he hurriedly began to telekinetically tie off blood vessels.

Triage. Keep what’s left of her lungs from flooding and stopping oxygenating the blood. Keep the blood pumping to her brain. Keep her heart beating to keep the blood pumping.

He could do that. He could keep her alive, keep her going.

Get her to a doctor, get her hooked up on machines until she heals. I can do this.

“…I’m… sorry…” Misato whispers.

Trying to put a smile on a face that did not feel like lying for once, Shinji told her with a trembling voice “You saved me Misato… don’t feel sorry for saving me. Here, let me return the favour.”

Blood vessels to the brain are all that matter. Everything else can wait. Make temporary ties at every other junction. Save the blood for the brain. I really wish one of us Children knew anything about regenerating others.

Coughing up blood, the spasms undoing half the blocks Shinji had just made, Misato lets a flicker of a smile pass over her ashen face. “…it’s…”

Oh fuck she’s in shock! I… I… I don’t know to do!

“…what…”

Come on, think! You’re a genius; you should know what to do! Survival is all that matters, healing can come later! Survival is easy, just be ruthless!

“…parents…”

“Don’t leave me Misato, we still have asses to kick, don’t you know? Don’t you fade away on me. Don’t you fade away,” Shinji tells her, his amazingly level voice belying the incredible panic he was going through at the moment but telling of the incredible emotional shock.

“…do…”

Misato’s hand dropped away from Shinji’s face, leaving a bloody hand print. The life was gone from her eyes. Her heart stopped. Shinji pumped it with his own telekinesis and made her lungs expand and contract for a good five minutes before he stopped.

He could no longer see the sparkle of electrical activity in a living brain or feel her soul.

She was gone. She had given her life to protect him, and now she was gone. She had given her life so willingly to. It was not a thought out decision; it was instinctive, like a mother bear protecting her cubs.

Misato was dead.

You know, it’s a pity you made me promise to leave her alone. I might have been able to snatch her soul before it goes to the place where human souls go. It’s not very nice. Did you know that it’s possible to bind a mortal’s soul to a host body much in the same way as with a daemon? Obviously the result isn’t very powerful, but it can be done if you have the soul and know what to do. A pity that we don’t have the former, because I know all about the latter.

Shinji ignored the daemon’s taunting, too numb to care.

Misato was dead.

Shinji just looked down at her body, gently stroking her hair a few times.

Oh for the love of… look hero, this is starting to go a little outside of plan, which I assume you still don’t consciously remember. Now, I know that you’re suffering a little, hey, suffering is my job, I can grok that shit, but try to look at the bigger picture.

Shinji still wasn’t listening. He had already spent all of his emotions for the day; he was tired of this shit.

Look, you’ve still got Rei and Asuka to worry about. Remember them? Little blue haired Nurgle worshipper, could be considered your half sister. Psychotic red haired Khornate berserker, awesome lay in bed despite the whole crude Blood God thing. Ring any bells in there?

Shinji blinked once.

He blinked twice.

Someone hit reboot to clear out the damn blue screen of death.

Oh… right. There are other people I love in mortal peril. I had better go kill anything that glances at them funny.

That’s the little sociopath we need.

Understand me clearly daemon. There will still be words later, when I am not so in shock.

Try me Tzeentch-boy.

Shinji got up, ripping out a chunk of the floor as he rose, shaping it into a flat, circular disk to bear Misato’s body along with him with the dignity it deserved.

Shinji’s pace was slow and deliberate as he forced himself to put one foot in front of the other, his staff at his side pulling him along like Chiron’s barge pole in the Styx. He made his way to the point where he had left his Marines, the downward slope of the roadway leading to this point facilitating the flow of current from all the blood accumulating in the tunnels. Whoever was in charge was just desperately throwing men at the problem.

The Rubric Marines were tireless, emotionless automatons that ignored anything short of a rocket launcher. The one picking itself up off the ground after a hit with an anti-tank weapon showed that even the things that they couldn’t ignore could still be shrugged off. The fact that they were manifesting their ammunition out of raw psychic energy and thus had infinite ammunition so long as Shinji was still awake meant that it wasn’t like they would stop firing any time soon.

As if to prove the futility of the engagement, the Marine knocked over a missile capable of punching through the front of an infantry fighting vehicle simply returned to its feet, training its bolter on the cross corridor the heavy weapons team that had struck it was hiding behind. Its auspex sensors tracked them through the wall as they franticly reloaded their weapon for a second shot, encouraged by the ‘kill’ they thought they had made.

The Rubric Marine, its skills honed through thousands of years of war, readied its bolter faster.

Two inferno bolts tore through their meter thick cement cover like tissue paper, detonating their stack of missiles in an explosion that vaporized most of the squad hiding there

“Come, we have much to do,” Shinji noted numbly.

Contracting to form a defensive bubble about their Lord, the Marines follow him deeper into NERV. Almost as an afterthought, Shinji collapses the tunnel behind him. A collapsed tunnel told even the dumbest of commanders to find a new path. Four men defending a choke point was a much better distraction. After all, with communications down, teams in the rear would only hear that the main route they were planning on taking was guarded by ‘only’ four men and thus flock forward as reinforcements, never knowing the full extent of the danger they were rushing towards.

Shinji wasn’t going to do distraction any more. He was going to do ‘Find Rei and ensure her safety before taking Unit 01 and along with Asuka kill every motherfucker on the planet that stands in our way’.


Asuka arouse from her coma in her Plug Suit and safely encased in the quiet darkness of Unit 02’s entry plug. Thoughts resonated within her mind, a feeling of warmth and well being radiating outward.

Shinji was alive.

He had kept his promise to her, to crawl his way back from even the depths of Hell itself just to be with her. He cared for her. He loved her. He would never leave her alone. She wasn’t alone anymore. She would never be alone again.

More warmth flowed through her limbs and core, as if phantom arms were wrapping themselves about her, filling her with pride and joy. She could feel it spreading through every inch; every pore; every cell of her being.

All those years she had spent being angry and sad at the whole world, she had never realized that the source and cure to all her sorrows was right next to her the entire time. But now that her heart was truly open...

Mama.

Shh… I’m here with you… I’ve always been here with you. I’m proud of you Asuka. I don’t care what you’ve become; you’re still my daughter, my baby to me.

Asuka grinned. Mama had never left her either. Shinji was back. Mama was back.

The warmth inside her exploded into fire.

It was time to kick some ass.



Despite the ferocious katabatic winds roaring down from the hole punched in the roof of the Geofront, the underground dome was still safer than the apocalyptic storm raging above, so anyone left had retreated there.

A colonel from a reinforcing group and his command staff strode up to the largest assembled collection of the ragged men on first contact and demanded to see who was in charge. He did not expect to get a salute from a second lieutenant.

