LNCrawler

Chapter 36: Misato’s Voyage

Neon Genesis Evangelion ANIMA — LNCrawler · All chapters

Chapter 36:
Misato’s Voyage
B Y APPROPRIATING THE WINGS from the Angel Carrier Shinji had defeated, Quatre’s Eva-0.0 had at last joined the ranks of the flying. The giant’s runaway mutations were spiraling out of control.
When Unit Quatre slipped through the window in space that opened to the south of Tokyo-3, it still held Misato imprisoned in its left hand. The commander shuddered with fear as the air suddenly changed around her. Rather than appear directly at their destination, they had entered a pocket of isolated space where the Eva was jostled up and down like a twig in a river.
The dislocation was nearly instantaneous—to describe the journey as teleportation wouldn’t have been a stretch—but Misato thought she caught glimpses of something passing them in the darkness, as if they were rushing though a complex tunnel system that split like the roots of a tree.
Misato had assumed that Evas possessing a Q.R. Signum could leap from place to place at will, but now she wondered if the travel was governed by some kind of intermediary system or a framework.
FWOOM!
Air rushed away, displaced by the mutant Eva-0.0’s arrival amid a hilly countryside.
Where have we gone?
The sun, which had been setting over Tokyo-3, was now high in the sky, and the air was dry. Misato glanced at her watch—the GPS and Galileo satellites had been thrown out of orbit by the changing of Earth’s gravity, but the device picked up, of all things, three signals from Europe, Russia, and West Asia.
The Eva began walking.
The birds had gone from this part of the world as well. In their absence, insects had proliferated, and clouds of bugs leaped up from the grass with each of the Eva’s giant footsteps.
“Where are we?” Misato asked.
“Cyprus,” replied Ayanami Rei Quatre from atop the Eva’s head.
This was where Kaji had become Seele.
“Impossible,” Misato said.
She knew very little remained truly impossible, but…what? Was she supposed to casually say, “Oh, is that so?”
Despite everything that had happened, this was too much to process on the spot. But as Misato looked all around, she saw two helicopters that had crossed over the mountains on her left only to abruptly change course, and a voice came from within herself.
Think, it said. Use your head .
She didn’t see any obvious landmarks. These remote hills were dry and offered little in the way of green, the insects having ravaged the flora. On a hill up ahead stood stone ruins, beside which a smoke grenade smoldered, sending green clouds billowing across the ground. Someone wanted to be found.
But who? she wondered. If this is Cyprus, then…
The weak southerly wind…is that from the sea? Is the Mediterranean on the other side of those mountains? Because the American and European UN peacekeeping fleet is anchored there. Were those UN helicopters?
For the past few days, Misato had completely abandoned her duty. She had suffered a tremendous shock when she learned that Chairman Kiel’s parting gift had wiped out Kaji’s conscious self, leaving his body behind. And now she was here, having let herself be captured by the fugitive Rei Quatre.
Get ahold of yourself! she told herself. Your time off ends now.
A surprised voice called out from the ruins. “Commander Katsuragi?”
“Aida-kun! Tell Hakone what’s happening at once!”
So, Quatre had been telling the truth. The mutant Eva-0.0 had used the mysterious power of the Armaros Q.R. Signum to travel some nine thousand kilometers in an instant.
Aida Kensuke appeared from behind the ruins, and another man emerged after him. Misato prepared herself. I’m going to see him.
The island of Cyprus floated in the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea, where the surrounding regions had been a source of political strife since antiquity. European and American fleets acting as UN monitors had been stationed in the waters south of the island. But now the fleets were there under rather different circumstances—in response to a phrase included in Armaros’ proclamation, “the Ark.”
As the nations of the world slid toward destruction, each had become desperate in their search for the Ark. Many focused their search on this region, rich in links to religious and mythological arks thought to offer salvation to a select few.
Newfound geopolitical tensions arose as the changes in the Earth’s geography caused the level of the Black Sea to drop, and Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, along with other naval ships, crossed the Bosporus. Most of the regional attention should have been focused there, and yet—
“We’ve held off against several attacks,” Aida said. “I think word has gotten out that Kaji-san has become Seele. The team went out in search of a vehicle.”
Quatre interrupted, “Cover your ears!”
One moment, there came a high-pitched sound from a small turbine, the next, Unit Quatre was struck by an explosion.
