LNCrawler

Chapter 14: Asuka’s Battle

Neon Genesis Evangelion ANIMA — LNCrawler · All chapters

Chapter 14:
Asuka’s Battle
S TRANDED ON THE MOON, Asuka and Eva-02 Allegorica faced an Angel Carrier bearing Arael’s larva in its abdomen. Asuka’s first attack had failed, and a system error had forced her to make an emergency landing. Now her entry plug’s LCL circulators were malfunctioning, and her enemy was closing in.
Using the mountains for cover, Asuka attempted to circle behind her adversary, but whichever direction she went, the Arael Carrier immediately turned to face her.
It can see me, she thought, then, No, not see me. But it can feel me. It can sense this heartbeat.
THRUM, THRUM went the beat inside Eva-02’s chest.
Asuka didn’t know why the heartbeat had started during her low-orbit flyover of the moon, nor could she have known. The cause was back on Earth, on the other side of the Longinus Curtain, which blocked all communications, presenting only lies.
She didn’t know that Nerv Germany had built an Evangelion—a twin, of a sort, to Eva-02—that was leading an invasion through Hokkaido and had begun to mimic Super Eva’s heartbeat. Across the vast distance, Asuka’s Eva-02 resonated with its twin, making the same pulsing sound. The gravitational disturbance spread to the floater slits in the Allegorica wings, where the gravitons amplified the signal.
Asuka understood one thing, however—the heartbeat within her Eva’s chest was calling the Carrier to her.
“If that’s how you’re going to be…” Asuka said. Then I’m going to lay a trap.
She retrieved an N 2 bomb from the Allegorica’s cargo compartment. In secret, Shinji and Toji had (illegally) replaced the explosive’s control program so that the fuse could be activated with a single confirmation code, just in case Asuka needed to use the weapon on her own. Asuka checked her Eva’s fire control systems and confirmed that the N 2 was ready for activation.
“At least something has decided to work right,” Asuka said as she buried the bomb in the ground.
If she couldn’t escape the Arael Carrier, then she would guide it where she wanted. She backed away, putting the N 2 explosive directly between her and her pursuer.
Asuka needed to draw the Arael Carrier directly over the center of the explosion. The moon had no atmosphere, and without any air to act as a medium, the fast-moving shock wave of the nuclear blast wouldn’t occur. (Technically, the moon had a trace atmosphere, long considered to be made up of gases emitted from underground. Eva-02 Allegorica’s sensors had confirmed its presence. But the air was too thin even for a meteor to ignite upon entry, and certainly not of sufficient density to suit Asuka’s purpose.)
But even though the lack of air would severely limit the bomb’s radius, the temperature at ground zero would be well over one million degrees Celsius. Not even ash would be left behind.
Asuka waved her hands to stir up the LCL, which had gone still when the circulators broke down.
Asuka was reminded of how little Six had to have a small fan installed in front of her pilot’s seat because her diminished lung capacity and weak respiratory muscles meant she had trouble breathing through the LCL. Asuka used to think that was funny; now she wished she had a fan like that for herself.
Roughly five minutes had passed since the LCL had stopped circulating. Plenty of oxygen remained in the entry plug, but without anything moving the fluid around, Asuka was breathing only the limited volume of LCL near her face. Her breaths were already becoming labored.
“Now, the Arael Carrier should be—”
There . The Angel’s mental attack beam grazed Eva-02 Allegorica standing on the ridgeline, and Asuka hurriedly slid down the slope and back into cover.
“Good boy.”
The Carrier was coming, just as she’d predicted.
Eyes ahead, she felt around with her left hand for a panel on the side of her seat, opened it, took out the emergency pressure regulator, and put it in her mouth. The regulator forced oxygen-rich LCL from a reserve tank directly into her lungs. All she had to do now was wait.
The Carrier held its hand forward, appearing to focus its shield toward her. Could she catch her enemy by surprise?
“Now!”
A sphere of light sprang to life on the moon, as if the sun had landed on its surface.
A two-kilometer-wide crater of lunar soil and rock blasted into the air. The shock wave traveled through the ground and violently shook Eva-02 Allegorica. Asuka had caught the Arael Carrier directly in the center of the blast, where the N 2 reaction produced a burst of heat on par with the sun’s core. There was no chance the Carrier would escape unharmed.
“Let’s see if you survived that one.”
Asuka had battled enough Angels to know she couldn’t assume the fight was over. But when severely wounded, the Angels tended to focus on regenerating themselves. That could mean a chance for Asuka to regain the initiative.
