Chapter 20: White Guardian

Chapter 20:
White Guardian

 

THE WHITE GIANT stood perfectly still among the fungal trees.

The Angel Carrier had wings and two Q.R. Signum scales—a Type-3. But in place of the typical cocoon, a black sphere floated within its open rib cage. Occasionally, a white interference pattern flashed across the sphere’s surface.

“Leliel!” Shinji shouted.

This was a smaller, larval form of an Angel that Shinji had encountered before. The black sphere was only a shadow. The Angel’s true body existed in imaginary space and could swallow anything that fell inside it.

Standing among the giant trees, their trunks like ancient ruins, the Angel Carrier remained completely motionless. Even when Shinji came closer, the carrier didn’t move.

 

Is it dead? Shinji wondered.

The carrier’s Q.R. Signum scales were intact, but they were completely black and lacked their typical dark-red glowing pattern.

The Angel inside—Leliel—had swallowed Shinji and Eva-01 when he was in junior high.

But this was Shinji’s first encounter with a larval Leliel. The Angel Carrier bearing Leliel’s cocoon had attacked Hakone while Shinji was dead—after he was evaporated by Quatre’s gamma-ray laser and before he was reborn as Super Eva.

After his revival, he’d learned that Asuka, piloting Eva-02, had managed to impale the cocoon with the Lance of Longinus—not knowing that the larva within was Leliel. The larval Angel had swallowed the lance into its imaginary space and promptly disappeared.

 

Shinji knew of two Lances of Longinus.

The one that currently encircled the Earth had previously been on the moon. The lance had landed there after Rei, in Eva-00, had hurled the weapon at the Angel Arael.

The other had been hidden among the weapons wielded by the mass-production Evangelions in the Battle at Nerv HQ. During the final stages of the Instrumentality Project, they’d impaled Eva-02 with the weapon to carry out the sacrificial ritual. After the Instrumentality Project had failed, Nerv Japan took possession of the lance. That was the one stolen by Leliel.

The latter was a reproduction—a copy of the original made by Seele.

Back when Nerv still possessed the Lance of Longinus, Commander Ikari Gendo had wanted to put the lance somewhere out of Seele’s reach in order to prevent them from initiating the Instrumentality Project according to their own plan. He’d managed to strand the lance on the moon, but Seele had prepared a duplicate instead.

“What does this mean?” Shinji said, thinking aloud.

In all likelihood, the black giant, Armaros, had purposefully stolen the Lance of Longinus from Eva-02—from humanity. Wouldn’t the Apple’s Core be an ideal place to store the weapon out of humanity’s reach?

Seele/Kaji had come to this planet in search of something. Then he’d threatened to strand Shinji and Quatre here, hoping this threat would compel them to try to escape.

“Kaji-san was looking for this Angel Carrier,” Shinji said. “He was looking for Leliel. And Leliel holds the lance—the same copy that Seele created.”