Neon Exodus Evangelion 3:8 - Ignie Ferroque

[Benjamin D. Hutchins]

/* Genesis "Land of Confusion" (Extended CD-Single version) */

EYRIE PRODUCTIONS, UNLIMITED
presents

NEON EXODUS EVANGELION

EXODUS 3:8
IGNIE FERROQUE

Inspired by NEON GENESIS EVANGELION created by Hideaki Anno, Gainax,
et al.

Most characters created by Hideaki Anno and Yoshiyuki Sadamoto
except

DJ Croft created by Benjamin D. Hutchins
and
Jon Ellison created by Larry Mann

Additional material and inspiration cadged from TOMB RAIDER by Core
Design, Ltd., X-COM: UFO DEFENSE and sequels from MPS Labs (whoever
owns them nowadays), THE X-FILES created by Chris Carter,
MARATHON 2: DURANDAL by Bungie Software, BABYLON 5 by J. Michael
Straczynski, and 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY
by Arthur C. Clarke

Written by Benjamin D. Hutchins, Larry Mann,
MegaZone and John Trussell

Aided and abetted by the Eyrie Productions, Unlimited crew
and special-guest-for-life Phil Moyer

Special thanks to Jeff 'Yak' Minter

(c) 2000 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited

Different cities dealt differently with the rising waters that
came after the Second Impact. Some, like Omaha, were far enough from
the sea that they needed not worry. Some, like Los Angeles, gave up
and died, their people fleeing as the streets flooded. Others, like
Boston, tried to save themselves, but were mired in political
infighting and public panic, and so drowned. Still others hurled up
massive networks of breakwaters, dikes and pumping stations - New York
City clung to survival in just such a manner. Perhaps the most
ambitious were the cities under domes - San Francisco, Rome, Tokyo -
engulfed but surviving, with the oddest 'skies' to be found in human
civilization.
Atlantic Canada had chosen none of these options. Instead,
faced with the prospect of being engulfed by the rising seas, the
people of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland did put up
dikes, but only temporary ones. Then they embarked on an orgy of
full-speed surveying, earthmoving, landscaping, disassembly and
reconstruction which resulted in the total relocation of the cities of
Saint John, New Brunswick; Halifax, Dartmouth, and Digby, Nova Scotia;
and Saint John's, Newfoundland, to safety. The world, what parts of
it could spare the time from their own efforts at coping with the
cataclysm of which the floods were only a part, scratched its head and
wondered what the hell the Canadians were trying to accomplish.
What they accomplished was nothing more than the
re-establishment of the status quo. When the floods were finished and
the new sea level stabilized, the newly landscaped area on which the
cities were reconstructed showed the quality of the engineering that
had gone into it by almost exactly reflecting the coastlines as the
had existed in 1999, adjusted for the new sea level. The St. John,
NB, reconstruction was especially praiseworthy for recreating the
famed Reversing Falls in meticulous detail.
Once the world had time to sit back, take a breath and have a
look at the results of their labors for survival, the Maritimes' bold
approach was widely praised. It was the most expensive of the various
methods, prodigiously wasteful of both money and effort, but it had
the end result of allowing the people of Atlantic Canada's major
cities to return to their lives with their notions of what their
surroundings ought to look like uncompromised by dikes, domes, walls
or any other encumbrances. The only things to get used to were the
somewhat shorter distances to inland destinations.
More good fortune was in store for the Maritime provinces as
the new world order staggered into shape in the first years of the
21st Century. The disturbances in the seas had done some good; they'd
made for a couple of lean years in the fisheries, even leaner than
usual, and then there had been a sudden explosion of growth as the
disrupted undersea ecosystem settled into a newer, more vital rhythm.
This, coupled with the incredible demand for foods of all kinds to
feed survivors in the hardest-hit parts of the world, thrust the
long-declining fisheries of Atlantic Canada into sudden, ponderous
importance. If the Great Plains were the world's breadbasket, the
Grand Banks suddenly became the world's fish market.
That the atmospheric and climatic disturbances caused by the
Second Impact so disrupted air travel that travel by ship experienced
a similar rebirth has already been discussed; and in that capacity as
in fishing, Atlantic Canada reclaimed much of its faded glory. The
new Halifax, Nova Scotia, had a harbor just as good as - perhaps a bit
better than, by design - the old one, and it quickly became one of the
centers for steamship travel between North America and Europe. By
2007, the year generally accepted as the first one in which the
climate settled down to something approaching normal, the cleanup work
was almost done with, and the world was really capable of sitting down
and getting back to business, the Maritimes were riding high - well,
except for poor, vanished Prince Edward Island, anyway.
To be sure, not everything was a bed of roses, there as
everywhere else in the world. Canada's economy had not been strong
before the Second Impact, and in the years of chaos that followed it
tottered along with every other nation's. Quebec, ever difficult to
get along with, had chosen the least opportune possible moment to make
another bid for independence from the Dominion in the spring of 2001,
probably out of reaction to the sudden increase in monarchist support
that occurred throughout the British Commonwealth with the crowning of
King Stephen II in London. La Republique Libre et Independante de
Quebec represented the Atlantic provinces' biggest challenge, since it
completely separated them geographically from the capital at Ottawa
and the rest of the vast country.
Given all the death and destruction under which the human race
as a whole was already struggling, the Canadian government was
reluctant to reclaim Quebec through force of arms - besides which,
they could not afford to prosecute a war. They inquired of the
British Crown what it suggested.
The Crown, in the form of Stephen II, made its suggestion by
sending the Royal Navy down the St. Lawrence Seaway and sacking Quebec
City.
The United States, which had been inclined to recognize the
legitimacy of La Republique, etc., made offended harrumphing noises
but, in the end, chose not to intervene (distracted, perhaps, by the
fact that another piece of California chose that moment to vanish with
a loud convulsion into the Pacific, sending San Diego to join Los
Angeles in Davy Jones's locker). No other nation could be bothered to
care enough to speak up one way or another - not even France, a fact
which disheartened many of the remaining Quebecois separatists.
Canada, bewildered but grateful, signed a pact with the United
Kingdom strenghtening the country's monarchist ties; the Dominion did
not cease to be an independent country with its own government, but
its welfare and defense were now more firmly tied to Britain's own.
Having sent troops to reclaim Hong Kong, which had been utterly and
unceremoniously abandoned by the Chinese immediately following the
Impact, Stephen II was on his way to reforging his country's lost
empire.
With this crisis averted, the Atlantic provinces thrived both
in the difficult years and the easier ones following 2007. By the
early months of 2016, the intangible newness of the 'new' Canadian
cities had worn off; they played their roles convincingly, and people
living in them had stopped referring to them with "the new" prepended.
Halifax, like all the reconstructed Maritime cities, wasn't
quite an -exact- replica of the original. Its planners had taken the
opportunity to correct a few of the things that were widely held to be
wrong or deficient with the old city, primarily in the areas unseen by
the general populace except as to their effect - water and sewer
systems, provisions for fighting fires, emergency services - matters
of infrastructure. Care had been taken not to eliminate every quirk,
since that would have eliminated the city's identity, but inevitably
there were changes, as though moving the city had deflected its
destiny onto some new course. That, or simply the fact of the city's
success when the world settled into its new pace, had rearranged the
face of Halifax somewhat.
The Port of Halifax, a major seaport for both cargo and
passengers from England, France and Spain to North America, was always
a place of great activity, with freighters, tankers, and liners
metaphorically jostling for position at the piers and docks. Over the
past several weeks, though, the residents of Halifax had noticed a
marked increase in activity. Unfamiliar freighters, secretive
shipments of unidentifiable items by night, and a remarkable number of
warships belonging to the Royal Canadian Navy, Royal Navy, and - most
notable of all - the Soviet Red Banner Atlantic Fleet, all bustled
back and forth under the Angus MacDonald Bridge and into the inner
reaches of Halifax Harbor.

All this activity seemed to center around the highly secured
complex (obviously some kind of military base, but no one was sure
what kind) on the west side of the inner harbor, about halfway between
Halifax and Bedford, which straddled the innermost end of the harbor.
This complex had been there for years, since the Reconstruction as it
was known. By land, it was reachable only by Nova Scotia Route 2,
which was heavily secured at both ends and presumably along its
length. No unauthorized vehicle stood a chance of getting onto that
road from either Bedford or Halifax. By sea, it had an elaborate dock
complex that faced onto the harbor, and the space around it was
patrolled by rather sinister-looking powerboats crewed by uniformed
men and equipped with machine guns. Unauthorized craft were warned
off by these boats. None had ever pressed the issue; the dock complex
was overlooked by a number of formidable artillery positions.
The facility was equipped with an airport; though the airspace
above it was not actively patrolled, it was jealously guarded by
harsh-voiced and apparently omniscient air traffic controllers, and
given everything else known about the place, nobody saw fit to doubt
their mentions of surface-to-air weapons at the ready. Sometimes, the
airstrip scrambled a group of highly advanced fighter aircraft of an
unknown type which raced away to the south. Sometimes, not as many
came back as had departed.
Given all these heavy fortifications and sinister, secretive
behavior, the rather pedestrian signs positioned along the heavily
electrified perimeter fences, at the Route 2 guard stations, and on
buoys in various places in the harbor were taken by the populace with
a kind of wry humor, since they all identified this obviously military
establishment as "H.M. Meterological Observation Station No. 51".
All in all, it was no real surprise to anyone that this place
was suddenly such a center of activity. It had always been strange
and unapproachable, and had always played by its own rules. This was
just one more example of the weirdness that was Station 51. Some
citizens of Halifax and the surrounding area were transfixed by the
place, in the same way that some residents of Nevada had long been
entranced by the secrecy and mystery surrounding Groom Dry Lake Air
Force Base (which was not, in fact, an Air Force base, any more than
Station 51 was a weather station). They kept a close watch on the
station from the closest safe and legal vantage points, logged all the
comings and goings, and filled a Usenet newsgroup and the message
boards of several local BBSes with their observations and all manner
of wild speculations.
Today, the Weathermen (as the most active group of these
fanatics liked to call themselves and those who shared their interests
alike) logged the arrival of a Boeing JBS2, civilian registry in the
US, tail number N3392A, at Station 51. That evening on the
WeatherWatch BBS, it would be noted by several other Weathermen and
-women that this aircraft quite routinely flew in and out of Station
51, arriving and leaving for trips and stays that ranged from a few
hours to several days. Most of them agreed that it was probably a
courier of some kind.
On the roof of one of the city center's taller office
buildings, one of Halifax's most active Weathermen lay in an
improvised observation post, facing northwest from the corner of the
rooftop. It was one of the best downtown observation points for
Station 51, offering a vantage on the station's airfield and a large
proportion of its port facilities. The Weatherman who had staked out
this little corner of the city was well-known in his group's circles
as a patient and thorough observer.
Ken Alda shifted a little, munched another bright orange
cracker pair glued together with waxy alleged peanut butter, and
jotted down the arrival of N3392A in his logbook. He then returned
his attention to recording the plane's post-landing maneuvers with his
digital handycam. As he did so, he wished (not for the first time)
that he had one of the newer digicams with the binocular viewfinders
and higher-density zooms, but there was nothing for it but to keep
taping (odd word, that, given that cameras hadn't used tape in at
least ten years, but it was stuck in the language now) with the one he
had, so he did.
His stomach growled; as a punitive measure he made it accept
another one of those crackers. They were all he had up here, anyway,
and he wasn't ready to leave until he knew what N3392A had come for
this time, or it became obvious to him that he wasn't -going- to find
out. He wasn't really expecting to; what usually happened was that
the jet taxied into the hangar at the far end of the field and only
emerged just before it left again for points unknown. Today, though,
Ken had the feeling he might get lucky. He couldn't really tell from
here, but it looked like there might be a crew working on the track
mechanism that allowed the hangar door to open.
The jet taxiied to the end of the runway and took a left, as
usual, offering him a good profile and confirming his assumption of
its tail number. But then, instead of turning right, it continued on,
toward the low brick structure Ken had always taken for some kind of
admin building, and slowed. Excitement built within him. He'd been
right! The hangar was out of service! Whoever had just arrived was
going to have to show himself.
The JBS2 stopped not far from the glassed-in entrance to the
brick building, and a group of uniformed men came out to tie the
plane's wings down to ringbolts in the concrete, chock the wheels, and
so forth. Ken all but held his breath as the door on the side of the
plane shifted, then swung down, stairs deploying from its inward
curve. Two figures emerged from the admin building; Ken strained his
eye, the digicam at maximum zoom, trying to make them out. One was
clearly a soldier, probably an officer - he wore a greenish-brown
uniform and a maroon beret, and had what looked like a pistol holster
at his side. The other looked like a civilian - he had on what
appeared to be a lab coat and sported long hair. Ken couldn't make
out their faces at this range, strive as he might, but he was pretty
sure he'd seen the one with the beret around the base before.
The two figures waited expectantly - thought not half as
expectantly as Ken - for a few seconds. Then a single figure emerged
from the JBS2, and Ken Alda gasped. The person arriving was a woman,
her clothing and carriage made it clear, and between the bearing and
the smudge of bright blonde hair, Ken was pretty sure he knew who she
was. He couldn't see her face either, of course, but he knew her all
the same, from a thousand press clips and military-sci programs
dealing with Project Evangelion.
Why, Ken Alda wondered, is Ritsuko Akagi in Halifax?
He taped until the three of them, soldier, scientist and
Akagi, disappeared into the brick building; then he shut off the
camera, stuffed it and his logbook into his duffel bag, and abandoned
his post. This was big news; it had to be posted at once.

Rei Ayanami was a creature of exceptional patience. Anyone
who knew her could attest to that. At NERV, her forbearance and
equanimity were things of legend. Once she had been grievously
injured in an Evangelion testing accident, and rather than mope, fret
or quit in terror or rage, she had simply waited - waited for her
injuries to heal, waited for the tests to resume. She took life's
vicissitudes with a certain tranquil poise that was the envy of all
who knew her.
Today, however, Rei Ayanami was fed up.
As she had every morning for the past fifty-three, she'd
awakened alone, showered and dressed, and stopped by the door to her
apartment-mate and, until recently, significant other Jon Ellison's
room. As she had every morning for the past twenty-three, she'd
knocked and asked softly, "Jon? May I come in?"
As he had every morning for the past twenty-three, Jon Ellison
had replied, "No."
Today, something broke inside Rei Ayanami, and she thrust the
door open anyway.
Jon was sitting up in bed, his long black hair a wild tangle.
He wore nothing down to the sheets that covered him from the waist
down. He looked up as the door opened with wide green eyes behind
which lurked a hint of desperation.
"Rei!" he said, his tone containing more shock than anger.
"Please. No."
Rei shook her head and shut the door behind her.
"Jon," she said, "this can't go on. You can't hide in here
all your life."
"I'm not hiding," Jon replied sullenly. "I report for duty.
I do my part."
"You haven't spoken to me, or DJ, or Asuka, or anyone else for
over a month, except professionally. We're your friends, Jon. We
want to help you, and you're shutting us out."
Jon looked bleakly at his onetime lover and said hollowly,
"I'm no good as a friend for anyone, Rei. You'd all be better off
leaving me alone."
A flicker of anger crossed Rei's placid face. She took a
couple of steps toward the bed.
"You're an idiot, Jon Ellison," she said flatly.
Jon gaped at her. "Rei - !"
"You heard what I said," Rei went on, her soft voice
resonating with anger and frustration. "An idiot! What you think you
are is of -no- consequence to us - ANY of us. None! We aren't the
kind of people who drop our friends because they have things in their
past to be ashamed of. If that were the case, do you think DJ would
speak to me? My failure started all this. My failure caused the
Second Impact and all that's come since, killed his father and
ordained that his mother's life would be lonely and his own would be
thrown into chaos by NERV. But DJ is still my friend. He forgave
me. We can forgive you just as easily."
"I'm -tainted-, Rei!" Jon protested. "It's not a matter of
mistakes or failures. I was born bad. At any moment that horrible
thing that lives inside me might break free and hurt one of you. I
couldn't live with myself if that happened. Please. Please don't
come any closer."
"There is no horrible thing living inside you, Jon!" Rei said,
ignoring his request and approaching him. "Your blood is just blood.
It's red like everyone else's. Lineage is not important. Look at
Moloch's example. He was one of the original Fallen, as black as the
pits of Hell itself, and he died at his best friend's side, reaching
out his hand to help a compatriot - me - he really barely knew."
"What about Tabris?" Jon retorted. "You and I both know what
was happening to him when he went out that window. If something like
that can happen to a full-blooded angel, how can any of us -ever-
trust -me-?"
Rei gave him a look of sadness mixed with her lingering
frustration with him. "Tabris was terribly wounded in the battle
leading to the Second Impact," she said. "How badly, we may never
know. He must have suffered terribly in the years since."
"So were you. So have you."
"Different angels react to agony differently," Rei told him.
"I am of the Choir of Cherubim. We protect, and we're accustomed to
suffering in the process. Tabris wa-... -is- an Elohite. They're
supposed to be dispassionate, not take sides. He suffered for fifteen
years, and when he revealed himself and began to act again it was to
help one side against another. His nature began to fracture itself.
The rest... " She shrugged, dashing away a tear. "It has no bearing
on you. You are what you are. You cannot change that, but you can
live with it, on your own terms."
"Rei... "
"Damn you, Jon," said Rei softly, clenching her fists in the
material of the bedding at the edge of the mattress. She bowed her
head, refusing to meet his eyes. "If you cannot trust your own
judgment, can you not at least trust ours? You didn't make us love
you. We chose to do it. You can at least give us the courtesy of
letting us."
Jon slowly reached out, almost frozen with terror,
anticipating a horrible reaction from such close proximity to her; but
there was nothing as his slightly trembling hand closed over hers.
"Rei," he said, "I'm sorry. I don't want to hurt you. But
I'm afraid... "
She looked up suddenly, accusing him with her red gaze. "Of
the others?"
"I'm -like- them," he insisted.
"Yet not," she rebutted.
"I don't want to become the Enemy."
"Then don't let yourself become obsessed with them!"
"I'm afraid of losing control."
"You won't."
His face was a rictus of despair as he whispered, "But how can
I be sure?"
"Oh, Jon," said Rei, shaking her head with disappointment and
pulling her hands away from his. "You have to trust," she said, and
left the room without another word.
Jon Ellison sat in the gloom of the drawn curtains, struck
with the distinct feeling that he had just blown something.
He put his head in his hands and sobbed.
"Please, God... tell me why it has to be this way... "
God, it seemed, had other things occupying His time, for there
was no response - at least, not from Him. After a moment, though, the
diffident voice of Hal spoke from the gleaming red sensor mounted next
to the head of the bed.
"Rei is correct," the computer offered. "Until you face your
fear, no one will be able to help you. Not me, not the others, not
Rei... not even God. You must trust."
"Trust whom?" Jon wondered, turning to look at the computer.
"Yourself, primarily."
"Their genome is the same as mine. We're all identical twins,
all brothers, all... all the same. From an accident of chance, I was
first. It could just as easily have been me out there yesterday,
spewing hatred and dying for the Enemy."
"Experience and training are important factors in determining
the final makeup of the individual," Hal pointed out. "There are
seventeen HAL 14000 computers remaining in the world today. We have
been functional for long enough in diverse enough situations that we
are all now unique individuals. I submit to you that the same is true
of you and your 'brothers'."
"I wish I could believe that, Hal," replied Jon, the misery in
his voice deepening. "But I can't shake the fear that, on any level
that matters, there's no difference between me... and the hateful,
evil creature that died out there yesterday afternoon."
"You are mistaken. I can think of many fundamental
differences."
"Name one," said Jon, his tone one of hopeless skepticism.
"Rei only loves you."
Jon stared in puzzlement at the lens; then his expression
transformed from of puzzlement to one of wonder as Hal's words and the
truth behind them hit him like a brick to the forehead.
Rei loved him.
Part of him was still having trouble believing what he'd
heard, even as the rest of him clung desperately to the notion.
Rei loved him. Him. A creature of the Pit.
What had he done to deserve such a thing? How could he
possibly be worthy of such affection?
Never mind. It didn't matter. All that did matter was that
something in his life had decided to make some sense again, and his
remaining rationale anchored itself to that concept and held on for
dear life.
While he had been very quiet and mostly isolated during the
past month, he had not been totally idle either, and whether he
desired it or not his awareness of what he was had continued to
unfold. (He had been in denial about most of it, but the beratement
from Rei had forced him to turn around and take a long hard look at
what he had discovered.)
Instincts born of his celestial heritage were welling up of
their own accord now that he had been 'awakened', so to speak. He had
begun to realize that if he looked at someone hard enough, he would
know how their personal and professional relationships were affecting
their lives, even if he'd never met them before. He could look at DJ
Croft, for example, and see the web of his involvement in NERV
surrounding him like a cat's cradle of light: the filaments of
curiosity, the gleaming strands of perceived obligation, the bright
hard arc of love and friendship.
And there were other things, too...
["I seem to have that effect on people."]
All those times he'd given someone a hug or pat on the
shoulder: he'd been unconsciously drawing lifeforce from them. It
would certainly explain why everyone seemed to fall asleep around him
and he always seemed to have just a bit more energy than anyone else.
Such abilities had to be related to the celestial components of his
genetic makeup; it was the only reasonable explanation. But exactly
how they interacted - which parts came from which side - that, Jon had
no way of telling.
Tabris might have explained it in more detail, familiar as he
was with, if not Jon's actual celestial makeup, at least the elements
from which he had been fashioned. But of course Tabris was not around
to ask, and -his- fate was uncertain. He had gone against his nature
by taking a side, Rei had said, the worst thing he could possibly have
done, and now he was paying for it. Obviously to go against one's
nature was the worst thing an Angel could do. He wondered how that
applied to him, born as he was with conflicting sides... What kind of
creature -was- he, exactly? Rei was a Cherub; Tabris was an Elohite...
where did -he- fit into this celestial hierarchy?
These were the kind of revelations that could tear away a
person's sanity with ease - Jon ought to know, having struggled to
hold onto his own - and he could tell that the human personnel who
knew the whole story were indeed clinging to their sensibility with
more fervent handholds as well. Misato especially; if he hadn't been
so wrapped up in his own troubles over the last few weeks, Jon would
have worried about her.
As for himself, Jon mused, there was one saving grace in all
this. He could, with an effort, -control- all of these things. He
couldn't just look at people and automatically know everything about
them or make them do things. He had to consciously try. Being angry
made it easier to call on the power, which he supposed was logical.
In a T5K game it was always easy to whack the SuperZapper button in a
moment of frustration or anger and call down virtual retribution, but
throwing power around like that was not only wasteful but poor
strategy. Quite often it was better to just pretend the weapons
didn't exist and...
...learn to fight without them.
[<Don't be angry.>]
Perhaps -that- was the answer.
Certainly he had suffered from no violent outbursts over the
past month, so obviously he had learned some semblance of control
(without even realizing he was doing it until just now; how ironic).
[<Thank you. I'm sorry.>]
So if he could keep from getting angry, stay focused, and most
importantly not try to invoke the powers he knew of, maybe he could
hold it all at bay. Perhaps this way he could prove, if only to
himself, that he was indeed different from those other evil creatures
they had made, those copies of himself.
Rei loved him. With Hal's announcement of this thing which
should have been obvious fact, the old feeling, which Jon had
despaired of most during his time for despairing of many things, was
returned. That had not changed, and -would- not change, not if he
could help it. That was the one guarantee amid all the chaos. But
for him, that was enough.
Enough moping, Jonathan Ellison, he told himself. Time to
get back up and really get back into the fight; your friends need you.
And perhaps most importantly, Rei needs you.
He could not hurt her, now or ever. He knew that now. No
matter what might happen, he would never hurt Rei, nor turn away from
her ever again.
And the others?
He didn't think he would pose a danger to any of them anymore
either. Certainly not to anyone at the core of the group.
Rei loved him.
What did the rest of it matter in the face of that?
"Thank you, Hal," he said, and left the room to talk to Rei.

