Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan Fiction ❯ Second Coming ❯ Home Opener ( Chapter 6 )

Chapter Six: Home Opener

 

Luckily, nervousness hadn't sapped away my memorization of the startup procedure. I got suited up, figured out how to release the entry plug and open it, got inside, closed it, and inserted it in the Eva in less than two minutes.

"Commence LCL fill," I murmured to myself, pressing buttons and throwing switches. I was trained to call out the procedures as I performed them, but I wondered how important it really was - was it like shouting out a weapon's name as you used it?

In a few more moments, I was no longer hunched over a control console in a slim cylindrical cockpit. I was lying face-down in a pool of cooling fluid, a large tent over my giant form.

San, are you with me? I asked the Eva. I got a sense of presence in response, which gave me more relief than I'd felt at any other time up to that point.

All right. Here goes nothing, I told myself (and perhaps 03 as well), and tried to stand up.

 

It was exactly as I'd described to the boys. Like standing up in a rowboat, I mean. Except the rowboat was 400 feet long and 65 feet in draft, and I was 200 feet or so tall myself.

Feeling proud just at the feat of standing up on such an unstable surface, I looked around at the multiple screens to try to locate my partner. There, a kilometer or more away to my left, I saw my giant, red twin already standing tall.

"Looks like you're both active," Misato said over an audio-only link. "Is everything okay?"

"I'm fine!" Asuka called out.

"Eva 03 status normal," I responded in turn.

"There's only one power coupling, and there are no sockets in New Yokosuka," Misato said. "Decide between the two of you which one uses the power source."

"Asuka has the higher sync ratio," I said. "She has a better chance of using it to her advantage."

"Good choice!" Asuka said, leaping from the ship she was on and 'hopscotching' to the Over The Rainbow.

"Is there any hindrance related to the water?" I asked, specifically meaning the so-called 'B-type equipment'.

"Just that it'll slow you down," Misato clarified. "We're almost in the harbor, which is 45 meters deep, so it's going to be around waist-deep for you. Just be careful not to fall out into the open sea."

"Got it," I replied, and, swallowing my apprehension, leapt off the Kestrel much as Asuka had taken leave of her own roost.

The display off to my lower right, in my peripheral vision, read 4:24.09 by the time I made it into the harbor. By that time, Gaghiel had taken out three more ships, and Asuka was hooked up to the power source on the OTR and ready to go.

"Good thinking, Fourth - you goaltend the harbor and I'll keep it from getting out to sea," Asuka declared.

"Uh, right," I said, as if it had been my plan all along, and I hadn't just been preoccupied with getting to 'safe ground'. "I'm ready."

"Here it comes!" Misato warned. "Watch out!"

The Angel jumped fully out of the water, reminding me somewhat like a giant manta ray in its shape and how it moved. It draped itself across most of the deck of the OTR, engulfing Nigouki as well.

Switch to gain mode, my training poked at my mind. Conserve battery power.

"Wups," I said aloud, and turned down the controls so that the power consumption was minimized. At least while I was standing still and watching things, I wouldn't be wasting as much juice.

"Scheiße!" Asuka hollered. "This thing is tough! Hey, Fourth - are you out there?"

"I'm here!" I responded.

The Angel either fell off or was propelled off the deck of the OTR, and Asuka stood back up. "I think the only way to take this thing out is to get to it from the inside!"

"R-right," I said, stammering, a little concerned about what that would mean, since there were no scuttled destroyers for us to sacrifice.

"That means one of us has to go down its throat, Fourth," Asuka clarified.

"I was afraid you'd say that," I moaned.

The beast was swimming towards the OTR again. Asuka said, "Look, I can do it, but it has to be held down for a minute!"

"Okay," I said. "How do you want me to get out there?"

"How did you get in there, baka?!" she shouted back at me.

"Right," I said, looking for a ship or three to use as platforms. Turning the power level up to full gain, I said, "All ships please maintain current formation!" and leapt forward once more.

This is like MXC, I mused as I managed to land on the destroyer that was first in my path. Except the stakes are much higher.

I made it to the second ship - an AEGIS launch, on which I accidentally cleaned off the aft missile launcher - hoping they wouldn't mark that against my paycheck. Asuka was kicking and punching at Gaghiel, who had leapt up onto the deck of the OTR once more.

"Anytime today, Fourth!"

"Coming!" I replied, taking the third of four leaps. The supply ship never knew what hit it, the entire deck submerging for a moment as I landed, then again as I propelled myself one last time into the air, intent on making a flying tackle on the Angel.

It writhed around in those few seconds, which unfolded in slow motion, to my mind's eye. Its 'tail' slapped Asuka to the side, almost knocking her off the deck into the depths, as the mouth with rows of teeth turned and yawned open to face me.

