LNCrawler

Chapter 61: Hikari’s Contemplation

Neon Genesis Evangelion ANIMA — LNCrawler · All chapters

Chapter 61:
Hikari’s Contemplation
T HE ROAR OF jet exhaust proceeded a squadron of fighter jets flying in from the northeast and over Heurtebise’s head.
Then came a long, uninterrupted swarm of low-frequency rumbles, and a large fleet of mixed aircraft came into view.
They’d come from Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean in pursuit of Ayanami Quatre’s Eva-0.0. The fleet contained many different types of military aircraft from every country in Europe; among them was Heurtebise’s control plane.
Quatre had teleported here, and Heurtebise had also overcome the boundaries of physical space to travel the distance in nearly no time at all. When the Eva’s signal had reappeared in northwest Africa, the fleet had given chase and was only now arriving.
But something wasn’t right.
That the VTOL and STOL aircraft came in for a landing was no surprise, but even the large fixed wing aircraft began to decelerate. The mesa was fairly flat, but too rocky to be suitable as a landing strip, so the fleet flattened the ground with a succession of explosives before attempting to land. Some succeeded, but others flipped over and crashed or fell down into the gorges.
But what had caused this mad rush?
After quickly distancing himself from the scene, Kensuke leaked the presence of the Ark in the Atlas Mountains, complete with photographic evidence. He left out the part where the Ark had been taken away.
By throwing the fleet into chaos, he’d hoped to make an escape.
The rest of the world still believed the Ark offered salvation. They didn’t yet know that it was a data backup system—like a save file in a video game—for hastening the reconstruction of the next world after this one failed the Human Instrumentality Project.
As if oblivious to the mayhem unfolding around her, Hikari kept calling Asuka’s name to the slumped-over earthen giant.
And each time she said it, << Asuka, Asuka, >> the words pierced into the clump that used to bear that name, and the clump made a tiny movement.
Or at least, that’s what it looked like to Hikari.
The sun had set, and the giant moon, having been revealed in its true form half a day earlier, cast its brilliant glow upon the land. The military forces littered the gorge with their encampments; their electric lights were countless tiny stars stubbornly refusing to be outshone by the swollen moon’s enlarged, reflective surface.
Hikari had continued to ignore the signals from Heurtebise’s command plane. She was still calling out her friend’s name. Outside the Eva, she had never been the kind of person who could ignore other people when they talked to her, but now, some part of her still-fuzzy consciousness compelled her to do only that which she deemed important.
Her Evangelion, Heurtebise, had been set up for remote operation. In order for the pilot to accept the dummy plug without resistance, her brain’s activity had been limited to a half-awake state—or, to put it another way, she lived in a faint but constant dream-like state. This was convenient for remote control, but when the dummy plug’s autonomous programs were in total dysfunction, as they were now, they had no way of reaching the girl dreaming inside the giant—a giant that, unfortunately for them, never needed to stop to refuel.
But even in her trance—or possibly because of it—she came upon a realization.
Her thoughts weren’t simply contained within her brain; they extended into the Eva’s consciousness. She was aware of the presence of Asuka’s mother, even though the woman wasn’t thought to have been bound to this Eva at the time of its construction. But even more importantly, if she had been in full possession of her faculties, she might not have recognized her friend in the muddled mass that was before her now.
Yet this wasn’t enough. Something was missing. But what?
<< Asuka, what do I need to do? >>
<< Asuka, do you accept no longer existing? >> Hikari asked. << Is there no one you want to see again? Not Ayanami-san, or Misato-san, or…Ikari-kun? >>
Hikari suddenly remembered. “Ikari-kun. Ikari-kun is here. I saw his Eva flying…I think.” She groaned in frustration. “Why is it so hard for me to think?”
That indistinct memory came from the Eva’s consciousness.
Amid the maze of ribbon cables and assorted devices that had been designed to control her mind (though they were no longer operational), Hikari shook her head, opened and closed her hands a few times to make sure she still could, and then put them back on the grips of her control sticks.
“Even my own body feels huge,” she remarked, only noticing now.
The N 2 reactor increased its output, and Heurtebise unfolded its wings. Seeing the Allegorica unit’s diamond slits begin to align the gravitons, the Nerv Germany staff, who at some point had gathered around the Eva for the purpose of rebooting it from the outside, scrambled away just before the white giant floated weightlessly into the night sky and surveyed the ground below.