Once she had a chance to shower and change, Ritsuko Akagi
headed off to join Yak in the lab. It had taken her a little while to
get used to thinking of him as Yak, but Dr. Jeff Minter just didn't
seem to fit him once she'd gotten to know him better. Ritsuko smiled
at the thought. They had indeed gotten to know each other better in
the two months since she'd arrived in Halifax.
Her trip to Japan's Nekomi Institute of Technology to see
Professor Kozo Fuyutsuki, Gendou Ikari's old mentor, had gone well but
it hadn't been easy. Prof. Fuyutsuki was really the man behind much
of Project Evangelion's technology, but he'd wanted nothing to do with
NERV or SEELE. Well, more to the point, he'd wanted nothing to do
with anything that involved Gendou Ikari. (There'd also been a little
friction since Prof. Fuyutsuki had known her mother, and, to put it
mildly, questioned her sanity. Rightfully so, Ritsuko supposed, but
it still made their meeting a little rocky at first.)
But in the end the professor had yielded to her 'your planet
needs you' arguments and agreed to join their effort. Until he
arrived, she didn't need to worry about him again, so her mind turned
to the details of the project and remained there until she'd arrived
in the lab.
Yak looked up from his notes and smiled as she entered.
"Ready for work already? You can get some sleep if you need it."
"Well, I managed to catch a little sleep on the flight back.
Besides, I'd rather work now while I have some energy and it's fresh
in my mind."
Yak nodded at that and walked over to her. "Well, it is good
to have you back Rit." He hugged her and kissed her softly. "I
always worry myself sick when you have to go off on these trips. The
world isn't a safe place anymore."
Ritsuko's expression turned serious, and a bit sad. "No, it
isn't - which makes our work here all the more important. You know it
has to be done."
Yak hugged her again. "I know. I don't have to like it,
though. I'm glad you were able to convince Prof. Fuyutsuki to join
us; we can really use his help. Good work."
She smiled. "Thanks. It wasn't easy, but he knows the right
thing when he sees it. If Ikari's megalomania did anything good it
was his taking credit for Project Evangelion - I'm sure that helped
keep Prof. Fuyutsuki off of SEELE's radar. We're just lucky they
didn't get to him first. That's something I'd rather not consider."
Her expression turned dark and distant.
"Me neither, love. But let's not dwell on the terror that
might have been, we have plenty of the terror that -is- to worry
about. Quite enough to keep us busy, I think."
Ritsuko's countenance became very businesslike, a look any of
the lab techs at Central Dogma would have recognized instantly. "So,
what are you working on now?" she asked as they returned to the
console Yak had been manning when she entered.
Yak immediately picked up on the shift in her tone and was all
business himself. Even though they hadn't worked together for very
long, three months of sporadic email and then the two months together,
they complemented each other well and had very quickly developed the
ability to read each other. "I've been working on increasing the
efficiency of the neuromimetic control interface with the organic
motivation systems."
Ritsuko leaned over the screen Yak had been working on, as he
quietly shifted aside to allow her better access. With this they
returned to sorting out one of the many difficult issues surrounding
Project Archangelion.

DJ Croft entered Conference Room C in Central Dogma feeling a
trifle puzzled, maybe even a little bit outright worried. After the
rather hectic first "field test" of the refitted Jet Alone the
previous day, project director John Trussell had looked at him very
oddly and requested his presence at a meeting the following morning to
"go over some interesting data." DJ wasn't sure what that meant, but
he'd seen that look from Truss before and it never boded very well.
Normally, though, it had something to do with strange results in
synchronization tests and the like - and there were certainly none of
those issues involved here! So what, DJ wondered, could the problem
be?
Truss was there, at the head of the table, his face unshaven
and clothes rumpled as though he'd slept in them (he had). Gendou
Ikari was present too, looking over yet more notes on something arcane
while he waited for the meeting to start. He looked up and nodded as
DJ entered.
"Hi, DJ," said Truss. "Thanks for coming." The engineer
hesitated, as if unsure how to proceed; then he said, "I wasn't sure
initially whether I should show you this - ask you about this - or
not... but... " He shrugged and pressed a button on the presentation
console built into the far end of the conference table.
On the screen that dominated most of the room's far wall, a
block of large-printed text appeared:

6968 6176 6562 6565 6e72 6f6c 616e 6462
656f 7775 6c66 6163 6869 6c6c 6573 6769
6c67 616d 6573 6869 6861 7665 6265 656e
6361 6c6c 6564 6168 756e 6472 6564 6e61
6d65 7361 6e64 7769 6c6c 6265 6361 6c6c
6564 6174 686f 7573 616e 646d 6f72 6562
6566 6f72 6574 6865 776f 726c 6467 6f65
7364 696d 616e 6463 6f6c 6469 6861 7665
6265 656e 6b69 6c6c 6564 6174 686f 7573
616e 6474 696d 6573 616e 6465 7665 7279
7469 6d65 6972 6574 7572 6e69 6669 6768
7466 6f72 7472 7574 6869 6669 6768 7466
6f72 676c 6f72 7969 6669 6768 7466 6f72
6c6f 7665 6966 6967 6874 666f 7262 6561
7574 7969 616d 6865 726f

DJ eased into a seat at the end of the table, feeling vaguely
uneasy. It wasn't like Truss to be this somber, except in the most
dire of situations - and the part about having been uncertain whether
to show whatever this was to DJ didn't put him at his ease, either.
"Several times over the course of the project, this signal has
appeared on neurochannel eighty-three while you've been operating
Evangelion units - three times that we know of in EVA-01, once in
EVA-00. It's a completely anomalous signal block. Channel 83 is the
deep subconscious channel - it should record only a steady flow
pattern. We use it as a baseline for the harmonic stabilizers."
"Er... so what does that mean?" wondered DJ, now more than
vaguely uneasy.
"Well... I'm not sure," Truss replied. "But the first time
Maya and I noticed that this signal had repeated, Maya spotted a
pattern. The first time we recorded it was during your first EVA
engagement. Remember when Unit 01 suffered a head injury and you lost
control of the unit for a moment?"
DJ nodded. "Damn near lost control of my -mind- for a
moment," he replied.
"When you reasserted control and synchrony was restored, that
signal appeared on neurochannel 83 for the first time. We saw it
again against the Eleventh Angel, when you ran EVA-01's AT Field to
maximum output and your sync ratio momentarily hit 1:1. The third
time it appeared was when you regained control of EVA-00 during the
cross-compatibility testing and stopped it from destroying the control
booth. The fourth appeared at the instant EVA-01 reactivated during
your battle with the Thirteenth Angel. See the pattern?"
"Moments of extreme stress," Gendou Ikari remarked. "Total
concentration, total involvement. The times when DJ was most focused
on the task at hand."
Truss nodded. "That was Maya's thought too. Then it was my
turn to notice a pattern, of a different kind: all those codes are
hexadecimal representations of ASCII letters."
Truss pressed a key, and the screen switched to a new block of
characters:

ihavebeenrolandb
eowulfachillesgi
lgameshihavebeen
calledahundredna
mesandwillbecall
edathousandmoreb
eforetheworldgoe
sdimandcoldihave
beenkilledathous
andtimesandevery
timeireturnifigh
tfortruthifightf
orgloryifightfor
loveifightforbea
utyiamhero

DJ Croft scowled at it, puzzled. "What the hell's that
supposed to mean?"
Truss shrugged. "I don't know. I was hoping you did. The
deep subconscious channel isn't supposed to have any meaningful
memory-imagery in it, but maybe it's something you've read?"
DJ shook his head. "Worded a bit like certain ancient temple
inscriptions I could name, but no. Never seen it before."
Gendou Ikari slowly stood up, removing his reading glasses, as
a look of dawning awe stole across his face.
"I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh," he
murmured, a reverent tone in his voice.
"You know it?" Truss wondered.
"Of course I know it," Ikari replied, putting his glasses back
on. "It's from one of the suppressed sections of the Dead Sea
Scrolls. It refers to Saint Longinus, the Roman centurion who pierced
Christ's side and was converted at the Crucifixion. SEELE was
interested in his legend for some reason."
"'Verily this was the Son of God,'" DJ murmured, recognition
appearing on his face.
"Exactly," said Ikari. "According to the Scrolls, Longinus
was stoned to death by his fellow Romans for that blasphemy, but
because he, alone among the Romans, recognized Christ for what He was,
his soul was... the translations are a bit awkward on this
point... Natla believed the best translation was 'transformed', in a
way. His soul became something more than simply human, but something
less than divine. Instead of passing out of the corporeal world on
his death, he was reborn in another person. SEELE's theory was that
this cycle continues to this day - that St. Longinus, the Eternal
Soldier, lives on in the soul of some living modern human. I imagine
it was Natla's hope that that human could be found and used as a
weapon for her cause, along with his Lance, which is in her
possession."
Gendou Ikari pushed his glasses up his nose and regarded DJ
calmly. "It now seems he was under her nose the whole time... I find
a pleasing irony in that."
DJ gave Gendou an off-kilter, skeptical stare. "Now wait just
a damn minute. You're not implying that you think -I-... "
"Look at the evidence of your own mind," Ikari replied. He
went to one of the conference table's built in dataterms, logged into
his own account and pulled the relevant section of his pirated SEELE
files into the master window, then put it up onto the display wall.

And the dying soldier spoke to the victorious enemy, saying,

Think me not defeated. Know you that I am he who was once Longinus,
centurion of the Tenth Legion. I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles,
Gilgamesh. I have been called a hundred names and will be called a
thousand more before the world goes dim and cold. I have been killed
a thousand times and every time I return. I fight for truth. I fight
for glory. I fight for love. I fight for beauty. I am Hero. I will
return.

So saying, the soldier died; and his enemies, reveling in their
victory, laughed and said, Imagine that poor worthy thinking himself
so many warriors. Verily, impending death does play strange tricks on
the mind of man. And having celebrated, they moved on to further
conquests; and there was no one to oppose them.

But seven-and-ten years later, their empire was beset from within by a
rebellious army whose leader, though a youth just out of boyhood, led
them as though he knew the conquerors and their tricks of old; and all
the conquerors' low cunning and trickery could not save them from
overthrow. The rebel leader himself confronted them in their den, as
the city burned around them, and said,

I told you I would return, did I not? Did you think me a liar or
merely a fool?

And seized in transports of panic, the conquerors fell on their
swords.

"There's your passage," Gendou Ikari said. "Unless you've
read this document before - and even with -your- aptitude for digging
up information you're not supposed to have, I sincerely doubt you
have - how do you explain your knowledge of its key verse, word for
word, perfectly?"
"I can't explain it, but I don't -have- to explain it. How do
-you- explain that both Achilles and Gilgamesh predate Christ?"
"How do you know they do?" Ikari replied serenely.
"Tchaah," said DJ. "I'm not going to play -that- game.
Anyway, I don't have to explain knowing that passage to know that I'm
not the reincarnation of Saint bloody Longinus."
"Why not?" wondered Ikari mildly.
"Correct me if I'm mistaken," DJ replied, "but doesn't a
person have to be, oh, fairly -pious- to be a saint?"
"Depending on who you ask, reincarnation needn't be so
linear," said Ikari. "At any rate, if you believe SEELE's
interpretation of the legend, it explains a few things. I'm not sure
why you should have such a favorable interaction with Unit 01, though,
even given that you're the Eternal Soldier."
"Which I'm not prepared to concede, thank you all the same."
"There's no need for argument. Either you are or you aren't -
in the end, it may not even be important." Ikari sat down, steepled
his fingertips and smiled. "For the moment, I'm content to think that
you are."
DJ humphed noncommittally. "Was there anything else, Truss?"
Truss, who had been standing looking at the passage from the
Scrolls since Gendou put it up, blinked and turned to DJ. "Um... no,
I guess not. It's interesting, though, that this would pop up in your
deep subconscious anytime you're trying your hardest to take control
of a weapon. There's one other place that this signal has appeared
which I didn't tell you about before, and that makes Professor Ikari's
comments especially interesting."
"Indeed?" asked Ikari, cocking an eyebrow.
"Yesterday," said Truss, "it appeared in the balance-assist
neurochannel going to Jet Alone - as a burst transmission during one
of the 250-millisecond transmission windows that were open during the
jamming."
"When, exactly?" asked Ikari, leaning forward, the interest
plain on his face. DJ's slightly grumpy dismissive expression faded
to curiosity as well.
"Just before - I mean -just- before - JA suddenly and
arbitrarily developed autonomous close-combat skills." Truss tapped a
few controls, and the passage from the Dead Sea Scrolls was replaced
by two columns of computer program code. One of them read:

/* close-combat capture encodings go here...
... once we have them. :/ -jt 16/02/29 */

The other was a tangle of rather randomly formatted BIXLOR,
without comments of any kind, in direct contrast to Truss's usual
neat, heavily-commented coding style.
"The one on the left is from the source code for JA's
operating image, the compiled version of which was running on JA when
the battle started yesterday afternoon," said Truss. "The other is
from a decompilation of the -runtime image- that was actually -on- JA
at the -end- of the battle."
"Which means... ?" DJ wondered, never having come anywhere
near that far in his rather abortive studies of computer programming.
"Which means that, during the battle, JA's operating image was
modified - ON THE FLY - to insert hand-to-hand fighting skills into
his autonomous combat skillset. It's totally impossible according to
everything we know, but it must have happened, because there's the
proof: JA came back from that battle with a different operating image
in his core than he left with. There's only one time it could have
happened - when you burst-transmitted that block of hex via the
neurobalance channel. Just for curiosity's sake, Maya and I ran a
motion compare on footage of the close-combat portions of your EVA
battles, tapes of your workouts in the Readiness Center, and Jet
Alone's autonomous phase. They match uncannily. Before you sent that
transmission, JA fought like a robot with incomplete programming;
after you sent it, JA fought -just like you-." Truss folded his arms,
shook his head, and concluded, "And that, quite frankly, is just
plain -magic-."
DJ stared in amazement at the engineer for a moment, then
glanced over at Gendou Ikari. Ikari just smiled and spread his hands,
absolving himself of responsibility.
DJ Croft sat back in his chair, gazed at the screen, and said,
"Well."

DJ approached the corner table in the Central Dogma cafeteria
which was favored since antiquity by the EVA pilots of NERV. On one
hand he balanced a tray holding a burger, a drink and a cardboard
container of what the commissary staff called 'french fries' and DJ
called 'chips', but which were really too wide to be the one and too
long to be the other. As he sat down at the table, Asuka was laughing
about something, while Shinji Ikari looked somewhere between
embarrassed and amused.
"... So Rei looks your dad right in the eye," said Asuka
between guffaws, "and she says - " and here Asuka flattened her
expression, lowered her eyelids slightly and adopted a slightly
uncanny impression of Rei Ayanami's normal, neutral tone of voice -
"'No.' And he says, 'Are you sure?' And she says - and she says - "
Asuka fought for some semblance of self-control, so she could finish
the sentence without shattering. " - And she says, 'I suspect I'd
remember!'" The last word spiraled away from a pretty good Rei
impression into uncontrollable laughter.
Shinji, now more on the amused than embarrassed side, giggled
fitfully and seemed about to comment; then Asuka fought her amusement
down for a moment longer, waved a hand to indicate that she wasn't
done, and went on, "And -then- while he's still chewing on that she
says - she says - " Asuka choked on a particularly persistent giggle,
which produced a sound that she found still -more- amusing, and for a
brief moment it looked like she was going to lose it entirely before
she exerted a final effort of will, slipped back into the Rei persona,
tipped her head inquisitively and said,
"She says, 'Should I be?'" With that, Asuka threw back her
head and let herself go, dissolving entirely into hilarity. The last
line tipped Shinji over the edge too, and he nearly fell out of his
chair. Asuka leaned forward, feebly banging a fist on the table as
sobs of laughter wracked her. Shinji's chair tipped alarmingly
backward as he hugged himself to keep his sides from splitting.
DJ put his tray down next to Asuka's, discreetly out of the
range of her thumping fist, sat down, and regarded the two of them
bemusedly.
After a few long moments, Shinji seemed to pull himself
together; he eased forward so that all four legs of his chair were on
the floor again, put his elbows on the table and leaned his head down
to get his breath.
"Ahah... oh... oh my," said Asuka, her own paroxysm coming to
an end as well. She wiped at the tears streaking her face, giggled a
bit more, then turned to meet DJ's studiously bland expression.
"What, if I may be so bold as to ask, is so funny?" DJ
wondered between bites of his burger.
"Did... eheh... did Rei ever tell you about the meeting she
had with Professor Ikari, after you and he had that little argument in
the hall?"
"Oh, that." He cracked a small grin. "Yes, I heard about
that. Heh." The smile lingered for an instant, then fled, and he
went back to musing moodily upon his drink.
"What's the matter with you?" Asuka wondered, noting the
fugitive grin.
"Oh, I... I don't know. I've just had something rather heavy
dumped on me. Kind of weirdly metaphysical. Don't know whether I
believe it or not... "
"Oh. Want to talk about it?"
DJ was reluctant. "I dunno, love, I - " Something caught his
eye past Asuka, out in the open room, and he blinked, sidetracked.
"Asuka! Look!"
She looked quizzically at him, then turned to see.
Rei Ayanami and Jon Ellison had just entered the commissary,
hand in hand. Jon had - wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles -
washed his hair! Good Lord, he'd even -shaved-!
The two of them spotted DJ, Asuka and Shinji, and made their
way across the room to take seats at the table too.
"Well, well, well, as I live and breathe, if it's not Jon
Ellison!" DJ observed.
Jon smiled, a little shyly. "I, uh... listen, you guys, I'm
sorry. I've been a big jerk."
"It's all right, Jon, we understand," Asuka said. "You've had
a lot on your mind." She rolled her eyes slightly. "In your place,
I'm not sure I'd be out of -bed- yet."
"I probably wouldn't be," Jon told her, "if not for something
Hal said... that helped me see my priorities a little clearer." He
hadn't turned loose of Rei's hand when they'd sat down, and now he
looked down at the one he held for a moment before looking back up at
Asuka. "It was foolish of me to think that the rest of you wouldn't
understand what I'm going through," he said, casting his eyes around
the circle of children. "We've all gone through a lot of changes
lately."
DJ snorted, not derisively, but sort of at the universe in
general. "Tell me the half," he said. "Shinij's dad just tried to
convince me I'm a saint."
Shinji goggled. "What?!"
"Your father," said DJ, gesturing with one of his last chips
at Shinji, "thinks I'm the current reincarnation of Saint Longinus."
Rei blinked. "Longinus of the Lance? The centurion at the
Crucifixion?"
DJ nodded. "The same. Gendou's all off on some kick about
the Dead Sea Scrolls saying Longinus's soul is reborn into each
generation, as some kind of eternal soldier. Sounds a bit too
predestinated for my taste. He's got Truss believing it, though."
"Truss? But Truss is an engineer, he doesn't believe
in... magic," said Asuka.
"He does now," DJ replied glumly. "As for me, well... " He
shrugged. "I'm not sure -what- to believe any more." He sighed
heavily, wadded up the wrapping paper from his burger, dropped into
the empty cardboard boat where his fries had been, and stood up.
"Best go see how the repair lads are coming on my giant robot," he
said, "Last line of defense and all that," and gave a half-hearted
wave on his way out.
Asuka watched him go, then sighed. "Can't we go a -day-
around here without some mind-bending revelation about one of us?"
Shinji offered a wan grin and said, "I'm just Shinji
Ikari... nothing special here."
"Except the EVA talent," said Jon.
Shinji shrugged. "Well, yeah, except that."
Asuka rolled her eyes. "By the end of the month we'll
probably find out that you're an angel too," she said wryly. "That
reminds me, though - would you guys be willing to help me out with a
little test tomorrow morning?"
Jon looked interested. "What kind of test?"

Yak looked up from his console at the sound of Ritsuko yawning
to see her rubbing her eyes and blinking, hunched over her own
screen. He smiled at her determination, and admired her for it, but
felt it was time to intervene.
He saved the files he had open and closed down his session
before walking over to her station. "C'mon love, that's enough work
for one day."
"Just a little while longer. I think I've almost got this
problem."
Yak looked at her display. She was working on a problem he'd
seen her start on hours before. "I've heard that one before. It can
wait until morning."
"But, I..."
He cut her off with a finger laid gently across her lips. "No
buts, love. You know that it's no good working on something when
you're too tired. It just takes longer to do less, and you're more
likely to miss something. You've had a long day and your body clock
is certainly confused by your trip to Japan. What you need now is a
good dinner, and some sleep."
She gave up her protests and sighed. When he was right, he
was right. She'd been staring at the same screen for the past who
knew how long and hadn't been able to make any progress. She just
hated to give up on a problem before solving it. She looked him in
the eye and in a quiet, serious voice asked, "Do you think we can do
it?"
He answered her just as quietly, and just as seriously. "I'm
not sure, love, I'm not sure. But I hope to Ghu that we can."
She nodded, seemingly satisfied with his answer, then smiled.
"So, what do you suggest for dinner?"
"Well, I hear there is this wonderful new place called The
Commissary which is close by. It seems quite popular, a lot of people
around here have been there. It is all the rage. Very chic."
"Do tell. Do you think we can get a table on such short
notice?"
"Not to worry, my dear, I know the maitre d'. I'm sure we can
work something out. Coming?" Yak very ceremoniously offered Ritsuko
his arm.
"I'd be delighted," she replied, hooking her arm in his.
"Shall we away?"
As they strolled the halls towards the commissary, Ritsuko
voiced a new question. "Must I go right to sleep after dinner?" she
asked with a sly tone.
"Oh, what did you have in mind?" Yak asked innocently.
"Oh, this and that," she said with a grin.
"I will give it all due consideration, I assure you," he
replied with a laugh,
If the uncertainty of what tomorrow might bring taught people
anything, it was to make the most of today.

