[Eva][FanFic] Neon Exodus Evangelion 1:1 - Enemy Unknown
Benjamin D. Hutchins
Hey all, Gryphon here.
Yup, the subject line says it all: this is the first episode of a new
series from Eyrie Productions. As you can probably tell from the
title, it's our interpretation of Gainax's seminal "Neon Genesis
Evangelion". A word of warning: If you're looking for Hideaki Anno's
Artistic Vision of EVA in all its unadulterated-but-hard-to-understand
glory, you probably won't find it here. On the other hand, if you dig
EVA and like the idea of seeing the Eyrie flair applied to it, you're
in the right spot! And you're also viewing a small piece of history,
'cause this is the very first EP release that doesn't have a Gryphon
in it. Not one. Noplace. Not even a cameo. :)
For those of you who will be at Anime Expo this year, you can catch me
at the fanfic panel (I forget which day it is) - chances are this will
propagate sometime during the con, so this might be anachronistic data
by the time it's read, but that's a chance I'll take.
Other good news on the Eyrie front:
- Gods Willing, that hugely delayed project I started before I even
moved to California which then promptly stalled when I moved, is
moving again! The first episode might even be out by summer's end,
although I hate to promise anything, especially for a series that's
already had such development delays.
- Remember Hopelessly Lost? Well, I found it... the next episode of
that, after a myriad of discarded concepts and false starts, is now
almost completely planned and in production.
- The first major Undocumented Features Future Imperfect arc,
"Twilight", is in release. The first episode should be coming shortly
after this one, unless USEnet does something weird, in which case you
might already have seen it.
As always, you can check out our web site,
for all the news. (One of these days I'll actually get the time to
put up a "what's new" page... for now, well, hey, that's why they call
it a browser.)
Oh - a bit more about NXE: I'm experimenting with a new format for
this series, releasing it kind of TV-style. The first nine episodes
comprise the first "season", and I've scheduled those eps for release
on a weekly basis following this one (so NXE 1:2 will be out next
Wednesday, and so on). Note that the release dates are the day I post
the ep and push it out to the web site; depending on the moderators
and the net, the USEnet version might not turn up for a few days
after. After NXE 1:9 comes out, the series will go into hiatus for a
bit (I'm not sure how long, but it shouldn't be as long as some of the
other breaks I've seemed to take over the years :), then NXE 2 will
start, and so forth until the whole story is told.
And, unlike most of my other projects, NXE has a more steady progress
curve because - get ready for this - I ALREADY KNOW HOW IT ENDS. :)
Well, that's enough background information - dive in! A familiar but
fresh universe awaits.
--G.
Oakland, California
July 2, 1997
/* Genesis "Land of Confusion" _Invisible Touch_ */
EYRIE PRODUCTIONS, UNLIMITED
presents
NEON EXODUS EVANGELION
EXODUS 1:1 - ENEMY UNKNOWN
Inspired by NEON GENESIS EVANGELION created by Hideaki Anno, Gainax,
et al.
Most characters designed by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto
(except DJ, who looks like a young David Duchovny)
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), and THE X-FILES created by Chris Carter
Written by Benjamin D. Hutchins
Aided and abetted by the Eyrie Productions, Unlimited crew
and special-guest-for-life Phil Moyer
(c) 1997 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
"Well," said DJ to himself as he stood at the guard rail and
looked down the hill on which the Worcester Airport was situated,
"this is a happening city, I can tell from here."
Sprawled out in the valley below, the city of Worcester lay
gray and squat in the afternoon sunlight, muted by an iron overcast
that DJ's arriving flight had descended through no more than half an
hour ago. There were no sounds of urban bustle coming up from the
gray network of streets, no cars moving, no trains running... only the
unnatural quiet of an abandoned city. Everyone had been evacuated to
shelters; DJ's flight had just barely squeaked by, and now everybody
in the airport had gone underground, too.
Except DJ. He spent quite enough time underground while
exploring ancient ruins with his mother, a renowned
explorer-adventurer, and felt no need to do so while in the lap of
civilization. So, when the passengers were hustled off the plane,
he'd used some of the skills that had been honed by and served him so
well on those countless adventures, and taken the first opportunity to
slip away. Besides, he was supposed to be meeting someone.
He reached into the front pocket of his shirt and pulled out
the photo that had accompanied his acceptance letter. It was a
snapshot, and depicted a remarkably attractive woman somewhere in her
twenties, dark-haired and cheerful, grinning and waving next to a blue
car of a sort DJ couldn't determine from what little of it was
visible. And even so, he wasn't motorhead enough to be overly
distracted from the woman, comfortably clad in t-shirt and cutoff
jeans, by ruminations about what kind of car it was.
Across the top of the photo, in a felt-tip scrawl, were the
words, "DEREK - I'LL PICK YOU UP AT THE AIRPORT," and a completely
unintelligible signature that might have started with a K, and on the
other hand, might not have. At the bottom, that same scrawl added,
"PS - LOOK AT THIS."
DJ wondered, not for the first time, if "look at these" might
not be a little more appropriate; then he pocketed the photo and
resumed surveying the city. From his vantage point, he could see no
particular reason for the state of emergency; just a sleepy little
podunk city, not unlike the one nearest the town he'd grown up in,
back in England.
If such a statement was indeed accurate. After all, he hadn't
spent all, or even most, of that time actually -in- England.
Moreover, at 14, Derek J. Croft had a lot of growing yet to do, and
he'd be the first to admit it. He was a bit short for his age, and
not heavily built, though he was wiry, stronger and faster than he
looked. From the time he could walk, he had joined his mother in her
workouts as well as her adventures; he could crawl through spaces no
bigger than an air duct, lift his own admittedly-modest body weight,
and run, at a moderate pace, more or less all day.