“You’re in charge…” the colonel read the man’s name off his uniform, “Lieutenant Gorman?”

“Y-y-yes sir. Most people above the rank of major were dead within minutes, assassins apparently, and then they suborned our communications gear. I don’t know who is still alive. I-I-I ordered all remaining elements to support the surviving infiltration teams… I-I don’t really know what’s going on sir,” the man reports.

“You’re all that’s left?” The colonel asks incredulously.

Lieutenant Gorman never had a chance to answer as warning lights went off around the perimeter of their position, warning that the ground was about to split open.

Everyone looked down at the ground and realized that in the panic and confusion they had set up temporary headquarters on top of an Eva launch tunnel in the Geofront. The lucky ones managed to ride the retreating armour plate to the edge of the gap, although being thrown at speeds high enough to break bones when they stopped was not what most would consider lucky. On the other hand, those closer to the centre tended to fall into the tunnel and go splat against the rapidly rising red Eva.

Disengaging from the launch rails, Unit 02 bellowed a challenge to any that could hear it.

The infantry in the Geofront were disinclined to answer. But surprisingly, there were a series of return bellows, weirdly modulated. Looking up, Asuka saw nine white shapes rapidly spiralling down into the Geofront, dropping altitude as quickly as possible to get out of the nightmare storm above. Rain and lightning sleeted harmlessly off their backs, their AT-fields flashing to disperse the energy of the storm. The winds still buffeted them, but their size made them all but inured to the winds on this level.

They were the only thing in the whole world capable of standing against Asuka at this point.

The safety on Asuka’s bolter clicked off and her chain-axe hummed up to full speed.

---

It's ass kicking time.

[FA Xerrik]

Nice Alien reference, that's funny if he's all that the JSSDF has left. Is Rei going to be in an Eva at all in this fight, or will she be relegated to a minor role like in the original EoE? Can't wait to see how it ends.

[Academia Nut]

Well, the primary reason why Rei couldn't fight in EoE was because her Eva was blown up, and because Gendo had other plans for her and thus needed her elsewhere.

Pretty much the same set-up exists here, so you can guess how that's going to go down. I think you'll like what I've done with the fight though. It's... impressive.

[Sidewinder]

Poor Misato. At least her death had some meaning, assuming you don't plan on having Shinji just sit there screaming as the mass production Evas tear Asuka to pieces. (Thousand Shinji would probably tear his canon counterpart to pieces for making his name synonymous with "spineless wimp.")

[Academia Nut]

Actually, amusingly enough I'm still batting around the idea of a post story apochyrphal side story where my Shinji basically does just that. It wouldn't be pretty, but it would be funny.

[Academia Nut]

Thanks, and apologies, to Chris for reviewing this chapter for me. I fear that I drove him to drink with the latter half in a vain effort to remove the images I put in his mind. I thus recommend you queue up some metal for the first half, and have a barf bag and some pain killers ready for the second half.

---

The halls of Central Dogma were a vicious battle zone that swept up and tore apart anything caught in their wake. While the commanders of NERV were inexperienced in this sort of fighting, they merely had to hold at the chokepoints to inflict horrific losses on the JSSDF troopers. The damage done to their back-up had meant that heavy weapons had been expended early only to break up defensive lines only for no resupply to be available once NERV hardened up their defences. Of course, the advantage of defensive terrain was pretty much NERV’s only advantage, so it was a massacre on both sides.

Oh, and the slaughter by the Rubric Marines had certainly not helped the JSSDF forces at all.

That was in fact the only point of relative peace in the entire command complex, the little bubble of death incarnate around the levitating funeral barge for Misato. They advanced at a slow but distance devouring rate towards the command bridge, for even though their speed was somewhat sluggish their velocity was higher than usual as they did not take any of the usual detours.

Walls were ripped open and deep shafts levitated over. Anything that tried to slow this advance met with rapid and overwhelming force in the form of several inferno bolts or a storm of electricity from Shinji if he was in no mood for delays.

It thus took him almost no time to go from the detention block to the bridge, a trail of burning and exploded bodies in his wake, not all of them JSSDF soldiers, some of them being NERV guards stupid enough to shoot at him when he really didn’t feel like taking time to explain that he was on their side.

There was of course a rather large amount of confusion and fear when Shinji swept into the cavernous chamber surrounded by four giants in armour that looked suspiciously like the armour on his Eva carrying weapons that looked like they should be crew manned. The command staff was fortunately not stupid enough to open fire.

Of course, the fact that he was floating through the air, witch fire radiating from his eyes didn’t exactly reassure those who were uncomfortable with his guardians.

“Where is Rei-san?” Shinji asks, his voice echoing with power.

There was stunned silence for a moment before Shinji nodded. “You don’t know. Very well. Where is Asuka-san?”

Again, an uncomfortable silence as everyone assembled tried to figure out if he had simply taken those thoughts from their minds. However, someone had enough presence of mind to bring up an exterior camera on the main monitor, showing the white with purple trimmed mass production Evas landing in a long line with Unit 02 squaring off against them.

“Come, we must make haste to the Eva bays,” Shinji tells his retinue while gently setting the disc carrying Misato’s body on the ground.

After he departed, his Rubric Marines carried aloft with him, Shigeru asked what everyone else was thinking in the stunned silence of the Command Centre.

“What the fuck just happened?”


The Mass Production Models of the Evangelion series were truly a marvel of modern engineering and research into the Angels. While being built in secret by SEELE as their counter to NERV, they had been refined and upgraded countless times in response to the latest data gathered from the battlefield. And they needed as much of an advantage as they could get, seeing as they didn’t have the much heavier L-type equipment available to them.

What had been produced though was terrifying enough. Every MP Eva had within it an S2 engine for unlimited operation that also granted regenerative abilities. This was rather critical as several of the abilities reverse engineered from studying the Angels actively used up the flesh of the MP Evas. For example, from Sahaquiel they had figured out how to take a bit of flesh and accelerate it using an AT-field, turning it into a deadly spike. For extra kick they gave each round so accelerated a tiny chewing maw to dig through armour and flesh, backwards engineered from Ramiels formidable drill.

From Matariel they had figured out how to charge the blood of the Evas to make them highly corrosive. One of the units even had a support weapon hooked up directly to its circulatory system, giving it the ability to shoot streams of acid long distances, a sort flamethrower analog only far more unpleasant.

The teams had also stolen the idea of using an AT-field to generate a particle beam, giving one member of the squad an enormous plasma cannon tied straight into its central nervous system and made primarily of Eva flesh to be better enveloped by the field to protect the mechanisms from the ravenous beam.

