Chapter 23: At the Foot of the Great Tree

Chapter 23:
At the Foot of the Great Tree

 

“BUT I WON’T SAY it was the smart choice,” Quatre said, seeming to understand, if not accept, Shinji’s decision.

“I know,” Shinji replied. “I mean, I think I know.”

 

Deep in the fungal forest on the nightside of the Apple’s Core, Super Eva stood before two hostile giants with his twin swords drawn.

One was the mutant Eva-0.0, formerly Quatre’s, now controlled by the Kaji-vessel and his hostage, Trois. The other was an Angel Carrier Type-3. The carrier’s shoulder was injured, and its larva, Leliel, was dead.

But the white giant was still moving.

“The carrier is down one Q.R. Signum,” Shinji said. “Did Kaji-san do that? The carrier was undamaged when Leliel swallowed us up.”

“Well,” Quatre responded, “whatever happened between them while we were inside, that carrier is obeying Seele now.”

“You can tell?”

“Seele can control Q.R. Signum scales by touch, and through the scale, he can influence the pilot. That was how he hijacked my Eva in Cyprus.”

 

The Kaji-vessel called out. <<Do you really think you managed to fool me? You sent the lance into an orbit that will bring it back down to Earth in a matter of months.>>

Behind Shinji in the entry plug, Quatre whispered. “He saw right through us… But at least he can’t do anything about it.”

Shinji remained silent, watching through a zoomed-in view on the holographic display. The Kaji-vessel still held Trois in one arm. He raised his other hand and placed his thumb and middle finger against her carotid artery.

<<You know what happens next,>> he said. <<I’ll kill this puppet.>>

Shinji shot upright, but Quatre placed a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t panic.”

She opened the comms channel so that her next words would be transmitted.

“He can’t do that, Shinji. Seele can access the Q.R. Signum and nothing more. He can’t control that Eva without a compatible pilot, let alone make the jump through the tunnels. If he could, he would’ve come alone.”

Seele chuckled. <<But Shinji-kun, Gendo’s son, do you really think the Earth can afford to wait around for the lance to finish its long journey?>>

That was, in fact, Shinji’s greatest worry.

Shinji and Quatre had been on this misshapen planet for more than half a month. The Kaji-vessel called this planet the Apple’s Core, but he’d also mentioned a second name—one that it had gone by as a testing ground for the Instrumentality Project. Eden. Though this was a strange land, it must have been a paradise compared to the destruction on Earth.

And how much worse had the situation become since Shinji was last on Earth?

<<What will happen to your planet is simple,>> the Kaji-vessel said. <<Once the moon is large enough, it will approach the Earth and drink up the land and seas.>>

What?! Shinji looked to Quatre in surprise.

“Wait,” Shinji said. “Is that the…”

Shinji remembered a phrase Armaros had spoken through the Ayanamis’ mental link.

<<That’s right. The Great Flood.>>

 

“The carrier is moving!” Quatre hissed.

The Angel Carrier leaped over the mutant Eva-0.0 and came rushing at Super Eva, thrusting its staff forward.

If what he’s saying is true, thought Shinji, then what could we possibly do to stop it?

All three giants, including Super Eva, were drawing power from identical sources—Armaros’ Q.R. Signum scales. It was a fact Shinji found ironic—and chilling.

Those given a scale could draw upon a terrible power. In return, they faced a gradual corruption, and every now and then, were made to speak on Armaros’ behalf. Beyond that, they were free to act as allies or enemies. Their actions were beneath the concern of a being who could create worlds.

The tip of the Angel Carrier’s staff formed two prongs with sharp, jagged edges, and the carrier’s rushing attack, strengthened by the giant’s A.T. Field-like shield, only barely missed Super Eva.

But Super Eva had purposefully dodged at the last minute to set up a counterattack with his swords.

“Show me what you can do!” Shinji shouted.