A cruise missile had flown in low from the south and detonated against the power shield generated by Unit Quatre’s Q.R. Signum. And then another. The noise was tremendous, even inside a protective barrier stronger than an Eva’s A.T. Field.
“What’s happening?!” Misato shouted.
The first explosion had caused the group’s ears to ring; after the second, they could only communicate through yells.
“The UN found us!” Aida answered. “Commander! Why are you here with Quatre?”
Why indeed. The commander’s abduction by the fugitive clone had, as a matter of course, been kept under wraps, and Kensuke had no way of knowing. Where do I begin?
Unit Quatre’s armor, distorted by mutations, creaked and groaned as the Eva moved into action.
Kensuke protested, “This thing has been designated a hostile to every military on the planet. The moment you’re found, of course they’re going to—”
His complaint disappeared into the shock wave as the mutant Eva-0.0 split the western sky with its gamma-ray laser cannon.
What’s the Eva attacking? Misato wondered.
She thought she saw an object glimmering far away in the sky. The object seemed to change course ever so slightly, and the light disappeared to the south, past the mountains and into the distance, where the UN fleet was on patrol. In the next instant, a bright light flashed, scattering the clouds over a wide area.
After a delay came the rumble of the shock wave, its power greatly reduced over the distance. A massive mushroom cloud formed in the southern sky.
“My God!” Kensuke said. “What the hell is that?!”
The shock wave came in several ripples as different portions of it interacted with the topography. Then they were gone, and stillness returned. The only sound was the creaking of metal as the outer plates of Eva-0.0’s laser cannon expanded from the weapon’s heat.
Unit Quatre lowered Misato to the ground and released her, and the commander gazed out at the strange cloud.
“That was the Iphiclus Javelin,” Misato said, “an N 2 warhead launched by a ballistic missile.”
The warhead’s anti-Angel shielding had backfired. If the missile had been equipped with a conventional exterior, the laser would have simply dropped it from the sky.
“This is bad,” Kensuke said. “This is really bad.”
Following the book, the UN Mediterranean fleet had attempted to bury Quatre’s Eva with the established tool for annihilating the Angels—an N 2 warhead. But Quatre must have noticed the attack before the missile entered the final guidance stage.
Behind the deeply rattled Kensuke, the other man was chuckling. Misato looked at him.
He laughed again and said, “What’s with the long face, Commander of Nerv Japan Katsuragi Misato?”
He was Kaji Ryoji, the vessel who had become Seele after Chairman Kiel’s memento hijacked his mind and body.
He looked and spoke like Kaji, except for the way he called Misato by her full name, and she immediately noticed a different spark in his eyes.
This is what you get, Misato thought, when you insist on acting flippant and place your hands on something clearly dangerous. In that moment, her overwhelming sadness was surpassed by a growing anger.
“Kaji-kun…” she said, searching for the words.
But Kensuke interrupted her. “Misato-san, Kaji-san is gone,” he said sympathetically.
It was then that Misato finally became conscious of the anger she felt toward this person who had been Kaji. The emotion surprised her.
The average person might have allowed themselves to fall into despair. Instead, Misato said, “But you’re not Kiel Lorenz either, right? You took in Kaji Ryoji’s knowledge, too.”
“That’s right,” the man said.
Misato adopted an accusatory tone. “Then you won’t have any problem with me calling you Kaji-kun, will you?”
Kensuke wasn’t sure that was how it worked.
“You’re such an idiot, Kaji-kun!” Misato said, refusing to accept that Kaji was entirely gone. Then she asked, “As…as Seele, what are your intentions for the world now?”
In the distant sky behind the man’s back, air heated by the tremendous energy of the N 2 explosion continued to rise in a giant mushroom cloud. The cloud had crossed the troposphere and was now entering the stratosphere. The sea below was hidden by the mountains, but the situation there was likely unimaginably terrible. If the European and American fleets had been tightly packed together, the losses could be staggering.
“That’s what I want to know,” the man said. “The Instrumentality Project has failed on this world. I don’t know why I’ve been forced to stay.” An odd, black spark flickered behind the man’s eyes—once Kaji’s eyes. “I don’t know why I’ve been detained here when all that was left for me to do was proceed to the next trial.”
Kensuke cut in. “What happened to you with that visor…that was an unforeseeable accident.”
