Chapter 59: After the Battle
Chapter 59:
After the Battle
After the Battle
A
RMAROS APPROACHED
the Ark, and the congregation of black, mirrorlike cubes slowly moved, seeming to follow after the giant.
He began to sink back into the ground, apparently setting forth on another instantaneous journey through the root-like tunnels that linked one place with another. As if being dragged along, the Ark, too, sank into the rocks.
Now that the Ark’s location had been discovered, Armaros left to take it somewhere else.
After the Lance of Longinus blasted a crater into the valley, dust and sand had filled the air. It was taking its time settling. Kensuke leaned on Misato, who had to feel her way forward from rock to rock.
“At least that strange, repelling force is gone,” she remarked.
The Ark had denied human approach and turned Kensuke’s right arm into crumbling salt. The intense pain clouded his senses on the whole right side of his body, but now that the Ark’s force was gone, walking came a little bit easier.
I guess it’s time,
Kensuke thought.
Just then, a large rock formation toppled over—maybe it had been damaged in the fight—and Misato and Kensuke dodged the falling stones just in the nick of time. Now they were separated.
Kensuke grunted in pain and shouted, “Commander Katsuragi?”
“I’m fine,” came a reply. “What about you, Aida-kun?”
With his remaining arm, Kensuke reached into a pocket of his tactical vest and retrieved a small, thin, hard case and tossed it to the other side of the fallen rocks toward Misato’s voice.
“Aida? What’s this?” she asked.
“Take it back with you to Hakone, Commander. This is where we part ways.”
“What are you talking about?” she said. When he didn’t answer right away, she prodded, “Aida-kun?”
“I believe that’s what shielded me from the Ark’s power. The Europeans called it orichalcum. Can you believe that? But get this…when I analyzed the metal, it tested as ordinary lead.”
Kensuke’s voice receded into the distance. Misato had intended on bringing him back with her.
“Wait!” she said, sounding nonplussed. “What do you think you’re going to be able to accomplish in your condition?”
“I’ll be in touch.”
That was the last thing he said.
The sand cloud made following Kensuke impossible, but still Misato tried, blindly searching for any trace of where he’d gone. She found nothing.
She’d completely lost track of where she was herself. Squinting her eyes, she switched her wristwatch to compass mode and began walking in the direction she’d last seen Super Eva, when the giant had been run through by the Lance of Longinus.
She felt no trace of the Ark’s repelling power. Had the enemy truly left?
Stuck at the bottom of the canyon, and being only the size of a person, there was no way for Misato to know for sure.
As the wind began to clear away the cloud, Misato found Ayanami in a heap on the ground.
“Trois!”
The dried sand had coated the girl, turning her bright white. Misato ran over to her and brushed the sediment from her face.
“Trois! Wake up!”
That was when she noticed that this Ayanami wasn’t Trois.
The girl was wearing an older plugsuit; brushing the sand away revealed its black color.
“Are you…Quatre?”
The girl who’d taken Misato so far from home was breathing, but not conscious.
What happened?
Immediately on guard, Misato looked all around. But she saw no sign of Quatre’s mutant Eva-0.0 anywhere near.
“What does this mean?” she said aloud.
The sound of approaching jet engines added to the wind that blew through the red canyon.
The noise sounded like reality returning, announcing that it was humanity’s turn to take their positions on this stage.
“Those are military craft,” Misato said. “Locals.”
If questioned, Misato could argue she was hauled here by force, but Shinji had made his own way here, intruding in someone else’s backyard, where he proceeded to go on a rampage. Talking her way out of this situation wasn’t going to be easy.
“But what else is new?”
The ear-splitting sound belonged to two Moroccan fighter jets bearing large camera pods for reconnaissance.
The roar of the machines bounced back and forth across the steep walls of the gorge as the jets circled several times. Eventually, they released the pods, which turned out to be drones. The drones had just unfolded their wings and begun to scout when—
VWOOSH!
The fighter jets suddenly peeled away and flew toward the northeast.
Misato realized she’d been cowering. She stood back up and said, “Hm? That direction is…”
Somehow—whether through teleportation or other means—Eva Euro-II had come to the valley as well.
“Looks like her retinue has caught up with her.”
Misato glanced at Quatre on the ground beside her. The girl’s eyes were clouded and distant; she might have been conscious, she might not have been.
The commander crouched down, put Quatre’s limp arm around her shoulder, and stood back up.
“Come on,” she grumbled, realizing how heavy a body could be when it offered no assistance. “Stand on your own.”
First things first. I need to find Super Eva. So…why do I seem to recall some body-snatched idiot saying something about giants being giant so that everyone could see them?