And as the MP Evas settled on to the ground, their huge wings morphed from huge flat flight surfaces into several long segmented limbs tipped with wickedly sharp scything blades, giving them a considerable advantage in close combat.

Perhaps one of the most terrifying abilities though was the way they were networked together. On a purely technological level, each MP Eva could share all of its sensor data with its fellows via a variety of uplink methods, but the designers had also been tooling about with incorporating the super-soul of Israfel, linking the Evas further together. When Tabris had died screaming at the hands of Shinji, the insane fragments of his soul had filtered into the various clones used in the Dummy Plugs.

The MP Evas were insane, fearless, felt little to no pain, and none cared for their own survival so long as the group survived. They were capable of acting as a single entity with one purpose: to kill.

There were also a wide variety of other nasty surprises as well, put in by SEELE and the design teams to increase lethality even more.

Asuka knew nothing of this. What she did know was that the rocket pods on her shoulders would slow her down. She wondered why they had been loaded on in the first place although she suspected they might have tried to dump her in the Eva during one of the attacks and see if she could take pot shots at range. Still, she didn’t want to waste the missiles by not firing them.

The MP Eva with the plasma cannon took a face full of heavy rockets and missiles, not penetrating its defences but knocking it on its ass with the enormous concussion of some of the weapons.

Time slowed and thickened like molasses, Asuka’s perceptions accelerated beyond all human capacities, even glimpsing into the future at times. She was one with her mother and the spirit of the Eva. Her mother would always be with her, and the beast within the machine practically worshipped her ability to propagate slaughter. It was a hive mind of nine killing machines versus the perfect single warrior.

Asuka cleared the three kilometre gap between them in ten seconds, and it took so long as she leapt and dodged about their fire, like a ballet dancer in the rain. It was hard though, the coordination between the MP Evas perfect, each one covering a different firing lane and switching around effortlessly as the hive mind tracked her movement. The flesh boring bits of flesh struck her at times, but always on her main armour where they did no damage before running out of energy and crumbling to dust. Her bolter fire on the other hand was deadly and accurate.

The MP Evas had to temporarily divert their AT-fields to accelerating their weapons, giving a brief flash where their defences went down every time they fired. By timing her shots perfectly Asuka was able to get a single round into one of the MP Evas before she was upon them. The high explosive-armour piercing bolt tore through the thin armour of the war machine, travelling half way through before detonating.

The Eva was blown in half by the explosion, releasing a torrent of purple blood that ate away at the ground for a moment before going inert. Its Dummy Plug shattered, it would most certainly never rise again.

One down, eight to go.

Asuka hit the formation like a train hitting a tank. She slammed full into the nearest enemy Eva, body checking it so hard that it was hurled into the air, its light armour plate shattered by the tremendous forces involved in the impact. Before it even had time to hit the ground a two round burst caught it in the hips, blowing its legs off in a shower of gore.

Already the group was responding to her assault, less like a pack of wolves turning upon a charging moose, or even an ant colony responding to a stick being shoved into the nest. No, their reaction was more like an immune system responding to an attack upon the body.

Asuka back flipped out of the way of the scything claws of an Eva that tried to sneak up on her. There were several more Evas in front of her and if not for precog she would have fallen for the trap, assuming they were the important targets when the true strike was coming from elsewhere. While its claws went through her umbilical cord and started her count down timer, she landed on its shoulders, crushing one of its claws before she wrapped her feet about its neck and dropped, twisting as she went, incidentally dodging the hail of fire sent her way as the group responded to this change in events.

With an enormous, wet, tearing sound the Eva’s head and most of its spine was ripped off in a torrent of purple blood. The headless thing brought a hand up to examine the damage before collapsing, its entire torso falling apart from the lack of a spine for support, the imploding flesh and metal crushing the Dummy Plug and killing the cloned pilot within.

Two down, seven to go.

Hitting the ground, Asuka quickly rolled out of the way of a barrage from the remaining five MP Evas armed with the flesh boring guns, taking a few hits but avoiding the majority of the attacks. Grinning with insane glee, Asuka kicked her Eva into the air unexpectedly, thus completely avoiding the ravenous beam of white hot plasma directed her way. A small tank division trying to flee the fighting of these titans flashed into vapour in an instant.

No normal human could have known that attack was coming. A tiny part of Tabris, the one in the explosively bisected Eva that had time to be afraid, wailed in terror. It remembered what the Third Child had done, and feared what the Second was capable of.

The rest of the hive mind ignored that part and told it to keep fighting.

Descending from her leap on a steep arc, Asuka turned in mid-air so that her chain-axe would strike with damn near all of the angular momentum and most of the linear momentum she had built up in her roll and leap.

The attack very nearly bisected the enemy Eva from crown to groin, the whirring progressive edged teeth of the chain-axe going through armour, flesh, metal, and the Dummy Plug with hardly any resistance until the acidic blood did its job and turned the weapon into scrap, the head snapping off of the haft and remaining in the steaming remains of the dead monster.

Three down, six to go.

Reversing her grip on the haft, Asuka slams the jagged, broken end into the guts of an MP Eva trying to sneak up on her. Hauling up, she throws the beast over a shoulder so that it collides with another Eva charging in with the intent to disembowel. Somersaulting to the side, she takes a shot at the now exposed heavy weapons Eva, sending a three round burst its way. Only one bolt made it through before it raised its AT-field, but that round managed to take its right leg off at the knee, dropping the Eva flat on the ground.

Her super refined senses were tied so totally into Unit 02, Asuka saw the next attack coming and knew that she could not dodge it completely, but she still had enough warning to get mostly out of the way. The support Eva had used the slaughter of its comrades to assume the perfect position to fire, the others having already vacated its line of fire. A high pressure stream of boiling, acidic blood painted her side, melting away armour in a cloud of acrid smoke, but Asuka was already rolling away.

Within her Entry Plug from the upper thigh to just under her breast on the left side, Asuka’s skin melted away. She snarled in pain, but refused to let it distract her. Instead she practically threw her Eva over to where the legs of the partially exploded Eva were lying. Grabbing a foot, she pivoted like an Olympic hammer thrower for a half rotation before she hurled the limp limb through the air. Tumbling end over end, it smacked the acid spewing Eva in the head, knocking it back.

Asuka charged, leaping up to plant a foot on one of the Evas knocked over, crushing its skull under Unit 02’s weight before kicking off into the air, deploying her back-up progressive claws from her now empty right gauntlet. She slammed it down with all her might into the torso of the Eva, piercing the Dummy Plug. As the twin progressive blades began to dissolve, she violently twisted, ripping out the guts of the Eva while shattering her weapon.

Four down, five to go.

