LNCrawler

Chapter 6: Resistance

Neon Genesis Evangelion ANIMA — LNCrawler · All chapters

Chapter 6:
Resistance
A DEPTLY USING the gravitational fields produced by its wings, Euro-II barely touched the soft soil as it approached, its cross-shaped spear held aloft. Meanwhile, Super Eva was crawling in the earth, caked in mud, all attempts to get back on its feet continuously and utterly thwarted. It could do nothing but dodge the oncoming blows.
Crack!
Another piece of Super Eva’s armor was torn away.
The boundary of Shinji’s A.T. Field was weakening, his mental state pushed to the breaking point. Every time he’d nearly gotten to his feet, he’d come crashing back down again. It was torture. The mental image of being stuck—writhing on the ground, never to escape—mentally and emotionally exhausted him, snatching away all positive thoughts.
Shinji rolled around, attempting to sweep away the circling vehicles and escape their ring, but his arms couldn’t reach far enough. He would remain an eternal prisoner.
Even if Super Eva had come equipped with a pallet rifle, or another similar weapon, hitting moving targets at such close range would have been difficult. Something that would have been simple for even a low-grade automated-turret could still be hard for an Eva.
Even with their preposterous power and fast reaction times, Evangelions were overly reliant on the mind of a single human. Unlike automated systems, they couldn’t freely redistribute their pilots’ attention as needed. And right now, Euro-II was commanding the vast majority of Shinji’s attention.
Every weapon designed to be used by the Evangelions was entirely focused on overwhelming penetration strength. They weren’t the kind of weapons made for suppressing smaller, spread-out enemies. This was the natural result of years spent battling enemies like the Angels, who were staggeringly massive and possessed incredibly resilient shields.
“I can’t even touch the damn army!” Shinji fumed.
He tried to stand, but that invisible hand yanked him back down. What Shinji needed now, more than anything, was someone else’s eyes. He was stuck with only what he could see directly in front of him, and without the perspective of an outside observer, he would never realize that the circling vehicles were using quantum wave mirrors to reflect the artificial gravitational fields generated by Euro-II’s Allegorica wings, throwing Super Eva’s legs just the slightest bit off-balance every time he tried to stand up. Shinji—Super Eva—was empty-handed, having already tossed his prog knives in an attempt to break open the ring, an attempt that had been guaranteed to fail. The weapons had disappeared into the dirt cloud with no effect. Meanwhile, Shinji had nearly exhausted his ability to evade Euro-II’s spear thrusts. His time was running out.
Just then, a musical electronic tone chimed, and the communications window appeared on Shinji’s display. A familiar voice floated through the LCL.
<< Shinji! >>
After a pause, Shinji responded, “Toji?”
<< You need to wake that dazed Hikari! >>
The signal was coming in over short-range laser, and without any encryption. The source was identified as the United Nations Armed Forces Religious Riot Control, Third Brigade. The transmission protocol had been set up when the UN was still their ally—an ally Shinji had never expected to face as an enemy. But here they were.
Shinji tried to ask, “Why are you talking to me through their network?” but Toji spoke over him.
<< Try it like you’re breakdancing, or a gymnast on a pommel horse. All you gotta do is get up. Doesn’t matter how. Before they flip you over again, shift your balance onto a different point. Then reach out and— >>
The transmission suddenly cut off. The signal disappeared, and the communications window closed.
Aoba’s plan went exactly as the technician had expected, including—unfortunately—his surmise that the link would be quickly severed once they revealed they’d gained access to the prime minister’s communication link. Toji had hardly been able to provide much guidance at all.
Shinji looked dumbfounded, like a pigeon hit by a peashooter. But in that moment, he saw what he had to do.
“That’s right…” he said. “I need to wake her up.”
With a goal at last, Super Eva emerged from its torpor and sprang into action.
The Nerv Japan command center once again lost its video feed of the battle, and the display went completely dark except for the words “NO SIGNAL.”
“Ah, damn it!” Toji exclaimed. Aoba and Hyuga turned to him simultaneously.
“Deputy Commander,” Aoba scolded, “I told you the link would get shut down immediately!”
“Come on, Deputy Commander!” Hyuga said. “You were supposed to tell him about the enemy’s gravity system!”
Sheepishly, Toji said, “S-sorry.”
What Shinji hadn’t been told was that, according to Maya’s observations, though the European military vehicles circled Super Eva in a seemingly disorganized manner, a specific five vehicles, equipped with quantum wave mirrors on gimbals and vibration-dampening mounts, maintained a precise formation around Shinji.
From its new home in the dirt, Super Eva ceased its attempts to stand.
“Are you giving up?” Hikari asked, as the Euro-II thrust its spear once more.
Super Eva’s upper body remained still, but then something swept swiftly across the ground from behind Super Eva’s back, like a hand on a clockface. Too late, Hikari realized it was the Eva’s leg, gliding in the opposite direction of the revolving convoy and catching the drivers by surprise with a longer-than-expected reach. Super Eva’s foot smashed into a truck and sent it tumbling from the circle.
