[Fic] Aeon Entelechy Evangelion (Chapter 11 up)

[EarthScorpion]

~’/|\’~



Quite simply, Toja knew that he should flee, knew that he should look away, knew that he should do anything but stand there, and stare vacantly at the scene through the ichor-covered windows. But he couldn’t. Frozen on the spot, barely blinking from behind the darkened visor of the filter mask, his eyes flicked between the vast humanoid figure of the Evangelion, and the wine-coloured, scarred mass that was the Harbinger, crawling on its insectoid legs, still leaking ichor from the mess where it was nearly torn in half. And... oddly, he didn’t want to run. There was something sickly fascinating about the sight, which even overrode his survival instincts.

He watched, as the Evangelion rose from behind its building. A sudden crack of thunder, and there was light; blinding light that was merely bright, as both the window and the filtermask suddenly went opaque. In the rising fireball that enveloped the monster’s head, the Nazzadi boy, even with the reduced colour vision of his subspecies, could see hints of the Colour, rising upwards in a fungoid bloom. The freezing gas vented from the rifle as coolant was lit in prismatic colours, before being blown asunder as the shockwave hit, thundering across the land. There was barely time to raise a hand, before the Babylon fired again, and again, and again, the windows and his filtermask as black as pitch, the cracks along the window alone transparent and casting their own broken, crystalline and prismatic light into the room.

Toja fell over backwards, not from how the ground shook, but from how his leg muscles suddenly turned into jelly from the sudden terror.

Through the darkness of his visor, something burning bright, through the dust and the freezing mist, could be seen to lash out, whipping forwards towards the humanoid figure, into the Evangelion’s arm. A spurt of dark-coloured blood splattered its way across a nearby building, before the wound sealed. As a result, the next shot went wide, the vECF warhead blowing out the core of a building and sending a skyscraper plummeting to the ground, only throwing up more dust.

Dust which was blown aside as, from the fireballs, came scuttling the bulk of the Harbinger, its broad head held low, two twitching, sun-bright tentacles reaching before it. Unit 01 barely managed to throw itself out of the way from the charge, falling to one knee, but managing to turn just in time to take another lash against its right arm. With just a hint of slowness which had not been there before, it turned, and another crack spoke of another shot from the Babylon, at very close range. There was no detonation this time, only the shimmering light of Eshmun’s AT-Field and the vented coolant illuminated by the lasers mounted over the Evangelion.

With a sudden burst of speed, which was not quite a jump, and which was not quite flight, the wine-coloured monster surged forwards, the 155mm shell it took to the middle of the forehead at point blank range, and the resultant gush of bruise-coloured vapour, not enough to dissuade its passage. Over and over it rolled, locked in a tight embrace with Unit 01, its whip-tendrils leaving wherever they touched slagged, even as its crab-like legs dug at the Eva’s back. The passage of the two titans demolished buildings, free-standing and sealed arcology alike. The sun-bright tentacles melted whatever they touched as they rolled, even as the Evangelion frantically clawed at the Harbinger with the hyperedged blades attached to its fingers.

The deathly embrace was only broken by human intervention, as a rain of missiles, zeroed in from the Geocity on Unit 01’s own signature, punched a line of fleshy craters along the back of the creature, the impacts small stars in the thick dust. The resultant fireballs tore through the buildings which the two leviathans had wrecked, only adding to the chaos, but the alien monstrosity largely protected Evangelion Unit 01 from the blast, and the warning which it had received had been enough for, in the confusion (as the hellish buzz of Eshmun grew higher in pitch), for it to get one foot under the chest of the Harbinger, and send it flying back into another building, shattering the insectoid legs which had been wrapped around the Unit.

Those blasts had been much, much closer, and larger too. The shockwave battened the building, knocking over chairs, part of the ceiling collapsing. Half-crawling, Toja managed to make his way under one of the desks, and curled up into a ball, survival instincts all that remained to him.

Slowly pulling itself partially upright, the Evangelion straightened up. It had lost one of the wing-like pylons which protruded from its back, in the brawl, and dark blood dripped forth from where it had shattered, running in rivulets down the small of the Unit’s back. Nevertheless, it was ready. Its left, uninjured hand groped for the fallen Babylon, while the right arm supported its weight.

Which was, naturally, when the tentacles whipped out again, both attacking in perfect synchronisation. One punched through the right arm arm, severing tissue and muscle and machine, and somehow expanded within the wound, tearing it up from the inside, sending the Evangelion crashing to the ground. The other sought out the torso, and found it, burrowing within like a flesh-eating luminescent worm, before digging down into the ground. Slowly, too slowly, the Harbinger crawled (on now-broken legs) towards the pinned Evangelion.



~’/|\’~



“Warning! DEV12/DDV13 RA Offline. Reconfiguring power and heat distribution grids. Restricted power flow to right arm. Class 4 weapons disabled.”

Icons all down the left side of the Evangelion’s body were flashing red. The armour there was seared, cooked; the sophisticated heat-resistant ceramics and high-reflectivity layered armour no match for the brute force of the Harbinger. The right arm hung entirely limp and useless, unpowered and heavily damaged, the servos in the armour, and the muscles, both synthetic and arcane, of the underlying organism, melted. The LITAN was reporting on the most urgent of the errors, even as unfamiliar messages scrolled down in front of the pilot’s eyes.

“Warning! DEV12/DDV13 T-1 and DEV12/DDV13 T-3 Offline. Warning! Insufficient power for peak operations. Switching to back-up supply. Warning! Insufficient heat disposal capacity. Class 3 weapons disabled.”

“How did it do that?” Ritsuko muttered, eyes hollow. “It knew exactly where to target the engines. Harbinger-class entities possibly sensitive to D-distortions?” she spoke into her PCPU.

“Shinji, you’ve lost three your D-engines!” the Major snapped, leaning into the microphone. “Pull back! I’ll get you cover-fire. Shut off all the weapons down his right side,” she added, turning to the technical staff. “I don’t want him cooking himself without the D-Fridges working, either.”

“The Ouranos has already done that, Major Katsuragi.”

Whimpering, Shinji gripped onto the control yokes as tight as he could. His arm... the Evangelion’s arm felt funny, even through the pain. Weak and floppy. And all of his right side felt like... well, it felt like that one holiday they had had to Shikoku, back before that major Dagonite attack had led to the restriction of arcology exist passes. He’d managed to get horribly sunburnt then. It felt exactly like that.

“Shinji, get up!”

Pinned to the group, it hurt even more to move.

Overhead, a flight of Chalybion gunships could be seen, emerging from the dust that filled the skyline from the conflict. The roar of charge beams from the tail-like turret of the fliers, and the extrapolated-from-scatter paths of the ultraviolet lasers, was nothing compared to the infernal buzzing of Eshumn. The silvery-white light of an AT-Field above the Harbinger showed where the blasts were hitting, but even the ones which broke the shattered light didn’t seem to stop it.

Kill! Kill! You are not a shadow! Kill! Kill!
Kill kill kill kill kill.
My own children are dead, piled into mounds,
Kill kill kill kill kill kill kill.
And your barren colour has entered me.
Kill kill kill kill kill.
Too real! You bring the final death! Too real!

“He’s trapped. Synch ratio is falling.”

“Mental pattern is destabilising. Loss of concentration, probably.”

“Scramble whatever forces you get! I don’t care! I have Advisor status for exactly this situation, and so I’m advising you that the Evangelion is your best current hope for killing that thing! And it can’t do that if it’s pinned to the ground.”

“Rei is suited up, correct?”

The vile, convolving, broken form of the Harbinger, was dragging itself across the ground. It was sheared in half even before he saw it, behind it, even as he writhes in pain on the burning tentacles, he can see the trail of bruise-coloured liquid drooling out, and it has only been injured further. The loss of its rear half seemed to have removed its capacity for true flight. Its carapace is pockmarked with craters, some grey and crumbling from the use of tactical arcanochromatic weapons. And its legs are now shattered and broken. It seems to be regenerating slowly, but the legs are malformed and twisted, no longer able to truly support its weight.

“Shinji! You need to get up!”

“Bravo Company is on rou... damn it, more of those things.”

“Thunderbird-6 inbound. Please retreat to minimum safe distance.”

“It’s no good.”

No. Something snapped inside, as he watched that broken, purplish shape pull nearer. It was pathetic. He had crushed its children, popped them like water balloons. And look at it! It was more damaged than he was!

With the one functional hand, the Evangelion reached out, and grabbed the tentacle that was stuck into his right hand side. Wincing in pain, but with a slight mad look in his eyes, Shinji tightened his grip around the sun-bright plasma, and, AT-Field suddenly flaring into iridescent, crystalline light around his hand, snuffed it out, crushing it in the inexorable claw.

Shinji began to pant, lips wide open in a rictus grin, deep gulps of LCL flowing in and out of his lungs. With his left hand, he groped for the Babylon, getting his hand on the firing mechanism, and, as the weapon synched up with the Unit’s internal controls (no, of course he didn’t fire it by squeezing a trigger. That would be inefficient, and problematic, considering the fact that trigger design was not a science well advanced for 40 metre robots), he grinned, lips pulled tight over his bared teeth.

Then, leaning forwards into a sprinters position, he charged. The other one energy tentacle was torn right out of the arm, jets of dark ichor accompanying it, but the sudden rush of adrenaline blanked out the immediacy of the pain, replacing it with a dull ache which seemed irrelevant to the fact that he was going to kill this thing.

The Harbinger might have had just enough time to experience the sensation of shock, before the colossal boot of the Eva collided with its ‘face’, sending it flying backwards. Luckily, locally all the buildings had been knocked down by their preceding brawl, so at least there wasn’t any more buildings to damage along this path, but on the negative side, the Evangelion had kicked it really, really hard, so judging by this trajectory, that was only a temporary state of affairs.

Misato was yelling something at him down the radio. He really couldn’t hear her, a mix of pain, adrenaline, and suddenly unleashed anger making her words only so much noise.

“Shoot it! With everything!” he roared at the LAI, as his momentum carried him onwards, a second kick, the AT-Field sparkling around the foot nearly disembowelling (if it had bowels) the Harbinger before it, or he, had hit the ground. Tumbling backwards, Eshmun continued to roll, tearing up the ruins with its reigniting tendrils. Waving his arm, Shinji just managed to regain balance, thinking very hard about not falling over, before he took a step back, levelling the Babylon one-handed at the twitching Harbinger.

The recoil was immense. It was, in fact, so great that he accidentally slapped himself in the face, his arm moving with the Evangelion’s. Ignoring the stinging pain (heh. He had already been punched today. That was ages ago, wasn’t it?) he struggled, stepping back on the uneven ground, to both stay upright and lower the weapon. The Babylon was an Evangelion-scale rifle, and that meant it wasn’t meant to be fired in one hand. Much as a conventionally-sized one wasn’t. Shinji could feel the bruises blossom up his forearm, as the yellow lights reported multiple fractures along the left arm’s armour, even as clouds of freezing coolant obscured his visible light vision. Nevertheless he watched with open eyes and feral grin as the blasted-open underside of Eshmun appeared from under the fireball, greyed and poisoned and spasming.

“How do I kill it?” he screamed at his support staff. Oh. Oww. That really hurt. Oh. Had he broken something?

Ritsuko looked momentarily shocked. “Sufficient damage. It doesn’t have an external core-equivalent, so it’s probably inside its body.”

Pushing forwards on the control yokes with both hands, teeth gritted, Shinji... no, Unit 01 made its way to the twitching Harbinger, right arm limp at its side, dark blood leaking from the multiple cracks in the arm, the puncture holes in the torso, and from the torn-off pylon. Its feet shook the ruins, crushing demolished building underfoot. Ahead, the Harbinger lay, that noxious, bruise-coloured light-gas leaking from all of its many wounds.

What if it does the explody thing like the last one? Shinji suddenly realised, with a sinking feeling. Too late to think about that. He tried to will the other arm to move, jerking on the right control yoke as hard as he could. Nothing.

“Switch ammo on the Babylon,” he told the LITAN. The loading bar flashed, and was gone. That was sensible. He didn’t want to forget, and accidentally blow himself up. Of course, he also didn’t want to have his arm hurt like that again... generally, the Babylon wasn’t a good weapon for that. That reminded him; Shinji checked that all the other weapons, the lasers and the shoulder mounted missile pods (oh, they were empty, he noted) and the 20mm cannons (also empty) were still hitting the target. Certainly, it seemed that the LITAN was not sparing with the ammunition based weapons, though, of course, there was a strict limit to how much the Evangelion could carry, because, where a normal mecha had storage space, an arcanocyberxenobiological organism had organs and stuff.

It seemed so far to walk. He really was feeling light-headed now, from the pain. But now he was here, and, yes, in the centre of the blasted open body, spewing forth that bruised-light, was some kind of cracked crystalline structure. Dropping the Babylon (it landed with a very expensive sounding clatter), he pulled back one clawed fist, and slammed it with a sudden brutal finality into the core, an impossibly pure note sounding out, as the pre-existing cracks widened and spread.

Beneath him, the Harbinger twitched.

What are you? What are you? What are you? What
are you? What are you?
Can’t I see? Somehow familiar? Hard to
think. What are you? Do not know.
Killing me. Sorrow and pain. So much pain.
My children are dead.
Pain. Pain. Somehow familiar. What are you?

Another blow. And another. And another, the left fist descending over and over again.

Finally, a rupture.

And oblivion.

Slowly, the remains of Harbinger-4, so damaged, so abused, sank into a foul, effervescent fluid, the same tainted bruised colours as its core.

Slowly, Shinji Ikari clutched at his arms and let out a scream of pain through clenched teeth, from the pain all down his right flank, and shooting up his left arm.

Slowly, Unit 01 sagged and fell to the ground, collapsing on top of a formerly relatively intact building and demolishing it.



~’/|\’~



All too slowly, Toja pulled himself out from under the table. He... he was alive. He was actually still alive. And with all limbs attached, too. Looking around through the dust filled air, at the classroom of fallen chairs and broken ceiling tiles, he reflexively coughed.

The windows were caked black with... something. No, he realised, it wasn’t something. They’d denatured? Was that the right word? They’d done that think where photosensitive stuff got stuck on the opaque mode, normally after being exposed to really bright light.

Stepping back, he realised that there was a pattern. A patch of less-dark glass, in the middle of all the darkness. It was... it was human shaped.

Wrapping his arms around himself, Toja began to shiver. That... that was its shape, wasn’t it. A patch of less-darkness, where it had been obstructing the radiance from those blasts. Just looking at it was making the colour drain from the world. Just like outside, in the greyness. And there it was, its legs sticking out of a wrecked building. Sprawled on the ground. In the middle of something dark. And fluidy.

Someone was calling out something. With an effort, he realised it was his name. Turning slowly, he could see a little human girl, head poking around the doorway.

“Toja.”

He blinked, heavily. “Yes,” he managed.

There was a moment of silence, as the girl stared at him. “You are Kany’s brother, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” Why was he here? What was he looking for. Why had he come out of the safety? Oh yes. “Are you... are you Imi?”

The little girl nodded. “Yes.”

“I... yes. I went to find you. We need to get down to the bunker. Now.”

Crossing the classroom to his side, standing on tiptoes, the girl peered out of the lighter patch of the window, too. “But the sirens have stopped, and the thing is dead,” she pointed out, staring at the sight before them.

“Doesn’t matter. Need to get to bunker.” He paused, and blinked, the mist that seemed to fill his mind lifting for a moment. “Where have you been?”

“I had to get another injector from my bag, because I had lost mine,” the little girl said. “And then everyone was gone, and the sirens were still going, and I did not know the way to the bunker. So I hid in the art cupboard instead.”

“Did you?” That did, even in the boy’s current mental state, seem a lot more sensible. Certainly more sensible than hiding under a child’s desk, and watching a lot of the fight.

She tugged at his sleeve. “Can you take me to the bunker then, please.”

The world around him seemed grey and filled with fog, all sound muffled. Even his sense of touch was muted, so that surfaces seemed padded. Silently, mutely Toja stumbled onwards, down the stairs, leading the girl by instinct.

The relief on the teacher’s face could not erase the terror which had been there before. “My God,” he said, and while Toja knew, intellectually, that the voice was packed with emotion, in the obfuscated world in which he dwelt there was only a cold, feelingless drone. “You found her. And you’re both alive. Our wireless Grid coverage was down, so we couldn’t even track either of you.”

“I found him,” the little girl, Imi said, her voice similarly unreadable to the boy’s addled mind.

The teacher turned to face her. “What were you doing.” It was impossible to tell if that was a question, or an outraged exclamation. “Why did you run off like that.”

“I dropped my medicine when we were trying to leave,” she said, as childish fingers tried to undo her mask, now that they were down in safety. “And it broke. It was necessary. I needed to go get some more from my bag.”

“You know you’re not meant to do that. You’re meant to tell a teacher, and never, ever, ever run off on your own, especially if we’re trying to evacuate.”

“But I need to have my medicine with me. Else I won’t breathe properly.”

“That means you tell a teacher, and they’ll go get it with you.” The man sighed. “You did get it, though.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re feeling alright.”

“I am now. I had to take some, though, because I was scared,” she said. The girl turned, and pointed at Toja, a thin, pale face framed by brown hair blending into the greyness (it wasn’t really grey, though, now that he thought about it; it just felt grey and tired and misty) around him. “He’s not well, though. He was looking out the window when I found him.” The teacher turned to look at him, worry on his face. This was interrupted, though, as a swarm of small children managed to break the teacher-cordon near the exit, and flocked in.

“Imi!”

“What happened!”

“Kany’s brother saved you, didn’t he? He said he would, and then he ran out of the bunker!”

“So coo~ooool!”

“Awesome.”

“What a hero!”

That was the thing though. He wasn’t a hero. He was just an idiot. God, the nine-year old girl had been brighter than him; at least she’d hidden somewhere safe, rather than under a table. A stupid, impulsive idiot who’d rushed in without thinking, and hadn’t accomplished anything at all. He never did. Better this way, than get her hurt, like he had his sister. But that didn’t mean he was brave, or a hero, or anything but a stupid little boy.

What an idiot.

He had punched the real hero.



~’/|\’~



Leaning back on the bed, Shinji stretched, squirming against the mattress. Above him, the bright white lights of the observation chamber shone down on the stark room. That was not to say that it was bare, just... ruthlessly utilitarian. Although there was furniture in here, there was a certain roundedness, paddedness and weight to it which clearly spoke of the design considerations which had determined its structure. Namely, the designers had not wanted for it to be something the occupant of the room could use to hurt themselves, or, indeed, others.

It was quite astonishing that, primarily, he was feeling bored.

“We’re going to keep you down here for a while, for observation,” Misato had said, as they’d got him out of the recovered entry plug, but before they’d run the battery of medical checks, or, indeed, extracted the LCL from his lungs. It was a strange, sloshy sensation to walk around in the sealed plug-suit variant, the world tainted orange by the fluid which filled the area behind the transparent faceplate. But he was used to it, too. She... she hadn’t been too happy about what he’d done. He should have pulled back once he had freed himself, and they would have dropped a nuke on it. Not damage the Evangelion further.

To be fair, neither had he. That had hurt. And Dr Akagi had noted that ‘Don’t fire rifles with one hand’ was now going to be added to the basic training guide. And, no, apparently, it wasn’t that easy to make it otherwise. He had been in some pain, and largely saying it to annoy her, in fairness.

That didn’t matter. He had heard the unspoken words from both of them, because, outside of the anger, he had thought them too. Why didn’t you try to take it alive?

Well, they hadn’t told him to. It was their fault, if that was what they had wanted.

Pulling up his t-shirt, he checked his stomach again. Nothing. He’d felt the pain as it stabbed into him... not quite true pain, but more like some kind of reflection; a dull ache. But his body looked fine. He still wasn’t feeling well inclined towards whoever came up with the idea of a war machine which hurt the pilot when it got damaged. Not well inclined at all.

At least he wasn’t feeling the same utter exhaustion after the incident with Harbinger-3. He was tired, yes, but this was just the kind of tiredness which came from a temper outburst, that kind of weariness after exertion. Actually remarkably like an exam, come to think of it. Still, with luck, whatever had happened, what the Evangelion had done, what he had done to that first Harbinger would never happen again. He still wasn’t sure; there were flashes of memory, nothing more.

Sitting up, he pulled his t-shirt back down and flattened down his tousled hair (now, mercifully clean of LCL; they were very careful about that in the decontamination procedure, and that was something he fully understood. It tasted vile, after all), and moved over to the seating area, booting up the desk with a button press.

Let’s see... yes. Oh, good, they transferred my muse over here. That was nice enough, he felt. At least this way, he could keep himself entertained. But, first things first.

“Go to the PBO site,” he told the LAI, “... and connect to the news channel.” Shinji had to admit that he was more than a little curious to see how they would be reporting... or not reporting, as the case may be, what had just happened. I’m certainly not an egotist. I don’t want to see whatever they’re saying, and feel all hot and smug inside that it was me. Even if it hurt. And they’re probably not giving me the credit. Not that I want it, of course; I never wanted to have to get into the Evangelion in the first place. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t feel irritated that they’re not worshipping me as their saviour.

Actually... that would really be kind of embarrassing, to be worshipped as a god-king. Some thanks would be nice, but I’ll settle for not being punched this time. Inwardly, he groaned. Oh. I really hope I didn’t hurt anyone else this time. I know it’s not my fault, really, but it’s still sort of my fault.

“Access denied,” the muse said, in its clear voice.

Shinji frowned. “Why?”

“You are currently in psychological observation. Access to outside sources of information has been restricted.”

Shinji let his head slump forwards, and banged it against the desk. “Et tu, you brute?” he muttered, as he rubbed his forehead.

“I am sorry.” The LAI paused. “You currently have three pieces of homework which you have not yet completed,” it added. “If you are bored, access to these activities is unrestricted. By previous behaviour, you will not complete it on time if you do not do it now. And it will free up more time later, when you have access to outside data feeds.”

The boy groaned. “What are you, my mother?”

“No.”

“That wasn’t a question.” Shinji paused. “Well, it was. But it was a rhetorical question.” Something which muses tended to have problems with, as it had been found that false negatives annoyed people more than false positives, when trying to interact with a LAI. The thing was to remember that the LAI wasn’t a person; something which was hard, when you had one so attuned, as he did. Shinji shook his head. It actually did make sense. But the LAI had always seemed to co-operate with Yuki and Gany to make sure that he got homework done, and, generally, nagging him. That was, from the point of view of the designers, a feature, not a bug; Shinji was fairly sure that whoever came up with these things was of the opinion that people needed to be prodded into doing things, and this held doubly true for children. And, yes, in truth, he probably would have a lot more problems handling his life, without his muse to do the menial organisational stuff. But... wait a moment.

“I thought I hadn’t set a priority for the homework yet,” he said slowly.

“The priority of the homework was set to Urgent by a direct override by Major Misato Katsuragi of the New Earth Government Army.”

Stupid emergent heuristic behavioural programming. And stupid Misato.



~’/|\’~



Sitting back in his chair, Gendo Ikari began to reread the formal report he was preparing for the Minister of War. Sections had already been tagged in yellow by his muse for checking, the phrasing adjusted from the rough description of contents into a fully fledged and verbose essay. He had had this Limited Artificial Intelligence for over a decade, after all, and so it was fully conversant with his style. In fact, it amused him that, unless he put in more effort than he could spare at the moment, the muse in fact wrote more idiosyncratically like him than he did. With a few keystrokes, he deleted half a sentence, pausing as he considered how to rephrase it.

It had been necessary to be rushed back to the Geocity in order to deal with the local civic authorities in the aftereffects of Harbinger-4; something rather inconvenient, as he had been involved in some rather important meetings with local Ashcroft personnel and the Navy, in Geneva, about the topic of Annulus, which he would now have to reschedule. The way that the Harbinger had shown up was annoying, a disruption to his schedule, especially for a man famed for his tendency to micromanage. Everyone knew that he would have preferred to be in the Geocity when the threat was detected.

That had, after all, been the point.

“Deputy Representative Fuyutsuki is outside,” the muse informed him.

“Send in him,” the man said, not looking up from his desk.

The echoing, statacco beat of the older man’s footsteps pulsed through the empty space. Gendo sighed, and waved a hand at the desk, turning off the screen. He was going to have to deal with this later.

“I’ve gone over the preliminary budget for the operation,” Fuyutsuki said. “Both mass-energy and financial. And,” he winced, “we really have to get your... the Third Child more familiar with the concept of ‘not damaging the Evangelion’. Ritsuko is... not pleased with the damage. Massive damage to the right arm, several fractures in endoskeleton of the left, quite a bit of torso damage. She’s especially displeased about the left arm, because that was avoidable.”

His protégé tilted his head slightly. “She is also fully aware that such things are necessary. She merely complains at you because you are someone she can complain at.”

“Oh, I know that.” The old man sighed. “But she does go on.”

“Quite,” and Gendo left it at that. He paused. “I have a meeting with her tomorrow evening. I am sure I’ll be hearing the same, if she hasn’t calmed down by then.”

“Anton will be pleased that they managed to capture a few of those things it hatched alive, quite apart from the corpses.”

“No doubt.” The younger man tapped his fingers on his desk idly. “And I can hardly wait to see how many people he’ll lose, trying to weaponise them. I’ve already granted the Engel Group more resources, to deal with the study of these things.”

“That might also explain some of Ritsuko’s irritation,” said Fuyutsuki, sighing. The white-haired man sunk down into the chair in front of the desk with a small groan. “I’ve been standing up for too long today,” he said. “My spine is playing up again.”

“I am sorry to hear that,” Gendo said, curtly.

“I should be enjoying my retirement.”

“You have the option of doing so. I cannot legally stop you taking a well-earned rest.”

Fuyutsuki sighed. “You know I can’t retire, not now. You’d have to find a replacement, and the disruption could be dangerous. But that does mean I can complain about my age occasionally!”

“I believe we had agreed upon that, yes.”

“Do you have to be...” the older man shook his head. “Talking to you is like talking to...” The Representative raised an eyebrow at him. “Never mind. The reason I am here, really,” he continued, “is that... I presume you’ve seen the reports from the Academy.”

“Yes.” Gendo turned the screen of his desk back on, telling the muse to find the relevant documents. “It appears that a pioneering group of students managed, from only a very little evidence, to deduce the existence of the Evangelion Group and of the Test Pilot programme.” The words were said completely without emotion. “Internal Security has been informed of the holes which they stumbled across, and will act to fix them, as best they can. The named students have been briefed on the need for secrecy, and the consequences of failing to maintain it.”

Fuyutusuki squinted at him. “Most people would be a little more concerned about the kind of flaws in security which would let out information about a top secret Project.”

“I am terrified.” The tone was deadpan.

“I see,” the older man sighed, leaning back in his chair. It was slightly annoying that the chair for visitors was just slightly lower than the one which the Representative sat in; it put all guests in a position of supplication. Quite deliberately, of course; it was merely another way that this room served to intimidate.

“The Evangelion Units are not a subtle weapon. A non-negligible number of military personnel not cleared for such knowledge are already aware, through mere observation, that the New Earth Government possesses some kind of secret, capital grade mecha. The Project was always going to be discovered at some point, after it was deployed in defence of the city.”

“And the fact that students were capable of doing so merely backs those who argue that the secrecy, once it has been shown that there are multiple viable Test Pilots, is unnecessary?”

Orange-tinted glasses reflected the light of the desk back. “It would be possible to read things that way, yes.”

“And the fact that knowledge that you have, among your assets, access to capital-grade ACXB units, only plays to your own advantage, strengthening your hand against the Research Representative, as well as NEG military and civilian authorities?”

“Is purely coincidental.”

“And the fact that it appears that part of the data which,” he checked his palmtop device, “Taly Talerni oy Chicago-twi oy...” he sighed, with the weariness of a man who had already been in his forties when the First Arcanotech War started, “... and I think we can skip the rest of the overly long name... part of the data one of the students used has already been lost in a server crash, and so the only evidence we have that it exists is the back-ups that she and another student made of it? Given that it was a server crash which seems to have corrupted that site’s own, off-site back-ups? And all the Grid archival sites we have tagged?”

“That is a problem. It would have made it easier to have traced the leak if we had access to such a thing.”

Fuyutsuki sighed. “Neither the Council of Representatives nor AHNUNG will be pleased.”

“And that is a terrible shame, but they must be made aware of the necessities on the ground. I am sure that the Council will agree with me, that it is better that we go public in a method we control, and can play to our own advantage.” Gendo paused. “Well, apart from Christina, but she objects to pretty much anything I suggest on general principles,” he added with a frown.

“And you are completely innocent of any antagonism towards her, Ikari.”

Ignoring the older man, Gendo continued, “And as for AHNUNG,” the man’s lips were concealed behind his white, sterile gloves, “... well, they have influence, but for all their pretensions and obsessions, they lack control. They know it; they know that I know that. They will accede, once the advantages are explained to them.”

Stretching his neck, Kozo Fuyutsuki slowly levered himself upright. “How goes research into ‘The Heart of Rogziel’, by the way?” he asked, knees clicking.

“Poorly,” Gendo admitted. “I have not made any more progress into finding the solution for the c-language, although it does bear some resemblance to Salaamian sorcerous markings... not in the vocabulary, nor in the grammar, but in the structure.” He paused. “What I presume to be the structure,” he admitted. “And you know of my beliefs that there is some kind of sapience within, which acts to circumvent such attempts. All that stands are the brute-force attempts, and the construct that results from such things is unstable and incomplete. And I do not have the time to spare at the moment, and cannot risk another accident.” For a moment, he looked lost. “I wish Yui were here,” he added softly. “She was always better at esoterics. Not the actual practice of sorcery, she couldn’t do that at all, but this kind of study of the root cause, this study of the obscure, the non-intuitive leaps... I miss her.”

There was a hollow silence in the office. Gendo blinked, and just as suddenly, the mask was back on.

The older man shifted uncomfortably. “When are you going to propose that Project Evangelion be revealed to the public?” asked Fuyutsuki, the words coming out a little too quickly, as if he were trying to get the conversation away from the previous topic.

“Not until we have shown that Unit 00 can start up, and maintain a stable synchronisation link,” the man answered, his eyes hidden by the opacity of his arglasses. “Such an event was a black mark in our book, and we cannot hope for the Evangelions to be viewed as a stable combat platform while the risk that such an event could happen again still hangs over our heads. Schedule the reactivation test for as soon as Rei is physically capable of doing so.”

“I understand.” Fuyutsuki’s footsteps receded, off into the distance, as he left. Gendo did not watch him go, but instead returned, head lowered, to his report.



~’/|\’~

[Tabasco]

You have been busy, that was a monster of a chapter. I compared against the relevant section of the previous fic, and man does a couple of years make a difference.

I liked Toja's motivation for leaving the shelter a lot better in this fic than the original series, a better look into what he's really like when he isn't being an impulsive jackass.

[EarthScorpion]

You have been busy, that was a monster of a chapter. I compared against the relevant section of the previous fic, and man does a couple of years make a difference.

Heh. Not even two years, actually; more like one-and-a-half. And, yes, I am a lot more pleased with how things are going this time. Now, yes, I am somewhat concerned by the tendency of my chapters to really bloat; I mean, would this have been better if I'd split it down into three sections of 10,000 words, or two of 15,000? That's something I'm really uncertain about.

I liked Toja's motivation for leaving the shelter a lot better in this fic than the original series, a better look into what he's really like when he isn't being an impulsive jackass.

Yes. Actually, a large reason for the reboot of ANE was that I needed to actually get characterisation for the side characters. I actually hav e a spreadsheet set up this time, where every character who gets named gets an entry which covers their physical appearance, name, and plot quirks; I've named and physical apperanced most of their class. And... well, without character development, anything nasty I might hypothetically do to a character (What? I'm not talking about Toja here,honest! *looks shifty*) won't mean as much

What did you think of that fact that Toja's sister is actually appearing, by the way? In fact, generally of the way I write the OCs (well, technically she's not one, but she might as well be) I'm using to flesh out the setting?

[Tabasco]

What did you think of that fact that Toja's sister is actually appearing, by the way? In fact, generally of the way I write the OCs (well, technically she's not one, but she might as well be) I'm using to flesh out the setting?

Works for me, at least. For my money, that's the true purpose of an OC in the first place, to explore facets of the lead characters or setting that we don't see otherwise.

[EarthScorpion]

Have Chapter 6; it's a bit of a shorter one.


~'/|\'~



Chapter 6

Die Grabesmutter / And the sullen rear was with its stored thunder labouring up.

ENTELECHY



~'/|\'~



Die Natur des Menschen bleibt immer dieselbe; im zehntausendsten Jahr der Welt wird er mit Leidenschaften geboren, wie er im zweiten derselben mit Leidenschaften geboren ward, und durchläuft den Gang seiner Thorheiten zu einer späten, unvollkommenen, nutzlosen Weisheit. Wir gehen in einem Labyrinth umher, in welchem unser Leben nur eine Spanne abschneidet; daher es uns fast gleichgültig sein kann, ob der Irrweg Entwurf und Ausgang habe.

The nature of man remains ever the same: in the ten thousandth year of the World he will be born with passions, as he was born with passions in the two thousandth, and ran through his course of follies to a late, imperfect, useless wisdom. We wander in a labyrinth, in which our lives occupy but a span; so that it is to us nearly a matter of indifference, whether there be any entrance or outlet to the intricate path.

Johann Gottfried Herder
“Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit”, Vol. 2, p. 186; translation vol. 2, pp. 266-7




~'/|\'~



21st of February, 2079

“But Mama, I’m hungry!”

The little girl’s mother glanced down at her, the corners of her eyes creasing up in a smile. “Now, come on, Asuka,” the woman said. “We don’t want to ruin your appetite, do we?”

“I do!”

“No, we don’t. We’re having a big dinner with Uncle Cal, this evening, and that means that you’ll want to be on your best behaviour.”

The little girl pouted. “But I’m hungry now!”

Kyoko Zeppelin Soryu sighed, a slight smile in her voice, and searched through her handbag. “Would a drink be okay, Asuka?” she asked. “I have orange juice...”

The little girl slumped to the ground, arms folded, a frown on her face. “But I want food now. I don’t want a fancy meal or stuff with Uncle Cal.” She stuck her hands into the pockets of her pale dress, made of undyed cotton. “Why can’t I have food now?”

“Don’t do that, Asuka, you’ll ruin the lining of the dress,” Kyoko snapped. She consciously tried to calm her expression. “Because,” she explained again, “we have a big important dinner planned.” She sighed. “Do you want the juice or not?”

“I want it.”

“Okay, now take your hands out of your pockets, and stand up, and you can have it.”

The child slowly, hesitantly pulled herself upright, both hands held out. The suction-capped bottle was handed over.

“I’m sorry it’s taking so long, Asuka,” Kyoko said, shaking her head, as her daughter began to emit slurping noises as she lifted the sports bottle in both hands. “And Cal’s going to be in a bit of trouble when he shows up, because he’s late.”

“So it’s all his fault that I’m hungry, then?” the girl asked, lowering the bottle.

“... I wouldn’t put it exactly like...”

“So, right,” said her daughter, a calculating look in her blue eyes, “that means he should be bringing me a nice present, right?”

“That is possible?” Kyoko said, blandly.

“But is he doing it?”

“Maybe.”

“Is he?”

“It is possible.”

“But is he?”

Kyoko sighed. “It’s a secret. Drink your orange juice.”

There was silence. Then, “Mama?”

“Yes?”

“Are you going to marry Uncle Cal?”

Kyoko coughed loudly, spluttering, while her daughter, clutching the bottle of orange juice close to her, looked up in worry. “Where... what... where did that come from?” she managed, weakly, gesturing to pass the orange juice.

“I asked you.”

The red-haired woman, almost as red in the face, took a long drink, and wiped her mouth. “No...” she paused, rephrasing the question. “I meant, why did you ask that?”

“Oh, well, I was thinking, you like him, and he gets me presents, so you could get married, and he could be my daddy.”

Kyoko shook her head sadly, at the combination of innocence and childish greed in the suggestion. “It doesn’t work like that, I’m afraid. He’s already married. And you can’t marry someone who’s already married,” she explained, trying to simplify matters.

“Oh.” The little girl looked upset, as she raised her hands to have the bottle passed back to her. “But Mamas always marry the nice Uncle on TV.”

Kyoko paused. How to explain this? She suddenly had a wave of sympathy for her own mother; Asuka was just as curious as she had been at the same age. “Things don’t happen like they do on TV in real life,” was the answer she settled for.

“Why not?”

Of course. The inevitable response. “Because sometimes, things on TV happen because people want them to happen, rather than because they’re realistic.”

“Why?”

“Because it makes people happy to watch something that isn’t realistic. I mean, bad things happen in the world sometimes, but people don’t like it when it happens, so they tell stories where only nice things happen.”

“But that’s lying!”

“Not really,” Kyoko winced. “It’s just telling stories to make people happy.”

The little girl tilted her head, and narrowed her blue eyes. “Sooo~oooo,” she said, elongating the word, “it’s okay to lie to people if it makes them happy, then?”

“No. No, it’s not. Drink your orange juice, Asuka.”

“I’m sorry I’m late,” a precise, elegant male voice called out, from behind them.

The little girl dropped the bottle of juice to the floor, where it began to leak, and ran over, colliding with the man’s legs with a slight squeak, and hugging onto them. “Uncle Cal!” she squealed.

“Hello, Asuka,” the man, who was not her biological Uncle, said to her, scooping her up and clutching her to his shoulder.

Kyoko smiled, as she bend down, and picked up the bottle, wiping the top clean and resealing the lid before tucking it back in her bag. The man, tall and thin (even taller than she was, and she wasn’t short), had a neatly trimmed beard matching his precisely cut, rust-coloured hair. He was a bit of a narcissist, actually, she noted; most male scientists tended to either let the beard grow to a manageable length, and just trim it, or keep clean shaven. It took more effort than most were willing to take to keep such a fine state of grooming. More than most of the women actually put in either, probably. There was something around his eyes which didn’t match his features, the hint a product of Vietnamese blood in his broadly Gallo-Russian heritage.

