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Neon Genesis Evangelion ANIMA - Volume 03 (Seven Seas) (Kobo - LNWNCentral)
Neon Genesis Evangelion ANIMA - Volume 03 (Seven Seas) (Kobo - LNWNCentral)
Color Inserts
Title Page
Copyrights and Credits
Table of Contents Page
Part 1: Children
Chapter 1: The Value of Humankind: Alpha
Chapter 2: Eva-01, the Corrupt
Chapter 3: Entrusted
Chapter 4: A Distant Reunion
Chapter 5: A World Forgotten
Part 2: A Journey Without Maps
Chapter 6: The Value of Humankind: Beta
Chapter 7: Falsehood
Chapter 8: The Illusory Passage, Part One
Chapter 9: Recovery Team, Above the Deccan Plateau
Chapter 10: The Illusory Passage, Part Two
Chapter 11: Recovery Team, Above Mainland Southeast Asia
Chapter 12: The Illusory Passage, Terminus
Chapter 13: The Dormant Land
Chapter 14: A Chance Meeting at the End
Part 3: The Apple's Core
Chapter 15: Earth Simulation
Chapter 16: The Commander’s Return
Chapter 17: Understanding the Planet
Chapter 18: Transcontinental Flight
Chapter 19: The Continent of Perpetual Night
Chapter 20: White Guardian
Chapter 21: An Invitation to the Final Battle
Chapter 22: Shinji’s World
Part 4: Symmetrical Components
Chapter 23: At the Foot of the Great Tree
Chapter 24: The People Left Behind
Part 5: An Invitation North
Chapter 25: Retuning Humanity
Chapter 26: Off the Shore of Tokyo
Chapter 27: An Island Awakening
Part 6: The Invitees
Chapter 28: Lost on the Way Home
Chapter 29: The Gap Between
Chapter 30: The Battle on the Northern Island
Chapter 31: A Person in Spirit
Chapter 32: The Closing Mirrors
Chapter 33: Eyes Open
Part 7: Divergent Paths
Chapter 34: Resolution and Execution
Chapter 35: Their Own Reasons
Chapter 36: Stray Children
Chapter 37: Deadlocked
Chapter 38: Friend
Part 8: The Extent of the Self
Chapter 39: Giants, Humans, and Beasts
Chapter 40: The Wolves
Chapter 41: The Tower of Babel
Chapter 42: Standin Executioner
Chapter 43: Playing the Hand that’s Dealt
Chapter 44: From the Butterfly’s Dream
Part 9: Kaleidoscope Sky
Chapter 45: Inside the Pyramid
Chapter 46: Transferred Power
Chapter 47: Leaving Babel
Chapter 48: Zeruel
Chapter 49: Their Own Ways Home
Part 10: In the Bright Night
Chapter 50: Leaving for a Dream
Chapter 51: Home at Last
Chapter 52: The Deputy Commander’s Return
Chapter 53: Moonlit Gathering
Postscript
Omake: Concept Gallery
Newsletter
Chapter 1:
The Value of Humankind: Alpha
THE EARTH SHUDDERED and—at least for the moment—went still again. Within
the armored personnel carrier acting as Nerv Japan’s mobile command center,
a cheerful tone chimed, and an artificial voice announced, <<The preceding
interplate earthquake was centered twenty-five kilometers east of this location.
The earthquake forecast has been updated. As of 1100 local time, the
probability of another interplate earthquake within the next twenty-four hours
has risen to forty percent.>> At the comms station, Commander Katsuragi
Misato was holding on to a metal rack to steady her balance when she heard a
man’s voice—familiar but unexpected—over her headset.
<<Commander Katsuragi.>> “Deputy Commander Fuyutsuki?” He no longer
held that rank—or any rank, for that matter—but old habits die hard. “Why are
you in the command center?”
<<I’m here because you aren’t.>> Misato didn’t know what had happened in
Hakone after her sudden departure. She had a pretty good idea, however, of
what was about to happen—a scolding.
In a valley within the Moroccan Atlas Mountains, crowded with bizarre and
grotesque rock formations, Katsuragi Misato had met up with Nerv Japan’s
search and recovery team, which had come from Hakone under the leadership
of Acting Deputy Commander Suzuhara Toji.
Misato handed over the broken rebel, Ayanami Rei Quatre—who offered no
meaningful resistance—to the security intelligence team to keep her safe…and
secret. Then, at the comms station, she reconnected with Hakone and Tokyo-3,
half a world away, via the network of stratospheric airplanes that had replaced
the satellites cast adrift by the Earth’s shrinking.
She hoped to speak with Ibuki Maya, who was chief of both the science and
engineering divisions, but instead, the person she reached was her former
superior, an exacting officer who was not about to pass up the opportunity to
put her through the wringer.
Rei Quatre had orchestrated Misato’s disappearance. But Misato couldn’t
deny being at least partially at fault; when Chairman Kiel’s booby-trapped visor
overwrote Kaji Ryoji’s mind in a hidden facility on the island of Cyprus, she’d
gone into a state of shock and abandoned her duties. Now she felt like a truant
student being scolded by her teacher.
Oh, come on, Misato silently griped. She attempted to run a hand through her
hair, which she’d parted when she put on the headset, but the strands were too
tangled by sand and dust for her fingers to pass through smoothly. Quatre had
abducted her with the mutant Eva-0.0 and taken her on a strange trip,
transporting her nearly instantaneously, like flipping channels on a TV, from
Japan, to the eastern Mediterranean, and finally to North Africa. Each locale
presented her with scenes that defied explanation. Only now was she able to
focus on her own physical state.
Because Misato’s disappearance had been kept under wraps, when the
retrieval crew happened across the commander in far-off Morocco, they
assumed that she was either here to perform an unannounced inspection or to
embed herself within the European troops under a false identity, for anti-terror
operations. But beneath her European army uniform—“procured” on-site—she
still wore the same off-duty clothing she’d had on at the time of her abduction
from Nerv HQ several days before. Her tight skirt and unkempt hair clearly
marked her as out of place among the professionals bustling about in workwear
and armored vests.
I don’t even want to know what my face must look like right now.
Toji patted the top of her head and pointed to a door with a sign that read
SHOWER ROOM. He placed a heavy-duty work uniform and an armored vest on
the central table, where an analog map had been spread out. Without
interrupting her call, he mouthed the words, Wear these. She waved him a
thank you.
He could have at least warned me that Deputy Commander Fuyutsuki was
back.
As if reading her mind, Toji stopped on his way out of the room and stuck his
tongue out at her.
Over the connection to Tokyo-3, Maya asked, <<Is that thing really Asuka and
Unit Two?>> “To be honest, I don’t know. But that’s what the kids are saying.”
The red giant looked like an Evangelion, with feminine features breaking
through the surface here and there like a colossal idol to a goddess. The
resemblance to Soryu Asuka wasn’t immediately apparent to Misato, but once
it had been pointed out to her, she saw the similarities. Still, she’d need more
proof before she accepted, as Ikari Shinji and Horaki Hikari claimed, that this
creature was a fusion of Eva-02 and Asuka.
The other Nerv Japan agents on the scene seemed to be taking the same
stance as Misato. Among them, only Toji thought that the red giant was Asuka.
“I guess it’s something only kids understand,” Misato remarked.
<<They’re seventeen years old,>> Maya reminded her. <<If you keep treating
them like children, you’ll only make them angry.>> Misato scratched at her stiff,
dirt-caked hair. “Well, how else am I supposed to treat them? They make
decisions based on intuition and take absolutely no responsibility for their
actions.”
<<I suppose that’s the mark of an adult—requiring proof so that we can
obtain a shared understanding with others.>> “I don’t think those kids are
looking for proof.”
Fuyutsuki cut in. <<Commander Katsuragi, I’m going to be blunt. It doesn’t
matter whether that red machine is Unit Two or Asuka or both—their combat
capabilities are lost. But now we face a new problem…the loss of our greatest
weapon, Super Eva.>>
Chapter 2:
Eva-01, the Corrupt
MISATO CHANGED into the uniform, put on the helmet, and walked outside to
where Eva-01 was squatting on the ground for emergency repairs. As she
circled the giant, she wrinkled her nose at the stench of scorched metal, resin,
oil…and decomposing flesh. Shinji’s Eva hadn’t undergone as radical a mutation
as Quatre’s Eva-0.0, but the foreign presence of the Q.R. Signum had discolored
portions of the giant’s armor and musculature.
The changes are only this minor, Misato thought, because Shinji is still
resisting.
The Eva’s EXW-038 Neyarl—an experimental shoulder-mounted energy
cannon—had been destroyed. The recovery team had anticipated that the
weapon wouldn’t survive its first use in the field, and the necessary
replacement parts were ready and waiting on the cargo plane.
But would handing all that over be wise?
“About Super Eva’s armament,” Misato said. “Keep it to swords…or blunt
weapons.”
“That’s all?” Toji was incredulous. “The repair crew says we can restore the
FCS as soon as we swap out the electronics. Once that’s finished, ranged
weapons should be working again, no problem.” Misato pursed her lips and
shook her head. Toji’s eyes widened as he realized she’d mentally reclassified
Super Eva as untrustworthy.
Super Eva hadn’t merely been rendered ineffective; the giant might now be a
net negative. The situation could be even worse than Fuyutsuki had indicated.
To keep Super Eva—and Shinji—alive after the Lance of Longinus ripped out
their heart, Hikari had made the split-second, unilateral decision to replace the
device with a Q.R. Signum—an object carrying a direct link to the apparent
commander of their enemies.
And what had happened the other time a Q.R. Signum had been implanted
into a Nerv Japan Eva? The scale had caused Ayanami Quatre’s Eva-0.0 to go
haywire in orbit—disrupting Quatre’s psyche, giving her self-awareness, and
even mutating her Eva’s physical form. Quatre had attacked her allies and gone
fugitive. She and her Eva had, in effect, joined the enemy.
For now, Shinji and Super Eva remained of sound mind, but there was no
guarantee they’d stay that way. As Misato and Toji walked back to the mobile
command center, the commander couldn’t help but feel uneasy about the
future.
Shinji spoke over the comms channel. <<Super Eva to Mobile Command.>>
Before his heart had been stolen, Shinji had begun to hear and speak through
his shared perception of Super Eva’s senses; but now he was relying on a newly
replaced communications module. <<Please commence the communications
and data link tests.>> “Command acknowledges,” Toji replied. “We’ll handle the
transceiving of the test patterns and the diagnostics on our end—” He stopped
and looked around in confusion. “Wait! What happened to the Soryu-looking
one?”
The red giant had disappeared.
<<Doesn’t seem like she’s willing to sit still for us,>> Shinji said. <<She went
running after the Akashima—Oh, they’re back again.>> “Yeah,” Toji said, “she’s
always never been much for waiting around. The Akashima should be bringing
you two shoulder units from the transport. I want you to put them on. Let’s get
you looking proper, even if it’s just for show. Once we get back to Japan, we can
do something about your eye, your broken bones, and, well, everything else.”
“Shinji,” Misato added, “have you felt any changes—physical or mental—
since the Q.R. Signum was put into your body?”
In other words, Are you still on our side?
There was a small pause before he answered. <<My chest feels like it’s on
fire, but my arms and legs feel cold and numb. It’s…confusing. And I really,
really don’t like it.>> “And how is Super Eva? Give it to me straight.”
<<The Eva isn’t putting out as much power as before. This restraint armor
feels heavy. And it’s strange, but it’s like the Eva is stirring up…negative
emotions. It’s disquieting. I feel as if I have to keep my guard up around it
now.>> With the militaries of numerous nations present in the valley, Misato
couldn’t do anything that might suggest that Nerv Japan was in danger of losing
control of Super Eva. If word got out, the UN—which held authority over Nerv,
at least on paper—would almost certainly seize Shinji and Super Eva. After all,
they’d tried it once already with their failed raid on Hokkaido just days before.
It was imperative that Nerv Japan continued to act like they could effectively
wield their Evangelions. For that reason, rather than sending Super Eva back to
Japan damaged and unarmed, Nerv Japan needed to make a show of re-
equipping it on location.
Toji gave the orders for the cosmetic repairs, despite resenting such ridiculous
procedures amid a global crisis.
Arming Super Eva carried its own risks, as Quatre had shown, but Misato saw
no other choice but to walk that tightrope.
But without any ranged weapons, even if Super Eva succumbed completely to
Armaros’ influence and turned against humanity, the colossus could only cause
damage within the reach of its swing.
The replacement of Super Eva’s shoulder modules began, but the Akashima
had to assist in lifting one of the giant’s arms.
<<Misato-san,>> Shinji transmitted from inside the plug.
“What is it?”
<<I’m sorry.>> Well, I’ll be, Misato thought. “I’m at fault for all this, too. When
we return, we can get chewed out together.”
Loud, purposeful footsteps and a knock at the command center’s door
announced the arrival of a man with a soldier’s physique and matching haircut.
“Lieutenant Colonel Kasuga?” Toji asked.
“Commanding Officer Suzuhara,” the lieutenant colonel of the JSSDF Anti-
Angel Rapid Response replied. “All the heavy equipment is assembled and in
place. My engineers there can handle the installation of the shoulder modules.”
“Yes, I heard,” Toji said. “I know this was a sudden request, so I appreciate the
effort.”
“With Super Eva soon able to walk again, we shouldn’t need any more
assistance from Akashima for the time being. The multinational forces have
requested our assistance in disposing of the giant creatures’ remains. I was
thinking I’d send Endo in the Akashima to deal with it, if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind. But do you? If you’d rather not to be tasked with that kind of
grunt work, I’d be happy to come up with an excuse for you.”
Kasuga smiled. “Are you kidding? I couldn’t ask for a better demonstration.
After all that chaos kicked up by your side and the Euro Eva, a lot of hope is
being put into the Akashima—a machine operated by human touch.”
The lieutenant colonel noticed Misato and raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t expect
you’d be joining us. I appreciate a commander who takes a hands-on approach.
If you’re traveling in secret, we can save formal introductions for another day.”
He offered a casual salute and exited through the door, leaving his laughter
behind as he went.
Misato stood frozen for a moment. “Who was that?”
Toji sighed. “I guess you could say he’s Six’s friend.”
Chapter 3:
Entrusted
Shinji stepped into Asuka-Eva’s entry plug. Whatever transformation the Eva
had undergone, the entry plug’s layout remained unchanged from when it had
been a part of Eva-02. Only the colors were new—every surface was red. The
headcam Shinji had borrowed from Toji transmitted the video to Nerv Japan’s
HQ in Tokyo-3, where Maya was watching.
<<Did you bring the sensor with you? Place it over there,>> the chief scientist
instructed. <<You said that, at first, she looked like a lump of mud? I wonder if
everything we’re seeing here was recreated from Asuka’s memory.>> “From…
Asuka’s memory?” Shinji repeated, confused.
<<In some places, Eva’s new form resembles Asuka, and in others, Eva-02. But
not Eva-02 as it was when it last departed, equipped for space travel. What I’ve
seen looks like Eva-02 as it was on land—as would have been most familiar to
Asuka.>> The interior of the entry plug was damp, like it had just been drained
of the LCL as part of the standard exit procedure. “Oh,” Shinji said, noticing a
book clinging to the wet surface of the side wall. The book’s blue cover was
conspicuous amid all the red.
When Asuka had embarked on her reconnaissance-in-force mission to the
moon, her friends had given her as many gifts as the storage space permitted to
help stave off boredom and homesickness on the long journey. Shinji had given
her this book, a collection of marine life photographs. Its pages were coated in
resin for bathtub reading.
It was Shinji’s attempt at being thoughtful—he reasoned that a waterproof
book would give her something to read in the LCL—but when Asuka saw his gift,
she was underwhelmed. Annoyed, even.
“Is this all he gave me?”
Shinji flipped through the pages and landed on a two-page spread of Pacific
white-sided dolphins jumping out of the water. What must she have felt when
she saw this, he wondered, after becoming stranded in space? He thought of
Ayanami Rei Cinq, who’d died before reaching the moon. Overwhelmed with
grief and regret, he continued absently flipping the pages, but he wasn’t
actually looking at them anymore.
<<Shinji-kun, stop right there!>> Maya said. <<Show me that.>> “Sorry,”
Shinji said. “I was just…”
<<Do you see anything odd about those pictures? They’ve triggered Magi-2’s
text recognition.>> Shinji was confused. “No, they’re just ordinary
photographs,” he said, but he angled the book into better light and squinted at
the pages.
That’s when he realized that the marine life images weren’t ordinary at all.
They were composed of miniscule symbols.
“What is this?” he asked.
<<Whatever it is, it’s not normal writing.>> Shinji resumed turning the pages,
looking closely this time. It was the same with every picture—the beautiful
waters and curiously shaped creatures were all formed from tiny symbols.
Had the red giant—the apparent fusion of Asuka and Eva—wanted to give this
to him?
Shinji hopped onto his parked Eva’s outstretched hand, and Asuka-Eva
withdrew the plug. As the red giant’s arm rose, her muscle fibers made a loud
scraping noise. Her hand pushed through what Shinji supposed was her hair,
and she reinserted the plug. Nothing in her actions indicated whether or not
she was aware that she’d left the book for Shinji.
Her attention turned to the European Eva, Heurtebise, kneeling a fair distance
away. She began to walk toward it.
“Huh? What?” Shinji stammered. “Asuka, stop! There are people on the
ground that way! You’re going to step on them!”
The red giant paused and looked over her shoulder at him. Then she resumed
walking, following the path cleared by a large, camouflaged transport vehicle
that had just passed by her feet. For the time being, at least, it seemed she’d
decided to avoid trampling anyone. As she approached the other Eva, her body
language so strongly evoked that of an excited child finding a turtle at the edge
of the water, that Shinji blurted, “Asuka, don’t poke that Eva! You’ll surprise it!”
What am I saying? Shinji thought. And why is she acting like a child?
But he could only guess at what was going through her mind. She still hadn’t
spoken a single word.
Chapter 4:
A Distant Reunion
A TECHNICIAN ARRIVED with a new headset to replace the one Toji had given to
Shinji.
“Commanding Officer Suzuhara,” she said, “I’ve reset the system to your
communications credentials. You have a transmission from Lieutenant Colonel
Clausewitz, the direct commission officer with the Euro Sixth Rapid Response
Unit under Hartmann’s command.”
“I was waiting for this,” Toji said cheerfully, but then he hung his head. “Wait,
how are we supposed to understand each other?”
The technician was ready with a short cable, which she stretched out
between her hands. “Your tablet can auto-translate. Don’t worry, we’ll also be
monitoring your conversation from the command center to catch any
translation errors in the software.”
“You’ve thought of everything. Thanks.”
Watching from a distance, Misato admired how the organization had adapted
to Toji’s leadership style.
Clausewitz… Misato thought. The head of Nerv Germany.
“Misato-san—I mean, Commander Katsuragi,” Toji said, catching himself. “I
can’t return command to you until we get back to HQ.”
“Because I’m not supposed to be here. I understand.”
“And, er…” Toji cleared his throat awkwardly. “Could you do me a favor?”
Again, Misato understood. She knew why he’d been so determined to see this
mission through himself.
“You have a chance to meet her?” she asked.
Toji stopped fidgeting and stood up straight. “Yes, but on one condition. I
must speak with her alone.”
“Then go. I’ll hold down the fort.”
“Thank you.”
Toji hopped out of the mobile command center and scrambled down the red
rocky slope.
“Go to her,” Misato said cheerfully as she watched through the window.
At the bottom of the slope, the security team’s SUV was ready and waiting,
along with an escort.
In this valley, surrounded by red mountains and teeming with soldiers from
any number of nations, Nerv Japan’s recovery team went about their duties in a
professional and orderly manner. Toji was an inexperienced leader, but rather
than falling apart, the Nerv staff had come together, shoring up each other’s
weaknesses. Even when given minimal orders, everyone was working hard.
The JSSDF had even lent the use of their giant robot, crew included.
Is Deputy Commander Fuyutsuki calling the shots? No, I don’t think so—if he
were, he probably would have left Suzuhara-kun and come himself. Whatever
the case, I need to get back in gear.
Nerv Japan’s Acting Deputy Commander Suzuhara Toji had put in the request
to Euro-II’s control team for a face-to-face meeting with their Eva’s pilot. He
figured that if they refused, he’d be no worse off than he already was. But
they’d said yes.
Euro-II’s unit seemed to hold a special place within the European forces. They
didn’t mix with the other soldiers and instead had claimed a section of the red
mountains for themselves. Though the European military was primarily
composed of units recruited from member nations on a provisional basis, the
Sixth Rapid Response Unit was a standing force reporting directly to the
European Joint Forces Command. Though their numbers were small, they held
nearly absolute authority over the army, navy, and air force—since their sole
purpose was to deploy Heurtebise into battle at a moment’s notice.
Toji’s SUV was waved past the perimeter without being asked to stop, but he
knew he was being subjected to any number of electronic scans. Because this
was a personal meeting, no grand reception awaited him. The SUV proceeded
straight to the feet of the kneeling white giant.
As Toji got out of the car, he immediately noticed the Eva’s positron rifle,
currently undergoing maintenance. This was a different model from the
Japanese ones. The particle-generating cyclotron wasn’t a torus. Instead, it
began in a cone—much like Eva-00 Type-F’s long rifle, the Angel’s Backbone—
before continuing into the accelerator’s long barrel, which curved back on itself
in a U-shape. This form, combined with the golden color of the weapon’s
electromagnetic-field-resistant coating, resulted in an appearance not unlike a
brass instrument.
“I guess that is something an angel would carry,” Toji remarked.
A reflection moved across the weapon’s shiny exterior, and a familiar person
stepped into view. Toji walked toward her, while his bodyguards remained
behind. In his peripheral view, he saw the Euro guards forming a perimeter, but
that was only to be expected. After all, they were protecting an Eva pilot.
“So,” Toji said, “they still have you in the old plugsuits.”
As if only just noticing what she was wearing, Hikari quickly moved her hands
to cover herself.
“C-can we maybe skip the fashion advice?” she stammered. “And stop staring
at me.”
Her arms settled into a crossed position, and her posture drooped.
She’s still herself, Toji thought with relief. After Heurtebise had confronted
Super Eva in Hokkaido, Shinji reported that Hikari had been acting strangely—
like she was under someone’s control.
“What’s next for you, Hikari? You could come back with me to Japan. I can get
the request put through.”
“I want you to take this.”
She handed him an aluminum tube. He opened the lid and retrieved a glass
ampoule. White crystals rattled around inside.
“That’s Kodama,” she said. “My sister.”
“What?!” Toji’s mind raced. Hikari’s family had been taken to Europe—her
older sister included. The Lance of Longinus had turned people across North
Africa, Europe, and Russia into pillars of salt.
Was she caught in the lance’s light?
Toji knew Kodama. She had a cheerful personality. He even called her “Sis.”
“What…?! No…”
No words could express his shock.
Toji wanted to scream, but in front of him was the person hit hardest by the
loss, and she was somehow remaining calm. He needed to keep himself in
check. He closed his eyes and focused his thoughts on his artificial arm so that
his racing heart wouldn’t cause the limb to twitch. Then, slowly, carefully, he
returned the ampoule to the aluminum tube and closed the lid tight.
“Take her back to Hakone,” Hikari said.
What?
“No, no, no, hold on. This isn’t the kind of thing you can just hand off to
someone else. You should take it. Keep it safe. And…”
He trailed off, at a loss for words.
She gave him a kind smile. “If you take it for me, then I know I’ll be able to
come home one day.”
Which means she won’t come back now. Is that what she’s saying?
She’d made up her mind. Now he understood why the Europeans had so
easily agreed to this meeting.
Hikari slowly walked toward Heurtebise, and Toji followed after her.
“Nozomi is still in Germany,” she said without stopping.
That was Hikari’s younger sister.
Toji dropped his voice to a whisper. “Are they making you say this? Is that
what’s going on? I can find Nozomi, and—”
Hikari shook her head gently. “It’s more complicated than that. I’ve come to
understand many things.”
She tapped Euro-II Heurtebise’s foot with her hand. “For now, I’m the only
person who can ride inside this Eva.”
That sounded like Europe’s problem. Toji couldn’t understand how she could
be so cavalier about the situation when she’d practically been kidnapped.
“You don’t have to bear that responsibility,” he said.
She turned. “Eva-II Heurtebise is Asuka’s mother, too,” she said, as if
introducing someone very important.
“What? That’s not…” Possible? But who’s to say what’s possible anymore? Toji
searched his recollection of the reports from Eva-02’s construction.
The German Nerv branch had originally built Unit Two, and both Maya and
Hyuga had theorized that Euro-II had been built from a discarded production
body.
“The Germans told me this morning—Unit Two’s core failed to bind with this
one’s body. They say her soul is with Asuka in Unit Two, but traces might still
linger in this Eva.” Hikari sighed and flashed a sardonic grin. “I feel like I’m only
just learning everything this morning.”
When it came time to decide whether the second giant-sized cargo plane
would transport Super Eva or the Akashima, Shinji insisted he could fly home
himself—and that was when he ran into a problem.
He couldn’t form an A.T. Field around Super Eva’s Vertex wings.
He didn’t realize anything was wrong until it was too late. Before, the giant
had seared across the sky as if propelled by a tremendous force. This time,
Super Eva leaped into the sky…and toppled over in full view of everyone. Shinji
yelped in surprise.
“I’m not flying!” he said, stating the obvious. Then, with delayed realization, “I
can’t fly?”
Crimson A1 stepped around the collapsed Eva and leaped from the rocks. Her
two long bundles of hair—or were they wings?—spread out ever so slightly, and
Asuka-Eva began rising into the sky.
“What?” Shinji said, startled, as she grabbed Super Eva’s arm and pulled him
with her.
Completely off-balance, Super Eva flailed about, but Asuka-Eva deftly moved
beneath him and began pushing him from below. She took hold of his other arm
—the one broken and dangling—and moved back above him again, still pulling.
Shinji was too flabbergasted to feel any pain.
He snapped out of his confusion and tried to create an A.T. Field so he could
find some kind of purchase.
Asuka-Eva soared even higher, keeping an eye on him. There was an
accompanying roar—or rather, a chorus of vibrations.
On the ground, the science team stood awestruck, and Misato—who’d been
about to attempt to load Crimson A1 onto the transport—remarked, “I don’t
understand how her graviton floaters are still active in her new form.”
Familiar traces of the Allegorica’s wings remained in Asuka-Eva’s hair, but
Misato had assumed the resemblance was merely vestigial.
“So then,” Misato said, “those two disc-shaped parts are the N2 reactors…
And she’s using them to lift something even heavier than herself?!”
The Akashima was loaded into one of the two giant-transport cargo planes,
while the other, which would have transported Crimson A1, had no cargo. Both
ignited their rocket boosters and lifted off, leaving tremendous smoke plumes
in their wake as they departed the continent that had been the birthplace of
humankind.
As Crimson A1 pulled Super Eva up and over the Valley of Human Bodies, the
anomalous aurora painted eerie, rainbow-colored trails across the northern sky.
Just then, a massive earthquake struck the mountain range below. The ground
turned pale and hazy, as if the Earth had coughed, but Shinji was too focused on
his perilous flight to notice what happened next.
Everything they’d seen and touched down there crumbled into dust.
Chapter 6:
The Value of Humankind: Beta
TO RECOVER SUPER EVA, Nerv Japan had sent two UN cargo planes—large
enough to transport one Evangelion each—and six additional aircraft. But the
red Asuka-Eva was pulling Super Eva across the sky, leaving one Eva transport
empty. It followed the pair of giants, its searchlights illuminating them. Their
only other escort was a single N2 Flanker, which had peeled off from the
retinue.
The Flanker was supposed to be Toji’s transport, but right now, the exhausted
leader was sleeping in the empty cargo plane, on the floor of the passageway
outside the CIC, while the unmanned, heavily modified Flanker accompanied
the slower, larger craft.
Even with Super Eva’s meager assistance, Asuka-Eva was too heavily
burdened to reach the cruising speed of the jet-powered transport planes. The
other aircraft, fully loaded with equipment and staff, had no choice but to fly
ahead. Otherwise, they risked running out of fuel. Shinji and the other
stragglers were still flying eastward over the Indian subcontinent as night fell.
Inside the CIC, Misato was on the radio with Maya in Tokyo-3. She kept one
eye on the monitor showing Crimson A1 and Super Eva. The image was washed
out, its subjects lit by the plane’s searchlights.
“The Q.R. Signum,” Misato was saying, “belongs to Armaros—our enemy.
Those black scales have been powering the corpses of the mass-production
Evas. So why are they continuing to supply energy to Heurtebise and Super
Eva?”
<<Maybe Armaros doesn’t actually regard us as an enemy,>> Maya said.
The reality was that they were fighting something that operated on an
entirely different level from humanity.
<<I’d wager its thought processes aren’t as complicated as we assume.>>
“You know, I think you might be right about that.”
What does a god care for the tribulations of humanity?
It was early morning in Japan, and Maya had clearly been up all night. The
chief scientist had no intention of dragging out this conversation, so she went
straight to the heart of Misato’s apprehensions.
<<Commander Katsuragi, you fear that, in exchange for its survival, Super Eva
has been contaminated and will become Armaros’ vanguard, correct?>> “That’s
right.”
<<As for whether Super Eva will end up like Unit Quatre…I’m not so sure. The
scale is inside the quantum wave mirror. What I keep thinking about is the
stolen heart and how it’s a window to higher dimen—oh… Hold on. Another
quake. This one might be a bit bi—>> The transmission cut off.
“Maya?” Misato asked.
But not only was the encoded voice channel gone, the entire communication
signal had been interrupted, including the navigation and weather data from
Tokyo-3. The monitor in the comms booth stated that the contact couldn’t be
found and asked if Misato wanted to retry the transmission.
Chapter 7:
Falsehood
NOT ALL OF THE RECOVERY TEAM’S aircraft were headed to Japan. One plane,
bearing the security intelligence division, peeled off from the formation after
takeoff, without announcing their destination. They returned to where they’d
left—North Africa, post-earthquake—to search for Ayanami Rei Trois, who’d
gone missing there.
Only Misato, Toji, and a select few other personnel knew that she’d walked
away alone soon after Misato had come back. Later, Misato happened to come
across Rei Quatre, who was in a near-catatonic state. For now, the commander
was pretending she was Trois and had placed her in the cargo plane’s medical
bay.
Why had Misato done this? In order to bring Super Eva home.
Misato reckoned that if Shinji knew Trois had gone missing, he would have
demanded to search for her until the bitter end and would have refused to
evacuate.
But unlike Shinji, Toji was responsible for everyone under his command. He
was, of course, concerned for Rei Trois, but the people on the rescue team had
entrusted their lives to him, and it was clear now that he’d made the right call.
Had he continued the search operations and not ordered the evacuation,
everyone on the ground would have been buried under the collapsing
mountains.
Shortly after takeoff, the departing personnel had looked down to see the
great earthquake level the mountains and kick up giant dust clouds. While most
of them had let out sighs of profound relief, Toji had shuddered with dread as
he imagined what would have happened had he acted differently.
Shinji felt a sharp knot in his chest. He grunted in pain and clutched the front
of his plugsuit.
Intuitively, he knew why. The Q.R. Signum implanted in his other chest—
Super Eva’s chest—had responded to Ayanami’s call. The girl’s words were an
incantation directed at Armaros’ black scale, the source of Super Eva’s power.
“If Ikari-kun won’t set this world free, and if I can’t escape…then at least take
us to the edge of the Earth!”
Shinji was clutching his chest so tightly his fingers had nearly dug between his
ribs. “You’re…Quatre?!” he realized. “But how?”
Super Eva continued to fall toward the Earth—one arm extended, the other
trailing limply behind.
If the heavily armored, four-thousand-ton Eva continued falling unchecked,
the giant’s impact would crater the Earth. But the Indian subcontinent was
already sliding north, violently pushing the mighty Himalayas up and slipping
under the Eurasian plate. Any mark Super Eva left would pale in comparison.
Super Eva passed through the tunnel and was spat out into the air.
Shinji was fully expecting to crash into the ground, back first. He’d lowered his
head and tensed his back muscles to brace himself, but no impact came.
Instead, his back was skyward now, and he’d been expelled on an upward
trajectory.
Apparently, a traveler left the tunnel with the same velocity they’d entered.
He looked down and saw an expansive white forest of dead trees, perhaps
done in by pests or pestilence.
Super Eva’s mighty bulk reached nearly five hundred meters before
descending again, and the receding landscape came rushing toward them.
Super Eva covered his face with both arms, and Shinji felt the snapping of
dried-out tree limbs. In the last moment before the crash, he was once again
swallowed into the ground and found himself briefly back in the tunnel before
appearing near a glacier-covered mountain. He fell into a valley and leaped
across space again.
Super Eva appeared near plateaus and plains, leaping from one place to the
next without rhyme or reason.
“Where is this taking us?” Shinji cried out.
Super Eva was tossed out onto a peninsula buried under sea waters surging
from a recent earthquake, or maybe a tsunami. A caldera rose, island-like, from
the water. The ring of mountains didn’t stand as tall as they once had, but they
were still tall enough to shield the city and lake nestled within from the giant
waves pressing in on every side.
Inside the next tunnel, Shinji realized what he’d just seen. “That was Tokyo-
3!”
He felt himself being carried farther away.
“Quatre! Take me back to where we just were!”
Quatre said nothing.
“Quatre!”
Shinji had had enough.
Wasn’t this the person who’d killed him? His hair stood on end as he relived
the memory of his body boiling away under Unit Quatre’s gamma-ray laser
cannon.
“Move!” he shouted.
He grabbed Quatre by the back of her collar and pushed her aside as hard as
he could. She didn’t offer any resistance, floating up in the flow of the LCL,
which was moving faster than normal in order to deliver enough oxygen for
two.
Shinji was still gripping her collar, and the zipper of her coveralls tore open.
The girl flew sideways, where, hidden behind the plug’s holographic display, she
crashed into the sidewall and rebounded. But Shinji wasn’t paying any attention
to her. He was staring straight ahead.