Pain exploded along Asuka’s left flank as the half of the Eva lying on the ground fired a salvo of rounds into the side that had been most damaged by the acid, the high velocity, biting slugs penetrating her flesh and chewing deeper for several seconds before dissolving away. The blood began to taint the LCL in the Entry Plug.

Asuka emptied her bolter into the bastard, exploding its head and torso.

Five down, four to go.

She started to get another magazine but when she tried to eject the one already in place she found the mechanism had been corroded into a single mass by all the acid blood flying around. Tossing it aside in disgust, she whirled around just in time to catch a charging Eva slamming into her. It had used the distraction of the sundered Eva well.

A long blade slammed through right shoulder while another one skittered across her torso armour, looking for a gap to plunge in and begin ripping out her Eva’s guts. Asuka held off its other hands while it snapped at her face, drool flying off its shiny, metallic razor sharp teeth to splatter across Unit 02’s helmet.

Asuka head butted it.

Teeth shattered and the thing reeled back. Releasing one of its hands, Asuka reached up and wrenched on the blade in her shoulder, snapping the limb off at the closest joint. Getting her legs beneath her, she planted her feet on the MP Eva’s chest and kicked out, throwing it off of her.

Quickly regaining her feet, Asuka felt Unit 02 being hauled back. She had forgotten to eject the remains of her umbilical cord, and one of the MP Evas had taken advantage of that by grabbing on to it. Snarling, Asuka ejected the cord with a thought and then spun around faster than she should have been capable of.

If it could have looked surprised the Eva would have when Asuka suddenly grabbed a hold of the cord and jerked on it, hauling the Eva towards her and the blade she had ripped off of one of its brothers. The weapon was still sharp enough to ram through its lower jaw and out the top of its skull with the force Asuka put in it. She then kicked straight out, impacting the MP Eva full in the chest. Armour shattered and flesh caved in, the entire Eva hurled back into the lake in front of Central Dogma, a Nike Swoosh carved into its chest.

Whirling about seeking any combatants still standing, Asuka discovered that the heavy weapons Eva had regained its feet, sort of. It was using its claws and its gun as crutches while it carried something else in its left hand. It looked like a long spear made out of two pieces of metal wrapped around one another, bisecting in the middle to form two long prongs.

The MP Eva braced, and then hurled its weapon with terrific force.

Asuka moved to get out of the way, but she felt it begin to alter course to strike her.

She held up a hand instinctively and projected an AT-field.

The prongs struck the hexagonal orange wall and began to slowly yet inevitably slide through. Asuka blinked in horror just as her field dissolved entirely, and then the copied Lance resumed its regular speed and crashed into Unit 02’s face, taking out two of the eyes on the right side.

Asuka stumbled back a second step. She saw the other three MP Eva’s beginning to rise, their injuries not enough to destroy their cores or Dummy Plugs, their regeneration allowing them to get back in the fight.

She stumbled back a second step, her whole Eva starting to list over with the weight of the spear in its head.

She took one more step back before her power clock ran down to 00:00:00.

In the warp, a daemon clapped with glee. It had had its encore performance.


Shinji was flying through the halls of NERV

Literally. And hauling his servants along with him.

Entering the Eva cages, he saw the empty stall where Unit 02 had once dwelt between missions. Asuka was out there fighting, he had to help her.

As he opened up the Entry Plug for Unit 01, dissolving his Rubric Marines into the dust in their canopic jars, Shinji also took note of the other cages for the first time in many months. The remains of Unit 00 were propped up in one of the cages, the prototype Eva badly damaged by its fight with the Sixteenth Angel, its core still barely intact but most of its armour cracked and the area around the core burned out.

The broken limbed doll of Unit 04 sat next to Unit 02’s cage, the Eva not quite destroyed but so badly mauled that only a half-hearted attempt had been made to repair it in the past two months. It was doubtful it would ever be operated again, especially with current events the way they were.

Going through the start up sequence as quickly as he could, Shinji had only one thought on his mind: to get out there and assist Asuka in her fight. He desperately hoped he wasn’t too late.

He couldn’t take any more loss today.


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

Asuka was bleeding from her left flank, from her right shoulder, and her right eye had been pretty much pulped, all from the feedback from her contact with her Eva. There was so much blood, so much pain…

But blood and pain were power to Khorne.

Asuka would not stop fighting just because of such minor damage. Nor would she let a drained internal battery slow her down.

The spirit of Unit 02 sang along with her heart, going completely berserk.

Berserk was good.

If they had eyes, the four remaining MP Evas would have blinked as Unit 02 suddenly stopped stumbling back and violently ripped the Lance of Longinus out of its head, tossing it contemptuously to the side.

Some outside force seized Unit 02, lifting it high into the air, its limbs held out taut. The air began to swim with unholy sounds, almost as if the wind had a forked tongue and was chanting in some blasphemous language. Something unpleasant was going on beneath the armour of Unit 02, waterfalls of blood leaking forth from its wounds, turning the ground bellow and the nearby lake vermillion.

With a scream brought forth from the very universe itself, the back of Unit 02’s armour exploded outward in a shower of broken metal and ceramics and a flood of brilliant crimson blood. A pair of colossal bat wings unfurled, flicking blood off their surface as they extended, before making a powerful downward stroke that launched Unit 02 into flight, seemingly ignoring the winds generated by the storm still raging above.

Reaching a hand out into nothingness, Asuka grabbed onto something with each hand and began to pull out. Twin ragged streaks appeared in the sky, blood raining from holes in reality as Unit 02 extracted its new weapons. In the right hand it held a titanic bronze battle axe dripping with blood on its adamantine blade, while in the left it bore a long, snaking whip covered in barbs.

The MP Eva that had thrown the Lance attempted to bring its plasma cannon up to bear on the circling Unit 02, but the crimson, bloodthirsty Eva just folded its wings and fell like a thunderbolt upon the offending monster.

There was a huge concussive shock that rocked the Geofront followed by a shower of Earth that erupted, as if a ton of high explosives had gone off beneath the targeted Eva. As the dirt and stones settled, it became clear what had happened. Unit 02’s new blade had cleaved through the Eva in one blow and kept going, striking the ground hard enough to gouge out an enormous crater.

Six down, three to go.

Two of the MP Evas transformed their claws into wings and took back to the air, preferring to take their chances flying into an apocalyptic storm, while the one with only one extra appendage just ran.

Asuka took to the air after the two fleeing, powering effortlessly through the brutal crosswinds and rapidly closing the distance. When she was close enough, she lashed out with her whip, ensnaring the leg of one and hauling back. Yanked out of its flight path, the MP Eva did not have time to do anything before it was disembowelled by the first stroke of the axe and decapitated by the follow up.