In the moonlight, all she could see clearly were the areas in shadow, as if she were looking upon the moon’s surface, but as her vision adjusted, she saw a collection of creepy-looking rock formations that resembled an assembly of Evangelions, while countless people bustled about between them.
Where…is this?
She’d asked the question before, but now she tried to figure out the answer.
The AI delivered the information straight into her brain.
Morocco, North Africa. The Dadès Gorges. Near the outskirts of Boumalne Dadès.
But the map’s topographical data no longer matched reality. Mountains had been leveled, and a newly formed, roughly two-kilometer-wide crater had cleaved an eerily round basin amid the far more complex geography.
All 28,000 kilometers of the orbiting Lance of Longinus had pierced through the planet at 90 kilometers per second.
On exit, the lance had blasted apart a patch of the ocean nearly two thousand kilometers wide, destroying entire islands and sending a two-hundred-meter-tall tsunami crashing into Australia’s eastern coastline. Compared to that, this crater was tiny.
Hikari found the giant she’d been searching for. The large figure was on its knees in the center of the crater.
Super Eva had been pierced through along with the Earth, and its heart had been stolen. The Eva was motionless. The soldiers had pinned the giant to the ground with crisscrossing wires that glistened in the moving searchlights, and a swarm of military engineers were creating a shower of sparks as they tried to torch their way through the entry plug lock.
Contrary to Kensuke’s aims, Misato hadn’t left the area. Amid the confusion, she stole a European military uniform and, holding Ayanami Quatre in her arms, had taken cover behind some rocks near Super Eva.
She’d come this far. She was this close to Shinji; she needed to rescue him. And she still didn’t know what had happened to Ayanami Trois.
But she couldn’t do anything with all these soldiers swarming about. They’d become a horde too large to command, and they all had flashlights in hand as they searched for the Ark.
The scene was surreal. Search teams belonging to every country had abandoned their efforts elsewhere and were streaming in from as far away as Mount Ararat. Aircraft continued to fly in, and those that failed the landing and crashed were left to burn.
Yet even more planes came in, drawn like moths to the flames of their fallen brethren. By now, fully half had crashed, which in turn drew in even more insects.
With flames behind them, the horde swarmed everywhere in their single-minded search.
Their individual murmurs of expectation and impatience blended into a low, all-encompassing hum. No one showed any interest in Misato or Quatre.
Before too long, the local military arrived with soldiers from other African nations. They were less than thrilled at having their sovereignty trampled upon by the European forces. The two sides stared each other down from a close distance, but in the end, everyone broke rank to search for the Ark. For the time being, direct conflict didn’t arise.
Misato noted that the battle at the end of the previous world, too, had involved a great gathering in this very same place. Those Evangelions had left their sorrows behind in the stone colossi. The only reason the obsessed Ark hunters hadn’t started killing each other was because Armaros had taken the object of their desire away, and they hadn’t been able to find it.
Once night lifted, they would likely realize the Ark was gone, and they’d slowly return to rational thought. But right now, the soldiers’ actions conveyed with painful clarity just how badly humanity wanted to survive.
Just then, Ayanami Quatre—still barely conscious in Misato’s arms—turned her hollow gaze upward.
THUD!
A dust cloud rose.
Though the moon and the ground were bright, the sky was dark, and nobody had noticed Euro-II Heurtebise swooping in until its white legs slammed into the ground.
The Allegorica Wings produced a discordant hum. Heurtebise roared, and all the people on the ground near Super Eva were sent scattering.
Heurtebise put its hands on Super Eva, shaking the giant roughly. The Lilliputian soldiers who had climbed onto the giant went tumbling down. One by one, the wire bonds snapped, tracing arcs in the night sky before landing on the crowd in sprays of blood.
Misato shuddered. No one seemed to care about the tragedy that had just unfolded; not the people around, and not the people caught in it.
<< Ikari-kun, wake up! >>
The voice in Japanese came through Euro-II’s external speakers and across every frequency. Shinji had said that Hikari was piloting the European Eva, and now Misato knew he’d been right.
<< Ikari-kun! >>
Super Eva didn’t move. The giant’s eyes and visor were closed. A hole had been carved from its chest down to its lower back.
Even Misato could see it was a fatal wound. She reeled.
“But…” she told herself. “But he’s still holding his shape. There hasn’t been any two-dimensional explosion!”