I have to go back there!
“Take me back to where we were!”
His right hand clutching the torn-off section of her uniform, its free end
floating in the LCL, Shinji grabbed the control stick with his left hand and jostled
it back and forth.
“Go back! Go back!”
But Shinji’s pleading went unanswered, and Super Eva raced onward through
the mysterious passage.
Chapter 9:
Recovery Team,
Above the Deccan Plateau
THE CARGO PLANE entered a holding pattern over the site where Super Eva
had disappeared.
The pilots switched the N2 reactors to standby and directed the planes’
complex sensors below, but Misato knew they would find nothing.
Q.R. Signum dislocation left no traces detectable by current methods.
As the retinue debated what to do next, the red giant, Crimson A1—who’d
been pacing the ground where Super Eva had vanished—suddenly leaped into
the sky and resumed her previous route.
“It looks like Asuka has realized that Shinji and Unit One are gone,” Misato
said, “and that they’re not coming back.”
She didn’t have concrete proof, but no one offered a counterargument.
“Let’s go, too.”
There was nothing left to be done here.
Word had spread among the crew that communications with Tokyo-3 had
been lost, and everyone was anxious to get back. Now that Asuka-Eva was no
longer saddled with a flight partner, she took off at incredible speed. Likewise,
the cargo plane had no further reason to fly slowly. Its massive array of half-
lowered flaps rose back in line with the wings, and it picked up altitude and
speed.
Chapter 10:
The Illusory Passage,
Part Two
The next thing Shinji knew, the overbearing, tangled arterial network of root-
like tunnels was behind them. He sensed that they were now in a single, one-
way tunnel.
And that tunnel was narrowing.
Chapter 11:
Recovery Team,
Above Mainland Southeast Asia
THE DISPLACEMENT JUMP went on a long time, and silence stretched between
Shinji and Rei Quatre.
Her pleas had sent them on this journey to an unknown destination where no
one would be and no one would come.
Within the root-like corridor, Shinji had difficulty perceiving what was around
him, but he could sense that the passage was narrowing.
On and on it narrowed, extending farther and farther. Shinji could do nothing
but wait to be expelled into some desolate place.
Just when he was thinking the road must be nearing its end, Kaworu’s voice
came to him unbidden.
I’m glad you didn’t spill out of your human vessel… Though perhaps your
current situation doesn’t call for celebration.
Where are you? Shinji asked.
Kaworu wasn’t actually in the tunnel, but Shinji thought he felt him point to
the Q.R. Signum in his chest.
You’re the lead actor, Kaworu said, you’re supposed to be in the spotlight. And
yet you’re here, under the stage, where the stagehands scurry about.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Shinji demanded. In response, his ears
began to ring.
He realized Kaworu was laughing.
This was only supposed to be an interlude. You’ve outperformed my
expectations.
Kaworu’s voice began to distort. The ringing in Shinji’s ears rose in pitch and
intensity.
“It’s…too much.”
Shinji felt himself begin to black out.
In the next instant, he was nearly himself again.
He’d emerged from the tunnel.
Much to Shinji’s surprise, there was air where he came out. He’d assumed he
was being transported to somewhere even farther than the moon—maybe
some remote planet, like Venus or Mars. But no, he was seemingly still on
Earth.
The surrounding area was dry and desolate—not unlike the Atlas Mountains.
“Kaworu-kun?” Shinji asked, but he no longer sensed his presence. His
remote-transmission friend always conversed on his own terms.
Once the ringing in his ears and the pain in his chest had eased a little, Shinji
drained the LCL from the plug.
Quatre’s hair and work uniform had been swaying like aquatic plants in a fish
tank, but as the fluid gradually lowered, they pressed flat against her skin. No
longer buoyant, her body sank deep into the plug seat.
As Shinji stood beside her, the weight came back to his legs. He lifted his heels
and broke their adhesion to the wet floor.
Shinji ejected the plug. Just as he was about to open the hatch, an alarm
sounded. It was the environmental sensor.
“A decompression sickness warning? Why would that be an issue?”
The display indicated low air pressure outside—on par with the atmosphere
atop a tall mountain.
A sudden change in pressure could be dangerous, particularly after time spent
in the LCL. Then the AI announced another hazard—high radiation—and a
recommendation to avoid prolonged exposure. At first, Shinji thought he might
have been transported to a former nuclear test site, a nuclear waste repository,
or something along those lines, but according to the computer, the radiation
didn’t match a human-made source. Apparently, these were cosmic rays from
above.
Without exiting, Shinji opened the hatch, and bright sunlight illuminated the
chamber—but the air was cold. The atmospheric pressure was low, the sky a
bluish black. Are we on a high-altitude plateau, maybe?
Shinji didn’t see the swollen moon anywhere, but he didn’t have a full view of
the sky, nor did he know what direction he faced.
But something else was odd.
“The Longinus Ring is gone.”
Shinji groaned. “Why did this happen?” To Quatre, he said, “So, we’re here.
Somewhere far away, just like you wanted. Are you satisfied?”
“Satisfied?” Quatre asked. “I don’t know what that feels like. When the one of
me was split into four, I was afraid. I knew fear. Commander Ikari was gone. You
didn’t choose me. Though I didn’t realize that until I learned how to be afraid.”
She’d been sitting in the pilot’s chair—not by choice but simply because that’s
where Shinji had put her—but the cold air had begun to freeze her wet clothes,
and she curled forward, shivering.
“I want instrumentality,” Quatre said. “You’re the one who chose this world
for us, Ikari-kun—and without you, maybe our world won’t have to end. Maybe
we could try the Human Instrumentality Project again.”
“I get it now,” Shinji said. He placed a hand on his chest, where his heart had
been before she’d melted him with her Eva’s laser.
“But I was wrong,” she said. “The black giant won’t change his decision. The
world will be reconstructed. But if I could just get you far enough away—
outside the world, even—then maybe…”
She let the thought trail off, and he filled in the rest. “Maybe we could let the
apocalypse go on without us. Is that it? And who knows, with me out of the
picture, he might change his mind after all, right?”
She buried her head in her knees and nodded.
“Ikari-kun…I’m cold.”
Shinji closed the hatch and slid his finger across the temperature control to
turn up the heat.
Super Eva walked across dry land. There was nothing green. The earth rose
and fell in monotonous brown waves across the seemingly endless plateau. He
had no GPS—the satellites had long since scattered, due to the Earth’s
weakening gravitational pull. The topography didn’t match anything in his
geological database, and nobody replied to his transmissions. Shinji began to
take measurements of the sun’s angle to try and get even a rough
approximation of his location. He realized something was off.
Even after several hours, the shining sun hadn’t moved from its zenith.
The planet wasn’t rotating.
Chapter 13:
The Dormant Land
ONCE SHINJI BEGAN to suspect something was wrong with this place, the two-
tone world of desert hills and empty sky began to resemble a surrealist painting
created by an unbalanced mind.
Nothing moved. That, in and of itself, felt wrong. At the very least, the sun
should have been shifting overhead.
Shinji didn’t know what kind of danger to expect, and Super Eva proceeded
with caution.
After some time, Super Eva’s survey module broke the silence with an alarm
—a series of short beeps that Shinji hadn’t heard before.
Or maybe he had.
“Wait…I think I heard this alarm during the connection tests for the swords I
got in North Africa.”
The two blades were a new design, with experimental sensors dangling from
each end—one on the pommel and another at the end of the sheath, making
four in total. He’d only received a brief overview of the devices, but each sensor
contained an array of quantum wave mirrors repurposed for detection.
When the alarm sounded, Super Eva’s automap opened to show a twenty-
kilometer range around his current location. Because he didn’t have any
matching topographical data, the map had only been filled with his direct visual
observations. Everything beyond the range of sight remained blank, and it was
in that blank space that an icon blinked.
“Predicted arrival?” Shinji wondered aloud. “What’s that?”
Who had heard Super Eva’s distress signal, and how were they arriving?
Apprehensive, Shinji switched off the signal. At first, the arrival icon bounced
around within a three-kilometer-wide area, but it soon began to focus on a
single point.
The alarm gave one last, long tone, and the icon stopped flashing. It turned
solid red, indicating an enemy.
Beside the marker, a label appeared: MUTANT EVA-0.0 (CONFIDENCE 62%).
“What?!” Shinji sputtered, speaking to the display. “H-how do you know?”
Until now, the enemy had always been able to get the drop on him. Shinji
wanted to know what had changed, but— I can think about that later!
Shinji readied himself. The designation referred to Quatre’s Eva-0.0, which
had been corrupted by Armaros’ Q.R. Signum. Shinji had been told that Kaji—
now a vessel for Seele—had hijacked Unit Quatre.
He looked over at the Eva’s former pilot, but she remained silent and
expressionless. He realized he knew nothing of what she’d been through.
Strangely, Shinji felt a sort of relief upon seeing a familiar enemy marked on
the display. He’d begun to feel stir-crazy, trapped in this place where time itself
was caged, where the terrain never varied and the sun never moved.
Armaros’ attendants—the Angel Carriers, the mutant Eva-0.0, and the Victors
—had always arrived without warning. For the first time, Shinji knew one was
coming and could choose his response. He elected to advance toward the
enemy’s entry point in hopes that he might find some answers about the place
where he found himself.
Without hesitating, Shinji refilled the plug with LCL, and then, on the map
display, he overlaid the shortest route to his target that still provided cover and
started walking.
I wonder if I can—he focused his thoughts on the Vertex wings—jump!
He tried to fly low along the ground.
“Whoa,” he said. as Super Eva listed forward. The giant’s toes scraped along
the ground and kicked up puffs of sand. It could hardly be called flying, but he
was moving much faster than he could have by running.
His chest tingled with heat. The closer the unstable Q.R. Signum was to the
ground, the more stable it was—relatively speaking, at least.
“I must have had a good teacher,” he said, thinking of Asuka-Eva pulling him
along.
The red giant had flown freely, innocently.
At first, Shinji had assumed she’d regressed into some kind of early childhood
mental state. But as he’d watched her, he’d realized that wasn’t the case. She
was simply free to be who she was on the inside.
Asuka was easily fascinated and easily surprised, but she hated showing it.
And so she kept her true self hidden, feigning disinterest and reacting instead
with weariness and derision.
“Of course, I’d never say that to her face,” Shinji said, “or she’d be pissed.”
He wondered if Misato and Toji had been able to convince her to keep flying
to Japan.
Chapter 14:
A Chance Meeting at the End
A figure stood in front of the Q.R. Signum jutting out from the Eva-0.0’s chest
armor. Kaji’s black coat hung from his shoulders, flapping in the wind.
When he spoke, his voice came over the hydrospeaker.
<<Gendo’s puppet… I thought you were broken. And who is that with you?
Gendo’s son? How did you know we were here?>> Seele had hijacked Kaji’s
mind, but the man still spoke with Kaji’s dry, teasing tone. It might have been
endearing once, but now it served as a painful reminder to anyone who’d
known him.
Hearing what had happened to Kaji still hadn’t prepared Shinji for the reality.
Shaken, he said, “Kaji?!”
Staying behind the mountain, Super Eva circled around to the Kaji-vessel’s
front, and Shinji saw another person standing inside Kaji’s open coat. She wore
the same black mini-dress that Quatre had previously taken from Trois.
“Ayanami?” Shinji asked. “Trois, is that really you?”
She stirred faintly but kept on staring straight ahead.
Holding her from behind, Kaji smirked. <<Is this where I say, “Haven’t you
heard, Shinji-kun?”>> “Now that you’re our enemy, the way you talk is really
starting to piss me off,” Shinji retorted.
But inside, he was distraught. Why was Trois here…and with the enemy?
Seele had manipulated Quatre and taken control of her mutant Eva-0.0, but
once she went into a near-catatonic state in the Valley of Human Bodies, the
Eva had malfunctioned and crashed.
Meanwhile, Ayanami Rei Trois had separated from Misato and the others to
strike out on her own, bereft of any kind of home. The Kaji-vessel had found
and captured her. She remained a fully functional Evangelion control device,
and that was all he needed, so he’d discarded her broken counterpart, Quatre.
Misato had gone searching for Trois, but instead found Quatre, and took the girl
into her protective care.
“Trois, can you hear me?” Shinji asked. “That Eva is dangerous. Its
contamination will spread to you, too!”
When Trois replied, her expression remained placid, even though her voice
faltered.
<<I couldn’t stop you, Ikari-kun. And I couldn’t be turned into salt, either. I’m
a puppet. I’m not capable of expressing myself. But if I’m here, I don’t have to
think about anything anymore. So…leave me be.>> Shinji searched his
memories for anything that could help him make sense of her incomprehensible
answer.
“Oh…!”
He remembered. When he’d confronted Armaros, Trois had become
distressed and tried to stop him, but he’d refused.
He tried to explain. “I was just—”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Quatre cut in. “You’re the version of me who has
everything! Why are you acting like you’re the puppet?!”
Ayanami Rei Quatre, who’d been like a marionette with its strings snipped,
leaned forward, her red eyes brimming with fury, and glared at the girl who
looked almost exactly like her.
Her outburst sent Shinji’s fingers digging into his chest even harder than
before, and he grunted in pain.
Is she activating the Q.R. Signum inside me?
One after another, error windows appeared on his holographic display. But
this time, the black force pushed back against his attempts to resist. The Q.R.
Signum’s contamination was spreading.
But Quatre wasn’t finished.
“When the black giant went through me to get into your clones, you—the me
who unifies—pushed your burdens onto us.”
The mental feedback caused the control stick to jump and twitch, and Shinji
scrambled to hold it in place.
“You gave each of us one disparate, incomplete piece! Six became the me
who is childish and selfish. Cinq was me the problem solver, but she passed that
back to you when she died. And—”
“Quatre!” Shinji shouted. “Please, stop!”
He could feel Super Eva’s body—his body—approaching some kind of
transformation.
But Quatre didn’t ease up.
“And you put into my body the me who cowers in fear!”
Her fury drove Shinji’s fingernails into his chest, and blood began to seep out,
dissipating into the LCL.
“You have everything!” Quatre yelled.
As if on cue, the Q.R. Signum began pouring the black force into Super Eva
with even greater intensity. Shinji had thought he could keep the raw power
contained within the darkness, but now it threatened to run rampant within the
giant who’d lost his heart.
Chapter 15:
Earth Simulation
A BRILLIANT BEAM of golden light struck the barren mountain, vaporizing the
sand and rock. The ground detonated, as if it were made of explosives.
Shinji counted the seconds. “Two, three, four, five…”
But how long, he wondered, letting the count trail off, until the mutant Eva-
0.0 recharges its cannon?
“Fifty-seven seconds,” Ayanami Rei Quatre said. It had been her Eva, after all.
“Fifty-seven seconds,” Shinji repeated. Then he winced. “I lost track.”
“Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen…” Quatre filled in.
The mutant Eva-0.0’s gamma-ray laser cannon was the most powerful human-
made long-range weapon, and it could pierce the ridge of a mountain as if it
were air. But for all its unnatural modifications, the mutant Eva still couldn’t see
through solid rock. The targeting systems relied on predictions based on Super
Eva’s last known movements. As long as he could find cover, Shinji had a chance
of evading the blast.
“Fifty-five, fifty-six… Now!” Shinji shouted as he slid across another mountain
ridge. He dove down the slope on the other side, kicking up sand clouds. In the
next instant, the mountain split open just to his right, and a tremendous wave
of heat grazed Super Eva’s head. The beam struck and exploded another sandy
rise ahead to his left.
“Jump!” Quatre shouted. “We don’t know the terrain.”
The cannon’s recharge time could allow them to survey their surroundings.
“I was just gonna!” Shinji said with the indignant tone of a child being nagged
to clean his room.
Preparing for the jump, Shinji planted Super Eva’s feet firmly on the ground,
while Quatre began drawing power from the Q.R. Signum—at a far greater rate
than Shinji had yet been able to access.
“Is the Q.R. Signum connected to Armaros through the ground surface?”
“Yes,” Quatre said. “At least, I think so. The gateways to the tunnel network
seem to work on the ground, too. Every time my feet left the ground, I could
feel the power source fading. You feel that, too, don’t you?”
With more experience using the Q.R. Signum, Quatre had already drawn the
necessary power by the time Shinji was ready to jump. Super Eva hurtled
skyward into the cloud of sand and smoke that had risen from the last laser
strike.
Shinji gasped. The power felt different from what he’d tapped into through
Super Eva’s heart. It was like a drug.
With tremendous energy, Super Eva shot through the mushroom cloud,
through the gathering bands of electrified lightning clouds, and into the open
sky above. For the first time in too long, Shinji experienced the thrill of flight.
Then he looked down, with full view of his surroundings. “The valley is
sloped!” he said. “It runs down that way, and then…”
But Shinji’s sentence ended there. The valley’s edge led to…nothing.
The land abruptly terminated at a dark blue sky that faded into darkness
below.
What is this place? Shinji thought. Can’t anything make sense?
In exasperation, Shinji called out to the man who was trying to kill him. “The
sun is stopped. The ground is missing. Kaji-san, can you tell me what the hell is
going on here?! The Lance of Longinus isn’t in orbit, and the bloated moon is
gone!”
<<There’s no moon here at all,>> Kaji replied. Electromagnetic interference
from the ionized air caused the signal to crackle and made his overly casual
tone somehow even more grating than before. <<The moon that was here was
carried off long, long ago on a collision course with Earth, to provide the
material and energy to form your moon.>> Shinji couldn’t process what he was
hearing. His mind seized up as he tried to work it out.
“Huh?” he blurted in confusion. “Where are we? Where on Earth is this place
—”
The Kaji-vessel continued, not waiting for Shinji to catch up. <<As I
understand it, the natural satellite didn’t have enough mass on its own. But
since this place wasn’t needed once the test was over, the material to make up
the difference was torn off from this land. That’s why it looks like it does. And
without any moon, this place eventually stopped rotating. The side we’re on
now permanently faces the sun. Does that answer your questions? Are we good
now?>> Shinji glanced to Quatre, next to him in the flowing LCL. She frowned
and shook her head. At least Shinji wasn’t alone in his confusion.
“My question is,” Shinji replied, “where on Earth is this place, and why is it
like this?”
<<Come on, Shinji. This isn’t the Earth.>> “What?” Shinji gasped, though less
from surprise than denial. This wasn’t the answer he wanted to hear.
But he’d known it was a possibility the moment he’d looked up and seen the
sky without the now-familiar presence of the Lance of Longinus.
And yet, he still fought acceptance.
“But there’s air here. There’s gravity!”
<<Of course there is. This was the testing ground for the Instrumentality
Project, after all. It wouldn’t make for a very good simulation of Earth without
air and gravity.>> The Kaji-vessel paused, sensing Shinji’s confusion. <<Oh, I see.
You didn’t know. But then, why are you here at the Apple’s Core?
“The Apple’s Core?”
Super Eva began to descend, and Shinji quickly appraised the updated
topographical map. He was seeking cover behind another ridge, when— Boom!
The mutant Eva-0.0’s gamma-ray laser cannon blasted the brittle rocks of the
mountain and sent a shower of sand onto Super Eva. In order to maintain a high
enough transmission rate, the reciprocal comms link used a rather high
frequency, which had the unfortunate side effect of making the transmission
source easily detectable.
“Wait! Simulator? Core?” Shinji shook his head to refocus his thoughts. He
could figure the rest out later. Right now, he had one question. “If this isn’t
Earth, then where is Earth?!”
While Super Eva moved around behind cover, the mutant Eva-0.0 slowly
turned to keep facing him. Standing atop the giant’s chest armor, the Kaji-vessel
brought his right hand out from the shadows of his coat—keeping his other
hand wrapped around Trois—and pointed skyward to the motionless sun.
<<Forever hidden on the other side of the sun. You now stand upon a mirror
Earth on the exact opposite side of the sun from the Earth you call home. So, if
you come across an electrical outlet, be careful which way you insert any
plugs.>> Neither Shinji nor Quatre caught the reference to an old science fiction
movie.
The Kaji-vessel chuckled to himself. <<Welcome to the Apple’s Core. Maybe
you’ve heard of its other name—the garden of paradise, Eden—where
humankind was created and tested.>> “What, like the myth?” Shinji blurted.
<<You know, I’d appreciate it if you stopped interrupting and just listened.
Anyway, this planet and its moon were packed together and hurtled into the
Earth. In other words, ultimately, the Earth itself is what bit the apple. Isn’t that
funny?>> All trace of humor vanished from the Kaji-vessel’s face, and he
whispered into Trois’ ear, “Fly, Ikari’s puppet.”
Ayanami Rei Trois jolted but then immediately opened a gateway to the
tunnel network. Shinji was still trying to figure out what was going on when the
mutant Eva-0.0 abandoned the fight and began sinking into the ground.
<<On your way here,>> the Kaji-vessel said, <<you probably noticed that the
connection to this place is thin and faint. I’ll give it one last nudge and then
separate it for good. You’ll die here with no way to return home.>> Shinji
moved quickly, but it was too late.
By the time Super Eva jumped over the ridgeline, the mutant Eva-0.0 was
already gone.
“Quatre, follow them!”
“I can’t! I don’t know where they went. If we were closer, I could have tuned
in to the same flow, but we’re too far.”
Super Eva landed with a thud sending up a cloud of sand and dust.
Shinji raised his fist, but he had nowhere to direct his anger. Instead, he
screamed. “Let’s just go home. Hurry, while we still can!”
With Rei Trois out of sight, Rei Quatre’s temper quickly subsided. But Quatre
and Shinji had been at a frustrating impasse from the moment they’d stumbled
onto this world, and Shinji could already sense that impasse returning.
He gave his head a vigorous shake to snap out of it. Patience, he told himself.
Calm down.
Now that the target of Quatre’s rage had gone, the Q.R. Signum was easing up
on its assault against Shinji’s psyche. But if he let himself succumb to fear and
anger, he might still be swallowed by the darkness of the black scale.
Much like Super Eva’s heart had been stolen from his chest, the moon had
been stolen from this unfamiliar planet.
According to prevailing scientific consensus, the Earth’s moon had been
formed from the debris of a collision with a Mars-sized body. Though the moon
had been Earth’s companion through the ages, humanity was only recently
beginning to understand the satellite’s vital role in regulating Earth’s celestial
movement and ecology. In that sense, the moon was like a metronome…or
even a heart.
Was the former satellite of this strange planet the object that had slammed
into Earth and created the moon?
Regardless, this planet had lost its beating heart and grown still. Then Shinji
had arrived, his heart stolen as well.
Now everyone else had left, and the place was quiet once more.
Shinji brought Super Eva over to the edge of the land he’d seen from above.
The deep blue sky darkened into a rich navy-black hue at the horizon and
continued down, below the edge of the world, into a pure black void dotted
with stars.
If the Earth had been flat, as was once believed, the edge of the world would
have looked just like this. It was an overhang, and Shinji couldn’t see the
underside. But far below, a sphere of clouds had gathered as if surrounding
something. Super Eva’s feet knocked a few rocks over the side, and they
tumbled down toward the clouds.
When Shinji’s thoughts calmed, he realized something didn’t add up.
“Wait a minute,” he said. If Seele wanted to leave us here to die on this
forsaken planet… “Why did he bother telling us?”
Chapter 16:
The Commander’s Return
THE BASE OF THE IZU PENINSULA had sunk some four hundred meters and was
now swallowed by the sea.
The Hakone Caldera, with Nerv Japan cradled inside, became an island
stranded in the middle of this newly formed strait. When the great sinking
happened, the ground turned fifteen degrees counter-clockwise, and anything
aligned to the cardinal directions became skewed. Miraculously, the ground
within the caldera sank straight down rather than tilting to one side or the
other.
After two agonizing days in Hamamatsu trying to secure a VTOL, Misato and
the others had finally arrived home. Elated to see that Maya was all right,
Misato remarked, “At least the ground didn’t tip over. That was some good
luck.”
“Good luck?” Maya shook her head. “You must be joking. The ground within
the caldera titled point four degrees to the east. That’s a huge deal! I’ve been
working this whole time to re-level the particle accelerator’s framework. Do you
want to ask me how many doors won’t open because they’re misaligned?”
“Take care of what you can,” Misato said with a placating smile. “I’ll
straighten out the supply situation.”
After the initial jolt, the sinking had been smooth. There had still been many
injuries, and the dead numbered in the double digits, but the greatest difficulty
Nerv Japan faced was the loss of the roadways and railways.
Hakone had no airports, and of course no seaport. The most pressing concern
was securing new supply routes for the immense volume of materials needed to
rebuild.
Hyuga came rushing into the command center, wearing a hard hat and a
cheerful smile. “Welcome back!”
Fuyutsuki was the next to arrive on the middle deck. “You’re back.”
Misato bowed her head. “Deputy Commander Fuyutsuki. Thank you for
stepping in.” She turned to Hyuga. “I’m glad you’re all right, too. So, can you tell
me what that thing in the lake is?”
“Ah. I take it you’ve seen it, then.”
A massive, egg-like object peeked out from the lowered waters of Lake Ashi.
The object was semi-transparent, like colored glass, with one solitary hole in its
surface. The hole had been plugged up by a rush of debris and silt when the
lake had partially drained. Hastily erected scaffolding around it indicated that a
survey had at least been attempted.
“We don’t have a clue,” Hyuga said. “Except… The outer diameter is exactly
the same size as the Chronostatic Sphere in the old Geofront.” He looked to
Maya.
“This is just conjecture,” she continued where Hyuga had left off, “but if
Armaros was telling the truth, and this world is repeating itself for the purposes
of the Instrumentality Project, then that object might be the remnants of the
vessel that carried Lilith from the past world into our own. In other words, it
might be Lilith’s previous Chronostatic Sphere.”
“So the sphere,” Misato said, “has a shell? Like an egg?”
“We don’t know. We don’t even know if that thing is a physical object or a
stabilized distortion in space.”
“Before we began Tokyo-3’s construction,” Fuyutsuki added, “we performed
underground—and underwater—imaging of the surrounding area, including
down to the bottom of the lake. But whatever that thing is, it didn’t show up on
any of our scans back then.”
“The object is tough,” Maya said. “We can’t even tell if anything we do to it
makes an impact.”
“The Japanese government sent a team to relocate the object,” Fuyutsuki
continued, “but when the ground sank, they weren’t sure what to do, and they
withdrew to Matsushiro. They left just before you returned. Another team was
looking into repurposing it as a makeshift shelter, but their work is on hold.
They found a large, bow-shaped object among the silt inside, which they
handed over to us as ‘repayment,’ but…”
Maya shrugged. “But we can’t make anything of it. It’s junk.”
Chapter 17:
Understanding the Planet
SUPER EVA FLEW LOW along the clifftop’s edge, keeping the drop-off to his
right, until he came upon his own footprints at the place he’d started. The loop
took two and a half days. Apparently, this was the full extent of this world.
Shinji thought back to a pre-medieval world map he’d seen in a history
textbook. “I think the people living before the Age of Discovery had more
reasonable ideas about the workings of the universe than this.”
Shinji seemed to be standing atop a flat expanse of arid land the size of a
continent, about five thousand kilometers across at its widest.
“I wonder if there’s any way down,” he muttered.
He couldn’t help but wonder what was under the continent’s overhang,
several thousand kilometers below.
“I feel like I can smell water. Can you?”
Apparently, Quatre thought the remark too illogical to be worth a reply.
But at least she seemed to be cooperating for the time being. Without her
help, Shinji wouldn’t have been able to fully utilize the Q.R. Signum, and he
wouldn’t have been able to get the lay of the land without her powering Super
Eva’s flight.
They only had two days’ worth of emergency food and water left, give or
take. But Shinji was hoping Rei Quatre might be more amenable to making the
leap back home once her survival was at stake.
Super Eva once again looked over the impossible cliffside. Far, far below was
the unidentifiable mass obscured by clouds.
The parasitic Q.R. Signum had increased Super Eva’s functions, and the Eva
had begun to automatically repair its injuries. Shinji realized he could once
again see with the giant’s left eye. With fully restored vision, he squinted down.
Beyond the clouds and the dark mass, he saw the faint, jagged, rose-colored
outline of something else.
He realized that their floating continent, the dark mass below it, and the
distant red outline were all lined up on the same axis. He suddenly remembered
that Kaji had called this place the “Apple’s Core.”
“An apple core…”
Shinji imagined a dumbbell-shaped planet. Except…that didn’t seem physically
possible. Asteroids could possess unusual shapes, but this was a planet, with
enough mass to experience 1 g of surface gravity. On that scale, even the
strongest rocks behaved like liquid. The planet would deform under its own
weight and become a sphere.
But, supposing this planet somehow has the shape of an eaten apple, then
what am I looking at?
If the dark, cloud-covered area beneath the cliff was the leftover, uneaten
and seeded core, then what was Shinji seeing even farther beyond?
“The opposite side of the core,” Shinji said. “Could there be another continent
over there?”
Another continent, with rough edges like flower petals.
If this side was always illuminated by the sun, was the other side a world of
eternal night?
“Quatre, do you think we could fly to the other side?”
“What would be the point?” Rei Quatre replied, as if she couldn’t care less.
“Er…”
Shinji recognized that he was going to have to get along with Quatre for the
time being. Bossing her around wasn’t going to get him anywhere. He gathered
his thoughts and chose his words carefully.
“You wanted to take me to the farthest place, right? Well, the farthest place
might be over on that side, don’t you think?”
Come on, Shinji. That was the best you could come up with?
The suggestion was so transparent that Shinji regretted saying it almost
immediately.
But Quatre replied, “That place in the middle, covered with clouds… There’s a
spike in gravity there. Not a gravitational pull naturally arising from mass
gathered together but from mass held in place by some other gravitational
force.”
“What does that mean for us?”
“If we approach it, that gravity will pull at us stronger than the surface of the
planet’s far side. And if we get pulled in, we might not be able to leave. If we’re
going to fly across, we need to make sure we avoid the center.”
At least she thinks we can avoid it, Shinji thought.
“So let’s fly,” he said.
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah. Lend me your help?”
For a moment—too brief for Shinji to notice—she didn’t know what to do.
But in the end, she said, “Okay.”
From the moment Ayanami Rei Quatre gained self-awareness, she’d either
been on the giving or receiving end of demand after demand. This was the first
time—including when she’d been consolidated with the others in Trois—that
she’d ever been asked for help.
Quatre measured the distances with Super Eva’s optical sensors, though, even
at full functionality, they left a little to be desired. The quantum flux inclination
sensors—the same sensors that had predicted the mutant Eva-0.0’s arrival—
measured the distribution of the eccentric gravity near the core.
The cloud-covered center was a little more than 6,300 kilometers away, and
the red continent on the opposite side was roughly the same distance again, for
a total of about 12,700 kilometers—almost exactly the same as Earth’s
diameter.
As far as Super Eva’s sensors could determine, the planet’s shape matched
Kaji’s description—an apple eaten to the core.
Curiously, despite so much of the apple having been bitten off, the planet’s
gravity and heliocentric orbit matched Earth’s.
As Quatre calculated a trajectory that would take them to the red land on the
far side, without falling into the middle, she muttered, “This continent is like a
five-thousand-kilometer-tall umbrella. I don’t understand how it doesn’t
collapse.”
Then, she added, “We’ll fly. And we’ll fly true. But there’s no doubt about it.
Some strange force is acting upon this entire planet.”
Chapter 18:
Transcontinental Flight
Hopping down from Super Eva’s palm, Shinji noticed a geometric pattern of
bumps on the ground—too regular to be natural. He followed the pattern with
his eyes. In the shade of a tree, the undergrowth thinned, revealing a long,
narrow piece of rusted metal.
“Metal,” Shinji said. “Train tracks?”
He seemed to have found an abandoned railway line. He could think of only
one explanation.
“The remains of civilization.” Though upon saying it, he grew less certain.
If he accepted Kaji’s story as the truth, then whatever used to be on this
planet would be ancient on an astrological timeline. No way could a piece of
exposed steel remain in anything approaching identifiable form.
He walked up to the rusty red rail and touched his hand to the metal.
Shinji gasped as the ground began rhythmically jolting beneath his feet with a
ka-clack, ka-clack. Reflexively, he reached for a hanging strap to steady himself.
He looked around in confusion.
He was standing on a moving train.
Ka-clack, ka-clack.
A man was seated on the bench seat in front of Shinji. The man kept his head
down, but his shoulders seemed familiar.
“Shinji,” the man said, “will you keep on going?”
Shinji’s answer came naturally. “I will. It’s not over yet.”
“Sometimes, moving in a new direction means you aren’t able to stop.”
“That’s fine. The only thing troubling me is that I don’t feel like I’m
advancing.”
“I see.”
Warm, early evening light flowed in through the train windows as Shinji
shared an unusually tranquil conversation with his father.
He was starting to forget where he’d been before this train. He let go of the
hanging strap to move to the seat beside his father, when— A hand gripped his
arm from behind, and Ayanami’s voice said, “Ikari-kun!”
He turned with a start.
“Quatre?” His eyes went wide, and his mouth gaped. “Wha?!”
He hadn’t expected to see Ayanami wearing a high school uniform. Even more
surprising, she wasn’t the Ayanami he’d been with only moments before. She
was Cinq, and Cinq was dead.
He recognized her immediately. She was a little taller than the others, and her
mannerisms came off as just slightly more mature. When she looked at
someone, her expression carried a feeling of urgency. Of the four Ayanamis, she
was the only one capable of that expression.
“Cinq?” Shinji said.
But she’d tragically died in the lonely space between the Earth and the moon.
Wait, is this Trois under Kaji-san’s control?
When Cinq was killed, her memories had crossed the vast distance and
flooded into the primary Ayanami—Trois.
But when Trois was with Kaji, she’d been wearing a black dress, not a school
uniform. Moreover, she hadn’t acted on her own like this. She seemed like
she’d gotten tired and given up.
So, is this really Cinq?
She didn’t give him time to work through his confusion. Before he could ask
another question, she squeezed his arm tight.
