The Curious Case of Rei Ikari

[Jackie]

Chapter 29:
Finest Hour​

My hands were shaking as I pulled the goggles down over my eyes. I toggled the fuel pumps on and checked the panel, full fuel in all tanks. I would be a little heavy, but that meant at least an hour and change of fuel, that'd do.

Power on, fuel on, magnetos on, primer on. I rolled the prop advance to full and pushed the throttles to the lower quarter and set the mixture to full rich. Radiators full open. The guard was running for me now, I could see him out of the canopy, he'd left Kensuke alone.

If he wanted me out, I'd make him shoot me.

I pushed the started for the left engine and listened as it chugged through. Oil pressure came up, one, two, three, four, five, six blades past, the engine caught. I leaned on the wheel brakes and throttled the engine up to half and then back down again, then set the mixture to auto-rich.

He stopped and threw his arms up in confusion, he was probably smart enough not to approach a spinning propeller. Hopefully he was smart enough not to try stopping me.

I hit the starter for the right engine and watched through six, seven, eight blades, before the engine caught. I dropped the mixture into auto-rich and throttled both engines up and let off the wheel brakes.

I started to roll immediately, and there wasn't time to waste. I steered the nose towards a clear patch of the apron and pushed both throttles up to the wire. The engines roared up to full military power and the craft lurched forward. I felt each crack in the pavement through the tires as I lumbered forward.

As always there had never been a choice. Not in the arctic, not over the pacific. Not with my father, nor Asuka. Since the very first day I set foot inside Nerv, there was never a choice. I would fight, because I had to fight, because I was a person who could fight. Even if somebody else could do it, I couldn't ask them to do it alone.

I reached down and powered on the gyro-stabalized gun-sight. The cross-hair lit up and floated in front of me inside of the mechanism. It had been a live fire demonstration, right? I could only hope that this was one of the craft that they'd loaded with ammo.

If they hadn't, I could still ram.

I eased the yoke back and the nose pitched up, with a few dozen meters of apron left in front of me I felt the mains pick up off the ground and I pulled the lever to retract the gear. In the air again, in a plane that was older than my father, from a war fought against my homeland.

And I was going to use it to fight a war against my homeland, to protect the ones that mattered to me… or I was going to die trying.

I pulled the radio set over my head and finally strapped myself into the seat, now that I had the time to. They wouldn't be able to catch me now. I looked down at the radio panel. A set this old wouldn't pick up encrypted comms, wouldn't be able to broadcast on those frequencies either. I could run on guard, or military guard, but that would be in the clear.

Unless…

I rolled to a frequency and keyed the mic, "This is November Charlie One One Three, to Robert Dean Stethem. I feel like I'm on a knife's edge. Lot of helicopter traffic up here. They're making it hard to see the Irises, what's going on?"

It was in code. It was a shitty code, but it was supposed to be, and I couldn't think of anything better. If the right people were listening, it would get their attention.

I didn't have radar, gps, navigation of any kind. I had to do this the old fashioned way, with my eyes. I rolled into a shallow turn towards the city center and kept my altitude low. This plane really shined in energy fighting but I couldn't afford to climb and make myself a visible target.

Eighty years out of date, but she still had a few tricks left, I was sure.

I eased the yoke forward and dropped altitude until I was nearly scraping the treetops. For what good it might do, every little bit that made me stand out less helped. The radio remained silent. If they heard me, if they put together what I said, they weren't responding.

My airspeed was approaching four hundred fifty, rather fast for a prop fighter. Fast even for a P-38, I had to wonder if this wasn't a K model instead of the L it appears to be. At this kind of speed it wouldn't take long either way.

And maybe I'd be lucky, and my suspicions would be invalid, it would be something else, and I was overreacting.

But Rose didn't show up when things were okay. No, she was the harbinger of sorrow. The anti-angel defense batteries lurched into the air ahead of me, propelled out of the ground on their high speed tracks.

Ahead of my flight path the ground pulled apart and an Evangelion launch track slid up into the air. Still no Angel siren. Unit Two slid up into my view, directly in front of me, a moment later. I felt my stomach drop into my feet as I stepped hard into the left rudder and wrenched the yoke over to avoid flying directly into the behemoth.

I keyed my mic back up as I leveled back out, "November Charlie One One Three to Evangelion Unit Two, what the hell is going on?"

As often as we'd played this game, if they weren't listening on VHF yet, I was going to punch someone.

"You know, you're a lot like your mother, Ikari. The military is attacking. They're trying to take over, they're trying to kill Asuka." The reply came back quickly, and in English. I recognized the voice as Mari's. It was too much to hope that Asuka would be back on her feet so quickly. "Where are you transmitting from?"

