Chapter 42: Stand-in Executioner

Chapter 42:
Stand-in Executioner

 

SHINJI DIDN’T KNOW if the compelling force came from Armaros or from the Victor who held his heart.

Deliver the judgment.

Though he didn’t want to, Shinji responded automatically to the command, and Super Eva slashed his swords at the U.S. Eva.

The beast jumped sideways, dodging the strike. At the same time, Shinji had also forced the blades off target, purposefully missing. This wild, unnatural motion threw Super Eva off-balance, and he tumbled to the smoldering ground.

The two Evas repeated this dance, again and again.

Dodging each attack, the beast circled the inside of the tower. Super Eva’s misses weren’t due to Shinji alone. The U.S. Eva really was good at evading the swords.

But sometimes Shinji couldn’t turn the blades away, and sometimes the girl wasn’t quick enough. Whenever both happened at once, blasts of air struck Super Eva’s body, blunting his attack.

Does the girl in the American Eva know how to use her field like that? But you have to concentrate on the projection… I didn’t think it was possible to send out more than one at once.

Shinji felt his body groan. This awkward ballet was wearing him down even faster than full-on combat.

Out of breath, Shinji forced the relentless swords to stay in place. He stared at the U.S. Eva through the virtual display. The beast—or beast pack, it seemed—stared back at him, its eyes gleaming. As the U.S. Eva dug its claws into the ground, Shinji thought he felt the gaze of countless eyes on him.

<<Are you going to kill me?>> the little girl asked. At least, she sounded like a little girl. But her voice was completely calm, as if she viewed her own death as something abstract.

His shoulders rising and falling with each heavy breath, Shinji found himself wondering about this girl at the core of the pack consciousness. Just who is she?

<<I’m Mari.>>

She answered as if she’d heard his thoughts, and without any concern about the fact that he was attacking her.

“We’re Shinji and Trois. I’m sorry about this, Mari.” Lamely, he added, “Hang in there.”

Despite Shinji’s words, Super Eva lowered his center of gravity and readied his twin swords for the next attack.

“I can’t exactly explain why I think this,” Shinji remarked, “but I get the feeling you’re about the same age as Six.”

<<Six? If you know Ayanami Rei Six, then could you tell her that I have Momo?>>

“Momo?”

Did Six make a new friend? A lot must have happened in Hakone while I’ve been gone.

When he thought about how the world had gone on without him, he grew jealous for everything he’d missed. And jealousy made him feel small. Even more so when he compared himself to the girl, who seemed confident that they were going to escape these walls.

She isn’t shaken in the least. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve swung at her, and she’s completely unruffled.

He realized why. She has a goal.

Shinji let out a deep sigh and steadied his breath. If he didn’t want to be controlled like this, he had only one option.

“Trois, direct power to the wings.”

Launching another attack, Super Eva dashed toward the U.S. Eva. Shinji focused his A.T. Field into the Vertex wings’ field deflection elements, and they began to roar.

“More!” Shinji shouted.

The field continued to converge on the wings, until their roar turned harsh and discordant. At that moment, Shinji pushed off from the ground and flew over the beast. I’m not going to be your stand-in executioner any longer!

Each oversized Angel Carrier guarded one side of the enclosed space, while interference patterns rippled across the barrier behind them. Shinji picked one carrier and flew straight toward it, head-on, the white giant looming nearly twice as tall as Super Eva.

“Do you have a plan?” Trois asked, fearfully.

“Not really.” Shinji didn’t look back. This answer would have left anyone at a loss for words, let alone the taciturn Trois.

“What?!” she managed to gasp.

“As long as I stay on the defensive, I’ll keep being controlled. I have to take an action before one is taken for me. Either way, it comes down to fighting them.”

No matter how big the enemies might have been, defeating them was the only way out. There was no retreat.

The white colossus met their first attack by holding out its hand as if to say, “Stop.” It fired a power shield and batted away Super Eva’s swords, sending him careening down, head over heels.

They’re not just huge, they’re strong, too!

Shinji grunted in pain. Ayanami was sitting in the plug seat, while he stood beside it, holding the control sticks. He tasted blood. He must have bitten his lip.

Still in an uncontrolled backward somersault, Super Eva put his right-hand sword, Kesara, into his left shoulder pylon. As soon as he landed, the Angel inside the carrier’s cocoon fired two beams of light, which he deflected with the field over his left-hand sword, Basara. One ricocheting beam blasted away an abandoned howitzer. The other struck the tower’s wall, creating ripples in the membrane, but no lasting damage.

Fighting the pain of the impact, Shinji spared a glance to the secondary display. Kesara had scanned its opponent’s field, and the pylon was baking in the new configuration.

Without pausing, Super Eva leaped forward and switched Basara to a two-handed grip. Advancing upon the colossal Angel Carrier was a risky move, but Shinji wagered that, up close, the carrier might not be able to use its size to full advantage.

The idea wasn’t terrible, until two long, slender arms reached down from the carrier’s cocoon. One hand opened and fired a long, glowing rod, in an attempt to pin Super Eva down.

“Sachiel again!”

