Chapter 28: Spread the Wings of War
Chapter 28:
Spread the Wings of War
Spread the Wings of War
J
UST AS ZERUEL’S BEAM
blasted the flying Super Eva even higher into the sky, the soft light around its wings faded, and—just as Maya predicted—Super Eva began to fall, face up.
Maya’s inner ears announced the sudden drop, and her instinctive fear was about to manifest as a scream when Shinji asked her a question seemingly out of the blue.
“What’s the difference between flying by knowledge or by technology?”
“What?”
Maya looked at Shinji. Was he…trembling? No, but his hands were as they tightly gripped the control stick. He seemed to be fighting with all his strength—but fighting
what
?
Urgently trying to find the right words, Shinji asked, “What’s the difference between climbing a mountain…and…and constructing a building?”
“What are you talking about, Shinji-kun?” Maya asked.
“I have to stop this thing, whatever it takes. I don’t care if I need to argue it to a standstill!”
“What do you mean?” Maya asked.
“Look forward! Turn your head. A big wave is coming, and I don’t want you to lose your head when it hits.”
WHAM!
Shinji felt like a tsunami had struck him.
The impact caused the supersaturated gases in the LCL to instantaneously form tiny bubbles. The interior of the entry plug clouded with white.
I can’t see my own hands!
The flow from the circulation system pushed the bubbles away and revealed an enemy right in front of Shinji’s face—a winged Angel Carrier. The six-kilometer distance separating the Carrier and Super Eva had disappeared in an instant.
I’m too close to use the spear,
Shinji thought. He wanted to kick the Carrier away, but the enemy was too close for that, too. And too fast.
He felt resistance on his right knee, and the sensation of something smashing apart. Super Eva’s knee shield had found Shinji’s intended target, and the Carrier’s head—and the chest to which it was attached—went flying, shattered into countless fragments.
Maya, who seemed distressed by the whole ordeal, watched the aftermath of Super Eva’s strike with surprise, but for some reason, the scientist’s movements appeared unnaturally sluggish.
“He did that in a single attack?!” Aoba exclaimed.
“He traveled 5.8 kilometers in an instant,” Hyuga said.
Super Eva’s reality-defying dash attack created a shock wave that smashed into Nerv HQ’s armored walls, and the rumble was heard and felt in the command center, causing no small amount of surprise. Even as the shock wave spread thin, it retained enough energy to strike the caldera’s outer mountains and echo back several times inside the rim.
“Incredible,” Aoba whispered.
But whenever humanity deepened their understanding of Evangelions, the page always turned to a new, even more baffling mystery. Now was no different, as the aboveground observation cameras captured images of the contrail Super Eva left in its wake, stretching and widening like nothing they’d seen before.
“That shouldn’t happen just from the expanded A.T. Field’s distortion field and phase light,” Hyuga said. “That isn’t the theorized effect.”
The band of light lengthened and spread open like a blooming flower.
Whatever the concerns of the technicians in the command center, Shinji felt himself gaining control over his wings. He could now make maneuvers like in the simulations—aside from the instant acceleration, at least. That hadn’t been in the simulations at all. But he was getting used to the speed, too, as his mind and body began to adapt and respond. He felt as if a strong force was driving into his back. He couldn’t control the effect, at least not yet, but it was a start.
“We’re going to get through this,” Shinji said. “Maya-san, just hang in there a little longer.”
Maya was beginning to lose consciousness. Shinji later learned that in that moment, she saw him controlling the Eva without moving a muscle and speaking through the terminal’s hydrospeaker without opening his mouth. She described him, without exaggeration, as “stiff as a rock.”
When Toji asked Shinji about the mysterious trail of patterned light, the deputy commander, too, acted in slow motion.
“What the heck is that, Shinji?!”
Shinji could hear the commotion in the command center, but he didn’t know what had gotten them so worked up.
What are they seeing?
Shinji recognized that he and Super Eva were moving through time differently than everyone else, and he sensed that was dangerous. But it felt good. And the excitement—thrill, even—far outweighed his worry.
The condition of humanity, having undone the knot. The nature of humanity, teeming, refuses the shackles. The distant and immaculate—
“Kaworu-kun? Don’t be so cryptic! Tell me what you mean.”
Be careful. Having opened the y-axis, humanity expands endlessly.
They will be unable to return to the human vessel.
The shackles of the Earth are many things but also a safety net.
Despite having its head and chest torn away, the Angel Carrier hadn’t gone still.
But Super Eva, leaving a trail of light as it flew, seemed unwilling to stop or even slow its momentum, and crossed the sky toward its next enemy.
The mutilated Carrier doggedly attempted to pursue Super Eva and was turning in midair, slow and unsteady, when a burst of particles, tiny in size but possessing tremendous energy, pierced through its power source—the Q.R. Signum—at the speed of light.
