Chapter 35: Their Own Reasons

Chapter 35:
Their Own Reasons

 

REQUESTS FOR INFORMATION flooded Nerv Japan’s comms channels. It was, after all, their Eva-02—now the Asuka/Eva synthesis—who’d appeared as the second Torwächter, which Nerv Japan had also previously claimed to have destroyed. A careful response was required. Send the wrong message, and Nerv Japan might be deemed an enemy of humanity.

Toji was hard-pressed to respond to the cross-examinations coming from every nation whose military was present on Novaya Zemlya, and the major question fell on Commander Misato in far-off Hakone. That question being—if Asuka/Eva was taking hostile actions, should she be regarded as an enemy and destroyed? Since Misato was responsible for the entire organization, duty required her to answer yes.

With that in mind, she asked Toji, <<Can you lead Asuka outside the battle zone?>>

The question, asked without hesitation, came as a relief. Misato wasn’t simply giving up on Asuka. But that didn’t change the situation.

“Honestly,” he said, “I think it’ll be tough.”

Toji surveyed the battlefield through his head-mounted display.

“Soryu has attached herself to the Victor—I mean, the Torwächter—and I don’t know why.”

En route to Hakone from Kanto Bay, but listening in on the call, Maya offered her guess. <<It might be because of Super Eva’s heart. Ever since she came back, Asuka has had trouble understanding surface-level concepts, like words and physical appearances, but I think she’s perceiving things on a different level.>>

“What do you mean?” Toji asked.

<<She thinks the other Torwächter is Shinji-kun.>>

 

With Heurtebise’s hand, Hikari pulled the camouflage tarp off of the massive cannon lying sideways in the trench and bent to pick it up.

I want to be you.

“What was that?”

She sensed someone else was focusing their attention on Asuka, and she turned around to look.

A gray blur plummeted to the earth. The ground shattered, and chunks of rock flew outward, the shock wave scattering the surrounding dirt and debris. The enormous, falling object rebounded onto the shield of a low-flying Angel Carrier, and both slammed into the ground.

As white feathers scattered and fluttered down, a giant figure—something between a human and a four-legged beast—raked its claws against the carrier’s shield, sending sparks flashing along the surface.

The U.S. Evangelion, Wolfpack, had entered the battle unannounced.

Mari had ignored her commanding officers’ protests and ejected her Eva from the UN giant-transport plane. Right now, the U.S. crew were likely having a very bad day as they hastily exchanged friend-or-foe identification codes with the Euro and Russian forces.

 

A chain-like object flew out from the Angel Carrier’s cocoon and launched toward the U.S. Eva’s head. The chain was shaped like a double helix. It had to be the Angel Armisael. The U.S. Eva lifted its head out of the way of the first attack and stopped the second by biting down on the Angel with fanged jaws, stopping the whiplashing double helix dead in its tracks.

“Eliminator Torus!” Mari shouted. “Engage!”

Four conical structures were mounted on the U.S. Eva’s back. One began to rotate, smoothly accelerating faster and faster.

The four cones contained American-developed super-directional N2 explosive charges. The high-velocity spin caused a more compact N2 reaction along the core and the outer ring, which then produced a secondary reaction in the middle. The result was a hyper-directional N2 explosive, created within the barrel of the cannon that fired it.

<<Mari!>> an officer transmitted from the giant-transport plane. <<Don’t waste those! You only have four. And you’re too close!>>

“Bang,” Mari said.

Once the core of the N2 explosive had been compressed into the density of a micro black hole, the charge launched from the cannon and struck the Angel Carrier’s tough power shield like a rock tossed into a pool of water. Small droplets of the shield splashed outward, and the N2 charge sank straight through. The reaction on the other side was massive. A tremendous explosion completely obliterated the carrier’s right-hand Q.R. Signum, shoulder and all, and even tore a hole in the shield of a second Angel Carrier behind it.

Before the second carrier’s shield could close back up again, another explosion sounded. This one carried the classic, booming roar of cannon fire, though it, too, was terrifically loud. Crouching down, Heurtebise had shot its cannon from the hip. The weapon was too heavy to lift any higher.