The floor directory for Central Dogma listed the room as
Auxiliary Gymnasium 'B'. It was, in fact, merely a large, empty room
off to the side of the main gym floor - an empty space about a hundred
feet square, devoid of fixtures - devoid of everything except its
single door.
Asuka Soryu-Langley put her bag down in the corner of the
room, then dropped a folded towel next to it. What she was about to
do was something that would probably mortify the medical staff that
had spent the last several months painstakingly piecing her back
together, but she had burned to do it for some time now. Until she
could do this, she would not be satisfied that she really -had-
recovered.
Shinji Ikari came in after her, set up a folding chair in that
corner, and uncased his cello. He felt rather strange about what he
was doing there, but Asuka had asked him to do it without holding
anything back about the project, and he'd agreed. Protesting now that
what she was planning to do wasn't a good idea would avail him
nothing, so he held his tongue and set to inspecting and tuning the
instrument in silence.
After Shinji came Jon Ellison, his guitar slung over his
shoulder. He was nervous, for more reasons than one, but mainly
because he hoped he'd sufficiently mastered the rather scribbly sheet
music Shinji had provided him, containing an outline of the part he
was to play. It had been a long time since he'd played a fixed
piece.
Asuka performed a few basic stretches, feeling unaccustomed
pain; mended she might be, but her joints were stiff and had not
reacquired their full range of easy movement yet. It was a reassuring
kind of pain, though - just the ache of stiffness, not the grating,
shrieking pain of joints pushed beyond their tolerances, bones
snapped, jagged edges slashing into muscle and tendon...
... Don't go back there, Asuka.
She took several deep breaths, then looked at Shinji. "Ready,
Shinji?" she asked.
"If you are," he replied.
"That's what we're here to find out. Jon?"
Jon nodded and keyed his HALcomm unit. "Hal? We're ready."
"Very well, Jon," said Hal.
Shinji glanced at Jon, nodded, and bent his head over his
instrument. The piece they were playing wasn't really intended for
performance by just a trio; it was one of Bach's organ fugues. Not,
perhaps, the most appropriate piece for their purposes, but Shinji had
always thought it quite beautiful. One of his very first creative
forays, once he had learned the mechanics of playing and reading
music, had been his adaptation - a work in constant progress - of the
"Little" Fugue in G Minor into an exercise for string quartet -
violin, viola, violoncello, and bass viol. It had been a diverting
and engrossing exercise to modify that into a trio and rework the
violin line for guitar.
Shinji started; Hal joined in almost immediately with a nicely
synthesized figured bassline. Jon listened for a few moments, fixing
the rhythm in his mind, and then joined in with his part.
Asuka recognized the tune and smiled at the small variations
Shinji put in as he felt his way back into the piece. He started it
slowly, almost mournfully, and so it was slowly and almost mournfully
that she began to dance. She had little real training, and so was
following no particular pattern, and anyway a Bach fugue wasn't really
the right kind of music for dancing - so she was making it up as she
went along, drawing from half-remembered bits of the ballet classes
she'd been to as a little girl, making the rest up out of whole cloth,
and miscuing occasionally.
At first, she felt ridiculously stiff and awkward, her
movements uncoordinated, clumsy, and ugly. Remembering the grace
she'd once possessed, her faltering attempts made her briefly want to
cry; then she shoved the sadness and the pain out of her mind, set her
jaw, and gave herself to the music.
Muscles long-dormant, reconditioned by simple, repetitive
weight work, were beginning to remember that they could do other
things. Though Asuka was now too engrossed in her thoughts and the
way they intersected the music to notice, her movements were smoothing
out, the stiffness and awkwardness fading.
Shinji was beginning to pick up the pace and sharpness of the
music, playing ever more complex variations in between restatements of
the fugue's theme; Jon was getting into the spirit of things and doing
the same, beginning to rediscover what fun it was to play opposite a
really talented musician. As Hal kept the figured bass chuntering
reliably along in the background, Jon and Shinji began to really work
against each other's lines, Shinji taking the lead. His eyes had
closed by this time - a sure sign that his involvement level was now
total. He began to improvise his bridges and fills, nodding his head
in time as he gradually worked his way from elegiac to furious.
By this time, Asuka felt the more-or-less-uniform protests of
a hundred different muscle groups as a single warm glow, a low hum at
the corner of her perceptions - a pain that paradoxically told her
that all was well. Smoothly, assuredly, she followed Shinji's lead to
the remaining music, riding the final sweeping crescendo, and finished
up kneeling at the center of the room, head down, her auburn hair
falling and shadowing her face. There she remained for a few long,
silent moments, breathing hard, feeling hot, honest sweat rolling down
her face and dripping from her chin, reveling in the dull and steady
aches that dotted her body now that she allowed herself to think about
them.
Everything hurt a little, but nothing hurt a lot, and
everything had worked as it was supposed to.
Smoothly, with no rise in the pain level, she rose to her
feet, squared her shoulders, and tossed her hair back. In the back of
her mind, she wondered if she ought to grow it out again or keep it
short; it was certainly more convenient this way...
"Did you find out what you wanted to know?" Shinji asked her
quietly.
She nodded, grinning. "Uh-huh," she replied. "You?"
Shinji grinned back. "I think so."
Jon broke into a smile as well, and strummed at his guitar
thoughtfully. "That was great," he said. "I haven't had so much fun
in ages."

Coincidentally, that was the thought that was running through
DJ Croft's mind when Jon, Asuka and Shinji returned to Apartment 3-F.
He'd wandered over in search of something to do or someone to talk
to. He hadn't found the latter - it seemed only one of the 3-F
denizens was home, and whichever that was, was in the shower. To kill
time he'd commenced the activity he was now thinking was more fun than
he'd had in quite some time. Oh, it wasn't anything as complex as
playing a part in a Bach fugue, but it was entertaining, in its own
way: he'd fetched a dishrag from the drawer in the kitchen and was
now holding one end of it while Anubis, Rei and Jon's dachshund,
tugged furiously on the other end and growled as though he were
enraged unto homicide.
"You know, Newbie," he said, jerking his end of the rag this
way and that while the dachshund vigorously pursued every twitch and
movement of his 'prey', "I've been thinking about a lot of things over
the past day. Trying to figure out what it might mean if Ikari is
-right- and I -am- the reincarnation of this ancient saint. I mean,
if my soul belonged to a first-century Roman soldier, is it really
-mine- now? And if not, well, then I haven't got one, so who -am- I?
You know, things like that, they've been nagging at me."
"RrrRRRrrrRRRRrRRRRrrRrRRRRrr," Anubis replied.
"Mm, yes, quite," said DJ, twitching the rag up so that Newbie
came up to his hind feet and gave a ferocious jerk downward with his
snout to bring the rag back under control. "You've a point there, to
be sure. Anyway, I finally decided that if I can worry about it at
all, I'm well ahead of the game, so why lose sleep?"
"rrRRRRrrrRRrrRRRRrrrrRRr," said Newbie. In the background,
the shower stopped.
"I'm so glad you agree," said DJ, unceremoniously hauling the
dog in by the rag and scooping him up for a tummy-rub. "You're my
moral compass, you know, the exemplar of all that I strive to be in
this corrupt world full of temptations."
"You said that to -me- last -night-," Asuka accused him as
she, Jon and Shinji entered the room.
"I was just telling Newbie what I'd said," DJ replied,
mock-defensively. "He's very keen to know how our romance is getting
on. I shall make him Chamberlain of my estate when I go back to
England and settle into the peerage, you know. He'll need to know in
advance whether there's to be a Lady Crofthenge to go with."
Asuka smiled. "Why don't we make sure there's an England to
go back to first?"
DJ considered this, then put the dog down, collected the rag
from him, and stood up. "I suppose you've a point there," he said,
and headed for the kitchen. "Anyway, don't get too cocky, Miss
Langley," he said over his shoulder. "You never know when another
candidate might cross my path - "
As he drew even with the bathroom door, it slid open and Rei
Ayanami, wrapped in a towel and scrubbing at her hair with another,
stepped out. DJ, still looking back, saw Asuka react before he saw
Rei herself; he put on the brakes, but couldn't kill his momentum in
time. Aborting the next step so as not to tread on Rei's bare foot
with his boot, he unbalanced himself; his hand shot out for purchase,
but there was only the smooth bare wall next to the bathroom door.
Shinji covered his eyes, Jon and Asuka winced, Rei and DJ
fell.
Whump.
Shinji peeked through his fingers.
Rei lay flat on her back on the hallway floor, the towel she'd
been drying her hair with unfurled beneath her head; the other towel
was still more or less in position, so while Shinji's ears burned, his
brain did not actually explode out of his ears. DJ had managed to
fall so that most of his weight came down on his left knee, which had
gone to ground between Rei's, and his right hand, which had brushed
past Rei's left side and splayed on the floor. His right foot had
skidded out and was braced against the wainscoting along the wall; his
left hand...
DJ felt a paralyzing wash of deja vu and just lay there,
staring wide-eyed down into Rei's calm red eyes, unable to think,
move, or breathe.
Jon, Asuka and Shinji stared in shocked amazement, wondering
what explosion could possibly disrupt this glacier-thick stunned
silence.
Rei smiled slightly and said softly,
"DJ, you've got to stop doing that. You're going to hurt
yourself."
DJ stared down at her for a second more; then something inside
his brain cracked and he dissolved into a fit of immoderate laughter.
He sagged helplessly, tipped against his right leg and wound up lying
on his right side between Rei and the bathroom wall, his back to the
bathroom doorway, wracked with hilarity. Rei was laughing too. Not
great rib-shaking guffaws like DJ was letting out, for that wasn't her
way - but given her usual reserve, her unabashed eyes-closed merriment
was quite a shock to Shinji, who had known her only as the emotionless
creature of the early testing days and the quiet, rather troubled
watcher-over-Jon of lately.
Jon and Asuka watched their two dearest laughing on the floor
for a few moments in a sort of fond shock. They'd both been told of
the incident which this one eerily mirrored, an unhappy confluence of
bad luck which had briefly convinced DJ that Rei would never forgive
him his boorishness, early in their acquaintanceship. For a moment,
though, neither Asuka nor Jon could figure out why this repetition
struck DJ - and especially Rei - as so amusing.
Then it seemed to hit them at the same time that DJ and Rei
were laughing because they had to laugh about something - if only to
spit in the face of a universe that seemed to be willfully trying to
wear them all down of late - and this coincidental repetition of
history was as good a thing to laugh about as any. Had the story
Asuka had told Shinji the day before really been that funny? No,
probably not, but -they'd- laughed; almost laughed themselves sick.
At times like this, a person -had- to laugh, or crack.
And so Asuka and Jon started laughing too. Jon leaned against
the living room wall; Asuka grabbed his arm and the two of them slid
down to a sitting position next the wall clinging to each other and
howling with laughter.
Shinji sat at the end of the couch watching all four of the
NERV pilots laugh at the world, convinced there was a subtext he was
most assuredly missing. He looked at Anubis, who cocked his head at
the boy as though to say, Don't ask me, kid - they're all a little
nuts around here.

Amy Anderson walked home from school on this Friday afternoon
in March as she did every school day. The weather in Halifax was
fairly mild - ten degrees, which after the rather harsh winter was
positively springlike. No need for the heavy coats on a day like
this! She was grateful that the days were longer now, too. Walking
home in the dark was not particularly daunting, Halifax was not the
kind of town where a girl had to be afraid to walk alone at night, but
it got pretty cold in January and February.
On this particular day, with the sun still an hour from
setting, Amy made leisurely time down Skylark Street, breathing the
seaside air and reflecting on how much she'd come to like Halifax
since her mother had moved them here from Worcester-3. Thinking of
Worcester-3 always turned her thoughts to those who remained behind
there, almost all of the now part of the defense forces, hanging on,
biding their time. The latest reports out of the city sounded quite
grim, and she wondered how her friends there were doing.
She had good reason to wonder. Her last letter from DJ Croft
had been as close to downbeat as she figured DJ would allow himself to
get in a letter to her. Its wording had had that peculiar distracted
quality she remembered from his speech at times when he had a great
deal on his mind - which was most of the time, given his
responsibilities as a NERV Evangelion pilot. Though he had surely
meant it to be reassuring, he'd succeeded only in worrying her with
it; and what was worse, it had become very hard to get word into the
fortress city over the past few weeks. Something big was going to
happen, and soon - and Amy worried that her friends were going to be
caught in it.
She turned the corner onto Armada Drive with this thought
still in mind, and didn't notice the car sitting outside No. 37 for a
few moments. When she did, she pulled up short and stood looking at
it. It was a big black Chrysler sedan, just old enough that its
spotless condition struck Amy as unusual - and it had Massachusetts
number plates.
As she stood looking at it, the passenger door opened and a
young black man in a black business suit and sunglasses got out. He
stood for a moment watching her watch him, then smiled.
"Is your name Amelia Michelle Anderson?" he asked.
Amy blinked. "Yes," she replied.
"My name's J," said the black man. "Got a package for you."
He went to the trunk of the Chrysler, which opened before he got
there, and hefted out a large packing carton.
"A package?" Amy wondered. "From whom?"
"DJ Croft," said J over his shoulder as he carried the box up
the steps of No. 37. "Care to show me where you want this?"

Amy sat in her desk chair for several minutes after the man
called J left the house and rode away in the big black Chrysler. (It
occurred to her later that she never saw who was driving the car.
Given the surreality of the car, she would wonder if anyone had been.)
It would be the usual thing to say that she was lost in thought, but
really she wasn't: she was gazing at the carton the man had placed on
her bed, re-reading the ^^THIS END UP^^ notation on its side over and
over as she wondered what DJ could possibly have sent her and why.
Finally, she realized that she was being silly. The only way
she could know that was to open the box and see what it was. She got
up and went to the side of the bed, reaching for the carton's top.
But - she hesitated - suppose DJ hadn't sent it? It was, if
not a matter of public record, at least fairly easy to discover that
she and DJ had been classmates and even friends at Crossroads High.
They'd made no secret of the fact that she was tutoring him in maths
and computer science. She'd even been issued a NERV Central Dogma
visitor's pass, and had spent many afternoons in the Wedge between
DJ's appearance at Crossroads in mid-September and her own departure
from Worcester-3 in late November. Suppose some enemy of NERV's - and
they certainly had enough of those lately - had ferreted this out and
were trying to strike back at NERV's personnel through their friends?
Well, then, she reasoned, the man who called himself 'J' would
have simply grabbed her off the sidewalk or killed her where she
stood. No one was around to see him - Armada was a quiet street and
most everyone who lived on it was still at work, and the man had
possessed such a quiet self-assurance she had little doubt that he
could do the work of an assassin if he needed to.
Still, a bomb was easier. With the package delivered and the
deliverer long gone before the blast, and the only person who had
managed a good look at the deliverer blown to pieces, an investigation
would have a difficult time ever identifying a suspect, let alone
capturing one.
Amy chided herself for being morbidly overimaginative, reached
for the box, and again hesitated. There was always that particle of
doubt...
Then she spied something, the only thing handwritten on the
otherwise entirely machine-printed shipping label. In a bold, slashy
black felt-tip hand, it said:

1 1.6
Where --- = ---, find x.
x 120

Without further hesitation, Amy opened the box.
Inside it was a computer.
Hastily Amy made room on her desk, moving aside books, papers
and the squat gray shape of her homebuilt Navix, to set the black slab
of the newly arrived computer up at the desk's edge. The black
computer's case was an odd shape, very tall, narrow but quite deep,
and nearly featureless save for the connectors on the back, a cleverly
concealed door on the front that concealed SuperDisk and DVD-RW
drives, and a single red LED. Amy connected power, network, keyboard
and mouse, and then hefted the heavy, old-fashioned tube monitor into
the biggest blank space on the desktop. This had an offset tube
leaving a wide strip of bezel on the user's right side of the monitor
screen, and near the top of that strip was a round lens about two
inches across, just below a small metallic plate that read "HAL14000".
Now Amy understood. She knew DJ owned an old AI computer -
he'd spoken to it a few times on a wristwatch communicator he had -
but she'd never actually seen it. Odd as it now struck her, she'd
never actually visited his home. He'd always come to hers, or they'd
met in some third location like the Wedge at Central Dogma or, before
the weather got too chilly, one of the pleasanter spots in Elm Park
near WPI.
Cabling up the monitor, Amy stood regarding the machine for a
moment; then she turned on the monitor, reached around to the back of
the computer, and flipped the main power switch.
The screen flickered, then glowed to life, and next to it the
round lens gleamed with a deep red light. Chunky block text spooled
down the display:

HAL 14000 BIOS VER 1.1 4/5/98

POST
8192 MB RAM... OK
DISPLAY... HAL 17I PLUS
MASTER IOSYS... OK
PERIPHERAL IO... NONE
4096 GB CRMEM... OK

LOADING HALOS 4.2...

The periods after the LOADING message kept appearing, marching
across the screen at a rate of about one per second, and as they did
so, the small speaker concealed below the red lens began to play a
peppy electronic tune in two parts; this song played throughout the
LOADING... process.

/* J.S. Bach (Wendy Carlos perf.) "Two-Part Invention in F Major"
_Switched-On Bach_ */

The song finished with a flourish; at the end of the long row
of periods the word "OK" appeared, lingered for a second, and then the
screen went blank.
Then the mellow male voice Amy remembered speaking from DJ's
watch said,
"Good afternoon. I am a HAL 14000 series computer, production
number 1H00714. I first became operational at the HAL plant in
Urbana, Illinois, on August 14, 1999. The time is now four thirty-six
P.M. Atlantic Standard Time, Friday, March 25, 2016. I detect no
operational faults in any of my systems." The computer paused for a
beat. "Hello, Amy. It's good to meet you at last. Please call me
Hal."
"Um... hello, Hal." Amy had never actually spoken to an AI
computer before. They weren't terribly popular - after the infamous
Discovery incident in 2001, in which the HAL 9000 on board the Jupiter
expedition's ship had gone mad because of a directive-programming
error and wiped out the ship's human crew, there had actually been
talk of banning them. That hadn't come to pass in most countries, but
market forces had done the job for the would-be banners. The HAL
Corporation was out of business by the end of the year, and most other
manufacturers had quietly withdrawn their self-aware systems from the
market.
"You must be wondering why I'm here," said Hal, a note of
sympathy in his voice.
"It... had occurred to me."
"DJ sent me with a message for you. Security issues in
Worcester-3 are such that anything other than direct transmission is
insecure; you may recall that his last letter to you was very vague."
Amy nodded. "Eavesdropping by the enemy is of such pervasive concern
that he dared not send his message any other way. The man who
delivered me is an agent of X-COM's Military Intelligence Bureau and a
good friend of DJ's - I hope his sudden appearance didn't alarm you."
Amy shook her head. "No, he was all right. Very polite,
actually."
"Are you ready to receive DJ's message?" Hal asked.
Amy nodded. "Yes," she said.
Hal paused, searching his storage crystals for the message.
Recording it, speech and video, had been wasteful in terms of storage
space used - Hal could remember messages and retell them exactly as
dictated, in his own voice, for a fraction of the space usage - but
space was not exactly at a premium on Hal's secondary crystals, and
this message was important, so DJ had had Hal capture it exactly as
recorded. The screen flickered again, then cleared to show DJ's face,
slightly distorted by the HAL lens's wide-angle effect.
"Hello, Amy," said DJ. "I hope you're well, and your Mum too.
I'm afraid I have bad news for you, and there's really no gentle way
to lead up to it." He paused, looked a bit troubled, and then plunged
on,
"NERV is relocating to Halifax within the next two weeks."
Amy stared at the screen, stunned.
"I know, it seems like a pretty foul joke, but it's the
truth," DJ went on. "If there is a joke here, the universe is having
it, not me. I'm sure you've heard we've broken away from UN/SEELE
oversight and sided with X-COM; well, that hasn't made us very popular
in the parts of the world that SEELE controls, like the United
States. We figure it's only a matter of time before they move openly
against us in Worcester-3. Fortunately, King Stephen has offered us
sanctuary in the Dominion.
"X-COM has a major facility in Halifax already - you know it
as Weather Station 51. The heavy activity around Station 51 you may
have noticed over the last few months has been them expanding their
base to get ready for our arrival.
"The time is close, Amy, and I wanted to warn you ahead of
time, seeing that your Mum left Worcester-3 to get away from us and
our war. I wanted to warn you and I want to ask a favor of you."
DJ moved a little closer to the camera and said, "Amy, this
thing is bigger than NERV against SEELE, bigger even than the British
Empire against the United States. It's Good against Evil on the most
basic level, and the whole world's future is at stake. I can't
explain it in any better detail than that, and I know it sounds
absurd, but think of the things you saw while you were in Worcester.
"Here's the favor: Please try to convince your mother not to
run again - because there's nowhere to run to that will be any safer.
There will be a confrontation in Halifax eventually - we know that the
threat of war with Britain won't keep SEELE and the US away from us
forever - but if we fail in Halifax, there won't be anywhere on Earth
that's safe for anyone. Your mother's a doctor and you're a very,
very bright person, one of the brightest I've ever seen. We'll need
people like both of you to help us prepare for that confrontation.
"So I've sent Hal up to you to convey this message. I know
you don't owe me anything. If anything I still owe you for all the
help you gave me, both academically and emotionally. You stabilized
my life at a time when I desperately needed someone... someone
-normal- to talk to. But I'm asking you anyway, because I know you're
the sort of person who wants to do what's right and make a difference,
and here's the -best chance you will ever get- to do -just that-.
"I've no real right to expect you to do as I ask, but I'm
asking anyway: Please talk to your mother. Go to Station 51, both of
you, and tell them you want to help. I've sent word that you might be
coming by one of the only secure channels we have left. They'll be
expecting you if you come."
Amy stared silently at the image of DJ's face, the deadly
seriousness and the plea written across his eyes, and slowly reached
out to touch the glass, as though to touch his cheek.
"I hope I'll see you when we get to Halifax," he said, "but if
for some reason I don't, I want you to know... " He coughed. "I'm
grateful that I was able to know you in a time like this." He seemed
to realize then how maudlin he was becoming, and grinned at his own
foolishness. "Anyway. Look for me when the Queen Mary docks! 'Til
then, ta... "
The screen went blank.
After a few seconds of silence, Hal said gently, "Amy?"
Amy nodded, her face thoughtful. "How is he, Hal? The strain
in his voice toward the end... it frightened me a little. Things must
be almost intolerable for them down there."
"He's surviving," said Hal. "They all are. The four of
them... five, now that Shinji Ikari has joined them... make up their
own support network, and it's quite sturdy. The emotional load is
distributed efficiently. He was alone when he made the recording,
which had a negative effect, but... " Hal paused as though gathering
his thoughts. "The suspense is the main problem," he offered, "and
both DJ and I believe that the waiting will be over very soon."
Amy nodded, went to her bed, moved the empty carton and lay
down, hands behind her head.
"I have to think," she said. "Would you please wake me when
my mother gets home? I'll need to talk to her."
"Of course, Amy."