He was also more alert than his usual expression indicated;
the blue eyes he habitually kept half-hooded took in everything, and
behind the indifferent expression which was the default for his darkly
handsome face - the face his mother said looked so much like his
father's - worked the processes of a mind wiser and quicker than its
years. Alertness was a good quality to have in the tomb-raiding
business, for many reasons. DJ had learned to trust his instincts
when they identified a threat.
They were identifying one right now. He half-turned to see a
long black car slide up to the curb behind him; the front doors opened
and a pair of men in black suits and sunglasses got out. DJ was very
familiar with this species of suit-wearer: Spookus americanus
domesticus, the common G-man. One with salt-and-pepper hair, he'd be
the senior. One with short-cropped ginger hair, the junior partner,
stuck with driving the car. Even from here he could see their little
earplug radios. Beautiful animal, the G-man, though DJ to himself.
Lovely plumage.
"Derek Croft?" Ginger-hair asked.
"DJ," DJ automatically corrected him.
"Come with us, please."
"Sorry, I'm meeting someone," DJ replied offhandedly, showing
nothing but indifference for their intimidating dress and air of
authority.
"Mr. Croft," said Salt-and-Pepper. Extra suckup points for
that, thought DJ, as the agent continued, "I'm afraid we have to
insist. There's a state of emergency on right now; we have orders to
escort you to Headquarters."
"Can't do, I'm afraid. Like I said, I'm meeting someone." DJ
took out the picture and regarded it momentarily. "Someone I don't
want to sod up my first encounter with," he added with a smile,
tucking the photo back into his pocket.
Ginger repressed a sigh that might have humanized him a bit
had he let it escape. "We have orders - " he started to repeat.
"Sod your orders," said DJ.
"Mr. Croft, given your status as a minor - "
"And a subject of the British crown," added DJ.
" - and a subject of the British crown, yes," Salt-and-Pepper
continued, "we really do not want to be put in a situation where we
have to use force."
"Then don't," DJ told him with a shrug, leaning back against
the guard rail. G-men don't know how to take it when you fail to be
impressed with their authority. It always throws them off-balance.
DJ knew all about G-men. His father had been one, in the
years before Second Impact. DJ's mother had told him the story
hundreds of times. They'd had one night together, coincidentally the
night of Second Impact itself, and then he'd disappeared. Later, the
government said he'd been killed with his partner in the Great San
Andreas Earthquake, but DJ believed otherwise.
When it comes to the United States Government, DJ's father had
told Lara Croft that night, trust no one. She had taken his advice to
heart, and so had the son he'd never met.
"We don't have TIME for this," growled Ginger. DJ had figured
him for the one who would crack first. He ducked easily under the
hand the G-man had meant to clamp on his shoulder, then slipped around
the man's outside and faded back behind the corner of the black
sedan.
"I'm not in your bloody country ten minutes and you're already
manhandling me. The British consulate is definitely going to hear
about this," DJ observed.
"Come -back- here, you little - "
"And now I'm to be subjected to foul language as well? Your
mother must be very proud of you," DJ chided. He knew he was baiting
the man, and that it probably wasn't a wise thing to do, but the hell
of it was, sometimes, he just couldn't help it. Another trait his
mother always said he got from his father, although DJ had seen her do
it more than her fair share of times.
Nevertheless, Ginger was starting to look downright ticked
off. DJ decided it was time to get moving.
/* Siobhan Lynch "Stayin' Alive" _Supercop_ */
"Well, it's been fun, gentlemen," he said, dashing back to the
airport terminal building. "Ta!" he called after him as he sprinted
through the doors into the deserted baggage concourse.
That the airport was evacuated was both good and bad: good in
that there were no crowds to get in the way and airport security
officers to help the G-men, bad in that there were no crowds to hide
in and airport security officers to misdirect into hindering the
G-men. Still, one makes do. DJ hopped a Smarte Carte, using it as an
impromptu skateboard to pick up some extra speed across the baggage
area, then ditching it and banging through a fire door.
This was more like it. The modest-sized airport was built, as
DJ would find out most things in Worcester-3 are, into the side of a
hill (actually, a sizable plateau, big enough for the runways), and
below the hilltop terminal building was a two-level parking garage
which had entrances and exits from the two-switchbacked access road
running up the hillface from the city. Assuming the two G-men didn't
have backup, they couldn't chase him and cover all the exits; it was
only a matter of avoiding them in the garage, and a little bit of luck
in picking the right exit, and he could elude them and get into the
city proper.
What he was going to do then, he had no idea, but what the
hell... it beat being dragged away to who knows where by the Men in
Black.
Bursting out of the stairwell on the first garage level, DJ
immediately ducked between two parked cars and crouchwalked along
between them, not letting his head show above the top lines of the
cars if he could help it. Flattening himself against the cool
concrete of the corner wall, he stole a look out into the mostly-empty
garage. The coast looked clear on the far exit, and the sounds coming
from the stairwell he had just exited meant at least one agent was not
far from catching up to him.
Nothing for it, then. He took a couple of deep breaths,
getting as much oxygen as possible into his blood, and then dashed
flat-out for the exit. Behind him, the stairwell door banged open and
the voice of Ginger bellowed, "STOP!" DJ prudently ignored that
instruction and charged out of the garage at full speed, flashing past
a startled Salt-and-Pepper and the black sedan before vaulting the
guardrail and proceeding to sprint down the grassy hillside. The
effort here was actually in not going -too- fast and tumbling out of
control; if he did that he would fetch up painfully against the guard
rail down below where the airport access road switched back and be an
easy pickup. He stole a glance over his shoulder; neither G-man had
decided to pursue him directly. Instead they were piling into their
car and trying to beat him to the switchback.
