Kaiju Slaying For Death and Profit (WC Evangelion SI) Ch 3

Ch 3 is Ch 2, but from the perspective of someone who was not temporarily turned into a cybernetic demigod.
In these types of stories, I do think that there can be something that is lost by not having a 'street level view' included. The key is, of course, in moderation.

Do please drop me a comment telling me what you like and don't like!

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Ibuki Maya worked diligently. She’d nearly fainted when the prospective pilot stated he was willing to die, to let the entirety of Tokyo-3 fall, purely to spite the Director.

She could not help but wonder if he’d said the truth, that this was the first time in years that Director Ikari had spoken to him. Yes, he was a great man, instrumental for the future, but to think that he would...

Maya shook her head, she needed to keep her eye on the prize! The Pilot would need her support, she couldn’t afford to get distracted!

[A little warning about not having to worry about drowning would have been nice before I was submerged.]

Shinji was remarkably calm with that rebuke, and he had a bit of a point. But there’d just not been time to explain so many things!

Still, the Director had said that he was the best candidate. Maya would place her trust in the Director!

‘You literally abandoned me when I was four fucking years old!’ Shinji’s voice thundered unbidden in her head. The anger and hurt on the boy…no, on the young man's face, not even the best actors could fake that. It was too visceral, too deep.

Too personal.

Makoto and Shigeru had been angry at him, at Shinji’s refusal to pilot the Eva into danger. Seemingly willing to let the whole city burn purely to spite Director Ikari.

Maya could not help but wonder though, what could drive someone to that extent of anger? To be so willing to self-destruct purely so someone else wouldn’t ‘win?’

“Launching!” Lieutenant Colonel Katsuragi shouted, and Maya mentally chastised herself for letting her thoughts wander.

The Pilot’s vitals spiked as the Eva was launched up. Maya watched with baited breath as the Eva rose up through the many levels before stopping at street level, facing off against the Angel. The final restraints were cut off and it leaned forward in a lazy, yet predatory way.

“Okay Shinji, I need you to concentrate on walking.” Lieutenant Colonel Katsuragi said into the radio.

On the screen, the enormous machine took a single, menacing step.

On its second step it tripped and fell to a knee.

Maya bit her lip in apprehension. It had taken Rei seven months to manage to synchronize with an Eva. It was incredible that the son of Direction Ikari had managed a synchronization rate of over sixty percent without even a plug suit. Yet the point remained he was still untrained, it really was too much to ask.

The Angel approached and the Pilot’s vitals went…calm?

“Shinji? Shinji you need to get the Eva to stand up!” Katsuragi said into the radio, her voice tense.

Maya’s screen began to show something impossible. She tried to say something, to warn Miss Ritsuko, but the words stuck in her throat.

“Synchronization rate rising! Eighty-six percent! Ninety-two! A hundred and five!” Miss Ritsuko said from her station.

“What does that mean!?” Katsuragi asked, her voice higher, the strain more evident.

“The last time we had numbers rising this fast, the pilot dissolved!” Miss Ritsuko said, typing away at her console.

“Stop it! Pull the plug!”

“We can’t! We're locked out!”

Katsuragi bit her bottom lip, closed her eyes and made the terrible call. “Blow the bolts! Retrieve the pilot!”

Maya followed the order, then fought off her surprise, dismay, and fear. “The safeties are not working! The system is unresponsive! Contamination rising!”

No no no, at this rate the Pilot would…

On the screen, the Angel effortlessly picked up the unresponsive Eva.

Maya saw humanity’s final and best hope placidly wait to die as the Angel began to toy with it.

Then the Angel’s left arm was broken and hanging at an unnatural angle. The movement having been so preternaturally fast that the cameras had not managed to catch a frame of transition.

“W-What?” Maya whispered.

With another quicksilver motion, the Eva had opened its welded together mouth and sunk its teeth into the other wrist of the Angel, biting cleanly through and causing that hand to fall to the ground.

“What’s happening!? Is the Pilot controlling it!?” Katsuragi demanded.

Maya turned back to her screen and felt her face blanche. “T-The Pilot’s vitals are…homeostatic? There must be a glitch in the system, we don’t, I don’t.”

“My God,” Miss Ritsuko’s terrified whisper sounded loud in the silent control room. “It must have gone berserk.” The Eva sprung back, and almost as if to spite Miss Ritsuko, it took up a defensive fighting stance. “What!? That’s impossible!”

“Could this be the Pilot!?” Lieutenant Katsuragi demanded again.

Maya looked at her monitors, the Pilot’s vitals showing…slight exertion? “I…maybe?”

“We need better than maybe!” Katsuragi growled.

