[Eva][FanFic] Neon Exodus Evangelion 1:5 - Guardian Angel

[Benjamin D. Hutchins]

/* Genesis "Land of Confusion" _Invisible Touch_ */

EYRIE PRODUCTIONS, UNLIMITED
presents

NEON EXODUS EVANGELION

EXODUS 1:5 - GUARDIAN ANGEL

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, and
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY by Arthur C. Clarke

Written by Benjamin D. Hutchins and Larry Mann

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

(c) 1997 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited

The streets of Worcester-3 were deserted by design, the
residents of the city tucked away in their shelters as the taller
buildings retracted to more defensible positions. That didn't bother
DJ Croft, though; as he hunched lower over the handlebars of his
motorcycle and opened the throttle a little further, he enjoyed the
luxury of completely empty streets.
He wasn't on call; Jon Ellison was at the top of the rotation
today. Nevertheless, as soon as the alert had sounded, DJ had headed
not for the nearest shelter but rather for Park Avenue, his NERV ID
getting him through the roadblock at the corner of Park and Institute
before the cops piled into the shelters with everybody else.
Now, with the city effectively to himself, he popped a brief
wheelie as he tore up the Interstate 190 entrance ramp on Gold Star
Boulevard, around the 190-to-290 bypass, and immediately onto the ramp
for S490. As he did so, a reading laser on the side of the road
painted the bar code embossed on the metal plate riveted to his
cycle's front fender, checked it against a database and determined
that the vehicle was authorized to enter that highway. A half-mile
ahead, barricades retracted, and DJ was allowed to enter the S490
tunnel. Rather than emerging on the other side of a hill or river, he
came out underground, in the great cavern of the Worcester-3
Geo-Front.
For the past three or four weeks, he'd made this ride at least
once a weekday, excepting days off rota like today, and most of the
time he took this part at a fairly leisurely pace - not only because
the speed limit here was a sensible 55 miles per hour, and the penalty
for overrunning the side of the road (which would, admittedly,
involved punching through or going over a Jersey barricade) was
falling the mile or so to the cavern floor, but because the view was
magnificent and he liked to soak it in. Some drivers couldn't handle
the S490 freeway - the height and vista gave them vertigo, paralyzed
them with fear. DJ was afraid of relatively few things, and
thankfully, height wasn't one of them.
Today, he hunched low over the handlebars, pulled in his
knees, and got as far out of the wind as he could, wringing all the
speed he could get from the Twin Atlas's blaring V-twin. He would
never know exactly how fast he'd been going, since he kept his eyes
glued to the road at all times, but the guy he'd bought the bike from
had once told him it would do 140 on a straight with a small rider.
He throttled back and eased off as he came around the great,
sweeping curve to near-ground-level, then hopped the off-ramp for
Central Dogma, zoomed into the parking garage and slipped neatly into
the space beside Misato's blue Z. By the time the special passcard
elevator had carried him to Level 1 and he'd reached the Control Room,
Jon was almost ready for launch.
"They just keep getting weirder, don't they?" Misato asked,
gesturing to the main viewer. On it, the newest Angel could be seen
floating above the streets of Worcester-3: a massive crystalline
octahedron, floating on its vertical axis, gleaming blue and almost
completely featureless save for a black equatorial band. It looked to
be around the same height as an average EVA, and was floating half
that height off the ground.
"Synchronization complete and stable," Maya Ibuki reported.
"EVA-03 ready for launch," Jon's voice reported calmly over
the speakers.
"Go!" Misato called, and Jon was hurled toward the surface.
As he popped out of the street, already raising EVA-03's
autorifle, the Angel seemed to pulse, its equatorial band glowing red.
"Look out!" Misato called. Jon tried to make EVA-03 dodge to
the side, but was rewarded only with a shuddering crash and an
absolute failure of the unit to go anywhere.
"Control, I'm locked down!" he cried.
The Angel's equatorial band blazed, and a white-hot beam of
energy lanced out, burning through an intervening building and
slamming into the chest of the black EVA. In the entry plug, Jon
howled in recursive agony as the heat flashed through the EVA's
structure and the LCL, which had a rather low specific heat in its
oxygenated state, began to boil.
"The interlock is jammed!" console tech John Trussell
reported, frantically punching buttons. "Some kind of magnetic lock
failure."
"Retrieve him!" Misato ordered. Maya slammed her hand down on
the emergency retrieval control, and as abruptly as it had come, the
EVA vanished beneath the streets.
"Life signs are strong and stable, he's in no danger," Truss
reported, looking over the med scanners. "He's unconscious, though.
Probably a good thing."
"Get him to the infirmary as soon as EVA-03 is locked down.
Engineering Section, I'll want a repair estimate on the EVA as soon as
possible. Tactical, keep me posted on what that Angel's doing.
DJ... you'd better suit up, I don't think Jon or EVA-03 will be up to
dealing with this one after this."
DJ nodded and headed to the locker room.