“You can’t stay here! Maybe if your body were still in the other world, it
would be different, but you’re here. If you let these thoughts take hold of you,
you won’t be able to leave!”
The train carriage was filled with the warm glow of the setting sun, and the
wheels made a rhythmic sound as they passed over the crossties. The scene felt
comforting and familiar, without even a hint of danger. Shinji’s mind brimmed
with memories of better days…
Cinq put more force into her grip, and the pain brought Shinji out of his
reverie.
“See!” she said. “That’s exactly what I mean. Try to remember where you
were before here. It was a different place, wasn’t it?”
He lowered his head in thought. “That’s right,” he said. “I was with Quatre, on
the edge of a continent on a strange planet. I found a rusted train track…”
When he looked up again, Cinq was giving him a kind, motherly smile, the
corners of her eyes crinkling.
“Let’s meet again, Ikari-kun.”
“Cinq,” he said, “You’re…”
Doubt briefly clouded her expression. But then she let go of his arm.
She turned her head away. “I don’t know what form that will take, but…let’s
meet again.”
She looked up at him, seeming to have decided something.
Directing her voice somewhere beyond Shinji, she said, “Quatre! The me at
the mercy of fear! You’re near, aren’t you? Quickly, pull him back to you!”
Then the train was gone. With one foot forward, Shinji was poised to run
down the rusted tracks, while Ayanami Quatre, in orange coveralls, pulled on
his hand from behind, holding him in place. They were in the forest of eternal
dusk.
Chapter 19:
The Continent of Perpetual Night
ON THE TWILIGHT RING of the nightside continent, the flora resembled normal
photosynthetic plants, with trees recognizable in shape and appearance, at
least to the point where Shinji could still comfortably call them trees. But
deeper into the continent, the story changed.
There, Shinji and Quatre found a silent forest thick with white flora and
undergrowth—or more likely, some kind of fungus. Whatever they were, they
didn’t require much light to thrive. Although, the forest wasn’t completely dark.
Some vegetation emitted light, either redirecting it from the shelf’s edge or
somehow creating it. Around them grew clusters of photosynthetic organisms
muscling in to soak up the light, which came in all different colors and reflected
off the plants in a soft glow.
After four excruciating assaults on his taste buds, Shinji found a fruit that was
edible. He and Quatre ate it as they flew Super Eva over the nightside
continent, colorful clusters of flora passing below.
The view reminded Shinji of a night market.
“It’s like someone cast a magic spell and erased all the people from a festival,”
he said softly.
He realized Quatre was staring right at him and immediately grew awkward.
“Magic?” she asked.
“I-I just meant that the forest looks festive,” Shinji stammered, “but at the
same time, still. That’s all.”
“Oh.” Ayanami took a crunchy bite of the red fruit.
But to Shinji, the stillness of the forest felt more like absence than order. He
sensed an unknown presence all around them, and he suspected there might be
more than train tracks buried underneath these forests.
They came upon a giant tree towering far above the surrounding forest. It
stood nearly five times the size of their Eva.
The tree had thousands upon thousands of branches—at least, that’s how
Shinji thought of the appendages—which glowed as if from countless hanging
lanterns. Shinji narrowed his eyes, attuned his senses to wavelengths outside
the visual spectrum, and observed that the light wasn’t being produced by the
tree itself but by flowers on a crawling vine that had colonized the barren tree.
“In my foster home, I saw a glowing tree like this in a picture book with paper-
cut art. But this tree is dead. I wonder what it was like when it was still alive.”
“The picture book… Did you…” Quatre trailed off.
“Did I…?”
“Did you like that book?”
Shinji searched his memories and then shook his head. “I don’t remember it
very well. Except that it was scary but beautiful.”
“Scary but beautiful,” Quatre repeated. “Scary” was the only part she
understood. Her self-awareness had been driven by fear. She’d turned traitor
and even killed Shinji once.
But, unexpectedly, the pairing of the word “beautiful” with “scary” seemed to
resonate with her. “So then, this must be scary but beautiful, too.”
As Super Eva circled the majestic tree—large enough to make even sequoias
seem like saplings in comparison—Quatre’s gaze remained transfixed upon the
spectacular, three-dimensional constellation of its lights.
Then an alarm announced a hostile presence.
Shinji and Quatre jolted upright. Super Eva dropped altitude and quietly
approached the target.
This time, they didn’t find the mutant Eva-0.0 with Kaji and Trois, but instead
an Angel Carrier, standing still as if hiding, deep within the white fungal forest.
Chapter 20:
White Guardian
THE WHITE GIANT stood perfectly still among the fungal trees.
The Angel Carrier had wings and two Q.R. Signum scales—a Type-3. But in
place of the typical cocoon, a black sphere floated within its open rib cage.
Occasionally, a white interference pattern flashed across the sphere’s surface.
“Leliel!” Shinji shouted.
This was a smaller, larval form of an Angel that Shinji had encountered before.
The black sphere was only a shadow. The Angel’s true body existed in imaginary
space and could swallow anything that fell inside it.
Standing among the giant trees, their trunks like ancient ruins, the Angel
Carrier remained completely motionless. Even when Shinji came closer, the
carrier didn’t move.
CRIMSON A1, the Asuka/Eva synthesis, left the city, where recovery operations
were underway, to visit Shinji’s watermelon patch, as had become her habit.
She bounded across the countryside, landing beside the field.
She sat on the northern side, so as not to block the sunlight, and noticed
three small, round dots weaving through the watermelons. Rei Six had come to
water the plants, and the three Type-N robots had accompanied her, along with
the two golden retrievers, Azuchi and Momo. But Asuka/Eva must have thought
the robots were harmful pests. She plucked one from the ground and flicked it
away with a loud pwing that reverberated through the caldera. And just like
that, with a little help from Earth’s decreased escape velocity, the Type-N robot
began its journey through space.
“Noooo!” Six shouted as she ran up to Asuka/Eva’s feet. She waved her arms
furiously while the dogs barked in objection. And so, the other two robots,
currently running in fear, were spared the same fate.
The straightest section of the Hakone Caldera’s outer ridge lay along its
southern rim, from Mount Daikan to Mount Shirogane. Before the caldera had
been leased to the UN, the area was known for its picturesque driving routes.
But now, Six was ruthlessly blasting apart those peaks with Eva-00 Type-F’s
rifle, Angel’s Backbone.
After her A.T. Field-accelerated baryon cannon flattened the land, Nerv
engineers compacted the ground with a monomolecular vibrating ribbon, and
where that wasn’t sufficient, they used soil-hardening agents to reshape the
sediment. This feat of rapid construction remade the ridgeline into a four-
thousand-meter-long runway for what was provisionally being called the Daikan
Airport.
But the new airport wasn’t finished in time for Commander Katsuragi Misato’s
return from the United Nations conference. Instead, her heavy VTOL craft
landed at the Nerv HQ heliport, which was crowded with containers and pallets
of supplies.
Deputy Commander Suzuhara Toji met her as she deplaned.
“Welcome back, Commander,” he said. “The Yamato will be coming from
Hiroshima to be refitted with our N2 reactor at the end of the month. We’re
going to provide them the one we were planning on using for Power Plant
Number 2. Is that all right?”
“It’s a generous gift, but with everyone stretched thin from all these disasters,
wielding our power like a stick will only take us so far.”
“So,” Toji said, broaching the main topic, “how did the Security Council
respond to the Euro’s op?”
“They approved the plan. The council said they were still narrowing down
locations for launching the offensive. And they’ve given us some work to do to
prepare.”
“That must mean they’ve seen enough evidence that the imitation heartbeat
will lead the carriers where we want.”
Toji opened the depot door, and Misato walked through, keeping a hand on
her officer’s cap so that the wind wouldn’t blow it away.
On the other side, she removed the cap and said, “We can lure Armaros’
underlings to any place of our choosing, and we’ll have total freedom to set up
the ambush how we want it. If we set the bait, we’re sure they’ll come. At least,
we’re mostly sure.”
Chapter 22:
Shinji’s World
The Lance of Longinus could pierce anything and had been the master key to
unlocking the Human Instrumentality Project.
“That’s the way,” the Kaji-vessel said. “Keep pulling!”
The lance’s long shaft kept sliding out of the imaginary dimensional space.
“Do you hear me, black giant? You’re just an oversized cog with no sense of
time, mindless of any element missing from the original plan, no matter how
useful. Do you have any idea how much work we put into making this
duplicate?”
A shrill sound shook the air. It was Leliel’s death cry.
“We’re done here.”
Ayanami Rei Trois let out a small gasp, her face registering surprise.
As Leliel shrieked, from inside the Angel appeared a hand, clenched around
the lance, then a strong-looking arm, and a shoulder.
“Puppet!” Kaji shouted. “Stop!”
He’d been taken completely by surprise. He quickly realized what was
happening and moved to stop it, but he was too late.
“Gendo’s son!”
Blood exploded from Leliel, and out came a curved horn, then a visor that
opened to reveal two gleaming eyes.
<<Trois!>> Shinji shouted. <<Cut the mental feedback link!>> Super Eva
sprang from the Angel with his bloodied left hand clutching the lance. In one
moment, his right arm was pressed close to his side, and in the next, it flashed
out a sword. The force of the swiftly moving blade sent Leliel’s blood flying in an
arc.
Eva-0.0 didn’t even have time to lift its shield.
In another instant, the blade would shatter the Q.R. Signum in the mutant
Eva’s chest.
Trois yelped as the Kaji-vessel roughly seized her right arm and moved it in
front of her chest. The mutant Eva-0.0 mimicked the motion, blocking Super
Eva’s blade with the gamma-ray laser cannon.
The sword cleaved the cannon cleanly in two, and the long convergence
barrel flew off into the distance.
But the cannon had turned Super Eva’s sword—Basara—aside, and the blade
narrowly missed the Q.R. Signum, tearing deep into the mutant Eva’s chest
armor. A piece of flying shrapnel gouged Kaji’s cheek and severed his ear.
This all happened in moments. The next instant, Super Eva had completely
freed himself from the prison of Leliel’s imaginary dimension space. His feet
slammed into the ground.
Using his forward momentum, Super Eva rammed the mutant Eva and sent it
staggering backward. The mutant’s grip loosened on the lance, and Super Eva
seized the weapon and swapped it with the sword in his dominant hand.
He kept moving—not into the mutant Eva, but past it, like a javelin thrower
making a run-up.
“Time for Plan B!” Shinji said to Quatre. “I hope you got the calculations
right!”
“Don’t mess up the throw, Ikari-kun,” Quatre replied.
Super Eva ran forward and raised the lance aloft. He planted one foot, leaned
his upper body back, and— <<What are you doing?!>> the Kaji-vessel shouted.
But Shinji wasn’t listening. “Go!”
Super Eva hurled the lance with tremendous speed, and the weapon whistled
through the air, easily breaking free from the gravity of the Apple’s Core. In the
blink of an eye, the Lance of Longinus disappeared into the starry sky.
<<Gendo’s son! What do you think you’re doing?>> “What am I doing? You’re
the one with a hostage.”
Shinji had decided that if he failed to disable the mutant Eva-0.0, he would
throw the Lance of Longinus away before Seele/Kaji could try to use Trois as
leverage to take the weapon back.
It was the wrong decision.
The original Lance of Longinus was constricting the Earth to cataclysmic
effect. If humanity could be armed with its duplicate, then why worry over the
sacrifice of one person?
“You were the same way when you stopped the Instrumentality Project,”
Quatre muttered. “You only see the world that’s directly around you.”
She was wearing Shinji’s plugsuit. The current-issue suits could suppress
synchronization rates as high as 400%. Wearing it prevented Quatre from
becoming disembodied inside Leliel due to over-synchronization. Having
become one with his Eva, Shinji assumed he could no longer be dissolved
himself, and he’d exchanged his plugsuit for Quatre’s engineer’s uniform.
If he’d been truly committed to saving humanity, he would have reclaimed
the lance the moment he’d found Leliel and then compelled Quatre—by any
means necessary—to make the jump back to Earth.
But Shinji hadn’t done that. As long as he knew Trois would eventually come,
he wanted to rescue her.
And this was the result.
Quatre sighed. “See? Now you’ve got nothing.”
“I don’t want to hear it,” Shinji replied as he returned Basara to his right hand
and retrieved his other sword, Kesara, from his right shoulder pylon.
“Kesara on standby, and…mark.”
“You know, Ikari-kun,” Quatre said. “All this time, I’d thought you made a
mistake.”
The pylon’s cylindrical chamber tilted forward and opened with a loud thud,
and Shinji unsheathed the second sword.
“Wait,” he said. “You had thought?”
“Three years ago, you made this flawed world because it was the world you
wanted. It wasn’t by mistake.”
Chapter 23:
At the Foot of the Great Tree
“BUT I WON’T SAY it was the smart choice,” Quatre said, seeming to
understand, if not accept, Shinji’s decision.
“I know,” Shinji replied. “I mean, I think I know.”
Deep in the fungal forest on the nightside of the Apple’s Core, Super Eva
stood before two hostile giants with his twin swords drawn.
One was the mutant Eva-0.0, formerly Quatre’s, now controlled by the Kaji-
vessel and his hostage, Trois. The other was an Angel Carrier Type-3. The
carrier’s shoulder was injured, and its larva, Leliel, was dead.
But the white giant was still moving.
“The carrier is down one Q.R. Signum,” Shinji said. “Did Kaji-san do that? The
carrier was undamaged when Leliel swallowed us up.”
“Well,” Quatre responded, “whatever happened between them while we
were inside, that carrier is obeying Seele now.”
“You can tell?”
“Seele can control Q.R. Signum scales by touch, and through the scale, he can
influence the pilot. That was how he hijacked my Eva in Cyprus.”
The Kaji-vessel called out. <<Do you really think you managed to fool me? You
sent the lance into an orbit that will bring it back down to Earth in a matter of
months.>> Behind Shinji in the entry plug, Quatre whispered. “He saw right
through us… But at least he can’t do anything about it.”
Shinji remained silent, watching through a zoomed-in view on the holographic
display. The Kaji-vessel still held Trois in one arm. He raised his other hand and
placed his thumb and middle finger against her carotid artery.
<<You know what happens next,>> he said. <<I’ll kill this puppet.>> Shinji
shot upright, but Quatre placed a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t panic.”
She opened the comms channel so that her next words would be transmitted.
“He can’t do that, Shinji. Seele can access the Q.R. Signum and nothing more.
He can’t control that Eva without a compatible pilot, let alone make the jump
through the tunnels. If he could, he would’ve come alone.”
Seele chuckled. <<But Shinji-kun, Gendo’s son, do you really think the Earth
can afford to wait around for the lance to finish its long journey?>> That was, in
fact, Shinji’s greatest worry.
Shinji and Quatre had been on this misshapen planet for more than half a
month. The Kaji-vessel called this planet the Apple’s Core, but he’d also
mentioned a second name—one that it had gone by as a testing ground for the
Instrumentality Project. Eden. Though this was a strange land, it must have
been a paradise compared to the destruction on Earth.
And how much worse had the situation become since Shinji was last on
Earth?
<<What will happen to your planet is simple,>> the Kaji-vessel said. <<Once
the moon is large enough, it will approach the Earth and drink up the land and
seas.>> What?! Shinji looked to Quatre in surprise.
“Wait,” Shinji said. “Is that the…”
Shinji remembered a phrase Armaros had spoken through the Ayanamis’
mental link.
<<That’s right. The Great Flood.>>
“The carrier is moving!” Quatre hissed.
The Angel Carrier leaped over the mutant Eva-0.0 and came rushing at Super
Eva, thrusting its staff forward.
If what he’s saying is true, thought Shinji, then what could we possibly do to
stop it?
All three giants, including Super Eva, were drawing power from identical
sources—Armaros’ Q.R. Signum scales. It was a fact Shinji found ironic—and
chilling.
Those given a scale could draw upon a terrible power. In return, they faced a
gradual corruption, and every now and then, were made to speak on Armaros’
behalf. Beyond that, they were free to act as allies or enemies. Their actions
were beneath the concern of a being who could create worlds.
The tip of the Angel Carrier’s staff formed two prongs with sharp, jagged
edges, and the carrier’s rushing attack, strengthened by the giant’s A.T. Field-
like shield, only barely missed Super Eva.
But Super Eva had purposefully dodged at the last minute to set up a
counterattack with his swords.
“Show me what you can do!” Shinji shouted.
He parried his enemy’s charge with his left-hand sword and slashed with his
right.
The blade moved faster than the speed of sound, yet it still failed to penetrate
the Angel Carrier’s shield. The moment the sword made contact, a strong force
repelled it.
Shinji grunted in surprise as the carrier sailed past him and landed on the
ground, scattering dirt and toppling a cluster of the white, softly glowing fungal
trees. Shinji leaped backward to get some space.
“That wasn’t supposed to happen!”
His twin swords, Kesara and Basara, were code named “Field Penetrators.”
But even when swung with all of Super Eva’s might, the blades hadn’t lived up
to their name.
Shinji looked at his swords through the holographic display. “Are they too
dull?”
A sub-window opened, and Maya’s voice spoke through the seat’s speakers.
<<You’ve drawn both swords, Shinji-kun.>> “Maya-san?!”
<<This is a recording,>> Maya said from the sub-window. <<I don’t have time
to prepare a field manual for you, but I can tell you the basics. If the swords are
working, that’s great. But if they don’t work, put them back in their sheaths
right away, and the system will deal with it.>> That was too brief.
With nothing else to do but to trust Maya’s instructions, Shinji returned both
swords to his shoulder pylons.
“What now?” Quatre asked.
Shinji’s eyes went wide as he realized Super Eva was now weaponless.
<<Oh, but do be careful,>> Maya’s voice added. <<The swords will need 201
seconds to retune.>> “Whaaaat?!”
This was no time to go unarmed for well over three minutes.
Super Eva grasped the swords’ hilts, but the sheaths had locked the weapons
firmly inside; they wouldn’t budge. Another new window opened on the
display, this time showing a three-dimensional cube along with a too-technical
message saying that something was happening to his equipment, but that was
hardly helpful now.
Super Eva had left Africa equipped with nothing but the swords and a single
knife. Misato hadn’t allowed him to carry any ranged weapons, out of fear that
the Q.R. Signum might cause him to lose control while flying over some
sovereign state.
With the swords locked away, all he had left was the knife on his right leg. He
was reaching to draw it, when— “Ikari-kun, on your left!” Quatre shouted.
He noticed the Angel Carrier’s attack too late. The white giant was flying
toward him, low—and this time it was coming at full force.
Shinji couldn’t get out of the way in time. He barely managed to bring up his
A.T. Field as a shield.
But he grunted in pain as Super Eva took the tackle head-on and was tossed
backward, carving a path of destruction through the fungal forest.
At first, Shinji thought Super Eva’s back had slammed into a rough patch of
ground—but the object beneath him shattered into dry, fibrous splinters that
scattered all around.
A root of the dead tree?
The giant tree, which stood many times taller than an Evangelion, swayed
faintly from the impact, and luminescent spores of the parasitic fungus fell like
snow from its branches.
The mutant Eva-0.0 transmitted Kaji’s voice.
<<Would you like to die at the foot of the old Tree of Life? It was one of the
two great trees that represented this place, you know. It would make a fine
grave marker, don’t you think?>> Unlike the Angel Carrier, the mutant Eva
showed no sign of pressing the attack.
The Kaji-vessel had come to this planet to find the duplicate Lance of
Longinus, but Shinji had hurled it into space.
The weapon was traveling too fast to pursue directly, and the tunnel network
only connected points on land. The Kaji-vessel had no way to recover the lance
now.
But he could still try to force Shinji to give up the trajectory data.
So why isn’t he moving?
“Be careful,” Quatre said. “Eva-0.0 is repairing the end of the laser cannon
where you cut the barrel off…so that it can be fired at that length.”
The gamma-ray laser cannon—when working at full power—was the
strongest weapon available to any Eva.
So that’s why he’s leaving the fight to the Angel Carrier.
Shinji pretended not to have noticed. “Two great trees, you say? Where’s the
other one?”
<<Didn’t you see it in the center of the sunside continent? That one has
mostly weathered away. It may once have been the Tree of Knowledge, but it
died and toppled a long, long time ago. All that’s left is a flat patch of ground
where the stump used to be.>> The Tree of Knowledge, the fruit of knowledge…
the forbidden fruit?
I’d eat just about anything that got me expelled from this paradise.
Both sides were trying to buy time.
“Let’s see if I can even the score before you jump back in the fight,” Shinji said
to himself.
The Angel Carrier was the first back on its feet. But the white giant’s stance
wasn’t normal.
The carrier’s left shoulder was already damaged. Did it break when it tackled
me?
Super Eva stood, knife in hand. But the carrier kept its distance. Instead of
charging in for another tackle, the giant aimed its power shield at Super Eva and
fired it like an invisible fist.
Shinji wouldn’t have seen the attack coming if it weren’t for the glowing
ripple spreading through the fungal spores.
Super Eva leaped to the side, and in the next moment, the ripple reached the
spot where he’d been standing. The ground exploded.
Shinji glanced back at Quatre’s face. She looked feverish, like she was under
even more strain than he was.
“Quatre, are you all right?”
“I’ve run the calculations on what will happen once Eva-0.0 has repaired its
cannon. With the convergence and laser pumping capabilities at that barrel
length, we should be safe from a distance of thirty kilometers. He won’t be able
to attack us from the horizon. But at close range, the laser will still be putting
out a quarter of its maximum power. That’s more than enough to be a serious
threat.”
She paused. Her chest rose as she took in a deep breath of LCL and slowly let
it back out again.
“This Eva can draw in unlimited power,” she said, “but every time we
maneuver in battle, the Q.R. Signum takes a little more control.”
“I wish I could say, ‘don’t push yourself,’” Shinji said. “But it’s not that simple,
is it? We need that power.”
By observing the lights of the forest, Super Eva had dodged several of the
Angel Carrier’s invisible fists, but eventually, it read Shinji’s movements and
aimed an attack directly at the spot where he was about to land.
Below him, the ground exploded, and a giant sheet of rock flew toward Super
Eva. Even with the prog knife running on high power, the rock looked too large
to smash. He hadn’t yet been able to control the Q.R. Signum’s power shield as
well as his A.T. Field, but at the last moment, he focused the shield’s power into
the knife, and— KA-CRACK!
The rock shattered into tiny fragments. Shinji had discovered how to use the
shield as a weapon, like the Angel Carrier was doing.
“Are you up for this?” Shinji asked.
Quatre nodded. “I’ll back you up.”
Super Eva’s shoulders tingled with unfamiliar heat.
The next time the Angel Carrier fired a shield projectile, Super Eva countered
with one of his own—using the same technique Shinji had previously employed
to generate his A.T. Field at a remote point.
“Go!” he shouted.
The two projectiles shot through the forest and collided head-on, but the
Angel Carrier’s was stronger, and it batted Shinji’s shield aside.
“Quatre?!”
“I’m losing power!” she said. “It’s slipping through my fingers.”
Super Eva’s shoulders were growing hotter.
“The swords!” Shinji realized. “The heat is coming from Super Eva’s shoulder
units, from within Kesara’s and Basara’s sheaths. What’s the status?”
Quatre’s eyes scanned the armament display window. “It says, ‘Tempering
process underway. Rearranging blade crystalline structure.’”
Whatever that meant, at least it wasn’t an error message.
“I think those swords are made out of the same A.T. Field-induction elements
as the Type-F’s cannon,” Quatre said, “or your Eva’s wings.”
“What does that mean?”
“The system can read the data from when the swords failed to penetrate the
enemy’s shield and then reconfigure their field pattern on the spot.”
Super Eva shuddered. Shinji felt like his blood flow had changed. Gasping, he
clutched at his chest. The Q.R. Signum was now causing him physical pain.
“See?” Quatre said. “The field type is changing.”
VWWMMM.
“Wait, this is strange,” she said. “The swords drain a lot of power, but I’m not
having to direct the power to them. The Q.R. Signum is spreading its energy into
the sword system on its own. It’s as if…”
The sound was like the earth rumbling, the vibrations like a low-amplitude
earthquake. The black scale’s power flooded into the swords in raging waves.
“It’s too hot!” Shinji cried. “Something’s wrong!”
“It’s as if the scale is trying to possess the swords,” Quatre said.
A loud, metallic wham sounded from Super Eva’s shoulders, and they both
jumped. A happy chime followed, and a new message appeared on the display:
REFORGING COMPLETE.
The cylindrical tumblers swiveled open, offering the two swords.
Bubbling with impatience, Super Eva crossed his arms in front of his face and
seized the twin hilts.
“What?!” Shinji shouted.
“What’s wrong?” Quatre asked.
“Super Eva didn’t move the way I told him to.”
He wasn’t completely sure, but it seemed like the Eva had moved ahead of his
conscious thoughts.
Maya’s voice spoke again. <<Cool the blades to bind the new crystalline
structure. If you’re near a river or a large body of water—>> Shinji didn’t hear
the rest. Super Eva took another direct hit from the carrier’s projected shield,
but he continued drawing Kesara and Basara as he tumbled backward.
Super Eva tore a swath of destruction through the fungal forest, rolling from
the impact. Shinji shifted his grip on the swords, turning their pommels upright,
and thrust their red-hot blades into the ground.
The earth swelled as the swords’ tremendous heat dumped into it, and the
forest’s underground moisture instantly vaporized. Steam exploded upward,
filling the air with white mist.
Despite losing sight of Super Eva, the Angel Carrier held its staff aloft and
jumped into the dense cloud in search of its quarry.
“Gendo’s son…what did you do?” Kaji muttered.
A wrenching sound echoed from the steam, then the carrier’s staff flew out of
the cloud and impaled itself in the ground in front of the mutant Eva-0.0.
The carrier’s arm was still holding on to the shaft.
“Did he cut through the shield?” Kaji wondered aloud.
The Angel Carrier was ejected from the steam cloud and crashed into the
trees. As it rolled, the giant raised its blood-soaked stump and threw one
invisible fist after another into the mist.
Super Eva came leaping out from the cloud, breaking through the outer wall
and leaving a black trail in its wake. The Eva held both swords crossed and
focused the strongest part of his shield at the point where the blades
overlapped. He didn’t try to evade the carrier’s attacks but simply shrugged
them aside. He closed the distance and broke through the Angel Carrier’s
shield.
With a scream like metal slicing through metal, Super Eva’s crossed swords
sank into the carrier’s shield, reaching either side of its neck. Super Eva threw
his arms wide.
Kesara and Basara passed each other inside the carrier’s neck, and, almost as
an afterthought, smashed through the remaining Q.R. Signum scale in the
carrier’s right shoulder.
Super Eva’s hands were gripping the swords, but to Shinji, his own Q.R.
Signum’s uncanny power seemed to be reaching black arms out to wield the
swords directly.
“The swords,” Shinji gasped, breathless. “They’ve attuned too well. The
power… I can’t…”
He couldn’t control it. Super Eva—or rather, the two swords—wanted to slice
through anything that moved, friend or foe.
Without a moment’s pause, Super Eva leaped to attack the mutant Eva-0.0, as
if there were nothing else it would rather do.
The mutant Eva-0.0 grabbed the Angel Carrier’s staff from the ground and
held the weapon in front of its body. But Super Eva’s sword, Basara, smashed
into the staff with a shower of sparks, scraping all the way down its length and
into the mutant’s A.T. Field.
The Field Penetrator was attuned to the Angel Carrier’s power shield, not the
mutant Eva’s field, and couldn’t slice through easily. But the field still crackled
and splintered as the weapon forced its way through with murderous fury. The
blade’s tip inched inexorably toward the Q.R. Signum in the mutant Eva’s chest.
The Kaji-vessel stood on a platform in front of the Q.R. Signum, holding Trois.
Shinji cried out through gritted teeth as he forced the blade to stop at the last
possible moment.
Shinji breathed heavily, and the sword’s tip trembled—centimeters from Rei
Trois’ face.
“Fire!” the Kaji-vessel ordered from behind Trois’ back. The girl shuddered,
and the mutant Eva’s arm muscles groaned. The shortened gamma-ray laser
cannon swung toward Super Eva and fired.
At the exact same moment, Super Eva slammed his right shoulder into the
mutant Eva-0.0, swinging Kesara upward. The severed cannon-arm sailed
through the sky, spraying blood behind it, and the laser roared past Super Eva,
slamming into the Tree of Life.
Trois gasped. For the second time, she felt the Eva’s arm being sliced off, as if
it were her own. She was going into shock, unable to even scream.
“Ayanami!” Shinji cried out to Trois. “The next time I give you something, I’ll
find a color that suits you. I swear!”
Racked with pain, Trois lost focus. Her A.T. Field had been allowing her and
Kaji to stand in place on their moving Eva, but now that field weakened, and
Super Eva’s collision had tilted the small platform under their feet. They fell
precariously close to the edge.
The LCL inside Super Eva’s plug had stopped flowing. After a moment of
confusion, Shinji realized that the entry plug was sliding out from Super Eva’s
back. He turned to see Quatre opening the hatch.
Before he could ask what she was doing, she pressed her lips to his. The roar
of the ejecting LCL faded into momentary silence.
“You can see me as part of Ayanami, too,” Quatre said.
“What are you doing, Quatre?!” Shinji sputtered.
She slipped out from the seat and stood. She was holding her arm, her face
contorted in pain.
“I’m synchronized with Trois right now,” she explained. “I told me—I mean
her—the way back home. And the duplicate lance’s trajectory.”
“What are you saying?”
The mutant Eva-0.0 had gone still, leaning against Super Eva.
Even though the two Evas were touching, they were still dizzyingly high off
the ground. Yet Quatre nimbly jumped across to the titled platform.
She approached Trois and said, “The me who unifies, the one in control—
close off my access to memories of the duplicate lance. Lock away my
knowledge of the lance’s trajectory.”
“What do you think you’re doing, broken puppet?” the Kaji-vessel said,
clinging to the edge of the platform.
Quatre was still wearing Shinji’s plugsuit. Using the built-in controls, she
instructed the medical telemetry unit to inject a sedative into her arm so that
she could take on the full amount of the feedback pain.
Then, to Kaji, she casually said, “Seele, I’m going with you. We could kill you
right now, but I have some acquaintances who don’t want your vessel to die.”
Trois was struggling to stand. She looked up weakly. “Why are you doing
this?”
“This Eva-0.0 was mine in the first place, and I want it back. Go home to
Tokyo-3 with Ikari-kun. We can’t put an end to this with you two stranded
here.”
“An…end…” Trois repeated. “If the worst happens, the me who is fulfilled… I
want to say…thank you.”
“No more running, the me who doesn’t realize she’s fulfilled.”
The two girls had arrived at a settlement.
Super Eva had finally shaken free of the curse on his swords. He reached out
to carefully scoop up both Ayanamis, but when his hand got near, Quatre
shoved the now-standing Trois over the edge. Shinji quickly caught her.
He fumbled his grip on Kesara, and the blade landed tip-first into the ground.
Before the sword even had time to topple, the mutant Eva was already
sinking into the tunnel network. Shinji rushed to the entry plug’s hatch, leaned
out, and shouted, “Quatre!”
She turned to look up at him, but before he could say anything else, the
misshapen giant, carrying Quatre and Kaji, was swallowed by the ground.
“Trois!” Shinji called out from the hatch. “Are you all right?”
She didn’t respond. She was curled up on Eva’s hand with her arms around
her own shoulders, staring at the patch of ground where the mutant Eva-0.0
had disappeared.
Worried, Shinji climbed down to her.
“Let’s go home, Ayanami.” He knelt and added, “Trois?”
That’s when he saw something he’d never expected to see.
Her blank expression had shattered. She was bawling.
Chapter 24:
The People Left Behind
In the Hakone Caldera, now geographically stranded in the strait where the
Izu Peninsula used to be, supplies were beginning to arrive through the hastily
constructed Daikan Airport, and the reconstruction efforts were finally taking
shape.
Super Eva and Shinji were still missing, but they were known to be alive. One
day, about half a month earlier, little Ayanami Rei Six had suddenly let out a
squeak, as if someone had put a pickled plum in her mouth, and she made a
surprise announcement.
“Ikari-kun’s eating a tart red fruit with Quatre.”
The Ayanamis’ mental link had only been sporadically present, either due to a
malfunction or their new self-awareness. This momentary reconnection gave
Six the knowledge that Shinji and Quatre were together—but not where.
Still, even knowing that they were out there somewhere, alive, was good
news.
Maybe next time Six could locate the pair, and a search party could be sent
out.
But when anyone asked Six about Ayanami Trois, whom the Security
Intelligence Department had failed to find after her disappearance in North
Africa, the girl always said she hadn’t heard anything.
And she always added, “I think she’s closed herself away.”
Maya entered the cage where the engineering team was giving Eva-00 Type-
F’s Allegorica system its final adjustments. The work was part of Nerv Japan’s
preparation for their role in the counteroffensive, but developing the system
was in their best interests either way. Nerv HQ currently had no other Eva at
their disposal.
The Type-F configuration turned part of the Eva’s body structure into a
specialized weapons platform. Notably, the Eva was missing one leg, which
restricted its movement. The Allegoric Wings would compensate for this.
Nerv Japan could have remotely recalled Six’s Eva-0.0 from orbit, or sent a
pilot up to it, but the Eva would have to be respec’ed for use on land all the
same. Plus, Six was assigned to Eva-00 Type-F anyway. Even with another
Evangelion on hand, they’d be a pilot short.
As Crimson A1 drifted lazily overhead, the Asuka/Eva hybrid’s wings offered
inspiration for Eva-00’s design.
Asuka/Eva had come home with nothing but a single blue book.
Shinji had given Asuka the book, a collection of marine life photographs, to
help her pass the time on her reconnaissance-in-force mission to the moon.
During the synthesis between Asuka and her Eva, the book alone had retained
its original shape, although a great volume of data had been written into its
pages.
In the command center, Maya presented a report on her team’s analysis of
the book, with the main screen providing visual aid.