He parried his enemy’s charge with his left-hand sword and slashed with his right.

The blade moved faster than the speed of sound, yet it still failed to penetrate the Angel Carrier’s shield. The moment the sword made contact, a strong force repelled it.

Shinji grunted in surprise as the carrier sailed past him and landed on the ground, scattering dirt and toppling a cluster of the white, softly glowing fungal trees. Shinji leaped backward to get some space.

“That wasn’t supposed to happen!”

His twin swords, Kesara and Basara, were code named “Field Penetrators.”

But even when swung with all of Super Eva’s might, the blades hadn’t lived up to their name.

 

Shinji looked at his swords through the holographic display. “Are they too dull?”

A sub-window opened, and Maya’s voice spoke through the seat’s speakers.

<<You’ve drawn both swords, Shinji-kun.>>

“Maya-san?!”

<<This is a recording,>> Maya said from the sub-window. <<I don’t have time to prepare a field manual for you, but I can tell you the basics. If the swords are working, that’s great. But if they don’t work, put them back in their sheaths right away, and the system will deal with it.>>

That was too brief.

With nothing else to do but to trust Maya’s instructions, Shinji returned both swords to his shoulder pylons.

“What now?” Quatre asked.

Shinji’s eyes went wide as he realized Super Eva was now weaponless.

<<Oh, but do be careful,>> Maya’s voice added. <<The swords will need 201 seconds to retune.>>

“Whaaaat?!”

This was no time to go unarmed for well over three minutes.

Super Eva grasped the swords’ hilts, but the sheaths had locked the weapons firmly inside; they wouldn’t budge. Another new window opened on the display, this time showing a three-dimensional cube along with a too-technical message saying that something was happening to his equipment, but that was hardly helpful now.

Super Eva had left Africa equipped with nothing but the swords and a single knife. Misato hadn’t allowed him to carry any ranged weapons, out of fear that the Q.R. Signum might cause him to lose control while flying over some sovereign state.

With the swords locked away, all he had left was the knife on his right leg. He was reaching to draw it, when—

“Ikari-kun, on your left!” Quatre shouted.

He noticed the Angel Carrier’s attack too late. The white giant was flying toward him, low—and this time it was coming at full force.

Shinji couldn’t get out of the way in time. He barely managed to bring up his A.T. Field as a shield.

But he grunted in pain as Super Eva took the tackle head-on and was tossed backward, carving a path of destruction through the fungal forest.

At first, Shinji thought Super Eva’s back had slammed into a rough patch of ground—but the object beneath him shattered into dry, fibrous splinters that scattered all around.

A root of the dead tree?

The giant tree, which stood many times taller than an Evangelion, swayed faintly from the impact, and luminescent spores of the parasitic fungus fell like snow from its branches.

The mutant Eva-0.0 transmitted Kaji’s voice.

<<Would you like to die at the foot of the old Tree of Life? It was one of the two great trees that represented this place, you know. It would make a fine grave marker, don’t you think?>>

Unlike the Angel Carrier, the mutant Eva showed no sign of pressing the attack.

 

The Kaji-vessel had come to this planet to find the duplicate Lance of Longinus, but Shinji had hurled it into space.

The weapon was traveling too fast to pursue directly, and the tunnel network only connected points on land. The Kaji-vessel had no way to recover the lance now.

But he could still try to force Shinji to give up the trajectory data.

So why isn’t he moving?

“Be careful,” Quatre said. “Eva-0.0 is repairing the end of the laser cannon where you cut the barrel off…so that it can be fired at that length.”

The gamma-ray laser cannon—when working at full power—was the strongest weapon available to any Eva.

So that’s why he’s leaving the fight to the Angel Carrier.

Shinji pretended not to have noticed. “Two great trees, you say? Where’s the other one?”