Together, Shinji and Super Eva made one complete person; they existed in a state of quantum instability. Their heart, and the singularity within it, acted as an anchor keeping them in this universe. How were they still here, retaining their form, when that heart had been stolen?
In fact, Shinji wasn’t dead—but unfortunately, it was only a matter of time until he was. And that time, Shinji knew, was running out.
The stolen heart wasn’t a living organ but rather a window to higher-dimensional space though which energy waves surged. Though separated from his body, the heart still powered Shinji and Super Eva through quantum jumps.
But over the span of several hours, Shinji’s strength had rapidly faded. He didn’t know why, but he guessed that the heart was being taken farther and farther away.
After he’d been melted by Unit Quatre’s gamma-ray laser, Shinji had been reconstructed sharing a single heart with Unit One. He lacked a heart of his own, that biological constant among all other people.
Shinji placed his hand over his chest and felt no heartbeat within. There, his hand froze; he no longer possessed the strength to move. He could sense that his body had grown cold.
His face had lost any expression. All he could do now was take what shallow breaths remained and await death. It wouldn’t be long now.
Hikari spoke through Heurtebise’s speakers.
<< Ikari-kun, that’s you, isn’t it? I’m going to do something a bit extreme, so…sorry! You can be mad at me later. >>
Hikari’s psyche had extended to her Eva’s thoughts, and she realized she possessed within herself something that could save Shinji. By the time she knew it, Heurtebise’s right hand was already clutching its left shoulder pylon. The metal groaned. She gasped with pain and then screamed.
From his world of total darkness inside the plug, Shinji heard the scream of someone he knew, and he asked, though he didn’t know if the words actually came out, “Assistant class rep? Horaki-san, is that you? What… What are you—”
Heurtebise had ripped off her left Q.R. Signum, shoulder pylon and all. She held the severed body part aloft, red blood gushing out, and jammed it into Super Eva’s chest hole.
<< Class rep—Ikari-kun! >> she said. << Call out to Asuka! >>
The Q.R. Signum was a quantum transmission port for energy. It was also a scale belonging to the black giant that had defeated him. The moment the Signum was thrust into Super Eva’s chest, the scale extended needles in all directions into the Eva’s body and made itself one with the Eva.
Hikari yelped in surprise.
A darkness overcame Shinji, even blacker than the darkness of near-death, and a mighty power coursed through his body.
But in exchange, a black thing wormed its way through each and every one of his veins. The pain and revulsion pushed into every part of his body. He thought he might puke.
Shinji screamed.
His body was cold and heavy, but strength filled him. It was a strange and unsettling feeling.
Super Eva’s body, inside and out, became stained with the Q.R. Signum’s color.
Misato shuddered. “What did she do? Now he’s going to—”
Just then, Super Eva’s head visor opened, followed by his eyes.
The world came back into view inside Shinji’s entry plug. The first thing he saw was the Q.R. Signum in his chest.
“This can’t be real!” he said. “Tell me it’s not. Right?”
In front of him was Eva Euro-II. Blood ran from the giant’s shoulder as Heurtebise turned around without warning, stirring up a strong wind and then fired its positron rifle.
<< Don’t touch her! >> Hikari shouted.
The positron shell grazed the top of the mesa, where several cranes were attempting to raise the mass that had once been Eva-02.
The shot was only a warning, and Hikari had missed on purpose. But even so, several soldiers were ionized by the blast, and a number of cranes lost their balance and dropped the muddled giant down into the gorge among the stone colossi.
<< Asuka! >>
“Horaki-san,” Shinji said, “who are you calling Asuka?”
He didn’t understand anything Hikari was saying. But he could figure out what was going on later. For now, all his thoughts were on Asuka.
The murky giant fell into the galaxy of flashlights, and the stars moved, rippling out like a wave.
Some stars jumped, some stars went out.
And then the frenzy began. The muddy, jumbled-up lump of a giant rose unsteadily, and the stone formations around it suddenly changed shape.
“What is that?” Misato asked. “Is that…a protozoan?”
It looked like one to her. But the protozoan was as tall as the rock tower had been—as tall as an Evangelion. The single-celled animal fell over and was crushed by its own weight. Its fluids scattered and began ingesting the crowd of soldiers.
That was just the first one.
One after another, the rock formations transformed into myriad once-tiny creatures—some long extinct. Previously only viewable through magnifying glasses or microscopes, the creatures now required a craned neck to be seen fully.