"Shiiit!" I shrieked as I hurtled unstoppably towards the Angel.

The impact was bone-crushing, bladder-jarring, and any other descriptors you wish to apply to it. Couple that with the fact that being synchronized with the Eva meant I felt what she felt, and I all but passed out.

"Get it, Fourth!" Asuka yelled, tackling the beast as I'd intended to. Out of the corner of my eye, on the far end of the ship, I noticed a VTOL jet quickly rise up on an elevator and depart.

That should make this easier, I said, bidding farewell to Mr. Kaji. I turned my attention back to the task at hand, and found myself staring down the maw of the Angel, with a core where its uvula (the little thing that hangs down in the back of your throat, doncha know) should have been.

The Angel was thrashing and flailing around, making it hard for me to focus on the core, but being the only point of color in an otherwise black void, it wasn't too difficult to keep track of.

"Use your prog knife, Jill!" Misato called out. "Destroy it!"

I activated the progressive knife, reaching up with some difficulty (since I was essentially inside the Angel's mouth) to pull it from its holster. Extending the blade, I watched through the screens as it began to glow and vibrate, then reached forward to plunge it into the core.

Suddenly I felt a short fall and a jarring thud, and water started pouring into the Angel's mouth. We must've fallen off the carrier! I realized.

"Jill, the knife won't work if it gets submerged," Misato said hurriedly. "Do it now!"

"Hurry up, Fourth!!" Asuka hollered.

I threw my arm forward, trying to stab the core dead-center with the knife, but it glanced off the core's surface just as the water completely filled the Angel's mouth. The knife fizzled and sparked in the water, and the glow dissipated.

"Knife unusable!" I declared, tossing it aside. "Switching to Plan B!"

"What the heck is Plan B?!" Asuka shouted.

I reached forward with both the Eva's hands and grabbed hold of the core, then squeezed. Ever tried to crush a marble with your bare hands? That's about as much luck as I was having.

It didn't take long for the Angel to react to what I was trying to do - mainly by clamping down with its jaws.. on my Eva's thighs.

"Ow! Fuck!" I bellowed, feeling the burning sensation ripple up and down my legs. I didn't let go of the core, though, and it almost felt like I was having a little bit of luck; my hands started to inch closer together, as if the core was starting to give.

"You've got to be almost out of time, Jill!" Misato yelled. I remembered the fact that I was on batteries at that very second, and glanced over to see that the timer read 0:34.27. "Dammit," I cursed.

"Whatever you're doing, do it quick!" Asuka demanded.

"Shut up! I'm trying!" I shot back, still trying to grind the core between my Eva's hands. Little by little it felt like it was working, but I didn't know if I would be able to get it done in half-a-minute--

--and suddenly it pulverized, shattering and filling the water in the creature's mouth with what looked like millions of little glass shards. The Angel seized, then went limp, even the death grip its jaws had on me relaxed.

The ordeal wasn't over. I had less than 15 seconds left before the Eva ran down to zero, and then I'd be stuck until we could effect a recovery mission. I didn't even know if New Yokosuka had the right equipment to do that - and worse yet, what if I fell to the sea floor with the Angel's corpse? What kind of pressures could an Eva take?

While I was trying to wriggle free of the Angel's maw, the display first went red at the 10-second mark, then just as suddenly, went to its yellowish-orange color again, with 8:88.88 on the screen. The 'EXTERNAL' legend flickered on and remained lit.

What's going on? I wondered. Suddenly I started withdrawing quickly from the Angel's mouth - or, more precisely, as I figured out a few seconds later, the Angel was falling away from me, as it headed into the depths. I was tethered to the ship by the umbilical cable, which had been ejected from the back of Eva 02 and locked into the socket on the back of my Eva's body, at the last moment.

"Hurry up and get back up here before I run out, Fourth," Asuka said, with her Eva crouched on the carrier deck, braced to hold me by the umbilical cable.

I turned around and thanked her as I tried to make the Eva perform swimming motions to rise the several hundred feet to the surface. Asuka just said, "No problem. We're a team, right? Like Misato said."

While her sentiments seemed genuine, something in Asuka's voice led me to believe she was miffed that I'd been the one to defeat the Angel and not her.

Wait.. holy shit, you just defeated an Angel, Jill, I realized with a start. I sat there in the entry plug, looking at the controls and the screens, replaying the events in my mind. I had fought an Angel, and won. I wasn't even supposed to be there. Gaghiel was supposed to attack much earlier, and Asuka and Shinji were supposed to take it out together in 02, with the help of the UN Navy. Instead, Asuka and I had teamed up to vanquish it, and we did, through no small part by my actions.