"Unit-03 recovered!" Maya reported as EVA-03 came to a stop
and the gates closed.
"Eject the plug!" Ritsuko snapped. "LCL emergency exhaust!
Hurry!"
The back panels of EVA-03 opened and the entry plug popped
out of its housing. Immediately, four jets of burning hot LCL spouted
from emergency exhaust ports on the plug's upper quarter and the
main hatch slid open, sending a huge gout of steam into the air.
An autoloader quickly moved into position, extracting the seat
from the plug's interior and transporting it over to the catwalk,
where a medical team waited with a gurney. With all speed they
unstrapped the unconscious Jon and loaded him onto it.
Misato hurried over to check on his condition. His exposed
skin was scalded, and blood oozed from his nose and mouth; Misato
tried not to think about what the boiling LCL might have done to Jon's
innards. As the medtech whisked the unconscious pilot away, they
passed DJ as he came out onto the catwalk, adjusting the throat tab of
his black-and-green plug suit.
"He looks bloody awful," DJ remarked, tabbing the wrist
control and wincing slightly as the plug suit contracted around him.
Misato nodded. "We can't launch you; it'll be expecting
another EVA. You wouldn't be able to get off the platform before it
nailed you, too, even if the release didn't jam. Go on standby."
Nodding, DJ turned and left the bay. He was a little
irritated at being all dressed up with noplace to go, but he could see
Misato's point, and he didn't relish being boiled alive any more than
Jon had.

Supremely unconcerned with the drama playing out below the
surface, the Angel continued to cruise inexorably forward, until it
had reached the center of the city. It then deployed a large, pointed
probe - which looked rather like an oversized drill bit - from its
nadir vertex. The glowing tip of the probe descended to ground level
and, without preamble, bored into the ground, tearing up anything in
its path.

"What do we have so far?" asked Misato after an hour of
probing and feinting attacks against the Angel.
"Anything that comes within one kilometer is immediately
attacked and destroyed," Truss reported. "It will respond to any
attacks regardless of range; the Type-12 positron rifle we deployed
fired one shot from two and a half klicks out and then was
obliterated."
"AT Field?"
"It's the most powerful one we've encountered so far. You can
see the phase space being affected." To demonstrate, he played back
video footage from their earlier attempt to knock down the Angel with
the Type-12 positron rifle, a weapon similar in nature to the one the
Angel itself wielded. The T12 fired its beam, which spanged off a
dark hexagonal distortion in the air.
"Both offense and defense are almost perfect," Misato sighed.
"The thing is like a floating fortress. Close combat with EVAs is out
of the question, then. What's the status of the enemy probe?"
"It's reached the first defense barrier. We estimate that it
will break through all 22 and reach the Geo-Front about six minutes
after midnight tonight."
"Ten hours... what's the status of the EVA-03?"
"EVA-03's chestplates and defensive armor were completely
melted. Fortunately the control center wasn't damaged. The unit can
be repaired within three hours; unfortunately Jon will not be combat
ready for at least another 24."
"00 and 01?"
"01 is fully prepared for combat. 00 is operational but there
are still feedback errors, so reliability is questionable, both of the
unit and the pilot. Rei's never faced combat before; we don't know
how she'll react."
"Hm... I think I have a plan."

Gendou Ikari gazed emotionlessly and expressionlessly at his
Operations Director, fingers steepled before him, for several minutes
before reiterating the gist of her just-proposed plan, to make sure
he'd heard it right.
"Long-range fire from outside the target's defensive
perimeter?"
"At the moment it's the best possible strategy," Misato
replied, nodding.
"What did the Magi say?"
"Two for approval, one for approval with conditions. Chance
of success is 8.7%. SHODAN concurs with their analysis but gives us
11.73%."
"Not much."
"But better than nothing."
"No reason to reject this plan. Proceed with it."
"Yes sir."

"Maya, what've we got for long-range weaponry that might make
a dent in that thing?" asked Misato as she returned to the Control
Room.
Maya turned in her seat and reported, "Nothing in-house. The
positron rifle we've been developing for the EVAs isn't ready for
prime time yet, and since it's based on a Type 12, I doubt it's got
the striking power at range that we'll need. Nothing else even comes
close."
"What about the rail-transportable particle beam cannon the
Army's working on over at Fort Devens?" asked DJ from the depths of
the current issue of Popular Mechanics.
Slowly, everyone in the room stopped what they were doing and
turned to stare at him.
"What?" he asked innocently.