DJ smiled. They weren't going to make it. He hopped the
rail, pelted across the pavement, hopped the opposite rail and plunged
down the hill again, hearing the screech of tires a good five seconds
behind him. That was silly of them; there was one more switchback to
go, and if they had kept the pedal down they might have beaten him to
it.
It was about then that the other black car cut him off. DJ
was going way too fast to stop, so he trusted the reflexes he'd honed
in countless workouts and adventures at his mother's side and vaulted
it, sliding across the hood and coming down in a neat tumble before
continuing toward the guard rail.
One of the men in the second car was too fast for him, though;
just as he jumped for the rail, a hand caught his collar and brought
him up short. Fine, then, if they wanted to be that way about it. DJ
whirled, his left hand tearing something from under his jacket, and
the startled G-man who had DJ by the collar and his sidearm in his
other hand covering the boy suddenly found himself looking down the
barrel of another pistol - smaller, but no less deadly for that.
They remained there, frozen, for several seconds, held at
arm's length, locked in each other's sights - your classic John Woo
standoff (cf. "The Killer").
Then the G-man found his voice: "Where the hell'd you get
that, kid?"
"Brought it with me."
"Through security?"
"A guy's got to have some secrets."
G-man and erstwhile mini-fugitive shared a quiet grin of
mutual understanding.
The sound of another car pulling up broke the tableau.
Looking past the man who still held down on him, DJ saw the new car.
It was the blue one from the photo, and the woman getting out was the
woman who belonged to it, though she was differently dressed; she had
on a brown dress that might have been a uniform and a jacket that was
at least part of one.
"Well," said the woman, smiling. "Nobody told me you came
with such interesting accessories. I'm Misato Katsuragi."
"Ah, is -that- your name," replied DJ, not looking away from
the G-man. "I couldn't read your signature at all. DJ Croft. Mind
telling me what the hell's going on here?"
"Hop in," said Misato, indicating her car. "I'll explain on
the way. Let him go, Stanfield."
"On the way where?" asked DJ as the G-man released him, but
kept him covered.
"I'll explain that on the way too."
DJ sighed. "I s'pose if I don't you'll have these fellows
make me."
"No," said Misato cheerfully. "I'll make you myself."
DJ smiled. "You're making me feel at home already." Putting
his gun away and sketching a salute to a somewhat amused-looking
Stanfield, he walked over to the blue car, tossed his backpack into
the back seat, and plopped down in the driver's seat before realizing
his mistake and sliding over. "Sorry. Forgot it wouldn't be a proper
car."
"What the hell's wrong with my car?" Misato demanded, irked.
"Nothing, nothing," DJ replied. "It's just I forgot you
Americans drive on the other side."
"Oh." She seemed mollified by that, and took her place behind
the wheel. "I just got it fixed."
"It's lovely," DJ said.
As they drove, Misato seemed lost in thought for a moment,
then turned to DJ and asked, "Do you have your acceptance letter?"
At a loss as to just why she would want that, since it was
obvious to him now that she didn't work for any school for gifted
youth, DJ nevertheless retrieved the appropriate document and handed
it over. Misato studied it, hmm'd thoughtfully, then stuck it into
the pocket on the cover of a binder and handed the whole thing to DJ.
NERV, said the cover, in large, not-particularly-friendly
letters, and PERSONNEL HANDBOOK below.
"NERV!" DJ declared, turning the binder over in his hand.
"Are you putting me on? NERV, the special military arm of SEELE?
That NERV?"
"You've heard of SEELE?"
"'Course I've heard of SEELE," he said, in the kind of tone
most teenage boys would say, "'Course I've heard of the Thrashing
Gnoberts."
"That's interesting, considering it's a secret organization."
"Sure, as secret as Majestic 12," replied DJ. The reference
went clear over Misato's head, but she decided not to question it. DJ
leafed through the manual. "They made NERV public but thought they
could keep its parent organization a secret? Idiots. Why'd you give
me this?"
"You'll need it. You see, you'll be working for us."
"I will. Gee, and here I haven't even interviewed yet."
"Sure you have. Remember the tests you took last year?"
"I knew it!" DJ said, slapping the armrest built into his
side's door. "The whole thing's a scam. But what the hell d'you need
-me- for?" he asked, running a hand over his thick black thatch of
hair. "I mean, granted, I -am- the world's most handsome and
sophisticated fourteen-year-old boy, but what good is that to NERV?"
Misato suppressed a snicker. "You'll see," she replied.
"Oh, joy," replied DJ. "A surprise. I love surprises."
They topped the next hill, and the city spread itself out
before them again; as it did, DJ noticed something that hadn't been
there before.
"What the hell is that?!"
On the hills on the other side of the city, perhaps four or
five miles distant, a group of combat aerodynes were being torn to
bits by...
... well, to DJ, it looked most like Hedorah, the Smog
Monster, from "Godzilla vs." same - a vaguely humanoid black shape two
or three hundred feet high, with a definite form and yet strangely
amorphous, gangly and entirely otherworldly.
"It's an Angel," Misato replied, all but standing on the car's
accelerator.
"Well, bugger all," said DJ. "They're back. I knew they
would be, sooner or later."
Misato would have liked to have asked DJ what the hell he
meant by that, but she was too busy driving the car at ridiculous
speeds into a tunnel.
