Kaiju Slaying For Death And Profit Ch 13

Heyo! Chapter ended up a bit shorter than I wished or anticipated. But it got to a good stopping point. Normally I'd wait to post it. But I'm going out of town for the weekend, and I'd rather post this when I have a consistent internet connection.

Have chapter! Where I do something I was accused of doing before.

Only. Now I'm doing it on purpose!

Hope you enjoy the chapter. Lemme know in a comment.

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In the entire time it took me to hide until I received word that the operation was starting, and the time it took to get from the break room to the Control Center, I had tried and failed to explain to Virgo that she did not need to punish herself.

Now she was offering specific suggestions.

+No, you may not strap yourself to a pillory for annoying me.+

This was my life now.

+No, you may not denail yourself for ‘making a subpar suggestion.’+

This is what I could look forward to for the next, if everything went well, eternity.

+No, you may not waterboard yourself because I sound mildly exasperated.+

If I was going to be stuck with this comically masochistic goofball for the rest of my hopefully extremely long life, I couldn’t be reactive, I needed to get in front of this. If I could not undo the proclivity, I could curve it, control it. Make it serve at my whim rather than have it be a thorn in my side.

+Virgo!+ I modulated my Mind Interface Unit produced voice to have an authoritative snap, making the Spirit Woman pause in her latest suggestion of what I could do to her while brandishing a toothbrush and chili powder. I had no idea how I was supposed to use those, and at this point I was far too afraid to ask. +Another of my Servants will deposit into your care a large number of naked, shivering clones. You will stamp them, clothe them, wash and feed them, and you will instruct them in the way of the maid.+

I changed my projected voice to a malevolent growl. +Make no mistake, my standards are exacting. If you fail to meet them in any way, my displeasure, and your punishment, will be immense.+

Virgo’s expression  remained dispassionate, but there was a fevered intensity to her eyes as she asked. “What would my punishment entail?”

+To star with I’ll strip you naked and lash your back until you squeal.+ I threatened, making her twitch. +In front of your students so they get to see how truly pathetic their teacher was all along.+

Trembling from head to foot in a way that had nothing to do with fear, Virgo asked. “Would you ever forgive your unworthy maid?”

Virgo all but smacked herself on the forehead as she prostrated herself before the camera, her body visibly vibrating and slight cracks forming on the ground beneath her. “This unworthy one will serve the most gracious Master to her outmost!”

+See that you do. Do not disappoint me.+ I said, and disconnected the call, I wanted to slump down against my seat, but I held myself back from that comfort.

Yep, there is the regret. Unfortunately, I could not think of anyone else able to handle a few dozen clones of a girl, teach them how to people, and train them in ‘maidly duties’ that was within my budget.

I probably could have asked M’Shen, but I had a feeling that would inevitably end in tragedy.

I was going to have to learn how to use a whip while minimizing the harm it could cause, Virgo was a Spirit, a strong one, but Safety is paramount. Hopefully I could convince her to actually pick a safe word.

I brought my attention back to the matter at hand. The men and women in the Command Room worked tensely, efficiently, and largely quietly, doing what little they could to support the boots on the ground by coordinating with the NATO Air Force and a NATO frigate that was setting up nearby to provide artillery support.

None of which would be very helpful, but what the hell do I know? I’ve only got the most confirmed Angel kills out of everyone on the planet.

[Ingress route clear.] Came a voice from the intercom, making me actually start to pay attention.

I watched on the screen as Asuka was slowly lowered in Unit 02 into the mouth of an active volcano. I hadn’t gotten to see the combination space suit/diving suit the Evangelion was stuck in.

It looked like a fat little gnome as it was quickly swallowed by the magma.

[Depth; four hundred. Four hundred and fifty.] Said miss nice assistant tensely…wow, they really spared no expense deploying, they’d been at NERV HQ just over two hours ago. [Five hundred. Five hundred and fifty.]

Everyone at HQ was collectively clenching their butt cheeks as Miss Nice Assistant spoke. But I couldn’t get past the fact that an Evangelion literally looked like a weird garden decoration.

Sure, the only feed we had of what was happening in the magma came from the cameras of the Eva, but the brief glimpse of it I had as it descended was enough for me to know, and now I could certainly not unsee it. It was pretty funny, and while I was a strict adherent of the ‘if it’s stupid and it works, it isn’t stupid’ design philosophy, the Eva still looked like a damn lawn decoration.

Wait what?

So wait, the suit wasn’t rated for the mission’s parameters? Why had Asuka volunteered for this mission then? And what had caused this issue? NERV had more money than God due to the old men seeking to doom the world. This was their big play, their Hail Mary, they were literally sparing no expense and if their bid for immortality failed, they’d be collectively broke inside of a decade.

Could it be they simply didn’t have the material science to make a better hostile environment suit?

[Nothing yet, the scope is clear.] Asuka said, reminding me that I should pay attention.

[The convection must be stronger than we assumed.] Bottle blonde said.

Misato ordered both a recalculation of the larval Angel’s location, and for continued descent into the magma. As Asuka got past one and a half kilometers deep, things began to fail. Cracks formed on the piping delivering coolant, the Eva diving suit crumpled in places, the screen showed a large crack as the suit’s faceplate cracked, and the strap holding the Evangelion’s knife melted through, leaving the weapon to sink into the depths of the earth.

