Chapter 28: Wrath of the Beast

Neon Genesis Evangelion ANIMA — LNCrawler · All chapters

Chapter 28:
Wrath of the Beast

THE AMALGAMATED GIANT BEAST, upon whose forehead Eva-02 lay buried, dodged Armaros’ opening salvo. The shot hit the hill behind it, and the earth rumbled from the impact. But the beast’s size proved to be a disadvantage as the next antiproton blast hit it a few seconds later. Antimatter reactions wracked its mountain-like body, but the beast charged at the black giant and sank its vengeful fangs into his shoulder.

Another gunshot blared.

“The trumpet is sounded,” the Kaji-vessel whispered as he saw the image on the screen.

Asuka struggled to get Toji out of his harness.

“Urgh… Humans are supposed to rule…over the beasts of the earth…”

“Yeah, yeah, we get it. Hang in there, now. We’re just getting started.”

“I know… Dammit! It’s the same thing that happened with the U.S. Eva. Why is he so hostile toward non-human creatures?” Toji forced himself up through his convulsions. “Answer me, Hikari.”

<<Those without will are doomed to obey.>>

The giant beast stared in disbelief at the hole in its chest. It looked like it was crumbling.

“Birds?!”

But in fact, it had dissolved into a flock of birds. Strangely, Eva-02 had disappeared along with it. Was it, too, transformed?

Kaji spoke with Seele’s knowledge. “They are only animals in the end, nothing but concentrated matter. Even if they could become the soil of the Human Instrumentality Project, they cannot climb the steps and be its bearers.”

Misato stood silent next to him, not sure what to make of his statement.

The Kaji-vessel concluded, “But it would be a different story if they got their hands on a core.”

As the flock flew away. Asuka saw a small white figure run into the forest, as if giving chase.

“Wait…Mari?!”

Asuka put her hands on the throttle of the idling Platypus-2. She clicked her tongue, “Ugh! I would’ve learned how to fly this thing if I knew this would happen!” She started rifling through the equipment to see if there was anything she could use.

“Mari… Mari what…?” Toji said, looking at her.

Asuka slapped his leg. “You pick now, of all times, to be useless?!”

She opened the cockpit.

<<Ikari-kun…>>

Shinji could hear it now. “Vice Rep…”

Hikari’s voice.

Final Model confronted the Armaros as birds flew off on either side of him.

“Horaki-san… Can you hear me?”

There was a time when he’d called her “Class Rep” and “Vice Rep,” and even “Hikari-chan.” But “Horaki-san” was how he’d referred to her ever since they’d entered high school. The pitch-black positron rifle gleamed in her hand like a brass instrument. He hoped against hope that she wouldn’t point it at him, but that was out of the question. Shinji had rebelled by breaking the lens in the sky, and now Armaros had come to dispose of him.

It’s not impossible. If it were, I wouldn’t have bothered coming here.

<>

“How about you get out of that thing, and we can all go back to Tokyo-3 together?”

<>

“Why—”

But the black giant pointed her gun at him before he could finish.

“Dammit!”

The positron rifle flashed. He managed to erect an A.T. Field, Bizen still in hand, to repel it. But the knockback proved too great, and Final Model tumbled from the impact. Armaros closed the distance within those few steps. She swung the stock of her glowing rifle right past Bizen and into Final Model’s throat.

WHACK!

It knocked all 3,500 tons of him into the air.

“Gah!”

The force felt like it would stop his breathing.

Maybe I don’t even need to breathe, since I only exist in an Eva’s dream.

But the pain rattled his mind.

No! If I don’t fight her, I’m going to lose.

“Not that I wanna win, either!”

The body of the Euro Eva was close to two times its original size now. Perhaps this happened to everything possessed by Armaros.

Final model crashed into an idyllic forest. Shinji felt the incoming shot before he could see it. He spread his wings of light just enough to nudge him away from the positron rifle’s gamma-ray burst.

Toji realized that Asuka had left him alone after they’d landed. He roused himself, opening the throttle.

<<Stop it, Hikari!>>

The Platypus-2 flew again with a roar of its graviton floaters.

<>

Armaros’ rifle had gained a bayonet, and it was now carving a circle into the ground. Chunks of earth flew all around, several of them hitting the jet’s shields.

<<You didn’t intend to!>>

<<But I carried it out with these hands!>>

Now linked to Armaros, Toji needed no words to understand the reality of Hikari’s situation.

<>

“Urgh!”

<<Help me, Toji!>>

The sight was beyond description. Human lives ended as quickly as their bodies scattered. A major city was leveled in an instant. He didn’t know how to save her after being confronted with such a vision. For an instant, the stage went still.

And then…

THRUM!

Final Model’s heart, Shinji’s heart, pulsed from deep within the mountain ridge.

<> Hikari’s voice was monotone.

“Why?! That’s Shinji’s heart!”