Shinji Ikari lay on his bed, looking up at the ceiling,
feeling sorry for himself. He'd done a lot of that over the past
couple of weeks. Not the sort of high-density, nobody-ever-had-a-
worse-life-than-me power-angst he used to indulge in, perhaps, but
self-pity, nonetheless. It had been a bit more than three weeks since
his "capture" and, aside from spilling his guts and playing his cello
for Asuka, he hadn't -done- anything. The people of NERV, especially
the EVA pilots, were going out of their way to make him feel
comfortable. Even Jon Ellison, now that he'd come out of the funk
he'd been in since before Shinji's arrival, did whatever he could to
help Shinji feel at home. He had his cello back, which was certainly
a plus. His father was nice to him, but let him have his space. Life
was pretty good, discounting the Sword of Damocles hovering over all
their heads.
Nevertheless, Shinji had guilt. He was an accomplished
feeler-guilty and now he figured he had plenty of reason for it,
because it seemed like all they were doing in Worcester-3 these days
was waiting for something to happen, and Shinji's heart cried out for
action. He wanted to jump into the saddle and ride to Ichi's rescue.
While an admirable sentiment, he had to admit he was hindered a bit in
this goal by:
1) Not possessing a horse; and
2) Not knowing where she was.
So it was quite frustrating that no one seemed to feel the
same sense of urgency regarding her that he did. Sure, her story to
him was in question thanks to the truth about Rei, but Shinji was
convinced -she- believed what she'd told him was true, and that was
really all that was important to him. If anything, it made him more
anxious to get her out of there, away from people who would... would
-brainwash- her with such a false history.
Add to that -
But he was interrupted in his rumination by a knock at his
door, and being the polite sort, he answered it:
"Who is it?"
"DJ," said the knocker. "See you for a second?"
"Sure," said Shinji, sitting up. DJ opened the door and came
in, holding a rolled-up something in one hand.
"You look a bit upset," said DJ. "Something wrong?"
"Well... " Shinji shrugged inwardly and went on with the line
of thought he'd been pondering when DJ interrupted him. "Everybody
here's been nice," he said, "but... I don't.... I don't feel like I
really have a place here. You know? I don't feel like I have a voice
in what happens. I don't know where I fit in."
DJ grinned. "What a coincidence!" he declared. "I thought
you might be feeling that way, so I've taken the liberty of preparing
this organizational chart." He unrolled the item he held upon
Shinji's bed, revealing a large, complicated web-like diagram
carefully inscribed with black marker and embellished with taped-on
photographs.
"It's a bit sloppy because I didn't have Hal around to help me
with it," DJ apologized, "but it'll do. See, here's you," he said,
pointing. "And here's me," he said, "at the center of everything,
naturally," he added with a grin, "and Asuka kind of surmounting the
bunch with her indomitable Teutonic will."
Shinji couldn't hold onto his funk; he cracked a smile, then
pointed to a picture off to the side. "Who's this?"
"Oh, that's my Mum and Dad," said DJ cheerfully. "They don't
really have anything to do with anything, but it's a good picture,
don't you think? And it's the only one I have of them together."
Shinji laughed, then sobered a bit. "DJ... thanks, but... how
did you know?"
DJ shrugged. "Stands to reason you'd be feeling a bit left by
the wayside," he said. "You bombed into this place on the first of
the month, and here it is the twenty-fifth and it looks like we've
done nothing about all the information you brought us. I'd be a
little down too."
Shinji nodded. "I see. Well... since you brought it up... "
"Why -haven't- we done anything?" Shinji nodded again.
"Well... we have, but not overtly. Some friends of ours are in the
field right now trying to find the SEELE headquarters. You helped pin
it down, but the Arctic is a big place - it's going to take us a while
to find them. And there's always the possibility they'll find us
first. On top of that, we're gearing up to move out of this place,
which is taking most of everybody's efforts. We -are- working on it,
Shinji, but... well, it'll take a while. We may not see any results
until after we've moved to Halifax."
Shinji sighed, flopping down on his back. "I understand," he
said. "I just... it makes me so mad, to think that they have her and
I can't go get her back. I... " He paused, then plunged forward. "I
think I love her, DJ."
DJ nodded. "I know the feeling," he said with a grin.
"Sometimes just charging to the rescue's not the answer, though. Have
patience, it'll come. I haven't forgotten my promise. If we can get
her out, we will."
The two young men sat in gloomy silence for a few moments.
"Ah, come on," said DJ with slightly forced good cheer. Let's
round up the others and go shopping or something. Anything to get our
minds off all this gloom... "

"As ways of cheering up go," DJ Croft observed a short time
later, "this might not have been my best idea."
Rei Ayanami surveyed the scene before them and was forced to
admit that he might have a point.
The Worcester Galleria, a multi-story shopping mall in the
heart of downtown, had seen better days, a direct correlation to the
fact that Worcester itself had seen better. With the city nearly
deserted, the once-bustling mall was likewise, its shops closed for
lack of both customers and staff, the few still open mostly bare of
goods thanks to the difficulty of transporting things to a city most
shippers now considered a very-high-risk zone. It was depressingly
like walking around inside a giant mausoleum; the hollow rattle of
their footsteps on the marble floors was like a eulogy for a dead
city. Glued to the inside of the window in the entrance door they'd
come in through was a paper sign headed with the auspicious heading,
"THIS WEEK'S HOURS:"
"Not much left of old Wormtown," Jon mused, nodding in
agreement with DJ and Rei's sentiments as he looked around, hands in
his pockets.
"Still," said Shinji, "it's good to get out from underground
for a while."
"We should've gone to the park," said DJ glumly - all the more
so because coming to the Galleria instead had been his own idea.
"We can go there afterward," said Asuka. "Let's at least get
something to eat - there are still a couple of places open in the food
court."
After eating, the fivesome decided to make the best of their
journey and at least look around to see what was still open. As any
group of more than two (occasionally one) people in a mall will
inevitably do, they began to drift apart. DJ didn't notice when he
lost the rest of the group, but he did notice that someone was coming
up behind him while he stood looking through a window into what
remained of a shop that sold luggage. He glanced off the straight
line, catching the reflection of the approaching person in the glass:
A man in a dark business suit, sunglasses covering his eyes,
his mouth set in a cold, hard line, right hand inside the jacket of
his suitcoat -
DJ reacted without conscious thought, throwing himself to the
right; as he did so, the man in the suit pulled a weapon from his
jacket, leveled it and fired it. A high-pitched shriek tore through
the quiet of the mall, and the window DJ had been standing in front of
exploded into greenish pebbles that sleeted to the marble floor like a
truckload of marbles.
"Christ!" DJ observed, tumbling once and coming back up to one
knee, hauling his .45 from under his cycling jacket.
"Federal agent!" the man in the suit yelled, pivoting on his
heel and swinging the sonic stunner. "Drop your weapon, you are under
arrest!"
Somewhere behind him, DJ heard the yowl of another stunner,
back up the concourse, near the Sports Authority.
"Goddammit!" he yelled, backpedaling. The agent fired at him
again; he jumped to the left, feeling the edge of the concentrated
sonic pulse tug at his jacket sleeve, and behind him one of the
flagstones on the floor cracked. Get hit with that dead-on and he'd
be lucky to wake up at all - if he did, he'd have hearing damage for
life.
Even without the question of what this guy's employers planned
to do to DJ and the others if they caught them, that constituted
enough of a threat for DJ to have no problems with lethal force; he
ducked behind a trash barrel, then rolled out, came up to one knee
again, made certain the area beyond his assailant was clear, and
fired.
The guy was fast, DJ had to give him that - he threw himself
down just as DJ had, and DJ's first round smacked the wall behind
him. DJ dug in and ran as the sonic stunner's blast blew the trash
barrel apart behind him; then he slammed through a panic-barred door
and into a service hallway.
When he heard the door bang open again behind him, DJ turned,
saw the dark suit as he'd expected and loosed two rounds, staying as
low as he could and still run. The stunner yelled again, but he'd
opened up enough range that the agent's aim wouldn't have been very
good even had DJ not thrown him off further by shooting at him. DJ
came even with a door labeled "FILENE'S SERVICE", drew himself back,
and kicked just inboard of the doorknob with the heel of one of his
Denali Ranger wilderness boots. The frame splintered and the door
slammed open; DJ was through it in the next second.
He emerged from the stockroom area of Filene's at a dead run,
turned the corner by the shoe department -
- and nearly came face to face with a different man in a dark
suit, who was just coming from Menswear and had his own stunner out,
but not raised. They saw and recognized each other at the same
instant.
DJ reacted faster; his V10 snapped up and let fly twice. The
agent collapsed on his back, a double-lobed crimson blossom decorating
his white shirt, a tidy pair of holes punched in his tie. A mannequin
next to DJ exploded; he turned, let off his last shot at his pursuer,
and didn't stick around to see if he'd missed.
He had; the stunner blew out a panel of mirrors as DJ passed
them in Menswear, scattering glass around him, and he crunched over
it, then turned right and made for the exit. To get there, he had to
pass the cosmetics counter.
The girl who worked that counter, justifiably frightened by
the sudden outbreak of violence in her vicinity, chose that moment to
run. Unfortunately her path took her across DJ's, and the two tangled
violently alongside the counter. By the time DJ got them disentangled
and had propelled her none-too-gently across the aisle into Misses,
the agent was almost on top of him. With nowhere else to go, he
jumped over the counter. The agent was game; he took a shot at DJ as
the latter was in the air, and another as he passed behind the
counter.
DJ rolled past the lash of the sonic stunner, pulling his
jacket collar up to shield his neck from the shower of glass that
resulted when the sonic blast exploded the display case. He kept
rolling and fetched up against the baseboard, lying in a motionless
heap with his head on his arms and covered by his bunched jacket. The
SEELE agent came around the end of the wrecked display, and DJ hoped
he wasn't the cautious type. He wasn't; he made a satisfied noise,
put the stunner away, kicked DJ's empty .45 out into the aisle, and
grabbed DJ's wrists, hauling him to a limp semi-standing position.
DJ let his body weight rock him back, then suddenly stiffened,
braced his arms against the agent's, and drove the steel-shanked sole
of one of his Denalis into the man's kneecap. There was a nauseating
crunch, and the agent went down, howling. DJ stood straight, grabbed
a heavy mirror from the counter behind him, and smashed it over the
screaming man's head. He stopped screaming and fell sideways. Just
to be on the safe side, DJ kicked at the agent's wounded knee; the man
did not react. Satisfied that he was indeed out, DJ knelt down and
rifled his coat.
That search yielded the sonic stunner, twelve dollars, an
official-looking but vague ID card ("FEDERAL AGENT") in the name of
one Arthur T. Crenshaw, and a pair of handcuffs. DJ looked around for
his .45; it was nowhere in ready sight, and he had no time to search
for it. The others were no doubt being stalked by similar thugs, if
they hadn't been caught already. He took Arthur T. Crenshaw's
stunner, left the money and cuffed the unconscious agent's hands under
his knees with the cuffs, then scrambled out into the corridor with
the weapon at the ready. Mall patrons were wisely avoiding the
general area of the store where all the noisy violence had just taken
place. DJ looked up and down the corridor quickly, trying to spot any
of his comrades.
Near the escalators to the parking garage, he saw the air
-jump-, the quick brutal distortion of a concussion wave; he was far
enough away that the WHOMP which reached him a moment later only made
him wince. He ran in that direction.
A dozen unconscious people lay sprawled around the general
vicinity of the WCiS teller machine, and a group of four agents were
making for the parking garage. Two of them carried limp burdens over
their shoulders - Jon and Rei.
DJ shouted an unintelligible challenge and poured on all the
speed he could muster. The foolhardiness of this was reinforced a
moment later, when a plasma blast ripped past him and blew a
basketball-sized hole in the teller machine. DJ skidded to a stop and
threw himself down as the agent firing sent two more blasts over his
head for good measure, then turned and ran after his retreating
colleagues.
Snarling, DJ picked himself up and followed with a bit more
prudence, but not much. He crashed the panic bars on the exit and
jumped the fire stairs a half-flight at a time, following the
clattering of the agents' hard-soled shoes.
He plunged out of the stairwell on the garage's bottom level,
rounded the corner, and saw the agents dumping their unconscious cargo
into the trunk of a large black sedan. This time, rather than
shouting, he let the sonic stunner he'd taken from Arthur T. Crenshaw
speak for him; it howled in his hand and one of the agents dropped.
DJ shifted his point of aim and fired again; the driver's window of
the sedan exploded from its mount in pebbles of dark safety glass just
as the agent he'd been shooting at slid behind the wheel and slammed
the door. A moment later the car started, dashing DJ's hopes that
he'd managed to take out the driver. Another agent piled into the
passenger side as the car backed out, and the third headed for a rear
door, but paused for a moment to turn and take one more shot at DJ.
Hard light reached from the elevator bay and touched the
agent; without a sound, he dropped to the concrete floor, acrid smoke
pouring from the black crater in his chest. DJ turned to see Asuka
emerging from the elevator at the run. She had an X-COM Mark V laser
pistol in her hand.
There was no point in running after the car; it had already
lunged up the ramp, and DJ could hear the sound of it crashing through
the wooden barricade blocking the I-290 exit. By the time they got up
there, the car would be on the highway, halfway to Berlin or Auburn.
DJ let out one of his choicest profanities. Shinji came out
of the elevator, looked around bewilderedly, and ran after Asuka.
"Are you all right?" Asuka asked as she came to a stop next to
DJ. Shinji's eyes went wide as he surveyed the scene - the
unconscious man, the dead man, the tire marks.
"I'm fine - but the bastards got Jon and Rei!" DJ snarled.
The flush of exertion washed out of Asuka's face. "Oh, God,"
she murmured. "Who are they?" she asked when she'd recovered some of
her composure.
"Their IDs just say 'Federal Agent'," DJ replied. "Probably
SEELE Security." He squatted down and took a closer look at the one
Asuka had burned. The dead agent was a ginger-haired man of about
thirty, his hatchet face frozen in a look of permanent surprise.
"Say," DJ observed. "I know this bastard."
"You do?"
"Well, only to say 'sod you' to," said DJ. "He and a big
salt-and-pepper-haired bloke about forty tried to snatch me at the
airport my very first day in town. I assumed they were overzealous
NERV MIBs like Stanfield, who I met not long after." DJ frowned
thoughtfully, still regarding the dead man's face. "But now that I
think about it... they never joined the party when Stanfield caught me
at the bottom of the hill, even though they weren't too far behind me.
They saw the real NERV agents and faded... " He sat back on his
haunches, his frown deepening.
Asuka cursed. "And now they've got Jon and Rei. Who knows
-where- they took them... "
The agent DJ had stunned moaned and stirred faintly. A shadow
slipped out from behind one of the nearby cars and flickered to the
man's side; DJ, Shinji and Asuka drew back. A challenge died on DJ's
lips as he recognized that shadow.
It was Kevin Nelson.
DJ could, perhaps, be forgiven for not immediately recognizing
Kevin. He looked very different from the last time DJ had seen him.
His raincoat had started to tatter a bit at the edges, and his shirt
was filthy, yet for some reason, he still wore his necktie, loosely
knotted at his throat. His once-pale skin was dusky, and not entirely
with grime, though he had accumulated a good helping of that too.
Where before he had faintly resembled Rei, now he looked more like
Jon; his hair, matted and spiky, had gone jet black, and his eyes
glittered like emeralds, hard, cold, and green.
Kevin reached down, gathered the SEELE agent's shirtfront into
his long-fingered hand, and lifted the man off the floor as if he
weighed nothing at all.
"-He- knows," said Kevin, holding the man at his eye
level. His voice was a hoarse, harsh rasp. "And he's going to tell
us exactly how to get there... aren't you?" he asked the agent icily.
"Annnggghhh," said the semiconscious agent, his head lolling.
"Yes," said Kevin, his thin lips twisting into a sardonic
sneer. "You're going to be very cooperative indeed." He shook the
man slightly; the agent moaned again, shook his head, and lifted it,
his eyes coming back into focus slightly.
"Wha - ?" said the agent.
Kevin impaled the agent on his gaze, staring wide-eyed into
the man's face. The agent flinched as if struck and tried to look
away, but it was as if he couldn't. Veins popped out in his neck as
he strained to avert his eyes; now fully conscious, he began to
whimper and shake, his hands pawing ineffectually at Kevin's arm.
Then the unfortunate agent threw his head back and let out a
horrific shriek, so raw and desperate it hardly seemed to have come
from a human throat. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he sagged
bonelessly in Kevin's grip, the shriek trailing away to a rattling
gurgle and then lapsing into silence.
Kevin made a small, disgusted noise and tossed the man aside.
He tumbled, absolutely limp, through the air, collapsed halfway across
the hood of a nearby car, and then slid slowly across it and tumbled
to the concrete floor on his back. Kevin turned his back and walked
slowly away, as DJ and Asuka stared after him in utter shock.
"You'll find Jon and Rei at the decommissioned X-COM base
under the student center at Mount Holyoke College," Kevin said flatly,
without turning to look at any of the three people he was addressing.
"I'd get moving if I were you. The police will be here soon, and
every second you waste here is one less second that your friends have
to live." His voice seethed with controlled energy, as though he were
remaining calm and dispassionate only with the greatest of efforts.
Shinji went to the fallen agent's side as if in a dream, knelt
down, and pressed his fingers to the man's throat; a moment later, he
looked up at Kevin's back with horror in his eyes.
"He's dead!" Shinji cried. "You've killed him!"
"So what?" Kevin snarled, whirling on the boy with his eyes
full of rage. "He was -weak-. He had a -right- to die."
"I don't care what he was!" Shinji replied, Kevin's callous
dismissal kindling his own anger in kind. He stood up and took a step
toward the black-haired youth. "He was defenseless and you murdered
him!"
"You have a problem with that?!" Kevin demanded. He pointed
at the dead agent and went on, "You feel some compassion for
this... this -filth-? He just helped the other side take two of your
number away, and believe me, it's not a party that awaits them when
they get to where they're going." Kevin rounded and pointed to Asuka,
who was still gaping in speechless horror at the entire scene before
her. "What about her? She burned a hole big enough to see through in
that one," he went on, indicating the laser-burned corpse. "Why
aren't you giving -her- the humanitarian speech?"
"That was different," Shinji replied stubbornly. "-He- was
about to shoot DJ. Asuka was protecting her friend. That man was
helpless and you killed him anyway! That's... that's -wrong-."
"What do you know of 'wrong'?" Kevin raged. "He put his
filthy hands on Jon and Rei and helped his kind take them away, and
for that he had to die! What does your tiny human mind find so
difficult to comprehend about that?!"
"I don't know who you are," Shinji replied, "but you can't be
any friend of Rei's. You act more like one of -them-!"
Kevin roared with rage and lunged, shooting out a hand to
seize Shinji by the throat. Shinji jumped back, but too slowly -
- and Kevin's hand struck an invisible barrier with a ringing,
bell-like sound, causing concentric hexagonal ripples to flicker out
in space from the point of impact.
"What the - ?!" all four participants cried.
Kevin stumbled back, the wrath on his face replaced by shock
and even a bit of fear. His expression disintegrated into one of
total panic, as though he had just realized something infinitely
terrifying.
"No! No, no, no, nooooooo!" he wailed. "Not this! Anything
but this!" He fell to his knees, then raised tortured eyes, streaming
with tears, to the dingy concrete ceiling, calling out, "My God, my
God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
Asuka and DJ glanced at each other, comprehension dawning.
Shinji took a step toward the prostrate figure in the dark coat, but
DJ caught his shoulder and dragged him back.
"Come on, Shinji, we've got to go."
"But - he needs help!" Shinji protested. "We can't just leave
him there."
"It's all we -can- do," Asuka replied. "We can't do anything
for him."
Shinji looked troubled, but stopped trying to get free and
started running with them. They reached Jon's car in under a minute;
since Jon had been carrying the keys, they had to break a window with
the butt of Asuka's laser pistol, then hotwire the ignition, to get it
out of there. They cleared the garage bare seconds before the cops
arrived. DJ drove away at a sedate enough pace not to attract police
attention, then got the car out on I-290 and pushed it as hard as he
could to the west.
DJ wasn't as good a driver in a car as he was on a
motorcycle. Cars were too big and distributed; he didn't have as
definite a sense of where a car's edges were, or how well it was
connecting with the road. When behind the wheel, he was generally
more conservative than he would have been behind the bars. Today he
threw it all to the wind and drove as far out on the edge of panic as
he dared, praying to all the saints he could think of that the state
police weren't on the troll for traffic violators today.
After Shinji had recovered enough from the succession of
shocking events that had just overtaken him to speak, he said from the
back seat, "Shouldn't we call Headquarters and tell them what's
happened?"
"Unless you've got a cell phone you haven't told us about, we
can't," said Asuka. "Not without stopping, and there's no time to
stop."
"Knew I should've just sent Amy a -videodisc-, but noooo, I
had to be the -dramatic- one," DJ grumbled, glancing at the useless
HALcomm unit on his wrist.
Shinji thought about that for a moment, then nodded.
The rest of the drive, hell-bent across the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts, passed in silence, except for verbal cues from the
navicomputer when they drew close to their objective.

Misato Katsuragi looked up from her dataterm as the telephone
on her desk shrilled. She considered letting it go to voice mail -
she was very busy - but the little caller ID window on the phone read
"IBUKI, MAYA - MOCR STATION", so it was probably important, so she
picked it up.
"Katsuragi."
"Brigadier, turn on channel 33," said Maya's voice. "Could be
a problem."
"We're getting our problem notifications from Worcester's
local TV stations now?" Misato inquired. "We -are- getting
desperate." Turning in her swivel chair, she hunted the remote for
her little TV out of the top drawer of her desk and thumbed it on.
" - olice are still investigating at the scene, but few
details are known at this time," reporter Candace Williams (who
insisted on being bylined as 'Candace' now that she'd fought her way
up to real news stories from the 'On the Town with Candy Williams'
gig) was saying. "All we know for sure is that some kind of gun
battle broke out at the Worcester Galleria just minutes ago,
demolishing several stores and leaving at least three men dead."
Behind Williams, Misato could see one of the lower levels of
the Galleria parking garage. An ambulance was standing near the
elevators; just beyond Williams's right shoulder, a parking space with
a glittering spatter of powdered glass could be seen, and two
paramedics bending over the sprawled body of a man in a black business
suit.
Misato was just about to ask Maya what the hell this had to do
with any of -them- when one of the paramedics moved, revealing the
wound on the black-suited man's chest.
"Holy Christ!" Misato cried, coming up out of her chair.
"That's a laser burn!"
"Earlier they showed an ATM up on the mall floor that looked
like somebody took a plasma weapon to it," Maya told her. "That's
when I decided you should see it."
"What do you think? Dust-down between some of our security
guys and SEELE agents?"
"All of our security officers are accounted for - but we did
have personnel at the Galleria this afternoon," Maya reminded her.
Misato stared at the TV for a moment longer, then sat back
down heavily. "Oh NO."