And still further was Asuka lowered.

I squashed the need to fidget and clench my hands. Every now and then, a few of the technicians and operators would glance anxiously at me to gauge my reaction and seeing me calm would return to their duties reassured.

I had no idea why, I was at best a difficult-to-get-along-with misanthrope who, to their knowledge, fully intended to drop out of high school and fuck off to retirement at first opportunity; a very well-paid pilot with a chip on his shoulder and no command experience.

But for some reason, seeing me calm reassured them, so calm I would look.

Only having three quarters of a soul, surprisingly, helped. It was rather difficult to feel the full spectrum of human emotion at the moment.

As Asuka neared two kilometers in depth, the Angel was found. I listened as the professionals worked, wondering where Gendo was at the moment, that thought had me furrow my brow as Asuka successfully captured the pupating Angel and began extraction. My scowl was not lost on the technicians, who became anxious at my visible show of emotion.

I could see them pull up graphs, scans, and other information, searching for what of the current situation might have made me scowl.

I didn’t much recall the show, Prime Me had not watched it in nearly twenty years at the time he signed up with the Company. But certain narrative truths were omniuniversal.

This was about to go wrong, the question was, how?

A question that was immediately answered as the Angel hatched.

The following minutes were some of my most stressful since my time at the Trenches outside the Imperial Palace.

Rei threw her own prog knife into the magma so Asuka would not be forced to fight without a weapon, Asuka juked and jibed, dancing around an Angel who could swim through magma as a manta ray swam through water.

Once the fight devolved to a grapple, it became very difficult not to break my stoic façade.

Unfortunately, this Angel’s body could withstand immense pressure, the rinky-dink knife was useless.

I was forced to listen to Asuka struggle and cry out in pain as Unit 02 lost a leg, her frightened scream as the Angel opened its mouth and tried to swallow Unit 02’s head curdled the blood. She was like a child beating on the shell of a tortoise.

As Bottle Blonde and the eggheads worked their way to the same conclusion I had already reached, I burned with the need to be there and kill it, to do something, anything, to help. Yeah, Asuka got on my nerves, but she didn’t deserve to die, and while I was a psychopomp and could in time resurrect her, I’d need her body to do so, and if she died in the magma she’d be lost forever.

Unfortunately, it seemed like I was going to have to avenge Asuka once the Angel made its way out of the volcano.

Then, Rei showed why, even if she was physically just a particularly athletic human, mentally and spiritually she held a spark of divinity, making her fully deserving of her Tier 5 status. She spoke in her usual monotone. [Douse it with coolant. It's evolved to exist in a difficult environment, it might not be able to survive the opposite extreme in temperature.]

[Why didn’t I think of that!? It’s so obvious! Divert all coolant to line three!] Asuka demanded and cut one of the suit’s coolant lines.

She then deepthroated the Angel with it, force fed it liquid nitrogen, and stabbed it in the core, killing the damned thing.

I let out a small sigh, only then realizing I’d been holding my breath. Unfortunately, that relief was premature.

“The Angel’s death throes severed the coolant lines! She’s going to sink!” One of the techs local to me shouted. There were calls to halt the crane bringing her back up, but that’s when the feed from Unit 02 began showing a descent.

[Scheiße, so close.] Asuka said, sounding wistful. [Shinji, I don’t owe you anything anymore, you hear me? I don’t owe you a thing.]

I stepped forward to the console and picked up the radio receiver, my action going unquestioned by the eggheads around me. However, before I could say anything, there was a lurch on the screen and the descent halted. Unit 02 tilted its head up and met the snarling faceplate of Unit 01.

There was a complete and heavy silence in the Control Room, one I broke by chuckling. I thumbed the receiver. “I don’t know about that, but tell you what, you’re still holding a chunk of the Angel, bring me a piece and we’ll call your debt squared. Still, that was a fantastic delivery on your famous last words, very dramatic, ten out of ten.”

The people around me snickered, then chuckled, then fell into giggles and full belly laughs, the tension draining out of them.

[First Children, drop me, drop me right now.] Asuka demanded.

And that’s when NERV HQ lost power. M’Shen really wasted no time.

The Control Room descended into controlled chaos. One of the eggheads called out. “We’ve lost power! Backup circuits are not coming online!”

“That’s absurd!” The old man that was Gendo’s second in command shouted. “Which lines are still active!?”

“A total of one point eight percent! Only circuits past 2522 are functional!”

“Reroute all available power toward maintaining the Magi and Central Dogma! And someone get me Katsuragi on the radio!”

“Sir!” The egghead with the long hair said. “If we do that, we will lose life support to parts of the complex.”

“No matter, this is priority one! And where is my call to Katsuragi!?”

“Working on it, sir!”

Man, as much as I hated to admit it, NERV had some good people working for it. It really wasn’t their fault they were being duped by the Illuminati.

Fucking cults.

Spotting movement to my right, I turned and saw one of the eggheads. He was holding a Beretta M9, giving me a distressingly good look down the barrel. He shouted, “God is great!” and squeezed the trigger.