The Angel fired point blank, an attack the Eva dodged by a hair’s breadth. Then shifted its stance and drove forward into the quintessential Karate straight punch. The shockwave of the strike causing all of the cameras and drones in the air to shake.

“That has to be the Pilot’s doing.” Shigeru whispered. “The Evas have never shown the knowledge of how to throw a proper punch. Ever.”

“The Angel has deployed its AT field!” Makoto shouted the moment the cameras stopped shaking enough to show a clear picture.

“So long as that field is active…” Katsuragi whispered, only to cut herself off as Unit 01 drove its fingers into the field and tore it open as if it were paper, not even giving the sensor suite time to spit out the results of their scans, showing that it had deployed its own AT field to corrode the Angel’s.

The entire command room watched in horrified fascination as Unit 01 charged into the Angel, lifted it over its head, and spiked it head first into the ground at its feet, the localized earthquake that followed as the Angel literally bounced off the ground demolishing several buildings.

The Eva contemptuously stepped on the Angel, before stiffening its hand into the shape for a knife-hand strike. It formed another AT field around its hand and plunged it down into the Angel’s core.

The Angel made a noise. Half whimper, half animal yowl. It batted weakly at Unit 01, Maya wondered if it begged for the mercy it had not shown others.

The Eva’s teeth parted in a way that made Maya quake in her seat. Unit 01 did not have lips, nonetheless, Maya would swear to her dying day that the biological robot smiled with glee and malevolence before twisting its hand inside the Angel’s core.

The Angel’s entire body shuddered, reducing what little remained of the building it had been laying on to rubble.

The Angel fell still, a great cross shooting high into the air to mark its passing. Unit 01 threw its head back and screamed its triumph. Something about the roar that shook the command center made Maya’s stomach roil with revulsion.

As monstrous, as alien, as unnatural as the scream was, so deep and powerful that it shook the buildings around the Eva where it stood. There was something quintessentially human about the sound. A declaration of victory and a challenge all in one. Maya felt her skin break out into gooseflesh as the sound shook her to the marrow.

As the Eva’s scream of victory died away, a notice on her screen demanded her attention. It took her three tries before she managed to speak. “S-Synchronization rate f-falling. Corruption index stabilizing. T-The P-P-Pilot appears…” she forced herself to take a deep breath, not daring to look at her colleagues yet feeling the intensity of their stares all the same. “The Pilot appears battered but ultimately unharmed.”

There was silence in the Command Center, nobody daring to break it, to be the one to shatter the illusion and awaken everyone from this wonderful, hopeful stupor.

A slow, moderate, quiet clap reverberated through the room like thunder. They all turned to see Director Ikari, clapping at the image of the Eva on the screen, his face as granite.

That one action threw open the floodgates.

There was cheering, screaming, whooping. Some people danced, Shigeru shredded on an air guitar. Maya felt wetness run down her cheeks and she could see that she wasn't the only one weeping.

The price had been high, too high.

But this was also the first time they'd ever had such an overwhelming victory over an Angel. Every other time the sacrifices had been much greater, the damage so monumental that the locations of the disaster had still not recovered, even fifteen years later.

For the first time, Maya truly allowed herself to have hope.

A resounding ‘thunk’ played over the Command Center speaker’s. Everyone turned to the screen to see Unit 01 knocking on the trap door from which it had been deployed, it gave it a few more raps with its armored knuckles before the Pilot’s voice came over the speakers. [Oi, open up. I wanna get out of this thing.]

That seemed to snap Lieutenant Colonel Katsuragi out of whatever trance she was in. “Send the retrieval teams! Bring the Eva and Pilot home!”

In less than an hour, the Eva was once again locked in its harness, the armor plates on its left forearm and hands was battered and cracked. That was the extent of the damage it had taken against the Angel while Shinji had been at the helm. It had suffered far greater damage in testing.

The area was crowded, unprofessional as it was, everyone at NERV wished to lay eyes on the miracle pilot. The one who had arrived without training, killed the Angel that had decimated the UN forces three times over, and made it look easy. Even Director Ikari was there, standing straight and inscrutable as always.

The technicians and mechanics all held their breath as the pod was extracted from Unit 01. There was a collective gasp as the hatch depressurized and the Pilot stepped out, his clothes soaked in LCL and his expression blank.

He ignored the hands seeking to aid him as he cast his eyes around, until they found his father.

He walked wordlessly toward Director Ikari.

“Shinji.” the Director said with an acknowledging nod, the highest of praise coming from him. “Your performance was admira-”

The blindingly fast right hook cut him off and sent him to the floor. Maya heard something click on the metal floor at her feet and, looking down, beheld a tooth.

The Pilot’s face was no longer an impassive mask. It had shifted into thunderous, murderous anger. When he spoke, it was with a quiet intensity that brought shivers up Maya’s spine.

“I deny you.”