"I'm in the P-38. If we're under attack I'm not running away. Find me a place to set down and I'll join you in Unit One." I answered back. Cat was out of the bag now, right? No more use for misdirection.

"No joy Ikari, surface access lines are cut. They're trying to slow the military down, but they'll probably blow the city if they can't get in." Mari answered back as Unit Two dropped down and then lunged into a sprint towards the city center.

"Like hell!" I yelled back and rolled the frequency over to military guard.

I punched the throttle through the wire and tapped the trigger. A short burst of pure tracer erupted from the fifty cals in the nose. She had teeth. Good to know.

I keyed up, "This is Rei Ikari to anyone listening. Toyko-3 is under attack by the Japanese military. I plan to fight them with every last breath in my body. I'm fighting to save the my friends, my family, and the only home I have left. I've fought to save this world, and I haven't always done the right thing… but I've tried.

"Captain Clark, if you're listening, after what I kept from you, you don't have any obligation to me, not anymore… but if you're willing, if you've got it in your heart, I could use some help to save my friends."

My throat felt tight, the tears were flowing. Even after what I'd done, I could still find it in myself to be a burden yet again on the people who'd helped me so many times? I--

"Ikari, this is Kitty Hawk Actual. I don't kill kids and I don't abide those who do. If we burn, we're burning together. Help is on the way."

I felt the hint of a grin pulling at the corner of my mouth. Maybe my account still had enough left in it to cash a few checks against. "Roger that Kitty Hawk. Try not to shoot down the P-38 I'm driving. Long story, if I survive I'll tell you about it. Ikari out."

May as well have painted a target on my wing, but if they were shooting at me, then I knew where to shoot back. I rolled in and dove for the surface, I had all the airspeed I could want with the engines running wide open. They were good for five minutes of war emergency power, and after that I'd probably be dead.

But then I had a big red friend who was drawing more attention than I was. I saw a group of Apaches hovering in a semi circle around Mari, firing rockets at her. They were going for the cable. Not today.

They were even nice enough to line up for me. The P-38 was ready for this. She'd been resting easy since the end of the war, but she knew what to do. She had a warriors spirit.

I chopped the throttle back to half on both engines and stepped hard into the rudder to bring the cross-hair where I wanted it. I had limited ammo, had to make it count. I'd have been surprised if it was anything but full tracer belts, and I had no idea how much they loaded, but it felt pretty heavy.

The cross-hair dropped over the first helicopter and I squeezed the firing stud for the hispano and was greeted with the thumping of the twenty millimeter auto-cannon pouring out its lethal payload. Bright red tracers lanced through the side of the lead Apache, and I kept stepping into the rudder and pulling on the yoke to rake my fire across the whole group.

The lead chopper hung in the air for a moment and then dropped like a stone as the engines failed. Helicopters were fragile things. The remaining four didn't fare much better, they weren't going to stick to the fight at the very least.

Best to be sure though.

I dropped the nose again and slammed my finger down on the firing stud for the brownings and fired a torrent of bright red fifty caliber tracers towards the helicopters and raked my fire through the group again before powering the throttle back into WEP and extending out.

There were going to be more Apaches than there were bullets in my machine guns, but I was piloting a guided missile, if I wanted to think of it like that. If I lived that long. I was one manpad away from being a flaming ball of wreckage.

Ground troops were moving into the city ahead and below me. This kind of thing was crazy, moving in ground troops against an evangelion made about as much sense as a soup sandwich, but then so did fighting them with a P-38.

Let today be a day of anachronisms. I pushed the stick forward and lined the reticule up on the road in front of me and pressed down the firing stud for the brownings and raked fire up along the convoy as I pushed through into the city proper.

The buildings would give me some cover from air to air missiles, though the flying would be nerve wracking as hell. The pure tracer belts, though, would scare the hell out of anyone I fired them at, even if they were less effective.

My heart was pounding in my chest, blood rushing into my ears. I was killing men now, men who were doing the wrong thing for the right reasons, my own countrymen. They were dying because of choices I made, and then I had to be the one to pull the trigger.

I blinked the tears out of my eyes. It didn't matter, fuck them. I didn't know them. I knew Ayanami, Asuka, Misato, Father, even Mari. I knew Akagi and Touji and Hikari. I'd pick any of them over every one of these guys every single time.

I saw a plume of smoke up ahead and squinted. A missile launch from a Japanese F-2A headed right for me. I had about six or eight seconds to appreciate how fucked I was. A P-38 was never going to outrun or out turn a modern missile. I keyed my mic up and stared straight ahead, "Misato, I'm sorry. I love you."