“Can we go have food, now, plee~ease?”

“Soon, soon,” he answered, bouncing her up and down slightly, as he turned his head to the girl’s mother. “Kyoko,” he said. “Sorry I’m late; the Magi were being uncooperative.”

Kyoko snorted. “As always. Hello, Calvin.”

“Yes. Magi-80 finally managed to get a valid build.” He shook his head. “I’d swear, -83 and -88 hate me. Never seem to work. But Eighty... Eighty is lucky for me. Naoko was very unhelpful,” he added.

“Yes, because that’s totally a change in behaviour for her.” Kyoko paused, and rolled her eyes. “Well, actually, yes it is. Normally, I’d call her ‘exceptionally unhelpful’. I swear sometimes...”

“But you shouldn’t swear,” interjected the little girl.

“Shush, Asuka. I think sometimes,” she said, changing her words, “that she’d marry them if she could. Like the names? Calling Magi-80 Casper, and -83 Melchior, and... so on. Just a little pretentious. How is it...”

Calvin waved her quiet. “Guess what, Asuka?”

“What?”

“I got you a present.”

“Yay!” She began to squirm in his arms. “What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it?”

Carefully, he put her down, and took off the backpack he was wearing. “Be careful with it,” he said, “because it is fairly delicate.”

“Not too delicate, I hope,” Kyoko interjected, a worried look on her face. “Remember, Calvin, she is four. And you did check that the pieces are child-safe, didn’t you?”

“I might be four, but I’m still a big girl. What is it? What is it?”

A small, metallic quadruped was lifted out of the bag, and put down. It was maybe 30 centimetres all, coloured a metallic bluish-grey, and vaguely canine in shape. It was, however, very smoothed down, as appropriate for a child’s toy, the only protrusions from the body of plastic coating and the clear bits which showed the black artificial musculature being the flaps on the head, which could close to protect its torch-like single eye.

“Well it’s a... technically, it’s not a LITAN. More like a LIPFA.”

“A what?”

“A Limited Information Pet For Asuka. It’s a small LAI network in the body of a robotic pet dog.”

“But dogs’ heads don’t look like that. I know, because we looked at the books last time we went to Chicago-3.”

“Chicago-2,” Kyoko corrected her.

“Oh. Chicago-2, then.” She frowned. “I thought we went to Chicago-3. Or something -3, anyway.”

“That was Toyko-3,darling.”

“Okay.” A childish finger prodded the toy, making it wobble from side to side. “So, how do I make it work?”

Calvin nodded. “Can you pass me your PCPU, please, Asuka?”

“’Kay!”

The man took the small, child-safe computer (a piece of technology devoid of sharp edges, and with a nice, solid build which wouldn’t break when someone in the intended 2-5 age range dropped it), and plugged a cable in from the side of his own, considerably more sleek model. “Just wait while it does the... okay. That’s it. Okay, Asuka, look at the screen here,” he said, detaching it.

“Uh huh.”

“Look. You can see the icon here. You can see that it looks like its head, yes?”

“Yes! It does! It has the light, and the flappy bits.”

“Well, look. Underneath, it says ‘Jeff’. That’s its name.”

“I can read, you know. I am four, after all.

“Only just,” said Kyoko, with a smile, looking at the pair of them crouched down on the floor together, next to the small quadruped.

“That doesn’t matter, Mama. The point is, I’m four, and only stupid people can’t read properly. Look. J. E. F. F. Jeff. And next to it is G. R. I. D. Grid. And next to that...”

“Okay, Asuka,” said Calvin. “I believe you. You’re a really smart little girl, aren’t you? Just like your Mama.”

The girl blushed as red as her hair. “I’m not that smart,” she said. “Mama’s like the smartest person in the world.”

Kyoko coughed. “Well, I’m certainly in the top hundred,” she said, with a smirk. “As are you, Cal. So it’s not really a...” she shook her head. “Never mind.”

“Anyway,” continued Cal, “You just press that, right?”

“Uh huh.”

“And then it activates. And you can press the buttons and make it do things, and you can teach it tricks. It’s like a real dog, but it’s smarter.”

“Cool!”

“It is really nice, isn’t it,” Calvin said, with a self-satisfied grin. “It would take some kind of genius to design it, wouldn’t it?”

He suddenly found a pair of arms fastened around his neck. “Thank you Uncle Cal! Thank you thank you thank you!”

He slowly detached her arms, and, standing up, tousled her hair. “I’m glad you like it, Asuka,” he said, still smiling. “Now, can you just see if you can work out how to get it to talk to you, because I hid that feature in it. I’ll be over here, talking to your Mama.”

The two adults sat down at the side of the room, and watched the little girl, tongue sticking out, as she starting pressing buttons. There was a moment of silence. Then;

“How are you feeling, Kyoko?”

The red-haired woman shook her head. “Like I’ve got that kind of squirming feeling where you know that you’re doing something that you shouldn’t do, but also that you can’t not do it.”

“I really don’t quite get your objections,” Calvin said. “You had no problems with doing it before.”

“Yes, but as we get closer to the 24th, I suddenly realise what I’m staring in the face. Do I have the right to do it?”

“Yes.”

Kyoko shook her head. “Oh, it’s hopeless getting into ethical debates with you. You’ve just got this damnable certainty. It’s one of your better traits.”

The man smiled. “Why, thank you.”

“I meant it seriously. From both my arcanobiological, and sorcerous training, I’m fully aware of how much of my reactions are determined by old evolutionary programming. It doesn’t help at all. I mean, look at the last 13.4 seconds of data from Y... from the incident with Unit 01. She panicked.” Kyoko sighed. “I hated her towards the end, but she didn’t deserve that. No one does. Fear won’t help me. And yet I’m scared.” She cocked her head. “And I can’t even drug those feelings into oblivion, because we found that the experimental test subjects in the test bodies responded... badly to that. How reassuring.”

“Well... at least, I hope tonight can help calm you down a bit,” said Calvin seriously, resting one hand on her shoulder. “This should be reassuring, make you feel more confident. That is, after all, why I persuaded Gendo to take you off the development team for the last week.” He paused. “That man doesn’t seemed to be concerned about another test.”

“I know why you did that, because I needed time to prepare stuff. But, mein Gott, I wish I was working. I just get to sit here and worry, and try to hide things from Asuka. Obviously, I’ve had her at nursery in the day, because I don’t want to break her routine, but the nights haven’t been fun. There’s only so long I can stare at my will without... hah... breaking my will. And you’ve been working all the time, too, so there hasn’t even been...”

“We’re sure we’ve found the problem with Unit 01, remember. We’ve got the enhanced LITAN handling animaneural integration, and we got Amunet to devise a new LCL-mix. And let’s not even get into the ways that you’re different from Yui.”

“I... I suppose.”

“Remember, we’ve made sure you’ve got an escape route from the Test which Yui didn’t have. You’ll be able to survive, if it all goes wrong.”

“I know. I... I know.”

“It will be fine.”

There was silence, only broken by the slight mechanical whine of “Jeff”, and the occasional squeals of “Look! Backflip!” and “Coo~oool!

“You’ll look after her?” Kyoko said, her voice almost a whisper. “Won’t you? If things go really wrong, and it doesn’t work at all?”

“Of course,” Calvin said, taking her hand, and staring into her eyes.

“It’s almost time, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”



~'/|\'~

[EarthScorpion]

Chapter 7

Die Brandrosenfürstin / One hand she press'd upon that aching spot where beats the human heart,

ENTELECHY



~’/|\’~



“Our century is probably more religious than any other. How could it fail to be, with such problems to be solved? The only trouble is that it has not yet found a God it can adore.”

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
“Le Phénomène Humain”



~’/|\’~



The Migou.

What were the Migou? What did they want? Why were they here? What, in fact, was their ultimate goal?

And, of course, how could one kill every last one of those fungoid, insectoid, Yuggothian fuckers?

These were all questions that the New Earth Government would really rather prefer that it knew the answers to. But, as knowledge was thin on the ground, too often it had to resort to guesswork and estimation, piecing together information from the pieces they could gather from mythology and misunderstood histories, from the extracted memories of the Nazzadi Firstborn, the generals of the Migou-built fleet, and from what had been gathered since the start of the Second Arcanotech War. Even the name ‘Migou’ was a misnomer, derived from misunderstandings of the tales of Tibetan peasants of a creature which bore resemblance to the yeti. That was quite eminently false; the white-furred, vaguely anthropic creatures native to Tibet were actually a result of the Leng Intrusion Zone there, leaking through and permitting the ingress of one of the denizens of that place, and not at all related to the Migou, although, in fairness, there were traces of what could have been their activity in those regions.

Where to begin, then?

Why, with what was known, of course.

The Migou, or Mi-go, were not an Earthly lifeform. It was likely that they did not even originate in the Sol system; evidence obtained from the ruins of the Elder Thing city in Antarctica, and what could be translated of the writings found there, showed what appeared to the arrival of beings which bore some resemblance to the kind of Migou most commonly encountered piloting crashed craft. That would put them as, by human standards, an incredibly ancient species; estimations from the strange, dateless rock used in the city put the images at somewhere between one and two billion years old. The resemblance was not exact, though, and it was debated whether they were truly the same species; even if they were, it was implausible that they would remain identical across these vast gulfs of time. Certainly, the modern Migou exhibited massive morphological variation, although the evidence was such that this appeared to be a deliberate, self-inflicted change. This hypothesis was backed up by their self-evident mastery of the biological sciences, and their pronounced proclivity for enhancing their servant-races. There were cybernetics which appeared to be grown from the body itself, rather than grafted in like human-made ones, massive neural rewiring, complete rebuilds of organ systems; the list of the accomplishments of their clinical genius was endless, and an object of subtle and not-so-subtle envy by New Earth Government scientists.

But, regardless of their origin, it was known that the Migou did possess holding outside of Sol, and they occupied most of the Oort Cloud. The vast cities of darkened Yuggoth, that place which mankind called “Pluto” riddled the fabric of the dwarf planet such that it was one vast habitat, and it was not alone. The flares of fusion drives, false stars in the night’s sky, which had accompanied the start of Migou operations against Earth as they discarded long-held stealth, were proof of this. The industry required to build the billions of Nazzadi, quite apart from the invasion fleet itself, which had attacked in the First Arcanotech War, was proof of this. The way they valued their own much more than they did their drones or constructs, preferring to risk a division of manufactured Loyalist Nazzadi rather than a company-formation of Migou, was proof of this, for they held an unimaginable amount of territory in the Outer System, and corresponding amounts of resources. On the other hand, it was known that they had not historically ventured in even as far as Uranus, at least in any major numbers, for the human colonisation of the Solar System, in that brief belle epoché of the 2040s and 2050s, had never found any trace of them; of other things, yes, strange and wondrous and terrifying things, but not of the Migou.

And perhaps because of this, the actual amount of Migou involvement in human affairs seemed to have been minimal. A few scattered contacts, a few peculiar corpses, never found for autopsy; they seemed to dissolve in less than a day, in what was suspected to be self-destruct mechanism. A few mad tales screamed by madmen in asylums after unpleasant encounters in remote areas. Nothing concrete. There had possibly been an upsurge in activity at the start of the twentieth century, but it had died down again by the time of the Second World War. The infamous Roswell Saucer was an urban legend, nothing more; rumours and tales blown into a mythology by the gales of human ingenuity and boredom.

And then one came to the Nazzadi. And they were a perplexing change in Migou behaviour. Built using archaic Homo sapiens as the clay upon which the Migou sculpted their designs, they were sufficiently diverse that it suggested that there had been considerable genetic sampling. Despite the archaic, pre-agriculture base, there were extensive gene segments which had almost certainly been imported straight from modern humanity, to the extent that some of the original Nazzadi had been, according to the genetic tests, sufficiently Jewish to satisfy Reformist, if not Orthodox, believers. The evidence suggested that the Migou had effectively rebooted human evolution, taking elements that they liked from Homo sapiens sapiens, but systematically cleansing the gene lines of Outsider Taint. None of the original Nazzadi had any signs of Deep One heritage, necrophagic proclivities, or Tcho-Tcho taint, to name but three of the morphological incongruities which existed among modern mankind, and which the eugenics programmes of the New Earth Government were trying their best to cleanse.

The First Aracnotech War had been a war of control, not extermination. The black-skinned, red-eyed cousins of mankind had come en masse, but to colonise and subjugate, not necessarily extinguish. Even the tales that the Migou had programmed into the Nazzadi, memories implanted without events, had backed this up; mankind was nothing more than a renegade branch of a failed colonisation attempt by the slow, cyclic mass of the slower-than-light Nazzadi peoples, records and contact lost by the terrors of civil war. The Reclamation had been an attempt to retake a failed, renegade colony founded by a long-dead cruel empire. Habitable planets were rare, after all, and it was all for the greater good that the world be used by real people, literally, nazzadi, not the degenerate, wrong-skinned descendents of illegal miscegenation and genetic manipulation. Of course, those humans who had been interned in the Nazzadi “re-education” camps would not agree, but they would thank them, later.

Yes, the Migou had studied human history and human psychology well, for the internal justifications and self-belief were all too familiar.

The First Arcanotech War was widely agreed to have begun on the 16th of December, 2059, when the American Cressida research station, in orbit around Uranus, the furthest that mankind had reached into the system, was destroyed by pin-point accurate laser fire. History credits the deed to a light interdiction ship from the first of the three fleets, the Nostalgy fer Solitudiny and five hundred million Nazzadi had cheered its name, as the lasered message had passed from ship to ship that the first blow of the Reclamation had been struck, even as the four billion inactive bodies of to-be colonists and soldiers slept in an undying sleep, packed densely into holds. And on Earth, still far enough away that the light from the destruction was still crawling its way there, over eight billion humans had more metaphorically slept on in peace, unknowing what was coming.

There had been no cheering, and no sleeping, in 2065, when two billion Nazzadi and four and a half billion humans had signed the peace treaty that had bought the war to an end. And had promptly splintered, as the nation-states which had allied under the New United Nations tried to go their separate ways, some rejecting the idea of peace with the Nazzadi while others made power plays for intact territory on the wrecked earth. There were also Nazzadi Loyalists still present on Earth; the combination of stealth technology, and the infinite-energy-finite-power of the D-Engine, meant that they could go worryingly long without resupply. The diamond fist of the nascent New Earth Government, growing out of the NUN, had enforced a new order for this changed world, in part using the assets of the now-surrendered Nazzadi fleet. Orbital insertions and strikes had decapitated any splinter faction which tried to oppose them. In an almost convulsive spasm of activity, rebuilding had begun, engineering projects beyond anything historically seen. Some might have been impressed by the wonders of ancient civilisation. The pyramids, the Parthenon, the Flavian Amphitheatre; they were nothing, as specks of dust to the arcologies which had desperately blossomed to repair a shattered civilisation.

And then, ten years later, the Migou had come again, against both the forces of mankind and their own renegade assets, and had swept orbit clean, bringing the so-called “Hive Ship” with them, a 1200 kilometre behemoth which dominated an entire hemisphere at once.

They showed that they had only given the Nazzadi trivialities, toys carefully designed to be marginally above human technological levels, such that should they fail, mankind would receive no extra boost. In an ironic inversion of popular culture, it was the bugs who were the elite, technologically superior, intelligent foes, against whom the swarms of humanity dashed themselves. The simple fact was that the fungoid creatures were smarter, tougher, more technologically and mystically advanced, and, by most objective measurements one care to name, just better than humanity. But the New Earth Government had found that it was willing to go where the Migou would not. To dabble in things that the Migou chose not to know. Because they were desperate. Because they were ignorant.

Such was the Second Arcanotech War. Man versus Migou... and both of them against the Others.



~’/|\’~



25th September, 2091

Flat on her back, head aching, Lance Corporal Xuan Do dropped her rifle, and fumbled for the fallen seeker-launcher, staring up at the overexposed sky. It was tainted with silver, everything slightly misted by the emfog of micromachines and smaller nanological weapons which both sides pumped out. The thin, gritty layer which was starting to accumulate on every surface drained the colour from the world; a grey dust which removed red and green and blue and yellow alike, leaving only a greyed out world which was disturbingly similar to an arcanochromatically drained region. Accompanying it, unseen, waves of ECM flooded the electromagnetic spectrum, both sides trying to flood the areas which their foes used. Images and messages flashed and skipped along the inside of both her helmet and her Eyes, jolting and twisting. For a moment, the legionary LAI in her armour’s systems flashed bright red, picking out a glowing red hit-box around a perfectly innocent piece of wall, before dancing away again. Crackles of static filled her ears. The launcher wasn’t even giving her a response code, and she swore. The uplink ports on the fingers of her armour obviously weren’t working, and she scrabbled at the wrist of right hand, trying to pull out the hard-link cable to physically hook it up to the smart micromissile system.

Her breath was shuddering, harsh under her helmet. Her new orders... she wasn’t going to survive them. But she would still carry them out, because she believed.

What looked like a crack of lightning whipped overhead, the white-blue brightness forcing her filters opaque. The impact blew apart one of the trees which grew inside this ruined church, vaporising leaves and branches that strove to reach up and out, towards the light. Creeping vegetation growing up the walls of rotted, stinking, plaster-covered stone ignited, basking the rubble in a flickering light whose black smoke only added to the dust in the air. The patter of dust and shrapnel against her semi-powered armour was like rain, wet sounding patters against the hard plates. Rolling, beating, the woman tried to scrape the superheated material off, before the heat got too much even through her armour.

Besides her, the remnants of her fireteam lay. Though that was not quite accurate. Baguna and Rereny had been shot, yes, heads torn apart by neat clusters of rifle fire, but Nahuel had been hit in the chest by a seeker-scale explosive, and as a result was smeared around the inside of this ruined church. The splatter was largely red, though right around the blast, it had been burned to a brownish-blackish colour which, Xuan had been told, smelt like a mix of ozone, burnt hair, and overcooked pork.

Slowly, agonisingly slowly, the woman pulled herself along her back, trying to find a lower point in the cratered floor. There were both Migou, and Loyalist Elite out there, and she wasn’t even in a true powered armour. She wouldn’t be able to carry out her mission if she died in the same way that Nahuel had.

[Reboot complete. WARNING! Corrupted files detected. Attempting auto-repair.] Text began to scroll down in her left Eye, the red warning of several failures in the LAI.

“Cancel! Cancel! Cancel it!” she hissed at the AICS system in her armour. “Hide text overlay in Eyes, as well.” The text, phantom images inserted by the circuitry which lived in-between the vat-grown, cybernetically enhanced tissue of her standard-issue Eyes, and the optical nerve she had been born with, vanished, and Xuan sighed. It was important that she know what was not working, true; it was also important that she be able to see, and have the LAI operating as best it could, rather than trying to autorepair. “LAI, check connection of Hornet HMLS.”

[Hardwired connection detected. Weapons system is slaved to smartlink. WARNING! Error: 550A-2. Without repair, functionality cannot be guaranteed. WARNING! Standard Interface Ports are offline. WARNING! Contact with Charlie Team lost. WARNING! Contact with Command lost. Trying to re-establish contact...”]

“Shut the fuck up, Aches! Will it work?”

A pause, while a progress bar zipped across her Eyes. [Smartlink is operational. Weapon is operational] it ‘answered’ in the form of text, the weapon icon turning green.

The woman sighed in relief. “Good. Aches, exit diagnostic mode, go to combat mode.”

The Limited Artificial Intelligence was silent, which was at least a small mercy, though it kept the red flashing icon up. Grinding, scraping, she managed to get as low as possible, and snaked her camera up, the smart fibre optic cable a much smaller target. What she saw made her swear.

She had been wrong. There weren’t Loyalists or Migou out there. Well, if there were, she couldn’t see them, which was alarming. But not as alarming on the gut-deep, visceral level, as what she saw was. The Migou were alien, cold, and inhuman. The Nazzadi Loyalists were their willing slaves, built by the Yuggothian fungoids as weapons to use against mankind. The majority may have defected at the end of the First Arcanotech War, as the subspecies discovered their origins, and had promptly slaughtered most of those who did not turn in the Nazzadi Civil War, but Loyalists still remained. They were bolstered further by fresh reinforcements, and the NEG believed that the Migou had set up forward growth vats in the Asteroid Belt. The Nazzadi Loyalist Elite, meanwhile, were a more recent appearance; while the normal Loyalists tended to use modernised variants of AW1 gear, the Elite aesthetic screamed of the design influences of the Migou, and the corresponding increase in lethality was a worry to anyone who saw them. They were still expendable, but they were a more valued asset, laden down with implants and enhancements.

But out there, were Combat Blanks.

Blanks. Men and women ‘utilised’ by the Migou, as infiltrators and soldiers alike.

Blanks. Any human or amlati could be one, until you’d put them through the tests. And even then, you couldn’t be sure, because the Migou and the NEG were engaged in a constantly escalating war of counter-intelligence and counter-counter-intelligence, so a near-infinite variety of Blanks existed.

Blanks. There was empty horror in the word, a horror that the Migou had deliberately chosen, for it had been given by the first captured examples. And it just made things worse.

These ones were Combat Blanks, too, not just Infiltrators. Infiltrators were basically base human, just... changed... in the head. Combat Blanks were more heavily modified. Fitted with many of the same enhancements the Loyalist Elite had, they were faster and stronger than a normal human being, their entire nervous system rebuilt for disassociated autonomous control. Shoot them in the head, and they did not die. Sever their limbs, and they would wirelessly control the integrated weapons. They were, naked, not dissimilar to an ultralight suit of powered armour, and then they were fitted with stolen NEG or Migou-built gear. The energy for all their combat systems came from the tiny amount of antimatter contained within a magnetic bottle inside their chest, replacing useless organs, which meant that not one had been taken alive or intact for full scans. They blew up, if there was a risk of being compromised, so the NEG did not even know how the Migou did what they did to make them.

The three, slightly misshapen shapes in combat armour, bulked out by synthetic musculature and integrated weapons, and their helmets covered in bubo-like bulges of sensory equipment, were making their way towards the ruined church. With smooth, precise efficiency and perfect coordination, they were bounding between cover, covering all angles. Clutching her seeker closer, Xuan checked that all three targets were highlighted in red on her smartlink. The rifle wasn’t going to do much against these kinds of things, but she could switch to the underslung seeker launcher on it when she ran out of ammunition for the dedicated launcher. Stay in cover, fire the seekers upwards, and let them home in. Sadly, these weren’t proper anti-mecha seekers, just the lighter version issued to infantry for use on powered armour, Combat Blanks and Loyalists, and weren’t a certain kill, especially if her smartlink wasn’t working properly. Which it might not be.

No. She’d done everything she could here. She should pull out of these fortified church ruins, let the Migou have it, and re-establish contact with the NEGA forces. It would be clear to even the most blinkered officer that one person could not hold against three Combat Blanks. She’d be useless if she was dead.

“Contact with Command re-established,” reported the AICS. “Codes are valid. Override patching you through.”

Xuan’s thoughts were turning to homicide. They’d know, now that Command had forced contact. As if the Migou couldn’t track a radio signal.

“Report in!” The voice of the Lieutenant in charge of her platoon was audible, even through the heavy encryption.

“Lance Corporal Xuan Do.” She rattled off her code.

“Verified. Report.”

“Rest of my team is KIA; I can confirm that. Hostiles advancing on my position; three Charlie Bravo Tangos, plus possible Loyalist or Bug units. Contact lost with Charlie Fireteam and Sergeant Bana; munitions detonation, I think.” She paused. “No contact, but I think they’re dead. They can’t have survived that. Migou artillery got a precise hit on one of our ammo dumps.”

“Understood.” There was a pause. “We have the squirt from your armour... what there is. There’s a major data loss, and a lot of error reports, can you confirm?”

“Yes, Lieutenant. The Migou were using some kind of AEW... maybe EMP, but that doesn’t match the crash. Systems went down, and my AICS is running in safe mode, due to damage.”

“Received.” There was a pause. “Yes, that matches the feed. You’re the forwards-most observer we have. Hold position, and observe. We’re sending reinforcements. Keep in contact. Over and out.”

“Understood, sir.” Underneath her breath, she muttered curses, scuttling over on her stomach to a fresh position. She’d need to get higher, to see what was happening properly.



~’/|\’~



This command centre was nearly identical to EuroHighCom, back in London-2. That was not surprising; these armoured bunkers were built to identical standards, after all.

“The Eidelon Combat Units are in position, Colonel Rury,” reported the interface unit of COEUS, the Total Information Tactical Analysis Network component stationed here on the Eastern Front. Quite simply, its various interface components cut past a lot of the chain of command, to ensure that orders were transmitted accurately, and to connect the humans who were making and implementing the decisions. “Ready to move at your order.”

The black-skinned, red-eyed woman nodded once. “Thank you, COEUS.” She stared across the room, catching the eyes of a blue-eyed, blond woman in the identical uniform of a Colonel of the New Earth Government Army, who gave her a slight twitch of the corner of her mouth, almost unnoticeable, and a similarly small nod.

That was reassuring. As a member of the Special Weapons Division, it was necessary to maintain a good working relationship with the main chain of command, and the other woman was attached directly to Vice-Marshal Slavik’s office. The Serbian Wolf was a good ally of the SWD, especially in the interdictine politicking which somehow managed to arise, even in a fight for species survival.

Shaking her head slightly, the nazzady glanced back at the strategic map, which only existed for her as an image fed directly into her optic nerve by her Eyes. The New Earth Government forces were being pushed back, it was true. That damned Migou commando strike had taken out one of the anti-capital lasers, and the bugs were pushing this to their best advantage. With a few gestures, she zoomed in on the landing zones on the east of Nova Kakhovka. One... two... three Drone Ships were already on the ground, kilometre-long vessels positively loaded with Nazzadi, Blanked and Migou forces, and worryingly invisible to radar, and Orbital were tracking several more, with Swarm Ship escorts.

But it was imperative that they hold Nova Kakhovka. The city had been built by the long-dead Soviet Union for the construction of a nearby dam, the source of hydroelectricity inherited by Ukraine, a nation which had sprung up from the carcass of that superstate, and left to rot by the European Union, one of the superstates that had formed the core of the NEG. The D-Engine had crippled this city, as its invention removed the raison d’etre for this place. Now it was an overgrown cemetery to progress, the trees and grasses having largely reclaimed rotting buildings and pot-holed streets. However, it was also useful as an airbase (the launch chutes dug deep under the city, into the sandy ground), and as a defensive hold-out. There were bases like this systematically placed all throughout Eastern Europe; some in the remains of old cities and towns, some built for this purpose, all designed as a weirdly trench-like counterpart to the so-called “Great War” of 175 years ago.

The calculus of warfare was quite simple. A capital-grade stationary defence could kill a capital ship, as they would always be better armoured and armed; they did, after all, not have to waste space, and limit their mass, due to the need to be mobile. Migou forces which came from orbit left their approaches obvious, and thus made themselves easy targets (and a high-atmosphere airburst nuclear weapon was an excellent way of ruining such a target’s day), hence enemy reinforcements had to be landed in “safe” areas, and moved in. Space them out, give them sufficient defensive forces and anti-air/missile capabilities, and suddenly, mobile warfare bogged down.

And the Migou did the same, too; their own stationary weapons upon Earth’s surface, their own smart-missile batteries, their own air-bases and underground facilities. The Contested Zone on the Eastern Front had barely changed in over four years. It had been static longer than the Western Front in the misnamed ‘Great War’, the “War to End All Wars”.

The question was, of course, whether, if the equilibrium was disturbed, would it prove to have been stable, or unstable. Would a small change be negated, or reinforced by subsequent events?

“Falling back! We can’t hold; multiple Mantises inbound, accompanied by... ” there was an explosion, “... Silverfish. Get those cloaked bastards!” the voice yelled.

“Roger that. Regroup at Charlie-Zero-Nine. We have a squadron of Type-Hotel-Zero-Four-Fives dug in there, but they need more Papa Alpha support.”

“Understood.”

The blinking, dark-red icons of the Migou units were shifting forwards, the organic flows of the lines of control intensely disturbing. Marshall Hassan was sweating heavily, his olive-coloured skin grey with stress. Of course, it was probably a lot more stressful on the ground. Here, constant waves of the horrifically smart Migou missiles swept across a fortification, the ones which escaped the laser defences blasting deep holes into the massively reinforced walls, while dart-like submunitions targeted individual men. There, Loyalist forces clashed with NEG-forces, a bitter fight between the extant varieties of Homo sapiens, until the Migou-enhanced Loyalist Elite hammer could fall upon the hardest pockets of resistance. And there, the Migou units, perfectly coordinated despite the fact that no electromagnetic transmissions detected between individual units, systematically took apart the front line, blue-white flares and the burning sun-radiance of directed plasma weapons illuminating the day in horrible light.

Suddenly, a change. The dark-green of New Earth Government forces suddenly multiplied, as icons indicating power armour and mechanised units swarmed out from underground bunkers, some to reinforce areas under threat, some into areas already cleansed by Migou forces.

“Eidelon Brigade-Zero-Zero-Seven,” Colonel Rury said, with a hint of pride in her voice. “Four and a half thousand soldiers; a proper mechanised formation. They have a company of G-Three Lilim serving in a command-and-control role.” She leant forwards, her teeth in a predatory grin. “Didn’t see that coming, did you, you fucking minions, and your bug masters?” she said, her comment directed at the hostile forces on the map. “Perhaps you should look underground better, before rushing forwards like that at a tiny weakness in the line?” she added, rhetorically.

Marshall Hassan stared at the screen, running one hand over his shaven head. “That won’t be enough,” he muttered, before blinking heavily. “Where is the Navy?” he asked. “We won’t be able to do anything, until they get capital support up, and we can stop the landing craft. We need to prepare for evacuation, should they take down the second cap-laser.”

The blond woman stepped forwards and saluted, black-gloved hands a contrast to her pale skin. “Sir,” she said with confidence.

“Yes, Colonel Kristos?”

“We have one capital unit on station, which is currently engaged in training exercises at Facility 2501. I had it moved up, when the anti-capital defences went down, and it is waiting for authorisation to deploy.” She permitted herself a slight raise of her eyebrows, at the improbability of her own statement.

The man paled. “What... where? What do you mean?”

There might have been a look of disdain in Colonel Oxanna Kristos’ eyes, as she kept her gaze locked on her nominal superior. “I’m afraid you don’t have the clearance for that, sir,” she said, her tone remaining professionally neutral. “Nor do you have the clearance to authorise deployment.” She blinked. “I am merely informing you of this such that you are aware of the presence of friendly units.” The woman bought up a menu, the gestures perfunctory. “The details and codes for the Unit have been added to your IFF database. I request that you confirm my authorisation to distribute them.”

Marshal Hassan ran his gaze over the file. It was very, very short. “Bipedal acksebee organism, authorised to deploy tactical nuclear and arcanochromatic weapons, innate functions capable of replicating third-tier sorceries,” he read in disbelief. “What? What is this?”

“It’s a capital-grade ACXB organism. It’s best to think of it as a corvette-scale Engel. And, I’m sorry, sir, but you aren’t cleared for anything more. I have been authorised, if you see the notes in my file from Vice Marshal Slavik, to handle this operation with his authority,” Colonel Kristos said, to head off the next objection, a faint smile creeping onto her lips. With a press, she transmitted the relevant files to COEUS, which the TITAN verified. She then disconnected from Marshal Hassan, before he could waste any more of her time, and opened up a separate channel.

“Captain Martello,” she said, her voice dripping with pride, and a hint of anticipation, despite the dire situation. “Unleash Superbia.”



~’/|\’~



The apartment block disintegrated as the titanic greenish-grey shape smashed through it, hunched low. It was surrounded by the snap of superheated air, as laser fire emanated forth from every one of its surfaces. Its sudden appearance made it the target for everything that now had line of sight, and a hail of fire was promptly directed towards the bulk.

As it turned out, that was an unwise decision.

The behemoth paused for a moment, one colossal foot digging into the ground, as it turned on its heel and slammed the leg through a building in a sweeping kick which tore down the entire structure. Then it was off again, the noise of the damage which its path inflicted upon the grass-covered streets muted by the cataclysm which followed it and it mutely encouraged. If it cared at all about the Loyalist platoon which had been trying to set up in the now-ruined structure, there was no sign. Certainly, the artillery barrage which almost immediately streaked down from the heavens, upon the surviving hostile troops in their smashed-egg of a building, did not care.

West. The figure, its outer carapace mottled with five-branched tree-like markings, interlocking and interweaving, was heading west through shattered streets and ruined roads. For those who could see outside the human-visible spectrum, the titan was sprouting a hedgehog-like array of ultraviolet light, protruding out to touch anything which tried to harm it, fist-sized chunks devoured by whatever its invisible limbs touched. And then there were the blasts which rippled across those who survived that lethal caress; shrieking demons descending from the heavens at the orders of their master to detonate in explosive martyrdom. To target it, to inform the beast that you were aiming at it, was a death sentence.

In the skies above, human and Migou craft fought. It was not the brave, ‘honourable’ fights of the fighter ace; no, this was a conflict of technological supremacy. The men and women in the NEG air supremacy craft were massively rebuilt; new eyes and spines and hearts and lungs and tendons all there to allow them to sustain marginally higher accelerations, their senses jacked into the feeds of their craft, LAI systems performing the actual tasks while the human intellect merely guided this technological mess. And such a thing was necessary; even with these enhancements, the Migou craft were darting insects compared to the birds of humanity, albeit insects capable of slaughtering their foes. They could operate at the maximum thrust from their A-Pods, unheeded by the constraints of mammalian biology. They thought and fought in, at a minimum, three dimensions natively, and, of course, they were the technical superiors of mankind anyway. In this airspace, however, the NEG made up for it with numbers. The skies above the grey-green monstrosity were being kept clear, through both ground based systems, and the swallow-like fliers which emptied their racks of missiles before resorting to standoff laser fire. To those who had eyes to see, the thick clouds of emfog were lit in red, blue and ultraviolet by the violence of the conflict, swirling in chaotic vortices as the passage of craft and projectile alike tore through the clouds. Lower down, gunships and ground attack craft plucked victims from the mortal coil through missile and direct fire, even as they themselves were swatted by ground-fire.

Down below, the behemoth raised one hand, still charging inexorably along its path, and a sun-bright lance of plasma evaporated a hostile mecha squadron, the slicing cone boring into the ground without regard for the foes in the way. One colossal foot stepped over the radiant inferno it had created, the red-hot ground sagging and giving way into a new crater, before that obstacle was past. More stellar flares from its outreached arm, the air around it warped by the intense heat and something else, marked its passage.

Somewhere along the monster’s line of approach, a squadron of Loyalist Elite pilots waited, their mecha powered down and almost inactive. The Elder Sign-derived basilisk camouflage on the thing did nothing to stop a physical aim; they had ascertained valid firing solutions with ease. They were Nazzadi, after all, basically human; merely... enhanced, as befitted their function, and so that perplexing symbol had no effect on them. The implants in their brains and in their nervous systems made their movements impossibly smooth and precise, the minimum of effort utilised as they tracked the double-mounted charge beams into the ever-moving left knee of the grey-green shape. The targeting systems did the rest to maintain the hit. With a few thoughts, baseline Loyalists were dispatched to begin the diversionary strike. It had been calculated that they would fail, and unless they evacuated the launch sites as fast as possible, they would be caught in the efficient counterbattery fire. But what they would do is divert attention away from the less... expendable assets.

The Loyalist Elite, and through them, the Migou, found this aesthetically pleasing. They were, however, not foolish enough to let an appreciation for aesthetics induce tactically unsound methods, nor force them to show mercy.

But it noticed them.

Twirling, the titan raised the implement of destruction it cradled in both hands, and, all four viridian eyes seemingly staring straight at the attempted ambush, eradicated them and a good proportion of the district they were stationed in. As the brief flash of the fireball faded, a cloud, discoloured by the arcanochromatic material within it, blossomed upwards. It was not quite a true mushroom cloud; the stem was insufficient for it to really be called that, and, indeed, it resembled nothing quite unlike a malformed, twisted rose, particulate petals shaped by the buildings at the edge of the blast which still stood.

Through the superheated air and burning, tainted dust the greenish-grey figure ran, now smeared in black and grey tar-like dust. The clouds of its passage billowed behind it, drawn with it as a veil of shadows which swirled and hissed with the freezing gas it had secreted. A patter of tainted ice-dust fell like rain, as the two mixed, to splatter, freeze and burn nearby combatants, as the thing passed. With a slight change in gait, it punted a heavy Loyalist mecha which had originally been part of the diversionary attack, sending the red jam-filled crushed tin can tumbling off far into the distance, and left its foe’s compatriots behind, assured that they could not harm it.

Yes. A building was crushed underfoot. Yes. The behemoth was nearing its target. It was nearing its prey.

And then the four, utterly inhuman, viridian eyes fell upon the foe. It had been tracking it earlier, of course, through other senses it had, but they were unreliable. The prey was illusive, after all, made of substances which made the ‘sight’ of its other eyes hazy, and furthermore it knew how to hide, how to camouflage itself in the electromagnetic mists of battle. It had set up cordons of defences, lesser beings to guard its concealed bulk from anything which might hunt it. They were heavily armed and armoured, machines that were to as gods to a naked ape.

They all died. They died in light and in heat and in colour, but they all died. Their feeble death throws scorched the surface of the behemoth, chipped into its unnaturally tough carapace, and were sometimes even simply negated by the shimmering crystalline iridescence of the air around the monster.

Futile. Utterly futile.

And, no emotion on its mask-like face, it aimed the tool of destruction it bore in its hands at the five hundred metre long landing ship, and fired. The rose-like blossom grew forth from the matt-black hull, spire-like weapons systems and extra armour melting like ice in a blast furnace as the thorns tore a vast swath of the ship away, boiling and broiling and swirling in unearthly radiance.