Letting the badly wounded Eva fall behind until the whip went taut, Asuka then stopped suddenly in mid air and swung the body forward, letting it loose to tumble through the air and collide with the other one trying to fly to safety. The active Eva so struck stalled for a moment as it tried to get its wings untangled.

The dread axe ironically freed it as it tore apart the limp body ensnaring it. Thus freed, it immediately dove, trying to gain speed and distance, trying to gain time to power up its own Lance, along with the one of its brother, seeing as the dead had no need of such things.

Seven down, two to go.

Unit 02 dove after it a second later when Asuka belatedly realized she had missed the still active target. She rapidly gained ground, a crimson mist trailing behind like a comet’s tail her from the numerous wounds Unit 02 had sustained. She should have been dead twice over, and still she refused to let her quarry escape.

Suddenly the MP Eva she was chased flared its wings, breaking in mid air and turning about to present its unfolding Lances. Asuka tried to break just as quickly, but her injuries had slowed her down a bit.

The two titans slammed together and tumbled to the ground, slamming into a hillside and digging a deep gouge in the Earth, both combatants disappearing into their trench. For a moment everything stood still.

The MP Eva’s head was tossed out of the trench and a moment later Unit 02 hauled itself out, one Lance sticking out of its gut, the other having 'only' nicked the left hip, leaving an enormous gouge in its side. Neither wound in isolation nor combination were not enough to put down the berserker.

Eight down, one to go.

Everything was fading in and out now for Asuka. One of the prongs had actually struck the Entry Plug a glancing blow and she could see it next to her. LCL was slowly draining out, bubbles rising from the points were the seal between the plug and the Lance was imperfect. She dared not remove the Lance yet as that would probably break the connection she had with Unit 02. Mother’s voice was getting distant-

Another Lance slammed into her right shoulder, ripping the arm off. The gigantic axe hit the ground and dissolved, turning her impact crater into a lake of blood. Unit 02 staggered back for a moment, before lowering its head and moving forward. It was less of a charge and more of a controlled fall forward.

Within two seconds there was no ‘controlled’ fall at all, Unit 02 ploughing completely into the ground, unable to keep moving.

Reaching out with its remaining arm, Unit 02 tried to drag itself forward still, but the Lance impaling its guts had embedded in the ground. Unit 02 was pinned like a butterfly, and no amount of struggling was going to get it any further.

Eight out of nine… that’s not bad…

Eight’s… a… good… number…

Asuka’s eyes closed and Unit 02 went silent…just as Unit 01 exploded out of its launch ramp.


At the deepest point of Terminal Dogma was a room that appeared on no maps that officially did not exist. Only two people in recent memory had access to this room, and one of them was now dead, just like everyone else who knew about it in the long run. What was contained within was a secret worth keeping, worth killing for.

Nailed to a cross and surrounded by a lake of LCL that still leaked from the wounds inflicted upon her, the Second Angel, Lilith could only wait in silence for the chaos amongst her children to end, the seven eyes of her mask staring out impassively as two familiar faces approached her.

One was Ikari Gendo, a cold antisocial man with a drive to achieve his goals only matched by the skills to back up such reach of grasp. As far as he knew, he had broken his son, the boy spending the majority of his time since awaking from his coma praying for his broken girlfriend to wake up. Religion as a whole was a concept he had no time for, just another weakness of the human condition, something for the strong to use to exploit the weak.

Gendo put himself in the former category and his son in the latter.

Ayanami Rei on the other hand, was currently a bubbling cauldron of mirth beneath her expressionless demeanour. She could feel years of planning coming to fruition, and she knew that she was the lynchpin to Gendo’s plans. He assumed that she was his obedient servant, beholden to do whatever he ordered her to. For so many years, that had been the case, and even in her most rebellious moments she had never actually gone against a direct order.

Now though… now…

The world was coming to an end and Rei would become the instrument of its destruction, something any minion of Chaos would be pleased to claim, especially a follower of Nurgle’s rot, ruin, and decay like Rei. Of course, she could still spare the people she liked.

Shinji had told her to foul Gendo’s plans. She assumed that what was to come would definitely count.

She was naked, Gendo having informed her that she would not need clothes for what was to happen. For a moment she assumed that he would take her physically, in which case she had a lovely set of diseases to inflict upon him, but when he had bade her to follow into Lilith’s chamber, she had known that something more special was about to occur.

The true Lance of Longinus had been removed from Lilith a short time ago in preparation for what was to come, Gendo not wanting to go about this process by Lilith directly, but to have Rei assume control of Third Impact so that she could lead him to his Yui. Ultimately control would rest with Unit 01, but Shinji was so pathetic and useless that he would not resist the destruction of the world. All was going just as planned.

Removing the glove from his right hand, Gendo exposed the embryonic Adam fused to his palm. For the destroyer of three billion people, it seemed such a small, pathetic thing, although as the insane Major Katsuragi would attest it had not been that small when it caused Second Impact.

Reaching out, Gendo placed his hand on one of Rei’s breasts, her flesh giving way like a gooey marshmallow before the slumbering might of the First Angel. Rei let out a small gasp that was mingled pleasure and pain at the experience as the Flesh of Lilith mingled with the Flesh of Adam, something that should not have been.

Already Rei could hear the siren call of Lilith behind her, demanding to make war with her old nemesis. It was an instinctive and ultimately suicidal impulse, one that would destroy both of them and leave Rei in command of both their powers, although what would emerge on the other side was uncertain as no mortal could experience such power and remain unchanged.

Moving her hand through her body like it was water Gendo let it settle upon Rei’s sterile womb before ordering, “Now go and undo all the AT-fields in the world and bring me to my Yui-san.”

A torrent of power was flowing into Rei, and she could already feel it begin to mix with the power she had dammed for her own good. Rei just looked up into the bespectacled face of Gendo and said quietly, “No,” before the transformation over took her.

Flesh began to run and rearrange itself, unveiling the form hidden within. Rei began to grow, her human genes giving rise to expressions that would have occurred naturally with the passage of time, her body maturing into something that resembled the adult Ikari Yui more with every passing second.

For the briefest of moments Gendo thought that Rei had found a better path, switching about her soul with the soul in Unit 01, giving him back his Yui in the flesh as well as the spirit.

Then Nurgle began to paint on this malleable canvas, dashing Gendo’s hopes in a way that only the God of Despair and his followers would find comical.

From a distance Rei would have still been comely and desirable, but up close one would quite clearly see what happened to those that championed the Great Corruptor. To see the change occur was to gaze into the mouth of insanity.

The first, subtle change was for the whites of Rei’s eyes to become yellowed and rheumy while her brilliant red irises flared with inner light.

Next, her hair fell out, replaced by something else entirely. At first it looked like new hair was sprouting from her scalp, but in truth this was not hair but thousands of incredible fine, translucent blue worms embedded in her scalp like bot fly larva. Shoulder length, the worms squirmed and writhed like some fouler version of the Medusa.