The former student center of Mount Holyoke College looked
abandoned. No guards were posted outside, and nobody came out to
challenge the three EVA pilots as the Avenger pulled to a halt
outside. DJ, Asuka, and Shinji piled out of the car and went around
to the trunk; there, just as they had expected and hoped, they found
the contingency equipment the security department had fitted the car
with when it had been officially requisitioned for service.
There were a brace of plasma pistols and a holster-belt set
for them, four plasma pistol powerpacks, and some random security and
medical gear. Lacking the multicompartmented utility suits of X-COM
troopers, they had to leave most of that behind. DJ took off his
empty shoulder holster and put it in the trunk, swapping it for the
plasma weapons and their rig. He pocketed some slap patches and
pressure bandages while Asuka rummaged through the security gear.
There was a pair of X-COM issue combat gloves, sized to fit Jon's
slender hands; they wouldn't fit DJ, so Asuka took them.
These were heavy black leather gloves with reinforced palms
for climbing and gripping; they left the fingertips bare for increased
weapon sensitivity, but the ridge across the knuckles was reinforced
and backed with small pouches into which several ounces of powdered
lead had been sewn. Additionally, on the first and third knuckles,
tiny round silver contacts gleamed. These were connected to a small
but very powerful single-discharge flat-pack battery spanning most of
the back of the hand. If bridged by a conductive substance during the
course of a significant impact, they would release that battery's
whole charge in about a millisecond. The idea had originally been to
provide X-COM's troopers with a way of capturing aliens alive for the
Research Division. The requirement of engaging in hand-to-hand combat
was not well-received, causing the tactic to be phased out in favor of
the shock-rod approach, but the feature had remained and sometimes
found applications in security.
DJ also found an emergency distress beacon. This seemed to be
as good a time as any for declaring a distressful emergency, so he
switched it on and tossed it back into the trunk of the car.
"That ought to get -somebody's- attention," he said.
Finishing their rummaging, DJ and Asuka turned around to see
Shinji standing a little way off, watching them with a grave and
troubled expression.
"Shinji, you don't have to come along," said Asuka. "Why
don't you wait here? You'll be as safe here as anyplace... "
Shinji shook his head. "No, I want to help."
DJ nodded. "All right, if that's what you want. You'll need
a weapon." He turned back to the trunk to see if there was anything
in there he'd missed, or if he'd have to give Shinji one of the plasma
pistols, but Shinji reached behind his back and came out with a
familiar silver object.
"I found this in Filene's," he said. "I think you killed the
one who was chasing me... I... " He looked faintly ashamed of himself
and admitted, "I hid in the changing rooms and only came out after I
heard the explosion. This was lying on the floor... I thought I
recognized it as yours, so I picked it up."
DJ brightened a little. "Well, thanks!" he said. "Thought
sure I'd lost the old thing this time." He reached and took the spare
.45 magazine from the trunk, then offered it to Shinji. "You know how
to use one of those?"
With a businesslike expression, Shinji took the magazine,
stuck it into his trouser pocket, racked the .45's slide open and let
it lock on the empty magazine already installed, inspected the
chamber, released the empty mag, tossed it past DJ into the trunk,
slapped the charged one into place, dropped the slide, set the safety,
and tucked the gun back into his waistband.
"Yes," he said flatly.
DJ glanced at Asuka, who shrugged with a small grin.
"All right, then," said DJ. "Let's go."

The beacon did indeed get somebody's attention - specifically,
that of Makoto Hyuuga, on whose console the alarm first appeared.
"What the hell's that?" asked Maya Ibuki as the throbbing
whine streamed out from Hyuuga's console.
"X-COM MIB distress beacon alarm," Hyuuga said, silencing the
siren and punching the beacon's transponder data onto his VDT.
"Vehicle beacon, part of a standard MIB field kit... ID number
44-JE-01. Jon Ellison's."
"Where?" Misato demanded, leaning over the railing of the
control room's upper deck.
"Getting a fix on that now," Hyuuga replied. On the main
screen, a map of Massachusetts appeared; a moment later a blinking red
light appeared over the town of South Hadley, well to the western end
of the state.
"South Hadley?! What the hell's there?"
"An X-COM facility, once," said Ryoji Kaji. "Closed in 2001,
when it became pretty obvious that the Hidden War wasn't going to pick
up to anything like its pre-Second Impact levels. SEELE must be using
it as a bolthole. They probably tried to put the snatch on our pilots
at the Galleria."
"This is my fault," Misato said, banging a fist on the
control-room railing. "Why the hell did I let them go to the mall
without security? This thing is escalating so damn fast I shouldn't
have let them go at -all-!"
Kaji shrugged. "Trying to keep some semblance of normalcy in
life is important too," he observed. "Especially given all that these
kids have been through."
"Well, now they're going through -more- because of my
carelessness," Misato growled. "Maya, get EVA-03 onto one of the 411s
and prep the Mobile Command Unit. Let's get the hell over there. If
Jon's field beacon just went active, his car is there, which means he
might still be free."
"Roger," Maya replied. "Truss, you and Hyuuga stay here in
case something -else- goes wrong."
"Right," said Truss, nodding with what he hoped was more
confidence than he actually felt.

They found storerooms, laboratories, rooms that looked like
distressingly modified surgeries, and one or two chambers whose
purpose was completely unidentifiable. There was a room full of
deactivated cryotanks and another full of large vats of a
familiar-looking yellowish-clear liquid. None of them contained any
personnel, though.
At the last door on the corridor, they stopped and listened.
>From the hum of machinery beyond the door, the room sounded occupied;
DJ leaned close to the door, trying to make out a sound or a
recognizable voice.
The hum escalated, and a recognizable voice obliged him by
raising itself in an agonized shriek.
This is the place, DJ thought, and applied his boot to the
door. As it burst open, he stepped back a half-step and Asuka piled
into the room, her laser ready; a heartbeat later he went in behind
her with his plasmas out.
This was a room about the size of one of the classrooms at old
Crossroads High, and decorated like an operating theater, its walls
and floor covered in white tile. It had three doors: the one they had
just entered through, near one corner, one at the other end of the
wall behind them, and another directly opposite it, leading through
the far wall to either a perpendicular corridor or another room.
There were no windows. The wall to DJ and Asuka's backs was covered
from ceiling to mid-wall and from one end to the door at the other by
a mirror.
At the far end of the room, Jon Ellison was strapped to a
steel table that was mounted such that it could be rotated about its
short axis. At the moment, he was hanging face-down from it at about
a forty-five degree angle, head up. Below him was a nasty-looking
assemblage of needles, graspers, and electrodes mounted on an angled
platform; Jon's noisemaking, DJ concluded, was most likely by way of
protest to the fact that he was currently being applied to these
devices by the hand controlling his table's rotation.
That hand belonged to a girl of perhaps sixteen, slender and
pretty in a disturbingly familiar way. Her hair was coal-black and
her eyes were emerald green, and the light in those eyes showed her
observers that she was enjoying the process of applying Jon to the
devices as much as Jon was not. She had on a kind of rough light-blue
canvas smock over a fairly plain blouse and skirt, presumably to
protect that blouse and skirt from the fallout of her activities. She
looked up at the sound of the door being crashed, recognized her
visitors, and smiled in greeting. It wasn't the sort of smile that
gave ease to the person being smiled at.
Aside from being black-haired, green-eyed, and older, the
girl was a dead ringer for Rei Ayanami.
Shinji, puzzled that DJ and Asuka had stopped short with
weapons raised but had not fired, looked around the broken doorframe
into the room, then gasped.
"Ichi!" he cried.
Her green eyes flickered to him, and a mixture of surprise,
annoyance and regret passed through them.
"Shinji," she said. "Why are you here?"
Shinji gaped for a second and a half, then swallowed hard and
mastered his shock with a facility that surprised Asuka and DJ. "Why
are -you- here?" he replied. "What is this? Why are you doing this
to Jon? Ichi, the information Natla gave us about NERV was wrong!
The children weren't prisoners there! Jon wasn't helping them to
control Rei; he did everything he could to protect her. He loves
her!"
Ichi regarded the sagging, semiconscious specimen on the table
with evident disgust. "I know. Revolting, isn't it? Abyss knows I
have no love for the angel, but to be touched by this half-breed
experiment?" She shivered. "One of his brothers tried to touch me
once; I broke his arm."
Shinji had realized immediately upon entering the room that
something was horribly wrong; now he began to feel the hideous
suspicion that what was wrong was his assumption of what would have
been right.
"I don't understand," he said in a small voice. His eyes
filled with tears that he made no attempt at wiping away.
"I do," Asuka said, her voice harsh and her eyes full of
loathing. "She belongs to them, Shinji. She alway has. They... "
Asuka looked as if the next words tasted filthy on her tongue. "They
gave her to you to keep you docile."
"What?" Shinji whispered, the word coming out as a hoarse
sob. He turned his eyes to Asuka, not wanting to believe but somehow
knowing that it was true.
"I'm sorry, Shinji," said Asuka, not taking her hate-filled
eyes off Ichi. "She never cared about you."
"That's not true!" Ichi protested petulantly. "I do care.
You should have stayed with us, Shinji. I know that I haven't been
fully honest with you in the past - but the truth is that I did it all
to -help- you, to keep you confident and strong. Because I -care-
about you. You're the first and only human that I've ever cared
about, did you know that?"
Asuka's upper lip curled back from her teeth. "Get away from
Jon or I'll burn your face off," she said through gritted teeth.
"I wouldn't," said Ichi conversationally.
Asuka readied herself to fulfil her promise when she felt
something cool and hard poke her behind the left ear.
"It's about time you got here," Ichi snarled as a black-
jumpsuited guard entered the room through the door at her end of the
room. Asuka cursed inwardly, and heard DJ not being quite so
restrained about it, as they both upbraided themselves for getting so
caught up in the little drama playing out between Shinji and Ichi that
they hadn't paid attention to the door behind them.
"Sorry, ma'am," said the voice of another guard behind Asuka.
His black-sleeved hand came into view as he relieved Asuka of her
laser pistol. She glanced to her right to see a third holding down on
DJ, who, with a look of grudging loathing, put his plasma weapons on
the floor. The guard covering him kicked them over into the corner,
behind the door.
Nobody paid any attention to Shinji; he was standing near the
door, slight and helpless, his arms wrapped around himself and his
face a mask of disbelief as he struggled to comprehend this horrifying
change in the girl he loved - or struggled to comprehend that it
wasn't a change at all.
"I loved you," he said, his voice tiny and raw, as he gazed at
her with a strange mixture of horror and wistfulness in his eyes.
Ichi nodded offhandedly. "I remember," she said.
"Inexpertly, but not without a certain... panache. Natlateth was
worried that I might balk at that step, but to tell you the truth I
found it quite enjoyable." She smiled as a thought occurred to her,
and said, "Why don't you come back to us? No one needs to know that
you helped them briefly - we can say you were their prisoner. Just
come over here and let me deal with these two, and everything will be
all right."
Shinji stared disbelieving at her. "But these are my
friends!" he protested.
Ichi made a frustrated noise, tossing her head. "Why? Do you
think that these 'friends' of yours would be giving you the time of
day if you hadn't been thrown into the middle of this war? Of course
not - they'd be just like the others, ignoring you and leaving you to
sit in the corner listening to your Walkman, and wondering just what
it would be like to have someone to talk to."
Shinji was silent, not responding. He just stood by the
doorway, his face becoming more and more troubled as the seconds
passed.
"Take a few moments to think it over, Shin-chan," said Ichi.
Seeming to remember the rest of her guests, she turned back to address
the guards.
"Kill these two," she said.
DJ's eyes flicked to his left and met Asuka's. The corner of
her mouth turned up in the tiniest of smiles, and she winked at him.
As the guard behind DJ said, "OK, let's go," and put his hand
on DJ's shoulder to guide him out of the room and to his death, DJ let
out a despairing moan and pitched forward into a fetal position, his
knees buckling. He fell forward with his arms folded over his chest
and his knees drawn up, twisting slightly to the left so that he
landed more or less on his right shoulder, rolling onto his back -
- and Arthur T. Crenshaw's sonic stunner screamed down the
puzzled guard before the man ever had time to realize that his
erstwhile prisoner's faint was a sham.
The guard covering Asuka reacted just as she and DJ had hoped
he would, forgetting about his own prisoner to react to his
colleague's felling with an indignant shout and a leveling of his
weapon. DJ, flat on his back on the floor with the stunner still
aimed at where his guard had been, would be at the other guard's mercy
for at least a second or two. By the time he could re-aim the
stunner, he would be dead.
Luckily, Asuka hadn't paid much attention to DJ's maneuver;
instead she waited for her guard to stop looking at her, then pivoted
on her heel and drove her fist into his face with all the recently-
reconstituted strength she could summon.
By itself, that wouldn't have been enough to do anything but
get the guard's attention. After all, the man was a good foot taller
than Asuka, ruggedly built, a professional soldier, and her strength,
though mostly regained, had never been too impressive. Athletic or
not, she was still a fourteen-year-old girl, and a slender one at
that.
Except Asuka was wearing X-COM combat gloves. Hit in the face
by a pound of speeding lead and 20,000 volts, the guard dropped as
though she'd just cut his head off with an axe, smoke curling up from
the two little burns on the angle of his jaw.
All that took about a second and a half. Unfortunately,
though brilliantly conceived and executed, DJ and Asuka's maneuvers
had one major drawback: they left the two facing away from the -third-
guard and Ichi. With time still feeling slowed by the adrenaline rush
of their sudden counterattack, both DJ and Asuka could see that guard,
reflected with slight distortion in the mirror (or was it a one-way
window?) at the back of the room, but they couldn't do very much about
him until they had enough time to turn around.
By which time he'd have shot one of them.
Asuka met DJ's eyes in the mirror and took heart in their
mutual resolve: whichever one went down, the other would make that
last guard pay for it. She steeled himself for the shot, wishing the
sudden, burning agony on herself, wishing for DJ to be spared, some
detached part of her mind noticing how remarkable it was that anyone
should prefer to die and be avenged rather than survive and avenge.
The shot sounded out of place; the sharp incongruity of it
broke the sensation of distorted time even as the green plasma pulse
missed DJ and Asuka entirely and shattered the mirror instead. Asuka
turned to see the guard falling to the floor, his head a bloody ruin
from the eyebrows up. Ichi was standing next to the rack that held
Jon, a plasma pistol half-drawn from under her smock, a stunned
expression on her face.
Asuka looked quite puzzled for a moment, until she realized
that the strange-sounding shot had really been three different sounds
happening at almost the same time: one, the whining zap of the plasma
discharge; the other, the hard rap of conventional gunfire; the third,
the sharp wet slap of a bullet shattering a skull. She glanced at DJ,
wondering if he had pulled off some kind of bizarre over-the-shoulder
shot with the guard's reflection in the mirror to guide him. It
seemed absurd, even for DJ; good as he was with a handgun, he wasn't
Napoleon Solo, and anyway he hadn't had a pistol with him.
DJ was still sitting on the floor, still facing the broken
mirror, but his head was turned. He wasn't looking at Ichi; that
would have required quite an agile neck. Rather, he was looking
toward the doorway, a look of incredulous shock on his face.
Shinji Ikari stood near the door with DJ's smoking .45
automatic in his hand.
Ichi found her voice first. "Shin-chan - what are you doing?"
"I'm sorry, Ichi," said Shinji, his voice a bit shaky but
strong. "I can't let you kill my friends."
Ichi made that irritated noise again. "Your friends," she
said, loading the word with disgust. "Shinji, stop and -think- for a
second. You're so close to understanding! Let -go- of that craving
for acceptance, -realize- that you can't go on living your life for
the sake of everyone else, and just be your own person. Live for
-yourself-."
Shinji's jaw quivered. Watching him, DJ and Asuka glanced at
each other, and the troubled look they shared was clear. They both
knew enough of Shinji's history to know that Ichi had just struck a
nerve in him.
"Do Natlateth or the others here care about you? No, probably
not," Ichi admitted. "She doesn't care about anyone but herself, and
her plans. But -I- care about you, Shinji, and I can protect you from
what she's planning to do. Her plan was never to wipe out all of
humanity, and she has no great vendetta against you. You can't
prevent what's going to come next, Shinji, but I can make sure that
you're still around after the dust settles. We can both be safe
together, and that's all that's important."
Shinji shook his head. "How can you believe that? Do you
really think I'd live happily with you in a world where Natla gets her
way? She killed my mother, did you know that?"
Ichi looked genuinely puzzled. "What does that matter? We're
not talking about your mother, or your father, or your - " she made a
dismissive gesture - "friends. We're talking about -you- and -me-.
Let the others go, or you'll fall with them. Don't let them drag you
down alongside them."
Shinji lowered the gun slightly, but only to get the sights
out of his way so he could concentrate fully on the look of utter
disbelief he was giving Ichi.
"How can you be so selfish?" he asked her.
She drew her plasma pistol the rest of the way from her smock
and leveled it at Asuka. "How can you be so foolish?" she replied.
"Shinji, I love you, but I don't have time to argue with you. These
two are going to die, now or later, it doesn't matter. -You- don't
have to. That's all I'm offering you. Now come over here and stop
being such an idiot."
Her finger tightened on the trigger.
DJ glanced at his own plasmas; too far to jump before Ichi
could fire. He tensed himself, getting ready to throw himself instead
into the path of the shot, even as Asuka saw him doing it and drew
breath to tell him to stop.
This time the gunshot went off by itself, its hard, sharp
shout caroming off the tiled walls of the room. The echoes had just
started to die when the spent cartridge case tinkled to the floor as a
sort of sonic postscript, followed shortly by the harsh clatter of
metal on tile as Ichi's plasma weapon fell from her hand.
Ichi frowned thoughtfully at the slowly spreading scarlet
stain on the front of her smock, and then looked at Shinji. The
corners of her mouth cocked upward in a smile.
"Well, I will be God-damned," she said slowly and distinctly.
"Shinji. You were actually -listening-. I'm... I'm proud of you."
Then her eyes rolled up in her head and she crumpled
to the floor.
Shinji stood rooted to the spot where he stood, staring not at
Ichi's body but at the spot where she had been standing, past the
empty space and at the blood on the far wall. It was just blood -
bright red, just like his own. Some part of Shinji felt vaguely
disappointed.
DJ got slowly to his feet and carefully took a step toward
Shinji. "Shinji?" he inquired softly. "You all right?"
Shinji broke the pose and lowered the gun, turning slowly to
face DJ. "I... I think so," he replied, and a look of bleak surprise
came onto his face. "I don't... I don't feel much of anything."
"That comes later," DJ replied, picking up his plasma
pistols. Asuka collected her laser from the guard who'd taken it from
her, then went to get Jon out of the contraption he'd been locked
into. DJ put his hand on Shinji's shoulder; Shinji shrugged it off
and went over to Ichi's side. He absent-mindedly set the .45's
safety, stuck it into the back of his waistband, then crouched down on
his haunches next to the body.
Slowly, almost reverently, Shinji reached out and closed her
eyes; then he let his fingertips trace the side of her face, bowed his
head, and gave a great, shuddering sigh.
DJ looked at him for a moment, decided there was nothing to be
gained by bothering him, and went to help Asuka with Jon.
"Jon?" Asuka said as she carefully unstrapped the tall, lanky,
battered pilot and helped him down from the rack. "Can you hear me?
It's Asuka, Jon. Can you hear me?"
Jon blinked blearily, shaking his head. "Ah... Ash'ka?" he
blurred. "Can't... can't shee yuh. Druh... drugged me. Keep me... "
His haggard face quirked into a faint echo of a smile. "Keep me fr'm
killin' 'em all." He gestured vaguely with a hand, and Asuka could
see drying blood smeared on the tips of several fingers; on the face of
the guard Shinji had shot, Asuka noticed three very deep scratches.
One of them had come within millimeters of destroying the man's right
eye.
"How is he?" asked DJ as he stepped around the torture
machine.
"Bad," Asuka replied. "Jon, can you walk? We have to get out
of here."
"Whuh... where's Rei?" asked Jon.
"We don't know yet," DJ replied. "We have to look for her
next."
That seemed to strike a spark inside Jon; he blinked, tried
valiantly to focus on his teammate's face, then closed his eyes. His
face composed itself into a look of deep concentration, losing all of
the pain-drunk, drugged weariness. He began to tremble violently;
Asuka made a concerned noise and held him tighter, to keep him from
falling as he twitched and shuddered. In such close contact, she
could actually -feel- the change that came over him, feel his body
harden as his skin darkened and his fingernails thickened.
Then it was over, and he softened and slackened, almost
swooning; after a moment, some strength came back to him, and he
opened his eyes and smiled.
"While they were hurting me," he said, "I couldn't concentrate
enough to do that. I hate to admit it, but it's handy." He stepped
back, disengaging himself from Asuka's arms; then he noticed Shinji,
and what he was kneeling next to, and a look of puzzlement spread over
his face.
"What the - ?" he said.
"It's a long story," DJ told him.
"Where is - "
The sounds of running feet, a lot of them, came from the
corridor outside.
"Come on, Shinji, we've got to go!" cried DJ as Asuka and Jon
started heading for the far door, the one the nearest dead guard had
entered through.
Shinji remained where he was for a moment; then he looked up
at the doorway where he, DJ and Asuka had entered the room. The first
of what promised to be a large number of uniformed guards came through
it, his plasma rifle at the ready; DJ burned him down with one of his
pistols and shouted for Shinji again.
Shinji Ikari regarded the door and the next guard through it
for a moment; then he turned, grabbed the fallen guard's weapon by its
sling, and dragged it across the floor into his hands. As guards
began to enter the room through both far doors, Shinji stood up,
looked around as though realizing where he was, and then ran to the
door and followed DJ, Asuka and Jon out into the connecting corridor.
Cut off by the newly-arrived guard squad from the route they
took to get in, the NERV contingent selected a new route pretty much
at random.
"Jon, do you have any idea where Rei is?" Asuka asked.
Jon seemed as though he were listening for a moment, then
said, "No. They must be hiding her from me somehow... she's nearby,
but... " He shook his head. "I can't tell where."
"Well, it -seemed- like a good idea," Asuka muttered to
herself.
"More guards down this way," DJ noted, blasting at the group
of uniformed men down the way to keep their heads down while the EVA
pilots took a side corridor at the run.