Grounded by the moon’s surface, Eva-02 Allegorica’s sensors were protected from the electromagnetic forces of the N 2 explosion, while physical shutters protected the sensors from the intense light. Effectively, the Eva’s eyes were closed, but its laser receivers continued to communicate with the scouting satellites, which dutifully reported the results of the attack. Eva-02’s AI analyzed the data and presented it to Asuka.
“What?” she said in disbelief. “The explosion ejected an object half the size of an Eva so fast it was going to escape the moon’s gravity, except that, 4.6 seconds after the blast, the object changed trajectory on its own—method unknown—and is now descending to the north of ground zero. The predicated landing position is…”
Asuka engaged the thrusters to leap backward.
“Here!”
She lifted off just moments before the Arael Carrier came diving in, instantly dispersing the plume of lunar dust Eva-02’s thrusters had kicked up.
“Didn’t the bomb do anything at all?!”
Then she noticed that the Carrier’s lower half was gone.
Though the blast had eradicated half its body, the Carrier had managed to use its powerful shield to protect its upper half. The two Q.R. Signum scales remained intact. But Arael’s larva didn’t launch its song-filled light. The Angel appeared to have been at least partially disabled, if not killed outright. It had taken a moment for Asuka to realize that her attack had done anything at all; the Carrier wasn’t moving like something that had lost half its body.
After the N 2 bomb sent the Arael Carrier hurtling toward outer space, it had manipulated its power shield to alter its course, much like the Allegorica unit made use of its floating field.
The Carrier landed on its two arms.
“You’re a nimble one, I’ll give you that.”
The surrounding area darkened. Having been blasted sky high by the N 2 explosion, the regolith dispersed evenly through the silence like an umbrella, blocking the sun.
Rather than retreating and allowing its damaged parts to regenerate, the Carrier was fighting to kill.
It came bounding toward Asuka on its arms. It was a trickier target to aim for now than when it had all its limbs.
“How are you so fast?!”
The Carrier moved with ease, unburdened by extraneous weight. Asuka lowered the acceleration of her Powered 8 and switched the rifle to fully automatic suppression fire mode. But when she fired, the Carrier didn’t even need to use its shield. It dodged her bullets as it crossed the distance to her.
Asuka felt personally offended, as if the Arael Carrier was making a statement about the imperfection of the human form, and she sprayed her rifle to prove it wrong.
The railgun’s rounds transferred from the magazine onto the rail in batches of twelve. The process took about half a second. The Powered 8 was notable for its ability to fire all twelve rounds nearly simultaneously, effectively saturating a single target with one shot, but that same mechanism resulted in a periodic delay during automatic fire. Right now, those half-second pauses were a major source of frustration.
The Arael Carrier circled around to Eva-02 Allegorica’s left, then dug one hand into the ground and planted itself in place. Asuka swung the 8’s line of fire in from the other direction, but before she could bring the rifle around, the Carrier produced its power shield on its free hand and lunged at her. Asuka tried to dodge the punch, but the Allegorica unit’s uneven weight distribution and massive bulk hindered the Eva-02 from making quick movements. She couldn’t quite get clear—
“Aggh!”
The impact knocked Eva-02 onto its side. The pressure regulator flew out of Asuka’s mouth, leaving a gash on her lip—even though the mouthpiece was made of soft resin.
Where’s the 8?! Shit, I dropped it!
I’ll use the Magorox—no, wait, that will swing too slowly. Maybe I should use the Counter Sword instead…
The Carrier slapped the ground with both arms and leaped toward Asuka.
The heartbeat in her Eva’s chest seemed to beat with even more intensity than before.
Still on the ground, Asuka was drawing the SRL-Magorox (short for “Magoroku Exterminator Sword”) from her left wing’s pylon when the Arael Carrier descended and grabbed her arm.
KACRACK!
From her left side came the tremendous sounds of breaking bone and metal.
Asuka screamed. It broke my arm!
Having stomped on Eva-02’s arm with its foot— no, its hand —the Carrier then formed a fist and began pounding on the Eva’s chest. The monster was trying to steal the heart it believed was inside.
Asuka coughed. She’d already disconnected the sensory feedback signals from the affected areas, but the pain lingered in her body and her mind. She began to panic.
WHAM! WHAM!
The impact of each punch rippled through the LCL.
“Why is this happening?! Someone tell me what’s going on! My Eva doesn’t have a heart!”
The heart was in Eva-01’s chest, put there when it and Shinji were reborn.