<<Didn’t you see it in the center of the sunside continent? That one has mostly weathered away. It may once have been the Tree of Knowledge, but it died and toppled a long, long time ago. All that’s left is a flat patch of ground where the stump used to be.>>

The Tree of Knowledge, the fruit of knowledge…the forbidden fruit?

I’d eat just about anything that got me expelled from this paradise.

Both sides were trying to buy time.

“Let’s see if I can even the score before you jump back in the fight,” Shinji said to himself.

The Angel Carrier was the first back on its feet. But the white giant’s stance wasn’t normal.

The carrier’s left shoulder was already damaged. Did it break when it tackled me?

Super Eva stood, knife in hand. But the carrier kept its distance. Instead of charging in for another tackle, the giant aimed its power shield at Super Eva and fired it like an invisible fist.

Shinji wouldn’t have seen the attack coming if it weren’t for the glowing ripple spreading through the fungal spores.

Super Eva leaped to the side, and in the next moment, the ripple reached the spot where he’d been standing. The ground exploded.

Shinji glanced back at Quatre’s face. She looked feverish, like she was under even more strain than he was.

“Quatre, are you all right?”

“I’ve run the calculations on what will happen once Eva-0.0 has repaired its cannon. With the convergence and laser pumping capabilities at that barrel length, we should be safe from a distance of thirty kilometers. He won’t be able to attack us from the horizon. But at close range, the laser will still be putting out a quarter of its maximum power. That’s more than enough to be a serious threat.”

She paused. Her chest rose as she took in a deep breath of LCL and slowly let it back out again.

“This Eva can draw in unlimited power,” she said, “but every time we maneuver in battle, the Q.R. Signum takes a little more control.”

“I wish I could say, ‘don’t push yourself,’” Shinji said. “But it’s not that simple, is it? We need that power.”

 

By observing the lights of the forest, Super Eva had dodged several of the Angel Carrier’s invisible fists, but eventually, it read Shinji’s movements and aimed an attack directly at the spot where he was about to land.

Below him, the ground exploded, and a giant sheet of rock flew toward Super Eva. Even with the prog knife running on high power, the rock looked too large to smash. He hadn’t yet been able to control the Q.R. Signum’s power shield as well as his A.T. Field, but at the last moment, he focused the shield’s power into the knife, and—

KA-CRACK!

The rock shattered into tiny fragments. Shinji had discovered how to use the shield as a weapon, like the Angel Carrier was doing.

“Are you up for this?” Shinji asked.

Quatre nodded. “I’ll back you up.”

Super Eva’s shoulders tingled with unfamiliar heat.

The next time the Angel Carrier fired a shield projectile, Super Eva countered with one of his own—using the same technique Shinji had previously employed to generate his A.T. Field at a remote point.

“Go!” he shouted.

The two projectiles shot through the forest and collided head-on, but the Angel Carrier’s was stronger, and it batted Shinji’s shield aside.

“Quatre?!”

“I’m losing power!” she said. “It’s slipping through my fingers.”

Super Eva’s shoulders were growing hotter.

“The swords!” Shinji realized. “The heat is coming from Super Eva’s shoulder units, from within Kesara’s and Basara’s sheaths. What’s the status?”

Quatre’s eyes scanned the armament display window. “It says, ‘Tempering process underway. Rearranging blade crystalline structure.’”

Whatever that meant, at least it wasn’t an error message.

“I think those swords are made out of the same A.T. Field-induction elements as the Type-F’s cannon,” Quatre said, “or your Eva’s wings.”

“What does that mean?”

“The system can read the data from when the swords failed to penetrate the enemy’s shield and then reconfigure their field pattern on the spot.”

Super Eva shuddered. Shinji felt like his blood flow had changed. Gasping, he clutched at his chest. The Q.R. Signum was now causing him physical pain.

“See?” Quatre said. “The field type is changing.”

VWWMMM.