“Of course,” the chief scientist was saying, “Asuka didn’t write this data by
hand. The book had dissolved in the chaotic stream of information and was
reconstructed, incorporating the data into its pages. Now, the contents of that
data were written in what can only be called a new language, created by
Asuka’s subconscious. The language itself changes as it goes along, which makes
the translation quite difficult.”
Of everything Misato, Fuyutsuki, and Toji had learned from Asuka’s journey—
including that the moon’s expansion was due to Armaros taking matter from
deep within the Earth and depositing it on the moon—the book was the part
they had the most trouble understanding.
“The data includes, in a compressed form, the things Asuka witnessed at her
final destination at the far side of the moon,” Maya explained.
The picture on the main screen switched to a 3D reconstruction of Asuka’s
memories and Eva-02’s sensor data. A massive, blue structure made of many
cubes was half-buried in the lunar surface.
Misato had seen the same thing in Africa.
“The Ark?” she asked.
“What?!” Toji gasped. “That’s the Ark?”
Beads of light collected on the structure’s surface, then slid down to the lunar
soil and took the shape of a small Angel. A mass of Angel Carriers’ arms
sprouted from the ground, grasping for it.
“What, is that the enemy’s main base?” Misato asked.
Maya shook her head. “That’s what Asuka thought. If only it were. The
structure doesn’t just contain the Angels’ information. Stored within those
cubes is the data for everything needed to start our world. When Asuka flew
her Eva inside, she was absorbed into it.”
“The data for everything?” Misato repeated.
“What did you see that night in Africa?” Maya asked.
Misato thought back to that one-night orgy of evolution.
At the beginning, a giant jumble, unidentifiable as either Asuka or her Eva,
had run past Misato, and then the colossal rock formations began transforming.
“Life-forms of every kind rose from the surface,” Misato said.
“While Asuka’s consciousness was swallowed within that swarm of
information,” Maya said, “she wrote one last note explaining the true nature of
the Ark. Whether it’s a fact or her conjecture, I can’t say. But this is what she
left for us: ‘The Ark contains the saved data of all life, so that each attempt of
the as-yet-unsuccessful Instrumentality Project can be made in tens of
thousands of years, rather than hundreds of millions.’”
The black giant Armaros had made his pronouncement though the Ayanamis’
voices, while across Europe, many people—not a great many, but enough—
heard Armaros’ voice inside their heads and repeated his message. Namely that
a great flood would clear the stage so that the next curtain could rise.
One interpretation of this message was that Earth was perpetually proceeding
toward fulfillment of the Instrumentality Project, like a stack of rocks toppling
over only to be rebuilt anew, stone by stone. But Asuka’s note suggested
something else.
“Good God,” Fuyutsuki said. “The path of evolution isn’t natural to our
present world but a shortened reconstruction of some distant past. Why do I
suddenly feel like everything around us is a matte painting on a movie set?”
“Why is there another on the moon?” Hyuga demanded.
“And what?” Aoba followed. “Next time around, the moon will be the Earth?”
Toji remembered something else as he looked at the book’s contents. In his
brief reunion with Hikari, she’d told him, “But amid that mishmash, her
mother’s soul tried to protect her by overwriting portions of the Eva with parts
that were Asuka.”
So, he thought, Not only did Soryu make it past the Longinus Curtain, she tried
to leave a record of every single thing she saw on the moon.
“Damn show-off.”
Oh crap, I said that out loud.
The adults all turned to him with confused expressions, but he forged ahead.
“Let’s say we can’t do anything about that world-creating jack-in-the-box for
now. What about splitting Soryu and the Eva apart?”
The question was on everyone’s minds, but they all were too afraid to ask.
Maya drew in a sharp breath and shook her head. “It doesn’t look good. As far
as we can tell, she’s still carrying the information for a significant number of
organisms. Even just from a raw data standpoint, Magi-2 still hasn’t been able
to disentangle them all.”
“I was under the impression that everything had left during that stampede,”
Misato said.
“The majority stayed dormant and never came to the surface, but they’ve
influenced her genetic structure. Her DNA is a complete mess.”
“Is there anything we can do?” Misato asked.
Maya thought for a moment. “Let’s reach out to Nerv U.S. They’ve been
working on genetically modifying pilot candidates in order to create pilots the
Evangelions will deem worthy.”
“What kind of modifications are we talking?”
“I don’t know the details, but it has something to do with simplifying the
thought patterns shared between the Eva and its pilot. They’ve been splicing
animal DNA into both.”
“Commander Ikari knew about that project,” Fuyutsuki cut in. “In theory, the
genetic modification could drastically lower the pilot requirements. But it also
comes with a high risk of producing something no longer human. Characteristics
of the contributing animals can rise to the surface. Potentially, those
manifestations could lead to better combat performance, but Seele forbid us
from exploring the possibilities. They claimed that such a pilot couldn’t be
counted upon to unlock the Instrumentality Project.” He frowned. “I’d heard
the U.S. branch dispersed after the failure of Unit Four.”
“That was the cover story,” Aoba explained. “Off the books, they’ve been
continuing several projects, using funds and resources from the federal
government. I wouldn’t be surprised if the reasons they gave for Unit Four’s
failure were a cover story, too. If the American public learned Nerv was splicing
animal DNA into humans, the religious groups wouldn’t stay silent. My guess is
that Nerv turned the accident to their advantage and took the opportunity to
go underground.”
“But we’re not talking about putting animal genes in,” Misato said, “we’re
talking about taking Asuka out.”
“Reverse the process, you mean.” Maya nodded. “An attractive notion, isn’t
it? Well, whatever the process ends up being, we’d be starting the research
from scratch, so we might as well see how far they’ve gotten. While we’re at it,
we should get the Europeans to share their imitation heartbeat tech. It
wouldn’t be too difficult to replicate on our own, but why go to the trouble if
we don’t have to?”
“You make it sound like we’re popping out to pick up pizza and ramen. I’m not
sure it’ll be that easy.”
“Near the Ark on the moon, Asuka found a German quantum wave mirror
truck that went missing from the battle in Hokkaido. Use that as a bargaining
chip.”
“You’re kidding.”
Chapter 25:
Retuning Humanity
UNFORTUNATELY FOR HER, Ibuki Maya hadn’t been there to witness the U.S.
Eva. The chief scientist was on the deck of the battleship Yamato with
Asuka/Eva flying overhead. After returning home at the end of World War II,
the last-century super-large battleship had undergone many improvements,
including having its coal-fired boilers switched over to heavy fuel oil, but it was
later moored and converted into a museum memorializing Japan’s defeat. Now
the battleship had been further modernized, gaining an N2 reactor in the
process, and was back at sea. The ship had just completed its sea trial in Kanto
Bay, where there weren’t freak swells like there were in the open ocean.
Rumors were circulating that the Yamato was intended as a shelter vessel for
select citizens.
Nerv Japan had been uncharacteristically generous in providing the N2 reactor
to the Japanese government. The global cataclysm was breaking down supply
chains of every kind, and the reactor was one way Nerv Japan could drag the
government to the bargaining table.
Talking to herself, the chief scientist remarked, “Even with the reactor, this
ship is still…” She tried to remember what Fuyutsuki had called it. “Fudara-
something-or-other.”
Fuyutsuki had called the government’s plans for the ship a “twenty-first-
century version of the Fudaraku tokai,” which was an extreme religious practice
where pilgrims committed suicide by boarding themselves up within a boat
bound for a paradise. But Maya didn’t know the reference.
The Yamato had passed its sea trial, but Maya still had work to do.
“Asuka, please come down,” Ritsuko said.
Asuka/Eva was making a game of disappearing into and appearing out of
clouds in the pre-storm sky. She’d been carrying a giant, unstrung bow—or at
least, something that looked like one—and was still holding it as she landed on
the stern end of the flight deck, which was currently being used for takeoff and
landing of helicopters and VTOL aircraft.
“Sorry to interrupt your game,” Maya said.
Unfortunately, the research into separating Asuka back into human form was
only just beginning. But the Asuka/Eva synthesis was responding to her own
name, and through the repetition of some simple exercises, she was even
learning to communicate. She had a lively curiosity and was surprisingly
agreeable, which seemed unlike her previous self. But maybe that was closer to
her true nature than anyone had known.
Maya thrust her fist forward as if she were holding a bow. “Hold that with
your left hand, like this.”
Asuka/Eva thought for a moment and then mimicked the action. The bow’s
bottom tip slammed down onto the flight deck, and the red giant turned her
torso, pulling her rear leg back into an archer’s stance.
The bow had been discovered along with the giant, semi-transparent eggshell
that had appeared from the bottom of Lake Ashi. Maya was treating the
mysterious object as an Evangelion-sized weapon. The bow possessed no string.
Instead, each half contained a particle accelerator that met at a shared focal
point. When the particles collided at an angle in the middle, the resulting
energy shot forward like an arrow—or, as Maya thought of it, an energy
slingshot.
The bow’s construction remained a complete unknown, but Maya figured that
if it was an Eva-sized weapon, having an Eva wield it might lead to new
discoveries.
“So, the bow is a little larger than an Eva,” Maya remarked. “Almost like it’s
sized for Armaros.”
Ibuki Maya had given herself two assignments—to recreate the guided
cannon, Neyarl, which had performed beyond expectations and destroyed a
Victor with particles drawn from Super Eva’s heart, and to identify the guided
particle that had done it.
The resulting magnetic field had either destroyed Super Eva’s full data records
or, at best, left them temporarily inaccessible. But in North Africa, Maya had
been able to retrieve one valuable piece of information—when Super Eva fired
the weapon, time stretched out so much that he perceived the behavior of
elementary particles. “Without ever touching the enemy, or undergoing any
change itself,” Shinji had said, “the beam tore through the Victor and made its
protons decay.”
That was enough to give Maya at least part of an answer—magnetic
monopoles. They were particles that had existed only in the first moments of
the birth of the universe, and even then, only in vanishingly small numbers.
Whether humanity liked it or not, Armaros had displayed acts of godlike
power. But if such particles could defeat him and his retainers, then those
fearsome giants were fundamentally no different from any other entities born
after the beginning of the universe. There was no reason for humanity to simply
hang their heads and accept defeat.
Ask others what that knowledge changed about the present situation, and
they would likely struggle to answer, but to a scholar like Maya, it changed
everything. Here was an enemy who defied all measuring, and maybe, finally,
she’d been given a set of laws that could place him on a scale.
“Don’t worry, Asuka,” Maya said, looking up high. “I don’t think that bow will
do anything without a lot of energy being dumped into it.”
Horaki Hikari had been the first to call Asuka by her name, so that she might
reclaim her identity, but now everyone followed suit.
“Today,” Maya continued, looking down at her tablet, “before we completely
hand over the N2 reactor, I want to take one last opportunity to make use of it,
along with those two miniaturized ones you’ve got, and see if we can test-fire
that bow. So if you could hang on to it until it shoots, that would be great.”
A storm looked like it was brewing, but for now, the waves were calm, as was
everything else.
Asuka looked over her shoulder.
The red giant froze, as if she’d heard a voice she recognized.
“Asuka?” Maya said. She looked back up from the screen and noticed that
Asuka/Eva was staring at a point somewhere in the distance. “What’s the
matter?”
Maya tapped on the tablet and pulled up Asuka’s status display. According to
the data, the giant wasn’t particularly alarmed. She was just focusing her
attention in that direction.
BANG!
Maya yelped. Asuka/Eva must have let go of the bow, and the weapon had
dropped to the deck.
The graceful red giant stood completely erect, as if someone had called to
her.
Her Allegorica wings billowed upward, like long hair caught in the wind. She
took one smooth step and then began gliding toward the coastline in the
direction she’d been looking.
“Asuka!” Maya spoke into her tablet. “Where are you going? Is something
there?”
On the shoreline of Kanto Bay stood the ruins of the old metropolis
abandoned after the Second Impact. Suddenly, black, root-like tendrils burst
out from the rubble and coiled around Asuka.
“Asuka!” Maya shouted.
Asuka didn’t resist as the tendrils pulled her into the ground. Just like that,
she was gone.
Alarms sounded throughout the battleship, and the close-range autocannons
swiveled their daruma-doll heads, but by then, it was all over. Still surrounded
by the upgrade crew’s scaffolding, the main battery cannons swept their barrels
across the sky at nothing.
Where the Asuka/Eva synthesis had disappeared, the rubble had been
scattered away, leaving the barren ground exposed. But other than that, there
was no trace that anything had passed through.
Chapter 27:
An Island Awakening
UPON LANDING AT ROGACHEVO, a Russian military air base on the southern side
of Novaya Zemlya, an archipelago that divided the Barents and Kara Seas, a
Euro soldier exhaled white breaths and grumbled, “What the hell kind of place
are they choosing for the last battle?”
The Europeans, after discussing with Russia, had selected this location for the
final confrontation and were rapidly preparing the ambush site.
The black giant Armaros, who’d brought calamity to every part of the globe,
along with his underlings, the Victors and the Angel Carriers, were drawn to the
heartbeat produced by Super Eva’s window to higher dimensions. An imitation
heartbeat produced the same effect. Even now, after the Lance of Longinus had
stolen Super Eva’s heart, the rumble of that imitation would still bring
humanity’s enemies calling.
With the Evangelion—Heurtebise—and their combined combat forces,
Europe and Russia intended on forcing a final showdown on this remote island.
Both seas, to the east and west, adjoined the Arctic Ocean. And at this high
latitude, the pull of the gargantuan moon had a lesser effect on the tides, so
damage from the water’s ebb and flow had been kept comparatively low.
Countless gray warships, constituting the bulk of Russia’s navy, were spread
out across the water as far as the eye could see. Their cannons had been raised,
and waterproof coverings removed, for thorough testing of their safeguards
and controls.
The ground troops were outfitted with CBRN gear (airtight suits and gas
masks) to protect against being turned into pillars of salt—if that phenomenon
could indeed be protected against.
At least the protective gear wouldn’t be uncomfortably hot this far north.
But even if the soldiers grew too warm for comfort, no one would remove the
gear by choice. In the previous century, Novaya Zemlya had been a nuclear test
site, and even now, Russia maintained a stockpile of N2 weapons. They tested
these weapons so heavily that the northern edge of the island wasn’t just
cratered, it looked like the bottom of a giant pot.
The N2 reaction didn’t produce radiation—at least, not officially—but the
testing had unearthed soil contaminated by the previous century’s nuclear
tests. Everyone present had heard rumors of radioactive soil turning to dust and
drifting away on the wind.
The angry bark of a drill sergeant echoed from inside the passenger plane that
had brought the latest batch of soldiers here, and they rushed off the plane as if
it were on fire. They were holding up the endless stream of aircraft queuing to
land, refuel, and take off again, empty.
From the airport, soldiers and supplies were shuttled by truck, helicopter, and
VOTL aircraft to the battleground—the bombed-out test site—which the locals
had taken to calling Misha’s Frying Pan.
A strange aircraft circled the center of the basin like a wayward leaf as it
attempted to land. It was Nerv Japan’s Platypus-2, a.k.a. the N2 Flanker.
<<Ritter?>> the command plane’s bridge called to Hikari in her entry plug.
It took a moment before she remembered that Ritter—knight—meant her.
“Oh, er, yes!” she hastily replied. “Kommandobrücke?”
<<Did we interrupt you? Were you on the phone with your boyfriend?>> “I
would never do that on duty!”
That had been a joke. All her communications were kept under strict control.
But she was a stickler for rules anyway.
<<Hikari, the additional quantum wave mirror trucks are here. Do you think
you could start the calibrations?>> “Affirmative.”
Leaning out from the cockpit of his parked Flanker, Toji removed his helmet
and waved it to get Hikari’s attention. The helmet tumbled from his fingers and
rolled away. He yelped in surprise and then scurried down out of the plane to
chase after it.
“What is he doing?” Hikari laughed as she watched through the Eva’s partially
zoomed-in side view.
Just as Nerv Germany and the Euro Sixth Army had promised, Hikari was no
longer being hypnotically controlled.
At this point, she—and her human rights—were being treated with
deference. With no other Eva-compatible pilots within their command, they’d
adapted a new strategy—to use her natural amiability against her. They’d
learned that as long as they apologized for their earlier discourtesy, and took a
completely honest and cooperative stance with her, she didn’t have it in her to
refuse. And yes, she knew what they were doing.
Her older sister had been caught in the Lance of Longinus’s light and turned
into a pillar of salt, but she still had a younger sister in Germany. And while the
mysterious presence inside the abandoned prototype body of Asuka’s Eva-02
might have been nothing more than vestige of a long-gone consciousness,
Hikari believed it was Asuka’s mother. She didn’t have any evidence aside from
her own belief, but she couldn’t just leave Heurtebise.
“This is Eva-02 Heurtebise requesting authorization to initialize my graviton
floater array and take flight.”
<<This is Rogachevo Air Base ATC. Keep clear of the aircraft staging area.>>
<<Kommandobrücke to Hikari, you are authorized for your calibration flight. Be
careful of the VTOL aircraft to your south.>> Heurtebise’s graviton floaters
began to hum and then roar, and the three-thousand-ton giant lifted off the
ground.
The Eva rose about twenty meters, held altitude there, and then glided
sideways to the right. The quantum wave mirrors, mounted on large armored
trailers, swiveled to follow Heurtebise’s movements.
“Measuring for tracking misalignment,” Hikari said.
In far-off Hokkaido, the quantum wave mirrors had reflected and focused the
spatial distortions created by Heurtebise’s graviton floaters into a single point in
midair. Heurtebise had used the effect to knock Super Eva off-balance and send
the giant to the ground. Since then, the Euro military had upgraded the trucks
and increased their number. Now there were sixteen. With this many, the
quantum wave mirrors could further amplify the imitation heartbeat. But that
wasn’t all. The trucks could also create weaponized spatial distortions of
drastically higher magnitude. Even as humanity continued to suffer under the
weight of Armaros’ boot, they weren’t just lashing out like a cornered rat.
They’d prepared a serious counterattack.
As Heurtebise glided through the air, the quantum wave mirrors swiveled
atop the sixteen armored trucks. Every now and then, Heurtebise’s spatial
distortions reflected between the mirrors and burst at the focal point, sending
an explosive roar reverberating across the basin.
“Ah, I hate that sound,” Toji said with a wince. He thought back to how Super
Eva had fallen to the ground again and again. Shinji had nearly lost his mind.
But back then, humanity was fighting among themselves. This time, they’d be
fighting together against a common enemy.
He switched on the comms channel. “Hello? This is Suzuhara. Are you guys
seeing this video?”
From his helmet speakers came a reply.
<<Woof! Woof woof!>> <<A cat! Cat ears!>> That was Azuchi—the golden
retriever—and little Ayanami Rei Six.
“Huh?” Toji replied.
“What?” Aoba spoke next.
<<This is Nerv Japan. The sound quality is great. We’re getting some hitching
on the video—it’s being routed through the stratospheric airplane network, and
we’re running into some digital noise—but it’ll do.>> “Where’s the American
Eva?”
<<They’re on their way to you. Misato should be back in the command center
any moment now, and Chief Ibuki should be watching your stream from the
deck of the Yamato.>> There was a brief pause. <<Hm? Why are you outside
your plane? Your suit and helmet should keep out the dust, but I’m not sure I’d
advise it.>> “Oh, er,” Toji said, rubbing the back of his helmet where it had
gotten dinged in the fall. “It’s nothing.”
He switched the head-mounted display from a direct view to a zoomed-in
view, aided by extra side-mounted cameras. Toji liked to think of it as his “bird
of prey” view. The new picture was transmitted from the helmet, to the
Flanker, to the stratospheric airplane network, and then to Nerv Japan HQ.
A giant trench had been dug around the outside of the basin’s rim. The tip of
a massive railgun peeked out from the trench. The gun seemed to be a kind of
mobile artillery.
“Hm?” Toji said.
Even farther behind the mobile railgun, he saw a convergence reflector that
he recognized from the Japanese maser howitzer.
A voice came not from Toji’s headset but from directly beside him. “Hey,
Acting Deputy Commander Suzuhara.”
Toji placed the voice immediately. “Lieutenant Colonel Kasuga?”
Toji returned the display to normal view and saw the large man standing
beside him, wearing a winter-camouflage CBRN combat suit.
Everything Toji saw through his head-mounted display was being
automatically processed by computer algorithms, which analyzed the man’s
silhouette and estimated bone structure and, within moments, added the name
“Kasuga” to the screen. But Toji didn’t need to read the digital name tag to
know. This man could be none other than the commanding officer of the JSSDF
Large-Scale Threat Unit. Kasuga was burly to begin with. And with his bulk
stuffed inside, he made the protective gear look like a suit of power armor.
The soldier’s affable eyes smiled from behind his goggles. Kasuga touched his
gloved hand to the side of his helmet’s covering in salute, and then turned in
the direction Toji had been looking. “First Africa, then Russia. And here I
thought all kaiju headed for Japan.”
“That’s never been a rule,” Toji said.
“But we’ve always been the ones on the front line. Don’t you feel like we’ve
had something taken from us?”
“Er…maybe,” Toji said, noncommittally.
“Let’s go out for yakiniku sometime, while there’s still meat left to eat.”
Toji didn’t mind that Nerv Japan wasn’t commanding the operation, but he
did care—greatly—that Hikari was being put on the front lines. Still, he was
relieved to see that the Europeans had brought more forces than he’d
anticipated. With sixteen whole trucks’ worth of quantum wave mirrors, maybe
they could even make that black colossus eat dirt.
Don’t be so sure, he warned himself. Dangerous is dangerous.
A voice in his helmet brought him back from his thoughts.
<<This is Ibuki from the Yamato in Kanto Bay. It’s an emergency!>>
Hikari made her way through the quantum mirror truck calibration checklist.
After she finished testing the gravitational field control of several dozen
different attack patterns, she made a soft beat with her graviton floaters. The
sound matched Super Eva’s heartbeat perfectly, only much more subdued.
On the day of the battle, she would drive the beat with full power to summon
the enemy.
In Heurtebise’s control plane, the crew were pleased with the results and
were feeling reassured. Among them were Lieutenant Colonel Clausewitz and
the officer serving as his chief assistant.
“I think we’ll be ready just in time for next week,” the assistant said.
“I think so, too,” said Clausewitz. “Hikari, stop the test heartbeat. Each truck,
move to a new position and prepare for a second try.”
<<Heurtebise acknowledges. The heartbeat is stopped.>> At once, everyone
in the command center relaxed. Some stood from their chairs, while others
reached for their coffee cups.
“I’d like to get more data on the wave interference,” the assistant said, “in
case things get a little confused out there. We’ve got more trucks to coordinate
than before.”
“I’m concerned about the opposite problem, too,” Clausewitz replied. “What
will happen to the amplitude if more mirror trucks are destroyed than our
estimates—”
A panicked voice came over the comms channel. <<Kommandobrücke, we
have a problem! The echo is bouncing between Trucks Five through Sixteen. We
can’t stop it!>> The soldiers inside the command center tensed.
“The new trucks,” Clausewitz remarked. “Heurtebise?”
<<I’m not generating the waves.>> Hikari replied.
“Is the echo bouncing between the trucks unaided?”
“Heurtebise’s A.I. might have mistaken the command to stop for a change in
output level,” the assistant replied. “The system could be automatically
stabilizing the echo. The new model trucks don’t have enough output to
generate the heartbeat on their own, but each does have an N2 igniter capable
of producing a small number of gravitons to make small corrections to the
wave.”
“Trucks Five through Sixteen,” Clausewitz ordered, “lock the mirrors in place
and unfocus the reflections. That will disperse the wave.”
Thrum.
The test wave had amplified. The heartbeat was now loud enough to hear.
<<This is Truck Six! I can’t enter any commands. We’ve been locked out from
the controls!>> THRUM.
The heartbeat grew louder still.
<<This is Truck Eight! It’s not just the mirrors. I can’t even control the vehicle!
The damn thing is driving on its own!>> The drivers of the newer trucks were all
screaming now as they reported malfunctions. Their vehicles were moving of
their own accord. Something else was controlling them.
THRUM.
The soldiers began to stir.
The twelve out-of-control quantum wave mirror trucks began to tighten their
formation.
“Why is this happening?” shouted Clausewitz.
The assistant slapped a palm to his head. “This morning, we used new data
code to us by Nerv Japan to update the trucks’ computers with improved
autonomy so that they can continue supporting Heurtebise in any eventuality.”
“What do you mean, ‘any eventuality?’”
“If the drivers are all dead.”
THRUM!
Now the A.I. was issuing an alert over the speakers. <<Warning: The imitation
heartbeat has reached call signal decibel level.>> “Damn it! We’re going to
invite company!” Clausewitz jumped to the microphone and shouted to Hikari.
“Heurtebise! Destroy the quantum wave mirrors on the malfunctioning trucks!”
<<Do what?!>> THRUM!
Alarms began ringing all across Novaya Zemlya.
THRUM!
The false heartbeat was the signal to commence combat operations. The
combat A.I.s for all forces present—the Euro army, the Russian navy, and the
local garrison—announced the initial combat phase…a week early.
THRUM!
The entire island was a hornet’s nest that had just been poked. The soldiers,
engineers, and scientists had all been caught off guard, but after a split-
second’s hesitation, they took off running to their stations.
The first confused query—Is this a drill?!—came in to the Euro Sixth Army’s
central command. Countless others flooded in after. In an instant, calls
saturated the voice modulation transmission network, and text requests for
confirmation scrolled down the command center’s display screen like a
waterfall. The commander of the Sixth Army personally relayed the requests to
Heurtebise’s control plane in the form of a strongly worded demand for an
immediate explanation.
Hikari spoke through Heurtebise’s external speakers. <<Watch out! I’m going
to lift you up!>> She picked up the nearest truck and turned the vehicle away,
sending the quantum wave echo out of focus. Before the other trucks could
realign themselves, Heurtebise’s A.I. assigned them new tasks, and the trucks’
guidance systems once again allowed manual input from their human drivers.
The heartbeat, which had been thundering like tens of thousands of soldiers
marching in unison, evaporated in an instant, leaving behind only the noise of
alarms and jet engines.
The assistant let out a sigh of relief. Then, the severity of the false start sank
in, and his face turned pale. He reached for the transmission switch. “We’d
better let them know it was a mistake and get those alarms turned off.”
Clausewitz gestured for him to hold off. “Wait!”
“But they told us to reply immediately!”
“Wait two minutes until we can be sure we didn’t accidentally summon the
enemy. Don’t take your eyes off the sensor readings!”
All eyes went to the display screen.
“What if we stop the alarm,” Clausewitz said, “and as soon as everyone
relaxes, the enemy appears? Even if we start the alarm again, everyone will be
out of step. We should remain in panic mode for now. Let them stay angry with
us until we’re sure this really was a false alarm.”
Everyone was on tenterhooks. The requests to confirm or deny the starting
order devolved into enraged shouting and vicious threats. Each time a new
transmission came in, the young soldiers at the comms station trembled and
looked to their commander with pleading eyes. By the time two minutes had
passed and the lieutenant colonel ordered the all-clear, the control staff were
all feeling heavyhearted.
As the assistant reported the false alarm, his only thought was how they were
all going to be held responsible.
The alarms quieted. The aircraft shuttling personnel and supplies had already
made their escape. The only remaining sounds were the rumble of the trucks’
engines, the Eva’s graviton floaters, and— THRUM.
Clausewitz and his assistant looked at each other. “What?” they said in
unison.
The heartbeat had been faint, but both had heard it.
“Why is the fake heartbeat still going?” Clausewitz asked.
The lieutenant colonel read the status window for the telemetry data sent by
Heurtebise and the trucks but saw nothing unusual. “Hikari?” he asked.
Within a small sub-window on the display, she was shaking her head. <<It’s
not me, and it’s not the trucks, either!>> THRUM.
“Then…what is it?”
“Is that…an echo?” a soldier asked. The sound seemed to be coming from a
different place than before.
Everyone who’d been moving froze and turned to listen. The soldiers who
were already at their stations looked uneasily around to find the source of the
heartbeat.
THRUM!
“That’s not an echo! It’s even louder than before!”
Something leaped out of the ground.
“Torwächter!” someone screamed. “I repeat, a Torwächter is here!”
Torwächter—German for gatekeeper—was the Euro designation for the
enemy that Nerv Japan had yet to assign a code name. It appeared on Japanese
detection systems as “Victor.”
They’d summoned Armaros’ vassal. But that wasn’t the biggest surprise.
Mouth agape, the same soldier shouted, “The Torwächter is making the
heartbeat?!”
Inside the Eva’s control plane, Clausewitz said, “The Torwächter is making an
imitation heartbeat? What the hell is going on?!”
<<Kommandobrücke!>> Hikari shouted from the speaker. <<It’s not an
imitation. It’s the original!>> “Wh…what?”
Another voice cut in. <<It’s moving!>> The Torwächter held its arms crossed
in front of its chest. Then it unfolded them to reveal a triangular object with a
large cleft in the middle and anchors at each point.
It was the Center Trigonus—the vessel that contained Super Eva’s heart.
Behind the cleft shone a brilliant, fiery light that flickered violently in time to
the heartbeat.
In the speakers in Toji’s helmet, Ibuki Maya and the Hakone control center
were coordinating the search for Asuka, but as the chaos unfolded around him,
he was in no position to participate.
“Oh, come on!” he shouted. He recognized the Center Trigonus immediately.
“Super Eva’s heart?! That’s what’s causing the heartbeat? Hyuga? Maya-san?
Are you seeing this?”
He hurried to the N2 Flanker but ran backward so that his helmet camera
could send video of the Victor back to Hakone, even if it meant a few stumbles
along the way.
Shaken, Maya exclaimed, <<I don’t believe it! That’s the singularity—the
window to higher dimensions and to the energy they hold. It’s the one we
stabilized into a heartbeat with the quantum wave mirrors inside Super Eva’s
chest!>>
No one spoke in the command center in Hakone. They were all too stunned
by the feed from Toji’s camera. They were hearing Maya, too. It wasn’t like the
chief scientist to raise her voice, but she wasn’t speaking for their benefit. She
was talking herself through what she was seeing.
<<The Lance of Longinus stole the singularity from Super Eva and broke the
shell that contained it. But when the singularity didn’t split the Earth apart, and
we didn’t measure any unusual burst of energy coming from the lance’s orbit, I
assumed it had exploded in the space they use to travel between their gates.>>
“That’s right,” Misato replied. “Once the singularity was torn from Shinji, it
shouldn’t have remained stable.”
Misato thought back to the disaster in North Africa. The Lance of Longinus
had been orbiting the earth and extending itself toward a complete ring when
the weapon suddenly changed course—like an 28,000-kilometer-long steel
snake—and pierced through the Earth, through Super Eva, taking the heart
away.
She angrily slammed her hands down onto the desk at her station. “That
heart belongs to Shinji-kun!”
She wasn’t speaking figuratively. Shinji’s own flesh-and-blood body possessed
no heart. In its place, medical imaging showed a hollow cavity. His blood
circulated from the beating of Super Eva’s heart. With that heart stolen, only
Armaros’ Q.R. Signum scale was keeping him alive.
“While the singularity was beating within the reflecting mirrors, could it have
stabilized into a heart-like state?” Hyuga asked.
<<Hm? By its own choice?>> Maya seemed to think about it. <<Like how
primitive organisms choose stability as if they possess consciousness?>>
“Whatever the case,” Fuyutsuki cut in, looking to Misato, “we are where we
are.”
“He’s right.” The commander nodded. “I don’t think the Victor would’ve
shown up with that thing in its chest if it made it easier to kill.”
The opposite was far easier to imagine.
“Maya, what’s your take on Asuka’s disappearance?” Misato asked, shifting
gears.
<<It may have been one of Armaros’ gates. She was sucked into the ground
without a trace. In which case, searching for her here would be wasted effort.>>
“Come back here right away. I feel bad for Asuka, but there’s nothing we can do
for her at the moment. I believe in her. That girl has luck on her side. She came
back from the moon, didn’t she?”
“Next subject,” Misato said, turning to Hyuga. “Is Unit Zero Allegorica ready?”
“I’d say we’re sixty percent there,” he replied. “None of the remaining work is
mission critical.”
“As of this moment, Unit Zero Allegorica is designated active. Six, get
moving!”
“Woof!” Six said.
“Arm the Eva with no restrictions.”
“Woof! Got it!”
Misato clapped her hands. “All right everyone. Get moving!”
THRUM!
The enemy’s heartbeat frightened Hikari, and at the same time, she had to
suppress the Q.R. Signum’s pulsing urge to seek it out. Her own Eva was
producing a heartbeat, too, but hers was a mere imitation, overpowered by the
real thing.
Nevertheless, Hikari managed to pick up the positron rifle from the ground at
her feet. The fire control system loaded up, and the blue options of the practice
menu were replaced one by one with a wave of orange live-fire modes. The
Eva’s reactor spooled up and began charging the weapon’s capacitors.
“Ritter to Kommandobrücke, requesting permission to fire!”
Hikari felt sweat pouring from her skin into the circulating LCL. It was a
strange feeling.
Chapter 28:
Lost on the Way Home
AS SHINJI AND TROIS raced through the darkness, Trois whispered, “I’m sorry.”
Shinji looked over his shoulder at her. She was sitting in the plug seat, close
enough that he could almost feel her breath. Yet even from this distance, he
couldn’t read her expression.
“You don’t have to apologize. We’ll keep trying as many times as it takes.”
What else could he say?
After serval attempts, Super Eva had finally broken back in to the tunnel
network. But now they couldn’t find their destination. They were lost on the
highway.
Inside Super Eva’s plug, Shinji and Ayanami divided roles the same as he had
with Quatre. Shinji piloted the Eva, while Trois controlled the Q.R. Signum that
acted as his power plant.
Why isn’t this working? Shinji wondered.
When Trois had piloted Eva-0.0, she’d lost sight of who she was. She’d
traveled these tunnels many times, thoughtlessly following Seele/Kaji’s
commands. But now that her thoughts were clear, she struggled. She’d found a
reason to live, and the Q.R. Signum’s ever-encroaching darkness terrified her.