Meanwhile, in the infirmary, Jon floated unconscious in a
Model 33 automatic life-support unit. The last word in automated
medical systems, the Kohler Model 33 suspends its patient in a bath of
High-Oxygen Liquid Environment, the same stuff used for deep-ocean
armored diving suits. The Hi-Ox is medicated per patient
requirements, and every aspect of the patient's life signs and
biochemistry are automatically monitored, adjusted, and compensated
for according to the baselines established in the patient's file, if
there is one, or by the mean human baseline if that is not the case.
(In Jon's case, being a NERV operative, he had a quite extensive
baseline file in the system already.)
Presently, the circulating Hi-Ox was drained away, drawn by
gentle suction pumps out of the patient's lungs and replaced with
slightly overoxygenated air.
Jon came to a few moments later, as the top of the unit popped
open with a gentle hiss and a team of orderlys came to move him to a
regular bed. Ritsuko Akagi hovered nearby; as the orderlies gently
put Jon into the nearby bed and made him as comfortable as possible,
he thought back to the events that had led him to be here.
"Embarrassing," he observed, wincing as the effort of speaking
grated on his dry throat.
"Don't worry about it; there was no permanent damage to
either of you," Ritsuko replied. "There was a wiring fault in the
gantry system that caused the release mechanism to fail - there was
nothing you could have done about it. Breathe regularly, try not to
talk much. We force-grew you a few new layers of epidermis, so your
skin will be tender for a bit, but your lungs are undamaged. You
should be fine in another 24 hours."
Jon nodded and settled back against the pillows as she left
him to himself. He felt no pain; the residual effects of the various
chemicals circulating with the Hi-Ox still kept him from feeling the
tenderness of his new skin.
He sighed. A fine EVA pilot he was turning out to be.

It was a rare pleasure for DJ to watch Misato in full
officious swing, her NERV plumage in full display as she brandished
executive orders, pushed Army officers about and generally had the
time of her life throwing NERV's weight around. The Army technicians
were more than happy to help them out with the conversion of their
experimental particle cannon prototype to an EVA-operable weapon; they
just liked to play with their big toys, never mind the official
circumstances, and they had tremendous respect for the EVA techs,
whose toys were widely acknowledged to be the grandest of all.
The brass above them, on the other hand, was furious at this
upstart agency's gall, just showing up on their doorstep, so to speak,
and demanding a weapon they weren't even supposed to know was under
development. What right did they think they had to do something like
that, they wanted to know? These questions were answered with a
polite but pointed recommendation that they read the NERV Charter a
bit more carefully next time, and by late afternoon, the Project EVA
tech types were bundling up their shiny new EVA weapon and preparing
it for air transport to Mount Wachusett, designated jumping-off point
for what had been codenamed by SHODAN, in one of those quirky moments
that made some people wonder about the computer's long-term
reliability, "Operation Gabriel's Horn".

Meanwhile, back in the infirmary, Jon had been floating
between periods of unconsciouness and wakefulness, and was at a gray
point between the two when he heard the room door slide open, followed
by the sound of a wheeled cart and footsteps. Turning toward the
source of the sound, he opened his eyes and tried to focus.
"Rei..." he said when he determined who it was, the sight
helping to bring him up to a more wakeful state. He spoke quietly,
still mindful of Dr. Akagi's advice to avoid talking too much or too
loudly. He properly noticed the cart, as well as the food tray atop
it.
"Dinner," Rei said simply, noting his look. "I also came to
tell you the schedule of Operation Gabriel's Horn. I... thought you
might like to know."
Jon nodded silently as Rei pulled her ever-present little red
notebook from her pocket, flipped it open to a central page, and began
reading, mechanically: "1730 hours, DJ Croft and Rei Ayanami report to
the cage. 1800 hours, power up EVA-00 and EVA-01. 1805 hours,
launch, proceed to staging base and wait for further orders. The
operation starts at midnight."
Jon sat up slowly, groggy but conscious of the fact that he
had no clothing on. "I hope it goes well," he said, keeping himself
covered with the sheets. "Sorry I can't be of help."
"We will do our best," Rei replied.
"Haven't made a good impression," Jon sighed, resting his chin
on his knees.
"Hm?" Rei asked, cocking her head to one side.
"Two combats, damaged both times. Not a good track record.
All that simulator time... you'd think things would go better."
"Some circumstances are beyond control," Rei replied evenly.
"And damage is expected regardless."
Jon said nothing.
"You're alive," Rei continued.
"... Yes."
"EVA-03 is functional."
"... Yes."
"That is all that matters."
Jon's pause was longer, but he answered the same way, because
he knew that she was right. "...... Yes."
"I have to go now," Rei said. "They're waiting for me."
"Mm," Jon nodded, pulling the cart closer so he could reach
the food tray more easily. Seeing that he had the situation under
control, Rei turned to leave. She was halfway through the door when
he called out to her. "Rei?"
"Mm?"
"Be careful."
Rei was silent for several moments. "... Farewell," she
finally said quietly. And then she was gone, the door closed.
Jon watched the closed door in silence for some time,
pondering her parting word.