“Wait, this is strange,” she said. “The swords drain a lot of power, but I’m not having to direct the power to them. The Q.R. Signum is spreading its energy into the sword system on its own. It’s as if…”

The sound was like the earth rumbling, the vibrations like a low-amplitude earthquake. The black scale’s power flooded into the swords in raging waves.

“It’s too hot!” Shinji cried. “Something’s wrong!”

“It’s as if the scale is trying to possess the swords,” Quatre said.

A loud, metallic wham sounded from Super Eva’s shoulders, and they both jumped. A happy chime followed, and a new message appeared on the display: REFORGING COMPLETE.

The cylindrical tumblers swiveled open, offering the two swords.

Bubbling with impatience, Super Eva crossed his arms in front of his face and seized the twin hilts.

“What?!” Shinji shouted.

“What’s wrong?” Quatre asked.

“Super Eva didn’t move the way I told him to.”

He wasn’t completely sure, but it seemed like the Eva had moved ahead of his conscious thoughts.

Maya’s voice spoke again. <<Cool the blades to bind the new crystalline structure. If you’re near a river or a large body of water—>>

Shinji didn’t hear the rest. Super Eva took another direct hit from the carrier’s projected shield, but he continued drawing Kesara and Basara as he tumbled backward.

Super Eva tore a swath of destruction through the fungal forest, rolling from the impact. Shinji shifted his grip on the swords, turning their pommels upright, and thrust their red-hot blades into the ground.

 

The earth swelled as the swords’ tremendous heat dumped into it, and the forest’s underground moisture instantly vaporized. Steam exploded upward, filling the air with white mist.

Despite losing sight of Super Eva, the Angel Carrier held its staff aloft and jumped into the dense cloud in search of its quarry.

“Gendo’s son…what did you do?” Kaji muttered.

A wrenching sound echoed from the steam, then the carrier’s staff flew out of the cloud and impaled itself in the ground in front of the mutant Eva-0.0.

The carrier’s arm was still holding on to the shaft.

“Did he cut through the shield?” Kaji wondered aloud.

The Angel Carrier was ejected from the steam cloud and crashed into the trees. As it rolled, the giant raised its blood-soaked stump and threw one invisible fist after another into the mist.

Super Eva came leaping out from the cloud, breaking through the outer wall and leaving a black trail in its wake. The Eva held both swords crossed and focused the strongest part of his shield at the point where the blades overlapped. He didn’t try to evade the carrier’s attacks but simply shrugged them aside. He closed the distance and broke through the Angel Carrier’s shield.

With a scream like metal slicing through metal, Super Eva’s crossed swords sank into the carrier’s shield, reaching either side of its neck. Super Eva threw his arms wide.

Kesara and Basara passed each other inside the carrier’s neck, and, almost as an afterthought, smashed through the remaining Q.R. Signum scale in the carrier’s right shoulder.

Super Eva’s hands were gripping the swords, but to Shinji, his own Q.R. Signum’s uncanny power seemed to be reaching black arms out to wield the swords directly.

“The swords,” Shinji gasped, breathless. “They’ve attuned too well. The power… I can’t…”

He couldn’t control it. Super Eva—or rather, the two swords—wanted to slice through anything that moved, friend or foe.

Without a moment’s pause, Super Eva leaped to attack the mutant Eva-0.0, as if there were nothing else it would rather do.

 

The mutant Eva-0.0 grabbed the Angel Carrier’s staff from the ground and held the weapon in front of its body. But Super Eva’s sword, Basara, smashed into the staff with a shower of sparks, scraping all the way down its length and into the mutant’s A.T. Field.

The Field Penetrator was attuned to the Angel Carrier’s power shield, not the mutant Eva’s field, and couldn’t slice through easily. But the field still crackled and splintered as the weapon forced its way through with murderous fury. The blade’s tip inched inexorably toward the Q.R. Signum in the mutant Eva’s chest.

The Kaji-vessel stood on a platform in front of the Q.R. Signum, holding Trois.