Unable to find an exit, Super Eva drifted at tremendous speed through the
massive travel network that connected all the vast lands the Instrumentality
Project had created.
Seele/Kaji had said that the Apple’s Core, the moon, and the Earth all
constituted one land, no matter the distance separating them, while Kaworu
had called this tunnel network the space below the stage, where the
stagehands scurried to and fro. Super Eva felt no sense of movement within this
dark space but was aware of the countless paths flowing past in rapid
succession.
Why can’t we exit to normal space?
Shinji could think of two possible reasons.
First, Seele/Kaji might have followed through on his threat to cut them off and
was somehow preventing them from opening an exit portal.
But during the fight with the Victors in these tunnels, Trois had felt that
anyone who entered this space couldn’t be blocked from leaving, otherwise,
the Victors would have trapped Super Eva here. Besides, however Kaji blustered
about cutting off the only route to the Apple’s Core, Shinji could sense that
Super Eva had returned from that long, lonely tunnel to the main network.
It was probably an empty threat. I’m not even sure Kaji-san has the power to
do such a thing.
The second possibility was that Trois wasn’t letting the Q.R. Signum sink as
deeply into her as Quatre had and that she didn’t possess full control over the
abilities the scale could grant her.
But it’s not like I can just come out and say, “Hey, Trois, let the darkness
consume you a little more.”
Every time Shinji drew power from the Q.R. Signum, he could feel the
darkness trying to eat him away. Right now, Trois was taking on the majority of
the burden. She didn’t complain, and Shinji couldn’t read her expression, but
she must have been hurting.
The skirt of her black chiffon dress swayed in the LCL.
Shinji didn’t know why, but Trois was wearing the same minidress Quatre had
taken from her room. The dress must have stayed with the mutant Eva-0.0 this
whole time.
Whatever the particulars, Trois wasn’t wearing any mental shielding gear
while she accompanied Shinji in the Eva—which was also his body. But he was
experiencing no cross-contamination of thought.
Which meant that her presence was weaker than Quatre’s had been, though
both were Ayanamis.
Shinji thought back to the promise he’d blurted out in the heat of the
moment. I’ll find Trois’ color. But…can I do that? I can’t even get my own crap
together.
Shinji thought he sensed something cut across Super Eva’s path through the
otherworldly space—something very familiar.
Something red.
“Asuka?!” Shinji reflexively called out, startling Rei Trois.
“Crimson A1 is here in the tunnels?” Trois asked. “But Quatre thought Asuka
went straight back to Hakone from Africa.”
“She did. But a lot of time passed while we took our little tour of Eden. I
wouldn’t be surprised if something’s happened on the Earth side.”
Shinji could have said he might have been mistaken about Asuka’s presence
here, but he was certain he’d been right.
His eyes stared at a single point on the virtual display. From behind him, Trois
realized his consciousness was shifting out of the entry plug.
“Stay here,” Trois said, sounding oddly peevish.
“Why?” Shinji asked.
But Trois didn’t know the answer herself. “Never mind,” she said, and that
was the end of it.
She told herself her emotional reaction had nothing to do with their current
situation, but it wasn’t like she’d never felt that way before. In fact, she’d felt a
similar way when she’d lost Gendo.
Having obtained a target, Super Eva began pursuing the red presence.
In this mysterious space, which provided no sense of speed or distance, the
Eva changed course like a train switching rails.
Chapter 29:
The Gap Between
Heurtebise’s positron rifle glinted in the sun like a brass instrument. A brilliant
flare blossomed from the muzzle, and moments later came the shock wave and
the roar.
Visible on the horizon twelve kilometers away, the Victor blocked the positron
shell with its invisible, A.T. Field-like power shield. The antiparticles struck the
shield at near light speed and released a tremendous burst of energy that
scattered across the shield’s surface, either dissipating or turning into steam.
The soldiers in the basin saw a blinding flash, followed by a loud bang.
So it was with battles between giants. To the human senses, the colossi
lagged behind the beat, and the result felt like slow motion. They weren’t
actually slow. The human mind could easily understand that airplanes flew fast
despite appearing slow from the ground, but because the giants had a
humanoid shape, the subconscious couldn’t help but assign them a human
scale, thus creating a gap between perception and reality. The giants seemed to
move as if underwater. This disconnect between senses and perception could
be jarring and nightmarish.
Even when Heurtebise’s second shot fizzled on the Torwächter’s shield,
Lieutenant Colonel Clausewitz of the Euro Sixth Rapid Response Unit wasn’t
about to become pessimistic. The plan hadn’t assumed any other result.
“That’s the way, Hikari!” he shouted. “Keep shooting. Lure that bastard into
the trap! Stick to the plan.”
<<Yes, sir!>> Her voice crackled. Steam from the second shot of her positron
rifle had caused significant interference in the radio spectrum. But she got the
message and proceeded as planned.
The enemy’s early arrival had thrown the multinational forces into extreme
confusion, but they’d recovered surprisingly fast and had deployed in an orderly
manner.
The first wave of troops to arrive on Novaya Zemlya had been about to begin
their second practice exercise. They were ready. The rear guard, who’d only just
arrived, were still near the airport on the island’s southern side, and their
reaction was far more chaotic.
Even though the graviton wave mirror trucks—the linchpin of their strategy—
had malfunctioned and summoned the enemy a full week ahead of schedule,
Clausewitz remarked, “All things considered, I think we can say we’re
performing admirably.”
When the Lance of Longinus first began encircling the Earth, the weapon had
cast a light upon an area from North Africa, across Europe, and into Russia, and
had turned 1.9 million people into crumbling pillars of salt. But that was just the
first taste of the apocalypse. The disasters that followed had claimed a far
greater toll, even in Europe alone.
But now the Euro forces needed to make the bringers of destruction pay for
what they’d done—no matter the cost.
This wasn’t merely a question of national pride. They needed to do something
before humanity fully gave way to despair.
THRUM!
The black Torwächter’s stolen heart kept beating as the giant turned toward
Heurtebise and began its advance. When Super Eva had last faced this enemy,
the Torwächter had wielded an ornate, ringed staff, but this time, the giant had
shown up empty-handed. The reason would soon be apparent.
The Torwächter reached behind its back, grabbed the edge of its obsidian-like
rear plate, and snapped off a sliver. At the moment of separation, the end of
the thin handle transformed into a large, jagged spindle-like weapon.
“Is that a hammer?” Clausewitz’s chief assistant asked. “An ice axe? Those
angles are strange, but if that’s supposed to be some kind of blunt weapon, it
won’t have much range.”
“Or maybe there’s more to it than meets the eye,” Clausewitz said. “Let’s
make the Torwächter use that weapon so that we can get some data. UAV
Team 3-Alpha-East, do you have any autonomous decoys ready to attack?”
Within moments, gunfire rang out from the ground. Several unmanned
mobile howitzers began firing from the trenches. Once fired, their 150 mm
caliber shells discarded their sabots to reveal a long, slender, pointed spear of
depleted uranium. The projectiles struck the Torwächter’s shield and were
instantly obliterated into smoke and debris.
The Torwächter responded with a wide swing of its arm and a flick of its wrist.
The weapon’s handle bent, and the thirty-meter-long spindle thrust forward.
Cutting through the air, it made an eerie, low-pitched sound that could be
heard throughout the battlefield.
“It’s an atlatl!” Clausewitz shouted. The spindle launched forward, attached to
the handle by a cable. “A spear-thrower! Except the thrower and the dart are
connected by a sling!”
The giant swung its arm again.
Attached to the sling cable, the spindle’s parabolic trajectory transitioned into
a large, sweeping circular motion. Another swing, and the projectile
accelerated, around and around. Suddenly, a huge crash shook the air.
“It broke the sound barrier!” Clausewitz said. The jagged mass created clouds
in its wake and then passed them on the next revolution.
The spindle struck the howitzers’ position, and its overwhelming kinetic force
—and the enveloping shock wave—smashed through the armored vehicles and
the ground beneath them. But the spindle didn’t stop. It simply bounced
upward and continued circling at supersonic speed.
Other nearby howitzer emplacements began to fire, joined by guided rockets
belching flame.
“Who else started firing? Stop them! If that giant turns course…” They
wouldn’t be able to lure it into the trap.
But Clausewitz needn’t have worried. The black giant responded by
lengthening the thread. In a single swoop, the spindle scattered the howitzers
that had joined the attack like they were toys. Armored vehicles and chunks of
dirt and rock flew upward and began falling in all directions.
The brutish weapon circled freely at any length within a 1.4-kilometer
diameter.
The Torwächter walked forward. The whirling spindle made the air howl and
the ground rumble. Both the giant and its weapon approached the center of the
battlefield. The spindle’s shock wave carved arcs across the ground, and dust
and debris rose like a curtain. The airborne Heurtebise could hardly see the
Torwächter through the haze.
Impressive to be sure, but still only brute force.
“We shouldn’t take this thing lightly,” the assistant said.
No one offered disagreement. And yet, there was something absurd about
having to fear such a primitive weapon, while the Torwächter’s shield—and
regenerative abilities—shrugged off humanity’s weapons, which possessed far
greater range and firepower.
Nerv Japan claimed to have destroyed the other Torwächter. They hadn’t
offered any proof, but previously, the pair had always appeared together, while
today only one had come. Does that mean the report was true? Clausewitz
thought. If so, I’m thankful. Especially since those two plates together could
have opened a gateway to another space—a source of enemy reinforcements,
or our worst nightmare…another salt pillar massacre. Only having to face one
plate is good news, but today it’s behaving differently. That damn giant tore off
a piece and made a weapon out of it.
“Anything goes, huh?” Clausewitz said and then clicked his tongue. “What the
hell is that plate, anyway?”
Whether attached to a Torwächter or Armaros, the plates never separated
from the ground. They matched their bearer’s movements, emerging from the
earth or submerging into it as needed.
Nerv Japan had come up with an oddball theory. The largest of the giants,
Armaros, previously had two rear plates that connected to the ground. After
the Japanese Eva destroyed a Torwächter, Armaros was seen with only one
plate. And the Torwächters could use the Earth’s surface as a warp gate.
Connect those two facts, and…
The assistant must have been thinking the same thing, because as he double-
checked Heurtebise’s status windows, he said, “The Japanese claim the plates
don’t have an end on the other side of the ground. If you followed Armaros’
plate, it would lead you through the tunnel network to the Torwächter’s back.
They made sure to clarify that this is only conjecture, but the circumstantial
evidence is there.”
“Our strategy stays the same,” Clausewitz said curtly, “but I’ll take that into
account. For now, my biggest concern is that weapon it’s swinging around. It’s
going to be even more trouble than it looks. With one swing, that spindle could
take out half our mirrors. Remove the option from the formation list for the
graviton wave mirror trucks to surround the target in concentric circles. And
let’s see if we can sever that sling with some long-range fire. In three, two,
one…”
The A.I. chimed. <<The Torwächter is speeding up and is now entering the
mirror array.>>
Chapter 31:
A Person in Spirit
AS THE PITCH-DARK SPACE of the tunnel network raced by, something grabbed
Super Eva’s hand. Shinji was startled but not afraid. The hand was warm.
<<Shinji! I found you!>> The voice seemed to come from overhead. Shinji
recognized it immediately.
“Asuka?!” he asked.
When Super Eva turned to look over his shoulder, he expected to see the red
giant, Crimson A1, the mix of Asuka and Eva-02. So he was surprised when he
saw Asuka’s human face. There in the strange corridor was Asuka, outside her
Eva, unclothed save for countless red shapes swirling around her, so fast that
they were a blur, like a robe of heat and wind.
Shinji didn’t understand what was happening. He began to consider the real
possibility that he was hallucinating.
Asuka rushed toward him, though he couldn’t get a sense of where she was in
relation to him or how big she was, either. He caught her and felt his arms
around her—and her at his chest. Whether that was his own chest or Super
Eva’s, he couldn’t tell. It felt like both.
“Trois…I think maybe I’m hallucinating.”
“No, that’s the Second—” Child, Trois was about to say, but she started over.
“That’s Asuka. I see her. But physically, I can’t make out where or what she is.”
Right now, she was human-sized, and she happily buried her face in his chest,
with her hands on his shoulders.
Wait, this isn’t right. This isn’t like her.
<<You were the one crying, telling me not to go anywhere—but then you left
me. You’ve got some explaining to do!>> Ever since the Q.R. Signum had
replaced his heart, the entry plug had felt chilly, no matter how warm he set the
LCL. But now he felt warmth spreading through it. Was this happiness? A feeling
of security?
Asuka noticed Ayanami Trois sitting behind Shinji.
“Cinq!” Asuka said. But that Ayanami was no longer in this world. “Cinq…you
got home ahead of me. I see you melded into Trois. Oh, Cinq, I’m so sorry I left
you.”
But rather than correct Asuka, Trois replied, “It’s all right.”
Startled, Shinji turned to Ayanami.
She really was Trois, and yet her gentle expression belonged unmistakably to
Cinq.
Cinq’s memory—or was it her consciousness?—spoke through Trois’ lips. “I
can only see myself in the connections I have with others. That’s what limits me
—but it also gives me a sense of values. I made the right decision, and I feel
fulfilled. You mustn’t feel bad for me. And that goes for you, too, Trois. I was
able to express who I am.”
Shinji didn’t notice that Trois was crying into the LCL. Cinq’s words had
provided salvation from her guilt over Cinq’s birth and death.
Trois was the one who’d come up with the plan to form a mental link with her
three clones to create an orbital Angel interception network. Ultimately, Cinq’s
death flowed from that decision.
“Trois,” Asuka said, grinning. “You look good in that dress.”
Who was this straightforward, sincere girl? Who was this person who’d found
Cinq within Trois and who looked straight into Shinji? Was this who Asuka had
kept hidden beneath her pride?
“Whoever picked that out must have had a good eye,” Asuka said.
At least she still knew how to brag. Shinji wanted to believe this was Asuka
and not an illusion. She separated from his chest but kept both hands on his
shoulders as she mounted the front of the pilot’s seat. The red forms continued
swirling around her body like clothing. The skirt—if it could be called that—
billowed around her legs.
“Shinji,” she said, “I flew all the way to the moon by myself. I guess I came
home with a crowd, but still, don’t you think I’m incredible? Tell me I’m
incredible.”
She batted her long eyelashes at him, but it sounded like an order.
Shinji’s expression had been frozen in shock, but now it shifted to one of
confusion.
Asuka had come home from the moon—but her data had merged with that of
her Eva. He’d thought there was no hope of reconstituting her alone.
Yet here she was, right in front of him. Smiling. Is this really her?
He began to think about everything that had happened to them, and he
started to grow emotional. No, I can’t let myself cry now.
He knew she’d make fun of him for it later.
“Yeah, Asuka,” he managed. “You’re incredible. I…I’ve got a lot of respect for
—”
She pressed a finger to his lips. “Respect feels too distant. You can keep it.”
Shinji didn’t care anymore why or how she was here. Her presence was
enough.
She’d made it to the moon by herself, she’d battled an Angel Carrier in low
gravity, she’d discovered the moon’s Ark, and she’d made it home to Earth even
after losing her body.
Now she’d reclaimed her self, in body and mind. Astounding.
What could a guy even say to that?
“Asuka, you’re…you’re one crazy son of a—”
“Watch it.”
Probably not that.
Shinji couldn’t believe they were talking like this again—sharing words,
sharing apologies…
Asuka suddenly looked into the far distance, as if someone had called her.
She stiffened and then looked toward Shinji.
“Asuka?” Shinji asked.
Her smile had vanished. Her stare was piercing, her voice wary. “It wasn’t you.
Then who?”
The flow of LCL in the plug reversed, as if blown by a gust of wind.
“You didn’t bring me here, Shinji! It wasn’t you!”
In an instant, she’d separated from him. Then she was outside Super Eva once
more.
“What?” Shinji asked. He felt like he’d been pushed away.
The whirling red wind hid Asuka behind its veil, and the vortex grew wider
and bigger until it was as large as an Eva. It flew away through the tunnels.
Then Shinji and Trois heard the sound, coming from the direction Asuka had
gone.
THRUM!
They both froze.
“That’s your…” Trois whispered.
Shinji looked at her over his shoulder. “My heart? How?!”
Chapter 32:
The Closing Mirrors
THRUM!
Super Eva’s stolen heart pulsed in the center of the circle of dust and debris
stirred up by the spindle’s sweep. The heart’s current owner, the Torwächter,
advanced toward the sound of Heurtebise’s imitation heartbeat.
Were Armaros’ retainers driven to steal the heartbeat’s source? Or did the
imitation heartbeat simply offend them?
Hikari’s eyes darted between her Eva’s visual feed and the map with the
deployment diagram. The dot indicating the Torwächter’s location crossed a
demarcation line on the map.
“Th-the target has entered the mirror array!” Hikari stammered. “Heurtebise
to Kommandobrücke—I’m switching the graviton floater mode.”
The graviton floaters stopped making the imitation heartbeat and prepared to
generate gravitational distortions. Losing the sound of the heartbeat it sought,
the Torwächter slowed its advance, as if unsure, which was just what Hikari
wanted.
From the control plane, Clausewitz announced that the trap was ready.
<<Mirror convoy, close the circle! Ritter, begin!>> The sixteen armored
trucks, with trapezoidal arrays of quantum wave mirrors mounted on gimbals,
raced across the barren land. The convoy overtook Heurtebise and began to
spread out.
Heurtebise’s graviton floaters hummed. The majority of the energy created by
gravitons escaped out of our dimension through gravitational waves. But when
positioned right, the graviton wave mirrors could reflect and focus those waves
into a single point in space.
The Torwächter continued swinging the spindle. As the giant took another
step, the space beneath its foot warped slightly and snapped violently back into
place.
This was the limit of the N2-based graviton technology. By producing
gravitons in greater quantity, the effect could be used to make Heurtebise and
the N2 Flanker fly, but those were fixed targets upon which the floaters could
be applied in great number. Gravity-based weapons that could blast away or
even knock over a distant target remained the stuff of science fiction.
But graviton technology still had its uses. The gravitational alteration could
pass through the Torwächter’s shield. The effect wasn’t strong enough to push
it over, but the Torwächter stumbled on the small distortion and staggered
forward.
Clausewitz spurred her on. <<Again, Hikari!>> “Yes, sir!”
Evangelions and Torwächters were able to stand on the ground. In other
words, they were physical objects affected by gravity, and their A.T. Fields and
power shields couldn’t block the force, either.
The Torwächter tripped on another distortion and lurched forward, just
barely regaining its balance.
<<Careful! The Torwächter lengthened the sling! The spindle will hit you on
the next revolution!>> Hikari’s eyes widened. She looked to her left where the
jet-black projectile raced toward her.
She swung the positron rifle around and managed to shoot at the last
moment, but she missed. The spindle had bounced and changed course,
smashing into her rifle. The weapon was instantly destroyed.
The impact jolted through Heurtebise’s left shoulder and opened a deep crack
in the Eva’s armor.
“I can’t block it with my power shield?” Hikari asked. The surprise hit even
harder than the feedback pain.
With a barely audible pwssh, Hikari’s plugsuit injected sedative into her body.
From the command plane, Clausewitz called out, <<Hikari, are you all
right?!>> “Y-yes…but I used the sedative, and…”
<<Don’t worry. Just hang on. I’ll increase the dummy plug’s control. The Q.R.
Signum will become more active, which should speed up Heurtebise’s
regeneration. Just take it easy. We’ll pilot you from here.>> The dummy plug
had only just begun interfacing and optimizing with the Eva’s damaged organ
systems. Heurtebise’s body was still limp, but the N2 reactor and the graviton
floaters got to work. The weary giant lifted from the ground and started to
move…slowly.
The pain in Hikari’s chest had begun to subside. Between the sedative and the
dummy plug system, her consciousness was growing hazy. But she needed to
speak.
“Clausewitz, sir… The heart. The Torwächter’s heart is beating faster, and…”
<<What is it?>> “It feels dangerous…even though…it’s my class rep’s—my
friend’s heart.”
The Torwächter continued to slither toward her.
But as its quarry began to fly away beyond its reach, the mangled Torwächter
froze, no longer pushed by its back plate, like a child left behind.
Brightly shining particles rained like blood from the Torwächter’s gaping
wounds. The particles came from the same radiant light that spilled from the
higher dimensions with each beat of the Center Trigonus’s heart.
“The heartbeat…” Hikari said, “it’s…”
The heartbeat’s sound had been drowned out by the battle, but now that
quiet had fallen again, the Euro and Russian soldiers noticed the black giant’s
hastened pulse.
BA-THUMP BA-THUMP BA-THUMP.
As glimmering blood gushed from the Torwächter’s wounds, the light behind
the crack of the Center Trigonus flickered even brighter. Crudely grafted onto
the Torwächter’s chest, Super Eva’s chest cover glowed red with intense heat,
searing the black giant’s flesh.
Was the heart about to explode, taking the giant with it? That might be cause
for celebration if that were the extent of the destruction.
The soldiers felt an instinctive alarm. They were standing in front of a dam
about to burst.
“Damn it,” Toji said from the cockpit of the hovering N2 Flanker. He pounded
his fist on his cybernetic leg. “I think I understand now.”
Super Eva’s heartbeat inspired hope in humanity to keep fighting, even when
confronted by colossal forces that could easily squash them. The heartbeat
signified the will to exist. It was a force that fought, at any expense, to remain
on the world’s stage even after the curtain had fallen. Armaros feared that
heartbeat. He’d stolen the heart in desperation.
“He fears the heart, and so he hates it. He wants humanity to destroy it!”
BA-THUMP BA-THUMP BA-THUMP.
“And as if that wasn’t bad enough, when that thing blows, from what Maya-
san says, the blast will wipe out this whole island—and beyond. With all these
soldiers dead, our will to survive will weaken. What a fine way to teach us a
lesson, huh?”
But what could be done? If the soldiers evacuated, and they tried to call down
Aten’s Hammer instead, the Torwächter might escape, leaving humanity no
better off than when this had started. Let up now, and they’d lose their
opportunity to destroy the Torwächter.
In the control plane, Clausewitz said, “We just have to keep fighting.”
Everyone else was thinking the same thing.
The flow of the Torwächter’s glimmering blood slowed, and that was when
the soldiers realized there was a second black giant.
Pressed tightly against the back of the propped-up Torwächter, so that their
two shapes matched, the second giant reached two arms around the front of
the first and soothingly held the raging heart. The heartbeat calmed.
Then the second giant moved out from behind the silhouette of the first and
revealed its own rear plate.
“A-alert!” Clausewitz stammered. “All forces, alert! A second Torwächter has
appeared! I repeat…”
But Toji was the most surprised. “That’s impossible! The other one… Shinji
said he’d defeated the other half!”
The Euro and Russian forces began firing at will. Amid the rising smoke, nearly
every shot missed. The chaotic barrage obscured the new Torwächter from
view. The giant seemed to have deployed its power shield, but the thick smoke,
electromagnetic interference, and heat blocked all sensors.
All Toji saw was the very tips of the two giants’ rear plates touching together.
“Damn!” he said. Using the military advisor protocol, he cut into the combat
radio frequency.
“Nerv Japan observer to all forces. This is an emergency! All units near the
Victors—er, the Torwächters—withdraw immediately!”
But the Euro’s control plane wasn’t hearing any of it.
<<What idiot is shouting on this frequency?!>> The cause of Toji’s panic was
about to become clear to them.
THE BATTLEFIELD was in chaos. The video feeds transmitted to the UN giant-
transport plane began to shut off, and the ones that remained provided little
useful information. But the U.S. crew didn’t need the cameras—their plane
could see the operational area with their own super-telephoto lenses.
The crew gasped when they saw the ten giants—nine against one.
Even with the support of the militaries’ combined firepower, the fight was
ludicrously unbalanced. Was there any point in joining in?
Mari watched Asuka/Eva with rapt attention.
“That woman… She’s sublime. Even with all those others mixed in, she shines
right through, pure and true.”
The girl was seeing something beyond human perception.
But she had no way of showing this to the others, and they heard her words
as just another nonsensical and unsettling utterance.
“A woman?” an officer said. “That’s not a woman. Nerv Japan calls it Crimson
A1. A pilot named Asuka got her data mixed together with her Eva, and that’s
what came out. Hm? Mari?”
Mari abruptly turned and took off running toward the entry deck, with her
bio-tuning robot hurrying after.
“Asuka-chan is cool! Cool, cool, cool!”
Mari had found her reason for existing—and an ideal to seek.
“I want to be you!”
Chapter 34:
Resolution and Execution
THICK, BILLOWING SMOKE rose from the smoldering earth of the battle-ravaged
arctic island of Novaya Zemlya.
A window to another place stood open. Seven Angel Carriers had arrived from
the other side. One group dominated the sky, white wings thundering, while a
second group landed on the ground.
Two Victors—or Torwächters, as the Europeans called them—had opened the
gate. The first Victor carried Shinji’s stolen heart, and had been gravely injured
by the Euro and Russian forces and the Euro Eva, Heurtebise. But the Eva had
also taken a deep wound.
When the gateway opened, several units on the front line went radio silent.
A tepid, sweetly scented wind blew out from the other side.
Soldiers who’d properly protected themselves with CBRN gear sent panicked
reports as they watched their less-prepared comrades transform into pillars of
salt—some of whom dutifully radioed in their own disintegration during their
last seconds of life.
Heurtebise’s control airplane closed off all external air intakes. From the
comms station, a radio operator said, “Kommandobrücke to all mirror trucks,
check that your personal equipment is airtight, pressurize your cabins, and
switch to interior air recirculation!”
Despite being badly shaken by these events—or perhaps because they were
shaken—the operators carried out their duties by the book, and they
disseminated the instructions that had been prepared for this eventuality.
Good, Lieutenant Colonel Clausewitz thought as he watched his crew.
“Hikari,” Clausewitz said into his headset, “you’d better arm yourself with
Dora while you have a moment.” He paused. “Hikari?”
A message came in from the joint forces headquarters by way of the Sixth
Army command center. They’d lost contact with three artillery units near the
Torwächters. The joint commanders wanted to know if Heurtebise could buy
any time for rescue efforts to be staged.
Clausewitz plucked the headset from his assistant, who, to his credit,
remained resolute despite the chaos.
Speaking into the microphone, the lieutenant colonel minced no words.
“Sorry, sir. Everyone in those units has been turned into a pillar of salt.”
Several members of the observation team had also ceased transmitting vital
signs.
The team had been installing sensors across the battlefield when the shooting
started, and they’d taken refuge under the closest shelter. A nearby sensor was
now reporting the presence of sodium chloride, equal to the mass of several
human bodies. A saw-toothed line on the graph captured the moment of their
deaths.
Clausewitz could apologize to the dead later.
He tossed the headset back to his assistant. “Something’s wrong with Hikari.”
“Is she not responding? I’m not seeing any abnormal readings—or at least,
not any more than you’d expect from those injuries. The regeneration is
proceeding well, and—”
Before his assistant could finish, Clausewitz adjusted the microphone on his
own headset and spoke loudly and slowly.
“Ritter! Schaft! Hikari! Get Dora! The eighty-centimeter armor-piercing
cannon! We can’t bring it to you—the cannon weighs 550 tons, and we don’t
have anything that can move it on this terrain!”
This time, Hikari replied, but her voice was trembling. <<Y-yes, commander.
Heurtebise…acknowledged. I’ll go… I’ll go get Dora.>>
“What’s wrong, Hikari?”
A pause. She was considering whether to answer.
<<The second Torwächter… The one who came to open the gate. It’s… She’s
my friend. And the Eva beneath that plate is Heurtebise’s sister.>>
“Are you telling me that’s Asuka Langley and the first production model
Evangelion, Eva-02?!”
An operator from central command came on the line. <<The outer territory
observation UAV squadron is launching.>>
At timed intervals, small scouting drones began taking off from just beyond
the outer ring of the battlefield. They were light gray and resembled miniature
fighter planes.
“Are you sure it’s her, Hikari?” Clausewitz asked.
<<I…>> she began weakly. But then her voice rose into a loud, tearful cry. <<I
wouldn’t mistake her anywhere!>>
Startled by the noise, the staff at the nearby stations looked up in surprise.
Acting in parallel with the main combat operations, the plan was to fly the
squadron of scout drones into the open window to determine the location on
the other side. The gateway had previously shown glimpses of a glasswork cubic
structure—the Ark. These reports had been corroborated by spies on the
ground in the Hakone Caldera. Now that Armaros had moved the Ark from
North Africa’s Atlas Mountains, the Europeans hoped to learn its new location.
By this time, Nerv Japan had passed word on to the Europeans that the Ark
didn’t offer salvation, but rather was a high-density repository for the
information of all life, so that the Instrumentality Project could be more quickly
rebooted after each failed attempt. But the European military had been
searching for the Ark in the Mount Ararat region because of the area’s
connections to religious stories, and they weren’t convinced that what Nerv
Japan had found was, in fact, the same Ark they sought.
Europe’s religious constituencies contained a great many people who looked
to the Ark for salvation.
But even if Nerv Japan was right, Armaros had specifically moved the Ark to
keep its location hidden from humanity. Whatever else Armaros was, he was
the enemy, and the Ark was important to him. All the more reason to seek it
out.
No one knew how many more lives would be lost on the battlefield this day.
Because of this, humanity needed to start focusing on the next step.
The ground forces launched an attack to draw the enemies’ attention away
from the scout drones. The Angel Carriers had spread out, with their backs to
the gateway, and the swarm of bullets struck their A.T. Field-like power shields
and disintegrated.
Over the radio, Hikari muttered, <<It’s all so strange. Heurtebise isn’t asking
me to rescue Asuka. Asuka is acting of her own free will. She’s not being
compelled.>>
“Hikari,” Clausewitz repeated, “get Dora. And stay at range. We need you to
figure out which Angel larvae those carriers are hiding!”
Hikari usually had no trouble focusing on her tasks, but now that the dummy
plug had taken greater control, her consciousness was melding into the Eva. She
was gaining new, extraordinary senses, and she was beginning to act in
previously inconceivable ways.
“You need to keep your head in the fight, or you’ll get yourself killed. There’s
too many of them!”
“Understood,” she said, but she was clearly more concerned about Asuka/Eva
turning out to be the Torwächter who’d opened the gateway than she was
about the seven approaching Angel Carriers.
The attacks of Heurtebise and the Russian naval railguns had fatally injured
the first Torwächter, reducing it to a torso, a head, and one arm—the same arm
that had been swinging the spindle-shaped weapon. The giant had turned into a
grotesque statue, propped up only by the black plate that grew out of its back,
no longer contributing to the battle except as a raggedy scarecrow, while Super
Eva’s heart raged out of control. But the second Torwächter—Asuka/Eva—had
come over and calmed the heart. Rather than self-destruct, the broken
Torwächter had begun rapidly reconstructing its missing limbs.
A volley of guided munitions sailed toward the wounded Torwächter, but
Asuka/Eva neutralized them with her A.T. Field. Though partially concealed by
explosive flashes and billows of smoke, the Torwächter’s recovery seemed to
progress differently from the way Evas or even Angel Carriers regenerated. The
giant’s black armor was reassembling, as if guided by unseen hands, but only
the Torwächter’s external layer was being reconstructed, not the body
underneath.
In the control plane, the observers from the science teams turned to each
other in confusion. “Where’s the Torwächter’s Q.R. Signum?” one asked.
Previously, the Torwächters had arrived, opened a gateway, and then quickly
departed. The location of their Q.R. Signum scale—or scales—remained
unknown. The working assumption was that the black-and-red scale must have
been hidden somewhere internally. But now, a gatekeeper’s body had been
shredded apart in plain sight, and there was no sign of a Q.R. Signum inside.
The resident theoretical physicists’ minds raced. Supposing the Torwächters
don’t possess any Q.R. Signum scales at all, what does that mean?
Rather than being merely linked to Armaros, are the Torwächters his
shadows?
The ground rumbled.
The Angel Carriers on land planted their feet firmly, and the ones hovering in
the air descended to a few meters above the ground. In time with the
Torwächter’s heartbeat, they began slamming the butts of their staves on the
ground.
Each strike shook the earth. Even amid the explosions and gunfire, the
rhythmic rumble announced the heartbeat—and their presence—far and wide.
So far, the battle had been a messy free-for-all. The ten giants seemed to
move with no apparent order, and the soldiers fired their cannons and missile
launchers at will. But when the seven carriers began striking the earth in unison,
the armies from each nation could sense something bad was coming, and their
chaotic barrage temporarily subsided.
The armies shifted from offense to defense while new orders filtered down
from their commanders.
During the lull, the joint command officers took a moment to assign each
Angel Carrier a number from one to seven. Any allied forces with electronic
sensors and line of sight—from fire control teams stationed around the edge of
the battlefield, to warships, to Heurtebise’s control plane—shared their
information with the rest of the military, and each carrier, along with its
number, appeared in real time on the strategic map.
The fundamental strategy employed when eradicating Angel-class enemies—
whether they appeared alone or in groups—was to focus as much firepower as
possible on one target at a time. In practice simulations, this seemed to be the
best approach. However, in a real battle, with this many targets, while the
military evaluated the effectiveness of a given attack, the other carriers might
already be striking back. To allow for better response time, the attacking forces
were split into groups that would attack in a predetermined order. When
assigned a target, the groups would focus on that target, regardless of what the
enemy was doing, while groups without a target would be free to defend
themselves against whatever was attacking them.
“If you identify an Angel Carrier carrying Zeruel in its cocoon, take that carrier
out,” Clausewitz ordered, “even if you’re under attack from the other carriers.”
The Angel Zeruel was capable of firing long-range attacks in quick succession.
The human forces relied on striking their enemies from superior range, so an
Angel that followed the same tactic posed the greatest threat. As long as the
military didn’t need to defend a specific point, they could fight the other Angels
on the run.
Chapter 35:
Their Own Reasons
A chain-like object flew out from the Angel Carrier’s cocoon and launched
toward the U.S. Eva’s head. The chain was shaped like a double helix. It had to
be the Angel Armisael. The U.S. Eva lifted its head out of the way of the first
attack and stopped the second by biting down on the Angel with fanged jaws,
stopping the whiplashing double helix dead in its tracks.