And, coddled in white freezing gas, the leviathan fired. Again. And again, until the broken spine of the kilometre long fallen craft was fully separated, its mechanical innards exposed to the air. Sheathing its weapon on its back, darting in, sun-bright plasma emanated from its hands to utterly slag those parts of the inside that had survived.

Pausing for a moment, for its task was done; the titan crouched in the red-hot remains of its slain prey. It was safe in the knowledge that such a bulk would allow it a moment’s respite and concealment.

“Target destroyed,” reported the pilot of the black-smeared green-grey monstrosity, her voice dripping with self-confidence. And more than a little hint of smugness. “Requesting new orders.”

“New coordinates transmitted. Be aware, we have heavy hostile resistance in the area. We believe they may be trying to set up a beachhead cap-defence; it is necessary that you eliminate it or casualties will be severe when the Navy gets here. If it is operational, it will also be an active threat to you.”

“Understood. It’s doomed.” The pilot flexed her fingers around her control yokes, the dark-red fabric which covered them moving perfectly in line with her skin, as she stared up at the change in force disposition on the map. “Gehirn, display status.” The Ouranos LITAN obeyed, and she nodded, once. “No need for resupply, no real damage,” she muttered. “Running a bit low on vECF, but, otherwise, plenty for all of them.” Out loud, she added, “Command still has priority artillery authorisation slaved to you?”

“Yes, Test Pilot.”

“Good.” Evangelion Unit 02 rose again, Babylon already raised, and a barrage of cracks from the launchers on its back accompanied the resumption of its terrible advance. The booster trails of rockets kicked in once they were at a safe height, filled the sky, only for unseen cluster bombs to rain down again, seeking their prey. All it had taken was a thought, and an authorisation from the control yokes. And along her new path, a cascade of dusty orange-red explosions marked the way.

“Good,” she said, hands barely twitching as she willed the Evangelion into motion once again.



~’/|\’~



Her semipowered armour was down to 36% battery, and caked in carbonised mud, as well as the somewhat less pleasant remains of the deceased Private Nahuel. She was bruised and battered. Even her Eyes ached. But nevertheless Lance Corporal Xuan Do was awake and alert; possibly more so than she had ever been.

What... what the hell was that? I didn’t know the New Earth Government had anything like that!

Shaking her head, she focussed again, and stuck the fibre-optic cable out of the cover again, under a propped-up section of fallen roof, staring down at the casescreen on her lap. The parts of the camera network stationed around the building still alive weren’t sufficient, and so she had to use her armour fibre-optic for this particular angle. She had a full launcher positioned in the remains of the aisle, elevated on its stand, staring up into the skies. In the launcher closer to her, there were two shots left, before she would have to go to reload it. That one was set up down the hallway, the command cable linked into the network which she and her squad had been setting up here before... before they had all died. The seeker, as a sort of hybrid micro-battery/missile launcher, the electrochemical propellant kicking the missile out of the launcher before the guidance system engaged, was exceptionally useful for this kind of indirect fire. She certainly liked the way that the firer didn’t have to be too near the weapon. Something large and Migou, some disc-shaped lander, had crashed nearby, and she’d lost two launchers which she’d salvaged, when counterbattery fire had zeroed in on them.

Of course, if the first, targeted blast, which had taken out the other fireteam, hadn’t hit the cache, this entire building would have been wired up with seeker sites. And not just the light, grenade-scale ones she had remaining; true anti-armour ones. And proper anti-air launchers, too. A dug-in squad, even if they were only in SP-armour, could slow down an advance no end.

But she was the only one left. The others were dead.

There. A standard three-man Loyalist powered armour squad, taking cover in one of the other ruined buildings, some kind of gutted apartment blackened by fire damage and covered in creeping ivy. The smooth, pseudo-organic lines of Nazzadi design were unmistakable, especially since the mecha used by the NEG had been hybridised with human aesthetics, and so had a certain utilitarian brutalism about them. Her smartlink flagged them with red outlines, extrapolating their positions from the glimpses she could get.

Her fingers danced on the casescreen on her lap. Two shots on each of them, from Hornet-2. One HE, one Shaped. Don’t want to risk them surviving... armour may be weaker in the head, but can’t be sure it’s a kill and they’ll kill me if they find me. Synch the arrival times so one hits each one at the same time for the first wave.

Yes. Sorry about this. And execute. The woman let out a slight, almost crazed, giggle; alone as she was in a ruin, her squad dead around her. In both senses of the word.

A sequence of six thuds hurled the seekers into the air, just another noise of conflict, lost in the immensity of this conflict. They were projectiles at this point, fired by the electrochemical launch packets, only guided by the small adjustments made by their unfolding fins. Crossing her fingers, Xuan watched their progress and arc on the feed in her left Eye, silently counting down in her head along with the decreasing number on the screen.

The thrusters of five of the six seekers fired at the same time, and the arc suddenly became guided, the dumb LAI systems in each missile acquiring the target fed from the smartlink and the launcher, before cutting all communications and running on their own visual systems. The sixth failed to ignite, and the dumb warhead continued on its parabolic arc, sure to overshoot by far.

From an outside observer’s viewpoint, what could be seen was the streak of small comets, tracked by their flame-lit tails, which dropped down into the ruined apartment. The blast, a whoompth of dust and rubble barely lit by the actual flames, rushed in a swirling cloud out of the ruins. There was a clatter of dislodged bricks, followed by a rumbling, as one of the walls gave way, sagging and falling inwards, the impact only knocking more dust into the air. If any of them had survived the hits, or, indeed, hadn’t been hit at all, they were at least going to be seriously inconvenienced by the load-bearing wall that had just hit them,.

Hah, she thought. One of the advantages of being on foot. SP-armour can hide properly in ruins; true power armour can’t. If I’d known the wall was that weak, I wouldn’t have wasted those seekers. She swallowed. Need to reload first, before firing again. Popping her case closed, and sticking it back in her pack, she scrambled on her hands and knees out from under the collapsed arch, over to the seeker, pulling off the magazine and making her slow way over to one of the armoured cases. There were still two shots left; it made more sense to reload the revolver-like cylinder from loose seekers, rather than slot a fresh one in.

Somewhere far overhead, there was a cluster of thunderous sonic booms, and a few seconds later, a ripple of blasts she could feel through the ground. Where those craft NEG, or Migou? She didn’t know.

A crash of rubble behind her. With a sudden jerk of motion, spilling the seekers all over the floor with a clatter which left her wincing, Xuan swung around. Nothing. Rifle braced, gun-cam filling her left Eye, she slowly edged to the left, trying to get behind cover without lowering the weapon. Rifle, or underslung seeker launcher? Not sure. Don’t think it’s a Papa Alpha, too quiet. Use the rifle.

Another series of blasts, outside. Very close this time. Too close; the pulse of air was a palpable force, and her left Eye wobbled as the weapon shook, even with the attempts of the AICS to keep the weapon steady.

Something moved, something over two metres tall, four blue eyes around a central orb staring from its blank mask-like head. A massively overengineered rifle was clutched in its arms, as it fluidly moved through the cover, far too quiet for something with that bulk. The woman just knew without knowing that something of that size should be making more noise. She flicked her rifle to the seeker launcher, and aimed for the head.

A second one, also highlighted in green in her Eyes, could be seen moving behind it. Slowly, she lowered the rifle. They were New Earth Government units... not a model of powered armour she was familiar with, but her AICS was getting a match for the armour and the codes were valid. She had to hold fire. That didn’t mean that they weren’t compromised, of course; one of the terrors of the war against the Migou was the way that Blanked Infiltrators, if not detected, could turn on their comrades without a moment’s hesitation, gunning them down with neither mercy nor pity. But the institutional paranoid this provoked could be just as harmful. It was a problem. Fortunately, it was unlikely that any entire squad would be Blanked and be able to slip under the detection processes; not impossible, but in the constant technological war between creation and detection for these saboteurs, the NEG’s techniques had improved enough that the old-style total rewiring were demoted to Combat Blanks. They were just too overt, now. Of course, that didn’t mean that there weren’t Loyalists in captured, or Migou-made, human gear, and they did come in squads.

Paranoia was a way of life.

There were more troops moving up behind them, engineering exosuits carrying anti-armour railgun turrets and seeker launchers, and the silent bulk of an IFV.

Actual NEG reinforcements...

Lance Corporal Xuan Do slumped down, shaking.

She... she wasn’t actually dead yet.



~’/|\’~



The roughly disc-shaped craft was a wreck. It had ploughed into a young forest, in the middle of what had been an industrial park, leaving a trail of splintered wood behind it. It had eventually come to a rest in the middle of a twisted, rusted pile of metal, which might have once been some kind of storage silo; grain, perhaps, or maybe sand. Once, it had hung lazily in the air (or, in actuality, moved quickly to avoid hostile anti-air, only hovering when it was picking up or deploying assets); now, it was a mere sixty metre wide tombstone. The D-Engine was offline, the termination switch kicking in to prevent the crash from tearing open a dimensional rift, as the impact knocked vital components out of place. The A-Pods had been specifically targeted by the NEG; two of the three had been punctured by the same relativistic particle beam, and half the craft was a melted, slagged wreck because of that. The D-Fridges had been working fine, but the Migou on board who had survived the crash had shut them down, because without the heat produced by the D-Engines, it was not necessary to maintain their functionality.

The snap of superheated air from a laser could be heard inside, to be joined by another, and another. There was a louder, more explosive noise from inside, and a brief gout of blue flame flared out, flaring through the outer hull.

“Bravo Command, this is Bravo Zero-Zero-Two-Three.”

“Bravo Zero-Zero-Two-Three, this is Bravo Command Actual. You have boarded a Migou lander.”

“Correct, Command Actual. This looks like a Bravo-Victor-0067-Sigma Field Conversion Ship. Zero-Zero-Two-One and Two-Two are KIA. Necessary security measures have been taken. Synchronising data.”

“Roger, Zero-Zero-Two-Three.” There was a pause. “The data is synchronised.” Another pause. “Do not, repeat, do not attempt an intact capture. We cannot salvage the craft at the present date. Cleanse and occupy, then hold position until we can get armoured units forwards. I’m sending Echo and Foxtrot squads to back you up.”

“Roger, Command Actual.” A pause. “There are Migou test subjects on board, in the standard fluid tanks. They appear to be recent captives, although they have had their IFF tags removed, and have been prepped for preliminary surgery. We have survivors, as well as corpses. Confirm ‘Cleanse and Occupy’ order. “

“Zero-Zero-Two-Three, do any appear to be Category Two Blank candidates?”

“Negative, Command Actual. We have a database match with standard Infilitrator prep.”

“Roger. Order is confirmed, Zero-Zero-Two-Three. Cleanse and Occupy. The chance that any can be salvaged has been deemed negligible, compared to the security risk, and there is nothing new to learn.”

“Roger, Cleanse and Occupy, Command Actual. Bravo Zero-Zero-Two-Three out.”

It was trivial for a suit of self-powered armour to crush a human skull.



~’/|\’~



“Well. That went fairly well.” Colonel Rury of the SWD took a swig of coffee from the can, and winced slightly at the taste. Evidently, it wasn’t displeasing enough to prevent a second sip, however. Well, she did have to start the paperwork for the Eidelon deployment, as there were things that LAIs couldn’t do, and she didn’t want to start on the Extended Operations Enhancement yet, so caffeine was going to have to do.

Colonel Kristos nodded, as she rummaged through her pockets. “Mhmrmph. Yes, I’d say so. At least relatively. It could have been a lot, lot worse, if they’d been able to push through, or even if they’d got those forwards defences up and running.” She paused. “Chocolate or blueberry?” she asked herself. “Chocolate or blueberry?”

“Hmm?”

“Muffins.” She leant forwards against the vending machine, staring at the confectionary through narrowed eyes.

“Can’t stand chocolate, myself,” the red-eyed woman said; a comment which produced rolled eyes, because it was not aiding with the muffin conundrum at all. “Mind you, don’t really like blueberry much, either.” She leant over to glance at the machine. “Oooh. Banana. I like banana.”

“That’s not helping, Rury.” The staring match between the confectionary and the Colonel continued.

A pause.

“Congratulations on Eidelon, by the way,” Oxanna said, her forehead now resting against the transparent front to the machine.

“Zy aprecy,” Rury grinned. “And you, as well. That thing has real promise as a stiletto-force component. And... well, it’s so nice to have organic capital support, instead of waiting for the Navy to get dressed and ready before they show up.”

“Oh, yes. That is after all why Anton’s so interested in them.”

Rury looked at her flatly. “Oxanna, I do know about the links between... between the ACXBs.”

The blond woman turned away from the muffins, and frowned for a moment, before smiling. “Oh, no, I meant Vice Marshall Slavik.”

“Oh.” The nazzady tapped the side of her head with a finger. “Buh. Brain jam.”

“I could have been clearer,” the other woman shrugged.

“Just that, well, at the SWD we have to... interact with Miyakame a lot,” she continued, in a tone which implied that such a thing was more frequent than she would have preferred.

“I do know, yes. I’ve had to deal with the man, too.”

“Sorry.”

Another pause.

Colonel Kristos growled. “Damn it, I’m getting both of them, and some proper chocolate as well. I can eat them on the way there, after all, and I’m hungry.” She glanced at her colleague. “Don’t raise your eyebrows at me like that.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“I know you didn’t. And I know you have less... never mind.” She shook her head, as she tapped in the numbers of the products, and then scanned the chip in the back of her hand.

“Say thanks to As... to Superbia for me,” added Rury, as Oxanna knelt down, trying to fish the muffins out of the catch bay.

“’Kay. She’ll certainly appreciate it,” the blond said, with a slight glance upwards. “Well,” she paused, “yes, we have a meeting with Hassan tomorrow. Together. Not going to be fun, is it?”

“Nope. He’s such a haranga. And a haranguer.” Rury shook her head. “See you there.”



~’/|\’~

[EarthScorpion]

~’/|\’~



The warning sirens sounded, as Unit 02, sealed within a camouflaged transport container, was slowly moved into the decontamination bay. The 2501 training facility, designed for testing of units which could feasibly be deployed on the frontlines, was still considerably further back than any of the more forward bases, where the mainstay. The bay was cramped, designed for Engels, not their progenitor-project, and so the Evangelion only just fit. In the observation room, a man, his dark-red lab coat sealed all the way up to the high collar, pushed his old-fashioned, bulky argoggles up onto his forehead and pulled off a thick black control glove, to wipe his forehead. With a sigh, he removed the other glove, discarding them carelessly on the surface.

“What’s up, Dr Schauderhaft?” a lieutenant, his face damp with sweat, asked the head scientist for the Unit 02 team.

The man shook his head. “She’s so hard on it, Feucht,” he said, running a hand through his sandy-blond hair. “I’ve been looking over the internal status feeds... we’re going to have to replace the top few levels of mirrorgloss due to the fact that she chose to run through an arcanochromatic blast cloud, and we’re going to have to go through all the breaches to check for contamination. That’s even before we get to actual battle damage.”

“Ah,” the younger man, Feucht, said, choosing not to say any more. He mopped at his forehead with a handkerchief.

Wilhelm Schauderhaft tapped his fingers against the diamond window. “Actually... it’s not really even that,” he admitted. “Captain Martello is pushing for increased deployment, and we can’t sustain it. He can’t get it into his head that the Evangelions are not ready for extended field deployment. They’re a sensitive arcanocyberxenobiological organism, which require constant check-ups, and simply don’t have the endurance of... of a frigate, say. Which is just armour plus D-Tech plus armaments plus a little bit of space for crew. You just can’t do that and he doesn’t get it.”

“Ah.”

“I wonder if I could beat it into his head with a mallet,” the chief scientist continued, his voice turning speculative. There was a pause. “That was a joke, by the way,” he reassured the other man. “I don’t intent to commit violence against the Deputy Director of Operations.”

“I understand, sir.”

Wilhelm sighed, a weary note entering his voice as he glanced at the uniformed man. “I’m not a ‘sir’,” he said.

“Would you prefer ‘ma’am’?” the younger man said, in a deadpan.

There was a snort from the scientist. “Fair enough,” he said, sliding his argoggles back over his eyes. “Gehirn, accept the hibernation plug as soon as the docking port is in place,” he ordered the Evangelion’s LITAN.

“Understood,” the mechanical voice responded, the four green lights of its ARvatar bobbing slightly in acknowledgement.

Dr Schauderhaft had never understood why the Second Child had insisted on using such a crude, obviously non-human voice for her LITAN. There were plenty of other options she could have used. But, no, she insisted on using this slightly grating, synthetic one. He shrugged. Never mind.

“Dr Schauderhaft!” someone called from behind him. He knew exactly who it was. “I need to talk to you!”

Come to think of it, she could be rather grating too. Maybe it was some kind of kinship.

Rather than turn to face her, he sat back down, and pulled his control gloves back on. “I’m listening,” he said, in a tone which he hoped might imply that he was busy right now, and she might be better advised to talk to the local Deputy Director of Operations, Captain Martello.

Not to be dissuaded, the girl stepped around him, standing in front of his desk, left hand on hip. She would always be a little girl to him; after all, he had first met her when she had only just turned nine, when he had been transferred from the Unit 00 team to replace the near-total losses from Berlin-2. She had certainly changed since then, though. Clad in a mid-red version of one of the jump-suits that any mecha pilot wore when not in one of the dedicated interface suits (in her case, a plug suit), she loomed over him when he sat. Her reddish-blond hair was darkened by the fact it was still wet from the decontamination, hanging limply from where it was bound by her A-10 clips. Two blue eyes, their shape one of the few obvious signs of her mixed heritage, stared down at him over a face paled, like so many others, from lack of sun. The gaze was steady, level, and more than a little impatient.

She was tapping her foot. Peeling off the gloves again, the doctor kept his face calm, even attentive, even as he sighed internally. She would not give up, and it would just be easier to deal with her now, even though it was probable that the issues she was about to raise would be covered when he had looked over the data that, even now, she was delaying his work on.

Still, at least she wasn’t the First Child.

Test Pilot Asuka Langley Soryu folded her arms in front of her, and nodded once. “The systems failed to adjust correctly to the loss of Torso-5’s D-Fridge,” she said in an accusatory tone. “Why, exactly, did it shut down T5’s D-Engine, when there were no heat issues? I still had all the other T-series functional and intact at that point; you don’t need to have it do that. It was only one DEV12 operating without a DDV13!”

“Asuka,” Wilhelm began, “it’s the precautionary principle. It’s good to have precautions set up so that if things do go wrong, there’s a margin for...”

“Precautions?” Asuka’s nose wrinkled slightly in a sneer, as she leant forwards. “That’s funny, I was under the impression that my laser defence grids were an important precaution when operating against the Migou! Given that they give me my anti-infantry, anti-light-power-armour, and anti-missile defences!”

Running a hand through his hair, Dr noted that Lieutenant Feucht had already retreated. He was a lucky man. “Asuka,” he began, “yes, I understand that a loss of an engine is going to be an inconvenience...”

“An inconvenience!” the girl snapped. She took a breath, composing herself, her tone turning icily polite. “Are you aware, Deputy Director of Science,” she continued, “of what the loss of ten percent of my continuous operating power... and that would be gross power, not net power, because the limb sets are basically committed... are you aware of what that does to combat performance in a hot zone where there are enemy capital grade units!” Her icy politeness thawed. “I need my primary and secondary integrated weapons for the heavier hostile combat units, I have finite ammo for the Babylon which is needed for my objectives, and so, in a dense urban environment, and against the Migou, I need my LDGs!” She took a deep breath. “Now, I can understand the loss of an Engine to enemy action. But the Engine was fine!”

Wilhelm did not sigh, because that would not help the situation. And not only because the sixteen-year old before him would certainly be able to beat him up. “Yes. The Engine may have been fine. It would not have been had it melted.”

“Then I suggest that you find a way to make use of the extra capacity of the DDV13 over the DDV12, then?” Asuka replied, a sudden smirk on her face, as she tucked a wet lock of hair back. The red jumpsuit was darker, where it had been in contact with the hair. “Given that you chose not to upgrade the DEV12s when you did the DDVs.”

The man with the dirty blond hair leant back in his chair, tapping the outside of one of his control gloves, idly. “We didn’t switch to the DEV13s,” he said, in a distracted tone, “because of the fact that we couldn’t fit the extra bulk into the Eva. Organs in the way.”

“Irrelevant,” Asuka said, putting her hands on his desk. “That’s wasted capacity in my Evangelion, Dr Schauderhaft. Wasted capacity that led to me getting,” she pointed at the diagram of Unit 02, and the doctor lowed his argoggles to look at it too, “there... look at that cluster of hits, section 44ZZ, just under the right shoulderblade.” The section was lit up red, craters dug into the armour, laser defence grid melted, the pale flesh of the Evangelion scabbed over by repair systems. “I took pretty much a Wasp squadron’s worth of missiles there, and because the LDG wasn’t working at 100%, some anti-corvette missiles got through.” Her eyes were narrow. “And one hit before I could shift my AT-Field enough. I can show you the sympathetic burns,” she added, turning slightly to show him the padding of bandages under her jumpsuit. “So deal with it.”

The doctor nodded. “Yes, Asuka,” he said, wincing slightly in empathic pain. No wonder she was in a bad mood. “I’m sorry, I was waiting for the black box and the data from Gehirn to get in. I didn’t know.”

“Okay,” the girl replied, obviously slightly mollified. “In that case, I have more issues to raise, especially to do with the sluggishness in the right arm... did you shift the armour distribution there, closer to the hand? It’s bad, and there’s a sympathetic twinge in my wrist when I rotate it too fast... I think you’re stressing my Eva too much. Not the same with the left, though, and you did the same there. So either there’s asymmetry, or...”

Wilhelm raised a hand. “Asuka,” he said, in a gentle, non-confrontational voice. “You should go eat. It’s going to take us a while to read the data properly, even with Gehirn and a feed to the MAGI... they’re busy with other things, too, so we’re lower priority than normal, and we’ll be able to understand your issues once we can sort out the battle damage from any other problems.” He paused. “You did very well,” he added. “But, right now,” he could see on the AR images floating around her, from her implants, “...right now, you’ve got low blood sugar. You need to get something in your stomach, too.”

Asuka smiled weakly, relaxing slightly. “I understand, Wilhelm,” she said, face softening. “Yes. I’ve been in LCL for over fourteen continuous hours today. Because of that, decontamination was Grade Three, which isn’t fun. I took an anti-corvette missile bleedthrough to the back. Yes. I think I deserve some food, and,” she pulled a lock of hair, and squeezed it, water running down her fingers “yes, a shower which doesn’t involve UV washes.”

“We’ll probably be done with an initial report in about,” the man looked at the clock on his desk, “... two hours. Check with me, and I’ll tell you if you can come in. But... yes, food, relax,” he ordered.

“Technically, that comes under Operations, not Science,” the redhead pointed out. “I chose to comply because it is advantageous to me, not because you have the authority,” she added, with a twitch of the corner of her mouth.

“You do that,” Dr Schauderhaft said, his voice and face studiously neutral, before he smiled slightly, too. He pulled his control gloves back on, and, with a few gestures, checked how the auto-summary was doing.

With a shrug, lopsided from the presence of the bandages under her jumpsuit and the numbness in her rights side, Asuka strode out, on her way to the mess hall.

She wondered where Kaji was, what he was doing, and hoped that he had seen how good she had been today, and that, for his sake, he would have had a less painful day than she had.

Because, of course, she thought, smirking, this couldn’t really be a bad day. No day that she got to add another strategic vessel icon to Unit 02’s kill-count really could be. Sure, Drone Ships were less impressive than Swarm Ships, for all that they were larger, because they were merely heavily armoured transports, not capital ships, but still...

She threw a glance back at the grey-green, wounded shape of her precious Evangelion. Yes, another white marker for the black-painted hands of the Unit, those only bits of 02 that she was allowed to customise.

Her accomplishment.



~’/|\’~



Mass-produced N-Pop blared through the smoky bar. The computer-generated vocals were bland and uninspired, although, it should be noted, the harmonic synthesis of classical violins and the thin whistling of gladisuharmoki did merge rather well with the lead singer’s voice, especially if one’s goal was to have problems hearing anyone saying anything at all, and possibly end up with a migraine. The dark-skinned man sat back in his seat, breathing out a long, draconic coil of smoke, before sucking in another breath through his cigarette. The man sitting on the other side of the table did not react, although the slight unconscious twitch in his nostrils possibly suggested that he did not appreciate this particular brand of cigarette. If that was true, it couldn’t be seen in his carefree smile.

“... and, so, I know he knows you. I was wondering if you’d seen him recently.”

The man with the cigarette snorted, coughing. “Yeah. ‘Cause, you know, I really look like a tourist guide. Just search for him on the Grid, you know.”

The blue-shirted man shook his head. “No Grid activity apart from some one-time pad encrypted pulses. No profile checks. No movement on transit networks.” He smiled slightly. “Enough that he might be dead, and yet there’s evidence that suggests he isn’t.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes.” The man shrugged. “Of course, if you’re not going to be cooperative...”

The black man ran a hand over the top of his close-cropped head, and reached for the drink in front of him. Faster than he could do that, though, the man in the blue shirt leaned forwards, and covered the top of the drink with his palm.

“I know you saw him on the last day he appeared on any main Grid records, Alesandro,” the man said calmly, with even a faint hint of a grin. “I know he met with you in this bar. I know he was very, very worried. I know he was more than a little drunk, and had opiates in his system as well. I know he tried to get emergency transport away from here, and I know you turned him down.”

The man leaned back, and blew another cloud of smoke at the standing figure. “I know you know all these things, Mr Kaji. So, please, tell me why the GIA is interested in this man. After all, surely a vanishing like this is the affair of the FSB, or maybe the OIS, if there’s something suspect about it, not the GIA.”

“Oh, I’m merely a concerned citizen,” Ryoji Kaji said, with a slight flick of his ponytail.

“Suuu~uuure, you are,” the cigarette-smoking man replied, with a role of his eyes. “Well, you know, I can’t help you. I’ve already... hells, you already know everything I know about Charles Habegger. Yes, he was sort of floating around the base. Yes, he came to me in a panic. But, beyond that...” the man shrugged.

The GIA agent, Kaji slumped down into his seat. “I understand,” he said, in a somewhat melancholy voice. “Damn.” He shook his head. “I’ll see myself out.”

The cigarette smoking man snorted. “Yeah. You do that.” He reached into his jacket, and Kaji froze, for just a moment, hand twitching. “Want one?” he asked, proffering the packet.

“You know my virtues, Alesandro,” Kaji said with a grin, hand swooping in to take one.

“It’s pronounced ‘vices’, Kaji,” the man said, coughing. “And... now, shoo!”

Sitting back, Alesandro watched as the blue-shirted man left the building, strolling out with almost insulting casualness. With a sigh, he shook his head, and stretched his arms forwards, lit cigarette dancing a trail of bluish smoke in the air. There was a burst of swearing, as he accidentally knocked over his glass of beer, the smash as it rolled off the table loud even against the music. Pulling himself to his feet, he went in search for a cloth to clean up the mess.

An outside observer might have noticed the beer-soaked credit chit, loaded with the equivalent of two month’s salary for a senior officer, tucked in the folded skin of his hand.

Alesandro hoped that Kaji would enjoy his cigarette very much.



~’/|\’~



“She’s a prodigy; that cannot be doubted.” The man’s voice was clipped, precise, conveying information with no revelation of his personal feelings. Only the very faintest hint of his native Spanish accent crept through. “It isn’t exactly surprising; she has been in the Ashcroft ‘Children’ programme since its foundation, and was involved in its predecessor group, too, before that had to be bought to an end. That’s twelve years of active training. Even with her youth taken into account, she’s the most experienced ACXB combat pilot in NEG service currently... although heavy on the theory and simulator training, compared to an Engel pilot, who are, after all, actually front-line soldiers, and taken from the military before that. The fact remains, however, she’s been training since before there were Engels.”

The room was dark, hollow; the presence of still air could be felt above and around, even though the edges of the room could not be seen. The glowing figures of men and women, sat or standing, were not Augmented Reality projections, but were instead holographic. The speaker did not know why they chose to do that, but it was not his place to argue. The arglasses perched on his olive-coloured nose were lit in green, relevant data for his presentation which nevertheless gave him a slightly sickly cast to his features.

“... which would be why she has lasted this long,” interjected a nazzady, in a neat, pale blue suit, a hint of cynicism entering her voice. “Active field combat cannot be compared to long term training. The difference in conditions alone...”

“That is true,” the bland-looking man admitted. “I should note, however, that she has been systematically and frequently exposed to extra-normal entities under controlled circumstances throughout her life, as a part of her desensitisation training. The stress induced by such exposures was suitably mitigated, after the events.”

“And?” asked a blond man, leaning forwards, hands resting on the back of his neck. “What were the results of desensitisation?”

The first speaker nodded, instinctively tucking back a lock of black hair. “As covered, she has been an exceptional success in those regards. As it currently stands, her Instinctual Fear Responses to all the common ENEs are in the bottom two percentiles, and her Conscious Fear Responses are, although higher... as is common for the methods used on her... are eminently satisfactory. Moreover, she is nearly completely desensitised to actions against Loyalists or Blanks; her Bladdiov Empathy Value against targets identified as hostile is 0.11, plus or minus 0.03 points.”

The blond man leant back. “That is... exceptional,” he said softly. “Although... the impact on her long term psychological health?”

“Acceptable, by the standards which Ethics has set. The combination of neural plasticity, due to the youth at which the training started, along with the detachment which comes from the EFCS-2 ANW-interface, means that... well, may I speak freely, sir?”

“Yes. All the people here are cleared for whatever you know.”

“Well, in that case, Project Ngoubou has been around since the old New United Nations. And that’s before you get to our predecessor groups, because a lot of people have always been interested in how the human mind works, and why it responds to extra-normal things as it does. Herkunft, Moneta, the Army Psychological Counselling Department... they’ve all adopted some of our practices. Quite simply, the exposure to the ENEs, combined with the other practices, are repeatable, reproducible, and provide that all-important reduction in IFR scores across the board. With clearance, I can provide the proper papers, rather than have to explain it here. We know what we’re doing, and with so long to work on someone, any errors can be corrected in a way that the standard Army six month Desensitisation Programmes simply cannot.”

“Thank you,” said the nazzady. “We will take that offer up. Although,” she added, as if the idea was only just striking her, “is it not true that Project Ngoubou started as a NUN Project, from A-War 1, specifically set up to extract information from captured hostiles? Should such a group really be...”

“No, ma’am,” the bland man said, shaking his head. “The Project was merely repurposed in wartime. Specialists in extranormal, and thus, inevitably, xenobiological psychology were needed, after all, and one of the major pre-A-War tasks of the Project was building a psychological parallel to Professor Fuyutsuki’s work on ghoul physiology. When there is an ‘alien’,” the click of the inverted commas around the word was palpably audible, “species, it is inevitable that anyone of any use is called upon.”

The red-eyed woman nodded. “I see. That makes sense. I was merely curious about what I had heard about your group.”

The man shifted slightly, smart grey jacket tight against his body. “No, ma’am; we are a Project, not a Group,” he said.

She sighed. “Small ‘G’.”

“Oh, I apologise. Is there anything else, or is that all?”

“For the moment, yes,” the blond man said, his hologram vanishing, along with the others, leaving only those who were really there. The bland man who had been speaking, and a woman in her mid-twenties, shaven-headed and pale skinned, a barcode obvious against her scalp.

And as she took a few steps towards the man, there was something obviously wrong about how she moved. Maybe a stroke, maybe something else, but she stuttered and jolted, the flow of human movement inconstant and broken. A sudden burst of speed moved a leg, and then it coasted; her entire gait held by pulses of muscular motion. Her face was sweaty, and now that she got closer, the paleness did not seem to come solely from her natural appearance, but instead from some kind of nausea or sickness.

“Ma’am. I... I did not expect you to be watching. Was that deemed satisfactory?” the man asked, suddenly looking worried. “Was I not my best?”

Red spoke.

“Y-y-yessss. It... was s-s-satisfactory. I was on-ly here in a... m-m-monitoring capacity, after all. J-j-just to check that our... trust in you wasssss well pla-ced.”




~’/|\’~




“Please roll up your sleeve,” the white-clad medical orderly said. Xuan complied, wincing slightly as she looked away from the needle descending towards her arm.

The orderly smiled, his teeth sparkling white. “Don’t like the sight of your own blood, eh?” he asked, the blue light of harcontacts overlaid on his eyes as the small camera on his headgear fed him the location of her veins.

Xuan winced. “Not really,” she admitted. “I don’t like needles much. Why can’t you just use the standard scrapers for the check?”

“Because this isn’t a DNA check, Corporal. We’ve already checked that you are who you claim to be, and you haven’t picked up any gene-carried taint. This is a medical procedure, to check for other forms of contamination... also,” he added, checking the files superimposed on his eyes, “you did have a suit puncture. Can’t be too careful. After that, we’ve just got the ANI map, the nervous system tests, and the CAT scan for the neurological Blank structures, before we can send you off to Mental, for a psychological analysis.” He shook his head. “Okay, just relax and look away... it’s just a small amount of blood...”

The woman groaned, turning away. She still winced, as the needle went into her arm.

“There,” the man said, a few moments later, as he stepped over to the machinery . “That wasn’t so bad.”

Xuan merely grunted at him.

“It’s funny how people react differently,” the man said, as he drummed his fingers on the side, watching as the test sample was lowered into the bulk of the machine.

The woman swallowed. “I think it hasn’t really sunk in yet,” she said, her voice slightly muffled. “I mean... I keep on expecting to see them again.”

The man paused. “I was actually talking about people and blood tests,” he said, hastily. “I mean, there are some people who don’t mind having needles stuck into them, but go green at the thought of seeing someone else, and the opposite, and then the other mixes.”

“Oh.” Xuan forced a smile onto her face. “So... heh... what are you?”

“Me? I don’t really care. Go through med school, and any dislike of needles will be gone, you know,” the man said. “I was... well, not terrified of them, but I didn’t like them before...”

That was when the alarm sounded, the raucous squawking accompanied by red lights illuminating the white of the lab in scarlet. At the exact same moment, something rocked the seat Xuan was sitting on, an all-too-familiar thump which pulsed through her backside.

Immediately, she was down onto the ground, rolling under the bed with muscle memory which overrode consciousness. She could recognise an explosion, after all.

“What the hell!” the orderly yelled, flinching back.

Code Amber Alert! All personnel report to their stations. Evacuate Hangars 012, 013, 014, 015, 016, immediately. All personnel in proximity to those locations should ensure that they are wearing full ANaMiNBC protective gear.

And interspersed with the announcement was the emergence of a crackle of distant gunfire.

“What the fuck!” the man added, hysteria entering his tone. Pulling himself back up to a fully standing position, he rushed over to one of the green-painted cabinets in the room, and stuck his hand against the memomorph lock, fingers twitching as the skin samples were taken. The machine was evidently satisfied, as the front of the cabinet flowed away, to reveal a standard emergency cache. The man grabbed one LAR-18 carbine for himself, and, after a moment’s hesitation, tossed one of the light weapons to Xuan, who caught it smoothly.

Technically, he shouldn’t have been doing that at all. She hadn’t passed the checks run on any solider who had experienced a combat incident with Migou forces, so she wasn’t allowed to carry a weapon on base. But... hells, she wasn’t going to raise it, if he was going to throw her a gun. It would make things a lot easier if she were armed.

“I need ammo to actually use this,” she pointed out; two magazines were passed, to make it an actually-useable weapon. She could see that he was looking at her with slightly dubious eyes, weapon clutched close to him in a position such that it could be raised if it was needed, as she checked the weapon, before sliding in one of the two magazines, and prepping it.

“You know what you’re doing, yes?”

She nodded, and he could be seen to relax slightly. That didn’t comfort her much.

Xuan swallowed. “Alright... erm. Oh God, I can’t even remember your name.”

The man flashed his sparkling white teeth at her in the dimmed lighting. “Corporal Janckowski. Marek Janckowsk, Medical Corps.”

That was more information than I really needed, Xuan thought, a hint of irritation in her voice, which was quickly removed by the scream which sounded just outside the room. She clutched the rifle tighter, and internally let off a cluster of curses at the fact that this was both lacking a smartlink, and chronically underpowered, by the standards she was used to. Infantry in semi-powered armour carried weapons which would probably leave a person firing them normally with hideously bruised shoulders, if they were lucky. This... this one, a 5mm carbine, was the kind of thing that the Dagonite fish-fuckers used, and got rightfully slaughtered by a modern military force for doing so; something combat and small and which probably wouldn’t even stagger a Loyalist Papa-Alpha, even with a direct joint hit.

She could only hope that this was only an Infiltrator Blank, rather than one built for combat, or anything worse. Because if it was anywhere above baseline, or had any integral Migou weapons, then things were going to go badly for her.

Raising one hand, she gestured for Marek to wait. Reaching out with one hand, muscles aching with deliberate slowness, she rested her bare palm against the door handle. Then, taking a breath, she eased it down, pushing slightly, just enough to have it swinging freely. She gestured at Marek to cut the lights in the infirmary; it wouldn’t be a good idea to be silhouetted here, and every little advantage would count.

I wish I had my FO-cable with me, she thought, anger in her mental voice. I hate going in blind.

And with that thought, she gave the door a hard shove with her foot, keeping her back against the doorframe. Trying to expose herself as little as possible, she flowed into the room, clearing the danger of the open doorway door as fast as she could. Carbine raised, her gaze flipped between the persons decorating the interior of the antechamber, the corpses sprawled around, unarmoured figures mutilated by the ferocity of the assault, and the flickering from the cracked light above, the ceiling indented, as if something had been thrown into it. No one, no thing was standing upright in the room.

Slowly, leading her way forwards, step-by-step, Jancowski behind her, Xuan kept her gun trained on the door opposite to her. To be more precise, she kept her aim trained on where it had been, because the attack had left it splintered and shattered on the floor.

“Check them!” she ordered the man, gaze not shifting. “See for survivors.”