Shinji cried out through gritted teeth as he forced the blade to stop at the last possible moment.

Shinji breathed heavily, and the sword’s tip trembled—centimeters from Rei Trois’ face.

 

Trois remained motionless. With a resigned expression, she spoke.

<<Yes, Ikari-kun. This is what you should’ve done in the first place. If you had, then you and Quatre—the me who loses hope to fear—would’ve been able to go home, lance in hand.>>

What is she talking about? As Shinji strained to hold the sword back, Quatre responded from behind.

“She’s right. Instead of throwing away the Lance of Longinus, you should’ve driven it through Trois, the me who unifies.”

<<Yes. Kill me now and correct your path. I can accept that. I’m nothing. I’m less than nothing. I’m a hindrance. I want you to do it.>>

“She’s right,” Quatre said. “If something stands in your way, you eliminate it. My other selves would reach the same conclusion.”

Shinji’s shoulders heaved as he fought against the sword. If he lost focus, the weapon would kill Trois and Kaji in an instant.

“Shut up,” he grunted. “Both of you!”

The A.T. Field at the tip of the blade rumbled. How can they so easily tell me to kill, when I’m fighting so hard not to? How can Trois look at me like that’s a sensible thing to say? And what about Kaji-san?

The Kaji-vessel held Trois in front of him as he listened to the exchange with his same damn smirk.

“Kaji-san,” Shinji said, “release Trois and the Eva. Or keep the Eva, if you want. Just let Trois go. Please.”

<<That’s not what the puppets are saying.>> The Kaji-vessel said and laughed. <<Don’t you think you should all get on the same page? I suppose we could decide by majority vote, but I don’t think that would go the way you want.>>

The Kaji-vessel glanced at the mutant Eva-0.0’s right arm. The tip of the sawed-off gamma-ray laser was nearly repaired.

Trois spoke. <<It’s only a matter of time, Ikari-kun, before I… I’ll become your mother.>>

Not this again. Shinji’s eyebrows furrowed. Rei Quatre had already ambushed him with that subject once.

Trois continued. <<When that happens, I can’t imagine being able to claim I’m a different person from her. Not when I can’t see who I am.>>

What is she talking about?

<<I don’t want to be like that. When the time comes, I don’t think I’ll exist anymore.>>

Her words offended Shinji. “Look, I’ll say this as clear as I can. I don’t see any of you as my mother. All right? When Quatre first said something to that effect, I admit, I felt something. But that was just because—”

Trois cut him off. <<The dress you gave me… It was her favorite color.>>

“I’m…I’m sorry. I didn’t give enough thought to how that would look from your point of view.”

<<You were telling me to become Ikari Yui.>>

“That’s not true!” Shinji yelled.

Trois fell silent.

Shinji lowered his head and shook it back and forth in the LCL. “Just listen to me. Asuka and everyone else… They enjoy picking out presents. I never know what to pick. Even thinking about it makes my head hurt! All I wanted was to give you something…to give us a chance to connect. Do you have to be so critical?!”

Whenever he thought too hard about something, other people always ended up meddling. The Shinji of three years ago—the fourteen-year-old Shinji—had considered that sort of social interaction an unwanted intrusion.

He’d made too much progress discarding those feelings to have them revived now. Revisiting them made him feel nauseous…and angry.

“You think you lack something that would define you,” Shinji snapped. “Well, I don’t know what that thing is. Maybe you really don’t have it. But stop assuming that I—or anyone else for that matter—know what defines me. I don’t!”

He’d only been venting, but his words sank in. Her expression shifted. “You’re right, I don’t know what it is… And you don’t, either?”

Too clouded with rage to notice her shift, Shinji barked, “That’s right! I don’t know! I don’t know what other people are feeling! I don’t know what I’m missing!”

“Is…Is that true? That thing I don’t understand. The missing part I can’t see. Not everyone can see it in themselves?”

“No! How could they?!”