“Eliminator Torus!” Mari shouted. “Engage!”
Four conical structures were mounted on the U.S. Eva’s back. One began to
rotate, smoothly accelerating faster and faster.
The four cones contained American-developed super-directional N2 explosive
charges. The high-velocity spin caused a more compact N2 reaction along the
core and the outer ring, which then produced a secondary reaction in the
middle. The result was a hyper-directional N2 explosive, created within the
barrel of the cannon that fired it.
<<Mari!>> an officer transmitted from the giant-transport plane. <<Don’t
waste those! You only have four. And you’re too close!>> “Bang,” Mari said.
Once the core of the N2 explosive had been compressed into the density of a
micro black hole, the charge launched from the cannon and struck the Angel
Carrier’s tough power shield like a rock tossed into a pool of water. Small
droplets of the shield splashed outward, and the N2 charge sank straight
through. The reaction on the other side was massive. A tremendous explosion
completely obliterated the carrier’s right-hand Q.R. Signum, shoulder and all,
and even tore a hole in the shield of a second Angel Carrier behind it.
Before the second carrier’s shield could close back up again, another
explosion sounded. This one carried the classic, booming roar of cannon fire,
though it, too, was terrifically loud. Crouching down, Heurtebise had shot its
cannon from the hip. The weapon was too heavy to lift any higher.
The eighty-centimeter caliber shell zoomed forward, absurdly large even after
discarding its rifled sabot, streaking past the first Angel Carrier and into the
open tear of the second’s shield.
The resulting reaction, however, wasn’t an N2 explosion like the others but
rather a phase explosion. The soldiers on the ground looked up with awe at the
cross-shaped jets of flame.
Backdropped by the flames and still clutching the Angel Armisael’s double
helix in its maw, the U.S. Eva realized, on some level, that even its mighty jaws
couldn’t physically snap the Angel in two. So it gave up trying and instead
looped the helix around the carrier’s remaining Q.R. Signum scale, yanking the
Angel to the ground. Too strong for its own good, the helix crushed the scale.
The Eva kept pulling, dragging the Angel out from its cocoon. The larva couldn’t
support its life on its own. It crumbled to dust before it ever had the chance to
infect the Eva.
The second Angel Carrier was badly damaged, but it still moved. A mobile
railgun howitzer roared, landing the killing blow.
The crew of Heurtebise’s control plane cheered.
“Amazing!” Clausewitz’s assistant said. “Those carriers didn’t stand a chance!”
“That was only the first two,” the lieutenant colonel replied. “As for the
reckless Eva on four legs—is that the American one? Why do they call it
Wolfpack if there’s only one?”
“What if there is more than one?”
Heurtebise had immediately supported the U.S. Eva in battle because Hikari’s
psyche had spread into the Euro Eva-02. She’d sensed the U.S. pilot’s peculiar
focus on Asuka.
Unconsciously, Hikari decoded the U.S. Eva’s control signal and cut into her
communications.
“What do you mean, you want to be Asuka?” she asked. “You’re coming on a
little intense. You look like if you don’t slow down, you just might eat her.”
<<Oh, really?>> the U.S. pilot replied.
“Your voice… You’re a girl?”
<<Eat her, huh? I hadn’t thought of that. You must be smart.>> “You’re
kidding, right?” Hikari said.
But she felt many pairs of beast-like eyes staring at her. Their consciousnesses
overlapped with the girl’s.
They’re…a pack?
Though different in scale and degree, their presence reminded Hikari of that
night in North Africa, when Asuka had been lost within a vast sea of organisms.
“You can’t be here,” Hikari was saying, but she hadn’t meant to. She hadn’t
even thought it.
What?
Someone else is watching. Someone far bigger than this girl.
Hikari felt as if a tremendous weight was pressing on her back, compelling her
to speak the words.
“You must not be here.”
As soon as the words stopped, Hikari blurted out as quickly as she could,
“Kommandobrücke! Lieutenant Colonel Clausewitz! I feel a strange presence.”
<<What is it?>> Clausewitz asked.
“I think it’s another message.” She began to breathe heavily. “You who should
not be… The human form must not… The form of… To give the form of… To
degenerate into the lower forms of life… Your sins are heavy.”
<<Another message from the black giant?! Hold on.>> There was muffled
conversation in the background. <<We’re monitoring the message from
responsive subjects back home. You don’t need to concern yourself. Leave
everything to the dummy plug.>> In Nerv Japan, the Ayanamis had previously
spoken as Armaros’ voice. The dummy plug wasn’t robbing Hikari of her
consciousness to the extent the clones had experienced, but Armaros’ powerful
thoughts came out through her lips and words just the same.
“Withdraw…stray wolf. The song of Instrumentality cannot be woven into
those who have degenerated into beasts. Know this—your soul will bear the
scar and will not be reborn into the next world.”
Every remaining Angel Carrier stared at Wolfpack.
The soldiers stopped their attacks as they tried to figure out why the Angel
Carriers had gone still. But then, in the next moment, the five white giants
rushed the U.S. Eva at once.
Mari was unmoved by Armaros’ message. “So what?” she muttered. “Who
cares about tomorrow. I see what I want to be. And you’re all that stands
between me and her.”
Moving not by calculation, but by instinct, and not heeding the warnings from
her control plane, she launched her second Eliminator at the nearest target.
“That’s all that matters.”
Chapter 36:
Stray Children
The stray railgun slug had damaged the N2 Flanker’s nose and the floaters on
the port side of the cockpit. The plane tilted and, unable to recover, went into a
spin.
“Toji!” Hikari shouted from Heurtebise. She’d flagged his Flanker on her
display and had been keeping track of him. She noticed his airplane’s distress
immediately.
The Flanker kept spiraling down, but Hikari saw no sign that Toji had ejected.
Then the plane disappeared behind the smoke clouds.
Hikari let go of her cannon.
The air warped around Heurtebise as the Eva grabbed the cross-shaped spear
in front of it, dislodging the weapon from the ground. Hikari roared as she
charged the nearest enemy.
The quantum wave mirror trucks couldn’t keep up with her. The crew in her
control plane frantically called out to her to make her stop, but she ignored
their commands.
The 550-ton, eighty-centimeter caliber cannon slammed breach-first into the
ground. The impact detonated the loaded charge, and the eight-ton shell flew
out from the barrel at a low angle.
The shell zoomed past the sprinting Heurtebise and struck the shield of an
Angel Carrier, whose larval Shamshel was reaching out from its cocoon with two
tentacle-like appendages. The shell failed to penetrate the shield but sent the
carrier flying backward.
Hikari saw a small crack in the Angel Carrier’s shield, and she thrust the spear
deep into the cocoon, vaulted over the carrier, and kept running into the smoke
cloud.
The carrier hadn’t died, but the U.S. Eva was about to have a turn. As the
carrier tried to get back to its feet, Wolfpack crushed the giant’s head with its
powerful forelegs and then smashed both Q.R. Signum scales. The Angel
Carriers had surrounded Wolfpack, but when Heurtebise took one down, the
U.S. Eva seized the opportunity to break free.
Mari didn’t understand why Wolfpack had suddenly become so much
stronger than before, but she didn’t care. It was only fair, considering the other
side had two Torwächters—one of which was the Asuka/Eva synthesis Mari
wanted to meet. Asuka/Eva embodied the perfect synthesis of numerous
creatures, and Mari wanted that for herself—even if it meant, as Hikari had
said, eating her.
The U.S. Eva ran into the thick smoke cloud after Heurtebise. Behind her, the
fallen Angel Carrier was still writhing on the ground, but the nearby howitzers
spat fire, turning the enemy into chunks of meat.
But striking out on their own inside the cloud, the two Evas wouldn’t have any
more support from the cannons.
Heurtebise ran through the smoke. The clouds were too thick for her sensors
to penetrate. Just before she made it out the other side, a spear-like object
pierced her right-side wings at her waist. She kept running. Overhead, her
shield repelled a corrosive liquid, and she pulled the spear-like object from the
ground by sheer force.
The object turned out not to be a spear but a long leg that extended above
Heurtebise’s head, where the four-legged larval Angel Matarael had lifted its
own carrier. Catching up, Wolfpack leaped onto the Angel Carrier and knocked
it down.
An intensely bright, long-range attack zoomed through the smoke and struck
Matarael’s body. Luckily, the attack narrowly missed Hikari and Mari—but
something was out there, waiting for them. Hikari recognized the Angel’s attack
from a report she’d read, and she wasn’t surprised when two long, thin, razor-
like ribbons snaked out and sliced through Matarael’s remains. A carrier bearing
Zeruel’s larva was somewhere within the hanging smoke.
But where?
Oh, that’s a relief. Toji’s vital signs are still all right.
“I’m sorry, Heurtebise,” Hikari said.
She’d betrayed her Eva’s trust. The presence within Heurtebise might never
lend Hikari her strength as it had before.
“I’m sorry, Asuka.”
Chapter 37:
Deadlocked
“I’LL SEE IF COMMAND will give the go-ahead for a regroup,” Clausewitz said
with a sour expression.
He was responsible for failing to manage Hikari. But assigning blame wouldn’t
change anything now. The only option was to break off and regroup. Neither
side in this fight could currently hold a battle line.
“Where are we?” Shinji asked. “And what the hell is going on?”
A loud explosion rang out, the impact rippling through his body. His head
spun.
Having suddenly emerged onto a battlefield on an island at the edge of the
Arctic Ocean, Super Eva took a fierce volley of friendly fire. He brandished his
twin swords, Kesara and Basara, and Ayanami Trois, riding inside with Shinji,
deployed the Eva’s shield. Blindingly bright bursts immediately covered the
shield’s surface. Returning to Earth in an unfamiliar location would have been
disorienting on its own, but appearing amid a massive battle was bewildering.
For Shinji, the experience was a lot like vertigo.
After about thirty seconds, the friendly fire temporarily stopped. Shinji was
trying to regain his balance when two razor-like ribbons shot toward him
through the smoke. At that last moment, he raised his swords to block them.
Sparks flew. He’d managed to guard himself, but the force of the impact pushed
Super Eva’s more-than-four-thousand-ton mass nearly two hundred meters
backward. Then Zeruel’s ribbons were gone, retracted back into the smoke
cloud.
An Angel?!
Shinji shouted to Rei Trois behind him. “Is there an Angel Carrier here?”
He was hoping she could sense what was out there, but she didn’t reply.
He looked over his shoulder. Ayanami’s eyes were unfocused. She was
fighting against something trying to steal her consciousness. Her fingers dug
into Shinji’s shoulder.
“Trois?”
“Wait, I’m getting something. A message…from the heart’s owner? No, from
the heart itself? My name is…”
Trois received the Torwächter’s message just as the giants disappeared into
the gateway.
“My name…is Shinji.”
Chapter 38:
Friend
TOJI AWOKE in what seemed to be a quite well-equipped ICU room. No, wait. I
recognize this layout. This place is the same size as the standard modular
barracks units. Between the curtains to his side, he saw a row of operating
tables.
A field hospital.
As he turned his head to look around, he saw Cyrillic letters.
“This can’t be good.”
He tried to scratch his head, but his left hand was oddly heavy.
The bedsheet fell from his arm, and his eyes went wide. His breath caught in
his chest. What he saw wasn’t his cybernetic arm but a terribly pale, emaciated
flesh-and-blood arm fastened to his shoulder.
“What the hell is this?!”
A man’s voice answered from the other side of the curtain.
“Don’t you recognize it? That’s your arm, Toji. We grew it for you three years
ago but gave up on reattaching it after what happened. They didn’t have any
spare cybernetics here for you.”
Through the curtains came…
“Kensuke,” Toji said.
“We didn’t reattach your limbs back then because of the whole ‘once Toji’s
body becomes whole again the Angel Bardiel will reawaken and kill us all’ thing.
I bet you thought your arm and leg were still somewhere in the medical
research lab in HQ, providing very valuable data on the efficacy of
preservatives.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Anyway, that’s why we haven’t reattached your leg. I’ve got that baby right
here.” Kensuke patted a cylindrical container on the bedside table. The faint
hum of a circulation system emanated from within. “And just so we’re clear, I
didn’t steal your limbs or anything. We just took them back.” He cleared his
throat. “We’d shipped them off to Nerv Germany as part of a trade. We got
details on their synchro-equalizer tech, and they got a living sample of Angel
infection to study. The security intelligence department’s technology division
has been making these kinds of backroom deals for the science department
since before I joined them.”
“I never heard about any of that.” Toji sighed. “I can’t figure you out
anymore.”
“I’m only doing what’s logical,” Kensuke replied.
“How have you changed so much? You didn’t used to be so…clandestine.”
Kensuke offered a wry grin and shrugged, as if he’d been expecting this
reaction.
“That’s exactly it, Toji. Am I the only one who’s never allowed to change? I got
tired of you and Ikari going ahead without me while I played the comic relief. If I
couldn’t follow the same road as you, and I was miserable where I was, why not
find a different path? Is that so wrong?” Kensuke shook his head. “Anyway,
don’t make me get into it now. I’d almost forgotten how lousy I used to feel.”
Kensuke picked up a water bottle and twisted the cap off. “I’ll admit, I go too
far sometimes, but I’ll make things right. I know I really did something bad to
Hikari.”
Kensuke’s team had, without permission, handed Hikari’s family over to
Germany. Toji had every right to be furious. The past version of him would’ve
punched Kensuke at least once by now.
Instead, Toji said, “Your right arm… Is that working for you?”
Kensuke’s arm had been turned into salt near the Ark in North Africa. His
replacement was a basic robotic version—the kind typically donated to war-
torn countries. The technology was limited so that local facilities could handle
the installation and repair.
“It’s definitely a step down from the one you had,” Kensuke replied. “You
almost walked out of here with one of these, you know.”
Kensuke exited through the curtains. As he left, he stuck out his stiffly moving
right hand and formed the rock-paper-scissors gestures. And then he was gone.
Chapter 39:
Giants, Humans, and Beasts
THE UNEXPECTED WITHDRAWAL of the Victors only made the battle more
confusing.
Shinji tried to break away, but as soon as Super Eva took to the sky, the Euro
forces misidentified him as a Victor-class threat and knocked him back down to
the ground with an explosive barrage.
“Gah!” Shinji groaned inside the entry plug.
Trois was still sitting behind him in the plug seat. She explained what she’d
figured out.
“I managed to pick up a time code from a radio transmitter. The signal is
weak, but we’re somewhere in Moscow Time. High latitude. Near the Arctic
Ocean.”
From the moment he’d arrived, Super Eva had been transmitting his unique,
internationally registered signature code, which identified the giant as Nerv
Japan’s Eva-01. Even if Super Eva wasn’t registered in the IFF databases of these
armies, each country’s strategic AI should have figured out who he was and
flagged him green. But the computer systems must have been confused, too,
and the friendly fire ebbed and flowed. This last volley had been particularly
intense.
The biggest reason for Shinji and Trois’ predicament had come directly before
their arrival, when Asuka/Eva appeared with a black plate on her back and
rescued the first Torwächter from certain destruction. The Russian and
European militaries’ trust in Nerv Japan had plummeted, not that the pair inside
Super Eva had any way of knowing.
Currently, the allied soldiers considered Super Eva another of the black giant’s
underlings. Recognizing that he was in danger—though not why—Super Eva hid
in the thick vapors that blanketed the battlefield.
The ground had been cratered and scorched. White and gray smoke rose from
the smoldering earth, and black, electromagnetic clouds flashed with lightning,
blocking all sensors from seeing anything within.
The clouds would likely offer little shelter from the Angel Carrier that had
attacked him, but at least the bombardment from his fellow humans would
ease. Their weapons weren’t as effective as the Angels’, but they still hurt like
hell.
Chapter 40:
The Wolves
A wide hole opened in the smoke, and a white, staff-like weapon thrust
toward the U.S. Eva. Thanks to Super Eva’s previous attack, the Eva beast was
already on guard and had managed to roll sideways out of the weapon’s path.
The staff impaled itself in the ground, which exploded, forming a crater wide
enough that Super Eva had to retreat to keep his footing.
Shinji didn’t even notice when two other staves similarly impaled themselves.
A fourth came swinging down to the beast’s new position. The U.S. Eva sprang
backward, out of the way—but when the beast tried to advance again, it ran
headfirst into an invisible wall. Shimmering colors, like on the membrane of a
soap bubble, swirled across the wall’s surface.
Super Eva and the U.S. Eva had been trapped in a four-walled space, with
each staff at one corner.
Shinji looked up, searching for a way out. The four walls converged at a point
far overhead. He struck one of the walls with his sword, but the weapon
bounced off with a loud clang.
“They trapped that beast,” Shinji said, “but now we’re caught in here with it!”
A voice came down from above. <<No, it was meant for you as well.>>
Outside the invisible pyramid, four pairs of wings beat away the smoke of battle
and the steam of heated permafrost.
Shinji gasped as four Angel Carriers leaped into view.
The white giants circled the pyramid once, and then each placed a hand
against one of the four walls. The carriers slowly pushed their way through the
barrier, which rippled around them like the surface of a pond.
“They’re trapping us in here where they can gang up on us!”
But that wasn’t all.
“Ikari, look!” Trois said.
Inside the barriers, the carriers’ arms—and then their bodies—were twice,
maybe even three times as large as they had been on the other side. Like light
refracting through water, the carriers’ bodies grew as they passed through the
walls.
“Oh, come on!” Shinji cried. This was absurd.
The carriers grew nearly as large as Armaros himself. Once fully inside, each
supersized giant stood with its back to one of the four walls, where they stared
down at Super Eva and the Eva beast, who’d both retreated to the middle.
“Trois, their Q.R. Signums…”
The Angel Carriers’ scales had grown proportionally with the carriers
themselves, but that wasn’t their only change. Before, dark-red patterns had
glowed softly across the surface of the quantum resonance plates, but now
those patterns were bright and shining. Shinji could tell with one glance that far
more energy was pouring into those scales.
“I see it,” Trois said. “Maybe this space allows the Q.R. Signums to receive an
oversupply of Armaros’ energy. That could be why the carriers got so big.”
Shinji renewed his grip on the swords—which still wanted to turn toward the
U.S. Eva—and pointed them at one of the Angel Carriers.
Cracks of all shapes and sizes had formed on the carriers’ armor, and blood
oozed out through them.
“Careful,” he said. “It looks like not even the Angel Carriers can conduct that
much of Armaros’ energy without paying a price. What if they’re like suicide
bombers?”
The voice returned.
“Human… For the crime of taking non-human form—”
This time, the words weren’t coming from Trois’ lips but from Shinji’s. He
reflexively clasped his hand over his mouth.
“I-I didn’t mean to say that!”
Was Armaros speaking through him as he had through the Ayanamis?
Another voice spoke inside the plug. It sounded like a little girl. The voice was
lilting, its words clear.
<<Don’t worry about us.>> “Who is that?”
He’d heard Mari’s voice—impossibly—not through a radio signal but as if she
were present.
Well, it was hard to say what was impossible in this space.
It was as if the inside of the barrier conducted everything better—not just
Armaros’ energy.
A terrible, oppressive feeling came over Shinji as the gigantic Angel Carriers
stared down at him from every side. They projected a message, which came out
through Shinji’s lips once more.
“Human child… Take dominion over the wild animals of the earth.”
Shinji’s eyes widened. He knew what was going to happen next. He could feel
it in his body.
Realizing that he’d been unwittingly handed the role of executioner, he
protested, “You’re telling me to do it?!”
The four Angel Carriers held up their hands as if to punctuate the voice’s
message.
“You, in the American Eva!” Shinji shouted. “Keep away from me!”
And then Super Eva was charging toward the beast.
Kesara and Basara filled with a savage power, glimmering with anticipation.
As the immense, unstoppable power flowed through Trois, she cried out,
“Ikari-kun!”
Super Eva was moving, but not by Shinji’s will.
“It’s me,” he said, “but it’s not me!”
Chapter 41:
The Tower of Babel
AFTER BRINGING the badly wounded Toji to the medical staff in Rogachevo on
the southern side of the island, Hikari flew back to the battlefield. As she
approached, she saw a tall, four-sided, pyramidal tower reaching up through
the clouds that had collected above the battlefield. The four walls glistened like
soap bubbles and met at a point at the very top.
“What is that?”
She descended below the clouds, where a confused battle raged.
The enemy had done the allies the favor of bunching together, but the Euro
and Russian forces were failing to implement a cohesive strategy. The soldiers
were scattered and moved without coordination.
What happened here?
Hikari pulled up the timetable and deployment map on the secondary display
screen to try to get a read of the situation, but the text was garbled and
unintelligible, and the map only showed a jumble of shapes.
Hikari wondered if some of her systems were malfunctioning. Steeling herself
to be chewed out for temporarily abandoning the battlefield, she turned to her
control plane for help.
“Heurtebise to Kommandobrücke, this is Hikari! Lieutenant Colonel
Clausewitz, are you there?”
His familiar voice came over her hydrospeaker, but she couldn’t understand a
word he said. Confused, she tested every kind of transmission coding through
her Eva’s senses. She thought that maybe the language support system of the
Eva’s onboard AI might have glitched out, but that didn’t seem to be the case.
No one on the island could talk to each other. The most they could do was
attempt to convey their emotions through noise.
“No one understands each other’s language,” Hikari said to herself.
Judging from the state of her display screen, written words or symbols
couldn’t communicate any thoughts, either. She had a feeling that even a basic
diagram would have the same jumbled result. It was like everyone had
forgotten any knowledge of language, in all forms, that they’d acquired over
their lives.
Still in flight, Heurtebise suddenly listed off-balance, and Hikari quickly
increased the power from her N2 reactors. She spread her senses into the Eva’s
systems, where nonsense characters flooded the command line, continuously
changing the settings.
“It’s even effecting the control system?”
The ability to communicate, whether through word, radio signal, or electrical
impulse, had been drastically reduced.
The exact opposite of what was happening inside the tower was happening in
the outside world.
Chapter 42:
Stand-in Executioner
SHINJI DIDN’T KNOW if the compelling force came from Armaros or from the
Victor who held his heart.
Deliver the judgment.
Though he didn’t want to, Shinji responded automatically to the command,
and Super Eva slashed his swords at the U.S. Eva.
The beast jumped sideways, dodging the strike. At the same time, Shinji had
also forced the blades off target, purposefully missing. This wild, unnatural
motion threw Super Eva off-balance, and he tumbled to the smoldering ground.
The two Evas repeated this dance, again and again.
Dodging each attack, the beast circled the inside of the tower. Super Eva’s
misses weren’t due to Shinji alone. The U.S. Eva really was good at evading the
swords.
But sometimes Shinji couldn’t turn the blades away, and sometimes the girl
wasn’t quick enough. Whenever both happened at once, blasts of air struck
Super Eva’s body, blunting his attack.
Does the girl in the American Eva know how to use her field like that? But you
have to concentrate on the projection… I didn’t think it was possible to send out
more than one at once.
Shinji felt his body groan. This awkward ballet was wearing him down even
faster than full-on combat.
Out of breath, Shinji forced the relentless swords to stay in place. He stared at
the U.S. Eva through the virtual display. The beast—or beast pack, it seemed—
stared back at him, its eyes gleaming. As the U.S. Eva dug its claws into the
ground, Shinji thought he felt the gaze of countless eyes on him.
<<Are you going to kill me?>> the little girl asked. At least, she sounded like a
little girl. But her voice was completely calm, as if she viewed her own death as
something abstract.
His shoulders rising and falling with each heavy breath, Shinji found himself
wondering about this girl at the core of the pack consciousness. Just who is she?
<<I’m Mari.>> She answered as if she’d heard his thoughts, and without any
concern about the fact that he was attacking her.
“We’re Shinji and Trois. I’m sorry about this, Mari.” Lamely, he added, “Hang
in there.”
Despite Shinji’s words, Super Eva lowered his center of gravity and readied his
twin swords for the next attack.
“I can’t exactly explain why I think this,” Shinji remarked, “but I get the feeling
you’re about the same age as Six.”
<<Six? If you know Ayanami Rei Six, then could you tell her that I have
Momo?>> “Momo?”
Did Six make a new friend? A lot must have happened in Hakone while I’ve
been gone.
When he thought about how the world had gone on without him, he grew
jealous for everything he’d missed. And jealousy made him feel small. Even
more so when he compared himself to the girl, who seemed confident that they
were going to escape these walls.
She isn’t shaken in the least. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve swung at
her, and she’s completely unruffled.
He realized why. She has a goal.
Shinji let out a deep sigh and steadied his breath. If he didn’t want to be
controlled like this, he had only one option.
“Trois, direct power to the wings.”
Launching another attack, Super Eva dashed toward the U.S. Eva. Shinji
focused his A.T. Field into the Vertex wings’ field deflection elements, and they
began to roar.
“More!” Shinji shouted.
The field continued to converge on the wings, until their roar turned harsh
and discordant. At that moment, Shinji pushed off from the ground and flew
over the beast. I’m not going to be your stand-in executioner any longer!
Each oversized Angel Carrier guarded one side of the enclosed space, while
interference patterns rippled across the barrier behind them. Shinji picked one
carrier and flew straight toward it, head-on, the white giant looming nearly
twice as tall as Super Eva.
“Do you have a plan?” Trois asked, fearfully.
“Not really.” Shinji didn’t look back. This answer would have left anyone at a
loss for words, let alone the taciturn Trois.
“What?!” she managed to gasp.
“As long as I stay on the defensive, I’ll keep being controlled. I have to take an
action before one is taken for me. Either way, it comes down to fighting them.”
No matter how big the enemies might have been, defeating them was the
only way out. There was no retreat.
The white colossus met their first attack by holding out its hand as if to say,
“Stop.” It fired a power shield and batted away Super Eva’s swords, sending him
careening down, head over heels.
They’re not just huge, they’re strong, too!
Shinji grunted in pain. Ayanami was sitting in the plug seat, while he stood
beside it, holding the control sticks. He tasted blood. He must have bitten his
lip.
Still in an uncontrolled backward somersault, Super Eva put his right-hand
sword, Kesara, into his left shoulder pylon. As soon as he landed, the Angel
inside the carrier’s cocoon fired two beams of light, which he deflected with the
field over his left-hand sword, Basara. One ricocheting beam blasted away an
abandoned howitzer. The other struck the tower’s wall, creating ripples in the
membrane, but no lasting damage.
Fighting the pain of the impact, Shinji spared a glance to the secondary
display. Kesara had scanned its opponent’s field, and the pylon was baking in
the new configuration.
Without pausing, Super Eva leaped forward and switched Basara to a two-
handed grip. Advancing upon the colossal Angel Carrier was a risky move, but
Shinji wagered that, up close, the carrier might not be able to use its size to full
advantage.
The idea wasn’t terrible, until two long, slender arms reached down from the
carrier’s cocoon. One hand opened and fired a long, glowing rod, in an attempt
to pin Super Eva down.
“Sachiel again!”
After defeat, Angels could be reconstructed from the Ark’s data to emerge
again from another cocoon. Even when we win a battle, we still lose. The
thought made Shinji feel weary.
The rod landed between Super Eva’s legs, failing to impale him. But his legs
got tangled up, and he fell over. Shinji winced, expecting to be impaled by a
second rod from the Angel’s other hand.
He heard a roar and opened his eyes to see the U.S. Eva leaping overhead.
Carrying its momentum forward, the beast sank its fangs into Sachiel’s arm and
wrenched the Angel’s elbow joint backward, as if trying to crack open a crab
leg. With a loud, sickening crunch, the larval Angel’s arm snapped. The Eva let
go, swinging away with the same speed it had charged.
“Th-thank—whoa!” Thank you, Shinji had been about to say, when a second
oversized Angel Carrier came flying in.
The toothy mouth of a giant deep-sea fish emerged from the carrier’s cocoon,
dripping magma-like beads of flame. Where the beads landed, the ground
melted into lava. Anything there burned up and sank into the molten rock.
“And Sandalphon.” Shinji sighed.
Super Eva got back to his feet and followed after the U.S. Eva just to put some
temporary distance between himself and the carriers.
Sandalphon’s carrier continued to fly around, blanketing the ground in lava.
Trois pulled open the deployment map. “That’s the carrier from the south
wall. The ones on the north and east haven’t moved. That girl must have
attacked the south one, like you did.”
“And my sword?”
“It’ll be reconfigured in another…110 seconds.”
Trois could no longer hide her pain. Nearly all the power she’d drawn from
the Q.R. Signum was being sucked up by Kesara in the left shoulder pylon. Its
thirst was limitless.
Trois had to delve deeply into the Q.R. Signum, and Armaros’ shadow soaked
more deeply into her. As Kesara was reforged, Shinji felt a throbbing, burning
pain, as if someone were pressing a hot iron against his shoulder.
A bulge moved down Sachiel’s broken arm as internal tissues pushed their
way to the injury. When they retreated, the joint had been put back into its
proper place, good as new. The oversized carrier turned and began firing flashes
of light at the Eva beast.
Running on four legs, the beast weaved left and right, skillfully evading the
Angel’s rays. One shot was on course to strike the Eva, but something invisible
crashed against the light ray, deflecting it.
Shinji watched the air distort as unseen shapes seemed to pass over the U.S.
Eva.
“Are they autonomous?” Shinji asked. “Something with free will? What…”
Mari responded with a question of her own. <<You’re a man and an Eva, but
in the end, you’re still only one person. Don’t you get lonely being by yourself?
>> There must have been more than twenty of the distortions. They moved in
unison, spaced apart. Shinji watched them encircling her.
“They’re like a pack of wolves,” he remarked, not knowing the U.S. Eva’s code
name.
The strange-looking Eva and its pilot had both undergone genetic
modifications to incorporate the DNA of various animals. But that didn’t mean
Nerv U.S. had known the Eva would end up like this. The fusion of beast and
Eva/pilot had been designed to inhibit their perceptions of individuality, so that
Eva-compatible pilots could easily be sourced.
The manifestation of the wind animals, which now raced across the ground
around the Eva, was almost surely a result of the way energy flowed within this
enclosed space.
Shinji tried to rationalize what he saw as remote projections of the girl’s A.T.
Field, which she’d formed into a pack of beasts. He found it hard to believe that
each and every one of them had its own consciousness.
As Shinji followed after the curious Eva and its pack, Mari spoke again.
<<What about that Torwächter? It called itself Shinji, too.>> “What?”
The AI chimed. On the secondary display, the sword’s countdown had
reached zero, and a new message appeared: REFORGING COMPLETE. INITIATE
COOLDOWN.
Shinji returned Basara to his left hand. “Let’s do this!”
The shoulder pylon’s chamber opened, offering the red-hot blade.
Shinji readied himself, remembering what happened last time.
When he went to grasp the sword, Super Eva drew the weapon before he
even realized what was happening.
My perceptions are lagging again!
Rei Trois was shaking. She covered her mouth to keep from crying out.
The black hand reached out from the Q.R. Signum and held the sword.
What is that thing?
Hot wind whipped around the forty-meter-long sword. Super Eva turned the
weapon upside down and thrust it into the frozen ground.
The tremendous reservoir of heat poured into the earth, and the
underground moisture vaporized and swelled. The ground erupted around the
kneeling Super Eva, veiling the giant in steam. Sachiel fired several rays of light
into this white curtain, scattering the base of the steam column, but Super Eva
was no longer there. He’d flown upward with the rising steam and was now
bearing down on the carrier, his sword at the ready.
Super Eva brought the blade down with all his might.
Kesara pierced the carrier’s shield, but not all the way through. Its tip was
suspended in air, the shield dramatically stronger than before the carrier had
grown supersized.
“Damn you!” Shinji screamed.
All of Super Eva’s heavily armored weight was behind the blade. Shinji turned
his Vertex wings, putting their full thrust behind him. Sparks flying between the
fields, he forced the sword the rest of the way through the carrier’s shield and
slashed sideways. Just barely, the blade reached one Q.R. Signum, destroying it.
But when two sharp rods pierced Super Eva’s stomach and right thigh, Shinji
realized he’d overcommitted to the attack.
While he’d been distracted, Sachiel had extended its arms out of its cocoon,
opened its pile-driver palms, and driven the rods into Super Eva.
Super Eva had not only been stationary but had also partially routed his A.T.
Field’s power into his wings’ propulsion, weakening the field. The Angel had
used this opportunity.
But the carrier also had stopped moving, its attention on Super Eva.
Mari was ready. “Eliminator Torus, engage!”
Three of Wolfpack’s back-mounted cannons had already been spent, but the
fourth black cylinder began to spin. The super-directional N2 explosive charge
let out a blinding flash of light along its rotational axis, then burst in the hollow
chamber. The charge imploded, spitting out the secondary N2 reaction at such a
high speed that the projectile appeared like a solid beam to the naked eye.
The secondary N2 charge lost most of its initial velocity as it penetrated the
carrier’s thick shield, but it made it through. The charge exploded, shattering
the Q.R. Signum and burning everything behind the shield—the Angel Carrier,
Sachiel, and all.
The carrier was dead. Its shield instantly dissipated, and the explosion’s
leftover energy spilled outward. The blast threw Super Eva backward. His head
visor slammed shut, protecting his eyes from the extreme heat, while his
restraint armor burned. Before his visor closed, Shinji saw something that
surprised him—not even the explosion had been enough to fully destroy the
carrier’s torso.
Super Eva hit the ground as if in slow motion, its mass trembling the earth as
it bounced and rolled to a stop.
Shinji groaned in pain. The entry plug—and Super Eva—were sideways. The
rod in the Eva’s thigh had been dislodged in the blast, but when the heat
subsided enough for his head visor to lift again, Shinji saw the U.S. Eva clamping
its fangs onto the rod in Super Eva’s stomach. With a sharp yank of its head, the
beast pulled the rod out.
Shinji screamed in pain.
“Ikari!” Trois said.
One downside of merging with his Eva was that the feedback pain came
directly into his mind. He couldn’t disconnect.