“Too recent for thermals,” Jancowski muttered, “don’t have heartbeat sensor with me. Triage, triage, triage.” He swallowed, the air coppery in the mess. “You... you have the doorway covered?”

“Do it!” she barked, gaze still not moving. “We might be able to save some of them.”

There was the sound of metal hitting wet meat behind her, and something thudded on the ground.

We didn’t check the bodies, Xuan thought, as she swirled, gun raised, pointed at the Blank who had its hands around the medical orderly’s throat. It was a female body, and Heavy Combat Infantry, too, but that didn’t matter now. It was a Blank. Except in the fact that the underskin armour and enhanced musculature of a HCI soldier would make things harder, and would also explain how a Blank got so far in. The rifle chattered, and she fought to keep it level, bullets punching through the unarmoured man it held as a shield and into the Blank. The desensitisation training, among other things, tried to teach you to ignore the “human hostage” reflex.

Who remained intact enough to throw Jancowski at her, the slam of his bulk bowling her to the ground and the rest of the shots spraying wide. Up above, the light shattered, casting the anteroom into the dimly-lit red of emergency lighting.

Not that it affected either of the combatants overly; both had NEG-construction Eyes, and whatever the Blank had on top of that.

Xuan groaned, and, gritting her teeth, tried to stop the world from spinning. Fuck, fuck, fuck! she thought, as she rolled out from under the bleeding corpse, and scrabbled for her empty carbine. It’s an HCI, I’m just a combat engineer. It’s faster, stronger, and more armoured than me. Any plan than involves me having to fight something like that unarmed is a bad plan. What to... urk.

Her chain of thought was suddenly interrupted, as the Blank, bleeding from multiple impacts, her skin a strangely smooth texture from the subdermal plating of a HCI, reached down, and grabbed her neck. The thing hoisted Xuan up to thrash and kick, her attempts to get. The woman could feel her spine creak and grate, agonising spikes shooting up and down her neck. Little black dots started to dance in front of her Eyes, and Xuan was suddenly aware of how little time she had.

A left heel, swung back into where she guessed the kneecap of the Blank was, managed to connect, and the reprogrammed woman staggered backwards. HCI implants didn’t have the solid plating around the joints, and so a military boot could still harm. And the combination of the mass of all the Blank’s plating, and the fact that she was trying to snap Xuan’s neck meant that they went down together. Furniture splintered as the Blank crashed down, its head impacting with a solid noise not entirely unlike a dropped bowling ball, and the Lance Corporal screamed in pain, as her ankle was crushed by the mass.

Still, she still had the empty carbine close to hand. No bullets, but any leverage was good, she thought, as she pulled herself out from under the heavy body, stress-given strength enough to push it off. Forcing the pain from her ankle away, teeth forced together in a screaming grin, she slammed the butt of the weapon into the right Eye of the Blank, rupturing the hard surface and tearing a chunk of flesh off the woman’s face, as it ricocheted off the hardened plates. The thing thrashed and writhed, so the second blow went into windpipe; armoured, yes, but still vulnerable to sufficient force. It wasn’t striking back now, just lying there, taking each blow.

Screaming, swearing, sweating, Xuan Do smashed the light carbine into the throat again and again, the lightweight plastics splintering, smeared in crimson, which suddenly went bright red when a major artery was ruptured, gushing forth from one of the flexible joints.

Xuan didn’t stop. If asked later, she would have claimed that she couldn’t be sure that this was just an Infiltrator, that it might have been a Combat Blank of some form, and thus not merely a mentally-rewired human, and so she needed to do as much damage as possible. But, to be frank, that was not what was passing through her mind.

There was a noise behind her, followed by the sharp pain of a stun baton thrust into her back. People were shouting, and the pain in her ankle was even worse. It was standard protocol; they couldn’t be sure that she wasn’t compromised, that this wasn’t some kind of Migou false-flag operation, to get them to trust one Blank for taking down another, to allow them to accomplish their objective. She was going straight for a neural scan, to see if she was a Blank. It made sense.

But as she convulsed on the floor, muscles spasming, her only rational, as opposed to pain-induced, thought was that she needed to damn well get a medal for this to be all worth it.



~’/|\’~



“Asuka?”

The reddish-blond girl, her now-dry hair swept back with the two A10 superconducting QUI Devices holding it in place, stiffened, standing to attention. “Colonel,” she said in response, turning to face the older woman. Actually, technically, she was looking down at her, but only in a physical sense; quite the opposite was true in a social sense.

Colonel Kristos followed where the girl had been looking, before her interruption. Already, the hordes of red-exosuited workers and car-sized drones which swarmed around Unit 02 had stripped away the contaminated upper layers of armour. Now, the titan stood in the chamber, almost perfectly reflective, as the layers of mirrorgloss, designed to minimise damage from the ubiquitous laser weapons of the strange aeon, were exposed to the air. In the white of the chamber, the workers were strange, distorted red shapes reflected in the war machine, the only distinction on the smooth surface being the bubbled and warped sections where the upper layers had been damaged by the action.

It was a mundane sight to anyone experienced with the necessities of maintenance.

Oxanna permitted herself a short, mono-shouldered shrug, and turned her attention back to the girl. “How are you feeling?” she asked.

“A little annoyed,” Asuka admitted, after a calculating glance at the black-uniformed woman. “I made some stupid mistakes out there.”

The blond woman raised her eyebrows at that. “I was actually talking about your back... but I don’t believe you did.”

“The fact that I have,” she reached over her shoulder, to point at the region around her right shoulder blade, “this is a sign that I made a mistake. I should have done better.” She shook her head, hair flicking in a tight controlled arc. “That was too close to the entry plug. And the pilot is the primary point of failure in an Evangelion.”

“Asuka,” Oxanna said, with a small smile in her voice, “you personally took down two Drone Ships, and a capital-grade charge beam and its attached lander today. Errors are inevitable on actual battlefields, and you made few enough that they can be fixed.” She watched as the girl relaxed slightly. “Less than your opponents made, certainly,” she added.

“That doesn’t mean what I said wasn’t true,” Asuka said, blinking once, those blue Eyes staring at the Colonel. “I know I’m the best pilot there is, but the fact is, compared to the Evangelion organism or the cybernetics in the machine, anyone is weak... prone to failure.”

Colonel Kistos restrained a sigh, running a hand down the sleeve of her black uniform. “Asuka... is this about the adrenal system or neurachem modifications again?”

The girl just stared at her, a look in her eyes which seemed far too old for her sixteen-year old body.

“Those are alterations which neither the NEGA Biomorality Board, nor the Ashcroft Representative for Ethics, will sanction. You know this. You’re still maturing, and we can’t risk the endocrinal or neurological damage that might result.” She held Asuka’s gaze. “You are too valuable as a pilot now to risk that.”

“I wasn’t fast enough today,” Asuka said, flatly. “I didn’t notice the second squadron of Wasps flanking me, so I got hit. I did notice the launch, but if I’d been faster, I’d have been able to switch LDG priority back. And because of that, the Eva got damaged, I got hurt, and I lost several secondary weapons systems. My body just can’t live up to what my mind wants to do, so I need it to be better.” She put her hands on her hips. “You don’t understand. I am the best Evangelion pilot that you can get. And it still isn’t enough.”

The older woman did sigh then, adjusting her black beret. “Listen to me, Asuka,” she said. “I think you are forgetting just how exceptional your achievements are, and just how much more time you have. We... that’s the Army speaking here... don’t intend to deploy you as a proper field unit until you have a proper commission, and that won’t be until you can legally get one. Today was an emergency; I had you pulled forwards, because it was that, or risk a breakthrough at Nova Kakhovka. And,” her face softened slightly, “I know there have been emergencies in the past as well, and live fire combat tests, but you are not a field-active pilot at the moment. You are a Test Pilot for the first Mass Production model of a series of experimental arcanocyberxenobiological combat units. And you are amazing at it.”

She could see the girl’s jawline tighten slightly, before loosening again, breaking into a confident smile. “I can be sure you mean that, Oxanna,” Asuka said. “I know you’d tell me if I wasn’t good enough.”

“... and have, in the past,” the older woman said.

“Which is why I can trust you with these things,” Asuka agreed. “Not like that idiot Malvolio,” she added, in a darker voice. “Always telling me that I’m ‘good enough’. No one can ever be ‘good enough’; you always, always can do better. I can’t tell if he’s someone’s sycophant, or just an idiot.”

There was a pause, as they watched the teams strip away one of the empty seeker launchers, its rails utterly warped and melted by an impact from a Migou plasma weapon.

“Could be both,” Oxanna suggested.

“Good point,” Asuka said, with a smirk.

“She’s right, you know,” a voice said from behind the pair, making them both jump slightly. “Not about Captain Martello, because as a neutral observer I cannot...” and that was about as far he got, before he had to save his breath for dodging a ballistic sixteen-year old, and her guided hug. Deploying countermeasures such as a worried look proved to be eminently ineffectual, and he was finally forced to mitigate the damage by keeping the embrace chaste, and brief. It would be rude to try to dodge it with his full capacities, after all; the girl would be offended, and that would just be unnecessarily mean.

“Didn’t you see what I did today!” Asuka asked the newcomer, her voice suddenly a lot more girlish. “Wasn’t I amazing?”

Ryoji Kaji smiled, and stepped back, disentangling one of her limbs as he did. “I’ve only looked over the reports, but, yes, Asuka, you did very well.” The man from the Global Intelligence Agency turned, and smiled at the Colonel. “Debriefing her, are you, Oxanna?”

“That’s largely been done already, Ryoji,” Colonel Kristos said back, matching his smile.

The man frowned. “I have to say, I just thought it was going to be a training exercise today,” he admitted, raising his eyebrows at the military woman.

“So did I,” admitted Oxanna. “And that was what it was meant to be. I had to move Unit 02 up from 2501 to Nova Kakhovka because otherwise we’d have had a line collapse. The bugs managed to take out one of the anti-cap lasers there, and... well, you know the rest.”

He knew the rest.

“So, did you do anything exciting, today?” Asuka asked him, still holding onto one of his hands. “Hunt down and kill a horde of Dagonite cultists, or maybe thwart the evil goals of a traitor to humanity? Did you use any good one-liners as you shot anyone?” Her eyes were sparkling.

Kaji sighed. “Honestly, no. I’m not a field agent anymore, as I have told you. Most of my job involves paperwork. Although...” he stroked his unshaven chin, “perhaps you would be interested in my valiant bravery against a most dreadful foe.”

“Sure!”

Oxanna rolled her eyes. “Why not? Although, if this turns out to be the story of the black-and-white-armoured pilot in the black-and-white Blizzard... well, I do have a loaded gun.”

The man’s face fell, in a comic overreaction. “Well, looks like the nice lady from the Army has just de facto classified my work,” he said.

“Oh, well,” said Asuka, a sly smile creeping onto her face. “Well, that’s a shame. I suppose we should go home now, because I’ve done pretty much everything I need to, haven’t I, Oxanna?”

The Colonel nodded. “I think that’s fine,” she said, Eyes flicking for a moment, as she checked her PCPU. “Yes. Be careful with her,” she told Kaji, in a warning tone, “she took sympathetic burns from ordinance to the back of Unit 02. The medichines managed to stabilise them in-plug, and they’ve been treated, but...”

Kaji nodded, face momentarily serious, before he smiled again. “I’ve got the car outside, Asuka,” he said. “We can leave now, if you want?”

The girl considered it. “Can we get something to eat on the way home?” she asked. “I needed a Level 3 Decontamination, and so... well, I’ve eaten since then, but there’s a lot of eating to make up for.” She rolled her eyes. “I’ll never end up fat, if that keeps on happening.”

“Yeah.” The man paused. “Actually,” he admitted, “I’m kinda hungry too. I had to skip lunch. Where do you want to go...”



~’/|\’~



The table in the apartment was heaped with plastic containers. Within these mounds could be seen rice, noodles, and all sorts of protein and woven vegetable substitute floating in various sauces. The iridescent colours of this alchemical mess would have driven ancient peoples into awe, at such wonder and light in the world. Also, there were prawn crackers.

They were having Chinese.

“Don’t take all the egg-fried rice,” Kaji warned Asuka, who was shovelling it from the container to her plate in vast amounts.

Her eyes momentarily narrowed, before returning wide and innocent. “But, Kaa~aaji,” she said, flicking her head slightly, “I was piloting today, and had to go through decontamination. You know that always makes me feel like I haven’t eaten in ages. I’m actually really, really hungry... and, yes, I know I’ve already eaten, but one meal isn’t enough.”

“I know,” the man said, “but, just try not to take it all. I like it, too. I mean, no one’s touched the chicken chow mein yet.”

She screwed up her face. “Not in the mood for that.”

“You normally like it.” That was said in a joking tone.

A shrug, followed by a wince, as a jolt of pain came from the sympathetic burn on her back.

“That reminds me,” Kaji said. “I got you a present.” He watched as her eyes lit up at that remark.

“What is it?” Asuka asked, with a hint of hunger in her voice. “Although, of course, you really shouldn’t have,” she added, hastily. “But what is it? What is it?”

“I managed to get you the action-reports from the Harbinger-4 incident,” the man said in a deliberately casual tone, before biting into a prawn cracker. For all her talents, Asuka really wasn’t that good at feigning disinterest.

“Thank you, Kaji,” she said, in what he was pretty sure could accurately be described as a squeal. She leant forwards, and he resolutely kept his eyes upwards. “What can I do to repay you?” Asuka said, in what he thought was meant to be a seductive tone. From his perspective, it was a failure.

“You can pass me the soy sauce,” he suggested, watching the faint flicker of disappointment warring against the ecstasy, before being resolutely crushed.

“Well,” the reddish-blond girl said, as she passed the aforementioned condiment, “thank you. A lot. Really.” Her hand hovered over her own plate for a moment.

Kaji smiled. “Yes, Asuka, you can go watch them right now.” He dug a hand into his pocket, and withdrew a storage chip. “It’s locked, so you can’t copy it, and... well, you know how classified everything Eva-related is.”

“Understood,” Asuka nodded, picking up her plate, and adding a few more things to it for good measure. “If you’ll excuse me...”

“You are excused,” Kaji said, gravely, his face twisted into a grotesque mask of ‘reasonable authority figure’. It looked rather comic on him. He shook his head, as Asuka disappeared into the next room.

It took less than an hour, as he cleaned up the table (there had been several distracting calls from his superiors, so the last parts of the meal had been cold), for the laughter to start. And it wasn’t nice laughter; he could hear the contempt dripping from it. Depositing the plates in the sink, he poked his head into the living room.

Augmented Reality interface before her, Asuka was working her way through the autocensored footage from Unit 01 and surrounding units. At the moment, she had the same image of Unit 01, from multiple angles paused. With a finger poke, she set it to play again.

On the screen before him, from multiple angles, the grey-blue figure of Unit 01 fired its Babylon in one hand. The structural diagram to her right, complete with flashing red, showed the consequence of that decision, as fractures propagated up the

“Useless,” Asuka proclaimed, mirth fighting with superiority. “What an idiot.”

“Really?” Kaji asked. From his point of view, it had looked fairly impressive.

There was almost a faint hint of pity in the stare she directed at him, quite unlike her normal interactions with him, before her normal exterior returned. “Yes. Complete and utter idiot.” She shook her head, hair whipping behind her. “Seriously, what kind of an imbecile tries to fire a Babylon with one hand, and hasn’t even grasped the concept of bracing yourself with your AT-Field?” She paused. “Well, this Third Child, obviously. Mein Gott, I can’t believe he passed the handling tests to even qualify. I mean... arggh! It’d be like trying to fire a man-sized rifle without bracing it.” The disgust on her face was evident. “If someone like him is piloting... they must be desperate. Or stupid. Facility 0343 needs to get Unit 03 ready, so someone competent can pilot, even if they have to ship them all the way from Australia.”

“And yet he’s managed to eliminate two Harbinger-level threats,” Kaji pointed out, mildly.

“Hardly,” Asuka snapped. “Asherah; he lost control, and the Eva did it. And Eshmun... that doesn’t count as a kill! The Army and Navy had already blown it in half. That’s... that’s like half a kill, at most.” She crossed her arms. “And he should lose points for getting so damaged both times.”

“So there’s a point system now?”

“There should be!”

The man stroked his chin. “Aren’t you a little harsh on him, Asuka?” he asked.

“Hardly! I’d say, the problem with him is that whoever’s been responsible for his training hasn’t been harsh enough. I mean, he’s my age, so he’s had...” she paused, “well, this Third Child obviously started after Berlin-2, so he’s had maybe eight years training. Now, that’s still less than me, but... it’s inexcusable to be this bad!”

“Asuka...” the man began, trying to prevent the rant.

She ignored him. “I-I-I’m glad I’m here on the Front,” she continued. “I never want to pilot with someone that useless. Look at him! An utter lack of control! I bet he’s still utterly reliant on the control yokes for memophysical association! What a crude, bumbling idiot.” She was almost spluttering. “I’m actually offended that someone like that is allowed in a masterpiece like an Evangelion, even one as crude as the Test Model!”

Internally, Kaji sighed. He actually couldn’t tell her the truth. The identity of the Third Child was still classified; all Asuka was allowed to know was his age, and sex. And... actually, the GIA agent didn’t understand why the age wasn’t classified for the other Children, too. Probably some mistake when sealing his file, was his opinion. The whole misunderstanding over how long the Third Child had been training was something he was going to raise with the Evangelion people. It wasn’t healthy to promote misunderstandings, the spy thought with deliberate irony.

“He does have a very good Synch Ratio,” he pointed out.

“And I’m sure that if Evangelion piloting was all about that one number, he’d be the biggest, bestest pilot ever,” the girl snapped. “Oh, wait, no. Mine is still better. So, just to clarify, I’m the best pilot in a technical, synchronisational, tactical, and strategic sense, and am also in the best Evangelion.” She snorted. “Well, at least they have their priorities right there. It’d be worse if that idiot was in my Unit 02.”

Kaji frowned. She did seem to be actively offended by this stuff about the Third Child and Unit 01; probably the idea of a competitor at all, he thought.

Out loud, he said, “Well... um, Asuka, I’ve just has a call. I’m needed in the office, some new data’s come in over the Migou response to what you did today, and I need to check it out. Will you be okay?”

“If I don’t die of laughter first,” she said, rolling her eyes. “No, I’ll be fine. But be back soon, and maybe we can watch the rest of this together.”

“Maybe,” the man replied, his face deliberately blank.

The schadenfreude-rich laughter resumed as he left.



~’/|\’~



Her uniform was already hanging up neatly. The smart fabric didn’t crease, after all, but it was still a good idea to leave it like that. The dark-green shorts and black top, the entopic image of a white hand flowing and shifting over the surface of the material, were, by contrast, worn-in and comfortable, soft fabric not designed for any kind of formality.

In Colonel Oxanna Kristos’ opinion, her current position here at Facility 2501, assigned by Anton as the Army supervisor of this sub-facet of the Evangelion Group, as they couldn’t trust the officers seconded to the Foundation fully, was a rather nice one. It was, in fact, almost a bit of a break, compared to the last time she had been dragged off to handle an operation. What had happened in Balleydehob had been... messy.

By contrast here, the most she had to deal with was deployment issues, logistics, and the work from Slavik which she could do remotely. The Evangelion team ran most of the day-to-day affairs, and so she was very much looking in, rather than involved in the day to day affairs.

Perhaps that was why she had started to interact with Test Pilot Soryu more. It really shocked Oxanna how little attention some of the Evangelion team paid to her. Personally, she had put it down to the length of time they had known her; they still looked at her as a little girl. Despite the fact that this “little girl” was, apart from having far more potential in her little finger than some of the engineering staff had in their entire bodies, also walking around at the age of sixteen with a degree in the Natural Sciences. In fact, the only reason she had not moved onto the Arcane Sciences was the fact that it was not permitted, at her age, to do so, which was a controversial decision with her, to say the least. And the fact that she had that known association with the head of the Achtzig Group... well, Oxanna had spent time around the man, and it showed. Oh God, it showed. So, yes, she had effectively begun to mentor the girl, who had instinctively responded, opening like a flower (albeit one with lots of thorns) in response.

Of course, such an association came with fringe benefits...

That was when the house LAI informed her of a visitor.

Checking that her pistol was still in place, she went to the door. Really, though, she thought, the pistol won’t do much. If something that’s trying to kill me can get past the blood checks, the CATSEYE scans, the wards, the neural scans, they’re probably prepared enough that a 10mm won’t do much.

Something ran the bell. Checking the camera and the CATSEYE, she nodded to herself, and stepped up to the door.

No one.

She looked to her left, and then right, up and down the corridor.

Still no one.

“Who are you looking for?” a confused-sounding man asked. A certain blue-shirted unshaven individual was leaning against the wall, to her left.

“Goddamnit, Ryoji,” she swore, flinching. “Don’t do that.”

“You always look left first,” he explained. “So I just stepped around you. It’s not hard. Especially if you’re very fast.”

“It’s not hard? You’re very fast?” She left a deliberate pause. “Then why are you here?”

The man winced, “I walked into that one,” before shrugging. “Well, anyway, I bought you some flour,” he said, holding a white bag. “Well, I couldn’t find any flowers, and I thought that, given it’s pronounced the same...” He put it down on the table, smirking at her.

“You’re late,” she said, trying to both raise an eyebrow and not laugh, while at the same time taking off her top. It was surprisingly hard to multitask like that, especially when he got up close and did that to her ear.

There wasn’t much talking after that.



~’/|\’~

[EarthScorpion]

~’/|\’~



26th September, 2091


She stood on a tarmac road. She could feel the material, heated in the height of summer, suck slightly at her shoes, whenever she stopped, and so kept on moving. She had to keep on moving.

It was hot. Sweltering. She couldn’t understand why anyone would want to be outside here.

And yet she was surrounded by dark-robed figures, veiled and masked, a legion trudging on foot as one vast, collective organism. They were giants as to her, figures that towered above her. One was holding her hand, clutching it tight, and, she realised, half-leading, half-pulling her along with the crowd.

“Was passieren?” she asked, confused. She didn’t know, and it was confusing her. No. That wasn’t quite true. She knew, but she’d forgotten. She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t even remember remembering. But she could remember remembering that she remembered, and that was enough to tell her that something terrible was happening.

The looming figure above her stopped, and glanced down, a hint of green light visible under the hood, casting the dark material in a viridian light, before it looked away, and continued pulling her away.

There was a grittiness in the air. She could feel it, horribly dry, horribly itchy, sucking at her skin like some swarm of infernal insects. Moving her fingers of her free hand as she was pulled along, her palm felt like sandpaper.

There were guardians by the side of the road; tall, taller even than the giants in the crowd, and far more bulky, bearing their weapons in grey hands. She began to count the glimpse of their helmets she could see over the top of the masked and robed throng, eins, zwei, drei... If any of the crowd tried to leave the road, they would push them back onto the path. If any stumbled and tripped in the march along this baking road, pairs of the guardians would step onto the road ... vier, fünf... and take the fallen. She didn’t know where they were taking them, and any questions she asked of the robed figure with her at most gained her a stare, and the same hint of green light from under the deep hood, before the march continued.

... sechs, sieben, acht, neun...

She couldn’t stop the march. It was going to happen, one way or another. All she could do was try to stay upright, and stay with the giant who clutched her hand.

Another fall. ... zehn, elf... Another one taken.

In the distance, far behind her, something began to scream, ancient, horrid, and yet horrifically young; a mechanical rise and fall which rose until her teeth vibrated, the sensation dropping just as the sound did until she could feel it in her gut. She wanted to turn to see what it was, but she now knew that she had been told not to look back. She couldn’t look back. She would be in a Lot of trouble if she did, she thought with a sudden giggle.

The crowd, the pilgrimage, only picked up its pace.

...zwölf, dreizehn, vierzehn, fünfzehn...

And that was when it happened. The first sign was the sudden white light which lit the giants from behind, and cast deep, dark, hungry shadows on the road in front of them. There was a sudden wash of heat, extreme even in the already baking temperatures of the height of summer, and she screamed in terror and pain, as did the robed and masked giants that surrounded her. And then came the noise, a terrible booming thunder to go with the flash of sun-lightning.

She looked back.

The pillars of light erupted from the great city, devouring its pyramids and consuming those pilgrims which had not gotten far enough away. The wrath of the heavens came for all alike.

Screaming in pain, clutching the rods of agony into her skull which she had once called eyes, she fell to the ground.

And strong hands closed around her feet and her arms, and carried her off.

...sechzehn, siebzehn...

Asuka Langley Soryu awoke, streaming with sweat. The acrid scent of terror filled the room, the hint of red light from the nightlight plugged in at the end of the room enough to cast the place in striations of crimson and black, but not enough to banish the shadows which lurked at the edge of vision, even to her eyes.

Arching her back, sticking her chest into the air (and suddenly feeling a hint of welcome cool, for the covers had evidently slid off in the night), she took a deep, shuddering breath, and let it out slowly. The gauze bandages, sealed over the sympathetic burns from the missile, were a patch of warmth, tight against her inflamed skin. Slowly, slowly, her spine lowered itself back into the hollow in the mattress, and she scrambled for the light at her bedside table.

In the soft glow, Asuka stared up at the ceiling. Then, with an effort, she swung her legs out of bed, to sit upright. No longer lit in red, it had the identical feel of so many military-type accommodations. Identical feel, and identical structure; this was a standard room design. In a sense, although she had only been here for a week, for the training at 2501 which had turned into... into what had happened today. No, what had happened yesterday, now, she realised, glancing over at the clock. She shook her head, an exhausted gesture of annoyance at how distracted she was feeling. Yes, despite the fact that she had only been here for a week, the ceiling was so utterly familiar that even the smallest quirks of design were known.

Clumsily, with stiff-feeling fingers, the girl peeled off her soaked top, the slight chill of the night air against her wet flesh a reassuring feel. Taking the drier front, Asuka dried herself off against it, further. She might as well feel more comfortable, as the top was already ruined for sleeping in, at least this night. Scrunching the sodden garment into a ball, she hurled it into the laundry basket, bouncing it in off the wall.

If one were to look at the contents of the plastic basket, one might see identical garments forming geographic strata of disturbed nights.

Asuka shivered slightly, and crossed her arms in front of her, before uncrossing them again. Why did she care about that? Either Kaji was home, and he might get a look at her wonderful body, or he wasn’t, and she didn’t need to care. Either way, there was nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, yes, after all, Nazzadi culture, insofar as one could refer to one culture, rather than a vast and complex noosphere of experimental memeplexes, didn’t have a nudity taboo, and if he did get a look at her, she could just say that she was emulating the cultural practices of Homo sapiens nazzadi.

It would probably be more convincing if she didn’t smell of hot and dampness and fear. And, always, underneath everything, the scent of LCL. It never came out, not really. Not when it was being swallowed and taken in through the lung walls and through the tear ducts and through anything exposed. There was a reason the plug suits were sealed at the neck, after all. It just diffused into the body, and stayed there. The injections and the scrubbers and the medichines and the UV-washes and the denaturing agents and the... and the everything did their best.

Their best wasn’t good enough. She could always, always smell it in her sweat. Just a hint, normally, but in these terror-filled nighttimes, it was notable to people who didn’t spend time around it, a recognisable tang of metal and blood and something to the air. Bed coverings didn’t last long with her.

She licked her forearm.

God, she could even taste it.

Sagging forwards onto her lap, Asuka stared down at the green carpet. She just wanted to sleep. It was true that she only needed about five or so hours, and could cope on less; a gift of what her grandmother had had done to her mother. It still wore her down, to live like this. Physiologically, she would be able to operate fine. Psychologically, the reddish-blond girl always wanted more sleep. That had to wait, though, as she’d feel even worse in the morning if she didn’t shower before putting on a fresh top.

But before that, there was the necessity to write down what she could remember of the dream. Her psychologist insisted on it; a problem made worse by the fact that all the dream suppressants they had tested on her interfered with the synchronisation process. Or, in one case, caused a violent allergic reaction, which had almost put her in a coma.

Which made them not an option.

Clumsily, she reached for the PCPU on her bedside table, without looking, gaze still locked on her pale feet and the green carpet which they rested on. By touch, she turned it on, and only then did she drop it between her feet, as she composed her thoughts, trying to ensure that she could record everything.



~’/|\’~



“Ryoji?”

Two naked bodies, entwined together.

“Hmm?”

“You’re good at this.”

“Hmm.” His tone was rather self-satisfied.

“Just one thing.”

“Hrhmm?”

“Shave, man!” Oxanna propped herself up on her elbows, mussed blond hair hanging loose around her face. “For... mmmrph... for fuck’s sake, shave! Stubble is not good.”



~’/|\’~



In the cold, harsh white light of the bathroom, Asuka stared at her reflection. Few would have recognised the Second Child, the confident, assertive, almost-arrogant prodigy, with her face grey with fatigue, hair soaked in sweat.

The faint scent of LCL was making her slightly hungry.

There was a hiss of water, as she turned on the tap, grabbing a pink mug from beside the basin. She filled the cup, and took a gulp, before spewing it all out, and unleashing a blister of profanity. The water went into the sink, and the tap was switched to “Cold”, before the process was repeated.

“Who the hell leaves the tap on ‘Hot’, anyway?” Asuka angrily muttered to herself. It was a brief outburst which would have been far more recognisable as the face she wore to the outside world to an outside observer, before the cold brightness of the light and the dull grey of her exhaustion snuffed it out.

The gush of water was a momentary distraction. The splash of the cold, as the jet hit the plane surface against her skin was a sudden chill quite unlike that of sweat, and Asuka flinched away, hairs already standing on end. She didn’t really have to clean herself down now, did she? She could just sleep like that, just sleep, and do it in the morning. There wouldn’t be anything wrong with that, would there?

Yes. There would be. She forced her cupped palms into the water, and splashed it over her face, massaging the water in. And then, because it really was cold, she turned around and grabbed the nice dark red dressing gown, a birthday present from Uncle Cal a few years ago, and wrapped herself in the fluffy warmth. It was only as she turned back to the mirror that she sighed. This was going to have to go in the wash, for sure. She liked this dressing gown, and didn’t want to see it ruined. And a replacement just wouldn’t be the same, for all that it would have the same structure.

Automatically, unthinkingly, she cleaned her hands, carefully scrubbing at them with soap and the nail brush. Then, with slow deliberateness, she looked down at her hands. Fine, delicate fingers, the nails cut short and, on the left hand, a little bit bitten. Asuka reminded herself that she’d have to go get some new ones, soon. Long nails were completely impractical for a plug suit, and tended just to get broken (sometimes messily) if they got too long, but it was nice sometimes, just for an afternoon, before her next synch test, to get to show them off. Before she had to trim them down, the synthetic keratin discarded, to be recycled. Just like everything else in her life.

With equal slowness, she raised her right index finger, and jabbed herself in the eyeball. She did not even blink.

The smooth, inorganic hardness of an Eye met her questing finger. As always. Just as every time she did it.

Good.

They might be able to make them look real, but they weren’t real to the touch. The surface was hard, solid, quite unlike the squishiness of the jelly-filled eyeball she had been born with. The retina was engineered for efficiency and effectiveness, quite unlike the haphazard ministrations of Darwin. They gave above and beyond peak-human clarity of vision, quite apart from the other tweaks incorporated from nature, from Nazzadi, avian and mantis-shrimp alike.

She had had them for so long, since just before her ninth birthday, periodic upgrades necessary to adjust for her growth. And that made them her eyes. Not the ones she had been born with. Her Eyes. Not anyone else’s.

She ran her finger under the eyelid, around the point where the Eye fused with her rebuilt skull. The eye socket was a weakness, an entry point, and, in more technical matters, they needed somewhere to anchor the heavily rebuilt, only partially organic sensory organ. Asuka could feel the difference between pseudo-flesh and flesh, feel the transition from conventional bone to the vat-grown variant that edged the Eye. Removing her finger, she cleaned it off, under the running water.

Yes. A shower. Good. No, Kaji might be asleep. I don’t want to wake him. If he’s here.

I could always go check...

Slowly, carefully, she placed one naked foot after another, making her way without sight (not that the low light levels were a problem for her) through the familiar corridors of the standardised housing. The carpeting under her feet was warm, even if it was a little hard, and perhaps wearing thin in places from the roughness. She placed one hand on his door, to push it open.

Asuka then paused, and tweaked her dressing gown, such that an almost indecent amount of cleavage was showing.

Through the open door, she could see that the bed was untouched, the neat sheets obviously unslept in. Again.

If she cried as she showered, alone in this empty house, then it was lost in the torrent of warm water.



~’/|\’~




As it turned out, Lance Corpral Xuan Do was actually going to be getting a medal. In fact, she was going to be getting more than one. There would be the standard White Laurel of Bravery, because she had managed to acquire a broken ankle in the fight, as well as the fact that her neck was in a cast. But she was also going to be getting the Kanala Seal, for “Valorous Deeds While Unequipped For Combat.”

The morning light, streaming in through the east-facing windows of the surface hospital, was warm; they’d moved her far enough back that there wouldn’t be any of the emfog clouds, legacies of previous battles, to cast the world into silver-lit greyness. The sight from the window was less pleasing. The Blank, the Infiltrator that she’d killed, had not been working alone. And they had succeeded in their missions, at least partially. They’d managed a lot more than putting her in here, and killing all those people in the anteroom. The wreckage of Hangars 013 and 014 were visible, the fires extinguished, but the wreckage clear to see. The bugs had managed to compromise a repair technician, she’d heard, and the damage that had caused was evident. Only one wall of Hangar 013 was still standing; the rest was just rubble, while Hangar 014 was riddled with worm-like holes around which the building had run like wax. The recovery vehicles, hauling away damaged mecha and tanks, were still trying to extract as many assets as they could, in case the Migou attacked again.

Still, it could have been worse for the NEG. If they’d managed to get access to large amounts of explosives...

Cutlery clinked, as Xuan hungrily devoured the nutrient broth that was her breakfast. Her left hand was lay beside her, bandaged and in a cast; she had managed to fracture two fingers, as well as break her ankle, and it was numb through the targeted painkillers. At least she hadn’t broken anything in her right hand, as well. She’d have been useless if both hands were incapacitated like this.

Finishing up her bowl, she stared up at the ceiling, and told the LAI monitoring her that she’d finished. It took only a short while for a nurse to show up, to collect the waste.

He was kind of cute, too. Nicely built, square-jawed, very green eyes...

“How are you feelingly, Lance Corporal?” he asked her, as he picked up the tray, and added the pile on his trolley. He glanced sideways at the machine. “You seem to be doing well.”

Xuan shrugged. “I’ve had worse.” A smile crept onto her lips. “I’ve had worse in training, actually.”

The young man winced. “Really?” he asked.

She nodded. “Yep. Fell off a wall, managed to break my leg.” The woman paused. “You can check my record. I always throw everything I can into doing things. It’s something you should always do, live for the moment. Don’t you agree?”

Inwardly, Xuan groaned. That had been a really, really bad pseudo-pass at him. God, the painkillers must be affecting her more than she thought they were. With luck, he wouldn’t have...

The man raised one eyebrow at the remark. “I’m sorry, Lance Corporal, I do have a boyfriend.”

Damn. He noticed. And is in a relationship. And prefers men. Why me? She managed to stifle the outwards manifestation of her annoyance, though, and smiled weakly. “I had to try.”

The man shrugged. “Well, I think I’ll interpret it as a compliment. But... hang on a moment,” he said, raising one finger to an ear, his left Eye lighting up to show that it was actively intercepting his vision. “Yes?” He paused. “Yes, sir. I’m actually there at the moment... yes.” Another pause, longer. “Really? Understood, I’ll inform her.”

Xuan made a curious noise.

“Um... well, I don’t know exactly how to put this, Corporal Do, but...” the man paused. “Wait a moment, that’s a lie. I do know how to put this. You’ll be getting a visit from Marshal Hassan in a few minutes.”

Xuan turned chalk white. “R-r-really? M-m-marshal Hassan, while I’m still in hosp...” She paused, and shook her head. “I didn’t expect that,” she said, forcing a smile onto her face.

The nurse smiled. “Well, he’s visiting the victims of last night’s attack on the base, and, well,” the corners of his eyes crinkled up, “well, you did manage to kill the one Blank which made a break into the base, rather than military assets. I heard they think may have been part of an assassination thing... you know, going for commanders, before it got caught in the lockdown. Of course he was going to want to meet with you,” the man said with increasing enthusiasm. “You’re a hero.”

“Oh... yes. That makes sense,” Xuan said, slowly. “Just bad luck me and all those people happened to be in the same section as it.”

The green-eyed man nodded, more seriously, the smile gone. “Yes. Indigo Blanks are very hard to detect, and... well, you did what you had to do,” he said, seriously.

Xuan nodded. “What I had to,” she said slowly. “I just wish I could have got it before it killed all those people.”

A stomp of heavy boots, and the slow, crushing steps of Centurion powered armours in the high and wide corridor spoke of the arrival of the senior officer. Taking up position by the door and by the window, the grey-armoured figures were alert, scanning the exits and windows. Compared to all this elaborate security, the Marshal himself was just another man; shaven-headed, with aristocratic, even pharaonic features and high cheekbones. His dark eyes matched his neat uniform.

“Room is secure, sir,” reported a mechanical voice through the speakers of the armour. “We’ve got all exits covered, and windows were already set to opaque.”

“Thank you, Sergeant,” said Marshal Hassan, with a nod of his head. He took several steps into the room, coming to a stop at the end of Xuan’s bed. “Lance Corporal,” he said, his accent, from his childhood in the slums of old Cairo before the First Arcanotech War, still prominent, “congratulations.”

“Th-thank you, sir,” Xuan said, stuttering.

The shaven-headed man looked down at the injured woman. A small, slightly superior smile crept onto his lips. “Really, Corporal Do, you can relax a little. I don’t expect you to stand at attention. That would be a little hard in your current condition, for one.”