DJ had seen a lot of surprising things already that day, but
if he had to look back on it and pick the most surprising one, he
figured the car coming out of that tunnel into an underground cavern
the size of a small state was probably the biggest one, just edging
out the sight of Hedorah the Smog Monster destroying a platoon of
aerodynes. They were on a massively elevated freeway, soaring down
from the lofty heights of the cavern ceiling toward a city sprawled
along the shores of a massive lake almost a mile below. Above, the
city of Worcester-3 hung suspended from the ceiling, looking absurdly
inverted. DJ counted himself fortunate that he was not acrophobic.
"This's a funny place for a Geo-Front," he observed.
"This is Worcester-3," replied Misato. "Our fortress against
the Angels."
"Slick," replied DJ. They fell silent as Misato drove and DJ
admired the view.
The NERV manual went completely unread as DJ marveled at
everything around him. He didn't even care that Misato had gotten
them both completely lost in the maze of escalators, elevators,
corridors and passageways that made up the labyrinthian pyramidal
building with the rather baroque name "Central Dogma"; he was much too
busy being impressed with the architecture.
In one of the elevators, though, he was distracted from the
architecture as they were joined by another woman. This one was about
Misato's height and age, with shorter blonde hair and a small mole
under one blue eye. Like Misato, she was a very attractive woman,
though they accomplished that end in completely different ways. The
new arrival (Dr. Ritsuko Akagi, according to the name tag clipped to
her lab coat) had a rather more arctic sort of beauty, and dressed to
match it. She had on dark stockings, a black leather miniskirt and a
tight blue zip-up top with a ring on the throat-high zip tab that DJ
found almost irresistibly enticing, topped off incongruously with a
white lab coat.
Neither woman, it occurred to DJ, looked even vaguely
Japanese, but if he had been the sort of person who worried about that
kind of thing, he would have lost his mind long ago; so he ignored it.
She arrived in a somewhat disconcerting fashion; the elevator
stopped, the doors opened, and there she was, standing right in front
of them. She stepped inside expressionlessly, in the process pushing
back a surprised and sheepish-looking Misato, who stammered, "Uh, hi,
um, Ritsuko."
"Why are you wasting my time, Captain Katsuragi?" Ritsuko
inquired coolly. "Don't you realize we're short of both time
and manpower?"
"Sorry," replied Misato sheepishly. "I got lost again."
Ritsuko turned and regarded DJ dispassionately. "This is the
boy?"
"Yes," replied Misato. "According to the Marduk Report, he's
the Fifth Child."
DJ grinned. "DJ Croft. I really must compliment your Human
Resources people sometime soon."
Ritsuko's look became quizzical for a moment; then she
directed it at Misato, who shrugged.
As they left the elevator and rode up another ridiculously
long escalator, DJ tuned out the conversation between the two women
(it was incomprehensible anyway, something about a test unit failing
some kind of synchronization with some absurdly small success rate,
sounded to DJ like they were talking about a faulty piece of network
routing equipment or some such) and admired the vastness and weirdness
of the space around them. He followed them absently, looking into the
manual's index for this or that, and only noticed that something was
odd when a door closed behind them and abruptly shut off all the
light. Startled, he looked up from the book, as though that would
somehow help, and bumped into one of the women, although he would
never be sure which one.
In retrospect, he would decide that it was more or less the
high point of his day, right there.
"Hey, what the - " DJ began, but then the overhead lights
snapped on, and he skidded to a mental halt.
He was standing on a catwalk across a large, vault-ceilinged
metal room, not unlike the service gantry across a submarine pen. The
resemblance was heightened by the fact that the room was filled up to
the catwalk level with a pinkish liquid. High on the far wall, near
the ceiling, was a row of thick windows. But the thing in front of
DJ, protruding above the surface of the liquid and bracketed by the
catwalk, was no submarine conning tower.
It took DJ a few moments to realize that what he was looking
at were the head and shoulders of a gigantic robot - if his sense of
scale was still intact, it might just be a rival in scale for the
monster that he'd seen attacking the aerodynes earlier. It was
covered in a dull purple armor plate, and the head had a curious
horn-like construct on it, jutting high above DJ's head from between
the slit-like yellow eyes that seemed, uncomfortably, to be watching
him.
"What're -you- when you're at home?" he murmured.
"This is the Test Type model of the artificial lifeform
Evangelion," said Ritsuko. "Unit 01."
"Well, that's all very nice, but what the hell's it mean?"
"It's Mankind's last line of defense against the Angels," said
Misato.
"And you will pilot it," came a man's voice, distorted
slightly as if by a loudspeaker. DJ looked up and saw a man,
dark-haired and intense-eyed, staring down at him from the booth
windows.
"Excuse me?" DJ inquired.
"I am Professor Gendou Ikari. I am the Director of NERV and
Project Evangelion."
"How nice for you," replied DJ conversationally.
"Your mother is Lara Croft, the archaeologist," said Ikari.
It was not a question.
"I know who my mother is, thanks," said DJ.
"She disappeared three months ago while investigating a Mayan
ruin in the Yucatan."
"Difficult to find Mayan ruins elsewhere, isn't it? Your
point?"
"Since then you have been a minor living alone, with neither
supervision nor guidance. That has now changed. You will work for
us."
"Will I indeed? Suppose I don't want to."
"That is not an option," said Ikari flatly.
"There're always options."
"I gave the last person in your position options, and he
disappointed me. I have decided to avoid this in future by no longer
presenting a choice. You will pilot Unit 01; you will defeat the
attacking Angel."
"Go to hell! You've got no right to do this, whoever the hell
you are. I'm a British subject - I can't be pressed into service by
an American agency, I'm pretty bloody sure that's an act of war!"
"NERV is above the law," Ikari replied coldly.