“ Assistant Class Representative Horaki!” Shinji shouted, finally using her correct title.
Continuing its sweep, Super Eva’s leg struck the Euro-II’s spear mid-thrust. The weapon flew from the white giant’s grasp. Super Eva snatched the spear out of the air and used it to stand.
<< Shinji? >> Hikari asked, sounding like she’d just been awakened from a deep slumber.
Shinji glared furiously at the scales that dirtied the chalk-white Eva-02’s shoulders. “Those things are making you do this!” he shouted.
Shinji didn’t understand how Armaros’ Q.R. Signum scales had become embedded in Euro-II’s shoulders. But in Hikari, he saw Rei Quatre, whom the scales had tragically turned into a fugitive. Whatever was happening, his classmate’s actions clearly weren’t born of a sound mind.
Which leaves me only one course of action!
Before Euro-II could leap backward and break away, Super Eva thrust the stolen spear deep into its right shoulder. Using its free hand, Super Eva grabbed Euro-II’s arm and ripped the limb off, Q.R. Signum and all.
This savage bit of field surgery risked sending Hikari into shock, but the feedback might also help awaken her hazy consciousness.
Still, Shinji sensed something from her thoughts that he hadn’t expected. If he’d been old enough to remember vinyl records, he might have compared the sensation to a needle skipping across the grooves, replaying the same section over and over again. Hikari’s mind was stuck in an endless loop of terror as she watched… something turning into a pillar of salt.
“What,” Shinji gasped, “is that?”
Having lost the Q.R. Signum, Euro-II’s body began to disintegrate from the right shoulder, but then the scales on the other shoulder began to glow. The destruction slowed and then reversed.
“Are the scales maintaining the Eva’s shape, like the Angel Carriers?”
If so, what would that mean? The Carriers were made from the corpses of the mass-production Evangelions. Does this Eva, like them, have no core?
Without flinching, the white Eva-02 reached down with its remaining arm, drew the sword from the sheath at its waist, and began swinging.
“Don’t you feel pain?! What was that vision you showed me?”
Shinji didn’t know that Hikari’s sister had been exposed to the Lance of Longinus’s light in Europe and had been turned into a crumbling pillar of salt. But the strange vision seemed like a shroud over Hikari’s consciousness.
Quatre made direct contact with the Q.R. Signum and was mentally contaminated. But this feels like something is between Horaki-san and the Signum—something like the dummy plug system?
As Shinji deflected Euro-II’s sword strike, he realized the remaining armored vehicles were moving into a new formation.
“They’re trying to trip me again!”
But they didn’t. Instead, a rumbling, footstep-like sound emanated from the convoy.
THRUM!
Shinji gasped in surprise. “That sound!”
They were mimicking Super Eva’s heartbeat.
By inducing a resonance in the artificial gravity generated by Euro-II’s Allegorica wings, the armored vehicles were imitating Super Eva’s heartbeat—the echoing background cadence of space-time.
THRUM!
“What the hell are you trying to do?” Shinji demanded.
When the false heartbeat grew louder than Super Eva’s actual pulse, Euro-II’s severed arm—still in Super Eva’s grasp—began to reach for its former owner.
Shinji yelped and reflexively released the arm.
In all the previous battles against the Angel Carriers, the Q.R. Signum scales had abruptly disintegrated as soon as they were damaged or removed from their host body. Shinji had expected the same would happen today.
But the pseudo-heartbeat was calling the Q.R. Signum back to its host body. The scales were drawn to Super Eva’s heartbeat—a fact Shinji’s opponents were now exploiting.
As if possessing free will, the severed arm pushed off the ground with its palm and leaped into the air. Euro-II caught it and placed it against the shoulder from which it had been torn.
“I get it,” Shinji said. “You found a way to summon an Angel Carrier to an Eva without a core.”
Once the Q.R. Signum had re-fused with its host body, the artificial parts began to come back to life. In moments, the arm was as good as new. Shinji wondered if this same process was how the engineers of Nerv Germany had built Euro-II in the first place.
The human imagination knew no bounds. Humanity could be faced with a task that seemed utterly impossible, but when any new phenomenon appeared—no matter what threat it might pose—people would use it to create a way forward.
Shinji shuddered.
THRUM!
By swallowing this poison, couldn’t a person become poison themselves? Couldn’t this bring about some new, unforeseen calamity?
Amid the reverberations of the false heartbeat, Super Eva’s own heart began to beat louder, responding to Shinji’s agitation. A dreadful chill ran down Shinji’s spine.
He felt all the hairs on his body stand on end. Super Eva reacted instantly, springing off from the ground in a giant backward leap as countless white arms began sprouting from the soil.
Except there wasn’t soil there anymore, just a giant black hole from which the white arms reached out, bending this way and that. They were all Angel Carrier arms. Mysterious scenery came into view within the empty space that framed the arms. Are those…ruins? For a brief moment, Shinji caught a glimpse of an intricate glass structure, but then two quantum-wave mirror trucks fell into the void, and it vanished.
Well…that was unexpected.
Euro-II had taken to the sky and was now retreating. Had Hikari seen what he’d seen ?