Four. Three. Two.

Oblivion take me.

A dark grey shape pulled head of me, pulling so many G's that the wings were shaking as it trailed vapor off the wingtips. I hauled back hard on the yoke right as the missile drilled through the midsection of the jet and exploded, by what felt like only inches I cleared the debris cloud and pulled a high G turn away from the Japanese jets.

"What the fuck?" I yelled to nobody in particular as I looked up and around through the canopy to figure out what the hell just happened. Three Raptors rocketed past overhead, followed by a much, much greater number of Super Hornets.

I keyed the mic as I pushed for the deck, to bury myself between the buildings to screw up their radar locks. "Who was that? Who just took a missile for me?"

"Cylon one one is down. Cylon one one is down. Cylon One Three, disengage. We'll avenge this loss."

The tears flowed again and I clenched the microphone switch, "If it's not wearing the stars and stripes, it dies. We have no other friends today."

So this was Rose's final 'fuck you' then? Would she be pleased to know she got her own brother killed? How would she feel when she found out?

I wanted to see her face, I wanted to see her justify it.

My fuel gauge was dropping for the left wing fuel tank. I looked over, I could see a thin trail. I must have taken a small arms hit, or maybe debris from the explosion. It didn't matter, I had more fuel than I'd need.

I powered back through the road I'd strafed before and fired another burst into the soldiers as I extended out towards Unit Two. She had a couple high-tech looking jet powered VTOL craft giving her trouble.

A step backwards and a heel kick later, both of the craft had exploded into shrapnel.

Maybe she didn't need as much help as I thought. If I could get to my Evangelion I could make them all regret this.

I looked back wards the city as a large red shape flew over top of me and into a high rise. Unit Two?

My eyes were drawn back from the direction the Evangelion had come from, and I was faced with the sudden, large, form of an Angel. One with two large, foil shaped arms. So. It was going to be that kind of a day.

I slammed the throttles to the stops and held onto the yoke for dear life, and forced the plane into a dive. I needed airspeed, airspeed was distance, distance was life. Life was victory.

A flash of movement to my left told me that Unit Two had launched itself back into the air, moments before a blast from the Angel leveled the building that the Eva had previously been leaning against.

This was not a fight she could win alone.

The next blast shook the plane and threatened to knock me from the sky, and with is the city center disappeared completely. The Angel had punched the armor completely in a single shot, and had a direct line to central dogma. Not good.

But then, that hole worked for everyone, didn't it?

I pulled back on the yoke and turned my airspeed into an Immelmann turn back towards the city, or would have had I not held the turn and turned it into a Split-S maneuver that took me inside of the now torn-open geofront.

I chopped the throttle to idle and dropped the landing gear and flaps. I need to shed airspeed and get on the ground quickly. Nothing except getting to the Evangelion mattered at this point. The P-38 couldn't do what I needed it to do, not for this.

Nobody else was going to die today. Not after Becket. I couldn't allow anyone else I cared about to die.

I let the craft drop in a lateral slip to shed altitude and add drag as I neared the large flat patch of ground that I'd planned to set down on, it would be near enough an access door to serve my purposes, if I could make it in time.

I was coming in too fast, in lieu of airbrakes I fired several long bursts from the machine guns and cannon, I would be needing neither in a few moments. The mains set down on the grass with a rough thud and I leaned hard into the wheel brakes while I cut fuel to the engines.

The airplane bounced and shuddered on the rough ground, but it held together. It was made for this, and it had seen worse. As I slowed I stepped into the left rudder to bring me closer to the pyramid. The closer I could get, the shorter the trip I'd have to take.

I cut the power when the wheels finally stopped turning and I popped the canopy open. I crawled out onto the wing on shaky legs, I could smell the gasoline. I was definitely leaking. But she'd done her job.

The Angel dropped into the hole above me and the ground started to shake. I found myself frozen in terror. Either I'd die in the next few seconds or I wouldn't, but there wasn't a damn thing I could do to influence the outcome.

And then Unit Three jumped out of the lake.

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 30:
One Minute to Midnight​

The familiar hallways were longer than I remembered, the urgency and fear with which I ran ensured that. I could be too late; I could meet a firing squad around every corner. More people I cared about could die while I tried desperately to find the speed I needed to get where I needed to go.

If I was lucky the soldiers hadn't made it down this far. If I was unlucky I, at least, wouldn't have to live to see the end of the world. I shook my head and pushed harder, dug deeper for the energy and stamina I needed to stop anyone else from dying today.