"Bollocks."
"For God's sake, this is childish!" Ritsuko burst out,
overcome with a wave of exasperation. "Stop arguing international law
and get into the damned EVA."
"Childish?!" DJ rounded on her, thrusting a finger fiercely
into her face. "Look here, my love, you people drag me halfway round
the world on the pretense of giving me an advanced-study scholarship,
you fly me into a WAR ZONE, you send a PRESS GANG to meet me at the
airport, you plop me down in front of a giant bleeding ROBOT and ORDER
me to risk my life to save you and then you have the GALL to call me
CHILDISH because I happen to be a little OUTRAGED about the whole
thing? Well, I've got news for you, Dr. Pullring - you and your spook
brigade don't control the entire bleeding world. Now I want somebody to
take me back to the airport RIGHT BLOODY NOW and maybe - just MAYBE -
I won't give a full report to the British consulate about what you've
just tried to do to me."
Having expected neither such focused anger nor such eloquence
from her small antagonist, Risuko had no particular reply to make;
instead she stared into DJ's angry blue eyes for a moment, shocked
into silence by the force of his indignation.
The moment was broken by the sound of Dr. Ikari saying, "Fine.
Captain Katsuragi, see that the boy gets back to his home after the
operation is complete." He tabbed a control on the panel next to him.
"Keller, wake up Rei."
"You're sending her?" Otto Keller replied, shocked.
"She isn't dead," said Ikari flatly.
Keller seemed to wrestle with his thoughts for a moment, then
nodded, his shoulders slumping as if he'd just lost the battle.
"Understood." His image winked out.
A moment later, there came the chime of another intercom
channel opening, and Ikari announced without preamble, "Rei, the
replacement is useless. You will do it instead."
"I understand," came a female voice, flat, emotionless, like a
strange mirror of Ikari's own tones.
DJ began to feel as if he had accidentally dropped through a
wormhole in time and space and into an Ingmar Bergman movie. A few
moments later, the feeling was intensified as a door at the far end of
the catwalk opened and three men in medical greens wheeled in a
gurney. On the gurney was a girl, DJ guessed more or less his own
age, and looking rather the worse for wear. Her legs were swathed in
bandages, one forearm wore a cast, and there was a loop of gauze
around her head securing a pad over her right eye. An IV in her
unencasted left arm dripped a clear solution from a bag held above her
by a bracket on the side of the gurney. She had disheveled pale hair
that actually looked rather blue under the lights of the bay, and her
skin was ash-white, the palest DJ had ever seen.
As she passed, she looked up at DJ with her good eye, and for
just an instant, their gazes - his blue, wavering between residual
anger and mounting bemusement, hers a deep red and unreadable - met.
As that instant stretched glassy thin, DJ felt curiously calm and
focused, as if the preternatural calm with which she was taking these
events had seeped into him through the momentary eye contact. He felt
an unspeakable kinship with her, an undefinable longing for more and
deeper contact... as if here was someone he could happily tell all his
secrets to, here was someone who could confide implicitly in him.
Then the moment shattered, time resumed its normal pace, the
gurney was past and the feeling was swept away, and for a moment, DJ
felt quite cheated. He turned, all blank of mind, and watched as the
medtechs removed the IV and the girl struggled to a sitting position,
beads of sweat breaking out on her forehead from the exertion or the
pain. She breathed sharply through clenched teeth, her hands clenched
into fists, one visible eye narrowed in obvious anguish.
DJ looked up to the booth, and the message in Ikari's
expressionless eyes was clear: do what I want, or I'll send this girl
to die in your place. For there was no doubt in DJ's mind that if she
went out there in her current condition, she would not survive.
Before he had a chance to say or do anything about it, though,
the chamber shook as if in an earthquake, and, as the medtechs
scattered in panic, the gurney turned on its side, dumping its
occupant to the steel catwalk with a single, sharp cry of pain.
Unthinking, DJ sprinted toward her, not even noticing as a tangle of
the girders across the vaulted ceiling broke free and tumbled down -
directly toward him.
Misato caught her breath, watching helplessly as the girders
fell. DJ was running out from under them, but he wouldn't clear them
in time - and so intent was he on reaching Rei, he would never know
what hit him.
That's what she thought until, with a metallic tearing sound,
the right hand of EVA-01 broke free of its restraints, rose out of the
suspension liquid, and interposed itself. The girders bounced away
with a crash, bashing against the booth window where Dr. Ikari stood
unflinching and watched. Misato looked away, bothered slightly by the
grin that creased the scientist's usually motionless visage - a grin
with no humor or warmth, only an unholy kind of triumph.
It then dawned on her, and on Ritsuko, what had just happened,
and they shared an incredulous glance that quickly melted into
satisfaction.
DJ, oblivious to it all, skidded to a halt beside the stricken
pilot, dropping to his knees and helping her as she struggled to sit
up. The fall had reopened wounds; as he supported her back with one
hand and her encasted arm with the other, he felt blood seeping sticky
and hot through bandages and uniform. She lay against his arm and
chest, good eye squeezed shut, taking short, gasping breaths through
the haze of pain. Feeling as if he'd been stabbed through the heart
with an icicle, DJ raised his right hand and contemplated it, smeared
with crimson, for a moment; then he looked down at Rei's pale, drawn
face and used his sleeve to wipe away some of the cold sweat standing
on her brow, hoping she could at least draw some comfort from his
presence and concern.
Looking up at Ritsuko, he said, "All right, damn you, I'll do
it."
You know, thought DJ to himself, it's really rather relaxing
in here. Except for that funny smell...