Misato looked to the sky. The propeller-powered drones were focusing their search on the same area toward which the commander had been headed. She resumed her walk.
Quatre’s feet got tangled together, and Misato stumbled forward and groaned.
“What did you get out of bringing me here from Hakone, huh? Well, enjoy your stupor while you can. Just know that your present satisfaction is only the prelude to your next discontent.”
From the distance came the noise of a swarm of helicopters, or maybe tiltrotor aircraft, and they were advancing fast.
The valley probably hadn’t been that hard to find. The giant clouds of sand and smoke were a dead giveaway.
Flying under the banner of the UN, the fleet of mixed European military aircraft raced toward the Atlas Mountains from Cyprus.
One plane, a heavy VTOL aircraft, had been outfitted like an aerial control center. Its role was, in fact, to control Eva Euro-II’s dummy plug, either through direct communications or, now that the shrinking of the Earth had rendered satellites useless, through intermediary aircraft in the stratosphere.
The staff of Nerv Germany had been taken by surprise when Euro-II traveled beyond normal space in pursuit of Quatre’s Eva-0.0. When Euro-II’s signal suddenly jumped to north Africa, the fleet gave chase as fast as they could.
But their problems weren’t over. Indeed, the worst was yet to come.
Inside the aerial control center, a Nerv Germany technician said, “Heurtebise isn’t responding to the command signal.”
Euro-II was the code name for the Eva; Heurtebise was its official designation.
Nerv Germany had begun the construction of the Eva from the leftover components of the Eva-02 build, but the project had mostly stalled until the Lance of Longinus wiped out 1.9 million souls in a single apocalyptic event, and all the nations of Europe stepped forward to help with the effort.
In recognition of the international collaboration, the Eva was christened with the French name of an Angel—not of the same Judeo-Christian tradition that the Angels took their names from, but one imagined by the avant-garde artist, Jean Cocteau.
But now, this white angel, designed to serve as the hand of humanity, was not responding to commands.
The signals weren’t being jammed. Even if that had been the case, they had ways of dealing with that, many of which could be performed autonomously from the Eva’s side. But with the telemetry data showing all systems normal, the technicians were left exchanging perplexed looks.
The battle in the Atlas Mountains had centered on Super Eva and Armaros. Left behind on the mesa was the giant humanoid figure that had materialized mid-grapple with Armaros. But the figure wasn’t so humanoid now; its form had been thoroughly jumbled with manifestations of other animals. Now the rabid movements of the former Eva-02 Allegorica were coming to a stop.
Gone was the vigor the giant had exhibited when it challenged Armaros; now it seemed to be forgetting why it was even here. If the self and the external were to completely mix, and the giant’s individuality, physical form, and thoughts were forgotten, disorder would be all that remained. Eva-02 would likely never move again. For now, the Eva was kneeling, head down.
This was the position it was in when the pure white Eva Euro-II—Eva-02’s sister—arrived. The graviton floaters in Euro-II’s Allegorica wings hummed as it landed beside its muddled twin.
The person who used to be Asuka no longer noticed the blue of the sky.
On the moon, she and Eva-02 had touched the Ark, the saved data of all living creatures, and consequently, both had changed. The information of all creation was erasing Asuka and Eva-02 as individuals, and as one mass they hurled their rage at the one-winged Armaros. They threw themselves at the black giant, slamming him into the surface of the moon—at least, that’s what should have happened.
Instead, the entwined giants had dived through the moon’s surface as if it were water, and then—
Blue.
They’d been tossed from the moon’s monotone vista into a world vibrant with color everywhere—but none as striking as the blue.
How… How am I here?
Had Asuka not yet lost her individuality, she might have been able to formulate a guess based on events she’d witnessed on the moon. She’d watched the Angel Carriers disappear into the moon’s surface on their way to a battle somewhere else, and she’d discovered Armaros pulling material belonging the Earth’s core from the moon.
But now her very existence was being mixed together with and overwritten by a vast jumble of consciousnesses, and the former Asuka wasn’t aware that she’d returned to Earth, nor did she notice the blue sky for which she’d so badly yearned.
A pathetic moan was the only sound she made. Her last spoken words had been forgotten.
Her body continued to deform to the point where it didn’t look like any particular creature at all. Unable to settle, all that was left was deterioration. Her movements slowed, and Armaros pushed her aside and left to deal with Super Eva.
All her emotions had been encapsulated into rage, but even that, too, began to crumble away among the multitude. That which had once been Eva-02 and that which had once been Asuka—and the stored information of the creatures that had flowed into her—were mixing together and losing their values, their form, and the definition of their existence.
Not knowing who or what she was, and unable to remember the long journey that had brought her here, the glob of a giant knelt and lowered her head, and became still.