Kaiju Slaying For Death and Profit (WC Evangelion SI) Ch 7

I needed to find someplace to spend my paycheck, the idiots trying to doom the world were paying me quite well, but I’d gotten to spend next to none of my money.

It's not like it’d be of any use once I moved on. 

Perhaps I could use Ritsuko for that? It had been most of a couple weeks since I’d Stamped her, but I hadn’t been called to enter NERV lately, giving me no chance to see my thrall or Rei.

As it turned out, my third Capture had to be an Angel before I got access to the rest of my Credits. That’s always a plus.

As I walked into the classroom, whispering sprang up.

I had also been kept away from school due to ‘unexplained medical issues’ so just about everyone and their mother must have figured out that I got hurt dealing with the last Angel.

I got left mostly alone as I took my seat. None of the teachers called me out for not paying attention.

Then again, when you have the Kaiju killing messiah in class, you’d probably cut him some goddamn slack if you knew what’s good for you.

Lunch came around and I followed Rei to the roof. There was a definite pep to her step as she reached the roof and turned to eagerly wait for me.

I chuckled as I handed her the generic Philly cheesesteak sandwich I got out of storage, but held onto her hand as she went to retrieve the sandwich. Incidentally pressing the Stamp to the back of her hand.

She turned inquisitive red eyes at me. And I realized I hadn’t thought to say anything, and three seconds was a surprisingly long time.

Fuck.

I tossed out the first thing I thought of. “You nervous about the test of your Eva later today?”

She tilted her head slightly. “No, I need only believe in Director Ikari’s work.”

I grunted and released her hand, vanishing the Stamp and watching as she appeared in my AR display, I wouldn’t get the Credits for her Capture until later.

Hopefully she’d count as my third Capture and give me access to the rest of my budget. I wanted to get another Waifu I could put to work making weapons and armor for me, I had plenty of blueprints, but no chance to get out of sight and do things myself.

“Wish I had your confidence.” I said as I sat down, Rei sitting next to me a few moments later.

“Can you not have faith your father’s work?” She asked dully before taking a bite of the sandwich. She had a little more meat to her, her arms no longer stick thin, nary a scar on her from her time spent as a partial mummy.

I snorted. “I refuse to honor that man with the title of ‘father,’ he’s the sperm donor that spawned me, nothing more.” I leaned back, keeping her in the corner of my vision in case she tried to slap me. “As to having faith in the man…No, no I cannot, I refuse to. After all he’s done, what he’s said to me…the fact that I’m willing to work with his organization is a privilege he does not deserve and is therefore purchasing at a premium.”

Rei’s eyes bored into the side of my head for long seconds before she turned away and stared at her sandwich like it held the secret to immortality and eternal youth. “The only thing in life I trust, is the Director.”

“You shouldn’t.” I said bitterly, bunching up the covering for my food and stuffing it angrily into my pocket. I all but threw myself angrily to my feet. “I bet that the moment he has no more use for you, he’ll toss you aside like so much trash, just like he did me.”

“You’re wrong.” She whispered, glaring angrily at the floor.

I sighed. “For your sake, I sincerely hope I am.” I said and walked away.

I used my HUD to move the Stamp to Rei’s lower back. Now if only nothing could happen for three days, that’d be great.

=][=

[Launching!]

I really should learn not to taunt Murphy.

A giant, floating, blue octahedron had decided to park its ass above NERV headquarters and began drilling down, punching past meters thick steel-reinforced concrete and tons of soil in a few minutes.

And as was becoming depressingly usual, it was apparently my problem.

I’m being paid a lot for this unenviable job, and I’m still not being paid enough for this shit.

About the only good thing that was brought about by the Angel arriving was that the test for Eva Unit 00 was cancelled, the cyclopean cyborg machine gave me the hibbie jibbies. Wasn’t it possessed by the spirit of the first Rei? Or was I remembering some other fucked up show?

Blegh, I blame Slutlife Entertainment, that shit rotted your brain.

I rode out the ascension. The spirit of Unit 01 eager to earn the spot of Adamantine Princess. The instant before the hatch at the top opened, I remembered that the floating cube’s main way of dealing with irritants was a very long ranged and powerful Particle Projection Cannon, or a Laser.