<<Get up!>> Mari said. <<There’s still three left.>> “Damn it,” Shinji moaned.
“You’re relentless.” He smiled weakly to downplay the pain.
The beast seemed to sense some incoming danger and leaped away. Quickly,
Shinji rolled to the side.
The ground jolted up and down. A pressure wave hit him, followed by heat.
Something must have struck the place where he’d just been lying.
Shinji directed power into his Vertex wings, and Super Eva scraped across the
ground as it rose, awkwardly. As soon as he got his feet under him, he pushed
into the air. Now his view was merely askew, rather than completely sideways.
The ground exploded in a straight line, sending up a giant wall of smoke. Hot
chunks of rock smashed against Super Eva’s body. The Eva’s senses picked up
something that Shinji interpreted as a smell—ozone and polarized electricity.
“There’s a Ramiel carrier, too?! Since when?”
Shinji was getting worried. He didn’t know if his wounded stomach and leg
would regenerate fast enough for him to fight back.
There was no way around it. Super Eva and Wolfpack were clearly
outmatched.
“I’m sorry,” Trois said, reading his concern. “If I were better at accessing the
Q.R. Signum, it wouldn’t be like this.”
“Don’t say that, Trois. The fight isn’t over yet.”
For the first time since they’d been trapped in the tower, Shinji turned to look
at her.
“Trois!” he gasped.
Swaying in the LCL, the back half of her pale blue hair had turned pure black,
as if engulfed in darkness. Her porcelain skin was a sickly ashen color, and her
lips were stained with blood, like she’d bitten them more than once. Her
shoulders heaved with each breath.
Armaros’ darkness is devouring her.
Suddenly confronted with what he’d done to Trois, Shinji felt blood rush to his
head.
“Ahh! Why?” he shouted in frustration.
“I’m sorry, Ikari-kun, I…”
Trois’ eyes were fixed somewhere distant.
But Shinji’s anger was directed at himself. And he didn’t have to think long to
understand why.
He should have known that if he left control of the Q.R. Signum entirely to
Trois, she would do everything he asked with no concern for her own well-
being.
He wanted to say, Why didn’t you tell me you couldn’t handle any more? But
he resisted the impulse.
He touched his hands to Trois’ cheeks.
She’s cold.
Her temperature was much colder than the LCL. After a moment, her eyes
focused on Shinji.
“Ikari-kun?”
Super Eva’s flight remained stable, so long as he didn’t get too far from the
ground. He glided as low as he could as he evaded Ramiel’s attacks.
Still facing Trois, Shinji patted his shoulders. “Trois, put your arms around my
neck. Like a piggyback ride.”
“Why?” Trois said, looking puzzled. “I won’t be able to control the computer.”
“Don’t worry about that right now.”
“But we’re in the middle of a battle. I can’t—”
“It’s fine.”
Trois’ body had chilled, but as she leaned on his back, her weight and her
heartbeat confirmed her existence. This was the moment Shinji learned that
physical human contact—skin against skin—carried far more meaning than any
knowledge he’d learned through the years.
Meanwhile, the battle was going terribly.
He never thought he’d have this much trouble fighting Angel Carriers when
he’d defeated so many before. And there were still three left.
But he couldn’t let it end like this.
Chapter 43:
Playing the Hand that’s Dealt
WHEN SHINJI OPENED his eyes, he was racing through the tunnel network.
When did I return here?
He looked over his shoulder to ask Trois, but all he saw were shadows flying
past him.
The tunnels didn’t recede into some far-off vanishing point but wound
together into something like a black cloth, which itself flowed back up the
corridor toward Shinji, to be sucked into the tip of the black plate on his back.
Shinji realized he wasn’t inside his entry plug.
He himself was flying through the corridors—or rather, the corridors were a
part of him.
Panicking, he looked down at his body.
It was dark black. His surface reflected the glowing particles that occasionally
strayed into the tunnel system.
He felt the warm presence of someone next to him. “Trois?” he said, looking
over.
It wasn’t Trois.
“Asuka! What are you doing?”
The Asuka/Eva synthesis moved though the corridor next to him. She’d been
facing ahead but now turned to look at him.
She, too, bore a black plate, which sucked up the corridor behind them. Her
long hair waved in the darkness.
“Why do you look like a Victor?” he asked.
She tilted her head quizzically. His eyes followed the flowing curve of her neck
to her shoulder, then to her long, slender arm, and finally to her hand, which
she held lovingly over his chest.
THRUM!
“Oh,” Shinji said. Warm light radiated from him. “There it is!”
The light and the low-pitched rumble spilled out between Asuka’s graceful
fingers.
Such heat…
The heart beat strongly.
THRUM!
Housed inside the badly cracked Center Trigonus was the window to higher
dimensions that had opened inside Super Eva’s chest.
When Super Eva’s S2 Engine had become damaged and slipped into the higher
dimensions, Shinji and the soul of his mother, Yui, had opened a dimensional
rift to restore the engine’s connection. She’d given over Eva-01’s body to her
son and gone through to the other side, while Maya and the Nerv team had
combined their efforts to control the torrent of energy that flooded out from
the rift. They’d succeeded, and the heartbeat was born.
Shinji had almost forgotten how hot, ferocious, and wild his heart was.
He opened his black hand and tried to reach inside his chest to grab his heart.
But just at the edge of the Center Trigonus, his hand froze.
<<Don’t touch me.>> “Who are you?”
<<I’m Shinji. I’m the person you’re trying to grab.>> The voice sounded just
like Shinji’s.
<<Give me back my body and my prize. Without it… Without it, I—>>
“Ikari-kun!” Trois shouted into Shinji’s ear.
Shinji opened his eyes. He was inside his entry plug.
Super Eva was falling, about to crash into the sea of lava. Matching Super
Eva’s speed, a crest rose from the blazing, looming surface. Something’s there!
Shinji intentionally turned his Vertex wings off-balance and put Super Eva into
a spin. He thrust Kesara forward just as the lava burst upward, as if to block his
path.
Kesara passed into the rising lava, into Sandalphon’s mouth, and all the way
through to the Angel’s tail.
The Angel larva thrashed about, wrapping its long front fins around Super
Eva’s arm and trying to sear it off. But Shinji hardly noticed.
<<I found my heart!>> he said, unable to contain his excitement.
“You what?” Trois replied.
Shinji’s voice hadn’t come from his mouth but from the entry plug’s
hydrospeaker. Trois realized what was happening. Shinji had entered the high
state of synchronization that shifted his consciousness into Super Eva’s body.
<<Reforge the sword with Sandalphon’s pattern!>> He wanted to use the
thrashing Sandalphon’s heat to reforge Kesara’s blade and spare Trois from
having to draw energy from the Q.R. Signum.
Trois touched Shinji’s face. Just like last time, his body had become unusually
stiff. When he spoke again from the hydrospeaker, he sounded like he’d just
come home from a trip.
<<There’s…a lot going on, and it’s bad. A Victor has my heart, and Asuka has
turned into the other Victor—the one I thought we’d killed. I don’t understand
any of it!>> Trois tried to reconcile what Shinji was saying with everything
they’d experienced.
“When we met Asuka in the tunnels,” she said, “the heart had been calling to
her. So, the Victor with your heart is the one calling itself Shinji?”
<<I think my heart is calling itself Shinji. It wants a body and a weapon.>>
“And that’s why Super Eva has been moving on his own, especially when you’re
holding Kesara and Basara?”
<<I think so. And so…>> Shinji sounded like he had an idea. <<This time, we’re
going to use my heart’s power.>> Something pushed Super Eva hard from
behind. The force surged against him as relentlessly as a waterfall and propelled
the more-than-four-thousand-ton Eva forward, swords, Sandalphon, and all.
For a second, Trois couldn’t breathe, and she felt like her body was going to
be thrown backward.
She could’ve let go of Shinji and given herself over to the back of plug seat.
But Trois wasn’t the type to go against what she’d been told, so she kept
pressing her forehead against Shinji’s back, if a little tighter than before.
As she watched over Shinji’s shoulder, Super Eva flew with incredible speed.
Something distant one moment was right in front of her eyes the next.
While kidnapped by Seele/Kaji and forced to pilot Quatre’s mutant Eva-0.0,
Trois had learned how to draw power from a quantum resonance scale. Once
she was inside Super Eva’s plug with Shinji, where he struggled to do the same,
she’d taken that responsibility upon herself.
Trois had been depressed because she felt unimportant as an individual, and
Shinji’s reliance upon her gave her happiness, even if it meant subjecting herself
to the Q.R. Signum’s corruption.
But now, a different kind of energy flowed into her from Shinji’s faraway
heart, warm and comforting, like a ray of sunlight. But it was also unrelenting,
and it pushed the Q.R. Signum’s cold reach away from her body.
Shinji realized that if the heart was exerting control over Super Eva, then it
was still connected to him in some fashion. Just as the Angel Carriers had drawn
power and become oversized, he was drawing power from his stolen heart.
Shinji stood still as a statue as she clung to his back. She let a shiver run down
her body. The top of her black chiffon dress, stained with North African sand,
rose and fell as she breathed deeply in the LCL. The color had returned to her
cheeks. She stared into the distance.
She found herself at the junction of flowing energy and looked out across the
network.
“It’s true,” she said. “Ikari-kun is on the other side, too.”
Something about that struck her as funny, and she laughed.
Asuka is protecting Ikari-kun’s heart. Well, then I’ll be his heart over here.
The power flowed through her and filled Eva-01’s body. Super Eva flew
through the sky, burning an orange trail behind him.
<<Reforging complete!>> Shinji announced.
The larval Sandalphon still thrashed upon the sword in its mouth. Suddenly,
flames erupted from the Angel’s body. It began to burn up and then exploded
into tiny fragments, leaving Super Eva’s right hand and the red-hot Kesara
behind.
From far away, Heart-Shinji shouted, <<There! The weapon! Give that to
me!>> Super Eva-Shinji shouted back. <<Yes, this is your sword and my sword.
Now, let’s bring them together! Give me your strength!>>
“Ikari-kun,” Trois reminded, “you have to temper the blade or the impact
from the next strike will destroy the molecular arrangement.”
<<That won’t matter if I kill it in one hit. This is going to get bumpy, so hold
on.>> Super Eva fixed its sights on the flying Sandalphon carrier, which had lost
the lower half of its body to Ramiel’s particle beam. He charged forward,
holding the still-hot sword behind him in his right hand, and tackled the carrier
with his left shoulder.
Their shields clashed, but Super Eva kept pushing forward until the carrier
slammed into the side wall at a shallow angle. It bounced off the membrane,
and its body turned. Shinji waited until both of its Q.R. Signum scales were lined
up just right, and then he swung the sword.
The blade, attuned to the same field pattern as the Angel the carrier had
borne in its cocoon, pushed through the oversized giant’s supposedly thick
shield like it wasn’t there at all.
By the time the Angel Carrier realized something was amiss, the sword had
already split one Q.R. Signum in half and was on its way to the carrier’s face.
The white giant’s head split open like a dropped watermelon, and the sword
passed through to the second Q.R. Signum, shattering it.
Kesara had finished its job but didn’t have time to slow down before it struck
the membrane of the pyramidal tower.
CLAAAAANG!
The sword hadn’t passed even one millimeter through the barrier, but the
loud noise thundered across the surrounding battlefield.
Chapter 45:
Inside the Pyramid
CLAAAAANG!
The edge of Super Eva’s sword struck the thin, transparent, soap-bubble wall
from the inside.
The sound reverberated for kilometers in all directions.
On the battlefield, a reenactment of the myth of Babel was taking place.
The tower’s influence had cut off all forms of communication—every
language, certainly, but even diagrams, symbols, electronic signals, and power
conductors had been thrown into disarray. With no way to find any meaningful
mutual understanding, the Russian and European allied forces were beginning
to panic.
But in that moment, when the sound of sword against barrier rang out,
everyone reacted in unison. All at once, they looked up at the tower rising
above the clouds of battle.
Some gazed up with fear, others with curiosity. With the smoke swirling inside
it, the tower looked like a giant cloud-in-a-jar experiment but with colossal
shadowed figures clashing within.
From the air, Shinji looked down at Wolfpack bounding across the ground.
Super Eva was one being split into three, while Wolfpack was a great many
souls in a single body. Though the pair had no way of knowing, they came from
very different origins, despite their similarities.
<<Now, who’s next?>> As Shinji looked for another target, his voice came not
from his mouth but through the entry plug’s hydrospeaker.
He occupied a state of super-high synchronization. Under his orange coveralls,
his body had gone completely stiff. He might as well have been part of the entry
plug.
But he’s still warm, Rei Trois thought as she held on to his shoulders. As she
braced herself against the rapid changes in acceleration, she quickly scanned
their surroundings through squinted eyes.
“Eight o’clock,” she said. “The Ramiel carrier is getting ready to fire again.”
A ring of light had formed around the oversized Ramiel carrier’s waist—even
with the cocoon—and it suddenly grew brighter.
“It’s at full energy!” Quatre said.
Super Eva raised his sword and performed an uneven corkscrew maneuver,
just as the Ramiel carrier fired its particle cannon from the right side of its ring
of light.
Super Eva narrowly evaded the initial burst, but the light beam persisted for
approximately 0.6 seconds, during which Ramiel swept the beam after the Eva’s
movements. For the briefest moment, the beam grazed the surface of Shinji’s
A.T. Field. The air burst, as if from a mighty explosion, flinging Super Eva
backward.
<<Ack! What is that light ring? Three years ago, when the Angel was a giant
polyhedron, it never attacked like that!>> Trois thought for a minute and then
said, almost whispering, “Maybe the Angel needed to be that big…”
<<What do you mean?>> “That ring seems to be acting like an accelerator for
a particle beam cannon, and it would’ve fit inside the fully grown Angel’s body.
When Dr. Akagi modeled Ramiel’s internal particle accelerator, she came up
with a torus about that size.”
<<The Angels in the carriers’ cocoons are stuck as larvae. Maybe their bodies
can’t grow to keep up with their weapons. In which case…what is Sachiel using
as a substitute?>> Shinji was trying to figure out the answer when, without
warning, Mari’s voice spoke within the plug.
<<Shinji, you attack from directly above, and I’ll attack from below.>>
<<Mari?!>> Everything was always so sudden with that girl. The U.S. Eva leaped
up from the blasted and smoldering ground and toward the flying Ramiel
carrier.
Shinji followed suit, accelerating toward the carrier. The air burned in Super
Eva’s wake as he swung his sword.
He didn’t come in from directly overhead but rather from the side. This didn’t
matter, however, as the beast had already drawn the Ramiel carrier’s attention.
Shinji’s attack should still have taken the carrier by surprise. Yet without
looking, the carrier brought its shield up and repelled Shinji’s sword.
Super Eva was thrown backward, while Mari’s Wolfpack tried to sink its teeth
into the cocoon from below. The carrier managed to move its precious cargo
out of the way, but Shinji saw the beast’s front claws tear deep gashes across
the white giant’s thigh.
Shinji’s attack didn’t go as well as he’d hoped, but at least his sword had
scanned the enemy’s field data. He returned the weapon to its sheath and
initialized the reforging process. This time, the burden wouldn’t fall upon Trois.
He could simply draw the power from his faraway heart.
Wait a minute… How did the American get through the carrier’s shield?
<<What’s going on here?!>> he asked.
“It’s the ring around the carrier’s waist,” Trois said. “Ikari-kun, the carrier is
anchoring its field in the shape of a torus. Here, look at the quantum flux
inclinations.”
She overlaid the measurement data on top of the external view display.
Countless rings formed the wireframe outline of a tube that encircled the
carrier’s waist.
<<Wait, so that means…>> Trois finished for him. “The Angel Carrier’s field is
acting as Ramiel’s particle accelerator.”
<<And the field is fixed in that position?>> The carrier’s field still served as
protective shield, but it would almost certainly be weaker to attack from
directly above and below—through the hole.
<<Mari, how did you know?>> Shinji sensed Mari’s puzzled reaction to his
question.
<<Those were the only places that didn’t smell bad.>> <<Oh. Okay.>> Shinji
was disappointed, rather than impressed.
The girl and her Eva didn’t think logically in the same way that he and Trois
did. They felt like a refutation of human culture and technology.
And their enemies seemed to share an almost visceral hatred for the Eva that
had taken the form of a four-legged beast. But why?
Whatever the case, Shinji had a new battle plan.
Super Eva dropped altitude and accelerated, skimming over the ground below
the flying Ramiel carrier.
The carrier changed directions to try to block Super Eva from getting at its
weak underside and fired another particle beam. But Super Eva deftly evaded
the beam. The sword had finished reforging, and without stopping, he slashed
the ground with the red-hot weapon to temper the blade.
Steam erupted from the earth.
Directly below the carrier now, Shinji burst up through the white cloud.
But something was coming back down at him—the tip of a spiraling, spiked
drill.
Oh, crap! I forgot about that part!
When the original Ramiel had encamped itself in Tokyo-3, the Angel had used
the drilling organ to penetrate all the way into the Geofront. On a subconscious
level, Shinji had wiped the drill from his thoughts. After all, the organ was
essentially an earth mover—a piece of construction equipment. What use
would that be in an aerial fight?
His sword and the drill scraped past each other like passing trains, with
shuddering tremors and fierce sparks.
Then a heavy weight fell upon Super Eva’s shoulders, and in the next moment,
something kicked him backward toward the sea of lava. As his view spun, Shinji
saw a gigantic, tiger-like blur jumping over him.
Mari’s Wolfpack had used Shinji as a midair springboard to leap onto the
Ramiel carrier. The Eva beast scrambled up the carrier’s wounded and bleeding
leg and raked its claws across the cocoon in its belly.
<<Hey, what do you think you’re doing?!>> Shinji protested.
But he fell silent as he watched her nimble movements with awe—and then
concern. She’d clearly gotten in too close.
Wolfpack crushed Ramiel’s larva in its cocoon, and the Angel burst into
mirrorlike crystal shards. The ring of accelerating particles around the carrier’s
waist began to wobble. But although the Angel was dead, its carrier was still
alive. The oversized giant reached for Wolfpack with both arms.
The Eva beast dug its claws into the carrier’s chest and flung itself higher,
slipping underneath the carrier’s arms and sinking its sharp fangs into the
enlarged Q.R. Signum scale.
Shinji righted Super Eva and shifted power into his Vertex wings to go back on
the offensive. The Angel Carrier was only moments away from grabbing the
beast.
<<Mari! Let go of that Q.R. Signum and escape!>> But her jaws remained
clenched around the scale. Is she not listening, or is she stuck?
A large white hand took hold of the Eva beast. The Eva’s slate-gray armor
plates cracked and crumpled. The beast’s neck snapped loudly.
<<Mari!>> Shinji shouted.
The Angel Carrier flung the U.S. Eva away.
At the same time, the bright ring of accelerating particles came loose, flying
from the carrier’s body. Is that because Ramiel was destroyed? And does that
mean that the carrier’s field is down?
Trois saw the opening, too. “Ikari!”
<<Damn you!>> Shinji cursed as he flew straight at the Angel Carrier. The
white giant reached out one arm to grab him, but he batted it away with his
sword. On the follow-through, the blade destroyed the Q.R. Signum in the
carrier’s shoulder. The carrier went still and began to disintegrate.
<<Huh?>> Shinji said. <<But that was only one Q.R. Signum.>> But then Trois
was shouting. “Twelve o’clock! Ikari-kun, move!”
Shinji leaped off of the falling Angel Carrier.
In the next moment, a sharp, razor-like ribbon pierced the bloodied white
giant and split its torso clean in two. If Shinji hadn’t gotten out of the way, his
stomach would’ve been butchered, too.
<<Zeruel!>>
The Zeruel carrier had been standing still, with its back to the tower’s
northern barrier, but no longer. As if to dispel any doubt that the carrier had
joined the action, flashes appeared from the smoke from where the ribbon had
passed, and countless explosions burst across Super Eva’s A.T. Field.
<<Whoa!>> Shinji said.
With smoke rising from his field, Super Eva dove downward. Shinji wasn’t sure
how much cover the terrain would give him within the large basin, but he’d
take whatever help he could get. He flew low to the ground. Meanwhile, the
Ramiel carrier’s corpse splashed into the sea of lava amid a giant plume of fire.
Behind the veil of hot lava droplets, Shinji saw a light.
<<But how?!>> he gasped.
Ramiel’s accelerated particles traced a wobbly ring around the U.S. Eva beast
where it lay on the ground.
Wolfpack unsteadily got to its feet.
In between the wafting trails of gray smoke, Shinji caught glimpses of the
beast forcing its head up. Its jaws held the Ramiel carrier’s Q.R. Signum, still
shining brightly. The accelerated particles circled the scale.
Mari had torn off the Q.R. Signum when the giant flung her away.
Even after the larval Angel’s death, the Q.R. Signum continued the last task it
had been assigned.
<<What are you doing?>> Shinji asked.
<<You showed me I don’t have enough strength like this.>> Wolfpack’s
powerful jaws crushed the quantum resonance plate—no, the beast was
devouring it. All at once, the many shapes that had been circling the Eva beast
converged, feeding on the Q.R. Signum like a pack of hunters sharing a kill.
When a Q.R. Signum was broken, it typically shattered into a mist of crystal
particles, but this time, the process was hastened by the hungry swarm.
<<Wait,>> Shinji said. <<What happens when you do that? Trois?>> “I don’t
know,” Trois replied.
But there was no time to think. Zeruel’s ribbon came shooting out from the
fog. Flying low, Shinji blocked the attack with both swords.
As Wolfpack leaped from island to island across the sea of lava, the ferocious
four-legged Eva beast instinctively tapped into the ring of light around its neck
and fired Ramiel’s particle cannon.
The induced electric current left a lingering trail of blueish-white paw prints
behind the beast as it ran. The same phenomenon hadn’t occurred with the
original Ramiel, or its Angel Carrier, because they fired the cannon from higher
off the ground.
Shinji would have expected the particle cannon to be a one-and-done affair.
Mari had inherited the particle accelerator created by the Q.R. Signum’s field,
but she didn’t possess the Angel’s original particle-generating organ. And yet,
after she fired the cannon, the ring maintained a dim light, which gradually
increased in intensity as it readied the next shot.
The trail of lightning tracks made the beast seem even more like something
straight out of a myth. But in contrast to the beast’s fearsome image, the little
girl who piloted it spoke calmly.
<<I wouldn’t like it if you died before we got out of here.>> <<I don’t plan on
it,>> Shinji said.
He might have come up with a better reply, but he’d felt something from Mari
that had shaken him. He sensed that she was in intense pain.
A pilot and her Eva shared a deep connection. Certainly, such a radical change
in an Eva would take a toll on the pilot. But Mari was acting calm—and Shinji
saw that as cause for concern. He thought about animals he’d seen in wildlife
documentaries—caught by predators, about to be eaten, their lives in terrible
peril. They didn’t cry out. They just stared into the distance.
Chapter 47:
Leaving Babel
THE ZERUEL CARRIER’S severed hand was still locked around Super Eva’s head.
The hand had stiffened, and its weight threw Super Eva off-balance and sent
the giant falling yet again.
<<Come on!>> Shinji growled as he pummeled the frozen hand with the butt
of his prog knife.
The hand shattered like plaster. Super Eva pried the last bits away and looked
over his shoulder where the molten ground was advancing.
“Ikari-kun!” Trois said out of fear. But Shinji parted the sea of magma with his
flotation field and pulled up above the surface.
This time, Shinji flew very high. With the Zeruel carrier focusing its attacks on
Wolfpack, Shinji decided to look for an opening from above.
He stored his left-hand sword, Basara, in his right shoulder pylon and initiated
the reforging process to attune the blade to the Zeruel carrier’s field.
Before Shinji had any time to think, Zeruel’s light beam struck Super Eva. His
A.T. Field managed to hold, but he still needed to stay alert. The ribbons’ tips
were hidden somewhere in the net’s complex weave, and he couldn’t tell from
which direction they’d attack.
Something struck Super Eva’s left arm, and Shinji grunted in pain. He looked
down. A ribbon had sliced away his armor plating.
While he was distracted, the second ribbon split the empty scabbard of his
broken sword directly through the quantum flux inclination sensors.
Now he’d have even more trouble sensing the shape and position of his
opponent’s field.
Keeping her hands on Shinji’s shoulders, Trois sat upright.
“Four o’clock!” she shouted.
<<Huh?>> Shinji rolled his body to the side and lashed out with his prog knife.
The blade repelled the sharp tip of an incoming ribbon.
“Six o’clock!”
Trois was doing much better at deciphering the movements of the latticework
net.
Super Eva turned where she indicated and blocked with his knife while he let
his sword finish baking.
But then, as he dodged one ribbon, another came from a different direction,
opening a shallow tear in his leg armor.
“Ikari-kun, this is a losing battle—nine o’clock! You should be attacking the
carrier itself.”
<<But how should I do it?>>
“Try to keep your maneuvers as small as possible. And stay out of reach of the
carrier’s arms. Dodge the field projections and the light beam and keep hitting
and running. Then, when there’s an opening in the net, drop through it.”
<<Okay!>> he replied eagerly, but not because he was in good spirits.
Shinji’s error had gotten him cornered and stripped Super Eva of his greatest
advantage—speed. He’d begun to panic a little, and though he’d understood
Trois’ directions, his mind was too distracted to really engage with her.
A large opening appeared in the net directly below him. Shinji didn’t let the
opportunity go.
<<Now!>> he cried, as Super Eva accelerated.
<<That way’s a trap!>> Mari shouted.
Shinji reluctantly slowed his dive. But the Angel Carrier projected an invisible
fist, ramming him in the back and pushing him down.
Mari fired her particle beam, as focused as she could manage to make it. Just
as Shinji was about to pass through the opening, he saw the ribbon’s tip sliding
to meet him on the other side, but it was vaporized by Mari’s beam.
He slowed to a stop. His haste had caused him to blunder into an obvious
trap, but she’d seen the ambush coming from below.
<<You’re even more cunning than I thought,>> Shinji said.
With the netting once again closed below him, Super Eva crossed his arms
and held his knife in a reverse grip as he flew toward the carrier.
Not only was Zeruel a formidable adversary, but the Angel and Shinji also
shared a significant history.
When Super Eva was fitted with the Vertex wings, Zeruel had been among the
invading Angel Carriers. Super Eva had overpowered the carrier and its larval
Angel, but that wasn’t the first time their paths had crossed. Three years
before, Eva-01 had gone berserk in the fight against Zeruel, and the Eva had
devoured the Angel’s flesh, absorbing its S2 Engine into its own body.
At the time, Shinji hadn’t known what his Eva was doing. He’d expended the
last of Unit One’s internal power reserves and become trapped in the total
darkness of his entry plug. He’d since watched the recorded footage of the
event so many times he could have puked, but it still didn’t feel real to him.
Facing Zeruel again like this put him in a strange mood.
This thing gives me chills.
A section of the net rose up in front of Super Eva to cut him off, and Shinji
veered around it with as little movement as possible. He realized that another
attack might be hiding on the opposite side, and he was ready for it.
But he’d been outflanked.
Something struck him from above. The Angel Carrier had flipped upside down
and done something the carriers almost never did—it kicked Super Eva from
outside his range, knocking him down.
Shinji was more impressed than anything, though this might not have been
the best time to admire his adversary. Okay, I’ll give you that one. You’re really
good at reading what I’m anticipating. Or is that just because Unit One took a
part of you inside?
Time seemed to crawl. As he was sent backward, a ribbon came rushing in,
and he blocked it with his knife.
His left hand was reaching for the hilt of his not-yet-reforged sword. The
second ribbon appeared and lopped his arm off above the elbow. Grasping at
nothing now, his hand and arm were flung away.
In that moment, time returned to normal, and a loud rumble filled the silence.
Blood sprayed from his upper arm, and a scream tore from his lips.
Shinji shrieked in unbearable pain. His cry sent fear into the typically
dispassionate Trois. In North Africa, he’d screamed in despair—as flames had
engulfed his body—and then he’d rejected her. But despite lingering doubts
from that memory, she clung to him even tighter now. She’d made the decision
to protect him. If that meant she’d be burned, then this time, they’d burn
together.
As he felt the faint thrum of her heartbeat, Shinji managed to step back from
the brink of panic.
I haven’t fulfilled my promise yet! he told himself.
He screamed again, but this time with purpose rather than despair. As the air
left his lungs, he focused his strength and tried to think from a place of calm—at
least, relatively speaking. But his next action came without conscious thought,
and it took him by complete surprise.
The ribbon was still zooming past him. His right hand tossed the prog knife
away, seized the ribbon, and pulled it to a stop in a shower of sparks.
If this is how it is…
<<If this is how it is…>> he repeated aloud, as if spitting the pain from his
body, <<then I’m taking you for myself. Only this time, I’m doing it of my own
free will!>> He pressed the end of Zeruel’s ribbon against the hilt of the sword
still baking in his shoulder pylon.
<<Take this as your arm!>> he said.
His heart responded from far away.
<<I will!>> The sword drew in the ribbon. The Angel’s thin, flat appendage
throbbed and swelled grotesquely, until it had taken the shape of Super Eva’s
hand. His fingers gripped Basara’s hilt tightly.
The next section of ribbon transformed into Super Eva’s forearm, and the
next became his elbow.
<<My arm!>> <<Yes! Your arm, and my arm.>> Unlike three years ago,
Zeruel’s larval form had no S2 Engine to offer, but that didn’t mean Shinji
couldn’t use its other organs. And so, Shinji brought down the wall between
human and Angel, joining them together.
Trois could hardly believe what she was seeing. “Incredible. You’re in berserk
mode, yet you’re still in control.”
But then the ribbon pulled back. Trois had supposed that the transformed end
of the ribbon would reattach itself to Super Eva’s body, but instead, Zeruel
yanked the arm toward itself.
The sword’s sheath opened with a clang.
Of all the possible moments, the Field Penetrator chose this one to finish
reforging, and the ribbon retracted with the sword in Super Eva’s hand.
“Ikari-kun, the sword!” Trois gasped.
Zeruel had stolen Shinji’s weapon along with his arm.
The ribbon folded back into the cocoon. Zeruel held the red-hot sword
directly in front of its face—right where the next light beam would come out.
Trois looked to Shinji as if to ask, What are you going to do?
<<It’s fine,>> he said. <<That’s my arm. Watch.>> For an instant, Trois’ mind
reeled.
And then the feeling passed. She looked at the outside world on the display.
The view had zoomed in on Zeruel’s face—moments before it split open.
Wait…did Basara just stab the Angel’s face?
Her eyes went from the sword, to Super Eva’s left hand, to his forearm, to his
elbow…which, had reconnected to Super Eva’s upper arm, good as new.
Zeruel let out a loud, grating death cry. “Gyoaaaaaaaah!”
Super Eva added his right hand to Basara’s grip and pushed the blade deep
into Zeruel’s face. He twisted the red-hot sword up and out, brutally shattered
Zeruel’s skull in the process.
Then he was wrenching the sword upward with both hands through the
carrier’s rib cage, to sever the oversized giant’s arm at the shoulder.
The carrier couldn’t comprehend what was happening. It tried to grab Shinji’s
hands, but the arm lost its fulcrum and fell through the air, the Q.R. Signum
falling with it. Shinji swung his sword and shattered the scale in a spray of
luminescent, bloodlike liquid. The liquid and the scale scattered into tiny
crystals and vanished.
The air inside the tower vibrated, and the four walls began to ripple like the
surface of a lake. As if on cue, the explosion of a massive cannon thundered
across the battlefield.
Heurtebise had fired the eighty-centimeter Dora cannon at the tower’s wall.
The wall shattered, and the Tower of Babel melted like an ice chip on a skillet.
Hovering inside the tower, Super Eva moved to the side, and the Zeruel
carrier fell. The tower’s effects vanished, and the super-sized carrier began to
compress in upon itself. Blood sprayed from every surface of its body, and by
the end, the giant had crumpled into an unrecognizable lump of flesh, crashing
into the smoldering earth.
<<Please, call on me again.>> Shinji’s voice sounded in the entry plug from far
away.
Now that the tower’s influence had gone, Shinji’s heart felt even farther away
than it had before. But that was okay. They were still connected. The flow of
power had lessened, but Shinji didn’t feel the same emptiness he’d felt when
the heart had been stolen from him.
“About Asuka… Um… A word of advice. Don’t make her mad.”
Asuka—the Asuka/Eva synthesis—was likely still flying beside his heart. The
warmth Shinji felt wasn’t just from the Trigonus. Her warmth was there, too.
Out on the battlefield, some soldiers were still firing in a blind panic, but most
continued their silent exodus. With the tower gone, their ability to
communicate was resuming, but only gradually. Normalcy wouldn’t return right
away.
The radio frequencies offered only gibberish—languages weren’t yet coherent
again. Shinji tried to get through to Hikari, but she didn’t even look his way.
Heurtebise stood with its back to him, the Euro Eva pointing away from the
battlefield.
Shinji and Trois were having trouble understanding what was happening
around them, now that they’d emerged from the tower. But all things
considered, the situation was favorable.
After barging into the middle of a chaotic battle, they’d defeated the Angel
Carriers—but they’d also let the first Victor escape along with Asuka/Eva, who’d
arrived as a second Victor. Politically, the fallout was going to be a challenge.
But if Super Eva were to stick around long enough for the confusion to settle,
the conflict might not just be political, but a violent, physical showdown.
Seeing no real option but to leave, Shinji flew through the thick smoke over to
one of the Angel Carriers’ staves that had formed the corners of the pyramid.
He retrieved the weapon and flew back into the sky, where the heat of battle
had summoned storm clouds heavy with rain…and the unmistakable scent of
ozone.
“Home, then?” Shinji asked.
His body had relaxed again. He looked over his shoulder at Trois, who still
clung tightly to him, and offered her a pained grin. “Could you maybe let go a
little? You’re kind of strangling me.”
“My arms fell asleep,” she said. “I can’t move them.”
He was fairly sure she looked sorry.