DJ yawned and looked at his watch: it was 23:30, half an hour
to "the operation", as Misato kept calling it. Well past his bedtime.
He'd never really had a hard-and-fast bedtime imposed; though Lara
Croft could not be described as a particularly lenient parent, she had
never been one to impose arbitrary restrictions, preferring to let DJ
learn for himself why some things were important. In this way, DJ had
come to his own conclusion that the necessity of rising early made it
best to get to bed at a reasonable hour of the evening. It was a rare
night that he wasn't in bed by ten.
Below him, on the mountainside, the techs were scrambling to
finish the last of the connections, linking the giant sniper rifle
they'd made of the Army's particle cannon mechanism to the vast banks
of transformers and other electrical substation-type equipment they'd
emplaced here. The scope of the electrical feed they were providing
for this operation boggled the mind: in order to power the rifle DJ
would use to attack the Angel, NERV would have to black out a sizeable
chunk of one of the most densely populated areas on Earth, from
upstate New York across the whole of Massachusetts, as far south as
Washington, DC, and as far west as Buffalo, New York. The only areas
that would have externally-provided power in that zone for the
duration of Operation Gabriel's Horn would be the massive pumping
stations that kept the walled city of New York from being inundated by
the swollen Atlantic Ocean, for if they failed, seventeen million
people would drown.
It was a sobering thought.
He went outside the tent he'd been napping in and stood on the
metal scaffold that some thoughtful soul had erected between the two
inactive Evangelions, sitting with knees drawn up and arms crossed
over them in the gloom like giants lost in contemplation of the city
below. Klieg lights swept here and there, checking the transformers,
illuminating the gleaming shape of the diamond-like Angel which still
hung unconcerned over the darkened city. In the distance, he could
see the gleaming surface of Lake Oppenheimer.
DJ heard footsteps beside him; glancing over, he saw Rei,
changed like himself back to street clothes for the wait. He nodded a
greeting; silently, she returned it. Both stood and watched the city
for some time, until Misato and Ritsuko came up behind them.
"It's time," Misato said. "You should get ready."
"DJ," Ritsuko said, "you'll be the gunner for this operation,
since your sync ratio with EVA-01 is higher. Rei, you'll stand by
with the blast shield and cover him if the Angel returns fire."
DJ resisted the urge to point out that this had been explained
to them at least forty times by now; instead he merely nodded and
headed back to the tent.
"I'm only to protect EVA-01?" Rei said - not in a tone that
carried any resentment or surprise, but merely as if she wanted to be
absolutely sure she understood.
"That's correct," Ritsuko replied.
"I understand," said Rei. She proceeded into the other side
of the divided tent.
DJ sat on the bunk and unlaced his boots, watching Rei's
silhouette where the light on the other side of the tent threw it
against the fabric divider as she undressed. He was feeling
uncharacteristically serious, heavily weighed upon, rather maudlin,
really - his eyes were sad, rather than mischievous or lecherous, as
he watched her slim shadow against the lighted nylon, shrugging out
of her bra, bending to slip off her underpants.
He sighed, removed his own clothes, and climbed into his plug
suit, still watching Rei's silhouette as she did the same. Inactive,
her suit hung in baggy folds, making her shadow look like that of
someone wearing a radiation suit with the helmet off.
Not for the first time in the past few months, but probably
for the most keenly-felt, DJ wished for his mother; but all he got was
the sound of the evening wind blowing against the tent, and he began
to realize that he might very well never see her again.
The realization washed over him like a wave coming up a beach,
and he flinched as if struck, his knees buckling and dropping him onto
the camp bed as his eyes filled with long-held-off, hot tears.
Why in God's name am I here, he wondered, and not looking for
my mother?
"What's wrong?" came Rei's voice through the wall, and he