Xuan’s laughter was nervous, and overloud. She winced. “Sorry, sir,” she said, her face pale. “It’s just... well, I didn’t expect to get a chance to meet someone like you... um... to have you visiting my hospital bed... um, okay, now I’m babbling.”

The smile was somewhat paternalistic. “Actually, Corporal, I’ve had a look at your file.” He pulled up a chair, and sat down, by the side of her bed, on her left. “Well... what to say? You managed to survive the loss of the rest of your squad, held out against both Migou and Loyalist forces while keeping hidden enough that they didn’t find you, and managed to provide vital observational data. That alone would be impressive. Then, before you’d even cleared checks, you managed to take down, while unarmoured, a Heavy Combat Infantrywoman who’d been Blanked, by... well, by beating her to death with a rifle butt.”

Xuan blushed. Put like that, it did sound rather ridiculous, almost contrived. A look of embarrassment on her face, she massaged her right Eye with her palm. “I was just doing my job, sir,” she said. Then, with one precise, quick motion, she punched Marshal Hassan in the unarmoured thigh.

The man barely had time to look shocked, before the nerve agent in his bloodstream hit his brain. It was quick. The tiny carbon-fibre syringes, which had been hidden in her standard-issue light underskin bioweave, couldn’t carry much, nor could much be hidden without the NEG finding it, but the rigid hair-like fibres now sticking out of her knuckles still had enough to kill one man in less than ten seconds.

“Just doing my job,” Xuan Do said.



~’/|\’~



“Movement!” The tone was alert, concerned. “Camera 12, north. Looks like... yes, it’s a Dragonfly.”

There was a slight shudder among the troops. The Dragonfly classes may have different from example to example, but they were always shockingly fast fliers, with superlative stealth systems. The ideal scouts, in fact.

“Do!” the leader of Charlie Fireteam, the other half of her squad, ordered over the radio, “get those AA-Hornets set up!”

“Alpha-one’s operational,” she replied, checking the status on her casecreen, “and alpha-two is being loaded right now.” She paused. “We’ve got four Spada up, too.”

“Good. Make sure you tag’em into the Foxtrot-Oscar network when you’re done. Over and out.”

That was when the booming announcement resounded, the echoes shaking dust from the walls

“Surrender,” it said, calm and impassive, eminently reasonable. “We offer you a chance to surrender. Just surrender, and accept our entirely reasonable demands. There are much worse things out there than us, and we shall protect you from them. That is what we have done for billions of your years, and that is what we shall continue to do. Be not afraid.”

“Sanginoji progogandi,” muttered Rereny, next to her, in her irritation applying the grammatical rules of Nazzadi to an English word.

Xuan paused. Yes, that was it. She had her provisional instructions.

Eliminate all witnesses if possible, then prepare for additional instructions.

“Baguna, Nahuel, you’re on overwatch. Maintain radio silence until you have positive contact,” she ordered. “Rereny, you’re with me. Cover me while I check the feed.” The rest of her squad moved to obey.

Pulling out her casescreen, already connected up to her AICS, she opened up the control window, with codes that she shouldn’t have known, and turned back on the full-integration networking. Which absolutely, completely, utterly should not have been active when facing the Migou, and their superlative grasp of technology.

A coordinate was quickly put into an insecure datafeed, and then, before the artillery strike had even hit Charlie Fireteam, summoned in precisely on the cache they were preparing, she was up.

“Behind you!” she gasped at Rereny, her own rifle already raising, and as the woman turned, she shot her in the back of the head, a cluster of three bullets at point blank range. Settling back down, rifle aimed at the door, she took a deep breath, and controlled her voice.

“Baguna, Nahuel, get here,” she ordered, the measured tone of a NCO deliberately underlain with a hint of hysteria. “Rereny is down, needs medical assistance!”

The cautious movement through the ruins, to get to her position, was designed to make them harder targets for any snipers. All it did was meant that they were moving slower, and thus they were easier targets. The seeker took Nahuel in the chest, the explosive charge smearing him over the walls. Baguna was knocked out by the blast, bleeding from multiple puncture wounds in his SP-armour. Another cluster of bullets to the head finished him off.

Yes. Good. It was now clear.

“Operative in place,” she said, rattling off her identification code into the unsecured link. “Security is maintained. Requesting briefing.”

The voice was sibilant, thin, whispering.

Good it said. We now have access to your Armour Internal Command System. Necessary data alteration has been performed. Stand by for instructions.



~’/|\’~



“How... how, I would like to ask you, did a fucking Blank manage to get past all those scans to be able to get far enough in to be able to take out a fucking Marshal!” Colonel Oxanna swore, pacing up and down in the observation chamber. “I am going to be bringing in so many fucking internal investigators that people won’t be able to take a step without getting probed!”

Agent Kaji, in his role as the local representative of the Global Intelligence Agency looked up from his PCPU, face grim. “Because I’m beginning to suspect that she wasn’t a Blank. Even before we get back the results from the trawl. Just a common , garden-variety traitor. Mind changed through persuasion... not even trauma, that leaves characteristic mental patterns which a trawl, or if she were ever pulled in for a deep scan, might get.” He shook his head. “So much harder to catch, and...”

“... and we have a tendency to neglect that possibility, because of how we know Blanking works,” continued a female GIA agent with coffee-coloured skin, somewhat more neatly dressed than her co-worker. “That is to say, how we know that it works; Blanks can’t be turned or compromised or feel regrets... unless it serves their objectives, of course... unlike someone who just chose to work for the Migou. So we’re more scared of it. But these damn Migou operatives, they’re trained not to think about what they’re doing. Even a surface sweep from a trawl, or a parapsychic mind-reader won’t catch them.”

“Three-hundred-and-seventeen LITAAI subroutines were dedicated to an analysis of her background, as directed,” reported COEUS, its ARvatar suddenly appearing, and making several people in the room jump. “Attempting to correlate relationships, to build up who subject’s cell is. The report is now complete.”

“Thank you, COEUS,” Colonel Oxanna said, her tone clipped. “Forwards the results to the GIA, EuroHighCom, C2, and to Vice Marshal Slavik.”

“Understood, Colonel.” The virtual ‘presence’ of the TITAN departed.

“You really think we’ll get back anything meaningful?” a man in a white coat asked, one eyebrow raised. “You know how the bugs like their operational security.”

Kaji winced. “It could have been worse. Could have been another Anchorage incident.”

Most of the room shuddered at that. It had been much, much earlier in the war, and the NEG correspondingly less aware of what the Migou could do. As it turned out, what they could do was conceal a tiny amount of antimatter, approximately two milligrams, in a tiny, sorcerously reinforced arcanomagnetic containment field, planted in an adjunct to a senior member of the North American Command. It would not work now; the magnetic field and the sorcery were blatant if you were aware of what you were looking for. But back then, they had not known. The resultant blast had decapitated the Regional command structure, and in the chaos, a massive Migou attack had hit. And Alaska had fallen.

As a result, the people in this room, in the here and now, were more than a little concerned about what might be coming next.

“Do we have a secure link to Vice Marshal Slavik yet, COEUS?” Colonel Oxanna asked.

“Yes. Quantum link prepared. Please report to Communications Room 03, Colonel.”

She glanced around the room, over through the one way glass, to where the traitor was being... well, it had started as a vivisection, but after the tiny charge the bugs had evidently built into the back of her Eyes to detonate at a full level mental trawl had gone off, it had turned into a dissection. It had been just enough to release one of their tailored chemicals which caused rapid neural degradation, making her brain useless for the extraction of data. She shared a glance with Ryoji... no, Agent Kaji, in these circumstances. There was almost certainly a Migou-cult operating here. Except that wasn’t quite the right word. They weren’t cultists, in the same sense that the Dagonites, or other ENE-worshipping fools were. They were more akin to trained cells, of people who actually believed that submission to the Migou was the best thing that humanity could do to ensure its own survival. They were dangerous, because they were comparatively sane. They didn’t sacrifice people to dark entities, or set up child molestation rings, or smuggle captives off to the Dagonite camps. They just stayed in position, the rare few communications following ingenious paths to get to them. Just stayed there, living normal lives, watching, waiting.

Until they did something like this.

As she strode down the corridor, and was subjected to the necessary security checks, Colonel Oxanna Kristos really wished that they didn’t do things like this. Adjusting her beret, she entered the communications room. Only one other person was there, his image displayed in her Eyes, with the possible addition of COEUS, a nebulous blue presence, depending on how one classified the TITAN.

“Sir,” she said, saluting her direct superior. Although she was only a Colonel, an O-6, and he was a Vice Marshal, an O-9, she was nevertheless his direct subordinate, attached directly to his command. She served as his liaison, and as a field command officer; a specialist in psychological warfare and the strategic use of terror best deployed to where she was needed, rather than holding a permanent command.

More unofficially, she was his left hand, his sinister hand, for experimental projects, black operations, and things that the Army as a whole wanted kept at a step away from High Command. Things like the Army Special Weapons Division and the Evangelion Group, in fact.

Slavik paused, his image clear enough that even the beads of sweat on his forehead were visible. “COEUS,” he told the TITAN, “return the optimal strategy, assuming the Migou do attack with a Level 4 attack force.”

“Level 4?” Oxanna echoed, the data in her Eyes bringing her up to date.

“Yes.” The man’s face was grim. “That’s assuming they use all the potential assets. They’ve been planning this, Colonel. The TITANs have noted a slight shift in troop rotations over the last two months; just slightly more coming in than being cycled out, but no increase in frontline troops. And, of course, the establishment of one of their forwards repair bases for capital ships.”

The blond shook her head. That was not good.

“Computation complete,” COEUS reported. “Assuming a typical Level 4 force, there is an approximately 70% chance that they will break through at Nova Kakhovka. Forces stationed there are insufficient. If all available military forces are scrambled, the probability is reduced to approximately 55%. Casualties will be severe even in the case of success.”

Colonel Kristos leaned forwards. “And if field-capable prototypes are deployed as well?” she asked, supported by her superior’s nod.

“Unknown. There is a lack of data.”

“Extrapolate from file EVA_02_25092091, then!”

A pause. “Breakthrough probability is reduced to approximately 45%. Error bars are plus or minus 10%.”

The two humans shared a glance over the link. “Not good enough,” Slavik said.

“By pulling the majority of the forces at Nova Kakhovka back to Position Alpha-Indigo-Xray-Xray One-Zero-Zero-Six, the line can be restablished,” COEUS added. “Moreover, Nova Kakhovka will be an inviting location for their own fortifications. By pre-emptively use of strategic-yield weaponry while they set up, a favourable outcome, within the limits of this scenario, can be achieved.”

Slavik paused, leaning his head on one hand. “Define ‘favourable outcome’, COEUS,” he ordered.

“They all die,” stated the TITAN, impassively.

“That’ll do,” said the Vice Marshal. “Colonel, obtain the data from COEUS. Tell Brigadier Anama to base his plans on its scenarios.” He paused. “And there’s one more thing. About Evangelion Unit 02...”



~’/|\’~



To a human, it would have been night-dark inside the hold. To a baseline-Nazzadi, it would have been dimly lit.

But to the Loyalists, both conventional and Elite, it might as well have been midday, for all the difference it made to their implants.

Rack upon rack upon rack of main battle mecha were stacked there, ready in position for a combat drop from the inside of the Drone Ship. The faint blue lights marking the path up to their cockpits were, in fact, the main source of illumination in this cavernous space. Back in the First War, they would have been all colours; relying on a lack of cohesiveness and distinction to force the foe into suboptimal firing choice. And, more subtly, the Migou had not wished for the Nazzadi to win to easily. It had been part of their plan for both sides to be heavily mauled, such that the Nazzadi would not think of expansion into the outer system. That had been stripped from them by the grim necessities of the Second Arcanotech War, though; the same greys and greens and blues that the New Earth Government used were now also present on the Nazzadi mecha.

And then there were the mecha of the Elite. The lesser Nazzadi used units which were still built with human-level technology. They were cheap, expendable, and could be repaired by the Loyalists. The Elite did not; their machines were sleek, almost techno-organic, but approaching the line from the other side. They were not flesh merged with machine; they were machine so advanced that it had almost become flesh. In some of the more specialised ones, the pilots were fused with the machine, little more than another processing centre for the Migou-designed machinery. For the others, the cockpit was more akin to an iron maiden, an-inwards facing coffin of fine nails designed to make the flesh and the machine twinned in unity.

Red eyes. Glinting red eyes, everywhere, reflecting the hints of light like a cat’s eye.

A signal was sent around, instructions to the computational equipment in the cerebrums of every member of Homo sapiens nazzadi present, alerting them that it was time. In neat, organised ranks, they filed, climbing the ladders to their assigned craft. Slowly, the light levels in the craft increased, bringing it up to the daylight outside, to give them a chance to adjust. There was camaraderie, and bickering going on from the more normal Nazzadi, dialogue and attitudes that would have been scarily familiar to anyone from the New Earth Government.

There was none from the Elite. They knew what they had been instructed to do, and they were ready. There was nothing else that needed to be said. They would survive, or they would not; either way, they would complete their missions.

And if they did not survive, well, their knowledge would live on, ready to go into the melange which new Nazzadi, grown in the facilities in the Asteroid Belt, would be decanted with. It was immortality, of a sort; all that was worthy, useful of you would live on in others.

The hatches were sealed. The motion felt, as the Drone ship folded back up, the armoured landing area folding back as a ribcage would into its hull.

A faint buzzing. A thin whisper. The noises of one of their masters, emulating human speech through the motions of their wings.

the sensory data is such that it has been determined that the forces of the New Earth Government are retreating it whispered, in the Nazzadi language. this was expected and desired; there will be no changes to the plan. The buzzing shifted, the tone sounding almost satisfied. your duty is to strike and harass their fleeing forces, while your kin hold the new conquests until the capital defences are set up; that is all that matters.

A cheer rose through the hollow space; a jeer of victory foretold.

There was a second message for the Elite, uploaded straight to their cerebral cortices. They did not hear it; they merely remembered hearing it.

they will be targeted, it told them. they are a diversion. The facility identified as ‘Testing Facility 2501’ must be destroyed, for it cannot be captured, and cannot be permitted to exist in hostile hands. Let nothing escape.

There was no cheer from them. Only silent acknowledgement.



~’/|\’~



Asuka Langley Soryu donned her plug suit with all the solemnity of a medieval knight preparing for battle. And for much of the same reasons. The black undersuit; soft and padded, came first, covered in interface ports and conduction mechanisms. A press of the button at the neck, and the suit suddenly contracted, the memomaterials hugging up to her like a second skin. Next came the outer layer, the crimson carapace obvious to the rest of the world. “02” was emblazoned just above her breastbone; she had got permission to put the white hand and triangle of the Soli Vodi Dexti on her right shoulder. Thicker, clumsier, it was nevertheless there for a very good reason, as an impact and acceleration suit, as well as functioning as full ANaMiNBC protection should she find herself out of her Evangelion. That was vital. Berlin-2 wouldn’t be permitted to happen again. Last came the cowl, the plated material folding out from a collar on the outer skin, to cover the A10 superconducting QUI Devices. A hiss, and it sealed itself. Her face was a thin mask of pale flesh, a heart-shape rimmed by her brow line and her jaw.

All she had to do input a few commands, and the plug suit attached itself to the A10s, and to the ports for her Eyes, just under both earlobes, and she was ready. Eyes reflexively flicking back and forwards, she read the feed from the local fork of Gehirn, Unit 02’s Ouranos LITAN, and nodded once, in satisfaction. Another perfect plug-suit set up. Naturally.

“COEUS, I am ready,” she informed the TITAN, as she stretched, the bulk weighing her down. It seemed sometimes like the plug suit was accumulating mass as she got older; years ago, it has just been the undersuit, but they kept on refining the technology.

“Good,” was the LAI network’s response. It paused. “Colonel Kristos is coming to see you for a tactical briefing,” it added.

The girl tilted her head slightly. “Hmm. We will be retreating,” she said, with narrowed eyes. “I don’t like it, but it’s the only sensible thing.”

The bluish-light of the ARvatar of the TITAN pulsed in her Eyes. “Why do you believe that?” it said, in the same neutral tone.

“Two reasons, COEUS,” she said, the smirk not quite overcoming the frown of annoyance. “Firstly, after the loss of one capital grade defence, Nova Kharakhov will be very hard to hold. You’ll have been unable to properly decide what I could do in the defence due to lack of data, and the fact that my AT-Field ruins your statistical databases. And the stupidity of the Army means that they won’t be willing to risk it, even though I know that I can pull it off.”

The TITAN was silent.

“You will’ve come to that line of logic,” Asuka said, leaning forwards, blue Eyes shining. “You’re conservative, COEUS. Just something to do with how your LAI programmes interact... your personality, if I were to anthromorphise you. Like RHEA, and not like CRIUS. Uncle Cal always says that it’s funny how your emergent ‘personalities’ are different.”

“What is the second reason?” it asked, its voice even a hint more mechanical than usual.

Asuka shrugged. “‘Cause if we were going into action now, she’d have been briefing me in the entry plug, not externally,” she said with a smirk.

“Then why would I insist that you wear your plug suit?” came a voice from behind her.

“Because you’re afraid that the Migou will be targeting Facility 2501 and want to have me ready to pilot in case they break through before they can get 02 into the transports.” Asuka rolled her eyes as she turned. “It’s not exactly hard to work out. The entire fact that they’re hitting Nova Kharakhov, rather than Gladiator or Sentinel,” two of the purpose-build military facilities along the line, “suggests that they’re after something.” The girl frowned. “And the way that they got Marshal Hassan suggests they have enough infiltrators in place to know about it.”

“Continue that line of logic, then, Asuka,” said Oxanna, tilting her head slightly.

The girl smiled. “Which means that the retreat is just an opportunity for the counterattack,” she said, confidently. “You’re going to let them have 2501; why does it matter, when you’ve got rid of everything important from it, especially me and Unit 02. And considering our position... you’re going to hit them, because they’ll have to overextend to hit 2501. Which means that I’ll be spearheading the counterattack, because that’s exactly what I’ve trained to do. A Evangelion doesn’t take and hold ground; it smashes weak spots and flanks, eliminating specific targets. It’s a lance, perfect for a counterattack backed up by naval support.”

“No.” The words were flat, measured. “That is incorrect.”

“B-b-but,” Asuka stammered, “that’s the optimal use of an Evangelion, tactically and strategically! It’s what I’ve trained for! I can do it!”

The blond woman stared at the girl, dressed up in the thick, almost slightly insectoid, from the smooth lines and the bumps on the head which marked the place of the A10 clips, without overt emotions. “You are being moved back to Ostberlin-2. You are not a front-line soldier, not yet, and so it is not appropriate to use you in that fashion. You are still a Test Pilot.”

“I-I-I...” The girl was almost incoherent, before her shoulders slumped. “I understand,” she said, eyes closed and downcast. “Can’t I even...”

“No. Unit 02 is being attached to a Phoenix for transport. You will be riding in-plug, back to Ostberlin.” Colonel Kristos’ face softened. “If what I’ve heard is true,” she said, reaching out to lift Asuka’s chin, “it’s probably going to be moved over to Chicago-2, for final field tests. You’ll be able to...”

One black-gauntleted hand, the thinner material around the hands a different colour, batted the hand away. “Don’t patronise me; I said I understand,” the girl hissed, turning on her heel, and stalking off. “I’ll be getting this... this toy checked over by professionals,” she said, jabbing herself in the chest, “since obviously the Second Child can’t be trusted that her plug suit is operational on her own.”

The blond gritted her teeth, eyes narrowed, but said nothing, and let Asuka go.



~’/|\’~



Through the line of defence, the oncoming Migou forces swept; like the onrushing tide they washed away the bastions of defence, weakened by the withdrawal. The skies were filled with the booms of their hypersonic craft tearing through the air, as, below the contrails of warped air, the vast, heavy shapes of Migou craft moved their own stationary capital grade defences forwards, deploying the new additions on site. The lines had move forwards, and Containment was proceeding on the third planet in a horribly contaminated system.

This was the Aeon War.



~’/|\’~

[Tabasco]

Between this fic and Tiberium Wars over on FFN, you could get a pretty decent education on how to run a near future fictional battlespace.

I'm torn on my opinion of the decision to pull Eva-02 out. On the one hand, its a potentially priceless tactical asset, but on the other assets are meant to be used. I guess it comes down to how important the upcoming operation is, which going by character reactions I guess is relatively minor. More a big skirmish than a full dress offensive. I do get a morbid curiosity what the half life of the average trooper or pilot is though.

I do like the focus shift to the eastern front, and the intro to Asuka's circumstances. Especially the way its made obvious that she really is almost as good as she thinks she is, it helps justify at least partially her attitude, annoying as it is.

[EarthScorpion]

I do like the focus shift to the eastern front, and the intro to Asuka's circumstances. Especially the way its made obvious that she really is almost as good as she thinks she is, it helps justify at least partially her attitude, annoying as it is.

Heh. Have you been reading my notes? Because I have that written right at the top of her file... wait, let me just go get the precise text...

"Very nearly as good as she thinks she is; which is going to play into..." and then we get into spoilerific territory. :)

But, yes, thank you. I felt this (and the chapter before it, with her at 4 years old), were a little experimental, but I thought it was probably necessary to cover them, because, unlike canon, she'd actually be used in the war, and can't merely sit around training.

[Sun Stealer]

I've read the first two chapters so far. You've really improved the characterization. In ANE, the characters I sometimes forgot who were the main characters and who were the cultists because everyone was ranting about "uplifted apes." But with AEE, you've captured the essence of the characters and do a good job of keeping them distinct. I liked your handling of Gendo, especially. But there is something I find odd, you do a good job of the Eva characters interacting with the OC's(one of my favorite scenes so far is when Shinji gets choked up a little bit while talking on the phone with his foster-mom), but the eva characters can't seem to interact with each other(When Misato is talking to Ritsuko, it sounds less like a concerned friend, and more like "Ah, there's the problem with your mad scientist, she's gone plumb loco. If she keeps acting up, just drop her off at the funny farm, and we'll have her fixed up in a couple a' days."). Even Shinji and the OIS Youth kid connect on some level, but the scenes with Misato and Shinji feel like they may as well not even be in the same room. Otherwise, it's an excellent read.

[EarthScorpion]

Hmm... interesting. Well, it's certainly nice to know that I've improved, but I haven't had anyone else raise these issues, so... let me think. Yes, I can certainly see where you're coming from. In fact, looking at it, I'd say that the problem shared by both the examples you raise is Misato, and my grasp on her. Or, rather, imperfect grasp on it. I have to admit, I have problems writing light-hearted Misato. I can do the bits when she's being all serious and professional (hence why she has a tendency to do it more than canon). But I don't really get her as much when she's being all playful... or rather, I can't do her kind of playfulness. I can do that for Ritsuko (one of the advantages of being a science student who hangs around with a lot more scientists)... basically, I can write for scientists easily. She's not meant to be blatantly crazy yet; a little neurotic and kinda snippy and sarcastic, yes, but... as I said, scientist.

In my defence, though, I should point out that I'm trying to write Misato and Shinji as kind of awkward with each other. Remember, at this point, Misato is still largely "person who I live with when I'm being used as a child soldier, and she's the one ordering me around then"; certainly, Shinji hasn't relaxed with her yet, and is still being rather passive-aggressive about how messy she is. They don't really "get" each other. I do plan to warm the relationship up, but if it's as notable as you say, I may be overdoing it.

Also, it's nice to see that the OCs are working well. And, yes, I do find Shinji and his interacts with his foster family to be fairly sweet.

[EarthScorpion]

Anyway, in a borderline-inhuman update words-time ratio;

Chapter 8

Rei 01 / As if just there, though an immortal, she felt cruel pain.

EVANGELION



~’/|\’~



Every Angel is terror. And yet,
ah, knowing you, I invoke you, almost deadly
birds of the soul. Where are the days of Tobias,
when one of the most radiant of you stood at the simple threshold,
disguised somewhat for the journey and already no longer awesome
(Like a youth, to the youth looking out curiously).
Let the Archangel now, the dangerous one, from behind the stars,
take a single step down and toward us: our own heart,
beating on high would beat us down. What are you?

The Second Duino Elegy
Rainer Maria Rilke



~’/|\’~



A Day That Has Past
A Time Which Is Now


Representative Gendo Ikari stared at the projected screen. He adjusted his glasses, pushing them back up onto the bridge of his nose.

"Activate."

“What’s the first thing you remember?”

The buzz of the Technical Centre started up again. Status updates came from all the technicians, staring down at the white-painted behemoth that stood, restrained to the wall, before them.

“Connect internal power supply to all circuits,” ordered Dr Akagi. “Initialise connection of exterior power in T-minus twenty seconds.”

Feeling rather useless, Major Misato Katsuragi, Director of Operations for Project Evangelion, and the woman who would be responsible for tactical command of this Unit if this test succeeded, did the best thing she could, and crossed her fingers. One hand unconsciously crept to the bulge under her uniform, where her cross-shaped necklace hung .

“What is the first thing you remember?”

“Main power system connected,” reported Lieutenant Ibuki, heading up the team of nine Operators running in full immersion mode, down in the Magi tanks. “Activation system online. We are ready to begin adjustment of attunement pattern at your signal, doctor.”

“Who are you?

Dr Ritsuko Akagi looked around the observation chamber. The Representative stood closest to the diamond viewing plates, Deputy Representative Fuyutsuki taking up his customary position just behind the younger man. In a very real sense, despite the fact that she was the Director of Science for Project Evangelion, and the Director of the Evangelion Group (as was customary for the eponymous Project of a Group), the Evangelions were not hers. Both men, the former a prodigy sorcerer who had climbed the ranks of the Foundation with almost indecent speed, the latter a legend in the field of arcanobiology, as the man who had done the first systematic study on the variant hominids known as ‘ghouls’, were much more tied to it than she was, had been involved in it longer than she had. It was theirs.

The woman ran her tongue over her lips, and swallowed, watching the digits count down in her harcontacts, time-as-volts ticking down until the critical activation voltage was hit.

This Test Pilot Candidate shouldn’t fail. Not like almost all the other ones before her.

“Who are you?

“It’s reached,” announced Lieutenant Aoba, the man leaning forwards towards his screen, his long hair tyed back, for once, in a ponytail. “Attunement is in process. Synchronisation is non-zero... 0.04... 0.13... rising.”

“We’re getting some fluctuations here,” Maya’s voice, coming in over the speakers in the room, said. “She’s... no... we’re stabilising. Subject is forming an EFCS Type-1 Attunement. Synchronisation is... clarifying second order harmonics... third order... yes, we have a stable animaneural wavefunction.”

“Who are you?”

“Start Phase III,” ordered Dr Akagi.

“Who am I?

“Plug is level 2. Beginning test sequence.”

“LITAN feed is clear... reports from in-Unit correlate with external feeds.”

“Feeding external power to non-vital systems. Right arm... left arm... all limbs are powered.”

“Releasing limited motor controls. D-Brakes are operating at full capacity.”

Slowly, ponderously, like the upswing of some vast pendulum, Unit 00 raised its head, to stare directly at the onlookers. It was just an illusion, though; it couldn’t actually see them. Not through the reflective surface. Could it?

Was it really just staring at its own reflection?

“Absolute borderline in... 0.5...”

“Who are you?”

“... 0.4...”

“Who are you?”

“...0.3...”

“Who are you?”

“...0.2...”

“Get away from her!”

“...0.1...”

“...”

“I know who you are.”

“The pulses are flowing back! Chaotic breakdown in AN-waveform!”

“EFCS-2! Mode has flipped to EFCS-2! No... back to EFCS-1!”

“Synchronisation is constant!”

“What?” Dr Akagi spun, to stare at the unfortunate civilian technician. “That doesn’t even make sense! Abort! Break the connection!”

Straining, the white giant fought against its bonds, the dimensional technology that wrapped over its hull trying to keep it in place. It was fighting a losing battle. A deep-bass roar, that shook the gut and the walls alike, emanated from the beast as it fought its bonds. Its one red eye swept from side to side, with jerking, wrenching motions. The deep crackle of breaking ceramics accompanied each jerk of its head.

“D-Brakes are failing! We have an AT-Field! Systematic breakdown of r-state differenatiation!”

“Abort!” barked Dr Akagi. “Operators, break all connections, raise plug to level 0.”

A cacophony of screams buzzed through the speakers, made mechanical by the limits of the technology. In Ritsuko’s harcontacts, the icons for four of the operators went yellow; two more were a fatal red.

“My...m-my DMIN is stable,” blurted out Maya, the pain evident in her voice, “b-b-but the Unit just attacked the retrieval process. My... my... that wasn’t the LITAN... only just enough time to cut before it broke thr...”

“Mute the Magi link,” ordered Gendo Ikari, coldly, the LAIs complying with his orders and silencing the Operators. “Cut external power, blow the D-Engines.”

The shutdown of the external power was immediately effective. Together, the legs and the arms slumped loose, swinging back down to slam into the wall, tearing chunks out of it as they impacted again and again. The head still wrenched, that same bass roar filling the air, but then the charges placed on the D-Engines mounted in the torso blew, shattering the power sources safely. The design for such tests was quite clear; it should always be possible to cut all power. All that the Evangelion, when set up like this, had access to at this moment were the life-support batteries, and they were on a completely different power circuit to the armour systems.

There was a communal sigh of relief from the observation room, now that the Evangelion was now back under control, and a set of blessings for the people who had been careful to ensure that the Unit failed-to-safe.

An almost animalistic cry of rage and terror and pain, made worse by the fact that the voice that cried out was unmistakably human.

“No!” A shrieked exclamation.

White fog; surrounding, enveloping, obfuscating everything.

“What are you doing with her?”

“You will be a god among men.”

Evidently, someone had forgotten to inform Unit 00 of this.

In a single, terrible motion, it tore itself loose of the wall, the barrage of broken connections and constraints impacting like an artillery bombardment against the other side. Fighting the inertia-thieves of the D-Brakes, the vast body slammed itself back into the wall, crushing the sophisticated technology with sheer bulk. The shift in its inertial mass only aided it, as it pushed off from the wall and crushed its front in the same manner.

In terror, the onlookers stared, and the one vast eye of the Unit stared back.

“Initialise TCP-7!” ordered Representative Ikari, the red eye reflected in his own orange glasses.

Softness, gentleness, calm. All was fogged light, but it did not matter, for two vast hands held her, and rocked her from side to side.

A children’s rhyme, fumbled by someone who only half-remembers the words.

“You will show men that they do not need gods.”

And then she was plunged into warmth and darkness.

Roaring, screaming, Unit 00 began to scrabble at its own back with fingers locked into claws. With another impact which shook the room, it pushed backwards into the other wall, and that was enough, for the superstructure snapped of this armoured shell, designed to take a point-blank nuclear blast. It had been ravaged impossibly by the impact with a cleanness which brute force should not have achieved. The containment protocols that Gendo Ikari had ordered were already kicking in, as jets of hard-setting plastic began to coat the white a dull brown, but it seemed unlikely that they would be enough.

[WARNING! AT-FIELD DETECTED!] reported a dumb LAI, audible even over the tumultuous chaos of the titan’s violence.

Yet it seemed that escape was not the beast’s goal, even as the bass took on a strange, shrill whistling.

Black and white blur to make grey, a finger retracts.

The damage done to its own back was enough to get a finger under the armour plating that protected the plug.

The look of horror on the bearded man was indescribable. “Rei! No!” he yelled, face as pale as death.

“I see you.”

With both hands, the titan tore at its own back, reaching up and around with inhuman flexibility. With both hands, it flensed the white plating, and tore at its own implants. With both hands, the flagellant sought its own plug. Gory ichor, dark and septic, ran down, to swirl and mix with the constraining fluid, but the beast did not care, and indeed the shrill noise began to ululate, in a cacophony that sounded all too much like celebration.

“My baby...”

One vast finger crushed the exposed end of the entry plug.

And the beast went limp. Legs now sealed in hard-setting plastic (though the onlookers now doubted how effective it would really be), it fell backwards, pivoting at the knees, to slam into the floor with one last terminal impact. Wounded, self-maimed, the fallen titan lay upon its back, dark seas of ichor and tainted plastics pooling around it like some perverse cloak around its white hide.

“Rei!” roared Gendo, in a cry of horror, as he sprinted out of the control room, his glasses falling from his face to land with a snap on the ground. Ritsuko watched him go, and glanced down at the fallen Evangelion, before screwing her eyes shut. She did not see, minutes later, Gendo rush across the floor of the test chamber, only wearing a protective suit because the medical team behind him had forced him to put one on as they waited for the airlock to cycle.

No, she knew how badly she had failed.

Standing behind the behemoth, the man could see the damage in a much more personal way. He was already knee deep in the dark blood of the Evangelion, and was having to wade against the slowly decreasing flow. The transparent faceplate of the suit was blacked out in wide areas, the autocensors doing their best. With a few words, he overrode them, to turn down the filter level. The LAI’s protests were ignored; he needed to see what he was doing. Hooking his fingers into the fibrous musculature and broken armour of the Evangelion, he began to climb, up to the partially protruding plug.

The end of the metallic cylinder was a mess, crumpled and crushed by the two impacts. By his estimation, a third one would have wrecked it completely. The second might have been enough, he thought, with a sinking heart, but those thoughts were discarded as he clambered along the plug, a crumpled metal ladder barely enough of a foothold for feet slick with ichor. The damage made it easier to balance on top of the cylinder, but he was still perilously close to slipping as he made his way down it.

With his suited hands, Gendo grabbed the twisted metal around the largest tear in the outer shell of the tube, and pulled. The metal was sharp, and the gloves of the containment suit, although insulated, were not enough. Screaming into the helmet as blood seeped from his palms, he levered open the shattered plug, and clambered inside, screaming again as the edges tore at his back.

The remnants of the LCL that pooled in the nooks and crannies were much redder than normal.

Rei was on her back, still in the pilot’s seat, almost inverted from the angle at which the Eva lay. This was not by choice; the control yokes were crushing her midsection, the structure of the plug warped and bent such that they were rammed into her abdomen. It was, in fact, probably the only reason she had not been thrown free by the impact with the ground. Her plug suit, just the undersuit for the test, was lacerated all over; red blood welling up white fabric and white skin. Her breaths were laboured, wet-sounding; she had evidently managed to hack up enough LCL to have marginally functional lungs, but the red drool which stained her lips pink told Gendo just at sight that her lungs had been severely damaged by the effort. It was a marvel that they hadn’t collapsed.

And then there was her face. Almost unconsciously, he had been skipping over her face, which lay limp against the headrest. Because one eye, her left one, was a ruined mess, perforated by shrapnel, the ruined eye spilling forth from the socket. The other eye was closed.

Gendo Ikari had seen worse. But he had not seen much worse for someone who survived, and not in a long time.

“Rei,” he gasped, through the pain in his hands and his back. “Rei? Are you alive?”

Slowly, wonderfully, the intact eye crept open, a dilated pupil nevertheless focussing on him. She gurgled something through ruined, fluid-filled lungs.

The man smiled, even as the rescue team climbed in behind him, having coated the edges with plastic to make them safer, and widened the hole. “Good,” he said, before turning his attention to the others. “Get her to an LCL tank,” he ordered. “Keep her alive.” And with that said, he collapsed, as the pain overcame him.

The first medical team called for a second one.



~’/|\’~



24th September, 2091

“Well, I’m rather surprised,” Ritsuko said, running down the details in the file on the desk in front of her. “I will, of course, defer to your expertise in your field, Dr Tam, but...” she left the statement hanging.

“No, no,” the younger man said. “I’m really rather surprised, too. I did not expect this at all. But,” he shifted in his seat, in front of Ritsuko’s desk, “well, he’s mostly bored. Well, and a little irritable from the sympathetic burns, but that’s natural.” He snorted. “Most people tend to be.”

“I see,” the blond said, running her eyes over the file. “Well, we’d always suspected that the EFCS-1 would provide better anti-AWS shielding than the Type-2,” she said, almost to herself, “but this... well, we’d need a bigger sample pool before we could say so.”

“I believe the relative lack of trauma... um, especially the psyche-corpus animaneural synthesis issues that arose due to the sudden and traumatic loss of the eye, this time, was also a contributing factor. From conversations with him, he was much better able to come to terms with the fact that he has mild sympathetic burns which match with the injuries, than experiencing the muted pain of the loss of an eye, without actually doing so.”

Ritsuko looked up at him, gazing at the younger man with blue-encircled eyes. All of those were reasonable suggestions; the man had been a prodigy of a medical doctor, before transitioning to psychology after a nasty family-related incident, after all. That was why he had been assigned to Project Evangelion. “Maybe,” she said out loud. She wasn’t willing to commit to anything. “But, you believe that he can be released from observation?”

“Well,” the man licked his lips, “erm, it would be more accurate to say that observation can be reduced to the standard day-to-day level...” he glanced at his superior, “oh, you meant that? Then, yes, he can be released from the Observation bay.”

“Good.” Ritsuko signed the document, and handed it over. “Well, I’m sure Misato will be pleased,” she said.

“And you aren’t?” The tone was questioning.

Ritsuko rolled her eyes. “Please. This isn’t the time for that. But I wouldn’t call myself pleased, no. Satisfied, yes. It’s important to remain detached when considering these things.” She held the gaze of the brown-haired man. “We all know the issues with getting too involved in matters which are important, don’t we, doctor?”

The man took the signed document, gathering it to him, to hold, almost as a protective barrier. “Yes,” he muttered, before blinking. “Thank you, Dr Akagi, for your time,” he said, more formally. “I’ll be off then.”

“Yes,” Ritsuko said, her head already lowered to the progress report for Unit 00.



~’/|\’~



“Potenejactakrona what!” the little black-skinned, red eyed girl screamed at him, remarkably active for someone only just out of intensive care, before continuing to babble at him in an incoherent pidgin of Nazzadi and English. Her friends, clustered around the bed recoiled from the invective. A nurse rushed over at the outburst, obviously worried that she was going into convulsions or that some other medical emergency was occurring. “No, I’m fine,” Kany told the orderly, panting, teeth locked together. “But my brother is an idiot!”