The deeper I got into the base, the stronger the smell of blood and burnt powder got, and I knew that I may already be too late. Even with what was going on outside, they were still fighting in here? Stupid. So stupid, the world would end for the ramblings of a girl that somehow people believed.

Or maybe she'd forced someone's hand, and they had to move early.

The ground shook violently and I nearly lost my footing, had to brace myself against the wall before I could continue running. I didn't even feel winded, even as my heart pounded in my chest with a force I'd never felt before.

Ten meters, five, three, I skid to a halt in front of the cage door and smacked my wrist against it. The electronic tag in my plugsuit triggered the lock and the door slid open. An instant later a pair of hands dragged me inside and I heard the door slide shut behind me.

"What are you doing here?" I heard the voice, flat, but familiar. The tone was accusational, hurt.

I felt the tears rising already.

"Misato? You know why I'm here." I answered as calmly as I could. I felt myself shaking, in fear, rage, pain. What would happen now?

"You lied to me. You lied and you ran away. You kept this from me!" She yelled, her hand gripped my shoulder hard. I couldn't tell if her other was going to hit me or hold me.

"Of course I kept it from you!" I yelled with sudden fire, my true feelings, my motivations, they were pure, right? "Look what's happened! Look at all this fighting, all this killing! This is why I didn't say anything! As bad as things were, the way I remembered, they weren't this bad, not this soon! This is what unkept secrets can cause!"

Her grip tightened, she stared with hard eyes. "We could have fixed this, we could have made it better if you'd told me sooner, we could have kept this from happening!"

I jerked away from her, I felt my blood boiling. This fight had been coming. "Of course we couldn't have! At least this I knew would work! I'm not the only one who kept secrets Misato! The only difference between you and me is that I already knew what you weren't telling me!"

She deflated slightly, her guilty eyes looked to the side, like she'd been struck and couldn't stand to see me. "She told me that, with the rest of it."

"Then you should understand! You know why you didn't tell me what you didn't tell me! I had a good reason, this attack should tell you--"

She cut me off with a hard look, "Why did you come back?"

"You heard my message if you were listening. I came back to repent for my sins." I explained. I felt the fire leaving me, leaving behind the hurt, the pain. The duty.

"And If I won't let you? If, after all this, I don't trust you? What then?" She accused. Her composure seemed to be slipping, whether she'd cry or kill me I didn't know.

And I didn't care. If I can't be yours, I don't need to live in this world.

"Shoot me in the head."

"What?!" She almost screamed, she recoiled as if struck.

I looked up at her, tears at the corners of my eyes, but my resolve was strong. "I said shoot me! If after everything we've been through, every battle fought, every victory earned in blood and flesh! If after all of that, the time we spent together, everything we shared. I've faced certain doom today and watched one of my only friends sacrifice his own life to save mine, I won't see it happen again!

"I was ready to die then, you heard what I said. I meant every word I said to you. But, if you can't trust me to do the right thing now, to do what I can to stop the people I love from dying, if you think I'm going to do the wrong thing… I want you to put a bullet between my eyes, before another person I love ends up standing in front of a bullet meant for me."

"Unit two is down! Unit three is taking damage!"

Her head jerked up to the sound from the loudspeaker and she looked back to me. I'd never seen her look so sad, so defeated. "I can't shoot you, Rei."

"Then let me do what only I can do. Let me fight and die for the only thing in this world that's really worth it."

I flinched when she reached out to my face suddenly, as if to slap it, but the strike never came. I opened my eyes and she ran her finger along my cheek, wiping the tears away. Her lip curled up into something almost a smile. What I'd have given to see that reach her eyes.

"Unit One was already prepared. You can go. I'll be here when you get back." She explained softly. Her tears flowed faster now.

I blinked hard and grabbed her hand, maybe for the last time. "Everything I did, every secret I kept. It was because I love you."

"I know."

xxx​

Once again, I felt the familiar weight of the nerve connectors set against my head, in my white mop of hair. My hands wrapped firmly around the warm and familiar control yokes. The weight of the armor plating dropped onto my shoulders like a truck, it was a rush job and it showed.


The panels flashed and lit up with the external view of the cage. In the moment it took me to catch my bearings, I saw Unit Zero launch up a catapult a few rows to my right. Ayanami. I wouldn't let her do this alone, wouldn't let her lose, wouldn't let her get hurt.

Nobody was ever getting hurt again, nobody but me.

"Unit Three is critically damaged, pilot status unknown."

Asuka. It had to be.

I slapped my fingers down on the MFD and over-rode the catapult. I was out of time, ready or not, here I come. "Unit One is launching now!" I yelled as the G-forces slammed me down into the control saddle.