“You don’t really believe that, do you, Aida Kensuke? Kaji Ryoji realized that this was about to happen to you, and so he went first, to beat you to the punch.”
Misato let out an exasperated sigh. “I thought as much. Beat him to the punch, you say? Well, I say you acted without thinking of the consequences.”
Thunderheads rolled in around the rising mushroom cloud, and lightning flashed.
This is no time for that bickering, Kensuke thought. Do these two not understand the situation we’re in? And if they do, then what an unrelenting, unforgiving pair they are. One of them could die and the other still wouldn’t stop arguing.
The clouds summoned more clouds, and fat raindrops began to fall.
Misato cut to the crux of the matter. “Tell me, as Seele, what does Armaros want to do with this world?”
Surprisingly, the man answered. “He doesn’t want to do anything. He doesn’t have a consciousness. But you could’ve found that out by asking the ones who have heard his voice.”
“What?! What do you mean?” said Ayanami Rei Quatre, standing on the shoulder of her kneeling Eva.
Kaji looked up toward her. “You must be one of Ikari Gendo’s toys. Ah, that’s right, you and the other ones have been asking that artificial vessel for answers. Wasted effort, if you ask me, when anyone can hear him if they feel like it.”
Quatre seemed to take offense at that. It wasn’t often that an Ayanami let that emotion show. But the Kaji-vessel continued, unperturbed.
“That black giant has no free will. He has intelligence, but it’s nothing more than a safety mechanism to ensure the advancement of the Instrumentality Project.”
Misato wavered. Nerv Japan had believed Armaros the bringer of—and mastermind behind—the present calamity.
“I’ll tell you now,” the man said, “trying to find the true enemy is a waste of time. There’s no one. No one is watching any of us. Maybe at one point someone was, but if so, they’ve vanished, or were destroyed, or went away.”
This knowledge wouldn’t likely change Nerv Japan’s operations or their defensive strategy and response. But Misato and Kensuke both felt demoralized. They’d been able to fight because they had an enemy. That wasn’t a bad thing or a good thing; it was simply the truth.
The Kaji-vessel continued. “All this time we’ve asked, ‘God, are you there?’ But Armaros has said that God is absent. The post is vacant. Interregnum. And our impresario’s absence didn’t begin with the Instrumentality Project’s failure, in case you’re wondering.”
“Then…what is Armaros doing with the Evas?” Misato asked.
“What’s left behind is the homework.”
“The Human Instrumentality Project,” Misato said.
“Right. I don’t know if it’s just our punishment, but every time humanity fails the project, the same problem is placed in front of us again. And we repeat the assignment, over and over and over. The only way to escape is to fulfill the project.”
All Misato could say was, “What…”
Does that mean that the goal isn’t what we gain from the project but the mere act of completing it? Was it not an outline for humanity to take the next step?
“In a past world, many ages ago,” the man said, “we were commanded to build an Ark that gave us access to a small portion of their techniques. With those techniques, we can cross time and form ourselves anew in the next world.”
“And that’s Seele,” Misato said.
And the name of the first was Noah. When Kaji put on Kiel Lorenz’s visor and transformed into Seele, Kensuke had gotten some of this information out of him. But when Kensuke kept asking questions, the answers started to sound like vile fairy tales.
“Humanity will always make the same mistakes. We still haven’t gotten the right answer, but by being in control, we can at least keep from making the same mistake twice.”
“You’re telling us an awful lot,” Misato remarked. “Is that because this world is closing up shop? Is someone going to come over the speaker and tell us to bring all final purchases to the front?”
“You all will be erased shortly. Armaros will prepare something truly terrifying. It doesn’t matter what you know; you don’t have time to do anything about it.”
“You don’t know everything!”
The Kaji vessel laughed. “That’s certainly true.” The man spoke just like Kaji had, with a dry, matter-of-fact irony. But through his voice, and without any concern, Seele described a cruel blueprint for the future.
The Kaji-vessel looked up at the northwestern sky.
“The battle resumes. The silent prisoner has arrived.”
The clouds broke in the far distance, letting in slanted rays. Along with the light came a white-winged giant leading European aircraft.
After suffering heavy losses at sea, the fleet had called in reinforcements. In the sky above the battlefield, Eva Euro-II appeared, wielding a positron rifle.