As such, the moment the ramp stopped, I did not wait to be given the all-clear to move, I had the Eva tear through the safeties and restraining bolts, utterly wrecking the very expensive piece of equipment and getting Misato to yell at me.

She shut up about my ‘recklessness’ when every building in a straight line between where I had been standing and the Angel got a thirty-meter diameter hole vaporized through them, the platform used to deploy the Eva reduced to so much slag. By some miracle, my rough handling had moved the umbilical cable keeping the Eva powered out of the literal line of fire.

I fell into the Eva, the cyborg roaring in pleasure as it and I became Us. We ran forward in a zig-zag pattern, moving in sudden, arrhythmic start-and-stop surges that had saved the inner in the trenches outside The Palace. Our chaotic movement served us well, Adam’s get overcorrecting and firing at where we would have been. Its song of annoyance making us smile in glee.

Unfortunately, the closer we got, the more accurate its shots became. Until we had to abandon evasion altogether, the greater forming a shield much stronger than Adamantine, the inner modulating it, forming the barrier into a wedge, providing an angled path of least resistance for the energy to wash past, the residual heat of the diverted attacks melting our outer shell and making it run like wax.

The sheer brightness of the attacks of Adam’s spawn blinded us, forcing us to move forward by memory, withstanding ever greater heat with every two steps forward we took. Ignoring the call from the rabble to retreat, our inner self’s automatic processes spoke with them until their voices became suddenly silenced.

Many steps later we gained a slight reprieve. Taking four unobstructed steps while the Other attacked lesser gnats that irritated it.

We roared in triumph as our barrier clashed against its own. We sunk our fingers into it, using our own to tear the barrier open.

This was a mistake.

With our barrier used to tear through its shield, it could not be used to defend us. The beam crashed into us, light so strong it nearly pushed us back vaporized the outer layers of our shell. We screamed as the liquid the inner was immersed in began to boil. With the conscious mind of the inner turning faint, we began to flag.

Incandescent fury made the inner’s weight in the bond become stronger by two orders of magnitude. Its rage growing until it surpassed the greater self’s. The barrier became as much of the inner as of the greater. With a roar, we pushed forward, ignoring the way our flesh ran like wax. We ranted, screaming invectives at that which angered us as the fingers of our left hand sunk into the hard outer flesh of the Other.

We barely twitched our head out of the way as its latest blast burnt away our arm at the shoulder.

The cable that granted us energy, which we had protected up until now, was severed.

But that was fine, it was not needed.

Before Adam’s spawn could recharge its main mode of attack, we formed our main hand into a spear, and drove it with our full weight behind it into the enemy’s body. We felt the tips of our fingers bend and break against its core. With a vicious smile, we wrapped our hand around it, then tore it out its body, it sang of fear and pain before its song petered out and fell silent, making us smile wider.

With the enemy vanquished, our rage soon fled, without our rage to sustain us, the bond weakened as our vision swam.

We separated, once again becoming it and I. And not a moment too soon as the timer ran to zero, the batteries ran out, and I was now stuck in a boiling metal coffin.

I laughed, choking on the overheated angel juice as ice seemed to crawl down my spine, and began the manual override for the emergency escape.

The fifth time I tried, I was forced to accept that the mechanical systems that would allow the exit had melted.

I brought up my HUD. I needed to buy a power to fix this. I’d Captured the Angel’s Soul when I killed it. That meant I had the rest of my Budget. I could get out of here.

And subsequently get quite fucked.

The hesitation cost me; my anger unable to sustain me without an enemy to kill, and succumbed to heat exhaustion.

=][=

“Launching!” Ibuki Maya stated as EVA Unit 01 ascended with a roar.

To think an Angel would come on the very day that the Miracle Child, as Shinji was called by the support staff at NERV, was supposed to finally get some backup.

The calibration of EVA Unit 00 was aborted. It was expected to take the better part of two days to get it fully combat ready, at the moment it wouldn’t be able to do much more than stand in place.

“Unit 01 arriving in five!” Makoto called out.

“I’m getting a high energy reading within the target!” Shigeru shouted.

“How high!?” Lieutenant Katsuragi asked tensely.

An alarm sounded as the sound of steel shearing like paper reverberated through their speakers.

“The Pilot has destroyed deployment cradle!” Maya called out.