After that, Rei’s fat and muscle began to redistribute, retreating in places to leave famine victim skin and bones, while conglomerating in others to form fleshy tumours. There was still a sick aesthetic though; the cancerous growths appearing in places to give curves that most women would kill for. For example, Rei’s breasts expanded with unwholesome tumours swollen nearly to bursting, her small, previously nearly unnoticeable nipples growing red and rosy… as boils brimming to the point of weeping with pus rather than mother’s milk.

Rei’s once alabaster white skin was stretched taut by the distortions to her body, before inflamed and swollen veins erupted across her skin, standing out stark blue as some sort of cancerous marble effect. Slowly the blue faded to black as her skin darkened from white to a pale, necrotic green.

Behind her the Lance of Longinus levitated into the air, orienting towards the surface before flashing away, tearing its way to the mind that had called it.

Rei smiled to reveal a mouth full of rotted black teeth and swollen green gums crawling with maggots, her saliva replaced with thick phlegm and pus.

Her voice a smooth, purring death gurgle, Rei says again, “No. Shinji-kun is the only one who can determine the distribution of souls after Third Impact; it is not up to you to decide this.”

Glancing towards the surface high above, Rei adds on mirthfully, “I don’t think he’s going to be very appreciative of your agenda.”

Gendo had only watched in mute silence brought on by a large chunk of his psyche shattering upon beholding such a grotesque transformation, before the animalistic part of his brain tried to escape, to withdraw his hand from Rei’s guts, to get away from the inescapable feeling that her intestines were squirming about his hand, worm maws nibbling upon his flesh.

Rei cocked her head to the side and released him. In true Nurgle fashion.

Gendo’s forearm began to rapidly swell with infectious inflammation. Enormous pustules began to grow, one on top of each other, the pressure growing agonizingly. Eventually the skin closest to Rei began to turn a putrescent green as necrosis set in. This did not last long as the rapidly weakening tissue could no longer contain the growing pressure.

With a sound like a cluster of water balloons being hit by a cluster of flechettes, Gendo’s right arm exploded, hurling him back in a shower of pus and gore. Falling to the ground, Gendo could only stare in dumb horror at the corroded yellow remains of his radius and ulna, slick with green and yellow pus.

Levitating into the air, Rei told Gendo, “Do not despair, you shall not die yet, your fate is for another to decide.”

Rei then slid back into Lilith. There was a momentary ripple before the Second Angel began to move, her hands sliding off the spikes that impaled them while her legs finished regeneration. Crashing into a kneeling position in the LCL lake below, the mask on Lilith’s face slowly fell off with a sucking noise to reveal Rei’s face.

Standing up, Lilith/Rei began to expand at a phenomenal rate, the same grotesque metamorphosis that had occurred before repeating itself on a scale a thousand times grander. Those that saw this happen invariably ran screaming when they did not collapse into quivering, vomiting piles of mental trauma. Those that had the misfortune for Rei’s ghostly flesh to pass through them were left gibbering wrecks, their sanity violently and permanently ripped from them by the horrific experience.

Rei smiled. She had an appointment with a friend to keep.


Shinji sat in his Entry Plug, mute and staring at the tiny broken form resting too quietly in the palm of his Eva’s hands. His Eva was floating several kilometres above the eye of the storm he had conjured, six enormous wings projecting out of its back, covered in ever shifting, iridescent feathers. Floating faithfully at his side was the Lance of Longinus, its prongs stained with the blood of the last MP Eva, while Chaos symbols a kilometre tall surrounded him, burning brightly in the sky and driving mad all who looked upon them.

“Wake up Asuka, wake up,” Shinji said quietly while staring at the limp body he held.

I should have been faster…

I shouldn’t have let Misato’s death affect me so when there were still others I had to look out for…

I should have…

I should have…

Shinji was a hollow shell, every last trace of human emotion drained from him by the trauma of all he had seen today. The horrors within Asuka’s soul, Misato’s revelation and death, and now this. No human could withstand such pain and remain intact.

Shinji had been broken to begin with.

In the end, all I really wanted was someone warm at my side at night. Is that such a terrible thing to wish for? To not be lonely like this, to know that when you go to sleep there will be someone who loves you waiting to smile at you in the morning?

Is that too much to ask?

I would trade it all just to have that again.

“Shinji…” a soft voice whispered to him.

Blinking twice, Shinji looked up and found a ten kilometre tall Rei in full Nurgle bloom staring back at him, smiling in that faint way that was only describable as being ‘Rei’.

Shinji smiled weakly back as a small, pained, psychotic giggle escaped from his throat. Recovering after a moment, he says with all the sincerity he could muster in his burned out state, “You look beautiful Rei-chan.”

Smiling more broadly, Rei says, “Thank you Shinji-kun.”

Chuckling sadly, Shinji says, “But you’re going to leave me too, aren’t you?”

Tilting her head to the side in a motherly way, Rei then shakes it and tells him, “Far from it, I am here to grant you your most deeply held, fondest wish.”

Exploding into full on dirge laughter, Shinji screamed out, “THEN BRING THEM BACK!”

Her smile never leaving her face, Rei says, “This I can do.”

Shinji blinked, a sudden spark flaring in his breast. For the first time since Misato died he felt something that was normally integral to his character: hope. He would not go down without a fight, ever. If he had to rip the gates of Hades off their hinges and put down Cerberus to get to Misato and Asuka, then he would damn well do it.

“Do it,” Shinji told her.

“Once passed beyond the veil, it is not easy to recover a soul,” Rei warned him.

“Do it,” Shinji repeated.

“There will be a great sacrifice to make,” Rei warned him.

“Do it, I will pay any cost to have them back,” Shinji told her.

“They will be changed by the forces required. You will be changed by the forces as they are yours to command,” Rei advises him.

“Change is good,” Shinji said with a feral grin.

“I thought you would say that,” Rei says, reaching up to cup Unit 01 in her hands, shrinking down below the clouds.


The storm had cleared an hour ago, but the air still remained unnaturally charged, leaving the soldiers on overwatch feeling queasy and nervous, some going so far as to have psychological breakdowns just from getting too close to Tokyo-3. There was little those in charge could do to assuage their men’s fears, for no one knew what was happening, just that some of the most battle hardened and experienced men in the country had gone into the city and never returned. Along the outskirts the broken vehicles and bodies could still be seen, mute testament to the hell that had engulfed the area.

In the centre, there was nothing. The governments of the world had launched dozens of high kiloton N2 devices at the site, but all that they were doing was blowing off the cover for a smooth black shell that now encased the Geofront, the strange material immune to everything thrown at it.