Simultaneously, both Ayanamis said, “Oh…”

 

“Fire!” the Kaji-vessel ordered from behind Trois’ back. The girl shuddered, and the mutant Eva’s arm muscles groaned. The shortened gamma-ray laser cannon swung toward Super Eva and fired.

At the exact same moment, Super Eva slammed his right shoulder into the mutant Eva-0.0, swinging Kesara upward. The severed cannon-arm sailed through the sky, spraying blood behind it, and the laser roared past Super Eva, slamming into the Tree of Life.

Trois gasped. For the second time, she felt the Eva’s arm being sliced off, as if it were her own. She was going into shock, unable to even scream.

“Ayanami!” Shinji cried out to Trois. “The next time I give you something, I’ll find a color that suits you. I swear!”

Racked with pain, Trois lost focus. Her A.T. Field had been allowing her and Kaji to stand in place on their moving Eva, but now that field weakened, and Super Eva’s collision had tilted the small platform under their feet. They fell precariously close to the edge.

 

The LCL inside Super Eva’s plug had stopped flowing. After a moment of confusion, Shinji realized that the entry plug was sliding out from Super Eva’s back. He turned to see Quatre opening the hatch.

Before he could ask what she was doing, she pressed her lips to his. The roar of the ejecting LCL faded into momentary silence.

“You can see me as part of Ayanami, too,” Quatre said.

“What are you doing, Quatre?!” Shinji sputtered.

She slipped out from the seat and stood. She was holding her arm, her face contorted in pain.

“I’m synchronized with Trois right now,” she explained. “I told me—I mean her—the way back home. And the duplicate lance’s trajectory.”

“What are you saying?”

The mutant Eva-0.0 had gone still, leaning against Super Eva.

Even though the two Evas were touching, they were still dizzyingly high off the ground. Yet Quatre nimbly jumped across to the titled platform.

She approached Trois and said, “The me who unifies, the one in control—close off my access to memories of the duplicate lance. Lock away my knowledge of the lance’s trajectory.”

“What do you think you’re doing, broken puppet?” the Kaji-vessel said, clinging to the edge of the platform.

Quatre was still wearing Shinji’s plugsuit. Using the built-in controls, she instructed the medical telemetry unit to inject a sedative into her arm so that she could take on the full amount of the feedback pain.

Then, to Kaji, she casually said, “Seele, I’m going with you. We could kill you right now, but I have some acquaintances who don’t want your vessel to die.”

Trois was struggling to stand. She looked up weakly. “Why are you doing this?”

“This Eva-0.0 was mine in the first place, and I want it back. Go home to Tokyo-3 with Ikari-kun. We can’t put an end to this with you two stranded here.”

“An…end…” Trois repeated. “If the worst happens, the me who is fulfilled… I want to say…thank you.”

“No more running, the me who doesn’t realize she’s fulfilled.”

The two girls had arrived at a settlement.

Super Eva had finally shaken free of the curse on his swords. He reached out to carefully scoop up both Ayanamis, but when his hand got near, Quatre shoved the now-standing Trois over the edge. Shinji quickly caught her.

He fumbled his grip on Kesara, and the blade landed tip-first into the ground.

Before the sword even had time to topple, the mutant Eva was already sinking into the tunnel network. Shinji rushed to the entry plug’s hatch, leaned out, and shouted, “Quatre!”

She turned to look up at him, but before he could say anything else, the misshapen giant, carrying Quatre and Kaji, was swallowed by the ground.

 

“Trois!” Shinji called out from the hatch. “Are you all right?”

She didn’t respond. She was curled up on Eva’s hand with her arms around her own shoulders, staring at the patch of ground where the mutant Eva-0.0 had disappeared.

Worried, Shinji climbed down to her.

“Let’s go home, Ayanami.” He knelt and added, “Trois?”

That’s when he saw something he’d never expected to see.

Her blank expression had shattered. She was bawling.