The man stared at the boy through narrowed, suspicious eyes. “She’s still on the mend,” he told him, in a somewhat patronising tone of voice. “Do not agitate her, or I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

Toja winced. How, exactly, had his sister’s friends managed to talk him into coming with them, to explain everything? How was it that he had been persuaded by a bunch of nine-year olds?

“I am fine, by the way,” said the dark-haired one, Imi, the girl who had been the reason for him running out.

“And what did you think you were doing, huh?” continued Kany, turning her head to stare at her friend. “Why’d you run out! You know we’re not meant to!”

“I did not run out...” The little girl blinked under the glare from the red eyes. “Oh. Because I needed my injectors, and they don’t keep spares down in the bunkers, only under the desk. It was necessary.” She seemed almost pleading. “You know I need them. Otherwise I get very ill.”

The little nazzady relented a little. “Well... maybe. But,” she yawned, “but it was silly of both of you. Well, it was silly of you, Imi, and stupid of you, bro.”

There was an awkward pause. It wasn’t helped in Toja’s books by how much Kany managed to sound like their mother had. The voice was younger, higher, but the intonations were near identical.

Toja raised his hand slowly. “Um... can I have back my manuprokedi? Since you’re out of the tube...”

She shook her head.

“Awwww, come on. Why can’t I?”

“Punishment! For making me worry like this when I’m sick and all that.”

“I am sorry,” he said, the guilt hitting him again, dropping his head.

“You should be!” Kany drew a breath, and seemed to calm down a bit. “Now, come on... not my stupid brother... but what have I missed?”

A boy grinned. “There hasn’t been any school at all,” he said, “‘cause the school building got damaged and stuff... I can see it from the observation place, and there’s a big tent thing whole area, and silvery dust everywhere. And really cooooool machines sucking it up. So we get to just do stuff.”

Kany pouted. “Bleargh. I’m still in this bed, haven’t relearned to walk yet, and I’m not even missing school.”

A little girl, her hair platinum blond, poked him in the side, while the conversation continued. “Well, I think it was pretty cool,” she whispered to him, gazing up at the tall boy with eyes that he suddenly realised were adoring. “And tonnes of us agree. You’re totally like some kind of fairytale prince, coming back with...” she giggled, “Princess Imi and stuff. Of course, Imi isn’t a very good princess. She played the witch in the school play,” she informed him, with all apparent seriousness.

“Ah,” was all that Toja could manage.

“So... you know, if you’re looking for a princess...” The ten-year old, her t-shirt covered in childish entopics, smiled shyly at him, then headed over to the rest of the group.

This was... awkward. Of all the consequences of leaving the bunker, he had never expected his little sister’s friends getting a crush on him to be one of them. A talk with the FSB over the breach of Bunker Security, yes, an immediately scheduled meeting with a counsellor from the Health Service to look for any instability induced by the exposure to the being (fortunately fairly small, and Toja could live with bad dreams), yes, immediate scans, for the second time that day, for any contamination, yes.

At least one nine-or-ten-year old getting a crush on him, no. And there was another thing that he’d have to do, too, because of what had happened on that Wednesday.

He was going to have to handle them both like a man would handle them.

For this problem, Toja ran away.



~’/|\’~



25th September, 2091

Of all the unfair things in Shinji Ikari’s life, the fact that the Academy has classes on Saturday morning had to be pretty low down the priority list, all things considered. It wasn’t as if he wasn’t used to it, after all; the Academy back in Toyko-3 had been the same. But this morning, of all mornings, he really didn’t enjoy the sight of children who went to other schools who were getting to hang around in normal clothing, not the high-collared black overcoat of the Academy, and make remarks at him and the other students on the maglev.

I mean, it’s not like they even need to be up this early, he thought to himself. For me to see them on the way to school, they’d have had to get up that early, and not chosen to lie in at the weekend. Are they doing it just to rub it in our faces?

And talking of rubbing in faces, Shinji had been somewhat surprised when the boy who had punched him in the face, and that one with glasses who had been hanging around with the rather attractive Nazzadi girl, came up to him, with a special request. In fact;

“Actually, why are you here?” Shinji asked the human boy, Kensuke. “I mean, you didn’t hit me...”

The brown-haired boy blushed slightly, and glanced sideways at Toja. “He said he’d hit me if I didn’t come to apologise too,” he explained. “It’s... it’s sort of my fault that he found out, because Taly and me were the ones who sort of worked out a link.”

“So why isn’t she here?”

Toja gritted his teeth. “I couldn’t really threaten her in the same way as Ken, here.”

Shinji raised his eyebrows. “Chivalry?”

Kensuke shook his head, with a hint of a grin creeping onto his face. “Nope. She’d kick him in the balls again. She’s... she’s kinda heavily into her martial arts. ‘Specially hun zuti.”

“We’re getting off topic,” Toja said somewhat hastily, with what Shinji suspected was a hint of remembered pain creeping into his expression. The boy straightened up again. “Mr Ikari,” he said, in a formal manner, “I want you to punch me. So that we’ll be even.”

“In that case, shouldn’t I punch you twi... no, I’m not going to get started on that.” Shinji blinked. “Why? I mean, I know why I want to punch you, but why do you want me to want to punch you?”

“See! You want to, so just do it!” The boy’s jaw was stiff, his eyes closed.

“But...” Shinji drew back his fist, but paused, wavering. “I... it... it’s not the same,” he said out loud, trying to work through the mess of feelings and emotions. “I mean, it was sort of my fault.”

“Rubbish!” Toja snapped. “It’s all my fault. I’m a hot-headed idiot who never thinks about anything. You need to do it, I want you to do it, and it’s kinda the only way to be fair!”

The Japanese boy’s hand wobbled, moving back and forth. On (and with) one hand, he actually did want to punch this guy. But... this would be in cold blood. It was completely different to snap, and try to attack someone which angry, to just going and punching someone.

“Do it! As hard as you can! Don’t hold back!”

He... he actually wants to be hurt? Why? That doesn’t make sense. And... and how dare he force me into this kind of situation! This is just a normal school day, and I’m being forced to think about whether it’s okay to hurt someone when they tell you do. Why does this happen to me!

The blow, as it happened, went low, into the taller boy’s stomach, who doubled over with a meaty-sounding oooof. Hands on thighs, the other boy began to wheeze, falling to his knees.

“You’ve got a nasty streak,” Kensuke said, shock creeping into his voice. “Right in the gut? Not cool.” He paused. “Not cool at all.”

Shinji, meanwhile, was staring down at the boy before him, guilt and just a smidgeon of self-satisfaction blended together. The very presence of the self-satisfaction, however, was causing it to get diluted. Because, in the boy’s self-image, he wasn’t the sort of person who’d do that. And yet he just had.

“Why...the...gut...” croaked out Toja. “Meant... to be face.”

“You didn’t say that!” protested Shinji.

“I...” he started coughing, “I... thought... obvious.”

“Not to me!” Shinji said, wincing. He paused for a moment, before adding, “And... um, well, I didn’t want to hurt my hand!”

Toja continued to cough.

“Skulls are hard,” Shinji continued, realising how pathetic he sounded.

The Nazzadi boy began to emit a burbling noise. It took a few seconds, before Shinji could work out that it was, in fact, laughter, which grew stronger as Toja pulled himself upright, face still taut with discomfort.

“Nice one,” the boy croaked. “Teach me to tell someone to do it as hard as they can, and not hold back.”

Kensuke smirked. “That’s what she said,” he said, almost automatically.

“Shut up, Kensuke.”

Shinji stared at the pair. “You’re mad,” he said, slowly. “You’re... you’re mad. Utterly, utterly mad.”

Toja was still clutching his stomach. “Yeah,” he said, looking up, “but at least we’re now even.” There was something in his eyes that Shinji couldn’t recognise. “Listen,” he said, “I... um... I got stuck outside... on Wednesday. Not outside outside. But in a surface building. A school.”

Shinji felt his stomach boil with sudden terror. “... I,” he blinked. “What... happened?” he said softly.

There was a sudden expression of shock on Toja’s face. “Oh, no,” he said hastily. “No one got hurt. But... um, I saw it.”

Shinji relaxed, a sudden rush of adrenaline making him shake. “Don’t say things like that,” he said. “I don’t want to think that I’ve hurt people.”

“No... no, what I mean to say is, right, I saw how that thing you’re in is like.

The brown-haired boy grinned, weakly. “Thank you,” he said, relief in his voice. He paused. “Uh... why were you stuck outside,” he asked, gingerly. “Was it just an evacuation thing, or...”

Toja blushed, a slight darkening of his face. “Um... no,” he admitted. “I ran out to look for someone in the class who’d gone missing.”

Shinji felt his eyebrows raise without prompting. “That’s pretty brave,” he ventured. “I mean, I probably wouldn’t have the guts to do it.”

“No, it was just stupid. It may have looked brave... I just wasn’t thinking.” The Nazzadi boy blinked. “Can we just put everything behind us?” he asked.

Unnoticed, unobserved, a white-haired girl watched the scene through dead grey eyes, no expression on her frozen face.



~’/|\’~



“Rei Ayanami.” The muse’s voice was calm, emotionless; disturbingly similar to the subject of discussion, thought Misato with a shudder.

Ritsuko caught the brief twitch of emotion, and nodded, sympathetically. “Pause briefing,” she instructed the system. “I know, yes?” she said. “Spend time around her, and you start hearing her voice everywhere,” the scientist said, a hint of dark humour in her voice.

“I was trying to make a point, Rits,” the Director of Operations said. “Resume briefing... pause briefing.” She glared at the blond. “And don’t pause my muse without my permission,” she added. “Resume briefing.”

“The subject is sixteen years old; date of birth: 5th of November, 2074. Subspecies: Homo sapiens sidoci. Genetic parents: classified. Subject was recovered in raid on cult organisation aged 4, and, after evaluation, was placed in state custody pending further investigation. Subject was inducted into newly formed Test Pilot programme as the First Child immediately upon programme formation in 2083, following discovery by Project Marduk that she possessed the appropriate characteristic factors. She is the exclusive and designated pilot of Evangelion Unit 00, the Prototype Model. Her current legal guardian is Representative for Europe, Gendo Ikari. The rest of her personal history is classified. Her psychological profiles are classified; a redacted file may be viewed separately. The subject possesses intuitive extranormal waveform manipulation capabilities, as is universal among her subspecies. These capabilities are classified; a redacted file may be viewed separately, and they have all been classified as non-dangerous and non-invasive.”

“I think that’s enough,” said the Major, her tone controlled. “Now, Director of Science, why don’t you explain why your Director of Operations has almost no knowledge of one of the assets she has to command?”

Ritsuko sighed. “Misato...”

“Don’t ‘Misato’ me. You’ve dodged this point before. I saw what happened at the last Unit 00 activation test, and things destabilised in a way that they never have even looked like they might for Shinji or Asuka. The next activation test is scheduled for next Wednesday, and I might be kinda worried that it might happen again.”

“You presume I have any more knowledge about her,” the scientist retorted.

“... well, yes. The Project Marduk is part of the Evangelion Group. That means they report to you.”

Ritsuko gritted her teeth. Misato could have both a rather perceptive mind and a highly functional memory when she put her brain to it. “And certain details are sealed even beyond what I can view. Yes, I do know more about her, but those are technical issues. I mean, I could ask for permission to release the details on... on the details of how her medichines react with her immune system, say, but I’m not exactly sure how useful it will be for you, so...”

The black-haired woman ran her hand through her hair. “Sorry, Rits,” she apologised. “I’m just a little... worried.”

She received a sympathetic nod in return. “I understand. But... please, don’t take it out on me. We don’t think it should happen again; the issue last time... well, we’re not sure what caused it, but we suspect it may have been mental instability in the pilot.”

“Mental instability?” echoed Misato. “In Rei?”

“Yes.”

“But,” the dark-haired woman searched for the right words to use, “from what little I’ve... that I know of her, she’s seemed fairly stable. Not necessarily at the same point of balance as anyone else, of course, but...”

“No. She’s... she’s disturbed at a deeper level; more that you’d think. And she’s sensitive to extranormal phenomena. She might have been affected by the... hah, by the harbingers of Harbinger-3. That kind of thing is not what you want when you’re trying to attune to a highly sophisticated ACXB organism.”

The New Earth Government Army officer shot a glance at her friend. “You do know that there are already suspicions that the failed activation test was what caused Asherah to show up, yes?” she said bluntly.

“That’s ridiculous,” Dr Akagi replied, with the same lack of prevarication. “We have had failed activation tests for all the completed Evangelions. And Harbinger-level threats failed to show up each time. You’re just displaying classic observer bi...” she was interrupted by the muse, and a simultaneous vibration of something in Misato’s pockets.

“Major Katsuragi to Communications Room 13. Major Katsuragi to Communications Room 13. This is a High Urgency call; ID number 05-02-65-32-98. Major Katsuragi to report immediately to Communications Room 13.”

“Oh-five, oh-two, sixty-five, thirty-two...” muttered Misato to herself, as she straightened up. “That’s the Unit 02 code. And 13 is one of the q-lines.” She blinked. “I’m off; this is important. That’s directly from,” she pulled the PCPU out of her pocket, “yes, I thought so. That’s Captain Martello’s code, and it’s got... it’s got an override-seal from Vice Marshall Slavik himself.” Almost reflexively, she tucked her hair back behind her ears, and adjusted her collar slightly. “I’ll see what it is.”

“I hope it’s nothing important,” Ritsuko said. Both women could hear the doubt in her voice.



~’/|\’~



The remains of Harbinger-4, Eshmun, were pooled in two separate vile, incoherent messes at the bottoms of Containment Chambers 09 and 10, in the Vault. It had been blown in half by that first ambush, after all, so they had been recovered separately. The fact that the whole creature would have been too large to fit in either of the chambers was only an added bonus, and had led to several new planned engineering projects which would be large enough. And ‘pooled’ was the operative word; with the death of the creature, it had lost cohesiveness at a dramatic rate, the beast decaying and rotting, as its structure disintegrated. Perhaps worse, its elevated r-state was decaying back down to a 1-state, throwing out high-energy variant r-state particles, in a parallel to more conventional radiation.

There were no people down in the Vault, working on the studies. It just wasn’t safe, even in full ANaMiNBC gear and added sorcerous warding. They were getting through teleoperated drones at a prodigious rate as the circuitry and hulls gave way under the bombardment.

Of course, Dr Akagi wasn’t too unhappy about this. A little bit annoyed at the fact that she wasn’t getting to carry out a proper dissection, but she could live without exposure to high-energy high r-state radiation. And because she had not been so exposed, she would continue to do so. “We’re discovering all new things about high variant r-state physics,” she ‘explained’ to Shinji and Misato, standing by the vast autocensored screen that was giving a sight into the progress in the vacuum-filled rooms. “The CCs are all set up as high end particle detectors for exactly this reason. I mean, the MAGI say they’ve seen a 512-state proton for the first time ever, and its behaviour means that we’ve just shown Imonike was right all along, and Juarez was wrong.”

“But what have you found out about the Harbinger?” Misato asked, hands in pockets. Once again, she was in a more formal version of her normal uniform, because the NEG had other, more senior officers on-site, and she was not enjoying it. She would really rather be dressed normally... well, actually, she’d rather be back in her pilot’s suit which were really comfortable, but that wasn’t an option anymore, and she wasn’t on the frontlines.

Ritsuko smoothed down her lab coat, a garment which, given what they were dealing with, would only really protect her from a coffee-based accident, and glanced over at the screen. “Not as much as we might have liked,” she admitted. “From what we can tell, from the state the remains are in, there was internal differentiation of layers, but only one thing which approximates an organ, as we would know it. Of course, that matches up with the feed from Unit 01, doesn’t it, Shinji?”

The boy, who had been drifting along in the mists of confusion, trying to understand and doing poorly at that goal, blinked, and refocused his attention away from the almost-hypnotic sludge which both parts had degraded into. “Um... excuse me?” he asked.

“There weren’t any internal organs in Harbinger-4, were there? Apart from the core-equivalent?” the scientist asked rhetorically.

“Not that I can remember,” the boy said, slowly. “But... well, I wasn’t thinking that clearly.”

“Yes... well, that is somewhat understandable.” Ritsuko shrugged. “Anyway, the current hypothesis is that the Harbinger we see is akin to a puppet vessel for a greater being which exists in greater-than-three spatial dimensions. Hence, it really doesn’t need anything beyond a core-equivalent, in the same way that your little finger doesn’t need lungs or a heart or... or anything apart from the connective tissue and blood vessels and the like, which in this analogy is the core-equivalent.”

Shinji stared down at the screen. A spider-like robot, all its many limbs dedicated manipulators, slowly descended from the ceiling, trailing its thread of power-cable behind it. Anchoring itself onto the outer carapace, it began to cut at the material. Despite the degradation, it really wasn’t getting anywhere. “I can’t believe I killed that thing,” the boy said to himself. “Is that what we really have to fight. Well,” he paused, “I say ‘we’, but... never mind. Why didn’t the outer shell-thing fall apart in the same way?” he asked, louder.

“That’s a good question, Shinji,” Ritsuko replied. “We’re... not sure. It might be that it’s only decaying due to r-state relaxation, compared to the rest, which is liquefying. We’ve actually got what might be structures in the outer carapace, which... well, it would suggest a biology completely unlike anything we’re familiar with.”

“No, really?” muttered Misato, who was ignored.

“We’re just having problems taking samples,” Ritsuko admitted. “Even when we do manage to extract specimens, the effects of removing them from the still-altered r-state of the region around the body, down to a 1-state environment, just massively speeds up the decay.” She paused. “They might be designed... well, I say ‘designed’, but that doesn’t mean intent... they might be there to enhance AT-Field generation. The properties of the regions that we suspect there might be structures... well, I don’t even know where to begin.”

“Oh,” Misato said, a sudden glimmer of understanding in her eyes, “this is the kind of matter is sort of like a wave and sort of like a particle, right?”

Dr Akagi fixed the other woman with a long hard stare. “Yes, Misato. It does, in fact, display properties exhibited by both classical particles and waves, at least at the quantum level. In fact, we have a super-special name for that very special kind of matter. It’s called... matter.”

“Oh.”

“I mean, that isn’t even arcane physics. It’s just quantum physics. That’s barely a step above classical mechanics.”

“Mbneah.” Misato flapped a hand at the scientist. “There’s no need to be condensing.”

“You mean ‘condescending’,” Ritsuko replied automatically, to a slight smirk from the black-haired woman. “Although I can try to explain condensed matter physics to you if you...” her eyes narrowed. “I see what you did there.”

Shinji quite deliberately said nothing. It seemed to be serving him well.

“Hey! Akagi!” someone called from behind them. Ritsuko shuddered, her face falling. Taking a deep breath, she turned around, her face set in a mask of professional neutrality.

“Dr Robinson,” she said, with a nod, to the woman, her skin so dark she could have almost passed for a Nazzadi. That illusion was shatterd by her eyes, a human brown, with the beginnings of crow’s feet marking their edges. “Doctor Malia Robinson, Deputy Director of Science for Project Engel,” she said, her voice lowered, to her two companions.

“Hey! How’s it going, Ritsuko?” the other woman asked, in her native Nigerian accent.

“Fine. Just fine,” the blond said, just slowly enough that it could not be taken as being rude. She paused. “This is Major Misato Katsuragi, Director of Operations for Project Evangelion,” she added, gesturing to the black-haired woman, while subtly trying to move to divert attention away from Shinji.

“Pleased to meet you,” Misato said, stepping forwards to shake the other woman’s hand.

“Katsuragi... Katsuragi, oh yes,” Dr Robinson said, and Misato’s face stiffened slightly at that. “You’re with the Army, yes? Which wing? I’d have to say, I’d have thought that they’d have had a Navy person for Director for Evangelion, given the strategic value of those things?” Her intonation turned something which wasn’t really a question into one.

“I used to be a mech pilot,” Misato explained. “It was decided that the actual command skills required for an operation involving the Units is more like those needed for land-based mecha than a naval ship, or even someone with the Marines.”

“‘Specially since the Marines are cutting down on their mecha component,” Malia said with a nod. “Pleased to meet you too, by the way; I’ll have to get proper communications set up with our DDoO Europe. I suspect you’ll end up having to work with us a lot, given how much we get used as spearhead forces, which, from what I’ve heard from the Eastern Front, worked really well for you today.” She smiled. “It’s nice to see our older brother Project getting some respect.”

“Parent Group,” Ritsuko muttered, just loud enough for Shinji to hear. Out loud, she added, “So, how is your Project’s research into Eshmun going?”

The other woman grinned, in a brilliant half-crescent of perfect teeth. “Amazingly. The other half of the torso; the part the Navy and static defences blew up, not the bit you got? Well, we’ve found several clusters of unhatched eggs. It’s a god-send, even above the live specimens. Anton’s got me heading up the work on the new Species, after my successes with the Hamshall and the Ish. And just looking at the combat data from the parent organism,” she let out a thin whistle, “well, damn. I think the Shamshel... that’s what we’re calling the Species by the way... it’s going to be an excellent super-heavy gunship, and that’s,” the grin turned slightly predatory, “a tactical role that the Migou are going to tearing out their cilia out over.”

“If you can get it working,” Ritsuko pointed out.

“Well, yes, that’s always the caveat emptor, and all that.” Dr Robinson frowned. “I don’t mean caveat emptor. I think I mean ceteris paribus.” She shrugged, an expansive gesture. “How are you doing?”

Dr Akagi smiled too, a slightly sickly expression. “We have several core fragments; damaged, of course, because it was necessary for the Evangelion to kill the target, but we’re already getting data from them.” Well, what the MAGI were actually returning was 601 “Insolubility” errors, even with an Operator diving with them, but that was data. Of a sort. “The r-states that thing was operating in, though... you know we’ve probably just disproved Juarez from its decay patterns.”

“No way.” The other woman blinked. “Let me guess. 512-state proton deflection?”

“Yes.”

“That was always going to be the big test for Juarez. Guess that leaves us with Imonike, then. Which is... kinda annoying. The maths is less elegant,” Dr Robinson said, with a pout. “Well, I really look forwards to you publishing. As in... actually, please do it soon. If we’re going to be dealing with it these things, then our team is really going to need your data on the behaviour of high r-state elem-n-ents.”

“Of course,” Ritsuko said, the corner of her mouth twitching. “

They watched the Deputy Director of Science for Project Engel depart.

“I like her,” Misato remarked. Shinji secretly agreed; the other woman had seemed pleasant enough, and, well, now that he actually had to fight against these things, the term “super-heavy gunship” was being linked to “more stuff shooting at the thing that’s trying to kill me,” and “more targets for the thing that’s trying to kill me,” to his approval.

Ritsuko rolled her eyes. “You would,” she said. “God, I hate that woman. Just... so... damn... bubbly. And she’s from Engel, of course. She’s like fingernails on the blackboard of my mind.”

There was silence. Then;

“So, what’s written on the blackbo...” began the black-haired woman.

“Shut up, Misato. The blackboard is not important. It is a metaphor.”

The black-haired woman glared at her. “I get that,” she said, somewhat snippishly. “I was just trying to inject some levity into the place.”

“Levitate in your own time.” The scientist pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m sorry, that was uncalled for. But if I can dodge Dr Robinson until the analysis is done, I’ll be a lot less stressed.”

But Shinji was no longer paying attention. Over on the other side of the room from the screen, he could see his father on the other side of a window.

He was smiling.

He was talking to Rei Ayanami, her arm still in a cast, but all other signs of her injuries gone.

She was smiling too, a faint curl up of the side of her lips.

Down by his side, Shinji’s hands balled into fists. Through narrowed eyes, he stared at the scene, as the Director of Science and Director of Operations droned at each other about irrelevencies that the boy no longer cared about.

His father never smiled at him. He never even talked to him unless he wanted something.

This was unfair.



~’/|\’~



26th September, 2091

The two boys stood before the door. It was a normal-looking door. No fanged maw, biohazard warning symbol, disturbingly organic sphincter or inscription of "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate" adorned the portal.

It was still somewhat intimidating.

“You ring,” muttered Toja.

“No, you,” was Kensuke’s devastatingly scathing and witty retort.

They continued to stand there.

The bespectacled boy rubbed his arm. “Man, security is tight here,” he said, idly. “They actually did a blood check, not just a skin-scraping, just at the dome entrance. And here...”

“Look, are you going to do it?” the Nazzadi growled. “No. Then I guess I’ll just have to use my superior manliness to... argh.”

The door had opened, without anyone touching it. This would have been sinister, had it not been for the fact that a dark-haired, and very attractive, woman with Japanese features stood in the doorway, one hand still raised to the interior controls. “Yes?” she asked.

Both boys immediately stood to attention. And it would be crass to mention that this applied in both senses of the word. “Um...” eventually Kensuke managed to stammer. “Uh, we were wondering if Shinji was here.”

Toja suddenly paled, a change which went entirely unnoticed with his complexion. Was this the right address? He’d got it off Hikary, who had been rather approving of his ‘attempts to be nice to a person at an unfamiliar school’, which just indicated that word of the punching incident hadn’t made its way to her. He could tell that, because he could still hear, and was not shell-shocked from several hours of shouting from an angry class representative.

Luckily, the woman smiled. “I’m afraid he’s out at the moment,” she said.

“Oh,” said Kensuke, his gaze descending, before rising back to her face with a regularity that Galileo could have admired. “Do you know when... um... when he’ll be back?”

She shook her head, ponytail whipping behind her. “No, I’m afraid not,” she said. “Why do you want him?”

“We were going to see a film,” Toja said, self-consciously running a hand through his hair, “and we were wondering if he wanted to call. To come. I meant come. With us.”

She favoured them with another smile. “I see.” The smile shifted into a frown. “Why didn’t you just call him, text him, or... well, do it any way that wouldn’t mean that you end up having to go through the security at this place.”

“We didn’t know about the security,” Kensuke said, grinning. “And he didn’t reply to the email to his Academy account, and we couldn’t find his number in the public lists. So we thought we’d just come over and ask.”

The woman blinked once, and then nodded. “Oh, yes. Yes.” She paused, as if considering things. “I can get you it,” she said, after some deliberation.

Kensuke nodded enthusiastically. “Yes please. Thank you, Mrs Ikari.”

The temperature suddenly dropped by about twenty degrees; the arcology air, kept a little cooler in this residential dome, suddenly freezing against the skin. Misato narrowed her eyes.

“I am not Mrs Ikari,” she said, trying to keep the annoyance out of her voice. “I’m Shinji’s guardian.” She paused. Yes, they deserved it. How dare they suggest that! There was no way she could be Shinji’s mother; did she look like the kind of person who’d have a teenage pregnancy like that; the kind of irresponsible mother who wouldn’t even screen their birth? She sincerely hoped not. She didn’t look a day over thirty!

That was completely separate, in her mind, from the fact that she was chronologically thirty one.

“Yes,” she continued, “I’m Misato Katsuragi, Shinji’s guardian. And you would be,” the overlay in her Eyes gave her their names, as well as a considerable batch of personal information, “Kensuke Aida and Toja Suzuhari. Your names have come up in connection to a certain...” she gave a deliberate pause, “... incident I was made aware of.” A series of clicks emanated from her hands held behind her back, which absolutely in no way whatsoever brought to mind, say, the sound of breaking bones. “If I hear of any more such incidents, there will be... consequences. If Shinji’s surveillance team suspects any more incidents might maybe be about to happen, the consequences will be much more immediate, though no more painful in the long run.” Misato leaned forwards, smiling. Unlike her previous smiles, it was not a pleasant smile. It displayed a little too much incisor for even the comfort of a Nazzadi, let alone a human. “I’m pleased we could have this chat.” And then her demeanour returned to normal. “So... shall I just get his gridlink?”

The details were given, and the two boys were left standing, once again, in front of the closed door. On the inside, Misato leant against it with a thump which was not transmitted.

I’m sorry, but what? ‘Mrs Ikari’? It says my name next to the door! Damn teenage boys and their predictable attentions! I mean, seriously, did they think I was old enough to be his mother? Or, in fact, that I was married to the Representative? I mean, it’s possible she hastily added mentally, that he could be a very nice person and a real charmer, and the mere fact that I haven’t ever seen a trace of it in his technocratic bones... oh, and the fact that Shinji and him have real issues... is just a persona, but, seriously? There’s a limit to the benefit of the doubt. I don’t think I know anyone who’s actually spent time around him who’d go throw themselves at him. Damn teenage boys and their... stupidness.

She sighed again. She didn’t look that old, did she? An innocent wastepaper bin received an almighty punt, which did make Misato feel better, although it failed to make up for either the blow to herself image, or the sudden and more immediate pain in her foot.

She would probably have been somewhat reassured to hear the conversation on the other side of the door, and she would have, had the door not been soundproofed and designed to take an RPG without breach.

“Wow,” Kensuke managed.

“Wow,” Toja agreed.

“Wow,” Kensuke expanded, before switching to a more conventional vocabulary. “That was... so hot. Shinji is living with a woman with breasts and legs and... and everythingnessocity like that.”

Toja slapped the other boy on the back, a little bit harder than might have been needed. “Yeah,” he agreed. “There’s no justice in the world.”

“You can say that again! He gets a giant robot and a totally hot chick as his roommate. I mean... that figure, and she’s military too... that attitude.” He flipped out his PCPU. “The figure alone would be enough to get her the coveted AAA rating, but the way she did those warnings... I think she’s going to be the first AAA+... no, AAA ++!” he said, marking it down. “What did she say her name was... oh, it’s right by the door.”

“... okay, I found that talk a bit scary,” Toja admitted.

“You just don’t appreciate the sublime beauty of a woman in uniform,” the bespectacled boy said.

“She wasn’t in uniform.”

“She was. In my mind.”

It should probably be noted at this point that the image in the boy’s head would not have been a very practical combat uniform; quite apart from the lack of ANaMiNBC protection, which would have instantly doomed the wearer, the heels were eminently impractical, and the exposed midriff, low-cut neck and miniskirt would have utterly ruined what little concealment the garment provided.

“Well... she’s probably not going to come out again,” Toja said, with reluctance. “You phone him, and tell him about the film.” He paused. “‘Course, he might actually be doing something... she did say he was out. At least we tried.”



~’/|\’~

[EarthScorpion]

~’/|\’~



The maglev ride was smooth and silent, as it always was; the only noise the hiss of air around the train. The only outside forces felt by Shinji Ikari, immersed as he was by the music in his headphones, were the accelerations in and out of stations, and, beyond that, the slight, omnipresent rotation, as the Fifth Circle Line looped around the city. Unlike many of the other train lines, the various Circle lines, all the way from the First, at the top down to the lowest, remained at the same depth; a cyclone and anticyclone which ran all hours of the day.

“This is Ellersmer Court,” the recorded voice played. “This is a Fifth Circle Line train, towards Whitborough Dome. Please allow passengers to leave the train, before you board.”

The movement of people, getting off. The movement of people, getting on. They flowed, and yet, to the eyes of the brown-haired boy, sitting here, eyes on the other people for lack of a better place to stare, he could discern no change.

With one last blast of trumpets, the current song came to an end. Slowly, quietly, the thin, gentle melodies of the violins gave the start to the next one.

“Krehaba estel soli footbali serakroni sanginoji abismi,” a loud-mouthed Nazzadi, slurring his words somewhat, proclaimed, “Chelsi... absul hi abisakroni adisi radski!”

“Zy kokrehakrony,” a woman standing next to him, in the same bright blue shirt, agreed. “Absul footbalazi... serakroni suluperukredoneyakroni , absul serabi suluperukredoneyabi, pla absul serakausi suluperukredoneyakausi.”

I’m sure you had fun, Shinji thought, irritation in his mental voice, as he turned up the volume, to drown them out, even if you thought the game was bad and the players are overpaid. But, seriously, can you please talk more quietly?

He didn’t say anything out loud, of course. Not only were they both bigger than him, but they looked drunk. There was no point in a confrontation; they would be gone soon, and he’d still be here, so what did it matter? In fact, yes, they had open cans of beer with them. A little voice in Shinji’s head gloated at the fines they’d be facing, because the watcher LAIs monitoring the CCTV cameras would have seen that and flagged their faces, but, still, it was irritating.

Shinji sated his annoyance by rolling his eyes at the girl sitting opposite him on the train, accompanied with a sideways glance at the pair. The dark-haired girl, who looked to be about his age, merely stared back without a change in expression, which suddenly made him feel more embarrassed. She was sitting next to an amlata, built like an athlete, and Shinji suddenly had a sinking feeling that he was accidentally flirting with someone’s (very attractive, a treacherous part of his brain noted) girlfriend. Actually, they both looked vaguely familiar; he thought that he might have seen there somewhere around the Academy.

Oh no. Just when I thought the situation couldn’t get any more embarrassing. To escape any further mishaps, he dropped his gaze, staring down at the screen of his PCPU, and just hoping that the world would leave him alone.

“This is Little Delhi,” the recorded voice played. “This is a Fifth Circle Line train, towards Whitborough Dome. Please allow passengers to leave the train, before you board.”

As they pulled out from the station, Shinji hazarded a look up. Phew, he thought, the football people got off. And the girl, too. That social minefield had been evaded, even if her boyfriend had stayed on the train. He flicked the volume back down, and sat back, as the music of Beethoven filled his ears.

*bleep* “Shinji has mail.”

Or at least it did, before his muse decided to inform him of it, subverting his music to do so. He really hoped it was something important to bother disturbing him. Then again, Ari was running high-end anti-spam filters, so she did tend to catch pretty much everything that wasn’t important.

He checked. It was a... well, an almost wary-sounding message from the human boy from yesterday, Kensuke, asking if he wanted to come see a film with Toja. They were meeting in Dome 3, in the Eddington cluster.

A few presses, to get to the map, and... yes, he had thought so. If he got off at Sideware, and then took the inclinator up to Third Tier, he’d be in the right dome. Shinji shrugged. It was going to be easy for him to do it, and he’d have to think up a reason for why he didn’t, which would be harder than just doing it. If he were to be perfectly honest, it wasn’t like he was doing anything vitally important. Just as long as he was back at Misato’s for six, because they were having dinner with Dr Akagi...

Why not?



~’/|\’~



The room was a vast cylinder, rising far above, just as it could, through diamond plates in the floor, be seen to plummet far below. The full height was unseen; the white light from the lit areas ended before this hollow space, deep below the depths of the Earth did. It was not a pure white, though, because for every light, there was a path which took it through the transparent sphere, divided into eighths by the metal bands which ran around its equators, which hung in the centre of the room. The orb refracted the light which shone through it with an uncanny radiance which spoke of its adamant nature, and was filled with a blue fluid which could be seen to move by the patterns of bent light, much like light shone through waves in an aquarium. The chamber was suspended by a cobweb of threads no thicker than a spider’s web, the other, more visible profusion of flowing cables and arcane, in both senses of the word, equipment there for its function, not for its structure.

And speaking of its structure, if one were to look into the onion-like layers of the globe, and at the walls of this place with an electron microscope, one might see the warding circles, inscriptions and other anchors for sorcerous containment procedures which covered every square micrometer.

Rei Ayanami floated naked in the warm tank of fluid, eyes closed, hair drifting around her like seaweed. Curled into a ball, she twitched slightly, mouth moving with unheard words. Around her, the pale blueness swirled, cycled frequently to prevent her from depleting the oxygen. It was LCL, true, but not LCL as used in the entry plugs of the Evangelions; this was, quite apart from being a different colour, thinner, and, in the areas away from her body, almost an aerosol, never quite sure on whether it was a liquid or a gas.

It was, after all, designed for a rather different purpose.

A twitch, and she spasmed, straightening to full rigidity with her spine curving back, an unseen jet of fluid expelled from her lungs to send the blueness swirling and twirling. Slowly, slowly, she curled up again, only for, only a few minutes later, the process to repeat, her mouth open in an unheard, or perhaps, ignored, scream.

With a lack of care in her eyes, Dr Ritsuko Akagi flicked her gaze up, the light painting her harcontact-lit eyes blue-within-blue, before returning back to the feed, to deal with more important matters. Eventually, though, she was satisfied.

“Prepare for chamber evacuation,” she ordered the girl. In response, mutely (or maybe not? How could one tell, when no sound seemed to escape the sphere?), the girl swam into a position which would leave her on her hands and knees when the vessel was cycled, as, indeed it did, the LCL drained away and replaced by air.

Kneeling, a gush of blue-to-clear liquid rushed out of Rei’s mouth, as she coughed it out of her lungs, only for the fluid to effervesce and boil away before it hit the floor, the unhealthy-looking mist pulled out of the chamber too.

“Cycling chamber,” Ritsuko noted.

“That went well,” Ritsuko told her. “As far as I can see, there were no issues with this first test after your synchronicity accident.” She paused. “Did you feel anything different or wrong?”

“I did not, Dr Akagi,” the girl replied, hands still by her side, making no attempts to cover herself. Ritsuko handed her a paper robe, which would last her until she got to the decontamination showers, to wash out the remains of the LCL-variant which still tinted her hair blue and coated her skin in a thin layer which made it look even colder than usual.

“Good.” The blond paused. “The Unit 00 restart test is on Wednesday. You are to attend school as normal; it is not scheduled until 16:00.”

“I understand, Dr Akagi.” Rei sneezed, the thin wisp of blue fog dispersing before the older woman could even recoil.

Ritsuko had the feeling that she was forgetting something. “We will schedule the next session for... the third of October,” she said, making note. “That’s next Sunday.”

“Yes, Dr Akagi.” The girl continued to stand there, unmoving since she had donned the paper gown, no hint of movement from her own conscious volitation. The sneeze didn’t count.

“That will be all, Rei,” Ritsuko said.

“I understand, Dr Akagi.” The girl paused, shifting slightly. “Dr Akagi?” she asked, raising one hand slightly.

“Yes, Rei?” the scientist asked, with a hint of interest.

