Chapter 46: Transferred Power

Chapter 46:
Transferred Power

 

WOLFPACK’S TRANSFORMATION had drawn Shinji’s attention away from Zeruel. Despite the distraction, he continued to block the sharp, incoming ribbons with his swords. But then, the thin, flat ribbon, as straight as a steel plate, did something different. It bent like paper.

Shinji barely had time to think, Oh, crap! before the ribbon wrapped itself around his right hand.

The ribbon yanked back toward the carrier and dragged the 120-meter-tall, 4000-ton-heavy Super Eva like a rag doll into the smoke.

Pulling back as hard as he could, Shinji brought his right arm to his chest and chipped away at the ribbon with the sword in his left hand.

After three whacks, the ribbon finally broke, but by that time, he’d already been carried directly in front of the Zeruel carrier. The oversized giant’s white arms spread open and filled Shinji’s view. It grabbed him by the head with one hand.

Yeah, but I’m inside your field!

Without a moment’s hesitation, Shinji slashed the carrier’s arm with his right-hand sword, Kesara.

But the carrier’s armor held firm. The sword broke instead.

The SRM-61a Field Penetrator—a.k.a. Kesara—was unstoppable when the blade had been attuned to an enemy’s field, but the repeated reforgings had weakened its structure and dramatically shortened its life span.

Shinji watched the fragmented sword tumble away.

He was standing beside the plug seat, bending over to hold the control sticks. Trois leaned forward against his back.

She lowered her head and whispered.

<<Human. It is the duty of humanity to rule the wild animals of the earth. Those who do not adhere to that which has been ordained…who abandon the command…will return to the beast.>>

Was it the voice again? Another message from Armaros?

<<Trois?>> Shinji asked.

“I’m fine,” she said after a moment.

The Angel Carrier’s fingers covered Super Eva’s eyes, but cameras elsewhere on his body reconstructed his vision. He struck at the carrier’s wrist with his left-hand sword, Basara, but the carrier’s shield was up, and the blade couldn’t cut through. As the carrier’s hand squeezed Super Eva’s head, his armor let out a ghastly creak, and sharp pains shot through his skull.

His remaining Field Penetrator, SRM-61b—a.k.a. Basara—had scanned the Zeruel carrier’s field data attack, but Shinji’s head would surely pop by the time the sword could be reforged.

<<Urk… Faraway me—my heart—if this keeps up, you’re going to lose the body you want!>>

Power coursed into Super Eva’s body. When two ribbons shot out from Zeruel’s cocoon, Shinji blocked them with the sword in his left hand and the prog knife he’d grabbed with his right. Sparks cascaded as the blades turned the ribbons off course. One ribbon flicked upward, out of control, and severed the carrier’s right hand at the wrist.

The carrier dropped Super Eva and then lurched forward with its left hand to try to seize him again. The white giant’s right shoulder pulled back, but it was suddenly struck by a beam of light.

<<What?>> Shinji said.

The Q.R. Signum instantly shattered, its fragments melting into bloodlike droplets. The carrier had already been turning to grab Super Eva, but the explosion pushed its body into a complete spin, and the oversized giant dropped from the sky.

 

As Wolfpack leaped from island to island across the sea of lava, the ferocious four-legged Eva beast instinctively tapped into the ring of light around its neck and fired Ramiel’s particle cannon.

The induced electric current left a lingering trail of blueish-white paw prints behind the beast as it ran. The same phenomenon hadn’t occurred with the original Ramiel, or its Angel Carrier, because they fired the cannon from higher off the ground.

Shinji would have expected the particle cannon to be a one-and-done affair. Mari had inherited the particle accelerator created by the Q.R. Signum’s field, but she didn’t possess the Angel’s original particle-generating organ. And yet, after she fired the cannon, the ring maintained a dim light, which gradually increased in intensity as it readied the next shot.

The trail of lightning tracks made the beast seem even more like something straight out of a myth. But in contrast to the beast’s fearsome image, the little girl who piloted it spoke calmly.

<<I wouldn’t like it if you died before we got out of here.>>

<<I don’t plan on it,>> Shinji said.

He might have come up with a better reply, but he’d felt something from Mari that had shaken him. He sensed that she was in intense pain.

A pilot and her Eva shared a deep connection. Certainly, such a radical change in an Eva would take a toll on the pilot. But Mari was acting calm—and Shinji saw that as cause for concern. He thought about animals he’d seen in wildlife documentaries—caught by predators, about to be eaten, their lives in terrible peril. They didn’t cry out. They just stared into the distance.