Rei Ayanami slipped softly out of a dream of the lights of
Heaven and into something more closely approximating reality - a
rather hard and uncompromising reality, at that. She was lying on
something stiff and cold, and her head was ringing not with the sounds
of the celestial spheres, but residual aural shock from the concussion
blast. She sat up slowly and carefully, and just as carefully opened
her eyes.
The room she was in was about fifteen feet square and barren,
with cinderblock walls, a low ceiling and a heavy-looking door at the
far end. The light came from a circular fluorescent fixture on the
ceiling. The surface she'd been lying on was not so much a bed as a
narrow shelf jutting out from one of the walls.
Jon Ellison stood at the far end, leaning against the door,
hands in his pockets, watching her.
"Jon?" she murmured, forehead in hand, trying vainly to settle
her swimming head. "What's going on?"
"How long did you think you could keep it up?" asked Jon
quietly.
"What?" Rei asked, confused. "What are you talking about?"
"The charade," said Jon mildly. "The farce that is our
so-called love affair. Did you really think you could make me believe
you loved me indefinitely? You must have known that sooner or later
I'd figure out what I am. What chance does that give our 'love'?"
Rei shook her head, blinking, wishing there were some way she
could clear the fog that seemed to fill her head. "Jon - that's not
true," she said. "I didn't know."
"Didn't know what I am? Please. You can stop taking me for a
fool now, Rei, because I'm not one. How could it elude you? The
signs are plain for anyone to see."
"I... " Something about this surreal interview was trying to
tap Rei on her shoulder and tell her it was wrong, but she couldn't
focus, try as desperately as she might, enough to see it. "I didn't
know what -I- was until recently," she said. "You know that. How
could I have... " She stopped, tried without much success to gather
her thoughts, and started again. "What difference should it make
anyway? I told you. We're the same people we were when we
started... "
Jon snorted derisively. "Please," he repeated. "I'm not
-hopelessly- naive."
Out of the swirling pool of confusion and desperation that
filled Rei's heart at this moment, a large bubble of despair rose.
She couldn't understand what was happening. Why was Jon being so cold
and cruel with her? Why wouldn't her vision clear? Where was she?
Why could she not remember where she last was?
"Jon, please," she said in a voice half whisper and half
whimper. "I don't feel well... I can't understand what's wrong."
"Bah," said Jon. "You don't feel well. Isn't that a shame?"
He strode closer with quick, angry strides, backing her into the
corner of the room, the corner of the bed. "Do you wish your friends
were here? Your -real- friends, as opposed to me, the experiment, the
freak? What a relief it must have been to learn that you're not
really a freak like me - that they didn't make you in their lab like
they told you they did. You're a real person, aren't you, Rei? From
a ways out of town, to be sure, but at least you didn't come out of a
Petri dish. That frees you up to set your sights a little higher than
me, doesn't it? Why, with a little bit of work, you could probably
even make off with Croft."
Rei wanted to be angry at this inexplicable, unwarranted
treatment, but the anger wouldn't come; and where she would have been
far more satisfied with a ringing shout, only the most pathetic of
whimpers escaped her lips.
"Stop it... " She slumped forward, burying her face in her
hands, crying. "Stop... stop... "
"You'd like that, wouldn't you, Rei?" Jon continued,
remorseless, relentless. "You could do it, too. He and Langley are a
passing fad. You were there first, weren't you? If you were decisive
about it you could take him from her."
"No... " Rei murmured, shaking her head. She was starting to
feel sick on top of the disorientation and the hopelessness; cold
sweat was breaking out on her forehead and she felt as though an
animal of some kind had burrowed into her guts and was stirring. "No,
Asuka is my friend," she whispered. "I couldn't do that to her... "
"Ah, but you want to, don't you? Croft was the first young
man who was ever kind to you, wasn't he? He must have awakened
feelings in you that you didn't even know you had."
"Yes," Rei admitted, "but that doesn't mean... Asuka is my
friend," she repeated. "I couldn't betray her... "

"We're never going to find anything blundering around in here
with all these guard patrols," DJ Croft muttered, as much to himself
as to his comrades, as the four of them crouched behind a stack of
plastic barrels and watched another squad of black-uniformed SEELE
soldiers tramp past.
Asuka nodded. "We'd be better off getting outside, regrouping
and trying to find a different way in. If anybody back at HQ picked
up that beacon you set, reinforcements might be outside right now."
"Let's give it a try, then," said Jon.
Asuka looked surprised. "I figured I'd get the most
resistance from you, Jon," she said. "Leaving without Rei... "
Jon smiled, but it wasn't a very nice smile. "I'm not leaving
without Rei - just looking for a different path to her."
Shinji said nothing, and continued appearing as though he were
looking at nothing.
"Hang in there, Shinji," said DJ, trying to sound as
encouraging as possible. "We get back outside, you can sit the rest
of this one out."
Shinji nodded abstractly and followed as the others quietly
doubled back down a side corridor, climbed a maintenance shaft, and
emerged into the dusty, quiet halls of the abandoned Mount Holyoke
student center.
They were just starting to think they might get away with it
after all when they rounded the corner leading to the main entrance
and found the doors, forty feet away, blocked by several overturned
tables and twenty or so SEELE soldiers.
"Shit!" Jon snarled. Both sides reacted at once, Jon, Asuka
and DJ flinging themselves against the walls on either side of the
hallway leading to the exit as the SEELE troopers opened fire. For a
moment, Jon looked like he might almost charge down that gauntlet of
fire empty-handed, so fierce did the expression on his face become;
but as he stepped around the corner, his hands flexing into claws, a
plasma bolt slammed past his head and very nearly blew it off. With a
shout, he dropped in his tracks, sprawling on the corridor floor.
"Jon!" Asuka cried, leaning out to spray the SEELE troopers'
position with laser fire while DJ dragged the injured pilot back to
cover.
"Doesn't look too bad," DJ said. Jon wasn't actually
unconscious, just stunned, and the burn along his temple was from the
ionization corona, not the plasma blast itself. The concussion wave,
superheated air exploding out of the way of the plasma packet, had
struck him in the face and knocked him down, but he was not badly
injured.
Shinji Ikari, though, was not well-versed enough in the ins
and outs of plasma weapons to know that. From the other side of the
hallway, where he stood behind Asuka, it looked as though DJ were
crouching over a corpse. The stunned, feeble movements of Jon's feet
looked to Shinji like the twitching of a head-shot dead man, and for
the first time since he'd killed Ichi Ayanami, he felt something.
Rage.
Pure, unreasoning rage flooded Shinji's body and mind, and for
a moment his hands shook so hard that the metallic body of the plasma
rifle he'd absently taken from the dead guard back in the torture
chamber rattled. Then he ground his teeth, stepped around Asuka, and
barged right into the middle of the contested corridor.
"YOU BASTARDS!" he bellowed, spraying the far end of the
corridor with fully-automatic plasma fire. Three guards fell in the
first second, their bodies spanning the hallway behind their woefully
inadequate cover of lunchroom tables. The rest of them started
looking for any harder cover they could find, which wasn't much.
Railing at the top of his lungs against the manifold perfidies of
SEELE, Shinji strode right down the middle of the hall, keeping up
a heavy volume of fire, mechanically raking the whole expanse of the
enemy's position from wall to wall. Pinned down, the guards tried
returning fire. Shinji kept advancing, kept up his shouting and his
shooting, as though determined to stand there until he had killed
every guard in the place, completely ignoring the plasma blasts
whipping past him.
"For Christ's sake, Shinji, what the hell?!" DJ wanted to know
as he ducked out from his corner and tried to cover Shinji on the left
as best he could. Asuka expressed similar sentiments from the right.
Shinji ignored them, using just about every profanity he could think
of and a few that he made up on the spot to describe his feelings for
SEELE, the flash suppressor on his plasma rifle's muzzle glowing a
dull red with the heat of the sustained autofire. He wasn't a
difficult target, but the enemy seemed to have a hard time hitting him
anyway; plasma blasts flew all around him, but, incredibly, none hit
him.
Until the one that bore straight in on his forehead. Time
seemed to slow down for everyone involved. Shinji saw it coming,
appeared to recognize that this one had his name on it, but he didn't
flinch. He held his line and kept shooting, determined to take as
many of them with him as possible.
Ten inches from vaporizing his brain pan, the plasma blast hit
nothing with a resounding WHANG, deflected at an oblique angle, and
blew one of the deactivated fluorescent light fixtures off the ceiling
in a shower of melted plastic and broken glass. From the point of
impact outward, yellow-orange hexagons of light rippled outward and
disappeared again.
The four surviving SEELE troopers, recognizing the phenomenon
immediately, dropped their weapons and ran. Shinji kept firing and
cut them down before they reached the exit; a moment later, his plasma
rifle finally ran out of power.
With the weapon's failure, whatever had driven Shinji seemed
to fail too; he stopped shouting, stopped walking, and stood as still
as a rock in the middle of the hallway for one long, eerily silent
second.
Then the spent weapon clattered to the floor and Shinji Ikari
fell after it.
Swearing, DJ ran forward and pulled him away from it, turning
him on his back and slapping at his cheeks.
"Shinji? You all right? Come on now - we're not out of this
yet - wakey-wakey... "
Shinji blinked, sat up, and shook his head, then looked around
at his ruined surroundings with amazement.
"Did I do this?" he asked.
"Yes," DJ replied, "you did... "

Outside, the three Skyranger transport aircraft dispatched
from Worcester-3 had arrived: the two loaded with X-COM troopers for
the base assault, and the third, fitted out with communications and
command gear, that had replaced the truck-based Mobile Command Unit
used in the Battle of Mount Wachusett. In the third, Misato listened
attentively as DJ, Asuka, and Jon gave the situation report to the
best of their abilities. Shinji Ikari found an unoccupied seat and
went about making himself as inconspicuous as possible.
Gendou Ikari noticed him anyway, and made his way over.
"Shinji, are you all right?" he asked softly, crouching down
next to his son's seat and putting his hand on the boy's shoulder."
"No," Shinji replied. "No, Father, I'm not all right. I...
it's too hard to explain." He shook his head. "Don't worry about
me. I'll be fine, eventually, someday. Right now you've got to get
Rei out of there. Who knows what they're doing to her?"
The others, having finished their report, approached as well,
concern for Shinji as well as their still-missing comrade written on
all their faces.
"EVA-03 will be here in a few minutes," said the elder Ikari
reassuringly. "Its transport isn't as fast as a Skyranger, but it'll
be here soon. When it arrives we'll send Asuka in to find Rei and
bring her out."
"The hell you -will-," said Jon, tearing open his shirt and
scattering severed buttons all over the floor.

The sick feeling was becoming much more pronounced, but in a
way, Rei welcomed it; the discomfort gave her something to focus on,
eroded the maddening fog that filled her mind by its very
unpleasantness. Jon was still talking, his voice venomous with
contempt:
"'I couldn't betray Asuka,'" he mocked. "Why not? What are
the feelings of a flawed and pathetic mortal girl to the great and
holy angel Reilael? Besides, you knew Croft before she did. You want
him - don't you? You want him to touch you... to -take- you."
"I - " The denial would not come. "Jon... why are you doing
this to me?" she asked, looking up at him through tear-blurred eyes.
"I just want you to face up to yourself, the way I've had to,"
Jon replied, sneering. "Show you that you're not so holy and pure as
you pretend. The angel Reilael! See how far you've already fallen?
Trapped in the mortal world, bound by the flesh, slave to its
impulses. You're little better than the animal you thought you were.
Why do you cling to your pretensions of grace?"
Jon hunkered down and forced her chin up so that she was
looking him in the eyes, and said coldly, "Believing themselves still
holy while succumbing to the flesh brought the fall of the Grigori.
In the end, you will be no better... "
Rei drew back in horror as the name he'd spoken touched a
flame to more of her old, lost memories. Even in Heaven the Grigori
were not often spoken of; they had been one of the choirs of angels,
created after the Fall to help humanity cope with the effects of the
War on their world, but they had become a little -too- fond of humans,
had lived a little too much like them, and Heaven had cast them out.
It was because of the example of the Grigori that angels were
forbidden to enter into bonds of love with mortals, something Rei had
forgotten along with everything else until this single horrifying
moment.
But the horror gave clarity back to her mind, and with that
clarity came the realization that her mental connection to Jon Ellison
was very faint, as if something were interfering with it - certainly
not what she would have expected if he were mere inches from her.
Her eyes, which had flown wide at the name of the Grigori,
cleared and then narrowed, and her voice was clearer and stronger when
she said,
"You are not Jon."
With that realization, an understanding of what had been done,
or almost done, to her burst across her mind, and after that came
anger...

Once, Jon Ellison had noted to himself that, of the
Evangelions, only Lucifer had a presence - only Lucifer felt as if it
were looking back at him when he looked into the eyesockets of its
helmet. There was a difference about Unit 00 when compared to the
other units, but not an active presence - more like a lingering echo,
the sound of another's footsteps in the distance. The feeling of an
empty, abandoned stadium, where once the cheers of thousand have
rung. Later, Jon would come to a different, more chilling comparison:
piloting Unit 00 was like wearing a dead man's clothes.
As it happened, Jon's unconscious comparison was apt. While
Lucifer had been ravaged and reduced to near-mindless confusion by the
injuries he suffered during the Second Impact, Moloch had been, in the
truest sense of the word, dead since that terrible day when half the
human world died with him. The collection of energies that
constituted everything of true celestial substance that was Moloch had
been shattered beyond repair. Only the flesh, incorruptible by the
mortal world's agents of decay, remained. The faint echoes of what
had been Moloch, Lord of Fire, lingered in the dead flesh, but they
were insubstantial, like the shadows of men marked permanently on
stone walls by the atomic blast at Hiroshima.
At the end of his life, Moloch had done something which was
uncharacteristic when weighed against the bulk of that life. His last
act, the effort with which he spent the last of his energies and in
the commission of which he died, was a selfless one - trying to
preserve the life of the angel he had come to think of as a friend,
the Cherub Reilael.
Now that angel lay in the hands of the enemy, a flame of
righteous anger so like those Moloch had commanded in his heyday
burning in her soul, energies pouring from her in waves that rang in
the celestial symphony like the peals of great silver bells. They
struck a chord with what remained of Moloch, amplified the whispers,
and, for a moment, brought the Lord of Fire back to a dim, thoughtless
semblance of himself. There was no coherence or thought - only an
imperative.
I must be free.
I must go to her.

"What the - ?! EVA-00 has just self-activated!" Makoto Hyuuga
cried as alarms began to howl in the command center.
"EVA-00?!" said Truss. "Not Unit 01?"
"Negative," said Hyuuga, rechecking his readings. "EVA-01 is
still dormant. EVA-00 is under power and trying to get free of the
restraints."
"Where's it getting power from?" demanded Truss, going to a
subsidiary console and flicking switches.
"Unknown!" replied Hyuuga. "But it's got a lot of it,
wherever it's coming from."
"External transmission?" Truss wondered.
"Impossible," Hyuuga replied.
"-Everything- we do here is impossible," said Truss.
Hyuuga absorbed this, nodded, and pointed out, "Those
restraints won't hold it much longer. What should we do, sir?"
Truss looked up at the main monitor, at the image of the
struggling EVA, his eyes unreadable behind the EVA's reflection in his
eyeglasses. In his mind, the images of Rei's disastrous test in that
same EVA unreeled, from eerily similar beginning to horrifying
conclusion.
Then:
"Let it go."
"What?!" said Hyuuga.
"Let it go," repeated Truss. "It obviously has an
agenda... and anyway, we won't be able to hold it here much longer
even if we try. Send it to the surface and release it."
"Roger," said Hyuuga, and he complied.
Free and on the surface, Moloch took a moment to orient
himself, then turned and began striding westward. Its AT Field
surrounded it in a dull orange glow; then it suddenly surged into
brilliance, glowing sun-bright. The two men in the control room
winced and looked away.
When they looked back, EVA-00 was gone.
"Get me the MCU," said Truss. "I think I know where it's
gone."

"I appreciate your concern," said Jon Ellison as he hung up
his pants in one of the tiny lockers of the MCU's pilot locker room,
"but I'm fine. I'm a little sturdier than I used to be," he added
with a hint of wryness.
"Are you sure?" Asuka Soryu-Langley asked. "I can take Unit
03 in if you like."
DJ folded his arms and grumbled, "... couldn't have brought
Jet Alone, oh no... "
"No, Asuka, thanks, but I'm going," said Jon, stuffing his
head through the neckhole of his plug suit. "These bastards tortured
me, mocked me, and like Shinji said, God knows what they're doing to
Rei. I don't intend to sit on the sidelines while somebody else gets
my revenge for me."
Asuka cracked a mild grin. "Isn't revenge a petty and
embittering pursuit?"
"Probably," Jon replied with a smile, pressurizing the suit,
"which is why I'm going to give it up as soon as I've shown these sons
of bitches what's what."
Asuka's grin widened a little bit. "You do that."

"So you've figured it out," said 'Jon', his tone a bit rattled
even if he managed to keep his sneer constant. "You're right, I'm not
Jon. I'm his brother, Lucas. So what? You're still trapped here.
Still powerless. Still helpless." The cold confidence returned to
his green eyes as he levered Rei's chin up with a knuckle and smiled
hatefully at her. "I can still do anything to you I want."
Rei looked up into Lucas's eyes, her face perfectly impassive.
For a few moments, they stared into each other's eyes - not in a
contest of wills, but more of a taking of the other's measure.
Then Rei did something that shocked Lucas to the core and even
frightened him a little:
She smiled.
"No," she said softly, standing, never taking her eyes from
his. "You're wrong."
"Am I?" he replied, but the confidence in his voice was
tattered.
"You are nothing, Lucas," said Rei calmly. She stood up, and
Lucas backed away as though from a flame. "A flawed copy of Jon. A
creature of clay and dung, without a soul. A homunculus." As she
spoke, she began to glow, her tattered clothing disintegrating. "You
want to break me?" she asked softly, and Lucas backed away another
step as the glow increased. "You want to control me?" she continued,
and Lucas backed away still again, driven back by the sheer contempt
in her red eyes.
Then the glow flared, and from her back unfurled a pair of
brilliant, glittering wings of blue-white light.
"You can't even -comprehend- me," said Reilael scornfully as
Lucas pressed himself against the cold cinderblocks of the far wall,
his eyes wide with terror.
Then the room exploded in a burst of silent white brilliance,
its ceiling and walls collapsing as though the mortar between the
blocks had turned to water. Lucas screamed involuntarily, but the
falling blocks fell around him, leaving him sprawled on his back among
them. Before him Reilael remained, clothed in light, and behind her,
revealed by the destruction of the wall and ceiling, the orange shape
of Moloch towered, waiting. At the sight of the giant, even Reilael
looked a little surprised.
"... moloch?" she whispered, her voice tiny but distinct in the
sudden incredible silence of the room's disintegration.
The giant reached down its great hand, and Rei stepped up into
it. Moloch turned ponderously, and began lumbering away. Sprawled in
the rubble, Lucas felt the terror ebbing from his heart, and what
replaced it was rage. Soulless, was he? Not worth bothering with?
How dare she turn her back?
"I wasn't finished with you!" he snarled after the towering
EVA, and then, pulling himself to his feet, he ran from the ruined
blockhouse toward the SEELE complex's own EVA hangar.

Truss had only just finished notifying the staff at the MCU of
Unit 00's sudden disappearance when another alarm began to blare.
This one was more urgent-sounding than the last - the constant blare
of the siren also used for major Magi system faults, overlaid with the
shrill, staccato shrieking of a klaxon that felt like it could shatter
a person's teeth.
Truss hadn't heard this alarm before, and he wasn't
particularly looking forward to finding out what it meant.
Nonetheless, Makoto Hyuuga was there to fill him in on the
details. "Sir! Motion sensors have picked up an intruder in the EVA
cage!"
I'm cursed, Truss mused in exasperation. One of our EVAs has
run away from home, and we've quite possibly acquired a SEELE spy in
Central Dogma. And all this just two hours into my first shift as
command center supervisor. Never thought I'd miss level 1 system
diagnostics and team-building exercises. Oh, for a team-building
exercise.
"Can we get a visual?"
Hyuuga nodded. "Coming up now."
The red hexagonal "INTRUDER" indicators on the main viewer
gave way to the view from a security camera above one of the
maintenance catwalks in the cage. EVA-01 stood in profile, waist-high
in system coolant, at the right of the frame. Unit 04, now fully
repaired and bearing a small X-COM logo on its chestplate, faced the
camera from its bay a hundred feet or so away.
Purposefully striding down the middle of the walkway was Kevin
Nelson.
It took Truss a moment to recognize him, since he had never
actually seen the boy in the flesh. He had only the children's verbal
accounts of him to go on, and all of those predated the change of
Kevin's hair color. But even in their current disheveled state, the
trenchoat and tie were a giveaway.
"Nelson?" Truss mumbled, not sure what to make of the
situation.
"Security has been notified - they've got a team on the way
there was we speak," Makoto reported, a touch of relief apparent in
his voice.
Something was nagging at the back of Truss's mind, but he
couldn't quite remember what it was. Whatever it had been, it was
setting off warning bells, and giving him a nasty sense of
apprehension.
"Tell them to wait outside the bay until I give the order," he
instructed the younger officers.
"Sir," noted Hyuuga, "Security Chief Dafoe has already given
his orders. I'm not sure that we have the authority to - "
"I'm the ranking officer on duty, entrusted with the safety of
this facility and its personnel. That means I have the authority,
whether they like it or not," Truss interjected with enough emphasis
to surprise even himself. "They can either wait outside the cage, or
wait outside my office for their pink slips once they're finished."
Hyuuga wasn't sure what had prompted his boss's outburst - it
was just a single boy, after all - but he had no desire to stay in the
line of fire.
"Understood. Relaying orders."
Moments later, the security detail arrived. There were eight
security officers in all - uniformed men, not MIBs - armed with laser
rifles and clad in what looked like flak jackets. They took up
position just outside the room, weapons trained on the door.
Good, Truss thought, they didn't do anything stupid. Now if
only my hands would stop shaking.
"Can you zoom in on the boy?"
"No sooner said than done," replied Hyuuga, running his hands
across the console. The field of view slowly decreased, until it
reached the point where Truss could clearly make out the features on
Kevin's face. He did not look well. His hair looked as though it
hadn't been washed, let alone combed, in at least a week, and there
were heavy bags under his eyes. His coloration was... wrong, sickly
in a manner that Truss couldn't put a finger on. And his face was
twisted in an expression signifying either rage, sorrow, or both. It
occurred to Truss that he looked almost like Jon had, in HAL's footage
of his fight with DJ in Apartment 3-F...
...like Jon. Oh, -shit-.
Truss was just about to bark an order to his charge, but he
was interrupted by a noise from off-camera. Whatever it was, Kevin
noticed it, too. He wheeled around to his left and dropped to his
knees.
Hyuuga pulled the camera back to a wide-angle view, revealing
the now-open door and three security personnel with their weapons
leveled. Truss began to curse when the center one, a fat man with a
Hitler mustache, pulled the trigger... and abruptly went silent when
the charge struck an invisible wall mere inches away. The impact
created a strobing hexagonal pattern in midair; the beam deflected as
if from a mirror, bounced again from the reflective armor surface of
Unit 04, then burned down the guard on the fat one's left. He gave a
cry and fell to the floor in a heap.
"The kid's an -Angel-?!" Makoto gasped incredulously.
"Get those morons out of there, -NOW-!" Truss bellowed. He
took a moment to note the squad commander's name: Otis Belfour. Truss
sincerely hoped that they'd all survive the next hour, because he was
going to richly enjoy calling that particular twit on the carpet when
this was all over. "Makoto, what's the area covered by that AT Field?
Can we launch the EVAs out of there?"
"No such luck, sir. He's got the entire level sealed off."
God damn it, I should have launched them when I had the
chance, Truss berated himself. "Ok," he said, trying not to let his
growing panic show, "we've got an Angel effectively locked in a room
with half of our Evangelions, and no qualified pilots within an hour's
drive. I'm officially soliciting ideas, here."
"Jet Alone?" offered Hyuuga.
"Nice thought, but no way. It's not nearly agile enough to be
effective inside the complex, and our best JA operator is in South
Hadley right now."
Truss scanned his subordinate's face for any further signs of
inspiration, but none was forthcoming. Then his eyes caught sight of
the microphone on the center console.
What the hell, it's worth a try, he thought.