The eighty-centimeter caliber shell zoomed forward, absurdly large even after discarding its rifled sabot, streaking past the first Angel Carrier and into the open tear of the second’s shield.

The resulting reaction, however, wasn’t an N2 explosion like the others but rather a phase explosion. The soldiers on the ground looked up with awe at the cross-shaped jets of flame.

Backdropped by the flames and still clutching the Angel Armisael’s double helix in its maw, the U.S. Eva realized, on some level, that even its mighty jaws couldn’t physically snap the Angel in two. So it gave up trying and instead looped the helix around the carrier’s remaining Q.R. Signum scale, yanking the Angel to the ground. Too strong for its own good, the helix crushed the scale. The Eva kept pulling, dragging the Angel out from its cocoon. The larva couldn’t support its life on its own. It crumbled to dust before it ever had the chance to infect the Eva.

The second Angel Carrier was badly damaged, but it still moved. A mobile railgun howitzer roared, landing the killing blow.

The crew of Heurtebise’s control plane cheered.

“Amazing!” Clausewitz’s assistant said. “Those carriers didn’t stand a chance!”

“That was only the first two,” the lieutenant colonel replied. “As for the reckless Eva on four legs—is that the American one? Why do they call it Wolfpack if there’s only one?”

“What if there is more than one?”

 

Heurtebise had immediately supported the U.S. Eva in battle because Hikari’s psyche had spread into the Euro Eva-02. She’d sensed the U.S. pilot’s peculiar focus on Asuka.

Unconsciously, Hikari decoded the U.S. Eva’s control signal and cut into her communications.

“What do you mean, you want to be Asuka?” she asked. “You’re coming on a little intense. You look like if you don’t slow down, you just might eat her.”

<<Oh, really?>> the U.S. pilot replied.

“Your voice… You’re a girl?”

<<Eat her, huh? I hadn’t thought of that. You must be smart.>>

“You’re kidding, right?” Hikari said.

But she felt many pairs of beast-like eyes staring at her. Their consciousnesses overlapped with the girl’s.

They’re…a pack?

Though different in scale and degree, their presence reminded Hikari of that night in North Africa, when Asuka had been lost within a vast sea of organisms.

“You can’t be here,” Hikari was saying, but she hadn’t meant to. She hadn’t even thought it.

What?

Someone else is watching. Someone far bigger than this girl.

Hikari felt as if a tremendous weight was pressing on her back, compelling her to speak the words.

“You must not be here.”

As soon as the words stopped, Hikari blurted out as quickly as she could, “Kommandobrücke! Lieutenant Colonel Clausewitz! I feel a strange presence.”

<<What is it?>> Clausewitz asked.

“I think it’s another message.” She began to breathe heavily. “You who should not be… The human form must not… The form of… To give the form of… To degenerate into the lower forms of life… Your sins are heavy.”

<<Another message from the black giant?! Hold on.>> There was muffled conversation in the background. <<We’re monitoring the message from responsive subjects back home. You don’t need to concern yourself. Leave everything to the dummy plug.>>

In Nerv Japan, the Ayanamis had previously spoken as Armaros’ voice. The dummy plug wasn’t robbing Hikari of her consciousness to the extent the clones had experienced, but Armaros’ powerful thoughts came out through her lips and words just the same.

“Withdraw…stray wolf. The song of Instrumentality cannot be woven into those who have degenerated into beasts. Know this—your soul will bear the scar and will not be reborn into the next world.”

Every remaining Angel Carrier stared at Wolfpack.

 

The soldiers stopped their attacks as they tried to figure out why the Angel Carriers had gone still. But then, in the next moment, the five white giants rushed the U.S. Eva at once.

Mari was unmoved by Armaros’ message. “So what?” she muttered. “Who cares about tomorrow. I see what I want to be. And you’re all that stands between me and her.”

Moving not by calculation, but by instinct, and not heeding the warnings from her control plane, she launched her second Eliminator at the nearest target.

“That’s all that matters.”