Some changed form more than once. People were scooped up and crushed by cilia longer than a whale’s whiskers; they were swallowed by membranes filled with digestive fluid. The canyon provided very few escape routes. Soldiers fled this way and that, the crowds pressed into each other, and in no time, the situation had devolved into total panic.
Some had begun to fire their weapons at the giants, but the creatures’ bodies had too much volume to be affected. What could the soldiers have possibly done against an enemy of that magnitude?
In the gaps between the colossi, Shinji saw the mud giant moving forward—and he caught a glimpse of a person in red running across the breaks between the stone statues.
“Asuka,” he whispered.
Having been through the brutal rebooting process of the Q.R. Signum, Super Eva ran toward the parade of giant creatures.
Under the bright light of the swollen moon, Hikari watched Super Eva wade into the madness.
“Ikari-kun, call Asuka back. I…I couldn’t. I tried, but I couldn’t.”
Super Eva leaped into the forest of colossi from the previous world.
Pursuing the formless, mud-like giant, Shinji wondered if the woman he’d seen had just been a trick of his mind.
But still—and with hesitation in his voice—he did something he’d never thought he’d do again: He called out to her.
<< Asuka. >>
At the sound of Shinji’s voice, the mud giant jumped and began running away.
<< What? Hey, wait! >>
As Super Eva weaved through the forest of stone giants, they began to transform into another swarm of colossal creatures.
Super Eva was pushing his way past a tower of rocks when the stone transformed into a preposterously gargantuan trilobite. The creature immediately grabbed the Eva with its perfectly ordered array of legs and attempted to sate a hunger that had been bottled away for hundreds of millions of years.
“Get off!” Shinji yelled as he kicked the trilobite in the stomach and sent the huge creature flying. By the time it landed, the trilobite had transformed into an entirely different species of arthropod.
Meanwhile, the soldiers below had nowhere to run.
Within the inescapable canyon, slime molds released their spores, and the heartbeats of gigantic see-through creatures sounded like explosions thundering between the cliff faces. Otherworldly monsters fell from above, and rock formations toppled.
As the mud giant and Super Eva ran, their footsteps seemed to materialize from the dark sky without warning, flinging aside everything and everyone unfortunate enough to be caught in their path. There was no telling where the next footstep would fall.
Overhead, a jellyfish had wrapped itself around Super Eva, who shredded the creature from the inside and rained hundreds of tons of gelatinous tissue onto the canyon’s floor.
All Shinji saw was the back of the giant running ahead of him.
Super Eva charged into the wriggling swarm of ancient creatures of unusual size.
The entire gorge was becoming an exhibition of larger-than-life models made by the hand of God. The data of innumerable creatures swirled like a maelstrom inside Asuka and Eva-02, turning them all into a gray jumble. In the statues left behind after the final battle of the last world, the data found new vessels and poured into them, taking new forms at will.
Shinji pushed his way through the giant creatures toward the figure at the center of the moving chaos.
“I need more speed,” Shinji said.
Each time the data of another creature was released, the evasive figure grew faster, its movements more fluid.
I’m…out of breath.
Shinji felt as though dry ice had been stitched into his chest. He felt simultaneously hot and cold, and both sensations burned.
He was running, but everything outside of his sight—everything behind him—was darkness. The effect gave the illusion that the darkness was chasing after him.
But to Shinji, the illusion felt very real. In his mind, the darkness really was coming to swallow him up. Between the vast power flowing into him and this persistent, consuming feeling that came as its price, Shinji couldn’t stand still.
The darkness wasn’t evil or hostile, nor did it have thought or will.
If he had to liken what he sensed to anything, it was like the seasons—or nature, or the universe. The darkness was coming, and it would kill him without hesitation the moment he let his guard down. It was the terrifying beauty and cruelty of divine law. It moved like the gears of a gigantic clock, caring nothing for Shinji’s circumstances. It was a system that carved away the world with emotionless precision.
“Oh,” Shinji said, feeling like he understood what the darkness was.
He was feeling his own powerlessness. He finally knew the terror that had awakened within Ayanami Rei Quatre when the Q.R. Signum was shot into her, activating her self-awareness.
I might end up the same way…
Except he had a purpose that kept him moving.
“Asuka!” he shouted.
That was all he had.
Another stone statue transformed, and the stalk of a gymnospermous plant rose higher and higher.
