Chapter 44: Red Shift

Chapter 44:
Red Shift

 

Shinji’s voice called out to her. <<Final Model to Unit Two. Asuka, just hang in there! I’m on my way!>>

Asuka had one hand on the control stick to swing the Bizen as the fingers of her left hand played with the loosening zipper on her collar.

“Hikari… She’s looking at something.”

Her right arm lurched wildly, and the Bizen swung diagonally, as if cutting the sky itself.

“I have to go after her now, or I’ll lose her.”

The Torwächters rotated their spindles, but she deflected their projectiles.

“I have to go!”

She pulled the release tab on her neck. The zipper of her specially crafted orichalcum plugsuit came loose in the LCL, immediately slipping down her shoulders as the resin contracted.

“Huff!”

Asuka’s skin burned as the connection between her and the Eva intensified. She remembered the agony she’d felt when the flood of life-form data overwhelmed her, disintegrating her physical body.

And yet, she wasn’t afraid.

Stay with me.

Something was in the Eva-02. Time and time again, that something had lent her its power. It was the force that had allowed her to return when Hikari called out to her.

As the black giant, Hikari had confirmed the existence of this something.

<<Your mother…is within…my Heurtebise…and your Eva…>>

Good enough for me.

The Bizen pierced the ground with a heavy thud. Light broke from her restraint armor, seeping out of the cracks, blowing it all away. Eva-02 leaned against the longsword as its legs failed. The Zeruel Carrier saw its chance and thrust its razor-sharp monolayered ribbon arm toward it.

A wind of red flecks enveloped Eva-02.

Life-form particles from the Ark.

Zeruel’s arm was pulled into the whirlwind, and the centrifugal force would have torn it off had it not been so resilient. As it was, the larval Zeruel was yanked out of the Carrier’s cocoon with great force. The umbilical that connected the two creatures was torn to shreds, and the larval Angel let out what sounded like a shriek of pain. It fired its zero-time light attack in retaliation before being sucked into the red wind. Emptied of its larval Angel, the Carrier lost its balance and fell backward.

Zeruel’s two blade arms sprang out of the whirlwind, forming a cross. They slashed at the Carrier, shattering the Q.R. Signums on its shoulders and slicing its body to bits. Blood spurted out, but it was immediately caught up by the wind and blown into the sky.

The two Torwächters moved in to face this new threat, bringing their spindles down on it. The red wind reached out its Zeruel arms again to deflect them. Sparks crackled across the sky as the projectiles slid off of the blades. Zeruel’s zero-time light attack glowed upon the waiting Torwächters, and the black giants were pushed back by the explosion mere moments later.

<<A…su…ka…>>

In the distance, the mountainous Wolfpack howled to urge Asuka on. It was the best Mari could do, given the progress of her assimilation. The sound was immediately picked up by the crimson particles.

The Asuka/Eva synthesis had appeared on the battlefield. The red wind enveloped her restraint armor, and she rammed the staggered Torwächter with her head.

Crimson A1. The form Eva-02 took as a protective measure against the encroaching life-form data of the Ark to keep Asuka’s person intact. She’d willed it back into existence.

She stepped on the Torwächter and jumped away.

<<That’s pathetic, Suzuhara. I thought you were supposed to…protect…Hikari…>>

Asuka retained her personality despite being mixed together with countless organisms. The surface of her body highlighted her feminine features. Her flowing hair was now the Allegoric wing unit. The graviton floaters activated.

The Asuka/Eva synthesis reached her hand out to Armaros, who was being pulled up by the vertical roots. The black giant was looking northwest, over the horizontal layers of the primary roots of the World Tree.

She began sinking into the roots, as if caught up by a current.

<<Hikari!>>

Asuka went after her. But she needed Q.R. Signums to open a portal. It made her long to be a Torwächter again. Her memories of that time had been hazy, but they’d become vivid again once she synthesized with her Eva.

She sank her slender body into the tunnel network and disappeared from the skies above Yomotsu Hirasaka Island.