Way to go! I cheered myself, and partly directed the same towards Sangouki as well. In my adrenaline-filled state, I was too hyped up to be able to understand the multitude of sensations and feedback impulses I was receiving from the Eva. Accomplishment was one, and I thought I could detect pride too.. but as I say, it was hard to focus on them all at that point.

I rolled the Eva back onto the flight deck, which was dented and damaged all over its surface, both by Asuka's and my fight with Gaghiel, and from the umbilical thrashing around as it was dragged about by either of us. To minimize my effect on the ship's center of gravity, I sat 03 down on the fantail, her legs draped over the edge into the wake of the ship, like a child playing off the family speedboat.

It didn't take long to get to the harbor after that. I'll spare you the details of how we idled the Evas at max conserve in the interim, trading off the power connection like two scuba divers buddy-breathing from the same air tank. Ultimately, the ship was anchored in the harbor, and the two of us waded to shore and climbed onto the docks.

Okay, do this carefully, I told myself as I set the Eva into a crouch. Think about what you need to do here and do it right.

'It' was, of course, positioning the Eva so that the ejected entry plug wouldn't be 30 meters aboveground (or worse) when it came time for me to disembark. Getting into what I figured was a suitable position - for the above reason and in terms of how 'dignified' the Eva would appear once shut down (hey, I have pride too) - I cut the power and issued the commands to start the disembarking process.

After having purged myself of the LCL and slowly climbing down San's shoulder and arm, I looked across the way to see that Asuka had left 02 standing and was using a container ship crane as a makeshift gantry. I guess that would have been easier, I realized, smiling to myself as I hopped the last ten or so feet.

It didn't take long for both of us to meet up and make our way over to where the others were deboarding the OTR. On the way over, I complimented Asuka on her skill and how she'd fought the Angel.

"Thanks," she said. "You didn't do too badly yourself!"

The pat on the back - verbal and physical - that I received there felt odd, considering how my mind was still expecting Asuka to behave. "You sure you're okay with the fact I finished it off?" I asked.

"Pfft," Asuka scoffed. "I'll have plenty of chances to show you up in the future, Fourth, I'm sure."

"Okay then," I said sarcastically, with a grin. "Just so I'm sure you won't be horribly scarred over this incident."

Asuka laughed along with me, and then stopped, nudging me as we walked along. "Look out. Here come the stooges - wanna bet they stare at us in our suits?"

"Erf," I said, trying not to blush. "No bet."

"That was incredible!" Kensuke exclaimed as he ran towards us both. "I got almost all of it on video!"

"Great," I replied. "I'll have to see it sometime, considering I spent most of it looking into an Angel's gut."

"I don't know if you want to, Fourth," Asuka quipped. "If his video is anything like my angle, all you get to see is a pair of legs whipping about!--" She flailed her arms back and forth, evidently mimicking my Eva's legs as they thrashed in the Angel's toothy grip.

"Ow, don't remind me," I complained, the throbbing sensation the synchronization with the Eva provided coming back to my mind in a flash. I reached down to rub the back of my legs a little, as if that would make the memory go away.

Toji arrived at that moment, trailed shortly by Shinji, and both saw Asuka with her arms in the air, and me half-crouched over, hands behind my butt rubbing back and forth.

"Um," I understated.

"Should I even ask?" Toji queried.

"Ach! Shut up, stooge!" Asuka bit out, bringing her arms down to fold them across her chest. "We were.. discussing tactics. Yes! Reviewing our performance, and.. and.."

"Critiquing," I offered, standing up straight.

"Right! Good one, Fourth! Critiquing our battle prowess. It's all part of being an Eva pilot. Right, Ikari?"

"Uhm.." Shinji trailed off. "If you say so," he finally said with a shrug.

"I hope you didn't mind sitting this one out, Shinji," I told him.

"I'm sure he didn't mind," Asuka cut in. "After all, it's only fair that Misato and the stooges get to see a quality performance once in a while."

Aha, now there's the Asuka we all know and love. I'd been worried, I kept to myself. Shinji, to his credit, acknowledged that Asuka and I had done a good job, but said nothing more after that.

"Ladies, that was wonderful!" Misato said as she arrived. "Efficient and quite a good job working as a team."

"You'd expect anything less?" Asuka smirked.

"Well, I'm a little disappointed that we lost a prog knife," Misato said, looking at me. "But perhaps it can be recovered when the team comes to inspect the Angel's remains."

"Eeep," I gasped, only then remembering the fact that I'd tossed the progressive knife aside while trapped within the Angel's mouth. It was probably on the bottom of the sea outside the harbor now, if not still inside the Angel's digestive tract. "Uh.. sorry?"

"It's okay," Misato said, as Asuka began some ribbing that would last well into our trip 'back' to Tokyo-3.