realized with a start that he must have said part of it out loud.
"Why are you crying?" Rei continued.
DJ wiped at his eyes and coughed. "I... I just realized. I
might never see my Mum again... "
"You won't die," said Rei softly. DJ looked up and saw her
silhouette suddenly shrink and smooth out into the familiar slender
curves that were so unmistakably Rei.
"I'll protect you," Rei continued, and then she left the tent.
As he pressurized his own plug suit, DJ realized that Rei was
right: he wasn't worried that his mother wouldn't come back. He was
worried that he wouldn't be there to welcome her when she did.
He shook his head, ran his fingers through his thick dark
hair, and left the tent as well.
Rei was standing on the catwalk, silhouetted again but this
time by the full moon, which hung blue-white in the sky. Bathed in
moonlight that washed every remaining trace of color out of her
already near-white skin and silvery-blue hair, she looked more like a
beautiful ghost than ever, and DJ shivered momentarily, though the
night was warm.
She glanced back as she heard him approach, but said nothing;
they stood on the walkway for a moment and looked up together at the
moon.
"Hey, Rei... " he said softly.
"Yes?" she replied.
"Why do you do this?"
"Pilot EVA-00?"
"Yes."
She considered for a moment, then replied, "It's where I
belong."
"Er?" said DJ.
"I belong to the EVA project," she repeated, though the
rewording did nothing to clarify the situation to DJ.
"Something to do with an obligation?" DJ hazarded, trying to
get a handle on what she meant. "To Dr. Ikari?"
"To all people," Rei replied, and DJ thought he understood.
Nodding, he put a hand on her forearm and said, "You're very
strong, Rei."
She shrugged. "I have nothing else."
Looking slightly wounded, DJ protested quietly, "That's not
true."
"It's time," Rei said, forestalling any further discussion.
"We have to go." She walked toward the hatch on the side of EVA-00's
extended entry plug, then paused before climbing in, half-turning.
"Goodbye, DJ," she said, and then she entered the entry plug,
dogging the hatch behind her.
As he entered EVA-01's rather more modern entry plug (which
had a sliding hatch directly over the seat rather than EVA-00's rather
X-1-like side hatch), DJ felt as if someone had opened a window and
let a chill draft into his soul; as if he'd just been privy to a
prophecy that one of them wasn't going to make it through the night.
The thought frightened him, not least since Rei had already assured
him that -he- was not going to die.
EVA-01 powered up and synchronized smoothly, and as it took up
a prone sniper's position at the giant rifle, DJ watched EVA-00 assume
a crouching position a hundred yards or so forward, a bit down the
slope of the hill, and ready the makeshift blast shield Equipment
Section had cobbled together. DJ noticed with an ironic, wry smile
that the black, winged shape bore a distinct resemblance to a
decommissioned National Aero-Space Plane hull.
"DJ, are you receiving?" Ritsuko's voice sounded in the plug.
"Loud and clear, Ritsuko, my love," DJ replied.
"Remember that, thanks to the Earth's magnetic field and
rotation, to say nothing of atmospheric forces, the beam from your
particle cannon won't go in a straight line. The computers will
compensate for most of that, but you have to keep it in mind. That's
why it will take several seconds for the rifle's fire-control system
to compute a firing solution - and that's why you're the gunner: your
higher sync ratio should give us the best chance of obtaining the
extreme precision we need."
"So the fact that I've handled a rifle's nothing to do with
it? Ah, well. I suppose it was too much to ask that I be allowed to
think I have some actual useful skills," replied DJ wryly.
"Just do what the manual says and don't try anything fancy,"
Ritsuko warned him. "You can't compute the trajectory needed for a
clean hit - the fire-control computer can. All we need you to do is
pull the trigger. Rei?"
"Yes," Rei's voice quietly replied.
"If the Angel returns fire, cover Unit 01 long enough for DJ
to get to cover, then retreat along the escape path loaded in Unit
00's navigation system. Our best guess is that the blast shield is
only good for twelve seconds or so of sustained fire, based on the
damage the Angel did to Unit 03 earlier."
"Understood."