The vessel wasn’t a real, blood-pumping heart. Eva-01’s S 2 Engine had run out of control and undergone a transformation beyond human understanding. The engine had opened a hole into dimensional space and drawn in tremendous power.
Miraculously, they’d managed to stem the raging torrent of energy with technology, and the energy had become a pulse contained within Super Eva’s chest.
This…this is Super Eva’s heartbeat… Shinji’s heartbeat.
WHAM! WHAM!
Amid the thundering roar and shuddering impacts of the Carrier’s blows, Asuka’s dimming consciousness made the connection between her memories and what she was experiencing.
Her bloody lips parted, and she spat out, “This heartbeat belongs to Shinji! It’s the sound of his life and his alone! I’ll never let a monster like you take it!”
If she’d stopped to think about it, Asuka wouldn’t have known exactly why she’d said those words.
Asuka’s Eva-02 was simply resonating the Euro-II’s pulse, which itself was a crude copy. On the surface, what Asuka had said didn’t fit the circumstances, but deep down, she’d realized that even if the heartbeat was a copy, it was still from Super Eva—it represented a connection to Shinji.
Even with half its body gone, the Arael Carrier was too heavy for Eva-02 to push away. And it didn’t recoil after its punches; the monster seemed to be using a kind of sideways-facing force field to drive its fist. But somehow, Eva-02 Allegorica found the strength—just barely—to resist.
“How am I supposed to move in this getup?!”
She needed to twist her Eva free from the Carrier, but the gigantic external unit was in the way. She set to work disconnecting the Allegorica unit, forgoing safety procedures in the name of speed. The entry plug’s illumination turned red again as the timer for the Eva’s internal power reserve began racing toward zero.
“Come at me!”
The disconnected Allegorica unit rose on its legs beside Eva-02, which was still pinned down and being pummeled by the Arael Carrier.
But as soon as the Allegorica was standing, it lost its balance and staggered back several steps before catching itself, stopping on hind legs built with the same artificial muscles found on the highly capable first-gen Jet Alone robot. The sight was surreal, and frankly comical. Asuka had left the Allegorica powered on but hadn’t taken the time to dictate any behavior, such as retreating or firing missiles or making a remote attack. So, having found its balance, the Allegorica unit stood as still as a statue amid the scattering regolith.
And then something strange happened.
The source of the heartbeat—the waves in space—shifted outside of Eva-02.
The pulse now emanated from a point in the not-air between Eva-02 and the Allegorica unit, which was still generating its graviton field. Nerv Germany’s Euro-II was using the same technology as the Allegorica to form its graviton-wave mirror, bending gravity and creating the heartbeat in a place of its choosing. But here, Eva-02 had separated from the Allegorica wings, and the focal point had shifted.
The Arael Carrier’s fist froze.
Asuka looked up. The Carrier was staring at a point within the scattering regolith. There, in the void, the heartbeat kept pulsing, and when the next beat came, a giant humanoid figure appeared.
Or rather, the moon dust and rocks appeared to take the shape of a giant figure. Each time the heartbeat pulsed and the fabric of space rumbled, the sediment danced, like corn on a hot skillet. The intermittent image, like that of a flickering projector, resembled a person the size of an Eva.
The Arael Carrier turned to the illusion and rushed toward it, seeking to snatch the heart from the dust.
Eva-02 was still in striking range, and not only that, inside the Carrier’s shield.
Asuka wasn’t going to let this one-in-a-million opportunity slip by. As she reacted, she said something she’d often said around Shinji.
“When you’re with me, don’t look away!”
Clutching the Magorox in her left hand, she braced her grip with her right hand and slashed upward at an angle.
Because her target was already missing half its body, nothing stood between her sweeping blade and the Q.R. Signum on the Carrier’s right shoulder. The SRL Magorox dug into the black scale—the lifeline and power source for the giant—and the sword bisected the Signum like a bundle of straw.
The force of the impact sent the Carrier twisting into the low-gravity sky. The giant reached out its hand to produce a shield again, but Asuka—Eva-02—had already scooped up the Powered 8 from the dusty ground.
“Take this!”
The Carrier’s remaining Q.R. Signum shattered in the fierce, rainbow-colored light.
But Asuka wasn’t finished firing. Having lost its power source, the Angel Arael was dead before it could be reborn. The larva was already turning the color of ash—but the 8’s powerful blast of kinetic energy shattered it like glass.
“Go away, you monster! Don’t mess with the living!”
By the time the Carrier fell back to the surface of the moon, it had completely reverted to a corpse.