The whole world held its breath and waited.

The arrival of a very curious person did nothing to lift the dread quiet, but it did stir up a hundred different emotions in the eyes of those watching.

He was clad in heavy blue armour with impossibly intricate gold designs worked into the surface, so reminiscent of the pharaohs of ancient Egypt, and yet also so much older and grander than that dusty civilization of yesteryear. In one hand he carried a huge axe set with spinning teeth like a chainsaw, while in the other he carried a pistol that most would have considered a small grenade launcher.

The man was infinitely similar to the armour and weapons upgrades of the Evas, but one look at him let everyone know that he had seniority on the Evas by several thousand years, as impossible as that was.

All stood aside as the giant passed them, watching as he walked out, unconcerned, onto the field of molten glass that lead up to the great black dome over the Geofront.

They watched as he walked right up to the edge.

And they watched as he fell to his knees and bowed down in supplication and worship.


Far away in Germany Keel Lorenz also watched in silent rage, a live satellite feed showing this strange event taking place.

Rage as the work of decades was destroyed by Ikari.

Silence, because with the Mass Production Evangelions destroyed, there was nothing he or anyone could do to stop these events

None of them had any idea what Ikari had unleashed, as this was all quite outside of the prophecies they had been using to guide their way through the war with the Angels to the culmination of Third Impact. But now everything had gone inexplicably wrong.

“It is because you messed with things you do not understand old man,” a silk smooth voice commented from the darkness about the weathered cyborg.

Turning his head as fast as his implants will allow him to, he immediately found a strange looking man sitting in the shadows across from him. He was clothed in a blue and gold style ancient Egyptian headdress and a purple and blue pleated kilt, with a fine gossamer shroud wrapping about the rest of his body, but no matter the angle his face was a depthless black void.

Behind him, the SEELE monoliths died, consumed by shadows that seemed to radiate off this figure like some unholy un-light.

“Who are you? How did you get in here?” Lorenz demanded angrily while quietly pressing a button to summon his guards.

“Oh, they are quite indisposed right now,” the man… thing… whatever tells him amicably.

From the shadows that seemed to be thickening with each passing moment there echoed small, distant screams of absolute terror and agony.

“As to who I am… well, who is not quite the correct word, but rather what. You may, however, call me a Black Pharaoh. He did so enjoy those stories you know,” the creature explains.

“Who?” Keel asks nervously.

“My master of course. If you truly want to know what I am, well, that is a little hard to explain. I am… a projection if you will, a manifestation of His will,” the Black Pharaoh tells him.

“And what does ‘he’ want?” Lorenz inquires; sweat starting to bead on his brow.

“Lots of things, but mostly power and love, of which He will have plenty by the end of His gestation period. From you however, he wants revenge. Revenge for all the pain and suffering you have put him through. To that end, your soul is going to be claimed with extra care so that you can be subjected to special torture afterwards,” the Black Pharaoh explains, leaning in, its body language cruel and predatory.

It then whispered conspiratorially. “You and the other members of SEELE wanted to shed your bodies and become one with a new god… well, no one ever said that God would be nice or particularly like you and your cronies for your involvement in its birth. I hope you prepared for the eventuality of an eternity being horrifically tortured by your worst nightmares.”

Lorenz had nothing to say to that.

“Ah, I see the Reiglings are finished with your guards,” the Black Pharaoh notes gesturing behind the leader and now last member of SEELE.

When the diseased claws plunged into the old man’s body, they made sure that he had a long time to scream about it. And at the end of it all, not even death held the release from suffering Keel Lorenz had long sought.


In Tokyo-3, the top of the great black dome split open, pouring unnatural light out into the surroundings. The sky went black, the warm light of the sun driven off in terror by the colours of out of space pouring forth. Khnemu held up his hands in worship, chanting an ancient prayer to Chaos Undivided as the things that streamed out passed him by, their insane giggling and grotesque figures driving most others mad simply by being near them. When they struck, they dissolved flesh into clear orange goo, bodies bursting like over inflated water balloons, their souls taken for the Great Harvest.

All across the planet, people started dying, their bodies turned to goo and their souls released to join into the collection occurring above Tokyo-3 at the behest of the Mother. Screams of fear and panic filled the world, but not all died. The creatures, the Reiglings, struck seemingly at random, harvesting one person but sparing the next. The only thing that seemed to help the odds was to fall down in worship of these dread creatures, an act that often, but not always, turned away their fell attention.

The Great Harvest ended ten minutes after it began, two thirds of the world’s population offered up as sacrifice to the Mother.

To Mama Reigle.


Deep within the Black Moon, the Egg of Lilith, the Warp bled out into reality, creating the perfect gestation grounds for the beings within. In this seething cauldron of unreality, things had many layers, and viewing things from different angles could have a profound effect on what was seen.

For example, looking at a particular room one way, one would see a high vaulted, cathedral like chamber coated in a mockery of organic tissue, pulsing and quivering with foul energies. Hanging like grotesque chandeliers from the ceiling were three enormous embryonic sacs, bright red veins pumping life and energy into the shrouded occupants. One of these sacs then began to descend.

Viewed from another angle, the room was a great void at the centre of which dwelt an unspeakable monstrosity bent and twisted into strange, non-Euclidean geometries. To say that it had tentacles was a misunderstanding of the nature of its limbs, for not all of their space could be seen at once by those with only three dimension sight. Great quakes began to shudder through this enormous beast as the process of budding off another like it began.

And from another angle, one best not viewed long for the sake of sanity, one could see an enormously pregnant Rei going into labour.

Across the planet, the survivors of the Great Harvest heard the psychic shrieks of mother and child as a new god was born.

He wore a thousand forms, but one of the few that could be understood by human eyes was that of a well muscled adult male human missing a finger on his left hand, clad only in a simple kilt, his eyes pinpricks of eternity, galaxies birthed and dying in a single moment within his fathomless mind.

He gazed at the other. Mother. Sister. Lover. Queen. Goddess. These were but a few of the titles She would wear.

“Hello Mama Reigle of the Seven Lives,” He said coolly and slowly.

“Hello Lord Tzintchi, the Nine Fingered King,” She replied in kind.

Glancing at Reigle, He asks, “How much longer until the other Queens are born?”

“Death was hard on Them; They will need more time to be cared for. Asukhon the Eightfold Victor will take perhaps another week to be made ready. On the other hand, because She was not a psyker, Mislaato of the Six Wounds will take anywhere from a month to a year to fully gestate,” Reigle explains.

Nodding, Tzintchi says, “We have all the time in the world. Do not strain Yourself or Them.”

“There is a message for You,” Reigle informs him.