/* Christopher Franke "The Geometry of Shadows, Part 1" (index times
0:00 - 3:18) _Babylon 5_ */

DJ watched the operational counter tick down, and when it hit
zero, Misato's voice rang out: "Commence the operation! DJ, we're
about to hand you all the electrical power in the northeastern US -
I'm counting on you to make this shot."
"No pressure," DJ replied, shaking out his hands and taking a
couple of breaths. Granted, his breathing was hardly going to disturb
EVA-01's hold on the rifle, but it was important to him to do it
right, and that meant handling it the same as if he were making a long
shot with his own rifle at the range back in the woods behind
Crofthenge.
"This is Evangelion Unit 01 - Lucifer," DJ announced calmly.
"Ready to proceed."
"'Lucifer'?" Ritsuko inquired.
"Unless I miss my guess, we're about to bring our friend over
there some very serious light," said DJ.
Despite the tension of the situation, Maya Ibuki smiled and
jotted down a quick note before returning to her close watch over
EVA-01's status indicators.
All around the mountain, all over the Northeast, the lights
went out. In DJ's room back in the apartment, Hal switched to battery
backups and automatically went to low-power mode, ready to effect a
total shutdown, if the power didn't come back on before his six-hour
battery life was exhausted.
The Angel seemed to notice that something was happening; it
didn't move, but the energy circulating in its equatorial trench
seemed to pulse for a moment, then visibly slowed in its orbit.
On DJ's scope, the changes were obvious, as the two red lines
moved closer and closer to crossing, seeming to go ever slower as it
became more apparent to him that his target knew it was under attack.
He closed his ears to the sounds of the control-van crew interpreting
their readings on the Angel, because what they were learning from
that, he could see plainly in front of him; it was getting ready to
shoot him.
The lines crossed. DJ pulled the trigger. With a crash so
loud DJ's brain interpreted it only as a high-pitched squeal, the
particle cannon hurled the entire last ten seconds' electrical output
of the northeastern United States at the Angel. It formed the
source of the brightest light ever generated by Man, a bolt of
artificial lightning whose temperature was nearly three times that of
the surface of the Sun.
At the very same moment, the Angel produced a comparable bolt
of its own. The two pulses of energy darted out along opposite halves
of the same trajectory, and just before they met in the middle, they
twisted, curving around each other as the electromagnetic forces of
like-charge repulsion built up exponentially with every millimeter of
closing range. Tearing free from the interference patterns, they
rushed forth again, their trajectories altered - the Angel's shot
blowing a sizeable chunk out of the side of Mount Wachusett, DJ's
flying right over the city and disappearing in the distance.
"Shit," DJ muttered, watching the red "TOO HOT" indicator.
The instant it went out, he jacked the bolt on the rifle, popping the
smoldering, blown fuse out of the chamber and replacing it with a
fresh one, and the charging cycle began again.
"DJ, look out, it's recharging faster than - !" Misato's
warning cry began, but before she could complete it, the Angel had
fired again.
Unit 00 surged to its feet, bracing up the shield, instants
before the beam slammed into it; still visible above the shield from
DJ's higher elevation, the target was almost lost in the glare from
the thrown-off energy. As EVA-00 struggled to hold the melting shield
upright, DJ saw the beam rifle's charging light flick off. He gritted
his teeth, eyes narrowed, staring at the slowly converging X-lines and
willing them to go faster. Instead, the targeting computer bogged
down as the magnetic interference of the sustained firestorm going on
in the foreground forced it into a constantly recalculating loop.
Then, overwhelmed with the unforeseen computational demands, it
crashed, and the targeting lines vanished as the scope went dark.
"Unit 01, abort, abort, abort!" Misato cried. "The fire
control computer's crashed, you won't be able to make a second shot!"
"Rei, get out of there!" DJ cried, bringing EVA-01 to its
feet, the rifle coming away from its mounts and trailing the
still-attached power cable. "The computer can't work out the shot,
it's over, we've lost!"