<<You’re getting too close, Toji!>> Shinji shouted from the shadow of the rock.

He’s trying to distract me by making me focus on Horaki!

<<With time…humanity will have no need for words or thoughts as a basis for their actions. They shall have something purer.>>

“What are you talking about?!”

No one knew where Armaros started and Hikari ended. The words belonged to Hikari, and with her superior vocabulary, she could convey things the Ayanamis couldn’t.

<<In a word, it’s the pulse. The rhythm that misleads life.>>

Toji blocked Armaros’ path. The black giant suddenly crumbled, melting into the ground. Countless Q.R. Signums slipped right under the Platypus-2.

“No! She’s going your way, Shinji!”

Shinji saw the first hints of Q.R. Signum form out of the rock he was hiding behind and backed away. But it was too late. An arm protruded from the pool of black scales, caught him, and knocked him to the ground.

The rest of Armaros’ body emerged from the rocks, which had acted as her shield. She shoved the bayonet of the positron toward his heart, where the Center Trigonus was located.

<<That is why I must erase your pulse!>>

Shinji grabbed the barrel, redirecting the fatal shot. The bullet exploded into the ground behind Final Model, and he took advantage of the blast to tackle Armaros.

Unfortunately, the black giant was already sinking back into the rock wall. Hikari’s voice echoed over the broken valley.

<<Humanity will continue to hope as long as that thing exists! It will continue to connect the rhythm of life! We cannot proceed to the new stage!>>

The sound reverberated through the mountain.

“Why can’t I detect the effect?!”

The barrel of the rifle caught Shinji off guard as it swept his feet out from under him.

<<We cannot proceed if the Human Instrumentality Project is not brought to completion, no matter how many times we repeat this world!>>

Shinji activated his wings in panic. Hikari would know to go after his feet. He remembered the struggle against this strategy of hers back in Hokkaido. He’d hoped to cross the Armaros bridge when she got here, but that ship had long since sailed.

“That’s enough!”

Toji couldn’t argue with Hikari when her thoughts were being transmitted directly into his brain. He was talking to her now, not through telepathy but through the Novaya Zemlya communications protocol.

“Let’s talk about this, Hikari!”

<<Why?>>

He heard Hikari’s voice as she fired at Eva-01 Final Model in the sky.

“Why?”

<>

Toji felt unsettled, as if a giant eye was looking at him. The mind link would’ve made him lose consciousness again had he not been prepared for it. He gasped, realizing that his plane was going down. The balance needle of its graviton floaters screeched as if under heavy stress.

I’m under attack? No!

<<Toji!>> Shinji sent him an image of the Platypus-2 through Final Model’s eyes. <<Abandon ship! Eject now!>>

“What?!”

A band of polished black light stretched up from the ground to engulf the Platypus-2. Now it seemed as if the jet was sprouting arms of its own. Arms that looked like they belonged to a hollow suit of armor.

Shinji screamed. <<That’s a Torwächter arm! You’re being turned into one of her eternal servants!>>

The positron cannon hanging from the Platypus-2 switched to its photon excitation mode and turned. A blinding beam of light fired at the arm, amputating the grotesque growth. The arm fell to the ground with a loud thud, and Toji’s jet shot up like a bullet.

What the hell was that?!

The whole thing felt like an illusion, but the wing cameras showed the stump of an arm still squirming.

<<Come with me, Toji.>> Shinji and the others were probably watching and wondering how another Torwächter had come into existence.

“Now, hang on…” He suddenly felt terrified of Hikari.

<> Which was a poetic way of saying she’d kill him.

Still, Toji couldn’t agree. The chain of supernatural phenomena was supposed to break him, but it only ended up motivating him. He knew that Hikari wasn’t the one talking right now. He took the Platypus-2 and charged.

<<Get away from there, Toji! She’s baiting you!>>

He ignored Shinji’s pleas.

Toji’s jet avoided the tip of Armaros’ positron bayonet with a sudden drop of altitude brought on by a deliberate deactivation of the VTOL’s floaters. He didn’t think Hikari was responsible for all the horrors Armaros had committed.

Armaros pointed her gun at the Platypus-2 and fired. The repulsor field generated by the N2 reactor deflected the shot, but the fuselage rolled violently from the explosion. Toji’s prosthetic leg smacked against his chin, and he immediately felt woozy.

Crap…

His surroundings brightened as he felt himself fading away. Final Model had deployed his wings of light and dashed in between the black giant and the plane before Armaros could get another shot in. A dust cloud exploded behind the Eva as the shock wave finally caught up to him.

“You need to cut your neural feedback link when you get cut like that. You might end up crippled otherwise!”

Shinji was shouting. Bizen’s slanted blade was still sheathed in the field. He brandished his pommel at Armaros.

“Sorry, Vice Rep! I’m carving the entry unit out of that body and taking you home!”