With little ceremony and less courtesy, he'd been stripped of
his clothes and dressed in a bizarre one-piece garment with all the
charm of a wetsuit and not quite as much comfort. It had odd fittings
whose purpose he couldn't quite fathom, sensors in less than optimal
locations, and was made of a strange material that contracted rather
alarmingly when a control on the wrist was pressed, changing it from a
rather floppy jumpsuit to an altogether embarrassing spectacle. Then
he'd been stuffed into a large white cylinder that looked like nothing
so much as a gigantic activated-charcoal cartridge for the world's
biggest swimming-pool filter.
So here he sat, sitting semi-upright in a nice padded seat in
a space about the size of a telephone booth. The walls around him
were covered in flexible display panels, providing a seamless display
surface all the way around; at the moment they were offline and
displaying a lovely, comforting Mandelbrot set as a result. The
control panel before him was remarkably simple, consisting mainly of a
pair of butterfly grips on gimbals and a couple of unlabeled buttons.
It occurred to DJ that his hands were stinging, as if he'd
scalded himself slightly testing too-hot bathwater. He wished
momentarily that there was some easy way to look at them - but the
gloves on his hands were attached to the arms of the plug suit, so he
would have to wait until he was done to investigate. He didn't
remember hurting himself - he hoped fervently that he wasn't allergic
to the material of the suit. That would quickly become very, very
unpleasant...
"DJ, can you hear me?" came Ritsuko's voice from a small
speaker on the instrument panel.
"Yes, I hear you," replied DJ, abandoning that train of
thought.
"Are you ready?"
"As I'll ever be."
"Begin synchronization procedure. Power up Unit 01's
neurosystems and flood the entry plug."
The display panels changed from the Mandelbrot to a muted
color-test pattern, then cycled through a few others before settling
into a well-laid-out status display which, at the moment, was
reporting absolutely nothing. DJ sat back and tried to clear his
mind, no mean feat for one as active as his. He registered only brief
consternation as the entry plug filled from the bottom up with a cool
yellowish liquid; since they clearly didn't intend to drown him, he
realized that it must be an oxygenation medium before Ritsuko informed
him of same over the speaker. Belching out a great cloud of bubbles,
he fought down a brief spurt of nausea.
"What fun," he muttered.
"Quit whining," Misato chided him. "You're a boy, aren't
you?"
DJ rolled his eyes, but said nothing.
Up in the control booth, Ritsuko watched with satisfaction as
the big board reported an orderly activation, nothing out of place, no
strange voltage spikes or stray neural pulses screwing the whole
delicate sequence up. In fact, as the nerve blocks connected one by
one by one and the green of nominal status spread across the map, it
was clear to her that the mind of DJ Croft and whatever passed for the
mind of EVA-01 were meshing with almost preternatural compatibility.
"Synchrotron is holding stable at 41.5%," reported the room's
chief console tech, dark-eyed Maya Ibuki.
"41.5%," Ritsuko repeated. "Impressive for his first
synchronization... especially considering which EVA he's using."
To DJ, this remarkable event passed more or less unnoticed,
except for a peculiar elongation of his senses. His balance swam
momentarily, then re-established itself; now he felt precariously tall
and curiously braced up. Of course, he thought to himself; the EVA is
locked into position by all the gantries and the like. What a
fascinating sensation... I could get to like this.
If only the people running the program weren't such jerks...
"You're synchronized. How does it feel?" asked Ritsuko.
"Can't describe it, really. Mostly, I feel... taller."
"You didn't freak out when we flooded the entry plug," she
observed. "That's a good sign."
"I've used Hi-Ox Liquid Environment diving suits."
"For what?"
"There's nothing better for exploring shipwrecks. Don't tell
me you haven't read 'Into the Titanic'? It's got some of my best
work."
"Is there anything you haven't done?"
DJ paused, a slow grin spreading over his face; then he
replied, "I'll let you have that one for free, but in time you'll
learn not to ask me questions like that, Ritsuko my love."
Ritsuko reddened slightly, but decided not to dignify that
obvious bait with an answer. Instead, she turned to Dr. Ikari, who
stood at the back of the room, hands folded, observing the big board
with the ghost of a smile on his face.
"Can we really do this?" she asked him.
He nodded. "If we don't, humanity has no future."
Ritsuko returned his nod, looked pensive for a moment, then
turned to Misato. "He's all yours, Captain Katsuragi."
Misato's smile melted away, replaced with a look of hard
professionalism, as she said to the console crew, "Prepare EVA-01 for
launch! We'll use Track 14."
Interlocks and more interlocks were released, catwalks were
moved, the EVA chamber was drained, and EVA-01, still attached to its
backing gantry, moved on a pair of magnetic tracks to one of the
sockets in the far wall. Above it, a series of hatches opened, giving
it a clear path to the surface almost a mile above.
"Exit path is clear. EVA-01 is ready for launch," Maya
reported.
"Lord," DJ muttered, "please don't let me fuck up."
"Say again, EVA-01?" came Maya's reply.
"Er, I said everything's A-OK here."
"That's what I thought, EVA-01. Stand by for launch." Was
that a hint of a smile in Maya's voice?
"Launch!" Misato ordered. Magnetic induction on the rails
running up the wall catapulted EVA-01's gantry, and the Evangelion
along with it, toward the surface.
To DJ, it felt exactly like the time he and his mother had to
get to the top of a tall building without going inside; they'd
accomplished it by severing an external elevator cable and letting the
counterweight pull them to the top. He let out the same whoop he had
on that occasion, too.