Rei did not reply; EVA-00 remained still. DJ screamed for her
to answer him as the shield warped, buckled, and disintegrated,
leaving EVA-00 directly exposed to the hellish fire of the Angel's
particle beam.
All thoughts in DJ's brain ceased with the knowledge that, if
he did not do something ->RIGHT NOW<- Rei Ayanami was going to die.
Without thinking, without operating the manual controls, without doing
anything but doing it, he brought EVA-01 fully upright, snapped the
rifle up to its shoulder, patched the sensor suite atop the rifle back
into the Evangelion's own sensor system, and took manual aim.
Ritsuko's cry that it couldn't possibly work was drowned in
the pounding of his pulse in his ears. As the moment stretched long
and thin, he murmured, "Wake up! Time to die," and fired.
The beam lanced out, streaked over EVA-00, and plunged
straight through the heart of the floating Angel, blowing a great
chunk out of the diamond's back side and bringing the whole thing
crashing unceremoniously down into Institute Park.
As the brightness of the Angel's beam snapped off like a blown
light bulb, EVA-00, its orange armor sagging and smoking, stumbled,
then crashed face-first to the ground. DJ dropped the particle beam
rifle and skidded EVA-01 down the side of the mountain on the soles of
its feet, knelt it at the fallen prototype's side, latched onto the
armor plate over the entry plug, tore it off, and extracted the plug
manually. Then he shut his EVA down, ejected his own entry plug, and
climbed forth, hacking and heaving the LCL out of his lungs into the
night air as he stumbled toward the smoking Unit 00 plug, which lay
across the palm of EVA-01's outstretched right hand on the ground
before him.
"Rei!" he called, though she couldn't possibly hear him with
the power off and the hatch closed. He cursed copiously as he
wrenched at the heat-expanded dogging handles on the prototype entry
plug's hatch, not noticing as the palms of his plug suit gloves burned
away and his flesh sizzled against the hot metal; then, with a
squealing, tearing cry, the hatch gave way and popped free, drenching
him anew with an outpouring of LCL, which some part of his mind noted
was alarmingly hot, though not scalding. He hurled the hatch aside
without a thought for the layers of his skin he was leaving on the
handles and climbed through the opening into the plug, his mind's eye
filled with nightmarish images of what he might find.
Rei was slumped in her seat, her eyes closed, but she looked
unharmed; as DJ splashed through the remaining LCL to her side on his
knees, put a hand on her shoulder and called her name, she stirred,
opened her eyes and looked at him.
"Are you all right?" he asked hoarsely.
She nodded, and DJ broke down, his eyes filling with tears as
he wrapped his arms around her and hugged her close.
"Why are you crying?" she asked softly, offering no resistance
to his embrace. "Do your hands hurt so much?"
"What?" He sat back a little and looked at his hands,
noticing for the first time that they were a mixture of black and
angry red, burned to the second degree at least. Even now that he saw
the extent of the injuries, though, he felt no pain; only an
overwhelming sense of relief. The battle was over and they were both
still alive. The strange sense of prophecy he'd felt had been
cheated.
"No," he whispered, "I hardly feel them... I just... I was so
afraid of what I might find when I got that hatch open... "
Rei took his hands gently in her own, surveying the burned and
blistered flesh of his palms. Then she did something he would never
have expected her to do: slowly, deliberately, almost ceremonially,
she kissed them gently, one after the other. It was a gesture devoid
of passion or romance - more like a benediction - and it renewed the
strange sense of awe DJ tended to feel around her.
"This is the second time I've hurt you," she murmured, a tear
escaping from one of her own eyes. "I'm sorry."
"It's all right, it's all right," DJ replied, the full
significance of what she'd said eluding him in his relief as he
enfolded her in his embrace again. "You need never apologize to me,
Rei, never. And please... don't say you've nothing else. Not as long
as you've me and Jon." He chuckled weakly through the still-flowing
tears and added wryly, "And don't say goodbye any more, it makes me so
bloody maudlin."
She placed her hands behind his shoulders and softly replied
only, "Yes."