“Why did you deem it necessary to have me stand-by for the Harbinger-4 incident, when I had not successfully synchronised with Unit 00 without a synchronicity incident? It was not necessary to have me do so, and any attempt to have me do so would have had unknown success.” If there was curiosity in the girl’s voice, Ritsuko could not read it. “It was not time then, and it was not necessary.”

“Because we couldn’t be sure that Test Pilot Ikari would be successful,” Ritsuko explained, any interest she could have before drowned by the... the Rei-ness of the question. “If he had been incapacitated, it would have been necessary to eliminate the Harbinger, and, as a secondary objective, salvage the Test Model.”

“But it was not necessary.”

“No, it turned out not to be necessary,” Ritsuko admitted. “To be honest, we did not expect Shinji to perform... well, to perform well. He’s been a bit of a surprise.”

“He has surprised you?” the girl replied flatly.

“Yes. Compared to the Second Child, the Third is woefully under-trained, and yet he’s a prodigy in the field of AT-Field manipulation. It’s a surprise.”

“The Third Child. Acedia. Test Pilot Ikari. Shinji Ikari. He is the son of Representative Gendo Ikari, and Dr Yui Ikari.”

The scientist waited for the girl to continue. She did not do so.

“You can go, Rei,” she said, framing the statement as an order.

“Dr Akagi.”

“Yes, Rei?” she asked, frustration creeping into her voice.

“Why are you surprised?”

The woman blinked, the lit harcontacts painting her eyelids purple as she blinked. She really wanted a smoke right now. “Because he’s defying the predictions made on you, the Second Child, and the other failed test subjects,” she said. “Now, if you’d just...”

Rarely, almost uniquely, Rei interrupted her. “I did not mean that,” she said. “What I meant was, ‘Why are you surprised?’”

Ritsuko frowned. “I just told you.”

There might have been a hint of sadness in Rei’s eyes as she answered, the doctor thought. “You did not understand. I am not surprised.” And with that said, she turned, and headed for the exit that would lead her to the showers.

Then again, that might just have been excessive and wilful anthromorphism, the woman thought with a hint of spite.



~’/|\’~



The sirens were wailing with the high pitched scream of a newborn infant. Most of what could be seen on the mainscreen was the red of destroyed assets; prime among them, the flanks of capital-grade charge beams now entirely silenced.

A woman screamed; a high-pitched shriek of terror. “Contact!” she managed. “C-c-contact!”

“My god,” a young man, his temples still streaked with grey despite his age, muttered, staring at the screen in front of him. “God! No! It’s... it’s still coming! It just came out of nowhere! Why didn’t you detect it?”

Her face streaked with sweat, the Captain in charge of the facility ran in, her red eyes narrowed. “Report!” she barked. “What the hell’s going on? It’s hell on earth outside!”

“C-captain!” the man stammered. “An unknown object... maybe two hundred metres in diameter... just appeared in low earth orbit. And that’s only after it destroyed the defences. We think it must have had some kind of arcane field protecting it from detection!”

“Impossible!” the Captain snapped. “Nothing that large could be warded against detection in that...” and her face fell. “No,” she said softly, expression suddenly wracked with fear. “They’re back, aren’t they?”

“I can’t say. But... but they’re launching smaller objects. We can’t stand against them.” The man looked up, tears in her eyes. “We just can’t. We couldn’t see them. Oh, God, why? What does science exist for!”

“Stow your bellyaching,” the Captain snapped. “I’ll tell you what science is there for! It’s there for truth, for beauty, and for the realisation of the imminent potential in all things! And, most importantly, it’s there for giving us tools, whether to find out more about the world, or killing those who would kill us. Because,” the nazzady said, breaking the glass on the wall to remove a fire axe, “the Migou may have made me, and their Loyalists may have called us monsters when we rebelled. But let me tell you this. I’ve read Frankenstein since then! And it’s in the nature of so-called monsters to destroy their makers!” She pointed up at the screen. “Look at that! Tower 07, by the Elder Thing City, is still operational! It’s just not firing! So we’re going to go there, and start it up again! For Earth! For Human and Nazzadi alike! And for the honour of the Antarctica Defence Forces!” She grabbed an automatic grenade launcher from a rack. “Saddle up, men, because the 27th of December, 2073, is a day which the bugs are going to remember for a very long time!”

There was a cheer from the soldiers huddled in the room, and a mass checking of weapons.

“You’re... mad,” the desk operator shouted. “It’s minus 50 out there! And they’re still bombing!”

The Captain glanced back over her shoulder. “Then the fireballs will keep us warm.”

“I thought I said I didn’t want to go see a film about military stuff,” Shinji muttered along the aisle to the other two, as patriotic music swelled.

Toja looked uncomfortable, as he leant forwards. “Uh... yeah, sorry about this,” he whispered back, his eyes reflecting the light like a cat’s in the darkness. “I... would rather have gone to see something else, too. But he,” he jerked his head towards Kensuke, who was sitting in the middle, “had already paid for the tickets.”

“But it’s not even that good,” Shinji hissed. “I’ve seen this story before. And the script is terrible.”

“Shush, you two,” said Kensuke, who was still avidly staring at the screen. “This is awesome. You do know, right, that this is all Live Action, no CGI at all? It’s amazing! They used real military equipment, even old stuff from the start of the war for everything. I’ve never seen such a realistic use of conventional explosives to fake a nuclear blast.”

The other two boys stared at him. “You mean you didn’t see if the plot was any good?” Shinji managed.

“Why?” Kensuke frowned. “It’s really pretty.”

Toja’s palm collided with his forehead. “Last time I let you buy tickets,” he muttered. “Next time, we’re going to see Snake Fist IV.”



~’/|\’~



Shinji was in a mixed mood as he got home. Some of the parts of the film, the ones which hadn’t been full of laughable dialogue or pretty explosions had been a little too close to home for his preferences. He’d heard that kind of controlled panic in the voices of other people, in the Evangelion Group, in training. He’d looked away at those points, especially when the bombardment had begun.

Of course, the events of December 2073, the so-called “First Strike”, had been a Migou attack against the Antarctican polar defences, the first blow in the Second Arcanotech War, which would properly begin the next year as the Migou Hive Ship arrived complete with escorting fleet. The first landings had been in Antarctica, which had not even been contested thanks to the damage done by the First Strike. But at least it had been a Migou thing, not anything to do with Harbingers or anything like that, so that had numbed it a little, disassociated it a little from what they made him do. Hah, Shinji thought, if I couldn’t do that, I basically couldn’t watch anything.

He checked his watch; good, yes, he was still back before the deadline at six. Only a short search was needed to find his keys, which weren’t actually mechanical keys, and the door slid open.

The... it wasn’t even a scent in the air anymore, more a taste, hit him in the face like a fist. A sensation which he was, regrettably, familiar with. Coughing, choking, he stepped back outside, and sucked in a breath of clean arcology air.

It, whatever it was, was even making his eyes water, just from the smell. Taking a tentative sniff, he could smell burning paper, chilli... yes, there was certainly chilli, maybe some kind of curry powder stuff... and that was when his endurance gave out, and he retreated back to safety.

“Ari,” he instructed his muse, pulling out his PCPU, “phone Misato.” If she didn’t respond, he should probably start getting worried, because peeking his head inside, he could see what looked like hints of smoke. Well, there would have to be. There had to be some point where a smell stopped being a smell, and started being a smoke, or maybe a vapour. Shinji couldn’t quite remember the difference between the two, from Chemistry.

There was a sound of sizzling and bubbling from the other end of the line, as Misato picked up her PCPU, and, using that peculiar tone of voice which people use when they’re holding the handset between their shoulder and the side of their head, said, “Heya, Shinji! I was starting to wonder when you’d call. Where are you?”

“Outside.” Either she was in a full medieval dungeon, complete with boiling oil, or she was probably in the kitchen, Shinji was forced to conclude.

“Oh. Let me just turn that down... wrong way... down! ‘Kay. ‘Kay. Right.” She paused. “Oh, right? Why? Are they not letting you through security? Your card should still be synched with your profile, right?”

Shinji shook his head, briefly wondered who he was shaking his head at, given that he was on the phone, and said, “No. I mean...right outside the entrance to the flat. I’ve got it open... are you alright in there?” he asked, with some anxiety. “I can smell smoke. Is there a fire?”

“Not anymore!” Misato said, cheerfully. “There was a leee~eeetle accident with some chilli I was frying with the beans, but that’s all okay.”

The boy relaxed. “That’s good, because...”

“... and the packaging is totally extinguished!” Misato added. “Although who’d sell real chillies in a paper bag like that, I’d like to know,” she added in a darker voice. “You can’t microwave it at all, even though it looks like you should be able to!”

“Okay.” Shinji blinked, lost for words. “Right.” She’s cooking she’s cooking she’d cooking a little voice in his head wailed, but he managed to keep it away from his vocal cords.

He could hear Misato humming tunelessly, as something sizzled. “So, Shinji, did you have fun today?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “Um... well, the film wasn’t that good, but, yes.”

“How were your friends?”

Shinji wasn’t quite sure that he’d chose to describe them as friends quite yet; associates, certainly, with a view to a potential upgrade later, but you really couldn’t say that when less than a week ago, one of them had punched you.

“Fine.”

“They dropped ‘round, you know?” Misato mentioned, an innocuous tone in her voice. “I had a talk with them in my capacity as Director of Operations... which was not what I wanted to do on a Sunday, ‘cause I managed to get a day off... and I don’t think you’ll have any more trouble with them.”

Yes, Shinji did know. Mainly because when the other two had asked what he had been doing, he had ended up explaining why he had got into the habit of just occasionally going out, and riding the Arconnect for hours at a time. It was something he’d done back in Toyko-3, too, because sometimes he just had to get away from people, to relax, and a house with one excitable little girl, and one very excitable little girl, was not a place where you could do such a thing.

And then he had made the mistake of using the line, ‘And sometimes Misato is a bit exhausting to be around’, which had been interpreted as two teenage boys, who believed that a double entendre could only have one meaning, would interpret it. There had been much discussion of the attractiveness of his guardian from the other two parties involved, with no appreciation of the fact that she was a slob, even when he explicitly pointed it out.

Shinji just knew this was going to get annoying.

“But... uh, Shinji, it would probably be easier if you’d come in, you know,” Misato added. “I mean, I could do with some help, and some of us have been working hard in the kitchen.” Shinji could smell it. If she’d been working hard in there, she hadn’t been working at cooking something edible.

No, that wasn’t fair, he corrected himself. She hadn’t been succeeding at working at cooking something edible.

“Um, okay, I’ll be in a moment,” he said, as he disconnected. No, thinking of it, a more appropriate descriptor would be ‘lied’. He was just going to wait out here for a while, let the air cycle a bit, before he’d come in, and try to help salvage dinner.

“Oh, hello Shinji!” called out Dr Akagi from behind him, the click of her heels a solid sound. He turned, noting that he didn’t think he’d actually seen her out of what he was going to call ‘scientist clothing’ before. The loose blouse and trousers looked somehow wrong on her, compared to the more common lab coat, or more specialist equipment. And the fact that her harcontacts were off, that her pupils weren’t rimmed with a blue gear... that was odd. “Why are you out h... oh, God, what is that smell?” Her eyes suddenly widened in recognition. “H-has Misato been cooking?”

Shinji winced. “I think so. And... um, when I called her, she said she’d burned it, too.”

Ritsuko nodded. “It smells familiar. She went through about... about three months at university,” she explained, “after a... difficult break-up trying to teach herself how to cook.” She glanced at Shinji’s expression. “No, I don’t get the chain of logic behind that decision, either. As I recall, I ended up spending most of my time in the library to avoid the way the flat smelt.” Her eyes narrowed. “Well, that and the tissue boyfriends.”

“Tissue?” Shinji frowned. “I don’t recognise the... what, were they all... oh. I see. Something to sob into and then throw away?” There was still a lot of doubt in his voice.

“Something like that,” Ritsuko said diplomatically. The actual line of logic behind the nickname had actually been that they were only good for a few blows, before they were discarded, and more covertly, that they were rather... limp. The blond had not had a high opinion of the other woman’s taste in men. “But,” she added, changing the topic, “did she say what she was making?”

Shinji shook his head. “No. She said something about beans and chilli, though, and it was sort of implied that she went and bought ingredients, rather than nanofac stuff.”

The woman’s eyes went blank for a moment. “Right,” she said. “In that case, Shinji, do you like Nazzadi food?”

The boy frowned, shifting his posture to lean against the wall a little more. “What kind?” he asked.

“What do you mean, ‘what kind’?”

“Well, it’s not all the same. At all,” Shinji said, with authority. “You’ve got the Traditionalist stuff (although, even then, you can split by Colony Ship), you’ve got nazzadanfrazzi nutrenti... that’s the stuff which takes inspiration from pre-existing human styles, but then twists it, and there’s at least one version of that for every culture, and then there’s the mess of ineveti nutrenti styles, which... well, you can’t really...” he trailed off, as he found the blond staring at him. “Gany, my Nazzadi foster mother, was the one who taught me to cook, and did most of the cooking,” he explained. “Um... you kind of pick this stuff up.”

“I’d always thought it was just food,” Ritsuko said, slowly. She had to confess, that was a side to the Third Child she hadn’t seen before. “You know, quite a lot of sauces, tendency to add spices, quite a lot of protein. That kind of food.”

Shinji rolled his eyes. “Yes,” he said carefully, “in the same way that all Japanese people eat is sushi.”

There was a snort from the woman, along with a shrug. “Okay, then. I get your point. But you’ll be fine with it?”

“Yes.” Well, as long as it’s well done, he thought, privately.

“In that case,” Ritsuko pulled out her PCPU, “... favourites... bookings... yes, they’ve got space for a party of three.” She tapped the screen a few times, before raising one finger to her lips, with a gesture for Shinji to be quiet, and selecting a call. “Hello, Misato,” she said, into the device. “Uh, huh.” A pause. “Oh, I got out of work a while ago, I’ve just got to your dome, so I’ll be with you in a few minutes. The bookings are for 18:30, so we should be able to make the reservation.” Another pause. “Wait, what? I thought we were going out. I was making the bookings, and we’d be meeting at your place... you’ve been cooking. Sorry, I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known, but... no, really, I insist. It is a really good place, I assure you... yes, it does have a good bar,” she added, with a glance down at Shinji. “Sorry, we should probably both have been clearer...” she laughed, “... yes, I know exactly what you mean. I’ll see you in a few minutes. Bye... bye.”

The PCPU was returned to a pocket. “And that, Shinji,” she said with a smile, “is how you handle Misato.” She winced. “Do me a favour, though. Next time she suggests one of these things, either make sure we’re going out, or don’t let her in the kitchen. I’m no longer a student, much as I hate to admit it, and I don’t think my stomach can cope with it anymore.”



~’/|\’~



“... so I said, ‘yes, that is what I said’!” Misato leant back her head, and roared with laughter. Shinji and Ritsuko exchanged embarrassed looks with each other; a situation only made worse by the looks that the other patrons were giving them.

“I happen to like this restaurant,” the blond muttered, “and I’d prefer to not be banned.”

“Oh, lighten up, Rits!” The woman paused, as she took a mouthful of food. The particular dish she had, fermoja flakorpa, was a solid Traditionalist meal, meant to be eaten only with a knife and the pastry provided. Misato was wilfully ignoring that, and had obtained herself a fork, just as she was ignoring the fact that, technically, this meal was only meant to be eaten by men over the age of 27. Of course, that latter detail was ignored by all but the most Traditionalist, but the way that she then went to look for where they kept the condiments would have produced wider annoyance.

Ritsuko shook her head, with a hint of sorrow in the motion, as she watched her friend go.

“Thank you for doing this,” Shinji said, as he sliced the leaf-wrapped protein on his plate into thin slices.

The blond flapped a hand at him. “No problem.” She paused. “Of course... are you sure that you want to stay with her, though?” she asked. “I mean,” the woman blinked, “I know you were placed with her, but... after smelling that cooking, there’s no need you need to have your life ruined by a bad flatmate.”

Shinji sighed. “I don’t really get her,” he admitted. “Sometimes, when we’re talking... it’s like we’re not even in the same room. I just don’t get how she can be like she is.” He shrugged. “It’s fine; there’s no need to go to all that trouble. I’ll survive.”

“Well...”

“... if only because I’ve taken over cooking and cleaning duties,” he added, with dark humour.

Ritsuko laughed. “I did the same at university,” she admitted. “She’s always been, for as long as I’ve known her, a slob, and a useless chef, and... well, she can only have got worse.” The last words were said with a seriousness quite unlike the rest of the sentence.

Shinji frowned. “Huh?”

The scientist’s eyes widened, fractionally. “Oh,” she mouthed, silently. “You don’t know?”

“Know what?”

Ritsuko frowned. “This is awkward. I don’t know how much I should really say, as her friend, but...” she licked her lips. “Misato was with the Army... one of the best mecha pilots of her generation,” she explained, picking her words carefully. “She made Captain after keeping the remnants of a brigade together and fighting for 23 days after they’d been cut off in the Fall of China, behind Storm lines, with only enough state-nullifiers to keep away state-sickness for fourteen... and even those weren’t designed for how high the states were getting as the Leng POLLEN expanded. State-sickness does... funny things to your brain... random excitation of the atoms into higher r-states, and there’s only so much that arcanotherapy can do. And then it happens again, when you leave, as they decay back down, and radiate out the energy. She came out lightly. Only the loss of most of her sense of smell and taste.” Yes, that would do for an explanation. It wouldn’t do to mention everything. For one, they were eating. For two, it was... private.

The boy paled, and poked at his food, suddenly much less hungry. “So,” he said, glancing over at Misato, who was leaning over the buffet table, picking up bottles of brightly coloured flavourings, “the reason she puts so much stuff on everything she eats...”

Ritsuko nodded, gravely. “Yes.”

“That’s horrible.” And Shinji now felt terrible for finding it amusing.

“Of course, she still can’t cook,” Ritsuko pointed out. “But now... she can’t even really taste or smell it. She probably couldn’t even smell the apartment, and because she has implanted Eyes, they wouldn’t have been watering as much. So she does this just to taste anything.”

“Oh.” There was an uncomfortable silence, which was only broken when Misato put the bottles of red, blue, clear, and red-with-what-looked-like-chilli-seeds-in-it down on the table, and began to liberally apply them.

“Ah, that’s better,” she said with a grin. “Want to try a bite?” the dark-haired woman said to Shinji, with a grin, proffering her fork forwards.

Shinji shook his head mutely, and poked at the slices on his plate.

“Wimp,” she said, with a grin. “A real man should always be willing to try something once.”

Ritsuko rolled her eyes. “What, you mean like Pola? As I recall, he let you drive for him once. And then left you.”

Misato pouted. “He was terrible in be... being a good passenger,” she said, with a sideways glance at Shinji.

“Misato. He was in training to be a fighter pilot.”

“So?”

“He’d had the Grade One implants. He shouldn’t even have been physically capable of getting motion sick.”

“So? He said the real issue was being that low, which just goes to show that he wasn’t all that good.”

The blond raised her hands. “I’m just saying, there are some things you shouldn’t try.”

Just then, both womens’ PCPUs chimed. “If this is an emergency, I’m going to kill someone,” the black-haired woman growled. “Oh, good,” she added, after checking, in a lighter tone.

“Yes, I was a little worried, but it seems to have gone smoothly. And not a moment too soon.”

“Hmm?” Shinji asked, or at least made a quizzical noise.

“We were having Zero-Two moved from where it was, to another place,” Ritsuko said carefully, choosing her words because they were in a public place. Well, she happened to know that a non-negligible fraction of the clients here were Armacham Internal Security guards, but the point still remained. “And that’s all I’m going to say... and Misato will say, too.” She snapped her fingers, and reached for her handbag, rummaging through it. “Although... that reminds me. She handed him a black sealed tablet, about the size of his hand.

“What is it?”

“Turn it over.” He did; the other side was emblazoned with ‘Secure Biometric Data package’. There was a transparent window on the front. Through it, he could see a picture of Rei Ayanami. “It’s her new Ashcroft Ident Card; her only one expired. Some of her access rights are dependent on this.”

“Why me?”

“Maybe because you’ll see her at school tomorrow, while I’m working,” the woman said, a hint of irritation in her voice.

Shinji could accept that this was a fair point. He glanced back at the picture. It was even taken against a black background; it had been found that sidoci ended up overexposed and bleached when taken against a normal white one. Tilting the sealed package, the familiar face shifted as the angle he was looking at it changed. Idly, he ran one hand along his jaw, squinting at the hologram of the girl.

He looked up to find both women staring at him, smiling faintly. Well, Ritsuko was smiling faintly. Misato had a look on her face which would probably have run afoul of pre-NEG decency laws in some parts of the world.

“What’s the matter?” asked the dark-haired woman, a slight lilt in her voice. “You seem to be looking at Rei’s face very intently.”

“What? Um...”

“Oh, come on, it’s sweet,” she continued. “This way, you have a nice little excuse to talk to her. And then, maybe...”

“It’s not...”

“You might even get to see her house,” Misato added, a salacious grin on her face.

Ritsuko blinked suddenly, her face rigid. “There’s no need to tease him quite so much,” she told her friend, mock-sternness in her voice.

“Yes! Thank you! A sane...”

“... of course, you still need to tease him a little,” Ritsuko continued, the grin creeping back in.

Crossing his arms, Shinji slumped back down, his face taking on the caste of a martyr.

“Make sure you remember, Shinji,” the blond said. She sighed. “She tries, you know.”

“Who?”

“Rei. But... well,” she ran one hand over her face, “much like your father, sometimes I think her problem is that she can’t see the little things in front of her. She can’t see the trees for the forest... and, yes, I mean it that way around. And she’s not very good at it.”

“At what?”

“Ignorance.”



~’/|\’~



Her handbag made a solid thump on the floor, as Ritsuko dropped it, and turned to check that the security systems had turned back on properly. Satisfied that they had, she slipped her shoes off, and, socks squeaking on the hard material, stepped into her kitchen.

Twelve eyes reflected the light from the hallways back at her, an inhuman yellowish-golden glint. The blond sighed.

“What are you doing in here, sitting around in the dark?” she asked, flicking the light on.

There was a mewing, as the cats protested at the sudden change in their conditions. The woman glanced over at their bowls. Ah. Yes, that made sense. She’d forgotten to fill up the dispenser robot; the football-like unit waiting at its charging point. They had drunk all their water, and would be wanting food. Stepping over to the bowls, she reached down to pick up the dishes, only for her fingers to be batted away by one of the cats.

“Major Zero? What are you doing?” she asked the cat, a handsome Havana Blue tom. Quite unlike their ancestor breed, the Persian Blue, the Havana Blue was actually, blatantly blue. The genetics labs of Cuba had been busy with genetically modified pets even before the First Arcanotech War; the specific breed was one of the oldest ones, an experiment into pet colouration which had tweaked the genes which decided coat colouration, carried on the X-chromosomes. Its fur was an almost-synthetic blue, never encountered in nature, and it had been rather pricy as a result. The Havana Blue was always provided with full geneline history, and the numbers were highly restricted, with a long waiting list.

It had been Ritsuko’s little act of rebellion to let the Sergeant breed with Kiko, a perfectly normal mongrel tabby. She didn’t care about the genelines, or the fact that she was diluting the stock. Their kittens would thank her, for one, because the cat breeders, even with the aid of genetic modification, tended to keep the lines too closed-in for her liking. Plus, the tortoiseshell from the litter had been adorable, its spiky fur a mottled grey, orange, black and blue.

The cat mewed at her, staring at her with its red eyes, and batted at her hand again. The human sighed. “Do you want foot or not?” she said, as she straightened up. The cat trotted out of the kitchen, waiting for her at the door. “Okay then,” she said to the cat, “be that way.”

A series of splashes of water was followed by the rattling sound of her filling up the dispenser robot. Shortly afterwards, she emerged from the kitchen, carrying a cat under each arm, because they had insisted at batting at the ball-like robot which was trying to fill their feeding bowls, rather than actually let it give them it. For all that she liked her cats, they could be rather stupid.

Making her way through to her box-like study, she found the large blue cat occupying her chair. She’d left the door open again, obviously, and they always found their way through, to the most comfortable chair in the house. Booting up the machine, her Grid workspace appeared, followed by the sound of its internal processor whirring to life. She picked up the tom from the seat, and sat back down, keeping the cat on her lap. Major Zero didn’t protest; in fact, he flopped over her knees, stretching, a fair purr vibrating her legs.

Reactivating her harcontacts, Dr Ritsuko Akagi resumed work. The Unit 00 start-up test was this Wednesday, after all, and she wasn’t going to get work done by having meals in restaurants.



~’/|\’~

[EarthScorpion]

Chapter 9

Rei 01, Something Black / The other upon Saturn's bended neck she laid

EVANGELION



~'/|\'~



"Trust no friend without faults, and love a maiden, but no angel."

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing



~'/|\'~


27th September, 2091

Without exception, everyone who passed the entrance examination to get into an Ashcroft Academy was a high achiever. The schools prided themselves on it; there was a reason that the global academic league tables were utterly dominated by these schools. They cherrypicked the brightest from mainstream education with generous scholarships, and were rumoured to conduct pre-admission genetic screening which was then taken into account in the acceptance process. The children there were disproportionately xenomixed and genofixed.

And despite this academic brilliance concentrated in one place, not one person had been able to deduce the logic behind how the Physical Education sessions migrated around the week. This week, they were Monday afternoon. Last week, they had been Tuesday morning. The week before that, Thursday morning. The general consensus was that the timetabling LAI was mad, with a minority report that the PE teachers were all a bunch of bloody-minded sadists who took too much pleasure in detentions issued for lack of the proper kit.

Up and down the pitches in front of the main buildings, a mass of boys thundered. Tight white T-shirts were covered by red or blue bibs, as they fought for primacy, and short shorts were splattered with mud as the studded boots tore up the natural turf. With a flick, a blue-bibbed player passed it to a tall, brown-haired boy who, pale legs flashing in the lightstrips in the dome ceiling, tore off up the field, outpacing or outwitting those reds who might have tried to obstruct him.

“Damn it, Dathan, pass the ball!” a boy, in a perfect position for a cross into the penalty box, yelled.

The taller boy ignored them, and, with a flick, sent it straight at the goal with a quite scary velocity, to barely be brushed aside by the fingers of the goalkeeper; fingers which were now in considerable pain. In the chaos around the goalmouth, the ball went out of play, and, luckily for the red-bibbed players, it was their goal kick.

Of course, the people on the pitch were predominantly the first team players from the six classes with PE scheduled at this time. The rest were sitting around at the sidelines, where they were meant to doing exercises. However, the teacher who had been covering them was currently escorting two boys, who’d managed to run head-first into each other, to the nurse’s office, and so they were currently being simultaneously apathetic, indolent, salacious and libidinous.

Whoever had decided to give the school swimming pool a glass front which was visible from the playing fields was worshiped as a minor god by much of the male population of the school, or at least the ones old enough, and inclined to find girls interesting. For one, they had single-handedly, in their pursuit of architectural aesthetics, managed to negate the work done in dividing the sexes when there was swimming, to avoid any possible problems with body issues imposed by social pressures.

With a synchronised splash, the five girls standing at the end of the pool dived in. At the other end, the previous set climbed out, dripping down onto the clean white tiles. One wrapped her arm around another, mouth moving in unheard laughter, and there were sighs from the male onlookers.

“I like the view,” Kensuke said, in a voice which was approaching sexual harassment merely in intonation, as he nudged Shinji in the ribs.

“I-I don’t know what you mean.”

“You cannot fool me!” declared Kensuke, with deliberate pomposity. “You, too, are looking for an answer to that eternal...”

“... well, since the 2060s...” Toja interjected, sitting on the other side of the boy.

“... eternal since the 2060s problem too, my friend. It has puzzled generations of men, driven them to madness... and stuff. But what is that problem, I hear you ask?”

Shinji squinted. “I feel you’re going to tell me.”

“Nazzadi or human! Which is hotter!”

“It’s a hard one,” a Nazzadi boy, his hair dyed white, said, as he leant back. “And if you say, ‘That’s what she said’, Ken, I will thump you.”

“Come on, Ala. Would I do...”

“Yes. And have.”

Shinji nodded. “It is true.”

“I hate you guys.”

“Don’t worry,” Enitan, the dark-skinned boy on the other side of Toja, said with a smirk. “We hate you too. But, back to the topic at hand,” he stroked his chin. “Difficult indeed. Humans are shorter, which is cuter...”

Toja snorted. “You only say that ‘cause you’re short and don’t want a girlfriend who’s taller than you. You know how much I’d have to bend down to kiss some of those people?” He paused. “Not that I’d mind, if they were hot, because that’s a sacrifice worth making, but still...”

“Ah, but we’re forgetting the big divide,” Ala pointed out. “More fat; yes or no? Nazzadi are thinner, but humans have bigger boobs, and are more curvy... which I just find...” he shook his head. “Well, look at Panary.” Gazes were indeed directed at the girl, her wet black hair tied back into a ponytail, as she stood at the end of the pool, waiting for her signal. “Sure, she might be tall and thin, but look! I mean, if I wanted someone tall, thin, muscled, and with no boobs, I’d go ask Dathan out.”

Enitan snorted. “Get ready to fight both Jony and Ferdina for him, then.”

“That wasn’t serioooous.”

“Even if he asked you out?”

“Yes! God, were you not listening to me? She’s gotta actually,” he made gestures in front of his chest, “be shaped like a girl, you know? That was the whole point of the comparison. Plus, you know, I’m a nazzada. So I know what my teeth are like. Like chisels, that’s what. And... well, that’s a real downside on a girl.”

There was collective male wincing from all but Shinji, who had tuned out the conversation a while ago. He couldn’t help but feel that the whole conversation was more than a little sordid. It was already a little dubious to stare; did they have to make commentary too? It made the whole thing rather uncomfortable. They really didn’t spend enough time around women... no, that didn’t make sense. It wasn’t as if all the other lessons were gender-segregated.

Shinji was of the rather smug opinion (which he would, of course, never mention to anyone) that he just had a healthier, which was to say, less objectifying, attitude to the fairer sex. Because when one is raised by two women, one of whom works for the FSB, one discovers that objectification is not strictly viable, unless one wants to have why it is wrong explained in detail.

Of course, that didn’t stop him staring over at the pool, too. Over at the pale figure, dark blue swimming costume a stark contrast to her chalk-coloured skin, who sat at the end of the pool, legs clutched up against her chest.

Rei Ayanami. Who was she, really? He didn’t know. Oh, they called the First Child, and sometimes, when they were talking to military people they referred to her as Invidia, but he didn’t know anything about her. He didn’t know where she lived, what she did in her free time, how she felt about having to pilot, what she was like as a person... in a purely professional sense, he hastened to reassure himself. Although, of course, she was very attractive, in a sort of special way; there was something about the way that snow-white skin just looked good on a girl, and from this viewpoint, he could see that she had an excellent figure. The thought had occurred that he would get to see her in a plug suit at some point in the very near future. It was a nice thought.

But of course, that wasn’t why he was interested in her. Honestly. This was a more professional (and the word felt strange to him) interest. Sure, it was possible that something more might be achievable, but that was only a distant prospect. This was just getting to know someone who, after all, also piloted a forty-metre giant robot; someone else who would understand the stress and the punishing training schedule they inflicted on him. He was... he was taking the initiative.

There were things, though, that he had picked up from the others in the class; they said she was asocial, cold, that she never chose to interact with people unless it was necessary and that she had been like this ever since she joined the class, back in first year. Some of the girls had apparently tried multiple times to get her more involved; he had heard mention of attempts by Hikary, Taly, that brown-haired bookish one who sat at the back... no success. Although it was admirable of them to try. She did look... isolated, sitting there, her legs raised up like a barrier to the world around her. Lonely, and yet there was something about her that left him ill at ease, a darker voice added. Maybe it was because she seemed to be able to make his father smile, when he couldn’t.

He really hoped it wasn’t some kind of unconscious bias against sidoci. He didn’t want to think of himself as the sort of person who had a problem with them.

Someone said his name. He switched his attention back to the conversation.

“Huh?”

There were mutual smirks all around. “I said,” Toja said, “I think Shinji agrees that xenomixed is best.”

He stared at them in confusion.

“You were staring,” the boy said.

“At Rei Ayanami,” Kensuke added, unnecessarily.

“N-n-no,” Shinji stammered.

Enitan rolled his eyes. “We’re not blind, you know. The world doesn’t shut down when you’re not paying attention.” He paused. “Well, if it does, it creates memories that make it the same as if it didn’t...”

“But what part were you staring at, hmm?” Toja interrupted, as he leant in. “Her breasts, perhaps?”

“I think you can definitely say she takes after her human side, if you know what I mean,” Kensuke said, waggling his eyebrows. “Or maybe her calves?”

“Or her thighs?”

“Like I said,” Shinji stammered, pushed off balance by both the interrogation, and the fact that they were leaning in from both sides, “that’s not it. Really.”

“... in that case,” someone muttered, “we should take away your man card. Because not staring at something like that...”

“Then what were you looking at, huh?” Toja said, drawing even closer.

“After all, we know you’re bad at lying,” the bespectacled boy added

“Your faces are too close,” muttered Shinji, through clenched teeth. “And... I was wondering why she’s always alone. Why she never does anything with anyone.”

“Because she’s... like that.”

“All sidoci are a bit like that. You can’t really get in their heads.”

“Always been like that.”

“Kinda creepy.”

“Don’t know why some of the girls keep on trying to get her to do stuff. She’s made it clear she’s not interested.”

“She’s Rei. That means she... she acts like Rei.”

The chorus of advice and answers was as useless as everything else had been.

“Plus, you know, by the way?” Toja nodded, face serious. “The whole ‘Why are you so lonely’, and wanting to be the one who does stuff with her? Doesn’t work. At all.”

“Which is a shame,” Kensuke added, “‘cause she’s a solid AA+ on my list of girls.”

“Well, yeah, you know there’s a study, right,” Enitan said, “and... I read it, and it turns out, that xenomixes all have that sex factor... don’t look at me like that, that’s what they called it, and the study found that, whether they’re amlati or sidoci, they’re like ten percent hotter than other people.”

“Yeah, because anything which uses the word ‘sex factor’ is totally a reliable study,” Ala said, rolling his eyes. “Mind you,” he said, eyes searching for a certain amlaty, and not finding her, “it’s true. They do just get the balance right, you know.”

Shinji tuned out again, only for the teacher to get back and start shouting that they should be on their feet, that this was ‘physical education’, not ‘sitting around education’, and other such witticisms beloved of the PE teacher. Who was wearing a lab coat, for some reason.

The boy blinked. Oh yeah, he thought, as he pulled himself to his feet. We were sitting around because he had to take people to the nurse’s office. Shinji had sort of forgotten that.

He also had a feeling he was forgetting something else. Oh well. It probably wasn’t that important.



~’/|\’~



“The time is 18:04. Shinji has mail. There is one new voice message from Dr Ritsuko Akagi. Begin voice message. ‘Shinji, did you remember to give Rei her card? It’s important. If you have already, thanks.’ End message. There is an attached file. Do you wish to add this to your reminders?”

Shinji groaned. That was it. Flicking through the attachment, he noted that, yes, Dr Akagi had sent him the girl’s address. He looked up at the wall, looking for a clock which wasn’t there; a pointless endeavour, since he did already know the time. Idly, he highlighted the physical address.

“Ari,” he instructed the muse, “get directions.”

The instructions flowed up onto the screen. Shinji frowned. She lived pretty high up, in one of the shallow domes feeding off from one of the older clusters. Maybe forty-five minutes in rush hour, as the estimate stated. He didn’t really want to do this.

But he probably had to. He had been asked, yesterday, and Rei would probably have problems without a valid card. And... well, he had wondered where she lived. This was an excuse, right? Well, not an excuse, it was a duty. In fact, he was helping her out by sacrificing his time, which made it acceptable.

Confirmed in his self-righteousness, which was still failing to drown out his nerves, Shinji headed off. Then he stepped back in, and left a note for Misato on the table, telling her where he had gone. And then decided that she’d probably knock it off when she dumped stuff on the table, or just not see it, and sent an email as well. Then he left, only to return to grab something to eat on the way; it wasn’t as if there was a paucity of junk food in the apartment. Places where she lived seemed to generate it in the same way that dishes left in the sink generated mould. In fact, there were some dishes in the sink, left to soak from the abortive cooking attempt the night before. Maybe if he just cleaned them first...

No. He wasn’t delaying, but he should just go and do it.

If only he could convince himself that the squirming in his stomach was a completely irrational response to an errand which would take him to a pretty girl’s house.



~’/|\’~



In retrospect, Shinji felt, as he stared around the dome, he probably should have started to get, if not suspicious, a little wary when the warning signs started to pop up, his muse alerting him that the entire dome was private property and that he would not be admitted unless he had a valid reason. Still, that had been within the bounds of possibility. The Geocity had similar warnings, although he hadn’t suspected them from a place like this, so high up. Likewise, if it was like that, then it would make sense that there wouldn’t be much traffic heading in from the larger domes in the cluster. Even the enhanced security at the dome access point was logical; it made sense that the place would be protected, if it was a private dome, although he hadn’t expected to see quite so many powered armours, or the slight nooks in the wall which, by his reckoning, concealed turrets. Still, he had passed the brain scans, the blood checks, and the phone-call down to the Geocity to check that he had a legitimate reason to be here, and he was into the dome where Rei Ayanami lived.

But it was so quiet in here. The only noise was the faint buzz of power cables, and the near silent movement of air from the life support units. Above, the top of the dome was sky-blue, the light strips imperfectly imitating natural sunlight, despite the fact that, outside, it was probably already notably evening. Shinji didn’t really know; he had never lived outside the regular twelve hour day-night cycle of an underground arcology, had not ever even been a surface resident, or one of the inhabitants of the very shallow domes, lit by transmitted sunlight from the surface. The place seemed hollow, empty, even more so than the Geocity, which was at least alive in its vastness. This dome was not; stark white buildings forming a circular canyon around the edges, looking down onto the smaller buildings in the centre, and the recreational area. If one could call this a recreational area, Shinji thought. It was maybe ten metres by ten metres, a small square of grass, with a single tree planted (or, from the looks of it, transplanted, given its age) in the centre.