Twenty seconds later, with much klaxoning and flashing of red
lights, a square hatch opened in the middle of a main street, and
EVA-01 popped up with a shuddering crash, coming to an abrupt stop
that hurled DJ against his seat harness and made him glad of the shock
protection afforded by the liquid-filled cockpit. All around him, the
display panels showed him a 270-degree wraparound view of what the EVA
was seeing from its head-mounted eyes. He towered over the city; only
a few of the nearby buildings were taller.
Ten blocks down the street, the black, white and red
hunchbacked shape of the Angel swung toward the new arrival with
obvious interest.
"Release final interlock!" Misato ordered; the bolts holding
EVA-01 to the gantry snapped back, and the machine lurched forward a
little, sagging slightly under its weight. DJ felt a momentary spike
of balance-related panic, the sort a person feels when he tips back an
unfamiliar swivel chair and thinks, wrongly, that he's about to fall
over backward.
"OK, DJ," said Misato. "Concentrate on walking."
DJ did just that, and, with a trifle of hesitation, EVA-01
took one thunderous step forward, the impact of its enormous footfall
shattering a nearby telephone kiosk.
He took another step, but misjudged the size of the EVA's feet
and caught one toe on the other ankle. His balance destroyed, DJ felt
the machine toppling.
"Ahh, bugger!" he declared as it crashed face-first to the
ground.
"Get up!" Misato cried.
"A work in progress," DJ replied - but before he could make
any significant progress toward that end, he felt the machine being
unceremoniously hauled to its feet, then beyond, hoisted up into the
air by the Angel.
"EVA-01's AT Field isn't deploying," Maya reported.
"Trace the fault," Ritsuko ordered.
"No fault found - it's just not unfolding!"
"What the - ?!"
"AAARGH!" DJ calmly observed as the Angel seized EVA-01's head
in one hand and its left forearm in the other, then started doing its
best to pull one, the other, or both appendages off.
"DJ, relax," Ritsuko called. "That's not -your- arm! It's
just feedback from the neural link."
DJ would have found that information a tremendous comfort had
he in fact been able to hear it, but the fact was, he was in far too
much pain - pain which spiked higher still when, with a splintering
crack, the EVA's left forearm snapped, leaving the hand dangling limp
and useless.
As the Angel's energy lance began pounding on EVA-01's head,
DJ's mind was in chaos, conflicting images of his own sound body and
the EVA's battered frame refusing to coexist in his brain, his sense
of identity collapsing entirely. He felt as if he wanted to scream,
but something was holding his mouth closed.
Then the EVA's armor gave way, and the machine went crashing
on its back into the wreckage of a building, sprawling insensate, a
fluid that seemed very like blood pouring from the massive wound in
the right side of its head, and DJ Croft's mind went totally blank.
"The Synchrotron's going crazy!" Maya cried, back in the
booth. "The pulses are flowing backward... all the neural interlocks
are coming apart! Unit 01's gone completely offline."
Having dispatched its foe, the Angel totally lost interest in
Unit 01. Turning its back, it returned to blasting at the ground,
trying to open a hole large enough to permit it to pass through and
attack the Geo-Front below.
In the cool and dim cockpit of the fallen EVA, Derek Joshua
Croft regained a tiny splinter of consciousness. His head and arm
throbbed mercilessly, and the voice of Ritsuko demanding to know his
status hammered meaninglessly at his ears. Nothing made sense,
everything was chaos, who in God's name was he?
"Carry on, my wayward son."
DJ's eyes snapped open.
She wasn't here, she couldn't be, but for just an instant,
he'd heard his mother's voice, telling him what she always told him
when giving him permission to go off on some solo expedition or
walkabout.
"I know who my mother is, thanks."
Yes.
And knowing her, I know who I am, too.
DJ smiled.
Thank you, Mum, wherever you are.
In the control room, the big board suddenly flooded with
green, and the Synchrotron spiked up to seventy-four percent.
/* Kenny Loggins "Danger Zone" _Top Gun_ */
Its one remaining eye glowing like a beacon, Evangelion Unit
01 hauled itself to its feet. The already-cracked armor over the
lower part of its "face" cracked, then shattered, and it swung its jaw
open and let out an unearthly howl; then it crouched until its knees
nearly touched the ground and kicked off effortlessly.
The Third Angel half-turned, facelessly unable to register
surprise, as EVA-01 crashed down on it from above, smashing it
face-down to the ground, then sprang away, executed a tidy back
somersault (its power cable streaming picturesquely around it, then
settling well-behavedly behind) and touched down lightly a block or so
away.
"OK," DJ understated cheerfully, "I think I've got motor
control down. How do I access the weapons systems?"
"The EVA doesn't have any integral weapons," said Misato.
"No integral weapons? What silly sod designed -that-?"
Ignoring that outburst, Misato continued, "You have a
Progressive Knife available in the left pauldron, and there are
weapons caches throughout the city. See the building over to your
left about five blocks, with the red light flashing on the roof?
That's your nearest weapons block."
"It'll have to do, I suppose," replied DJ. The winglike
structure jutting up from the EVA's left shoulder popped open,
deploying a handle; reaching up with the unit's good hand, DJ grasped
it and drew it out, revealing what looked for all the world like a
Bowie knife suitable for transport by heavy rail. "Cute," he remarked
as the cutting edge of the blade began vibrating, heating to a white
glow.
The Angel had regained its feet, and as EVA-01 sprang forward
for the attack, it manifested its Absolute Terror Field. DJ grunted
as the EVA slammed into the wall of yellow energy, flinging him
against the straps again. "What the hell?!" he demanded, sparing a
snarl of consternation as the Progressive Knife bounced away and
disappeared between a couple of buildings.
In the back of his mind came a whispery feeling, not a voice
but just a certainty: I know how to handle this.
