Chapter 14: A Chance Meeting at the End

Chapter 14:
A Chance Meeting at the End

 

WITH HIS APPROXIMATION of flight, Shinji neared the mutant Eva-0.0’s predicted arrival point quickly. He stayed four kilometers away, with a mountain for cover, and extended an external camera just above the ridgeline.

 

The camera panned from side to side and then stopped.

And there it was, malformed and monstrous, the chimera-like mutant.

The giant’s gamma-ray laser cannon had merged with its right arm. A mass-production Eva’s external S2 Engine had been hacked off from its owner and jammed into the mutant’s misshapen body. It even had black wings stolen from an Angel Carrier Type-3.

This is what the Q.R. Signum’s influence had made of Unit Quatre.

Chief Engineer and Scientist Ibuki’s sensors had worked. Though she wasn’t around to hear, he couldn’t help but compliment her. “Maya-san, you’re a genius.”

The monstrous giant hadn’t noticed Shinji’s presence. It seemed to be searching for something. Moving from vantage point to vantage point, the mutant Eva-0.0 surveyed its surroundings.

“Damn it, Toji, why couldn’t you have given me a gun?”

Shinji held the control stick from his position beside the plug seat, and his attention was fully on the outside view. He didn’t notice when Quatre’s vacant expression changed to one of distress.

When she began to howl, “You…you!” Shinji finally looked over at her.

“Quatre?”

“Why are you here?!” she screamed.

Super Eva’s transmitter, which was only supposed to respond to Shinji’s voice commands, reacted to Quatre and blasted out her yell with the transmission code assigned to her before she’d been designated an enemy.

The mutant Eva-0.0 turned.

Shinji gasped. As he shifted Super Eva into a defensive stance, he glared at Quatre. “You gave us away! We had the drop on it!”

But she ignored him. Her eyes were locked on the mutant Eva-0.0 on the screen.

And then she shouted as loud as she could.

“Trois! The me who unifies!”

“What?!” Shinji blurted.

Super Eva picked up on his thoughts and zoomed in with his uninjured eye.

 

A figure stood in front of the Q.R. Signum jutting out from the Eva-0.0’s chest armor. Kaji’s black coat hung from his shoulders, flapping in the wind.

When he spoke, his voice came over the hydrospeaker.

<<Gendo’s puppet… I thought you were broken. And who is that with you? Gendo’s son? How did you know we were here?>>

Seele had hijacked Kaji’s mind, but the man still spoke with Kaji’s dry, teasing tone. It might have been endearing once, but now it served as a painful reminder to anyone who’d known him.

Hearing what had happened to Kaji still hadn’t prepared Shinji for the reality. Shaken, he said, “Kaji?!”

Staying behind the mountain, Super Eva circled around to the Kaji-vessel’s front, and Shinji saw another person standing inside Kaji’s open coat. She wore the same black mini-dress that Quatre had previously taken from Trois.

“Ayanami?” Shinji asked. “Trois, is that really you?”

She stirred faintly but kept on staring straight ahead.

Holding her from behind, Kaji smirked. <<Is this where I say, “Haven’t you heard, Shinji-kun?”>>

“Now that you’re our enemy, the way you talk is really starting to piss me off,” Shinji retorted.

But inside, he was distraught. Why was Trois here…and with the enemy?

 

Seele had manipulated Quatre and taken control of her mutant Eva-0.0, but once she went into a near-catatonic state in the Valley of Human Bodies, the Eva had malfunctioned and crashed.

Meanwhile, Ayanami Rei Trois had separated from Misato and the others to strike out on her own, bereft of any kind of home. The Kaji-vessel had found and captured her. She remained a fully functional Evangelion control device, and that was all he needed, so he’d discarded her broken counterpart, Quatre. Misato had gone searching for Trois, but instead found Quatre, and took the girl into her protective care.

“Trois, can you hear me?” Shinji asked. “That Eva is dangerous. Its contamination will spread to you, too!”

When Trois replied, her expression remained placid, even though her voice faltered.

<<I couldn’t stop you, Ikari-kun. And I couldn’t be turned into salt, either. I’m a puppet. I’m not capable of expressing myself. But if I’m here, I don’t have to think about anything anymore. So…leave me be.>>

Shinji searched his memories for anything that could help him make sense of her incomprehensible answer.

“Oh…!”

He remembered. When he’d confronted Armaros, Trois had become distressed and tried to stop him, but he’d refused.

He tried to explain. “I was just—”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Quatre cut in. “You’re the version of me who has everything! Why are you acting like you’re the puppet?!”

Ayanami Rei Quatre, who’d been like a marionette with its strings snipped, leaned forward, her red eyes brimming with fury, and glared at the girl who looked almost exactly like her.

Her outburst sent Shinji’s fingers digging into his chest even harder than before, and he grunted in pain.

Is she activating the Q.R. Signum inside me?

One after another, error windows appeared on his holographic display. But this time, the black force pushed back against his attempts to resist. The Q.R. Signum’s contamination was spreading.

But Quatre wasn’t finished.

“When the black giant went through me to get into your clones, you—the me who unifies—pushed your burdens onto us.”

The mental feedback caused the control stick to jump and twitch, and Shinji scrambled to hold it in place.

“You gave each of us one disparate, incomplete piece! Six became the me who is childish and selfish. Cinq was me the problem solver, but she passed that back to you when she died. And—”

“Quatre!” Shinji shouted. “Please, stop!”

He could feel Super Eva’s body—his body—approaching some kind of transformation.

But Quatre didn’t ease up.

“And you put into my body the me who cowers in fear!”

Her fury drove Shinji’s fingernails into his chest, and blood began to seep out, dissipating into the LCL.

“You have everything!” Quatre yelled.

As if on cue, the Q.R. Signum began pouring the black force into Super Eva with even greater intensity. Shinji had thought he could keep the raw power contained within the darkness, but now it threatened to run rampant within the giant who’d lost his heart.