Someone had hung a swing on the tree; a crude construct of two lengths of rope, and a plastic pseudowood plank. The brown-haired boy gave the swing a push, and watched as the pendular motion exhausted itself. He shivered, a motion which flowed into a retrieval of his PCPU from his pocket, to check the address on the map he had generated.

Where was everyone? He almost snorted, at the realisation of another horror film cliché. Where were the cats, too? If films taught you anything, it’s that when the cats, colonies of which were kept in every dome for their innate sensitivity to extra-normal entities as well as for more mundane, anti-pest issues, disappeared, something odd was happening. Maybe this whole thing was a trap, maybe it hadn’t been Dr Akagi at the dinner, but instead some sinister, evil shapeshifter, which stole the forms of its victims, and was merely luring him here to consume him too...

Shinji shook his head. He was being silly. Obviously, this was an Ashcroft owned-dome, which they leased out to younger employees, who’d still be at work at this time. He was being silly, and letting his imagination creep him out. He should be rational about this.

The problem was that his imagination was both very productive, and somewhat disobedient. And his rationality would have been pleased if it could have just seen someone else. Just for reassurance. No, he was being silly. This was just nerves from going around to an unfamiliar girl’s apartment. So what if it was quiet? That was a good thing in a residential dome, especially considering how lively the areas he had been through to get here had been. It was the change which was putting him off, not anything rational.

Rei’s apartment was one of the ones on the outer loop, the vertical wall of buildings that encircled the inner space, and which the access tunnel had led through. Naturally, things being as they were, she lived on the opposite side to the one which he had taken. Stepping up to the entrance to her block, the door sliding open as it detected the visitor ID they had given him at the checkpoint, Shinji glanced at the occupancy list, just to check that he was really at the right place.

Yes, there it was. ‘Flat 402: Ayanami, Rei’.

And that was it. All the other name spaces, blank. There were ten or so flats per floor on the list; the last one listed was 609. And of that, the only one occupied was 402.

Fortunately, the inside of the apartment building was clean, well lit, and in good condition. It was just as well. Shinji was beginning to get jumpy, and, to name a completely arbitrary example, if there had been a mysterious leaking stain on the ceiling, just above the entrance, he would probably have decided that enough was enough, and just given Rei the card tomorrow at school. Still, despite that, as he got into the lift, his finger hovered over the ‘400’ button for a few seconds, before he pressed it. And, it had to be said, the slight flicker in the light in the lift really did not help matters. Still, he arrived at his destination entirely safe.

“401... 403... huh?” Shinji was getting a little disturbed by now. There didn’t actually appear to be a room 402. This was... oh, wait. Yes, there it was. All the odd numbers ran along one side, all the even along another. That... that made a lot more sense. A short burst of nervous laughter escaped his lips, and echoed along the white-painted corridor. He really had to get his imagination under control. Stepping forwards, he swallowed, and knocked on the door.

“Hello?” he called out. Maybe there was a hidden microphone or something, because I can’t see a panel next to the door.

The door swung inwards silently. Through the gap, he could see a stark white hallway, a door at the other end, which suddenly seemed a lot longer than it... Shinji put one hand to his forehead, suddenly feeling lightheaded. He shook his head, eyes screwed shut, and looked up again, leaning into the door, which opened fully, a slight ‘clunk’ marking when the handle hit the wall. No, it was just a hallway. His stomach growled; most days, he would have eaten by now. It would probably make sense to grab something on the way back, he thought, before looking closer at the scene before him. There was a pair of shoes sitting just inside the door, next to an empty bin, and a pair of socks. That was somewhat reassuring.

“Hello? Rei? It’s... um, it’s me. Shinji Ikari.” He blinked, heavily. “The Third Child,” he ventured, in case she didn’t remember the name. She might not. It wasn’t as if they’d talked.

No response. Well, in that case he should probably find somewhere to leave it for her, and then leave. Should he shut the door properly behind him? She might be around at someone else’s house, and forgotten her key, but on the other hand, it wasn’t safe to leave the door open. Slipping off his shoes, he stepped inside, walking on tiptoes. He was just going to find a place to leave the card, and... well, maybe he was a little curious.

To his left, he poked his head into what turned out to be the kitchen. It was approaching Misatoan levels of untidiness. What it lacked in empty cans of beer, it made up for in discarded pizza boxes and food wrappings. Shinji frowned, the cook in him subtly disappointed that she appeared to live off fast-food and nanofactory meals, rather than actually cooking. It wasn’t that hard, despite the fact that everybody else seemed to find it too much effort. And this wasn’t a place to leave the card, certainly, not with all the junk around. He stepped back into the hallway, and pushed the door to the main room open.

His first thought was What’s with the colour scheme?

His second thought was Yuck, it’s messy in here. Are those... bloodstained bandages? And blood on the pillow, too?

His third thought was largely incoherent, because he realised that three of the four walls were not painted with a sort of black pattern. They were painted white, just like the fourth wall, to his left, which looked fresh. No, the patterning was writing.

It wasn’t scrawled, scribbled writing. No, it was the precise and methodical writing of someone who had taken a great deal of care over what they did. He couldn’t recognise all of the characters; there were the phonetic and phonemic symbols of Reformed English, though even then the words were not all familiar, there were kanji, hiragana and katakana, and there were sections in what looked like Greek; at the very least, he recognised the symbols from science lessons.

Uneasily, he was pretty sure that some of it was like the sorcery-related stuff in his father’s office. Those bits were typically labelling the diagrams and sketches, interruptions in the flow where turbulence rained, and characters wrapped and swirled around the new shapes, warped from their neat lines.

With a sick fascination, Shinji leant in. It really was very pretty, in an aesthetic sense, each linguistic transition seemingly chosen for some sense of elegance. He traced his finger along one line; the writing felt smooth, and slightly oily on the white paint. Some kind of pen, he suspected; a suspicion which was confirmed as his fingertip smudged the elegance. Hastily he withdrew it, leaving a grey streak on the sharply delineated divide.

Watching the sun rise he read, the Queen of Μάτια and the Blinded Prince wait for us at the end of everything. There was then an section he couldn’t understand, in an alphabet he couldn’t even recognise, before it resumed in kanji. It has always been an inevitability that unity and oblivion will conflict, for they are the same thing, and they are both born of the soul. Our ties and it switched back to RE, connect us all to one another. Our ties make us σκλάβοι and that is how it must be, for who would chose to be wild and free, beyond καλό και το κακό? It is the final decision we all must take. If we chose to be so, we cease to be us.

Shinji shivered, and with an act of will, looked away. Three of the four walls were like that. The last was freshly white. No, no it wasn’t, he realised. There were the first creeping signs of a new diagram snaking around onto the blank canvas, over by the bed.

The bed. Yes. The bed. Stop looking at the walls. Compared to them, the rest of the room was as messy as the kitchen. There were bloodstains on the bed, and the covers were yellowed. And these defects were made worse by how bare, and how bright the rest of the room was. If it had been ill-lit, these sins could have been concealed. Shinji sniffed. And there was a scent to the air, a scent of metal and blood and... something else.

The room stunk of LCL.

Gritting his teeth, that familiar smell rolling off his nostrils and onto his tongue, he stepped further into the room, walking on tiptoes. He swallowed his mouthful of saliva, which tasted as everything did, of LCL, and looked around for somewhere to leave the card. There. There was a chest of drawers over by the bed, which seemed to have a few personal possessions on it. That would be a good place. And then he could get out of here.

He reached into his bag, and took out the card, still sealed in the protective, anti-tamper wrapping that Dr Akagi had given it to him in, and, hand hovering, looked for the most obvious place. There were books, actual, physical books, not readers, stacked neatly. The dust-jackets were dull, pictureless; the font on the spines was that sharp golden writing that Shinji had always thought of as an academic typeface. There was a medicinal box with a scrapelock on it, merely labelled MEDICATION TYPE-4A. Peering through the transparent front, he could see layer after layer of syringe. Some of them had been used; he could tell from the red safety cap covering the tip, compared to the unused whites.

That was a good place, he decided, before frowning. He should probably leave a note, too, to explain it showing up. It would be rather odd for it to suddenly just appear. Leaning on the surface, he took a piece of paper from his bag, and wrote;

Rei,

I was told by Dr Akagi to bring you this. It’s a new Ashcroft Ident card; she said your old one had expired. I did knock, and call, but you didn’t answer, and the door was open. You might want to keep it closed.

I’m sorry if this is rude.

He paused, then continued, rather than signing it off immediately.

Good luck on the upcoming Synchronisation Test. I hope it goes well, and look forwards to training with you

Shinji Ikari

He reread the note. Yes, the ‘I’m sorry if this is rude bit’ was certainly in the wrong place. It looked like he was apologising for wishing her luck. He amended it to read, ‘I’m sorry if this is rude. to let myself in like this,’ and then put his pen back in his bag, which left the final thing on the chest of drawers. A pair of deactivated arglasses rested on their side. One of the sides hung uselessly, the hinge obviously broken; a weakpoint, compared to the composite-diamond display.

“Are these Ayanami’s?” Shinji said to himself, staring at his own brightly lit reflection in the surface. He couldn’t really see her wearing a model like this; something small and oval-shaped, maybe, or one of the circular full-eye ones, but not this older, and expensive model, which looked exactly like a pair of corrective lenses.

Actually, they looked like a very good quality model. They’d certainly still work, despite the broken frame...

Shinji fought with temptation for a moment, and lost.

The arglasses, despite the broken hinge, still fit as well as they would have normally, which was to say that they were perhaps a size or two too large. Reaching up, he felt around the frame until he found the activation button, and they turned opaque, the lens whiting out, the three rotated triangles of the Ashcroft Foundation showing exactly who had made them, and programmed their OS. Blinking, he noted the small black test in the bottom right of both lens.

Property of Gendo Ikari. Invalid Retina.

Frowning, he turned around, noting that the lenses had whited out again. What was Rei Ayanami doing with a pair of his father’s arglasses?

Oh, wait, no. They weren’t opaque anymore; he could see the way they highlighted objects in the room in red and green. No, the white opacity directly in front of him, almost toe to toe, was a dripping wet, naked Rei Ayanami, a white towel draped over her shoulders. She was staring at him

The next few seconds were... confused.

There was certainly a bit when Rei reached out and tried to take the glasses back.

There was certainly a bit when Shinji instinctively recoiled, and screamed in a manner not dissimilar to a little girl, before bouncing off the furniture and straight back into Rei.

There was most certainly a bit where her knee ended up going into his crotch as they fell together. Because that bit hurt.

But no matter what happened, it ended with the drenched Rei on her back on the ground, her hair spread around her like a bridal veil, Shinji leaning on top of her, one hand on something rather warm and one on the cold floor, and one pair of blue eyes locked on one grey pair.

The two stared at each other, unmoving.

Shinji mental processes were largely incoherent with terror at this point, because he’d just been caught in someone’s house and they’re her glasses andohGodshe’s naked and I’montopof her... Oh, and he was in pain, which was not helping with matters,

Motion still failed to occur.

“Why are you not moving?” Rei asked, her tone no different than she might use if someone were blocking her way at school.

With a yelp, Shinji recoiled up, as he realised that the wet warmness beneath his left hand was her breast. His motion carried him back into the wall, both hands raised in an instinctive protective gesture. What had just happened? What did he think he had been doing? Oh, why hadn’t he moved earlier?

Rei lay there, arms still spread, her only movement to tilt her head towards him. With a horribly guilty feeling, the boy could see the pink creep over her right breast, in a rough hand-shape; paler than it would be in a human, because her skin was actually pigmented white, but still there. And still those black pupils stared at him, the only real contrast on a body of whites and greys, with only hints of pink around her eyes, lips, and... down below.

“Do not smudge the wall,” she said. With a second yelp, Shinji sprung away from the wall, the black markings on the back of his white shirt and the smudges on the wall proof that the instruction had come too late, only to knock back into the chest of drawers.

With a series of thuds, the pile of books and the box of syringes cascaded off, onto the bare floor.

“Sorry!” gasped Shinji through clenched teeth, face screwed up into a mask of contrition. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry sorry sorry,” he sucked in a breath, “really really sorry.”

Slowly, her unclad state apparently unimportant to her, Rei pulled herself to her feet. Stepping up to Shinji, still trailing water in a path he could now see led back through another door in the room, she bent over, to pick up the sealed medical box, and place it back on the chest of drawers. Next to it, she placed the arglasses, fingers reaching around the edge to turn them back off.

“Pick up the books,” she instructed him. “My hands are wet.”

Shinji nodded frantically, realised that the act of looking down might be misinterpreted, and tried to find a safe place in the room to look. This was remarkably hard. Eventually, he settled his gaze on the white wall, over by the head of the bed. “Okay, right away,” he babbled. “I’m really sorry, by the way. Sorry. Um. Sorry.”

The girl ignored him, as, out of the corner of his eye, he saw her bend down again, to pick up the towel phew, and wrap it around her hair, which hung down to her shoulders when wet, suddenly a lot longer, and making her look peculiarly un-Rei like to him.

The boy crouched, and started picking up the books; thick, heavy tomes. German Poetry 1910-1925, Volume II, he read. The Pnakotic Manuscripts: Vol. IV. The Pnakotic Manuscripts: Vol. V. Die Verborgenen Geheimnisse: Die Grundlagen der arkanen Technologie. Shinji frowned. He only knew a little bit of German, a necessity when living with a sorceress, because the Lorenzian School made use of it, and so he had been expected to know enough to know what not to touch, but he was pretty sure that this was one of the foundational books of modern arcane physics. Straightening out its dust jacket, he glanced at the pages it had landed open at.

There was a diagram taking up one page, with that certain quality which suggested it had originally been hand-drawn. It was... odd; he squinted, trying to understand exactly what he was looking at. It looked vaguely like a mesh of cogs, but some of the cogs were sharing teeth with other cogs, intermeshing and yet discrete and unconnected, depending on how he looked at it. The mass of text on the other page, printed in a very small font... well, he could maybe understand one word in every ten. He suspected that even if it had been in English, Japanese or Nazzadi, he wouldn’t have got much more than one in three.

And then there were the annotations. In the same hand as the writing on the walls. Some entire sections had been crossed out in red, and replacement text crammed into the margins.

Shinji didn’t dare look any further, because this looked like something extra-normal related, or at the very least sorcerous, and when living with a sorceress, he had had it drummed into his head that you do not read books lying around which look like that. Instead, he put it back on the pile, and glanced over to see a Rei Ayanami, now, mercifully, at least in a bra and wearing underwear, staring at him, hair still wrapped up in the towel. It would probably have helped more if the undergarments hadn’t been white, skin-coloured for her, and she hadn’t still been wet, which was already inducing translucency.

“What is it?” she asked.

Shinji stared over at the safe wall again. “Um... uh.” He swallowed, tasting the scent of the LCL in the air. “I... uh, that is, yesterday Dr Akagi asked me... that is, told me... um, asked me to give you this new Ident Card but I forgot at school. So I came around. And...” he trailed off.

Rei moved in front of his safe line of vision, to sit down on the bed. He shifted his gaze to the floor, noting the trails of wet footprints that crisscrossed the room. That, and the large damp patch where she had fallen. He could feel the dampness... the warm dampness on his clothing.

“I had an examination with Dr Akagi yesterday,” Rei said, from somewhere outside his line of vision. “Why did she not give it to me then?”

“I-I-I guess she forgot,” Shinji hazarded.

“Forgot?” Rei asked, her tone dead.

“Probably.” Shinji swallowed. “And then... um, I knocked, and the door was open, and I called but you didn’t answer so I came in and I thought you might be out or having dinner with neighbours and I left you a note and it was with the card which I put on top of the white box thing,” he sucked in a much-needed breath, “um... and I’m sorry.” He swept his eyes onto the floor around his feet. Where was it? It had been there, and then the box had fallen off... had been knocked off.

“I have no neighbours.” She paused. “I was in the bath,” she said, the words somehow utterly disconnected from the previous sentence.

“Oh... um.” Yes, that made sense. He’d have heard a shower, after all, but... yes, head under water, it made sense. Oh, there it was. He stooped down, and picked up the card, still sealed in its packaging, and the slightly damp note. Then, eyes squinting, biting his lip, he walked over to Rei, staring at the towel wrapped around her hair, which seemed the safest place, and thrust both in front of him. “So here they are!” he said, in a voice which seemed far too loud in this quiet place.

Silently, Rei took them from him, and then stood up, stepping around him, to put them back on the chest of drawers, on top of the pile of books.

“So...I’ll be off then,” he added, rapidly. “Silently... I mean, I’m sorry for everything.”

There was the sound of a lid being removed from a pen. “Why?” Rei asked.

“I didn’t ask before I came in. I should have... just put it through the door or something,” Shinji said, backing away towards the door, arms briefly pinwheeling as he almost slipped on a discarded shirt, leaving a footprint in the middle of it. “And... um, I just... never mind.”

There was no response. The pale girl was hunched up against the wall, black pen in hand, correcting the damage done to the markings on the wall by his clumsiness. Slowly, the towel slithered down off her head, letting her damp hair hang loose over her face. She didn’t seem to care.

“Sorry again,” Shinji said, by means of farewell, as he closed the door slowly. His steps out of the flat were careful, measured.

Then he slumped down against the wall in the corridor, fist in mouth, and started whimpering, as all the suppressed nervous tension unleashed itself.

What the hell just happened?



~’/|\’~



The process of rationalisation had already begun by the time that Shinji got home.

Well... she might have the Nazzadi attitude to nudity, he thought. Yeah, that makes sense. I’m just being insensitive by objecting to it. I should try to be more open-minded. And I was distracted and didn’t hear her... no wonder I freaked out, just a little bit well, more than a little bit, he had to admit, when I saw her behind me like that.

Now... how to deal with the writing on the walls and the fact that she’s reading arcane texts?

It was fighting an uphill battle.

Misato was seated at the table, still in her uniform, poring over printed out documents and dataslates alike. Her Eyes were twitching at unseen images, scanning from left to right. An empty plate, the remains of one of the meals that Shinji had prepared and left in the fridge, was on her left, a pair of grease-covered chopsticks resting on top.

With a small noise, the Major made a few small notes in the margin of one dataslate, and then returned to work, her eyes flicking across nothingness. She blinked once, and then her eyes focussed on the boy in front of her. She seemed tired as she rubbed her eyes.

“Heya, Shinji,” Misato said, with a weak smile. “I got the note, by the way, and the email.”

“Good.”

“Did you give her the card?”

Shinji swallowed, and nodded. “Uh huh.”

Misato grinned wider. “You know, it was pretty silly of you to forget to do it at school, huh? Guess you wanted to have an excuse to go around to her house early?”

The boy shook his head mutely. Misato began to respond, but then focussed, properly focussed on his expression.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, more gently.

“Did you know she reads arcane books?” he blurted out.

Misato frowned, looking for one of the documents in front of her. “Yes... here it is... yes. It’s been tagged to her file; she’s been allowed access to the censored versions of... well, there’s a long list here.” She glanced back up at Shinji, her face warm. “It probably was quite disturbing to find it out that way.”

“And that she writes on the walls?” The boy’s tone was almost pleading, although he didn’t know which way he preferred it. That they did not know about it, and Rei was secretly disturbed, or they did, and they had deemed it acceptable.

Misato nodded once, her face stony. “I’ve seen the pictures. That... that must have been a shock. If it helps, the psychiatrists say that it’s harmless, and she’s never shown any other harmful tendencies, violent or otherwise. And, of course... I was a little disturbed when I first saw the pictures, but Ritsuko pointed out that she can’t, physically, do sorcery. She’s a White. They’re parapsychics so they can’t be sorcerers. It’s safe.” Standing up, she put one arm around Shinji’s shoulders, slightly awkwardly. “We probably should have thought it through better, or at least got you to interact before now, huh?”

“I’m... I’m sorry. It’s... I should have given it to her at school,” Shinji explained, not moving closer to the one-armed hug, but not recoiling, either.

“We’re all flawed, Shinji,” Misato said, staring at him. “We all forget stuff.” She paused. “And how did you get all the black stuff on your back?” she asked, as glanced around his shoulder.

He looked back. “Oh... um, I backed into a wall, and it was dirty.”

“You might want to get changed, then... probably should, anyway. I think the bathroom’s free, if you want a shower... I cleaned it up.” At Shinji’s confused expression, she wrinkled her nose. “Pen-Pen was sick. And you smell of sweat... did you have sports today?”

The boy frowned. “Can birds even be sick?” he asked, ignoring the comment at his personal odour.

“Evidently, this one can,” the woman said drily.

And, indeed, the bathroom smelt slightly of sick, and even more of the... concoction that Misato had brewed up yesterday, even when the rest of the apartment had largely been ventilated. Shinji could make some educated reasons for exactly why the albino penguin had been sick, but he was not going to, after the revelations at the meal.

Although it seemed that Pen-Pen was not as smart as some people would have had him believe, if he had willingly consumed that substance; Shinji hesitated to call it food.

Being very careful to lock the door behind him, after ensuring that the room was penguin-less, Shinji stripped off, running the shower to let it warm up as he folded up his trousers, and saw the full state of the shirt. Yes, the white back was completely covered in the smudged black pen markings. If he’d been wearing the coat from the uniform, the markings wouldn’t have been noticeable, but he’d have to have been an idiot to wear his uniform like that, out of school hours, up to such a high elevation. Academy students had a certain reputation which worked against them in poorer areas, as a bunch of rich, stuck-up, genofixed children of Ashcroft technocrats. Shinji would like to try to argue that wasn’t the case, but as he objectively filled three of the four criteria by any standards, he was not the best representative for their case.

He suddenly realised why Toja must be so insistent at not following the school uniform policy. Hadn’t he said that he lived in one of the surface arcologies? It must be unpleasant for him, having to make that commute every day.

Checking the temperature with his hand, he withdrew it instantly, and added more cold to the blend, until it wasn’t actively painful. Stepping under the shower, he let the warm water roll down his head, darkening his hair which hung limp over his face, running in rivulets down his shoulders and over the small of his back, the warm feel of her breast under his hand.

Shinji looked down. “Damn it,” he muttered. He shouldn’t be turned on by that; he should be disturbed. And yet he had most physical evidence that he was.

That went horrifically, horribly, inutterably wrong, was Shinji’s foremost conclusion from that little escapade.



~’/|\’~



29th September, 2091

Rei was not at school on Tuesday. Shinji considered this a blessing; it might be better to get the explanations and more apologies out, before things could fester, but he didn’t want to confront her at all. If he could never see her again, it would have been perfectly acceptable to him in his current mindset. Neither was she there on Wednesday morning, which was a relief for Shinji, and he spent the classes feeling rather more cheerful than he might otherwise have been. This state of affairs was only aided by Toja’s sense of impending doom, and wailed protests of ‘What did I do to deserve a bunch of nine-year girls crushing on me?’ He and Kensuke did do their best to ‘reassure’ him by pointing out that he could apply for a different Social Work Programme for the Spring Term, which only bought further groans.

However, such a thing could never last, for the Unit 00 Synchronisation Test was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon, when he had to be down in the Geocity. And when Rei Ayanami stepped into his otherwise-empty lift, both of them on their way down to the areas assigned to the Evangelion Group, his luck ran out.

The trip down was filled with awkward silence, the two figures in the black overcoats of the Academy standing at opposite corners of the box. Perhaps foolishly, the boy tried to break the quiet.

“I’m... I’m really sorry for Monday,” he said. “I-I-I just want you to know, it was all an accident, especially the... the touching.” He blushed bright red, as he realised just how that comment sounded.

She did not turn to look at him. “You have already expressed such sentiments.”

“Yes... well, I want you to know that I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?”

Shinji screwed up his eyes. “Because it was all my fault... and...” he trailed off.

“Will your sorrow change anything?”

“... no, but...”

“Then why be sorry?”

“Because I’d be a bad person if I didn’t!” he snapped, before instinctively recoiling. “Oh... I’m sorry.”

“You have already expressed that sentiment. Today.”

Shinji fell paused, and tried to change the subject. “I know you’re going to be trying the reactivation experiment today,” he said.

Rei said nothing, still not making eye contact with him.

“I hope it’s successful this time,” he added.

The silence at her end of the conversation continued.

“Aren’t you... scared of getting into Unit 00 again?” he asked. “I would be. Terrified. I’m scared of Unit 01 as it is, and nothing that bad... as bad as what happened to you, has happened to me in it.”

“Why?” The word was soft.

“Excuse me?”

A pause. Then, “Why should I be scared of Unit 00?”

“Because... um... well, I saw how injured you were on that first day. Aren’t you scared that it will happen again?”

“No.” He saw her eyelashes flicker up and down, as she blinked slowly. “Fear would increase the chance of a synchronicity accident. So I am not scared.”

The boy couldn’t help but marvel at the self-control shown there. And be a little scared at the fact that she had just said that fear could cause synchronisation accidents, of course. Because if that was true, and considering his first time... Shinji suddenly got the feeling that there was a universe’s worth of razor blades just a hair’s breadth from his skin, which were just waiting to fall.

With a feeling of deceleration, and a ping, the lift came to a halt, far down in the guts of the Geocity. The area here was one of the vast hallways, the ones which an Evangelion could probably crawl through. Shinji mentally paused. In fact, that was almost certainly their purpose; transporting the things around. Stepping out of the lift, he followed Rei, the sounds of their footsteps utterly lost in the immensity of the space, having to job every few steps to keep up. She walked quickly.

And for once, Rei initiated the conversation.

“You are Representative Ikari’s son,” she said, her tone not a question.

Shinji nodded. “Yes.”

“You must trust your father’s work.”

The boy blinked heavily. “Why?” he retorted. “He never gives me any reason to trust him! He never cares; only uses me! I certainly won’t trust him because he happens to be related to me!”

Rei Ayanami’s footsteps ceased, and she turned, no, flowed around, suddenly facing him. “Do not speak about Representative Ikari that way,” she said, the corners of her eyes narrowing fractionally.

“Why not? He’s my fath...”

The blow was not so much a slap as a full-on punch, her knuckles impacting with the soft tissue of his cheek. Blinking hard, mouth hanging open, Shinji slowly raised his hand to his face. He hadn’t even seen her move. And that really hurt. Fall on her when she was naked; no response. Make negative comments about his own, useless, child-soldier-using father, and...

“Mnghui,” he managed, to the figure that was already striding off. “Oww. Um... I’m sorry?”

There was no response from the pale girl.



~’/|\’~



Compared to the first activation test, the air in the control centre was buzzing with nervous tension. Only Gendo Ikari, alone, seemed proof against the concern, his gloved hands folded behind his back.

“Inform me when the Operators are prepared,” he ordered Dr Akagi, not looking her way.

“Yes,” she nodded. Inwardly, she winced. The Operators... well, they had done their best to reassure the heavily cyberised computer technicians, but, to be honest, they were scared. Two of them had died in the last test; three more were in a vegetative state. Only one of the ones who had not disconnected before the Evangelion had broken through their defence barriers was back on duty, and, for obvious reasons, he was not permitted to assist today. Running one hand down her spine, she shook her head slightly. The Operators all seemed so young to her. Not as young as the girl in the Evangelion, though.

Ritsuko resumed her preparatory work. The conditions for this test were quite unlike the ones which had prevailed last time. While before it may have been merely been secured to the wall, this time it was sunk to its waist in a variant of the dark RCL fluid used in the Evangelion bays. This time, if it tried to break free, it would be treated as Dante’s Satan, its legs immobilised in flash-frozen memomorph. Its arms were spread out wide, to minimise the leverage it could gain, but they were under no illusions that it would stop the beast. Not now. No, they would begin with the restraint fluid, and move up to, should it prove insufficient, detonating the shaped charges placed on the Units limbs, to sever key muscles.

The Representative opened a communications channel to the white Evangelion.

“Rei.”

A quiet response. “Yes, Representative Ikari.”

“We will begin by inserting the LCL. Are you prepared?”

“Yes. There will be no synchronicity accident this time. It is necessary that I successfully synchronise with Unit 00, therefore I will.”

“Good.” He closed the connection. “Flood the plug,” he ordered. “Monitor her mental state at all times, even before the experiment begins. If there are any signs of recurrence, abort immediately.”

“Yes sir.”

Shinji was standing away from the workfloor, on the raised observer’s platform. Beside him, Misato stood, her face pensive, a cup of coffee clutched in her hand. She took a long, slow sip, staring intently at the screen. Although this was being carried out in one of the test chambers, it wasn’t being carried out in the same test chamber as the one which the room overlooked. What if the Evangelion had gone for the exposed window, it had been asked? What if it had turned on its surroundings, rather than itself?

The consequences would have been catastrophic.

“We should never think of the Evangelion as just another war machine,” Misato said to herself, softly, almost unheard of over the babble. “It’s not. I’ve seen Engels out of control. But last time... this was a wholly different thing.” She snorted. “Or maybe an unholy different thing.”

Shinji narrowed his eyes at her. “Thanks a lot for your reassurance,” he said, his tone bitter. “Given that, you know, we’re watching someone who’s already lost control once before...” he paused, “... and come to think of it, so have I!”

“No, that’s what I mean,” Misato said, raising her voice. “The rampant Engels... they acted like Unit 01 did. They attacked things... anything that wasn’t from their Species... that’s a base-organism, by the way, in the same way that all the Evangelions use the same base. But Unit 00... it hurt itself. It was really trying to get the Entry Plug out.”

“Yes, my father really did a wonderful job when he... did whatever he does with them, I’m not quite sure,” said Shinji, his rousing condemnation somewhat ruined by the uncertainty at the end. “Why should I trust his work, when I don’t even know what they are or what he did?” he added to himself, staring down at the man. A thought struck him.

“What?” asked Misato, who had missed the last part.

“When did my father start wearing gloves?” he asked.

Misato leant against the railing, and took another drink. “The Unit 00 start-up test,” she explained. “The Evangelion... it tried to crush its own entry plug. Partially succeeded, too.”

“But... the Entry Plug is covered in armour,” Shinji protested.

“Yes.” The word was said with a dreadful finality.

“You mean...”

“It slammed into the wall until it managed to crack the plating enough to get a finger under it, and then it started ripping its own back apart,” Misato said, a distant look in her eyes. “It just managed to expose the plug, and crush the end, when it finally deactivated. And then it fell over backwards, because its knees didn’t lock up.” She shook her head, staring at the boy. “Your father was the first one down, with the rescue team. He managed to get up onto the Evangelion, crawled out onto the plug and levered it open, around one of the tears. His hands... they got horribly cut up on the edges, and his back too, when he crawled through. And the Evangelion was bleeding too, so the blood got into the wounds, and... well, they managed to save his hands. Or I heard he did, managed to pull out some sorcery to cleanse the wounds.” Misato took a sip. “There’s a lot of tales about him. I’m sure he has people spread some of them, because I can’t believe that they’re all true.”

“He... did all that?” Shinji asked, feeling slightly numb. “But wasn’t that only a few days...”

“Before Asherah showed up, yes. Everything that first day, he was doing it on just enough painkillers to allow him to think clearly.”

Shinji leant his chin on his arms, resting on the balcony, and stared again at his father.

The bearded man spoke. “We’re going to try reactivating Unit 00,” he ordered. “Start the first connection.”

“Connect the external power supply.”

“Voltage has passed the critical point.”

“Understood,” reported Penny Epouvantable, the red-haired civilian Operator who was heading up this dive. “Subject has passed Phase II. We’re getting a stable EFCS Type-1 Attunement. Animaneural waveform is... stable.”

“Start Phase III,” ordered Dr Akagi, her stomach a tight little ball of acid and fear.

“Plug is set to level 2. Beginning test sequence.”

“LITAN feed is clear... reports from in-Unit correlate with external feeds. Maintaining monitoring.”

“The series of pulses and harmonics are normal.”

“Feeding external power to non-vital systems. Right arm... left arm... all limbs are powered.”

“Releasing limited motor controls. D-Brakes are operating at full capacity.”

There was a terrible moment of silence, as everyone’s eyes were locked on the bar. Rising, rising, falling, rising, nearing the point of absolute borderline.

With an almost cheerful bleep, the bar passed the given value.

“Stable connection formed!” the message came from the Operators.

There was a pause, a moment of silence.

And then everyone relaxed, as the bar did not retreat.

“Unit 00 has activated.”

A window opened from in Unit, to display Rei’s face, an even paler heart shape within the cowl. “Activation is successful,” she announced. “I am waiting for your permission to begin the interlocking test.”

“Roger. Go ahead, Test Pilot Ayanami.”

Shaking her head slightly, an adrenaline-smile in her exhausted face, Ritsuko made her way up to the observation balcony.

“Congratulations,” the Major said, with a professional nod, and then Misato smiled. “Well, you did it, Rits.”

“Well... we’ll see, but it looks hopeful. The tests are probably going to go on for...” Ritsuko tapped a button on her PCPU, to bring up the schedule, “... well, let’s put it this way, I’m not getting any sleep tonight, and Shinji, you won’t be seeing Rei at school tomorrow.” The blond sighed. “You can go home... and you too, Misato. It’s just, as you’d put it, ‘boring technical stuff’, and as I’d put it, ‘vital test work to ensure that pilot synchronisation is calibrated correctly’.”

“I thought you just dumped people in the Eva and hoped for the best,” said Shinji, a slightly bitter note in his voice. He couldn’t have stopped himself for free access to every IP database on the pla... okay, he could have stopped himself for that. But he couldn’t have stopped himself for some very large, but not too large, prize.

Ritsuko did not snap back. It would have been easier had she done so. “It’s okay, Shinji,” she said, in a quiet, almost dead voice. “We can just delete all your pilot data we spent weeks building up, and let you go in a default, guessed setting every time, because we got lucky with you on the first time. And then you’ll be lucky if you only get hurt as badly as Pilot Ayanami did on the activation test on the sixteenth of August. We can do that, if you like.”

Shinji winced. “Sorry,” he said, already cringing inside. “I didn’t think...”

“No,” the scientist said. “You didn’t. Off you go. Some of us have work to do.”

“Lay off him, Rits.” Misato’s words were calm, controlled, and quiet. “That’s not needed.”

The scientist blinked. “I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m just... I’m just relieved that this didn’t go wrong like last time. And still might go wrong.” She sighed. “I sometimes forget that you’re not like Rei,” she explained. “You’re not used to it. This. Everything. And you have the right to object.”

Shinji nodded silently.

“But... yes, you should both get some rest,” she said in a quieter voice. “Someone might as well, and this place is going to be humming with stressed-out scientists, engineers and technicians for the next... God knows how long. Aeon, probably. So... like usual, but even more stress.”



~’/|\’~



30th September, 2091

Shinji was shaken awake, by a Misato with a jacket thrown on over her nightclothes. “Shinji, wake up!” she shouted at him, her face deadly serious. “Get out of bed now!”

The boy squinted in the light. “Gah.” He shook his head. “What’s happening?” he asked, sitting up, as Misato yanked off his covers, dumping an armful of clothes onto his lap. “What time is it?”

“Get up, get dressed. We’re needed down in the Geocity now. Emergency call. And it’s about half-three in the morning.”

With a groan he swung his legs out of bed. “Why?” He blinked, as something struck him. “Did something go wrong with Rei’s test?”

Misato shook her tousled hair. “No. But they’ve found Harbinger-5. Or rather, it’s shown up. In Eastern Europe.”

Shinji was suddenly wide awake, and fumbling at his top. “Is it... coming this way?” he asked. “And... um, can you look away, please?”

“Yes and yes,” Misato said, turning around to leave the room, to get dressed properly herself. “There’s security in the living room, and they’ve put some coffee on. We can drink it in the IFV, right?” she added, a slight lilt in her voice.

Shinji couldn’t help but smile slightly. It was a weak, trembling and rather tired expression, true, but a smile nonetheless.



~’/|\’~



Above, the night sky was filled with stars. They did not twinkle, and they did not shine; they were cold, distant points of light. If there were children’s tales told of these stars, they were the kind which were censored and bowdlerised, all to keep from infant minds from the terrible truths of the cosmos. The darkness of the void reached from horizon to horizon with no hint of dawn; terrible, unreachable, anathematical to light, which died in its Stygian majesty.

And the land below was the same. Black, glassy crystal covered every surface, was every surface. The stars below reflected the stars above, distorted and warped them until not one familiar constellation could be seen, and an onlooker could not tell what was up, and what was down.

But, slowly, the eyes adjusted to the darkness, to the lack of contrast, to the dead beauty of this place. And that was when the true horror crept in. Because in among the monoliths of black crystal, resplendent in their five-fold symmetry, the other shapes could be seen. Buildings of opaque black crystal. Trees of black crystal which blossomed into leaves of black crystal. The scattered chess-pieces of the army of the gods, all without White to oppose them. The eye adjusted, and then it did not believe, for to believe that this alien landscape was one which had so recently been just another battlefield in the Aeon War was too much to accept.

And in the precise centre of this darkness, something hung. It was only visible through omission, for it did not reflect, and it did not glisten and gleam and shimmer in the cold light of the stars.

[EarthScorpion]

Rather than have to reformat everything again for this forum (it's odd what the lack of [center] does), I think I'll just inform people that Chapter 10: Rei 02, In Ice and Dust is now done and is up.

Of course, if anyone cares, I'll be willing to reformat it. I'm just not sure if anyone does. :(

[EarthScorpion]

Chapter 11 Rei 02: In Water and Darkness is now up on FF.net.

[EarthScorpion]

Chapter 12: Rei 02, In Fire and Ashes is now up. Large explosions! Mythos horrors! Misato's plans never quite working as she expected but just about managing to pull through!

Must be a Tuesday in AEE-land.