Well, I wish you'd get on with it then, was the wordless
response.
The EVA raised its left arm, clenched the fist, and DJ felt
the sympathetic relief as the damaged area fused back together,
leaving it whole and undamaged.
"EVA-01's left forearm has been regenerated," Maya reported.
"IN-credible," Misato muttered.
Thrusting its fingers into the Angel's AT Field, EVA-01 looked
for all the world like a man trying to force open a pair of
recalcitrant elevator doors, as the machine and the boy within bent
their collective will toward defeating the field that kept them from
their quarry.
"EVA-01's AT Field has deployed!" called Maya with delight.
"It's neutralizing the Angel's phase space."
The yellow field disintegrated; with a wolfish grin, DJ drew
EVA-01's left fist back and drove it into the Angel's "face".
The Angel reeled back a couple of steps, twitched back, and
then unleashed a blast from the red gem on its chest, sending EVA-01
tumbling back several blocks.
"So that's the way it's gonna be, eh?" asked DJ as he got
EVA-01 to its feet again. "All right then." He made the machine leap
again, but this time, his target was not the Angel, but rather the
building Misato had pointed out earlier.
As he grounded the EVA next to it, the building slid open;
within, nestled in sockets and looking for all the world like gigantic
versions of regular hand weapons nestled in the foam of an expensive
gun case, were a pair of cannons - on the EVA's scale, big handguns,
slab-sided auto pistols that looked absurdly Glock-like given their
huge size.
DJ smiled. "You shouldn't have," he said, scooping them both
up and leaping back to the main drag again.
As soon as he landed, the Angel tried to let him have it with
that big beam blaster again, but this time DJ was ready for it; he
jumped the EVA back, turning another back somersault in midair, and,
as it straightened at the peak of its arc and started to fall, he
dropped the sights onto the Angel and opened fire. It felt just like
shooting a jungle croc with a pair of .45s, except amplified to
EVA-scale like everything else, and for the first time, DJ Croft
really started to feel in control of the situation.
"Damn," Misato observed, watching the big screen as EVA-01,
almost seeming to hang in mid-air for a second before dropping to a
crouching landing in the street, blazed away at the Angel, the shells
from its handcannons tearing huge chunks out of the monster's
blue-grey flesh. "This kid's a natural fighter."
"He's his mother's son," Ritsuko observed.
The handcannons ran dry just as the Angel, persevering in its
dogged plodding, reached EVA-01; DJ dropped the spent weapons just in
time to intercept the monster's grasping hands, seizing it by its
wrists.
"Let's see how you like it, Sparky," he growled through
gritted teeth, hauling its arms out to either side and pulling with
all the EVA's considerable strength. Muscles bulged, twisted, tore
under the Angel's black skin, and then, with fountains of bluish-grey
goo, both arms tore off at the shoulder. DJ tossed them aside and
drove EVA-01's fist into the Angel's chest again, sending the monster
over on its back; then he pounced on it, pounding again and again at
the gleaming red sphere embedded in the Angel's chest.
To his consternation, the thing lunged at him one more time,
and this time, its shape changed. Liquid-like, the Angel's blackish
flesh poured around EVA-01, solidifying around it. The red sphere
began to glow, and DJ got the distinct impression that something very
unpleasant was about to happen.
A second later, the Angel self-destructed, exploding in a
towering mushroom-cloud blast that flattened most of the adjacent
blocks.
As the smoke cleared, though, EVA-01 strode out, standing
tall - scuffed, blackened and battered, but mainly unharmed. A cheer
went up in the control room even as Misato was ordering a recovery
crew to bring the unit in post-haste.
DJ was feeling pretty proud of himself at the moment, and had
just worked out a way to switch the view the main display was showing
him to an outside camera so he could take stock of his EVA's
condition. Right now he was looking at a close-up of its damaged
head, trying to guess the extent of the damage.
As he looked, the cracks in the purple armor over its good eye
widened, and then the whole left side and front of the EVA's "face"
slid away, falling to the ground. Below was a much less ornate
structure, a brownish-grey bullet-shaped affair that looked rather
more like a proper humanoid head.
Well, said DJ to himself, they did say 'artificial lifeform'.
I guess what I thought was its head was really just a helmet.
A slit appeared in the flat brownish-greyness of the inner
head, on the left side, and then, before DJ's wondering eyes, an eye -
not a sensor head, but a real, honest-to-goodness eyeball - popped
open, massive and green. Its pupil widened, then contracted,
revealing as it did three smaller pupils spaced equidistantly around
the central one. Through the still-synchronized link, DJ had the
sudden incredible feeling that he was watching himself watch himself
watch himself watch himself watch himself watch
"Check, please," he declared, and passed out.
In the control room, Ritsuko Akagi was saying much the same
thing as she observed a readout indicating that, during the combat, DJ
Croft and EVA-01 had, for a millisecond, hit a peak synchronization
ratio of eighty-seven percent.
For his part, Gendou Ikari merely smiled, and left the room.
Ensuring that Lara Croft didn't return from the Yucatan had
been a very expensive endeavor, but it had just paid for itself with
interest.
/* The Marcels "Blue Moon" _Billboard Top Rock 'n Roll Hits: 1961_ */
NEXT EPISODE:
- The Fourth Child!
- Rei Ayanami speaks!
- Find out what DJ's favorite food is!
- A bath scene!
All this and more, in the next pulse-pounding episode of Neon
Exodus Evangelion, due for release on 7/9/1997! Don't miss it!
--
Benjamin D. Hutchins, cofounder and Keeper-Straight of the Continuity
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited - An AnimeTech Limited Company -><-