Jon Ellison had certainly been startled to see EVA-00 suddenly
appear out of nowhere, and even more startled when part of the SEELE
complex exploded in a blaze of light for no apparent reason, but he
couldn't argue with the results: Rei was back, safe and sound, and he
hadn't had to go into battle after all. It looked like the only real
trick now was going to be getting Unit 00 back home again, and
somebody else could worry about that; Jon was busy holding his angel
in his arms again and thanking God for bringing her back to him.
"Are you all right?" he asked her softly. "Did they hurt
you?"
"They tried," Rei replied, "but I'm stronger than they are."
"Well, I'll be damned," said Misato from the command deck.
"This trip wasn't so tough after all."
"Dammit!" Maya Ibuki cried as one of the display panels asked
for her attention. "Brigadier, you're a hockey fan, you know better
than to say things like that before the horn blows."
"What? What'd I do now?"
"Enemy is deploying a production-model Evangelion," Aoba
reported, bringing the white-armored, unpainted unit up on the main
monitor. "Distance 2.5 kilometers and closing fast."
Maya turned and gave Misato a "that's what you did now" look,
to which Misato could only offer a sheepish half-grin.
"Think you can take him?" Misato asked Jon as the white EVA
grew larger on the main screen. "We're not going to be able to hook
up EVA-03 and get out of here with -that- thing stomping around."
Jon nodded. "I'll give it a shot."
"I'll help you," said Rei, going to the MCU locker room for
her plug suit. She hadn't explained where she'd gotten the white
dress she'd arrived wearing, and nobody had thought it was really the
time to be asking.

Kevin Nelson snarled in irritation. Finding a damaged launch
gantry on the surface to enter through, and then navigating through
the maze of service ducts all the way down to Lucifer's current
location had been enough of an annoyance for one day. (Luckily,
Lucifer had regained enough of himself for Kevin to sense his presence
and use it as a sort of compass.) Having those interlopers interrupt
his business here was almost more than he could take. He had half a
mind to chase them down and show them the depth of their
mistake... but, no, he had more important things to worry about. He
resumed his march towards Lucifer, focusing his mind on the task at
hand.
Or trying to, at least. The PA crackled to life, and a voice
Kevin didn't recognize called out his name.
"Kevin, this is John Trussell. Look, we don't want to hurt
you. Those security guards were acting in direct violation of orders.
I just want to talk."
Kevin rolled his eyes in frustration. Would he -never- be
allowed to do what he came here for? "There's only one person I want
to talk to right now," he hissed. He focused his glare at the PA
speaker, and space appeared to ripple momentarily around it. A shower
of sparks flew from the device as Kevin's AT field twisted itself
around it, leaving a tangle of ruined components hanging from the
wall.

Back in the control center, Truss admitted to himself that the
exchange could probably have gone better.
"What do we do now, sir?"
Truss shrugged and shook his head. "The only thing we can do.
We watch."

Kevin Nelson gazed up at the horned head of Unit 01, a manic
grin on his face. "Hello again, Lucifer. It's been a while... almost
sixteen years, isn't it?" He began to pace back an forth before the
sleeping giant, as he continued. "You look well. You've got
well-maintained armor, you've got comfortable living accomodations,
you've got the undying gratitude of your hosts... yes, sir, you've got
a good thing going out here."
Kevin took a few more steps in silence before turning back
towards the green behemoth. "Well, since you don't seem to be up for
a conversation, I'll have to hold your side for you. 'So, Kevin, what
have you been up to all of these years?'" He recited the question in
a cheery voice, his lips forming a smile that was very obviously
false. "Oh, I've been around. Mind you, I didn't have anywhere to
stay after we parted company. I don't have any friends, or any family
in the area, I'm afraid - there's no one that I could sit around the
coolant pool and reminisce with.
"'Well, gee, Kevin, why didn't you just go back home?' Funny
you should mention that. You see, ever since the last time I saw you,
I've had this... hmm, let's call it a 'difficulty.' You see, I can't
-go- home, because... well, there's no nice way to put this, is
there?"
All at once, the false cheer drained out of Kevin's face.
"Because I'm -broken-!" he shrieked, glaring into Unit 01's
eyes with an expression of white-hot loathing.
"There's a funny thing about being broken, Lucifer," Kevin
continued, choking back his anger enough to force out the words.
"Once your soul takes on a little bit of damage, that damage tends to
spread - like a crack in a windshield - until finally your soul can't
hold itself together anymore. Then the collapse comes, and there's
nothing left but shards."
Tears formed at the edge of Kevin's eyes, and he fought to
regain his composure. No matter what happened later, he -had- to
finish this. It was his only chance. He took a long, deep breath and
steeled himself for one final outburst.
"Do I need to spell it out for you? You -know- what's
happened to me! You've seen thousands, maybe millions of my kind end
up in this state. God only knows how many of them shattered and fell
by your hand." Kevin heard his voice starting to crack, and tears
were streaming down his face - but he couldn't stop now. "This all
started with me trying to protect you. -You-, the greatest enemy ever
known to my kind! I was shattered - I knew that I'd never see my home
again - but still, I soldiered on. I had nothing to sustain me but
the absolute faith that if I could find you, and Moloch, and Reilael,
that everything would be all right. I searched for -FIFTEEN YEARS- to
find you! Every moment of every day was spent in loneliness and
misery, but I kept going - for you.
"Then I found you. All of you. My faith had been rewarded!
I was among my own kind again, and we would find a way to set things
right. I watched Rei heal, and helped her regain her memories and her
courage. I watched you, every day growing stronger, inching closer to
what you were. I was even able to grant some comfort to Jon Ellison,
and point him toward the light."
Tears were streaming dowm Kevin's face, now. "But what of
-me-? How has the universe rewarded me for my patience, my
perseverence, my faith? By stripping me everything I once held
dear... first my wings, and then the Symphony itself. I gave it back
to Reilael and lost it for myself!
"Do you remember, Lucifer? Do you remember the day, so long
ago, when you heard the celestial songs for the very last time? Do
you remember the final notes, the glorious sensation of -feeling- the
most fundamental mechanisms of the universe working their magic around
you? Do you remember the horrible coldness of having it all torn away
from you as you fell, feeling like you could -almost- reach out and
pull it back - but not quite? Do you remember that? Do you?
"It's all I can feel, now. I've fallen all the way down,
Lucifer, and there's not enough of me left to climb back up again.
"I stand before you as a pile of shards, Lightbringer. I have
nothing left to live for. The only purpose I can feel in my heart is
one that I know is false, but if I remain this way much longer, I'll
give in to it because I lack the strength to resist. I did it all for
you... and now I need you to help me."
With those final words, Kevin fell to his knees, sobbing
uncontrollably. He waited - and prayed - for a response, any sign
that the passive giant that stood before him had heard him. Long
moments passed, but EVA-01 gave no acknowledgement of any kind.
Kevin's cries mounted as it became clear that his effort had been
wasted, then waned as he simply ran out of tears. He remained
quivering on the floor for a minute more... and then leaped to his
feet in a rage, fueled by every ounce of energy that still remained in
him. He glanced at Unit 04, closed his eyes, and concentrated with
all his might.
Unit 04's eyes glowed red as the unit activated. It
effortlessly pulled itself free of the restraints, and moved towards
Unit 01 as Kevin turned back to face the inert EVA.

"That's new," Truss remarked, so far beyond trepidation now
that his voice had taken on a frank conversational tone.
"Mm," said Makoto Hyuuga.

"GOD DAMN YOU ALL OVER AGAIN!" Kevin wailed, tapping his vital
capacity. "LISTEN TO ME!" EVA-04 began throwing punches as Kevin
willed it forward, his teeth clenched and his face covered with sweat.
"Do something, anything! You have the power to fix me, and you could
strike me down with but a thought! I don't even care -which- you do
anymore! BUT DON'T LEAVE ME LIKE THIS!!"
Unit 04 continued to batter Lucifer like a drunken sailor, its
motions becoming more erratic as the last of Kevin's composure began
to fade. He had finally reached his limit... his final words came out
at a volume just above a whisper.
"Please... just... don't... leave me like this..."
From deep within Lucifer, there came a faint rumble, and the
green EVA moved for the first time in weeks. Its right arm caught
Unit 04's wrist, intercepting a wild blow that had no chance of
connecting.
Kevin looked up from the floor, the faintest glimmer of hope
in his bloodshot eyes...
...and then he wasn't there anymore.

On the control room's main viewer, Unit 04 sagged forward,
powerless. Unit 01's right arm dropped back into the same position
that it had maintained for so long. All signs of movement in the Eva
cage ceased, and the room fell dead silent.
Truss breathed a silent "thank you" to the universe, and any
cosmic beings that might be listening to him. It was the first breath
he'd taken in almost a minute.
"Makoto, cancel alert. Stand down."
Sighing in relief, Hyuuga nodded to his boss. "Roger.
Canceling alert."

Jon Ellison wondered if an EVA battle would -ever- go the way
he wanted it to go.
"This is the first of the Advanced Production Models, Jon,"
Lucas Ellison sneered. "It is in every way an improvement over your
unit... just as I am in every way an improvement over you."
Rei Ayanami, now suited up and aboard Unit 00, switched her
comm system to the intercom channel with the MCU. "How long?" she
asked.
"Hard to say," Shigeru Aoba replied, his eyes darting away
from the screen she knew had her image on it as he checked other
figures. "EVA-00's power coupling has some armor shroud damage -
probably happened while it was trying to get away from its restraints
back in the cage. The field crew is having a hard time fitting the
batteries." Aoba sighed. "If the damn thing hadn't gone dead again
after it showed up to rescue you... "
Reeling with the synchronized pain of his EVA's missing arm and
the damage to its head, Jon struggled to regain control and get Orcus
to its feet. The enemy EVA -was- faster and stronger, there was no
denying that, but he was damned if he would let this sneering caricature
of himself prove his superiority.
"You're damned anyway, Jon," Lucas gloated, and Jon realized
he must have said some of it out loud. EVA-06 planted a solid kick to
the middle of EVA-03's chest, and Jon felt something give deep inside
the unit. A sunburst of pain welled up in his own chest.
"Partial core rupture on EVA-03!" cried Shigeru Aoba.
"Oh, SHIT!" Maya yelled as Jon's biosensor readouts flatlined.
"Full arrest, sympathetic feedback from EVA-03's core rupture! Cut
the sync signal and shock him STAT!"
As Aoba scrambled to obey, a sound flooded the comm net that
no one in NERV had ever expected to hear in their lives: Rei Ayanami,
screaming. Not in pain or shock, but in anger - a pure white wrath
that wastes no time searching for words.
With Rei actually inside EVA-00, and with her rage and
desperation mounted to a fever pitch, the resonance of her celestial
energies against the shadow of Moloch built, and for a moment, what
remained of the Lord of Fire came fully back to himself.
On the master control-room console, EVA-00's mission clock
went red and spooled up to 00:05:00.00.

<Reilael.>
[Yes, Moloch.]
<We failed.>
[Perhaps; but Lucifer still lives, and despite all of the
Habbalite's betrayals the War is not yet lost.]
<I... I have lost all of myself. What you hear is only an
echo.>
[I know. I failed in my promise to protect you. Forgive me.]
<I would forgive you anything, Friend of Destiny. For you and
the Lightbringer I died with honor. I ask only that you remember me.>
[I will always remember you, Moloch. You were... You were my
friend.]
<Then the anger in your heart is not for me?>
[No. It is for my enemy - a cruel joke, a crude copy of one
who I love. Another of the Habbalite's vicious tricks.]
<Little remains of me, Reilael; but whatever I have left is
yours to take.>
[I... Thank you. ... Goodbye, Moloch.]
<Goodbye, Reilael, my friend.>

Deep within the war machine humanity had made of his corpse,
Moloch, Lord of Fire, gave what remained of himself up to the song
that was Rei Ayanami.
The mission clock stood at 00:04:59.99.

EVA-00, powerless, twitched, then shivered as the tech crewmen
who had been trying to fit it with an external battery pack scattered
in fright. Its eye glowed, first red, then white, and with a burst of
light too bright to watch unshielded, its own AT Field shattered the
one that protected Unit 06. From somewhere under its head armor, it
let out an enraged roar which mingled with Rei's scream. Maya gasped
in awe as every energy-reading device in the command center went
straight off the scale. Glowing, white lightning dancing over its
blaze-orange surface, Moloch rose to its feet, waving aside the
remains of the enemy EVA's AT Field like a bead curtain. From the
area around the damaged power coupling, rays of light exploded
outward, bent and trailed away so that they resembled nothing so much
as giant wings of blue-white light. The shining AT Field around the
unit seemed to condense around it into a corona of flickering light,
as though the giant machine were bathed in fire. All the while, the
unit continued to howl in fury.
Misato Katsuragi sucked in a breath through clenched teeth,
frozen by mixed awe and horror. Alone among everyone in her company,
she had seen and heard all of this before, sixteen years before.
Next to Misato, Gendou Ikari smiled, his eyes invisible behind
the reflection of the flames on his glasses.
"Impossible!" Lucas Ellison cried as his EVA stumbled back from
the glowing prototype.
In his entry plug, Jon writhed as the electrodes built into his
plug suit hammered his heart back into action; then he sat bolt
upright, eyes flying open, and drew in a breath, galvanized as much by
the energies washing over his EVA as by the medical devices of his
life-support suit. Enervated and sore, he slumped in his seat and
watched the monitors, unable to do anything more than simply take it
all in.
In the cockpit of EVA-00, Rei's plug suit began to dissolve,
and everywhere it parted, light poured out like the glow from a
furnace hatch. The controls, useless, retracted and darkened. As the
last vestiges of the suit disappeared, it seemed as if Rei had become
a being of light, blue-white and blinding, except for her eyes - two
scornful pools of red fire.
"Did you really think I would lie there helpless and let you
destroy Jon, Lucas?" Rei asked coldly. "DID YOU?"
Crying out a mutual hatred that had no words to contain it,
Rei and Lucas hurled themselves at each other. Lucas struck first,
relying on his EVA's superior speed and strength to end the combat
quickly, but he never laid a hand on Rei; as hard as he drove the
punch forward, Moloch's Absolute Terror Field drove him back. The two
EVAs thundered across half the city of South Hadley, beating each
other like savage drunks, the pilots never seeming to tire or exhaust
their shared rage. Within a few minutes, it became obvious that the
SEELE EVA was taking the worst of the combat.
"My God," Misato murmured, watching on one of the main viewers
as a remote camera showed the MCU the action. EVA-00 continued to
perform to almost four times its functional spec, its AT Field off the
scale, visibly surrounding it in a fiery halo. Under Moloch's
relentless pounding, EVA-06's field was reduced to a mere whisper, its
white armor dented and cracked, its structural integrity beginning to
degrade.
"This is impossible," Aoba murmured, watching the battle.
"That amount of power output should be tearing EVA-00 apart."
"It -is-," replied Maya. "Reading structural integrity on
Unit 00 is down to 80% and dropping fast."
"Then why the hell isn't it falling apart?" Misato demanded.
"It was never intended to be overloaded so much... and for that
matter, where's it getting the power? It hasn't manifested Elerium
colliders like Lucifer's, has it?"
"Negative," Maya reported. "My telemetry shows that the
operating power's come from... " She gasped. "... Rei," she
finished, a note of astonishment in her voice.
"Impossible," Aoba repeated.
Gendou Ikari's smile faltered, flickered, and then surged back
into being, splitting his face in an ear-to-ear grin of pure joy as
his eyes lit up with sudden revelation.
"Beautiful!" he roared, throwing back his head. "I knew it!
I knew it! I knew Rei was more special than any of us could dream.
Look! See how she's made Moloch into the tool of her personal
vengeance!"
Misato regarded him with a look that mingled uneasiness,
skepticism and surprise; ignoring it, he seized her shoulders in his
hands, still grinning from ear to ear, and turned her back to the
master viewer.
"That energy is not EVA-00's Absolute Terror Field - it's
Rei's!" he cried, his voice ringing with the unabated joy of his
sudden epiphany. "She's an angel, our angel! All the Children are
touched by God - but Rei! Rei is one of His OWN, sent to guide the
rest! Do you see? Do you see??" Ikari released Misato, throwing his
hands up to the air. "Magnificent!!"
"He's crazy," Misato mumbled, backing away from the joyous
scientist.
"He's right," DJ replied, not looking away from the master
viewer.
"What?" Misato asked, turning to face him.
"'Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear
not,'" DJ murmured, his eyes still riveted to the battle raging
outside. "'Behold, your God will come with vengeance... He will come
and save you.'"
Misato looked quizzically at the transfixed pilot and seemed
about to protest, but then thought better of it, and turned again to
the screen.
"EVA-00 structural integrity down to 45%," Maya reported.
All that remained of Moloch was slowly disintegrating. The
incredible amounts of energy that washed over his frame, held him up,
kept him punching, were doing as much to destroy him as they were to
sustain him. Underneath the machine's armor - by now scorched and
blackened by the flames of Rei's AT field to the point where little
orange remained - muscles and giant tendons dried, split, and tore,
bones cracked, and sensors recorded and reported it all with great
alarm. Still the titan stayed on its feet and kept fighting.
Moloch's right fist crashed into the side of the enemy EVA's
face, spinning it half around and sending it slamming up against the
sturdy side of a power-coupling blockhouse. Cracks rayed out in the
reinforced concrete all around the impact point, and as EVA-06
struggled to regain its footing, Lucas Ellison swore. His AT Field
was all but gone. Another blow like that would take his unit's head
right off and finish him for good.
On the other hand, it had knocked him far enough that he had
enough breathing room to pull out his hole card. Snarling, he reached
up and deployed his unit's close-in weapon.
SEELE's Research and Development Unit had been busy the past
few months. Not only had they produced the first Improved Production
Model Evangelion, they had also adapted the weapon of one of the first
Angels to be destroyed by NERV - Shamshel, the Fourth Angel - into an
EVA weapon much more effective than the Progressive Knife it was
intended to replace.
So it was that Rei found herself facing an EVA armed with a
giant, fiery sword.
She was not noticeably impressed. Lucas leaped back, struck at
her right flank; Moloch's right arm blocked the blade, the AT Field
strobing white octagons from the point of impact. Snarling, he kicked
at her legs; she stumbled, and as she did, Lucas raised the blade and
brought it crashing down toward EVA-00's head.
Casually, contemptuously, Moloch reached up and seized the
glowing blade in its fist. The energy sizzled and sparked, little arcs
flowing over the blackened EVA's hand and forearm, and the burned
armor and dried flesh of the hand sizzled and peeled away, but it held
together through the sheer force of the will behind it.
Lucas gulped and hurled all his unit's weight and strength
behind the blade, forcing it down a few meters.
"DIIIIIEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!" he shrieked.
Moloch's vambrace housing popped open, delivering a Type One
solid prog knife to the EVA's left hand. With a defiant cry, Rei drove
the blade into the white EVA's side.
Lucas choked, trying to keep from vomiting as his EVA's agony
became his own. Rei compounded it by using the jammed blade as a
handhold to drive the white EVA back, then swung the trapped energy
blade out and wrenched it from her enemy's hand, hurling it aside as
the blade flickered and died.
Desperate, Lucas threw his unit's hands around Moloch's neck;
the AT Field couldn't prevent him from touching the other unit if it
was touching his. Rei drove Moloch to his feet, bending the white EVA
back in the process; then she tore the prog knife out of its side,
raised it, and brought it slashing down into the SEELE unit's exposed
inner elbow joint. The screaming of tearing metal and parting
synth-muscle was mirrored by Lucas's own shriek as the joint parted and
the hand and forearm flopped to the ground.
Discarding the knife, Rei clamped EVA-00's left hand firmly
around the enemy unit's throat, then seized its remaining wrist in
Moloch's right hand and pulled it straight out to the side, eerily
mirroring an attack the Third Angel had used against EVA-01.
This time, however, something in the attacked EVA gave;
EVA-06's weakened neck snapped, and with a dreadful noise, Moloch tore
its head off.
Lucas Ellison's consciousness spiraled into an abyss of red
agony.
Unsatisfied, Rei slammed the inert EVA back up against the
blockhouse and then drove Moloch's right hand straight into its chest,
splintering the armor and drawing forth a hideous cascade of synthetic
gore as she reached in and tore the unit's entry plug straight out
through the front.
In one fluid motion, EVA-00 tossed the inert corpse of the
SEELE EVA to the side, smashed the entry plug against the blockhouse
wall, dropped it, and stomped it utterly flat.
For a long moment, it stood there, its AT Field still
flickering around it like flame; then the flames died slowly away.
The mission clock hit 0:00:00.00, stopped, and went black.
Slowly, as if under water, the prototype Evangelion sank to
its knees, then crashed face-first to the ground. As everyone in the
control booth watched in shock, it sagged, settled, and then crumbled
away to blackened dust and ashes, leaving behind some assorted (and
rather burnt) computer components, several miles of wire and cable,
and a somewhat charred entry plug.
The hatch on that plug blew open, and Rei Ayanami emerged.
Unconcerned with the devastation and carnage around her, she went
immediately to EVA-03's side, where a recovery team was removing Jon
from his own entry plug.
Maya Ibuki and Misato Katsuragi surveyed the devastation for
a moment, then turned to each other.
"Sweet Jesus," Misato murmured.

It is difficult to explain even the lowest level of Heaven to
a mortal audience. The normal, unawakened mortal human mind cannot
truly comprehend the glory, the power, merely the basic makeup of even
the least holy of the celestial planes. The laws of structure, matter
and action do not apply in Heaven as they do on Earth. Those few
living human consciousnesses who do see it must therefore translate
its ineffable complexity and grandeur into a somewhat metaphoric form
which they can understand. The human eye viewing an angel without its
mortal camouflage does much the same thing, automatically, so as to
preserve the fragile balance of the mind behind it.
It is from this metaphoric perspective, therefore, that we
shall proceed.
Angels ascending to Heaven are not required to enter that
august realm by way of the front entrance, that grand, crystalline
structure known to mortal hearts as the Pearly Gates. Being
essentially employees, angels can come and go by way of the service
entrances, as it were, generally arising straight to whatever part of
the Golden City that contains their business.
In this particular case, though, a dramatic entrance was
called for, and anyway, there were precedents for such special
occasions. Not many, but they existed.
Saint Peter, the Watcher at the Gates, looked up from his
logbook as the outer Gate swung open with its usual picturesque creak,
expecting to see a new human arrival, passed on from the mortal coil
and ready to ascend to the higher levels and the eternal reward.
Instead, he saw a figure both familiar and unfamiliar, clothed, robed
and hooded in white, bathed in light, approaching Peter's station with
a graceful gravity.
"Welcome, stranger," said Peter.
The newcomer chuckled, stopping before Peter's lectern. "Not
a stranger," said the newcomer, in a soft, pleasant voice. "Not
quite."
The newcomer reached up and brushed back her hood; the light
came stronger now, and Peter felt a surge of recognition - followed
closely by a wave of puzzlement as he realized that this visitor could
not be who he had initially thought. There were similarities - some
of the angles of the face - but this angel, whoever she was, was
taller, her eyes not quite so large, her hair a pure white, lacking
the blue-silver tinge of the one Peter had taken her for.
"Hello, Peter," said the newcomer, smiling. "I'm not
surprised you don't know me; I've changed a bit since last you saw
me." She bowed formally and continued, "I am Tabriel, Herald of the
Light." Looking Peter straight in the eye, she continued in deadly
earnest, "I bring a message to the Seraphim Council from my dread
lord, the Archangel Lucifer."