“I know. I shall get to it in time, but for now I wish to gloat,” Tzintchi says before turning and leaving the chamber.

In the compressed and tangled space that was the inside of the Black Moon, He was where he wanted to be in an instant, in a thought.

He was at the Hall of Torment.

The senior members of SEELE and his father were imbedded in the walls, ceiling, and floor of this place, screaming in agony, their souls trying to claw their way out of membranes of unreality that would trap them for all eternity. Tzintchi walked along, admiring the handiwork, until he came to his father and leaned in close.

The soul of Ikari Yui emerged from the sea of souls that was Tzintchi. When the division had been made, her ability to scheme and plot and hope had assigned her to her son who had become a God. Within Him, and in fact all of Them, all souls were one, and yet separate, a bizarre paradox only Chaos was capable of. The only thing certain was that the souls that had once been Shinji, Rei, Asuka, and Misato were all firmly and absolutely in charge, as Tzintchi had commanded it be.

Still, They could deign to let the others out from time to time.

Yui looked sadly at the tortured face of her husband, reaching out to soothe him, saying, “Oh Gendo… this is entirely your fault. I willingly stepped in to Unit 01 wanting to make the world safer for our son, and you abandoned him. If you had just opened up your heart and been a good father like I had hoped you would have been, none of this would have happened.”

Her face going firm, she then says, “I’m afraid that it is quite too late to try and make amends at this point dear.”

Subsumed back within, Tzintchi took control again and looked at Gendo before saying, “That was a concession to my mortal birth mother; I on the other hand am not so forgiving. But perhaps I will change my mind in a few millennia and absorb you, so that you can be with Yui. Perhaps.”

Cackling with mad laughter, Tzintchi went to review the message waiting for him. It was not pressing, for it was a message in a bottle.

Or rather bottles.

The four canopic jars that contained the spirits of his Rubric Marines had been an incredible drain on Sensei Khenmu, more than they should have even in this Warp hostile environment. There was something else in each of them, fragments sent along to tell Him something.

The jars opened and out poured the gods.

“All Hail Tzintchi!” They declared, accepting Him as of their rank.

“All Hail,” Tzintchi replies, settling down to hear what they had to say.

His acolyte to begin with, Tzeentch begins, “Very good my young apprentice, very good. You did remarkably well, and things went just as I had planned.”

“You endured much,” Nurgle gurgled.

“You suffered much,” Slaanesh hissed.

“But You fought hard,” Khorne growled.

“Ya fought well,” Gork, or possibly Mork told Him.

“Ya woz a sneaky git too,” Mork, or maybe Gork, continued.

“But in the end you won out,” Khaine congratulated Him.

“But there is still much to do, many questions to ask,” the Laughing God informed Him.

“So it is time You got some answers,” the Emperor finished.

---

3... 2... 1...

MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Oh... aren't you glad that I still have one chapter left where I'm going to you know, explain what the fuck I just did there? Hoo boy, I've been waiting months for this reveal.

You may now begin ranting and screaming at me.

[KlavoHunter]

What?

What?

WHAT?

WHAT?!?

*Breaks down into insane gibbering, screaming, and laughter*

[Academia Nut]

And that would be the response I have been patiently waiting for.

Laughter of thirsting authours indeed.

[LadyTevar]

Why rant and scream? I liked it.

[Master of Cards]

I hate you so much right now.

I love you.

[Academia Nut]

So, any speculation on what I'm going to reveal for the last chapter now that I've thrown a curve I don't think anyone expected. Shinji ascending and becoming a god or at the very least a daemon prince? I know people expected that. All four Chaos gods being represented, well I know no one suggested such a thing, but it wasn't that extraordinary in terms of what was going on.

The whole Emperor thing at the end? Yeah, that one couldn't have been predicted

[Vehrec]

I dunno. I had a feeling that Mankind's One True Warpgod would get involved somehow. NO I am not making this up, I really 'called' that one in my own thoughts.

[Sidewinder]

So the apprentice has become the master, i.e., by ascending to daemonhood, Shinji/Tzintchi has become closer to Tzeentch than Khenmu? Fascinating.

By the way, is the Black Pharoah a reference to H. P. Lovecraft's works? (I've read very few of his works, so I can't tell.)

[FA Xerrik]

Viewed from another angle, the room was a great void at the centre of which dwelt an unspeakable monstrosity bent and twisted into strange, non-Euclidean geometries. To say that it had tentacles was a misunderstanding of the nature of its limbs, for not all of their space could be seen at once by those with only three dimension sight. Great quakes began to shudder through this enormous beast as the process of budding off another like it began.

Mmmm... sweet unwholesome Cthulhu goodness. Does a heart good to see the ol' dreamer being brought in for the Real Thing.

Unfortunately, I'm not well-versed enough in WH40k lore to really see where this might be going. I can only assume that the Warp-related deities had some reason to want to prevent the AT-related deities from being united in Impact as per the original NGE timeline.

One question: Why the combination names for our plucky Earth hero/Gods if the Chaos Gods are still distinct entities? Just curious, not a big nitpick. Guesstimate ETA on the final installment? This story has shaped up really well, and it would be a pleasure to see a story actually concluded on these boards

[Academia Nut]

While it will be made clear next chapter, this is not daemonhood, this is full blown godhood in the 40k sense. Admittedly, nowhere near as powerful, but such things will be made clear in time. That time is... oh, a week at most, probably a couple days tops, including the time for Chris to beta for me and everything, which tends to add a day or two.

The Black Pharaoh is an alias of Nyarlathotep, an Outer God from the Cthulhu Mythos who is fairly close of an analogy to a 40k god in that universe. Most of the evil deities from the Mythos aren't evil per se in that they really just don't care about running us over, same the way we don't care when a mosquito hits our windshield and goes splat. Old Narly on the other hand likes to corrupt things and sow discord and chaos. Combined with Shinji's whole Egyptian theme, it makes a good fit for Tzintchi's minor daemons.

The names... eh... it's to indicate that they are more than they were before. Basically it started when I realized that Tzintchi would be pronounced (in English) pretty close to Shinji when you factor in that the t's are probably silent, like with Tzeentch. Then came Reigle. I was never all that happy with Mislaato, and I basically flipped a coin in my head for Asukhon. I just got lucky that I could mash their names together as closely as I could.

Want something really funny though? Mislaato will be She Who Thirsts... for Beer.

[Setzer]

So Comoragh turns into the universe's biggest brewery?

[Setzer]

Welll..... a bit of Wild Mass Guessing here...

It seems to be a product of all the 40k deities pooling their power. They figured the most likely future was one where the C'tan completed their great warding, which amputates the warp gods.

They decided to change one element in the past, to redo things so the Warp has so much influence on humanity that it can never be removed. No untouchables, etc.