After defeat, Angels could be reconstructed from the Ark’s data to emerge again from another cocoon. Even when we win a battle, we still lose. The thought made Shinji feel weary.

The rod landed between Super Eva’s legs, failing to impale him. But his legs got tangled up, and he fell over. Shinji winced, expecting to be impaled by a second rod from the Angel’s other hand.

He heard a roar and opened his eyes to see the U.S. Eva leaping overhead. Carrying its momentum forward, the beast sank its fangs into Sachiel’s arm and wrenched the Angel’s elbow joint backward, as if trying to crack open a crab leg. With a loud, sickening crunch, the larval Angel’s arm snapped. The Eva let go, swinging away with the same speed it had charged.

“Th-thank—whoa!” Thank you, Shinji had been about to say, when a second oversized Angel Carrier came flying in.

The toothy mouth of a giant deep-sea fish emerged from the carrier’s cocoon, dripping magma-like beads of flame. Where the beads landed, the ground melted into lava. Anything there burned up and sank into the molten rock.

“And Sandalphon.” Shinji sighed.

Super Eva got back to his feet and followed after the U.S. Eva just to put some temporary distance between himself and the carriers.

Sandalphon’s carrier continued to fly around, blanketing the ground in lava.

Trois pulled open the deployment map. “That’s the carrier from the south wall. The ones on the north and east haven’t moved. That girl must have attacked the south one, like you did.”

“And my sword?”

“It’ll be reconfigured in another…110 seconds.”

Trois could no longer hide her pain. Nearly all the power she’d drawn from the Q.R. Signum was being sucked up by Kesara in the left shoulder pylon. Its thirst was limitless.

Trois had to delve deeply into the Q.R. Signum, and Armaros’ shadow soaked more deeply into her. As Kesara was reforged, Shinji felt a throbbing, burning pain, as if someone were pressing a hot iron against his shoulder.

 

A bulge moved down Sachiel’s broken arm as internal tissues pushed their way to the injury. When they retreated, the joint had been put back into its proper place, good as new. The oversized carrier turned and began firing flashes of light at the Eva beast.

Running on four legs, the beast weaved left and right, skillfully evading the Angel’s rays. One shot was on course to strike the Eva, but something invisible crashed against the light ray, deflecting it.

Shinji watched the air distort as unseen shapes seemed to pass over the U.S. Eva.

“Are they autonomous?” Shinji asked. “Something with free will? What…”

Mari responded with a question of her own. <<You’re a man and an Eva, but in the end, you’re still only one person. Don’t you get lonely being by yourself?>>

There must have been more than twenty of the distortions. They moved in unison, spaced apart. Shinji watched them encircling her.

“They’re like a pack of wolves,” he remarked, not knowing the U.S. Eva’s code name.

The strange-looking Eva and its pilot had both undergone genetic modifications to incorporate the DNA of various animals. But that didn’t mean Nerv U.S. had known the Eva would end up like this. The fusion of beast and Eva/pilot had been designed to inhibit their perceptions of individuality, so that Eva-compatible pilots could easily be sourced.

The manifestation of the wind animals, which now raced across the ground around the Eva, was almost surely a result of the way energy flowed within this enclosed space.

Shinji tried to rationalize what he saw as remote projections of the girl’s A.T. Field, which she’d formed into a pack of beasts. He found it hard to believe that each and every one of them had its own consciousness.

As Shinji followed after the curious Eva and its pack, Mari spoke again. <<What about that Torwächter? It called itself Shinji, too.>>

“What?”

The AI chimed. On the secondary display, the sword’s countdown had reached zero, and a new message appeared: REFORGING COMPLETE. INITIATE COOLDOWN.

Shinji returned Basara to his left hand. “Let’s do this!”

The shoulder pylon’s chamber opened, offering the red-hot blade.

Shinji readied himself, remembering what happened last time.

When he went to grasp the sword, Super Eva drew the weapon before he even realized what was happening.

My perceptions are lagging again!

Rei Trois was shaking. She covered her mouth to keep from crying out.

The black hand reached out from the Q.R. Signum and held the sword.

What is that thing?

Hot wind whipped around the forty-meter-long sword. Super Eva turned the weapon upside down and thrust it into the frozen ground.

The tremendous reservoir of heat poured into the earth, and the underground moisture vaporized and swelled. The ground erupted around the kneeling Super Eva, veiling the giant in steam. Sachiel fired several rays of light into this white curtain, scattering the base of the steam column, but Super Eva was no longer there. He’d flown upward with the rising steam and was now bearing down on the carrier, his sword at the ready.

Super Eva brought the blade down with all his might.

Kesara pierced the carrier’s shield, but not all the way through. Its tip was suspended in air, the shield dramatically stronger than before the carrier had grown supersized.

“Damn you!” Shinji screamed.

All of Super Eva’s heavily armored weight was behind the blade. Shinji turned his Vertex wings, putting their full thrust behind him. Sparks flying between the fields, he forced the sword the rest of the way through the carrier’s shield and slashed sideways. Just barely, the blade reached one Q.R. Signum, destroying it.