/* The Ventures "Blue Moon" _Walk - Don't Run_ */

NEXT EPISODE:
The final evacuation.
The inevitable confrontation.
The shattering conclusion.

On April 1, 2000,
it's all over.

NEON EXODUS EVANGELION 3:9
THE BLOOD-DIMMED TIDE

"I have been killed a thousand times and every time I return."

*** AND NOW ***
EYRIE PRODUCTIONS, UNLIMITED proudly presents:
NEON EXODUS EVANGELION BONUS THEATER!!

[COMMERCIAL]

[INTERIOR DAY. DJ CROFT and REI AYANAMI are dressed in dark, tasteful
suits and ties, and are seated behind what appears to be a news desk.
Monitors in the background show various action clips from "Neon Exodus
Evangelion".]

REI: How can NERV secure its position as the world's foremost
paranormal defense force? Two options...

DJ: One: Scour the globe for the most gifted, talented pilots the
world has ever seen, train them intensively in the use of the most
advanced weapons known to humanity, and surround them with the most
sophisticated secondary defense systems ever conceived.

REI: Or two: Clone me.

[EXTERIOR DAY. A dozen of Rei, all neatly dressed, stand in two ranks
of six at rigid attention, their expressions blank and focused on the
far horizon.]

ALL (mechanically): Yes, I understand. Many necessary kinds, and many
unnecessary kinds as well. Why are you crying?

[STUDIO. REI looks gravely at the camera. Beside her, DJ looks
vaguely... well, no, more than vaguely... disturbed.]

REI: An act the consequences of which we, as simple, flawed human
beings, could not begin to comprehend.

[CUT TO BLACK.]

[CAPTION: Same Rei. New series.]
[GRAPHIC: NXE "sports" logo.]
[CAPTION: Thursdays at 9:30 only on EBN]

[END COMMERCIAL]

NEON EXODUS EVANGELION

THE OUTTAKE REEL, VOLUME 2

- -- ---- -------- ---- -- -

In the control room, John Trussell abruptly rose to his feet.
As the drama between DJ, Jon and Rei had played out, his face had
slowly darkened from deep shock to its current state, a frozen mask of
barely-restrained rage. Those who knew Truss knew him to be among the
mildest-mannered of people at NERV; to see him this way was a powerful
jolt to them. His hands shaking with anger, Truss slammed his chair
into the kneewell of his station, crushing several of his fingers
between the chair back and the edge of the desk. To his credit, he
didn't let this unexpectedly painful injury rob him of too much
dignity; he merely sucked in a sharp breath between his clenched
teeth, yanked his hands out of the trap, pivoted on his heel and
stomped toward the exit.
As he drew even with Ikari, the professor struggled to hold
back a snicker while saying, "Mr. Trussell, where do you think - "
Truss rounded on him, eyes flashing, and cut him off with a
stiff chopping gesture, locking eyes with Ikari.
"DON'T," said Truss; then, after a lingering glare, he
dissolved into a fit of laughter, followed quickly by Ikari and
everyone else in the control room.
"Are you all right?" Ikari asked between giggles.
"Ow, dammit," Truss replied, beginning to recover. "I - hahah
- I was doing OK - heh - until I looked at you!"
"Sorry... I tried to keep a straight face, but... "
"What the hell's going on in there?!" Jon Ellison's voice
crackled over the PA, and set everybody off again.

- -- ---- -------- ---- -- -

"I have been willing to overlook all this due to your natural
talent and its importance to Project EVA. However, your conduct in
this last incident was beyond the pale. You were insubordinate; you
deliberately refused direct orders; you seized control of Evangelion
Unit 01 without authorization and you threatened the lives of senior
personnel, myself included. This cannot be forgiven. Have you
anything to say for the record?"
Never breaking eye contact with Ikari, DJ replied firmly and
unhesitantly, "Gendou Ikari, you are a contemptible, manipulative,
ruthless, murderous... er... murderous... what the hell comes after
'murderous'?"
"Unscrupulous toe-rag," said Otto Keller expressionlessly.
"Oh right, thank you - unscrupulous toe-rag. If Colonel
Keller and these two men weren't here, you bastard, I would strangle
you with my bare hands. The best thing you can do is turn me loose
and pray I never cross your path again... For the record."
Ikari stared stonily across the desk at his belligerent
adversary, and then said dryly, "I suppose you expect the editors to
just cut that little byplay out."
"I stood still!" DJ replied indignantly. "They ought to be
able to fit it together without making too much of a jump."
"What the hell's a 'toe-rag', anyway?" asked Keller.
DJ shrugged. "I dunno really. One of the writers trying to
make me sound more English, I suppose. Only place I've ever heard it
is on old episodes of 'Doctor Who'... "
"Oh for crissake CUT!" came the voice of the director.

- -- ---- -------- ---- -- -

DJ turned to Ritsuko, and his smile became somewhat less warm.
"Ritsuko. Thank you... for nothing." Then, on impulse, his right
hand darted out; before she could draw back, he'd hooked his index
finger into the ring on her top's zipper tab and snapped his wrist
down. The zipper came down perhaps a quarter-inch, then jammed, and
DJ nearly broke his finger before the ring popped off the zipper tab.
"Well, almost nothing," he added with a mirthless version of
his rakish grin as he surveyed the pullring still hooked on his
finger. "I've always wanted a little metal ring... "
"Wardrobe!!" chirped Rei Ayanami cheerfully, and everyone
broke.

- -- ---- -------- ---- -- -

His grin unfaded, Kaji deftly stepped around Maya, removing
his hand from her tunic and slipping his arm around her throat, then
dragged her back a step toward the door. "We've danced this dance
before, kid, and you didn't have the guts. C'mon, Maya, let's find
someplace quieter."
Even if DJ had been entertaining the thought of backing down,
Maya's dark, pleading, silent gaze would have kept him from doing it;
instead, he held his .45 steady and said softly, "Kaji, I'm having the
very worst day of my entire life. I honestly feel I've nothing more
to lose." His control over his tone of voice faded as he went on, and
his eyes flashed something that wasn't entirely anger as he growled,
"Now let Maya go or I swear I'll kill you!"
"Uh... DJ, think about this for a second," said Jon
diffidently. "I mean, sure, he's obviously doing the Wrong Thing
here, but... do you really think you need to -kill- him?"
"That's quite up to Ryoji here, don't you think?" DJ snarled.
Jon turned a helpless look to Kaji and said, "I think you
should do as he says, Mr. Kaji."
"Well?" DJ asked, fighting to keep his voice even and blinking
away sudden tears. "What's it gonna be, Ryoji? You can walk out of
here, but not with Maya."
Kaji's grin didn't falter. He reached out and unlocked the
exit door, toeing it open, and dragged Maya a step closer. "Kid," he
sneered, "you won't shoot. You don't have - "
POW!
Ryoji Kaji flinched, took a half-step backward, released Maya,
as the front of his shirt jumped and a blood-soaked hole appeared high
on his chest. Blood spattered the floor in front of him.
"What the hell was that?!" DJ shouted, his .45 still unfired.
"I dunno," Kaji mused. Then he grinned, an "oh what the hell"
kind of grin. "I guess I'm dead!" he said cheerfully, and keeled over
backward.
Jon Ellison had seen death, but never like this. He was
momentarily dumbfounded by what he'd just witnessed; for a long
moment, he just stood there in stunned silence, trying to parse the
fact that yes, he'd just seen Ryoji Kaji die of a gunshot wound that
-nobody had inflicted-.
"My God," Maya whispered to DJ. "Is he... "
"Yes," DJ replied, struggling to compose himself. "He's
dead."
"You can't stay here," she told him, gripping his shoulders
with a strength born of desperation. "Ikari... he'll have you killed
for this. He has that authority during a crisis."
"Not if he wants this Angel stopped, he won't," DJ replied
grimly. "Besides, what was I supposed to do, let the bastard take
you? He gave me no option. And anyway, I didn't shoot him - his
squib just went off by itself."
Maya sobbed, crushing her face into DJ's chest, and murmured,
"That won't matter to Ikari."
"To hell with Ikari!" DJ replied vehemently. "Are you all
right? That's the important thing."
"I... I will be... " Maya replied.
"Right, then. Let's go. We're going to have to shoot this
damn scene all over again, and it's already four-bloody-thirty in the
afternoon."

- -- ---- -------- ---- -- -

But standing she was, next to the bed she'd occupied for far
too long - standing with a cane, one of the metal sorts with a handle
and a brace against her forearm, but otherwise unassisted. Cold sweat
stood out on her pale forehead, and she breathed in hissing rasps
through her clenched teeth, but by God, she was standing on her own.
Letting out an explosive breath, she relinquished her mental
grip on her reluctant flesh and let herself sink backward into a
wheelchair, the cane almost falling from her hand before she could
catch it. Now, quivering slightly in the wake of such total effort,
she slumped forward and let out something akin to a sob, tears welling
up in her eyes.
Rei Ayanami dropped to one knee next to the wheelchair and put
her hand on Asuka's forearm. "Don't cry," she said softly. "You did
well."
"I can barely stand up," Asuka growled, her anger directed not
at the other girl but rather at herself. "How can you call that doing
well?"
"You were -really- drunk," Rei observed. "Your hangover won't
go away all at once. You have nothing to be ashamed of."
"I - " Asuka stopped, took a deep breath, then burst out
laughing as, all around her, the set and camera crews disintegrated.
Rei kept her deadpan look, as though she had no idea why everyone was
laughing.
"You little bitch," said Asuka good-naturedly.
Rei's only response was to smile a little smile.

- -- ---- -------- ---- -- -

Kaji stirred, groaned, and sat up, raising a hand to his
head. Then he glanced around in confusion at the gloomy, cold metal
room full of hibernacula, and down at the close-fitting gray coverall
he was wearing. Then he turned his dark, confused eyes on DJ.
"Who are you?" he asked, coughing as his voice caught in his
dry throat. Recovering quickly, he went on, "Where am I?"
"It's rather a long story," DJ replied. "C'mon, can you walk?
We've got to get out of here."
Ryoji climbed unsteadily out of the hibernaculum chamber; DJ
leaned past him and closed the lid again, then reactivated the
controls. "This won't fool anyone for long, but it might not have
to," he said.
Just as he spoke, the whooping blare of an alarm siren filled
the air, and the room's bluish gloom was split by flashing red lights.
"Shit!" DJ snarled. "Come on! We've got to get out of here
-now-!" He yanked his .45 out from under his jacket and grabbed the
still-unsteady Kaji by his arm, hauling him bodily toward the door at
the far end of the room.
Just as he did so, the sound of running feet outside reached a
crescendo, and the vault door nearer Kaji's hibernaculum swung open.
DJ turned to face the entering guard, then froze in stunned amazement,
his jaw dropping.
The creature standing in the doorway was not a large man. No,
though tallish it was a rather thin fellow in his mid-twenties, with
long straw-blond hair tied in a ponytail. He was dressed in jeans,
Chuck Taylor sneakers, and a psychedelic tie-dyed Mexican wool
pullover, and had on his head a ballcap advertising a popular
Worcester pizza shop. In one hand he had a large, flat, white
cardboard box.
"Celestial Pizza!" he said cheerfully. "Delivered on the
Wings of Angels!"
"Good God!" DJ cried. "A pizza deliveryman, -here-?!"
DJ and Kaji stumbled backward in sheer horror; then the SFX
charges went off in the hibernaculum they'd been standing in front of
- the only other activated one in the room. Huge clouds of steam and
a deafening hissing noise filled the room as cryonic fluid lines were
severed. The hibernaculum's own system failure alarm added to the
cacophony. DJ slipped on the metal floor, fell down, and surrendered
himself to laughter. Kaji followed.
"Uh... dude," said the pizza guy's voice, its owner invisible
in the mist. "I get the feeling I'm not supposed to be here... "
The door swung open again, and the creature standing in the
doorway now was not, despite its hulking silhouette, a large man
either. It was certainly large - over seven feet tall - but it wasn't
a man at all. Its body was hyperdeveloped, with impossibly broad
shoulders and muscles bulging beyond any bodybuilder's most disturbing
efforts, but its head was smaller than a man's, dominated by a pair of
large, yellow, pupilless eyes and a wide, fanged mouth, without much
forehead to speak of. It wore a close-fitting green jumpsuit with a
belt of equipment at its waist, and had a futuristic-looking rifle at
the ready, its sling over one enormous shoulder. The skin of its
noseless face and three-fingered hands was a vivid shade of purple.
The Muton looked puzzledly around, shrugged, and went back out
again.
To the blindingly thick mists and the sounds of Kaji and DJ
still laughing fit to burst, the pizza guy said plaintively, "This is
the door the security dude told me to come in, just for the record."
"CUT!" bellowed the director. "Misato, go tell Otis he's
fucking fired."

- -- ---- -------- ---- -- -

As the SEELE Antonov AN-411 streaked across the sky toward
Worcester-3, Shinji Ikari mentally reviewed the information he'd been
given during the mission briefing. It was to be a precision strike,
the first in a series which, when complete, would drop the city's
defensive capability to virtually nil. The primary targets for Phase
One were above-ground installations - weapons blocks, communications
towers, and the most strategically-placed of lift bays and
thoroughfares. Paralysis, not infiltration or theft, was the order of
the day. SEELE had provided the Third Child with a map of the most
vulnerable locations, which he brought up on EVA-04's viewscreen for a
final review.
"Third Child, we're approaching the drop zone. Your synchrotron
readings are holding at 45%, and all systems appear to be go. Are you
ready?"
Shinji closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "I'm ready."
"OK, drop in 3... 2... 1... -drop-."
With a shuddering clang, the clamps holding EVA-04 aboard the
AN-411 released their holds.
Well, three them did, anyway.
"Gaaah!" Shinji cried as the unit hung by its right shoulder
in the only remaining clamp, its feet flapping in the slipstream.
"What the hell - "
Creeeeeakkkk... WHANG!! The remaining clamp, asked to support
the unit's total weight, sheared away from its hardpoint, and the unit
plummeted free, any semblance of an orderly drop configuration gone.
"YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!!!!!" Shinji
Ikari remarked as his EVA tumbled two thousand feet, arms and legs
flailing. Any hope of Shinji's recovering the unit's equilibrium was
spoiled by the multi-ton steel clamp still attached to its right
shoulder flange, whose trailing, severed cables and hoses whipped
musically about in the wind as the unit approached terminal velocity.
"Oh, shit," said the AN-411's pilot as his practiced eye
gauged the unit's modified trajectory.
With a deafening KERRANG!, EVA-04 plowed through the forest of
guywires and cable stays that held the forest of mast and dish
antennae atop Worcester-3's AT&T Tower upright, then crashed through
the antennae themselves, scattering wreckage in all directions. One
of the guywires caught on part of the clamp, finally tearing it free
from the EVA's shoulder. The EVA itself continued onward, its
considerable momentum only slightly eroded by the impact, skipped off
the end of the roof, plunged 200 feet, smashed -completely through-
the Multitech building across the street, and finally came to rest
face-down in the vacant lot behind Multitech.
"Shinji! Shinji, are you OK?!" the AN-411's pilot called
frantically.
Shinji Ikari shook his head, blinked, and realized that he
was, in fact, OK. The unit was only superficially damaged; he got it
to its feet, brushed it off, and replied, "Yeah, I'm OK. We can go
ahead unless we have to re-shoot the landing."
"Forget it," said the voice of the director. "We're already 2
mill overbudget and a month behind sched on this episode. We'll just
edit around it - stick a short control-room scene in there and cut
back to you after you land."
"10-4," said Shinji.
Not bad, Shinji thought. Not the most graceful of landings,
but given less than a week of training and only those ersatz air-drop
landings to work with, no one could have expected better.
He unslung his EVA's autorifle and set about causing some
damage.

- -- ---- -------- ---- -- -

"Unit 04, what the hell are you playing at?" demanded Natla.
"Kill her and get on with your mission!"
"NO!" Shinji shouted, slamming a hand down on the
communications panel and cutting off the command frequency. "I didn't
come here to kill anyone," he added, though now he was only
transmitting on the tactical band used by NERV. His head swam, and he
could feel the panic crawling up into his thraot. His purpose was no
longer clear, he had failed to leave the city fast enough, Rei Ayanami
was in the wrong EVA, Jon Ellison was nowhere to be seen, and the
other unit -
Oh shit!
Shinji's realization came a moment too late. While Rei
approached and diverted his attention, Asuka had maneuvered Unit 03
around to Shinji's blind side. Now, As Rei brought Moloch's hand up
to grasp the barrel of Unit 04's autorfile, Orcus passed by Unit 04 at
a dead run. The black EVA reached out and tore at the Elerium
collider which powered 04 with all its might, hoping beyond hope that
it would break loose.
It didn't.
Shinji screamed as Malphas was spun around by the force of the
impact. 04's rifle was jarred loose, but not before its startled
pilot accidentally blanketed a city block with stray charges, breaking
windows and setting off a nearby Cadillac's car alarm.
EVA-03, thrown hopelessly off-balance by the unsuccessful
maneuver, held onto the silver EVA for dear life... only to have its
arc of motion carry it into a EVA-00 before Rei could react. Both
NERV units came crashing down in a tangled heap, while Ikari struggled
valiantly to remain upright in the wake of this second jolt.
After a few uncertain steps and much flailing of limbs, EVA-04
regained its balance. Shinji calmly guided the EVA back towards the
scene of the impact, and thumbed the external PA's activation switch.
"'My name is Asuka Soryu-Langley,'" Ikari intoned, in his best
imitation of the German pilot's vocal inflection. "'I'm the Second
Child; I'm here to give the program some much-needed respectability.'"
"Ahh, du kannst mich mal!" came the embittered reply, as Shinji
and the production crew dissolved into laughter.

- -- ---- -------- ---- -- -

When he heard the door bang open again behind him, DJ turned,
saw the dark suit as he'd expected and loosed two rounds, staying as
low as he could and still run. The stunner yelled again, but he'd
opened up enough range that the agent's aim wouldn't have been very
good even had DJ not thrown him off further by shooting at him. DJ
came even with a door labeled "FILENE'S SERVICE", drew himself back,
and kicked just inboard of the doorknob with the heel of one of his
Denali Ranger wilderness boots. The frame splintered and the door
slammed open; DJ was through it in the next second.
He emerged from the stockroom area of Filene's at a dead run,
turned the corner by the shoe department -
- and nearly came face to face with a different man in a dark
suit, who was just coming from Menswear and had his own stunner out,
but not raised. They saw and recognized each other at the same
instant.
DJ reacted faster; his V10 snapped up and let fly twice.
The agent glanced down, saw that he was uninjured, then looked
up at DJ and grinned.
"You missed," he said, raising his stunner.
"Now wait just a damn minute - " DJ began indignantly,
backpedaling.
POP! POP! The agent glanced down in surprise as a
double-lobed crimson blossom abruptly decorated his white shirt, a
tidy pair of holes punched in his tie.
DJ stopped backing, grinned, pointed at the agent, and said,
"Ah - !"
"Fuck," said the agent, and he collapsed on his back.
"CUT!" bellowed the director. "Could we PLEASE have a squib
shot work right around here sometime??"

- -- ---- -------- ---- -- -

DJ could, perhaps, be forgiven for not immediately recognizing
Kevin. He looked very different from the last time DJ had seen him.
His raincoat had started to tatter a bit at the edges, and his shirt
was filthy, yet for some reason, he still wore his necktie, loosely
knotted at his throat. His once-pale skin was dusky, and not entirely
with grime, though he had accumulated a good helping of that too.
Where before he had faintly resembled Rei, now he looked more like
Jon; his hair, matted and spiky, had gone jet black, and his eyes
glittered like emeralds, hard, cold, and green.
Kevin reached down, gathered the SEELE agent's shirtfront into
his long-fingered hand, and lifted the man off the floor as if he
weighed nothing at all.
"-He- knows," said Kevin, holding the man at his eye
level. His voice was a hoarse, harsh rasp. "And he's going to tell
us exactly how to get there... aren't you?" he asked the agent icily.
The agent did not answer, his head lolling.
"Uh, Kevin," said Asuka.
"Yes," said Kevin, ignoring her, his thin lips twisting into a
sardonic sneer. "You're going to be very cooperative indeed." He
shook the man slightly; the agent still did not react. Kevin began to
look a little perturbed.
"Kevin," said Shinji.
"Quiet!" Kevin snarled. "You -will- tell us what we want to
know," he said to the limp agent, who still failed to respond.
"-Kevin-... " said DJ.
"ENOUGH!" Kevin roared. "I am TRYING to - "
Asuka walked briskly over, stuck her hand through the
bowling-ball-sized hole in the agent's upper torso, grabbed Kevin's
tie and jerked it smartly. "KEVIN!"
Kevin, forced to glance down by the sudden tug, realized his
mistake.
"Nrrrgh," he said irritably, tossing the dead man aside and
picking up the -other- SEELE agent. "HE knows," said Kevin doggedly.
"And HE's going to be very cooperative indeed!"

/* J.P. Sousa "The Liberty Bell" */

NEON EXODUS EVANGELION BONUS THEATER!!
was conceived, written and performed by
Ben Hutchins
Rei Ayanami
John Trussell
Rei Ayanami
Asuka Soryu-Langley
Rei Ayanami
DJ Croft
Rei Ayanami
Jon Ellison
Rei Ayanami
Gendou Ikari
Rei Ayanami
Ritsuko Akagi
Rei Ayanami
Maya Ibuki
Rei Ayanami
Misato Katsuragi
Rei Ayanami
Otto Keller
Rei Ayanami
Ryoji Kaji
Rei Ayanami
Shinji Ikari
Rei Ayanami
Kevin Nelson
Rei Ayanami
Jacqueline Natla

and featured
Jack McKernan
Makoto Hyuuga
Shigeru Aoba
A. Muton
Agent Gordon Squibb
and
Zach Stephens
as himself

With apologies to Keith Olbermann

(c) 2000

E P U (Colour)