From Jon's vantage point, such as it was, the operation was
little more than a blackout, followed by loud weapons fire and
explosions, and then the sound of cheering as the Angel had been
knocked out. The power came back not long after, but the
unidentifiable sense of dread which had been gnawing in him did not
leave, nor did the word Rei had spoken on her way out.
["... Farewell."]
Did she believe she was going to die? The thought had lodged
in his brain and played havoc with his guts, only becoming further
entrenched by his attempts at denial.
Keeping one ear open, he heard fragments of conversations as
people rushed back and forth outside his room. They never lingered in
the area long enough for him to get whole sentences, but the fragments
he got started to slip into a pattern that filled him with dread.
"... shield buckled... "
"... melted clean through... "
"... completely reconstructed... "
"... second-degree, maybe third... "
"... total loss... "
"... told her to abort, but... "
"... suicidal... "
"... lucky we didn't lose both of them... "
Jon turned away from the door and went to the window on the
opposite side, as far from the corridor sounds as possible. He didn't
want to hear any more, he couldn't bear it. His mouth was dry, and he
could feel his heart pounding. Could it be? Had Rei been killed as
she seemed to foresee? He struggled not to believe, but only made
himself wilder.
He was looking out at the night-darkened Geo-Front cavern,
easily visible with the lights in the room off. He'd almost worked
himself up to a proper panic, when the door slid open, startling him.
He was initially reluctant to turn around as the anxiety tore at him.
What would he find when he turned around?
Well, only one way to find out: slowly he turned to look.
And palpable relief flooded him as he saw her lovely face.
"Rei," he whispered, slumping visibly as the nervous tension
that had wound him to a fever pitch drained away. "You're all right."
She nodded. "Thanks to DJ."
At his quizzical look, she explained how DJ and EVA-01 had
pulled the entry plug from her disabled unit before conducted heat
from Unit 00's slagged armor could heat the LCL to dangerous levels
and break down its oxygen-carrying capabilities - how he'd very
probably saved her life.
Jon's reply was simple: "Thank God for DJ, then." As his
compatriot had an hour or so before, Jon gathered Rei into a hug,
whispering over her shoulder, "When you told me 'farewell'... and then
I heard that Unit 00 had been so badly damaged... I was afraid you'd
been killed. You seemed convinced that you would be, when you left.
It scared me."
"Embarrassing," she said quietly. Whether she was talking
about the way the battle had gone, or about the nature of her
parting words, he didn't know, and frankly didn't care.
"You're alive," he replied softly.
"... Yes," she answered.
"That's all that matters," he continued, and hugged her
more firmly, not even noticing the tenderness of his new-grown outer
layer of skin anymore.
"...... Yes," she repeated, smiling ever so slightly.
DJ was right; she did have something else.
The door opened again; Jon looked up to see DJ, back in street
clothes and with his hands bandaged more heavily than last time.
"Oh, sorry," he whispered.
"No, come in," Jon said, beckoning. DJ entered, closing the
door behind him, and went to join them, somewhat startled when Rei and
Jon reached out together and drew him into their embrace as well.
"Thank you," Jon whispered to DJ, who hadn't the faintest what
he was on about, but nodded and replied "You're welcome," anyway.
As the three separated, DJ placed his pack on Jon's bed,
opened it, and fumbled about inside with his rather clumsy bandaged
hands, eventually coming out with a scroll-like roll of paper. "Here,
Rei... Hal and I made this for you, but I didn't have a chance to give
it to you before all the excitement started."
Rei took the paper silently, and, followed by Jon and DJ, went
to the head of the bed so she could switch on the reading lamp there
and look at it. Slowly, carefully, she untied the ribbon that held it
in its roll and spread it out flat on the bedside table, like an
old-fashioned map.
It was a sheet of heavy, plasticene material, not really paper
at all (the sort of durable, color-holding material that softback
books had been covered in for the last twenty years or so), about
twenty inches by ten.
Printed on it was a picture of Rei, but not as she had ever
appeared. She lay on a stone bier (its sides covered with
hieroglyphs), dressed in elaborate and beautiful court robes, her
bejeweled hands folded funereally over her chest, her face perfectly
composed at rest, eyes closed. On her head was a golden pharaonic
headdress, complete with the blue lapis stripes. Only two things
dispelled the initial impression that this was a picture of a dead
ruler laid in state: the pillow under her regal head and the
ever-so-slight hint of color in her cheeks.
REI AYANAMI, said the caption in a stilted, hieroglyph-like
font. QUEEN OF THE NILE.
"The setting was Hal's idea," said DJ as Rei turned the
picture up to look at the papers attached underneath it with a paper
clip. One was a sheet torn from a sketchbook with a fairly good
pencil sketch of a sleeping Rei, from the same perspective as the
finished image - it must have been done in the infirmary, she decided,
noting the obvious outline of an infirmary gown. The other was a
printout explaining the meaning of the hieroglyphic writing on the
bier in the finished image.
"It... it's beautiful," Jon murmured. "You say you and Hal
made this?"
DJ nodded. "Sometimes when I can't manage to get a camera
into someplace Mum and I are exploring, I'll take a sketch pad
instead. Then when I come out, I'll scan the sketches into Hal and
let him color, shape and render them to make them look more realistic.
Sometimes he embellishes - he's quite creative for a computer. Making
fanciful images like this on the side is kind of a hobby of ours."
Rei carefully rolled the image and accompanying notes back up
and tied the ribbon around them again; then she turned and said
softly,
"Thank you, DJ."
DJ smiled. "It's the least I could've done for my guardian
angel."
She blushed; it would be some time before he knew the full
reason. In response, he merely smiled, touching his forehead like a
salute.
"I have to go," said Rei after a few quiet moments.
"Dr. Ikari wants to speak to me about today's action."
"I'll see you tomorrow," Jon said. "Dr. Akagi wants to keep
me here for the rest of the night - such as it is - for observation,
but she'll let me go home tomorrow."
Rei nodded and went to the door.
"Say, Rei," said DJ as she reached it.
She turned, hand on the doorknob.
"Yes?" she replied softly.
"Why'd you stand your ground when the shield broke up? Did
you hear Misato telling you to cut out?"
"I heard," Rei replied. "But if I had let the beam pass, it
would have hit the charging transformers for the particle beam rifle.
The rifle was charged. It would have exploded. You would have been
killed."
"You would have sacrificed your life for mine?"
"If necessary."
"Why?"
Rei fixed him with an even gaze from her deep red eyes, one he
couldn't read at all, though it seemed to stare right past his own
eyes, straight to the place in the back of his head where his feelings
lived, and play a brief toccata on them.
"Because you belong to me," she said unequivocally; then she
turned and left the room, leaving two astounded young men staring
after her.
At length, DJ turned mystified eyes to Jon and said, "Did
-you- understand that?"
Jon shook his head. "If I figure it out... I'll let you
know."

/* The Mavericks "Blue Moon" _Apollo 13_ */

NEXT EPISODE:

A familiar face welcomed with joy.
A familiar face met with dismay.
An auspicious first impression.
And the most violent sea battle since Jutland.
Join us in seven days for:

NEON EXODUS EVANGELION
EXODUS 1:5 - ENTER THE DRAGON
08/06/97

"Wonderful girl! Either I'm going to kill her, or I'm beginning to
like her."

--
Benjamin D. Hutchins, cofounder and Keeper-Straight of the Continuity
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited - An AnimeTech Limited Company -><-