But when two sharp rods pierced Super Eva’s stomach and right thigh, Shinji realized he’d overcommitted to the attack.

While he’d been distracted, Sachiel had extended its arms out of its cocoon, opened its pile-driver palms, and driven the rods into Super Eva.

Super Eva had not only been stationary but had also partially routed his A.T. Field’s power into his wings’ propulsion, weakening the field. The Angel had used this opportunity.

But the carrier also had stopped moving, its attention on Super Eva.

Mari was ready. “Eliminator Torus, engage!”

Three of Wolfpack’s back-mounted cannons had already been spent, but the fourth black cylinder began to spin. The super-directional N2 explosive charge let out a blinding flash of light along its rotational axis, then burst in the hollow chamber. The charge imploded, spitting out the secondary N2 reaction at such a high speed that the projectile appeared like a solid beam to the naked eye.

The secondary N2 charge lost most of its initial velocity as it penetrated the carrier’s thick shield, but it made it through. The charge exploded, shattering the Q.R. Signum and burning everything behind the shield—the Angel Carrier, Sachiel, and all.

The carrier was dead. Its shield instantly dissipated, and the explosion’s leftover energy spilled outward. The blast threw Super Eva backward. His head visor slammed shut, protecting his eyes from the extreme heat, while his restraint armor burned. Before his visor closed, Shinji saw something that surprised him—not even the explosion had been enough to fully destroy the carrier’s torso.

Super Eva hit the ground as if in slow motion, its mass trembling the earth as it bounced and rolled to a stop.

Shinji groaned in pain. The entry plug—and Super Eva—were sideways. The rod in the Eva’s thigh had been dislodged in the blast, but when the heat subsided enough for his head visor to lift again, Shinji saw the U.S. Eva clamping its fangs onto the rod in Super Eva’s stomach. With a sharp yank of its head, the beast pulled the rod out.

Shinji screamed in pain.

“Ikari!” Trois said.

One downside of merging with his Eva was that the feedback pain came directly into his mind. He couldn’t disconnect.

<<Get up!>> Mari said. <<There’s still three left.>>

“Damn it,” Shinji moaned. “You’re relentless.” He smiled weakly to downplay the pain.

The beast seemed to sense some incoming danger and leaped away. Quickly, Shinji rolled to the side.

The ground jolted up and down. A pressure wave hit him, followed by heat. Something must have struck the place where he’d just been lying.

Shinji directed power into his Vertex wings, and Super Eva scraped across the ground as it rose, awkwardly. As soon as he got his feet under him, he pushed into the air. Now his view was merely askew, rather than completely sideways.

The ground exploded in a straight line, sending up a giant wall of smoke. Hot chunks of rock smashed against Super Eva’s body. The Eva’s senses picked up something that Shinji interpreted as a smell—ozone and polarized electricity.

“There’s a Ramiel carrier, too?! Since when?”

Shinji was getting worried. He didn’t know if his wounded stomach and leg would regenerate fast enough for him to fight back.

There was no way around it. Super Eva and Wolfpack were clearly outmatched.

“I’m sorry,” Trois said, reading his concern. “If I were better at accessing the Q.R. Signum, it wouldn’t be like this.”

“Don’t say that, Trois. The fight isn’t over yet.”

For the first time since they’d been trapped in the tower, Shinji turned to look at her.

“Trois!” he gasped.

Swaying in the LCL, the back half of her pale blue hair had turned pure black, as if engulfed in darkness. Her porcelain skin was a sickly ashen color, and her lips were stained with blood, like she’d bitten them more than once. Her shoulders heaved with each breath.

Armaros’ darkness is devouring her.

Suddenly confronted with what he’d done to Trois, Shinji felt blood rush to his head.

“Ahh! Why?” he shouted in frustration.

“I’m sorry, Ikari-kun, I…”

Trois’ eyes were fixed somewhere distant.

But Shinji’s anger was directed at himself. And he didn’t have to think long to understand why.

He should have known that if he left control of the Q.R. Signum entirely to Trois, she would do everything he asked with no concern for her own well-being.

He wanted to say, Why didn’t you tell me you couldn’t handle any more? But he resisted the impulse.

He touched his hands to Trois’ cheeks.

She’s cold.

Her temperature was much colder than the LCL. After a moment, her eyes focused on Shinji.

“Ikari-kun?”

Super Eva’s flight remained stable, so long as he didn’t get too far from the ground. He glided as low as he could as he evaded Ramiel’s attacks.

Still facing Trois, Shinji patted his shoulders. “Trois, put your arms around my neck. Like a piggyback ride.”

“Why?” Trois said, looking puzzled. “I won’t be able to control the computer.”

“Don’t worry about that right now.”

“But we’re in the middle of a battle. I can’t—”

“It’s fine.”

Trois’ body had chilled, but as she leaned on his back, her weight and her heartbeat confirmed her existence. This was the moment Shinji learned that physical human contact—skin against skin—carried far more meaning than any knowledge he’d learned through the years.

Meanwhile, the battle was going terribly.

He never thought he’d have this much trouble fighting Angel Carriers when he’d defeated so many before. And there were still three left.

But he couldn’t let it end like this.