Chapter 49:
Their Own Ways Home
Super Eva flew over the Arctic Ocean, where the aurora borealis now shone
even at midday. Trois didn’t feel that using the tunnel network would be safe.
Shinji’s faraway heart was sending power to the Eva, if only a modest
quantity. The Q.R. Signum’s effects had diminished, which might have
hampered travel through the transdimensional corridors.
Though Armaros’ darkness had retreated into the scale, the back half of Trois’
hair remained black. But there was a brightness behind her blank expression,
and her pale blue hair smoothly transitioned into the darker color as it floated
in the LCL.
Before Super Eva accelerated into his suborbital flight back to Japan, Shinji
and Trois opened the entry plug’s hatch and stuck their heads out into the cold,
desolate air. The feeling reminded Shinji of being on the desert side of the
Apple’s Core, the site of the Instrumentality Project’s initial test. Shinji’s long
journey was ending. And an even longer one was about to begin.
The grotesque swollen moon began to rise in the east.
The Longinus Ring had lengthened in the time since the lance pierced the
Earth and stole Shinji’s heart. The gap between the lance’s head and tail was
shrinking. Before long, they would meet, and the ring would be complete.
People were saying that when that happened, the Earth would end.
But even more changes were happening in the abandoned area underneath
Tokyo-3.
Lake Ashi’s water level had been drastically lowered, and now, the lake’s
waters were flowing into the Geofront beneath Nerv Japan HQ.
The grounds of the former headquarters had been sealed away under a giant
dome of hard tektite concrete. There, in Central Dogma, Lilith had gone
dormant. Immediately following the failure of the Human Instrumentality
Project, Lilith had shut itself away from the world in a giant sphere. Over 150
people had been trapped inside this timeless space, including Shinji’s father,
Gendo, Dr. Akagi Ritsuko, and a dozen or so JSSDF special forces soldiers who’d
assaulted the old headquarters. For three years, everything had stopped within
this black egg.
But years were nothing when time was frozen. At some point, everyone had
taken it for granted that the egg would remain there forever.
Until, one day, it was gone.
Chapter 50:
Leaving for a Dream
YOU SURE ARE a piece of work. Kaworu flashed a half-smile. Do you remember
what I told you when you got your wings?
“I think it was something like… If a human tries to become more than human,
their vessel won’t survive.” Shinji said.
Right. Even before your heart was stolen, you were starting to feel out of sync
with your own body, weren’t you?
“Was I?”
When he’d confronted Armaros in the Atlas Mountains, and failed to save
Asuka, Super Eva had wailed in despair and erupted in flames. His flame body
and his real body had fallen out of step with each other.
Your body was about to break down. But just before that could happen, a
certain someone neatly divided you into two parts and allowed you to find a
peculiar kind of stability.
“You mean what the Lance of Longinus did? You make it sound like having my
heart stolen was a good thing.”
Ultimately, yes. A miscalculation of the black giant. But he’s merely a tool. I
doubt he’s capable of regret.
“Your advice… How do I say this? You cut right to the essence of things. It’s
hard for an ordinary person like me to figure out what you’re talking abou—
hey, what’s so funny?”
Come on, how could you be ordinary? I chose you. Kaworu laughed. When
people try to get close to you, you turn them away. That’s how you preserve
who you are. That’s your way. Beauty in self-reliance.
“Are you making fun of me?”
At the same time, you also want someone who’ll fawn over you endlessly. I
could have done that, but if I had, the world would have closed at that moment.
After his creation, man’s first failure came because he believed the words of
the first person made from him—the beautiful imitation, Eve.
“What do you mean, beautiful imitation?”
Failures are repeated. Look at you now. You’ve handed your heart over to a
red kitsunebi.
“Who, Asuka? Or are you talking about women, like, in general? I don’t know
if you should call Asuka a beautiful imitation. If she heard, it wouldn’t go very
well for you. I wouldn’t be surprised if she yelled at you all night. Besides, if you
look at our chromosomes, it’s men who have an extra one mixed in. That makes
us the imitations. At least, that’s what Maya-san told me.”
And you’ve given your body over to a white paper doll. Even as you dream, the
embodiment of your power flies through the sky because she is deep within you.
This time, Kaworu said as his voice faded, the Eve is no imitation. That’s why
she’s been prepared. But imitations quickly melt into the real thing…
“What?” Shinji asked.
“I didn’t say anything,” answered a beautiful imitation. At least, according to
Kaworu.
Inside the LCL, Rei Trois looked at him with her bright red eyes.
Chapter 51:
Home at Last
As they had approached Hakone, Shinji and Trois had reported on their
adventures in digest, and the Eva pilot standby room had been converted into a
medical inspection room in anticipation of their arrival. On opposite sides of a
single curtain, the medical team stripped Shinji and Trois of their clothes and
gave them each a standard examination. The process wasn’t exactly pleasant,
but it was hardly surprising, either.
If anything, Shinji wasn’t sure if the precautions went far enough.
They didn’t take us to separate rooms, which means they don’t feel a need to
interrogate us separately. Does that mean they believe our surreal story? Heck,
I’m not sure I believe it myself.
Here they were, home after visiting an alien planet, and yet only a small team
of scientists had come to meet them, their tests mostly perfunctory.
“So, the prodigal son and daughter finally return.”
“Fuyutsuki-sensei,” Shinji said.
The old soldier parted the antimicrobial curtain at the doorway and entered
the room.
Smoothing down her white patient gown, Trois stepped through the cloth
curtain behind Shinji and sat beside him on the examination table. Together,
they looked up at Fuyutsuki.
“Sorry for all the fuss,” he said. “I’m sure you have questions. We couldn’t tell
you what’s happened over the radio, so I’ll fill you in.”
Shinji and Trois learned that Lilith and the Chronostatic Sphere had
disappeared from the old Geofront and that Rei Six had gone missing.
Spearheaded by Chief Scientist Ibuki, the majority of the Nerv personnel had
gone deep underground into the dome of the sarcophagus, which stood
partially submerged in the flooding lake water. The staff were desperately
searching for anything left behind after the Chronostatic Sphere had vanished.
The completely black, light-absorbing sphere—though, technically, it had
been egg-shaped—had left behind an empty space neatly carved out from the
Geofront. Gone was Lilith at its center, along with the old Nerv HQ and the
more than 150 people who’d gotten caught within the timeless egg. There was
no telling where they were now.
“Father…?” Shinji said.
As for Rei Six, the girl had gone missing in orbit. From the ground to the
ionosphere, the Earth’s electric field was an absolute mess, and any attempts to
reach her were met with a waterfall-like roar of static. With nothing else to be
done from Hakone, Nerv Japan had handed over the search to external space
agencies.
But now that Rei Trois had returned, Shinji expected the last intact Eva-0.0
would soon be called back from orbit.
Quatre’s Eva-0.0 had gone rogue and incorporated its powerful gamma-ray
laser cannon into its body. The weapon’s existence made it difficult to
remember that the 0.0 series had been designed, unique among all Evangelions,
with reconnaissance as their primary focus.
Even though Earth’s diminishing gravity had scattered the satellite network
into the depths of space, the last Eva-0.0 had still managed to stay in orbit. The
Eva simply had a greater reserve of propellant to perform the necessary orbital
corrections to maintain its altitude. But its fuel wasn’t limitless. Regardless of
Nerv Japan’s immediate needs, Trois would eventually have to retrieve the Eva
for refueling and maintenance.
As Trois reached the same conclusion, she softly pinched the bottom hem of
Shinji’s patient gown.
THE JSSDF C-11 giant-sized transport plane landed at Mount Daikan Airport
shortly after dawn.
The rear cargo ramp lowered, and the maser howitzers rolled out, along with
Toji on a stretcher. His pale arm rested beside him. A medical team came to
meet him, but of all the primary staff, only Shinji and Trois had joined them on
the runway. The pair had come partly out of boredom but mostly because they
didn’t know where else to be.
“Hey!” Toji shouted to them over the noise of the jet engine. “You left
together, and you came back together! I hear a bunch of other stuff happened
along the way, but all’s well that ends well, am I right?”
Hearing Toji’s voice, Shinji finally felt at ease. I’m back, he thought. Of course,
he’d been back for hours now, but this was the first time he’d felt at home.
Toji immediately noticed Trois’ new hair color—the light blue in the front
fading to a deeper blue in the middle and then black in the back.
“Ayahachi?” Toji said. “Trois? What’s with the hair? Getting a start on your
rebellious phase, eh? Have you gone punk rock on us?”
Toji called out to a JSSDF soldier who’d just stepped off the cargo ramp.
“Could you wait a second?”
“No, you see, with Trois, it’s more of a back in black phase,” Shinji attempted
to quip.
But Toji ignored this. “Sorry, Shinji, but could you carry that canister?”
Shinji took a waist-high metal canister from the camouflaged soldier. It was
heavy.
“What is this?” Shinji asked. “All those gauges and lights make it look like
some kind of bomb.”
“It’s no bomb, you idiot. That’s my leg!”
“What?!” Shinji’s grip slipped, and one end of the canister clanged against the
tarmac.
For a second, the artificial circulatory system’s indicator light turned red, but
then it flashed green again.
“You idiot! Be careful with that!”
“S-sorry.”
Trois knelt and lifted up the end of the canister.
Toji raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“What?” Shinji asked.
“So, you two are getting pretty close, huh?”
“It’s not like that.”
“Look,” Toji said. “Whatever it is or isn’t like is fine with me. Are you at least
able to say whatever you want to say now?”
“Totally…” Trois said softly.
Shinji dropped the canister again. This time, the circulatory system had to
reboot.
“I overstepped,” Toji said. From his wheelchair on the middle deck, he bowed
his head deeply to Misato. “I’m sorry.”
She’d been planning to say something about it, but he’d beaten her to the
punch. His thoughtfulness impressed her.
“I’ll handle explaining the situation to the JSSDF, the airport, and the city,” she
said. “We need to make sure they’re all fully on board, in case we need to keep
the power out longer. Delays can happen.”
She stood. It was time for the grown-ups to get to work.
Her expression still looked tired, but the weariness behind it was gone.
Even though she’d technically been taken hostage by the mutant Eva, she’d
abandoned her duties as commander for a significant time. She’d needed to
accept Shinji back after he’d done the same or else she might have faced major
criticism from those around her.
As she left the room, the others followed after her with brisk footsteps.
The soapy cleaning solution rinsed down Super Eva’s body. It would take
more time to repair the countless scratches and dents from the Eva’s long
journey, but at least all the blood had been washed off.
Shinji had been watching Super Eva’s bath from the other side of a small,
blast-resistant window. He proceeded to the pilots’ standby room. The
partitions from his medical inspection had been taken down, and a wide,
curtain-like cleaning laser slowly swept the room, searing the air and
stimulating the antimicrobial effects of the photocatalytic walls.
Shinji opened the door of his plugsuit’s bioseal locker. Behind him, Rei Trois—
who’d been following him like a shadow—began to strip off her clothes.
“Whoa, whoa!” said a flustered Shinji.
Trois paused.
“I got this one,” he said. “S-so if you could just rewind all that…”
“Rewind?”
To everyone who didn’t listen to his father’s digital audio tape player, that
wasn’t a word that held any meaning.
“This time,” Shinji said, “I can go alone.”
When Super Eva was adrift with no heart and the Q.R. Signum as his power
source, Trois had managed the flow of Armaros’ energy. But now, Shinji could
receive energy from his faraway heart.
“But…”
Trois looked faintly displeased. Or…concerned?
<<This is Suzuhara from the command center. Trois, are you there?>> Toji’s
voice blared from a speaker in the ceiling. <<We’re going over plans for taking
Eva-0.0 off ice. Come up here. We could use your input.>>
Super Eva’s external armor hadn’t been fully inspected for structural fatigue.
The Eva’s internals had repaired themselves during the battle. But his new arm
—the one regrown from the Zeruel’s tissues—would need to be thoroughly
inspected at some point. The cage crew had been given just enough time to
replace the restraint armor around the Eva’s abdomen, where the spear had
passed through, and to switch out the sword-sheath shoulder pylons for the
standard-spec pylons.
Super Eva’s visor lifted. Something clanged into his back. Though the Eva no
longer needed an external power source, he still possessed an umbilical cable
plug in case of emergency. The noise must have been the work crew installing
the phase contrast electricity generator into his socket. The module stuck out
from his back like a bird’s tail feathers.
“My systems are seeing the phase generator,” Shinji said. “Power
transmission test…check. The output is… Well, I won’t know until I deploy the
A.T. Field.”
<<Good to see you again, Shinji-kun,>> Maya said. <<Don’t forget your
weapons.>> “What? This isn’t a combat mission. Are you sure I should go out
armed?”
Fuyutsuki answered from the command center. <<Technically speaking, that
would go against our treaty with Japan, but the time for minding that sort of
thing is long gone. You never know when and where the enemy will appear. Or
if the enemy might be human.>> “That’s terrible…”
<<You may not like it, but you must defeat any hostile and come back in one
piece. Otherwise, we’re all in trouble.>> Maya stood in the control booth
directly in front of Super Eva’s eyes. She looked small as she brought the
microphone close to her mouth. <<You won’t be able to take the Powered 8.
When Super Eva repairs his body, the tissue growth breaks any unused
electrical circuits. That means no weapons with high-power draw until we
rebuild the connections.>> Super Eva took the prog knife and the KEG-46R
Yamato Rebuild, a stand-alone cannon with high-explosive ammunition. The
barrel had once belonged to a warship. In the Eva’s hands, the weapon was
more like a pistol.
The knife draws power from my palm, so I think it should be all right…
probably. And what’s that strange weapon on the wall?
“Maya-san,” he asked, “is that a bow? A boomerang?”
<<Well, you could throw it and hit something. But no, it’s a guided weapon?
Energy-based? It’s called Azumaterasu.>> “Are you asking me or telling me?”
First Neyarl, then Kesara and Basara… Where was she coming up with these
names?
<<You saw the glass egg at the bottom of Lake Ashi, right? We found this
down there with it. I’ve been trying to get it fixed up again. If I’m right, it’s a
weapon that works like Neyarl.>> “That would be amazing.”
The Neyarl guided cannon had drawn undiscovered particles from the higher
dimensions through Shinji’s heart. Maya thought the particles were monopoles.
When the cannon fired, the barrel couldn’t withstand the energy, and it was
blown apart. But the particles had struck one Torwächter and disintegrated it.
<<In an Eva’s hands, the weapon would be held like an oversized bow.
Crimson A1—Asuka—was abducted just before we were going to test it.
These…things…came out of the ground—like tree roots, or whips—and
wrapped around her.>> That sounded familiar to Shinji. I think I saw something
like that recently…
“Those whips… Did they look like bundles of flat strips twisted tightly
together? Like black film? Or tape, maybe?”
<<How did you know that?>> He recalled when he’d been his heart, flying
through the transdimensional corridors in a Torwächter.
As he’d passed through the dark tube, the walls had split apart like strips of
film and gathered into a helix behind him, which was then sucked into the plate
in his back.
“I’ll tell you about it when I get back,” he said.
Did the Victor abduct her? Er, Torwächter, I guess we’re calling them now. Did
my heart summon her from the Torwächter’s chest?
A warning alarm sounded, indicating that Eva-01’s flotation field was active.
With Super Eva ready to depart, the thick, shielded ceiling opened, and warm,
early-morning sunlight streamed into the cage.
Chapter 53:
Moonlit Gathering
SUPER EVA flew over Kanto Bay, where Tokyo had been submerged following
the Second Impact. On the north shore, at the High Energy Accelerator
Research Center, he fulfilled his duty as a mobile power plant, and the proton
accelerator ran right on schedule. Gold mirrors focused and directed the proton
beam, which produced pions that traveled through 130 kilometers of bedrock
to the sarcophagus dome in the old Geofront under Hakone—and into specially
placed tanks of purified water, where the pions were converted into neutrinos
and muons.
Now that the Nerv scientists had obtained a baseline particle sample, the
observation system performed a series of minute adjustments and reinitialized.
The computer performed corrections on the historical data, and the resulting
logs indicated that the Chronostatic Sphere had disappeared half a day before
the great collapse. That was when the sensors had first detected muons coming
from the interaction of solar rays in the Earth’s atmosphere. Previously, the
sphere had blocked particles of any kind from passing through.
Seeing Super Eva’s departure from Hakone, JSSDF Lieutenant Colonel Kasuga
got an idea. He instructed the maser towers—designed to transmit power to
Eva-02’s rectenna—to turn their microwave antennas to the north, where the
waters of the newly formed channel separated Hakone from mainland Japan.
On the opposite shore, the Akashima carried a JSSDF maser howitzer equipped
with a relay rectenna.
The N2 reactor that powered Nerv Japan and Tokyo-3 had excess power
capacity. Kasuga wanted to test to see if that excess power could be shared
with less power-stable areas on the mainland in times of emergency. And so,
when Super Eva came home in the early evening, he saw the faint purple glow
of the focused microwave beams above the water.
Shinji walked down the hallway carrying a bag with cabbage and wheat flour
for Toji’s okonomiyaki.
Shinji had picked up the ingredients in Tsukuba. That was what had started
this whole thing.
Vegetable fields had been hastily planted throughout the caldera, and unless
the weather changed drastically, a sizeable harvest was expected. Only a short
hop away, the old Izu Peninsula was historically known for its many orchards.
But there was a difference between obtaining something and having a steady
supply of it. Once the flour reserves ran out, there was no telling when more
would arrive from the outside. The same was true of meat—though Trois said
they’d all be fine without it. But what about fish? Hakone was surrounded by
water, but the changes to the Earth’s crust had caused the fishing grounds to
empty. Would the fish ever return?
That line of thinking only led to fear. If a typical disaster struck here or
somewhere else, then the rest of the world could offer aid. But what about
when the disaster was more widespread? What if it covered the entire planet?
Will this be the last time I have a chance to bring food to a party?
As he walked through Nerv HQ, he ran into Maya, who was carrying a bottle
of vegetable oil. The oil looked like it could work for the okonomiyaki, but Shinji
squinted at the bottle in doubt.
“I didn’t make this in the lab, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Maya said. “I’m
not a mad scientist.”
“But I smell flowers…”
“I was working underwater, so I took a shower after.”
Shinji changed the topic before the conversation went somewhere
inappropriate. “Working in the water tanks in old Dogma, you mean?”
“No, not the test tanks,” Maya said. “They’re filled with purified water. If
anything got in, the water wouldn’t be pure anymore, would it? I was outside
the dome, in the Geofront—everyone’s calling it the underground lake now.
Drainage water. I hope I got the smell out. Did I?” She sniffed at the sleeve of
her lab coat.
“It’s not like it’s sewage water. It can’t be that gross,” Shinji said. “Were you
looking for the Chronostatic Sphere? The containment dome is still intact, right?
So the sphere must have gone through the extradimensional tunnels, or
something like them…”
When a large portion of the Earth’s crust had disappeared under the base of
the Izu Peninsula, and the land had suddenly sunk, the dome’s earthquake
sensors had tripped, activating an automatic lockdown of any passage, in or
out.
Since the sarcophagus hadn’t taken any major damage, the initial rebuilding
efforts were focused elsewhere. Only later was a team sent to pry their way
back inside. That’s when they found a hollowed-out space exactly the same size
and shape as the sphere had been.
Today’s efforts had uncovered the time of the disappearance but nothing
else.
The sphere had vanished without releasing all the people Lilith had trapped
inside it three years ago, including Ikari Gendo and Akagi Ritsuko. The policy had
been to act as if those trapped inside had died, if only so the survivors could go
on with their lives. But now the sphere was gone. How would that feel to the
people whose colleagues, friends, and family were gone with it?
“You idolized Ritsuko, as a scientist,” Shinji said, aware that he was making
light of any other feelings she might have had.
Maya let go of her sleeve and pointed at Shinji. “Idolized? That’s a strong
word. Watch yourself.”
“Ah, sorry,” Shinji said with an apologetic shrug.
But then Maya said something he hadn’t expected. “No, the real shock is how
little I feel now that the sphere’s vanished and she’s still gone.” Clearly
unsettled, she anxiously ran a hand through her hair. “I suppose that means I’ve
made peace with my loss in the three years since Lilith froze time. But what
about you, Shinji-kun?”
Shinji should’ve known this was coming.
“Well?” Maya said. “Director Ikari—your father—is gone, too.”
Shinji didn’t know what to say to that, even after all this time.
His father had abandoned and deceived him…but he’d also needed him.
If the sphere had lifted its spell, and Shinji had been able to see his father
again, he hoped they could’ve gotten along.
He’d imagined running into his father one day. He’d even played out the
scenario in his mind. Shinji wasn’t averse to social contact the way he had been
before. He was awkward, but so was his dad. Maybe this time, they could have
been some kind of family.
But when he thought back to who he used to be—someone who only found
purpose in other people needing him—he got chills. If he met his father again,
would he revert to that person? Part of him wanted to find out, but another
part wanted to delay the reunion forever.
When the Chronostatic Sphere disappeared, he’d been freed from a curse, in
a sense. In that moment, Shinji realized he’d been feeling relieved.
“Well…” he said. “I feel the same as you.”
She scrunched up her nose. “That’s cheating.”
Toji tried to flip an okonomiyaki patty on the hot plate, now that one side had
finished cooking, but he couldn’t quite match the movements between his right
arm and his newly connected left. It was a miracle he could move the arm at all.
He let out a panicked cry as the patty landed hard on the hot plate and split
down the middle.
He shook his head forlornly. “There’s nothing sadder than that to someone
from Kansai. Ayahachi, do the rest, will ya?”
He foisted the twin spatulas onto Trois and pressed his fingers against the
bridge of his nose.
Shinji was chopping up additional ingredients. “Suzuhara Toji, the greatest
tragedy of Kansai.”
Trois moved next to Shinji and began flipping the okonomiyaki.
“If Six were here,” Shinji added, “she’d definitely want to do that.”
“Next time,” Trois said without looking away from the hot plate.
The group understood her optimism. The mental mirror link between the
Ayanamis was still dysfunctional, but Trois had said, in an uncharacteristically
roundabout manner, “She’s still alive. I think she’s sleeping. Once she wakes up,
I’m sure she’ll phone home or look for a way back herself.”
“How about we take those okonomiyaki to everyone waiting for her call?”
Shinji asked.
The okonomiyaki party had started as a small gathering, but as people invited
others to join, it grew into something big.
The cafeterias were used by the night shifts, so they hadn’t been an option.
The party had started surreptitiously in the briefing room, but when the
revelers set off a fire alarm—and received a dressing down from the fire
watchers—they relocated to a cafeteria after all. Except by then, their party was
over the room’s capacity. The next step was to take it outdoors.
Beneath the aurora, and the long, thin line of the Longinus Ring, the revelers
put up wing canopies, set down tarps, unfolded chairs and tables, and hung LED
lanterns.
“Hey, Toji,” Shinji said. “Someone brought a bunch of alcohol. Is that okay…
Acting Deputy Commander?”
“What are you, stupid? Just pretend you never saw it. The adults can take
responsibility for themselves.”
Misato weaved her way through the people on the tarps. She’d taken her
shoes off and was holding them. “Just be mindful of everyone who’s still
working inside,” she said. “And no alcohol for people who are on the next shift.”
Then she added, “Mind if I join?”
“Er…sure,” Shinji said. “Trois, would you split that patty in half and put it on a
plate for her?”
The original plan for the party had long since been abandoned. People were
grilling and cooking all kinds of different food, and through the mouth-watering
smoke, someone had set up a tarp as a movie screen and was projecting
pictures and video clips pulled from Super Eva’s visual records, including from
the battle at Novaya Zemlya.
Holding their drinks, the people watched the screen. The crowd stirred with
each new clip, but their reactions to the footage of the Apple’s Core—the site of
the first test of the Instrumentality Project—were far more subdued than Shinji
had expected.
Toji leaned in. “Sorry to say it, but those pictures are so far beyond the realm
of the ordinary that they come off as low-budget computer graphics.”
Shinji shook his head. “I guess I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what most
people here think. Even seeing it in person didn’t feel real.”
But one cluster of partygoers was watching with rapt interest—the science
staff.
Among them, Maya sat on a cushion on the ground. She was still working—
her tablet in one hand, a drink in the other. She stood and, as an afterthought,
picked up her cushion—apparently not wanting anyone else to use it—hugging
it to her side as she walked through the seated crowd toward Misato.
“I think Armaros came to the old Geofront before the great sinking. Or at
least, something as big as him.”
“What?!” Misato nearly spat out her drink—oolong tea. She’d been resisting
the array of alcoholic beverages.
The crowd went silent, the blood draining from everyone’s faces.
The biggest of all the giants—the one blamed for the global catastrophe—had
been right beneath their feet without anyone noticing?!
Is this a joke? Misato thought. “But there’s nothing in the dome’s sensor
logs.”
“He didn’t go inside the sarcophagus. And you know how little we’ve been
monitoring the Geofront since the lake flooded it. But that’s where we found
the evidence. Outside the dome, where all the water is.”
Next to Misato, Fuyutsuki lowered his titanium mug from his lips. “Right.
We’re still watching everything inside the dome, but the flood wiped out our
sensor network outside. So how did you find anything out there? Even if there
were cameras on the outside of the dome, all they’d see is the water’s surface.
What makes you think we had a visitor?”
“I sent an underwater robot to inspect the foundations for damage. At the
fifth level underground—now the bottom of the underground lake—we found
this.”
She thrust her tablet at Misato.
The commander sat up straight and took it, careful to keep the device
perfectly level. Maya’s drink was balanced on top of it.
Once Misato had the tablet, Maya retrieved her glass. Some condensation
had gotten on the screen, but the image was difficult to decipher to begin with.
It looked like underwater footage.
The camera showed sediment that had been carried into the underground
cavern. Along the sediment’s surface was a long indentation.
“What am I seeing?” Misato asked. The picture didn’t seem like much of
anything.
Still holding her glass, Maya used her pinky to swipe through the other
images.
“The earthquake damaged the tracks, but we found several. And if you
connect them together…”
The tracks formed two staggered, parallel rows.
“Footprints!” Misato said. “Are they from Armaros?”
“An unbroken line runs along one side of the tracks. I think his single back
plate etched it into the sediment. Analysis of our visitor’s stride also shows a
likely match for his height.”
Misato couldn’t believe that something twice the size of an Eva had gone
undetected so close to home.
“What about vibrations?” she asked. “They would’ve showed up on our
seismographs.”
But then she remembered that the mutant Eva-0.0 that had abducted her had
also infiltrated underground without leaving any evidence.
“The prints are unusually long,” Maya said, “like he was sliding. I don’t know
how, but he wasn’t putting his weight under him. And then he went straight up
to the dome.”
“Straight up to the dome…”
“That was it. No tracks leading away.”
Misato looked to Shinji. Everyone else followed suit.
Trois had been picking the meat out of her okonomiyaki and dropping it onto
Shinji’s plate. He’d accumulated a little pile and was nibbling away at it, but
when all eyes fell on him, he got flustered and gulped the rest down at once.
“He…he went into the ground,” Shinji said nervously. “Like with the…the
dislocation.”
Misato traced the footprints with her finger. The last two prints turned
outward in the shape of an open “V.”
“Just before he disappeared,” she said, “he planted his feet and stared at the
dome’s wall.”
The nearby partiers crouched down to get a better look at the screen, and the
ones farther back got on tiptoe or stood on folding chairs. The crowd imagined
the black giant standing in front of the dome wall with the water up to his chest
and grew noisy again.
“He didn’t need to see what was inside,” Fuyutsuki said. “Didn’t the first
Angel Carrier break through the wall to get a look at the sphere?”
“So then, why did their boss come to visit this time?” Misato asked.
Trois mumbled something.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Shinji said.
She swallowed. “Probably to come get it.”
It? Does she mean Lilith, from inside the Chronostatic Sphere?
“Why do you think that?” Misato asked.
“Because the sphere disappeared.” Trois seemed surprised by the question.
“Wait, am I weird for thinking that?”
If the sphere had already gone, why would Armaros care about the empty
space?
“I get it,” Toji said. “After that, the ground came out from under us, and
everything within twenty kilometers from here sank four hundred meters
straight down. Lieutenant Colonel Kasuga told me once that this area’s crust
was probably stable because we had Lilith here. So after Lilith went away, the
disaster came. It fits with what we know.”
“Hold on,” Hyuga cut in. “All that tells us is the order of the events. Let’s not
jump to any other conclusions.”
Misato thought for a moment, tapping her finger against the tablet’s screen.
“He’s right. We don’t have enough evidence to say what happened. And even
if we did, the real question is, where did Lilith’s sphere go?”
Trois looked to Shinji with frustration—a feeling she rarely showed. “Maybe I
am weird…” she said, imploring him to speak up.
Shinji sensed that he’d come to the same conclusion as her. Probably
everyone had. They just didn’t want to say it because it sounded crazy. Shinji
looked Trois in the eyes, working up the nerve to speak.
“Should we just come out and say it?” he asked.
Misato’s eyebrows shot up. “Shinji-kun?”
“We’re all acting like we don’t know just because we don’t have a physical
explanation for it. The answer is simple, but we’re pretending it’s complex.”
What am I saying? Shinji wondered. But it was too late to stop now.
“If we take this all as some kind of messed-up creation story, then we know
what comes next. Everyone knows. Right? You’re all picturing it. The stage for
the next Earth…”
“Sengu,” Fuyutsuki said softly. The relocation of a deity to its new home
through a temporary shrine. “A pregnant spirit thundered in the heavens, and a
voiceless herald moved her shrine. Her final destination—”
“The moon,” Misato said. “The surface of the moon.”
Making a scene wasn’t in his character, but Shinji had come this far. He might
as well follow through. He turned, pointing east.
“There,” he said.
The bright, overbearing moon had just begun to rise over Gora.
Toji squinted. “So…Commander. We want to stop our stage—the Earth—from
being cleared away, no matter what it takes. But if Lilith is up there already,
we’ll have to bring it back. And if Lilith is still on its way, we’ll have to block it.
Right?”
Misato downed the rest of her tea and thrust her empty cup at Toji. “How
about the stronger stuff?”
“Sure thing. What’re you having?”
The moonlight party took on an almost desperate rowdiness, especially from
the adults, ignoring the objections of the security agents who came running
over.
Some of the JSSDF undercover watchers must have been near the HQ,
because word of the party reached the Akashima’s team at the airport on the
other side of the island. Armed with food and drinks, a band of burly,
camouflaged soldiers soon joined, and the revelry continued with no end in
sight.
Postscript
All right, and that was Part Three of Neon Genesis Evangelion: ANIMA,
serialized in Dengeki Hobby Magazine from November 2010 to August 2011. It
was the kind of third part that makes you say, “Hey, where is this going?”
The big earthquake hit during this period of ANIMA’s serialization, and
creators of all kinds had to take a lot of different sentiments into account.
Depending on the subject matter, scripts had to be rewritten. Theatrical runs
were postponed. With ANIMA, I received the request to tone down the disaster
elements. I’d built up an association in my mind between myths and natural
disasters, and with ANIMA I had been so relentlessly destroying the Earth that
the very title had come to mean cataclysm. I took a few measures to
temporarily divert course—namely, setting the story somewhere that wasn’t
Earth and making the battle an embodiment of the character’s internal conflict.
Looking back now, I don’t know if that added depth to the story or if it only
acted as a detour, but I’ll be thrilled if you come along with me to the final two
volumes.
—Ikuto Yamashita,
Evangelion Mecha Designer
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Color Inserts
Title Page
Copyrights and Credits
Table of Contents Page
Part 1: Children
Chapter 1: The Value of Humankind
Chapter 2: Eva-01, the Corrupt
Chapter 3: Entrusted
Chapter 4: A Distant Reunion
Chapter 5: A World Forgotten
Part 2: A Journey Without Maps
Chapter 6: The Value of Humankind
Chapter 7: Falsehood
Chapter 8: The Illusory Passage, Part One
Chapter 9: Recovery Team, Above the Deccan Plateau
Chapter 10: The Illusory Passage, Part Two
Chapter 11: Recovery Team, Above Mainland Southeast Asia
Chapter 12: The Illusory Passage, Terminus
Chapter 13: The Dormant Land
Chapter 14: A Chance Meeting at the End
Part 3: The Apple's Core
Chapter 15: Earth Simulation
Chapter 16: The Commander’s Return
Chapter 17: Understanding the Planet
Chapter 18: Transcontinental Flight
Chapter 19: The Continent of Perpetual Night
Chapter 20: White Guardian
Chapter 21: An Invitation to the Final Battle
Chapter 22: Shinji’s World
Part 4: Symmetrical Components
Chapter 23: At the Foot of the Great Tree
Chapter 24: The People Left Behind
Part 5: An Invitation North
Chapter 25: Retuning Humanity
Chapter 26: Off the Shore of Tokyo
Chapter 27: An Island Awakening
Part 6: The Invitees
Chapter 28: Lost on the Way Home
Chapter 29: The Gap Between
Chapter 30: The Battle on the Northern Island
Chapter 31: A Person in Spirit
Chapter 32: The Closing Mirrors
Chapter 33: Eyes Open
Part 7: Divergent Paths
Chapter 34: Resolution and Execution
Chapter 35: Their Own Reasons
Chapter 36: Stray Children
Chapter 37: Deadlocked
Chapter 38: Friend
Part 8: The Extent of the Self
Chapter 39: Giants, Humans, and Beasts
Chapter 40: The Wolves
Chapter 41: The Tower of Babel
Chapter 42: Standin Executioner
Chapter 43: Playing the Hand that’s Dealt
Chapter 44: From the Butterfly’s Dream
Part 9: Kaleidoscope Sky
Chapter 45: Inside the Pyramid
Chapter 46: Transferred Power
Chapter 47: Leaving Babel
Chapter 48: Zeruel
Chapter 49: Their Own Ways Home
Part 10: In the Bright Night
Chapter 50: Leaving for a Dream
Chapter 51: Home at Last
Chapter 52: The Deputy Commander’s Return
Chapter 53: Moonlit Gathering
Postscript
Omake: Concept Gallery
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