Each time the giant that had once been Asuka and Eva-02 transferred the data of another past creature into a nearby rock formation, the Eva regained more of its original appearance and became more beautiful.
The red figure crossed Shinji’s vision again.
Before him, the running giant came in and out of view as it weaved through the colossi. The figure’s outline appeared more crisp, with more detail, sometimes taking on a deeper red before fading back to gray, and then red again.
An ancient fern grew swift and tall—too tall—and with a cracking sound the plant toppled and covered the lights of the fleeing people below.
The running giant leaped over the fallen leaves. It was looking more and more familiar now.
Familiar? Shinji thought. But I haven’t seen anything like this before.
Something trailed behind the giant. Wings? Hair?
Was this a person or an Eva? Whatever it was, the figure reminded Shinji of Asuka in her plugsuit, and the resemblance was growing stronger. The giant had a slender waist and hips that moved rhythmically back and forth. Her legs made a delicate silhouette, but each time her feet hit the ground she leaped powerfully, like a coiled spring.
<< Asuka, wait! >> Shinji said.
Whether at school or in the HQ, she’d always been near him. On occasion, he’d accidentally seen her in various states of undress (though she never seemed to get as mad as he would have expected). But the last time he’d seen her with his own eyes, she was wearing her plugsuit—with Ayanami Rei Cinq—preparing to embark on a reconnaissance mission to the moon.
Is this a hallucination? Shinji wondered. Have I gone mad?
Asuka had crossed the Longinus Curtain and disappeared. He’d sworn to rescue her, but before he could, he’d been defeated by Armaros instead.
Am I even worthy of chasing her?
A pile of ancient fish blocked his path. They flopped about, scattering the lights below and eating everything they could find. Super Eva waded through them, but its pace had slowed.
As Shinji began to doubt himself, Hikari’s voice arrived like a slap in the face.
<< She’s getting farther away! >> Hikari shouted. << Just chase after her! And be sure to catch her! >>
She’s right, Shinji thought. If I’m being given another chance, I don’t care if it comes from God or the devil—I’m not letting it go!
Shinji climbed over the amphibians that were trying to crawl up his legs. He crossed a hill ahead.
<< Asuka! >>
Shinji passed between two rocks shortly after she did, and the rocks became enormous dinosaurs. One charged at him low and from the side, striking below Super Eva’s center of gravity. The Eva went flying and slammed into the side of the cliff.
The other dinosaur came at him with bared fangs. Super Eva smacked the creature away with a swift punch, but its long neck twirled, and it came back for another attack. Its fangs had become a long, sharp beak.
Shinji cried out; the dinosaur had punctured his eye.
My A.T. Field isn’t working!
Or rather, he didn’t understand how the Q.R. Signum’s shield worked.
What do I care? That’s not what matters right now!
<< Asuka! >>
He grabbed the dinosaur’s neck and snapped it, somehow managing to hurl the beast away. But he’d lost sight of the figure he’d chased into the towering ferns.
Suddenly, the darkness was back. In an instant, half his body had been swallowed by its shadow.
<< Asuka! Where are you? >>
Fleeing from the darkness, he searched for any sign of her. He stumbled against the cliff face more than once.
But he couldn’t find her. The green leaves of the unnaturally large plants turned red and began to fall in such numbers that Shinji could no longer see.
Is this it? Is this how it ends?
Pleading like a little boy, he cried, << I’ve lost you too many times! Asuka! Don’t go! >>
He stumbled right. He stumbled left. He circled around a rock, and—
She was waiting.
The giant looked like Asuka, or like Asuka mixed with her Eva.
She’d nearly finished shedding the creatures that had merged with her body. A thin, grayish film remained on the outside, but that, too, peeled and fell away, revealing her body entirely in red.
Shinji came crying to her like a lost child who’d found his mother, but at the last moment, he tried to cover it with an awkward laugh.
<< Ha ha! Look at you. You told me you were going to have them paint your Eva the color of the moon. But red just suits you better. >>
He fell to his knees.
The red giant reached her hand out to him, and he grasped it.
Nearly all of the canyon’s colossi—those vestiges of grief—had been transformed into giant creatures. The gorge would never look the same. As for the creatures, by the time morning came, they had all been crushed to death by their own weight.
Freed from the false eternity of the Ark, their short lives ended in a single night, and their immense bodies lay down to rest on the Earth alongside all the people they’d trampled.
As the sun rose, and the maddening moon set, the curtain fell on the frenzied festival.