The shot had come from Mount Komagatake at the center of the caldera, cradle to Lake Ashi and Tokyo-3, where Ayanami’s Eva-00 Type-F had fired the Field Piercer—a.k.a. the Angel’s Backbone—a weapon that had replaced its entire right arm. Ayanami targeted the Carrier’s remaining Q.R. Signum and fired once more, and the Carrier fell toward the Earth without ever getting the chance to reveal which Angel’s larva it had carried in its cocoon.
Super Eva flew onward, as if gliding on the light the giant had left in its wake. The light flashed even more brightly, searing the sky, and the Eva disappeared, leaving behind a shock wave from where the air was torn asunder. This time, Shinji was ready with the Euro-II’s lance. The next Angel Carrier brought up its shield. In an instant, the space between the opponents vanished, and the cross-shaped tip of the lance drove into the winged Carrier’s shield.
Shinji roared as the spear and shield clashed. The barrier held, even in the face of Super Eva’s newfound strength, but it was being pushed inward. Like the rest of the Carrier, the shield was powered by the two Q.R. Signum scales. One overheated and broke down. The scale didn’t even have time to crystalize before it burst, spewing out a blood-red fluid. The lance easily penetrated the now-weakened shield, and Shinji drove his weapon into the Carrier’s throat and out through its back.
Before he could push the Carrier away and take off into the sky again, a double helix of light flew out from the Carrier’s cocoon and latched onto Super Eva.
“Armisael!” Shinji said.
The helix’s sharp tip drove itself into the center of Super Eva’s heartbeat, the window to the higher dimensions. It bulged, like a snake that had eaten something larger than itself, and with each pulse of Super Eva’s heart, the torrential energy rushed into Armisael, swelling it further. The helix tried to break free, but Super Eva grasped it in its left hand and refused to let go. Armisael ballooned, losing any semblance of its actual form. In the next instant, the Angel imploded, becoming a dim speck that wobbled and spun like a top, spewing a bar of fierce light from its center axis.
Super Eva crushed the dot in its fist, and Shinji felt tremendous power flow back into him. Brimming with energy, he hoisted the still-living Angel Carrier with the lance impaled in its throat and turned.
Maya had fallen unconscious, but that was probably for the best. She didn’t have to witness Super Eva running roughshod over her beloved laws of physics.
“Human nature…” Six imparted. “Their deeds never cease… Their greed knows no bounds… They consume all.”
The Armisael Carrier still lived. Super Eva held the zombie in front of itself like a shield to block the Zeruel Carrier’s energy beams. By the time Super Eva reached Zeruel, the Armisael Carrier’s limbs had been blasted away until all that was left was a grisly chunk of torso.
Somehow, miraculously, the remaining Q.R. Signum had survived intact in its flesh, which the scale kept alive, though it was on the brink of death. Shinji ripped the scale out, turning in the same motion. He slipped past the Zeruel Carrier’s sharp, band-like arms, and struck its shield with the detached Q.R. Signum.
The twin scales glimmered, recognizing each other as allies, and unwittingly invited Super Eva through the shield. Shinji reached inside with a hand that had—at some point unknown even to himself—switched out the lance for a gun. He swung inward, smashing the Zeruel Carrier’s Q.R. Signum with the gun’s grip. As the weapon passed in front of the Carrier’s face on the follow-through, Shinji jammed the barrel into the Carrier’s eye socket and fired.
The KEG-46R Yamato Rebuild wasn’t an energy-based weapon—electromagnetic, particle, optical, or otherwise. It was kinetic, a modern recreation of the largest battleship cannon from the previous century. Its one-ton shell entered the back of the Angel Carrier’s skull at roughly twice the speed of sound. Before the other eye could blink, the shell tore apart everything inside, leaving only the face armor behind.
“The method of instrumentalization…” Quatre intoned. “A test to banish the circle of sin… The trial ended in failure. Preparations to await the next test… This world will be cleared away. That’s right, Ikari-kun, it’s all over. It ended three years ago when you destroyed the Human Instrumentality Project.”
Super Eva gripped Zeruel’s limp, ribbon-like arms as if they were reins and stood on top of the plummeting giant. The Eva planted its feet on the Carrier and accelerated. The pair crashed like a meteorite into the ground beyond the northwestern edge of the caldera.
A large column of dust rose from the far side of the mountains, and the Earth shook. When Super Eva came climbing over the ridgeline and planted a foot on one of the peaks, the command center personnel erupted into cheers, though what they really felt was terror.
Super Eva took Zeruel’s remaining Q.R. Signum in both hands, squeezing and twisting until the scale broke.