“Shinji what are you doing!? Such reckless disreg—!” Lieutenant Katsuragi cut off as the video screen showed Unit 01 diving to the side an instant before a glowing molten trail was all that remained of the deployment cradle and every building between it and the Angel.

Maya watched in amazement as the Eva dodged every shot that sought to destroy it. Every attack by the Angel leaving a line of utter devastation that the Eva danced through perfectly.

Until it couldn’t.

“AT field holding!” Maya called out as the outer layers of the Eva’s armor was outright vaporized even through the AT Field. “Pilot’s synchronization holding at ninety-eight percent!” 

“Shinji! Shinji, fall back!” Lieutenant Katsuragi ordered.

Unit 01 resolutely took another few steps forward, before being hit again by the Angel’s weapon.

[I refuse!] Shinji panted. [Unless I take it down now, you’ll have to deploy Rei, and her Eva isn’t calibrated yet!]

“Unit 01’s armor integrity down to forty-five percent!” Shigeru called out.

“Shinji!” Lieutenant Katsuragi screamed into the mic. “That is not your decision to make! You turn the Eva around right now and get to safety!”

On the screen, Shinji’s face twisted into a feral snarl. [And risk you monsters sending Rei out in a barely working robot!?]

“That is her duty!” Lieutenant Katsuragi ground out. “Just like it’s yours to get back here!”

Unit 01 withstood yet another incandescent blast, and there was a screech of static on the radio.

“Unit 01’s receiving antenna has been destroyed!” Makoto called out. “He can broadcast but can no longer hear us!”

Lieutenant Katsuragi did not answer, but she did grind her teeth in frustration as the Eva withstood yet another impossible shot. “Call in artillery support! Get that thing’s attention!”

Tanks and missiles shot out at the Angel, not a one of them got more than one salvo off before being obliterated. But their sacrifice allowed the Eva to cover the remaining distance without trouble before it sank its claws into the Angel’s AT Field and tore it like tissue paper.

And then the Angel blasted the Eva point blank.

“Plug temperature exceeding safe parameters!” Maya said, her voice tense. “He’ll be boiling soon!”

The pilot’s vitals fluctuated before his brainwave pattern indicated unconsciousness. Maya felt ice crawl down her spine.

An instant later, a roar of pure animalistic rage rang out of the speakers, the pilo—Shinji’s vitals spiking as adrenaline flooded his system.

[You think I’ll let you win!?] Shinji shouted. [You think you’ll take my vengeance from me!?]

Maya gulped. Wondering if she should cut off the radio, but Shinji continued before she could make up her mind.

[I’ll get my vengeance on that bastard Gendo! I won’t let anyone get in the way!]

The Eva took another point blank blast but was barely phased.

[I’m going to get a girlfriend, with big titties!] Shinji shouted, bringing Maya up short. [Imma put that bitch through college! We’re going to be happy! Imma give her love and emotional support!]

As he raved about the happy life he would have with his future girlfriend, Shinji modulated the Eva’s AT Field to corrode the Angel’s. [And we’ll have a daughter!] Shinji screamed with the fevered air of a man speaking prophecy as the Angel removed one of the Eva’s arms. [She’s going to look just like Mom! And I’ll send the bastard pictures! One for every birthday he’ll be kept away from! Every holiday he won’t be allowed to be part of my children’s lives! Gendo will beg on his knees to be a grandfather, and when he does, I’ll look down and he’ll finally reap the summation of all his sins when I tell him; No!]

Shinji shouted the last as he tore the core out of the Angel. Holding the red gem aloft as the Angel fell silent and the Eva ran out of battery and deactivated.

There was an exceedingly awkward silence in the control room.

“Send out the retrieval team.” Lieutenant Katsuragi said quietly, her voice adding to the awkwardness of the moment rather than taking away from it.

Maya couldn’t help but sneak a glance at the Director, and was surprised to see his face twisted in pain and anger.

She turned back to her station, feeling like she had intruded into something personal.

She was starting to suspect that she should rethink her bet that the Director and Shinji would reconcile.

After all, everyone at NERV just got to hear Shinji’s very long and detailed plan on how he would simultaneously cut his father out of his life, and torment him with the knowledge that he would make the Director the boogeyman for the man’s own grandchildren.