I kept screaming as the catapult rocketed upward. The sync wasn't finished, but it was getting there, sensation in my fingers, toes, thighs, biceps. Nearly complete, I'd be ready. I hadn't far to go.

I slammed into the top of the launch rails at the same instant as a flash brighter than a hundred suns blinded me. I put my hand up instinctively to shield my eyes and Unit One mirrored my movement. I could make out the burnt form of Unit Zero as the light faded and the smoke started to clear.

She'd hit it with an N2 mine. That was never going to work. She was disabled, I could see that, either from thermal shock or raw damage, she couldn't move. The Angel started to change started to shift.

Started to form a mouth.

"Ayanami!" I screamed into the radio as I pulled and tore at the launch cradle. I was too far, too slow, the moments held in the launch restraints would make all the difference. The Angel lurched upward, ready for the kill. My left foot made it to the soft dirt floor of the geofront.

"I have to do everything, don't I?"

Asuka.

Time seemed to slip into slow motion as my right foot struck down. The Angel descended, Unit Zero stood as a mute statue, a monument to my own failure.

I took another step, the Angel fell further. A dark shape rose from the ground in a frantic lunging sprint. Blood poured from multiple wounds, one arm was missing, the other stripped of its armor, but in the moment it moved with a fluid and grace that I had only ever seen once before.

Unit Three's surviving shoulder smashed against the inert form of Zero and knocked it clear of the Angel's deadly strike.

For a moment, I allowed myself to have hope. The Angel's attack completed, and Unit Three disappeared into the Angel's gaping maw. A sickening crunch pierced the air, and I knew I truly had failed.

Asuka was more like me than I would have thought.

"No!" I screamed as I dropped down and pushed harder, left, right, left, right, left, right, jump! I launched into the air and crashed down hard on the Angel's chest, tearing through the AT field in a single strike.

My blood was on fire I felt my arm burning, my chest pounding. The deep feelings were coming out, the primal, reptilian urges. My left hand hit, my right. Over and over, drawing blood and splintering bone, shredding the carapace of the creature, cracking its mask.

The form under me changed into that of a girl, instead of the somewhat ribbon-like form it had taken before, the shoulders of the Angel remained, as did the mask. This didn't dissuade me from my task.

A surprised blast from the Angel's face knocked me off of it and I landed on my feet ready to launch myself back into the fight. My armor felt heavier for a moment, and then nothing. The plug went dark and the power alarm flashed. I'd run out of battery power. I'd never plugged in, in my haste.

I felt the plug lurch, I knew from the feeling that I and the Evangelion were airborne, and a moment later, we'd hit the ground. I was aware, dimly, that I was being struck repeadly.

"No."

The plug shook, I felt that burning in my arm again, in my chest, in my heart. I felt the tears falling from my eyes and dissolving in the LCL.

No.

I felt it deep, deep down in that primal place in my soul, full of hate, and rage, and pain. The agony of failure, of defeat. The loss and emptiness that I'd felt, before, that Rei Ikari before the one I was now, the one before I was the sum of two wholes. The one before my life had been completed, if for only a time.

No!

I felt the burn spreading throughout my whole body, that deep primal instinct overriding all else. I knew what was happening to my body, I welcomed it. The hate and the rage boiled over, the pain strengthened me, I would take all of it, now and forever, if I could save them all.

And everything else be damned.

I felt my AT field manifesting, I gripped the control yokes so tight I thought they'd break. I could smell ozone and I knew it was because of me, I knew what I'd become. What I'd had to become, what I needed to become. Only Ayanami would understand.

And Asuka. Asuka. "Asuka..."

I forced the controls forward to their limit as the view screens slowly crackled back to life.

"I'm… taking… her… back!"

My AT field flashed into existence in front of me, blocked the Angel's next attack outright. My blood was rushing in my ears, pumping hard through my veins. I'd never felt more alive, more powerful, more in tune.

I could feel every part of my Evangelion as if it was my own body. The true power of the Evangelion was this, this feeling, this being. I lurched back to my feet and purposefully walked towards the Angel. I knew in my heart, instinctively, what I had to do, what I would do.

The Angel blasted me with its energy beams, and by reflex I returned the favor, cleanly severing one of the ribbon foils it had been using to attack me. My whole body tingled with fire and I reveled in it.

I could feel the Angel in front of me, even without seeing it. Feel it's strength, it's fear. I could feel--

Asuka?

Asuka!

I gripped the Angel's bone mask with my left hand and twisted hard, snapping the neck before my right hand pressed against the blood red core. I could feel it, I could feel her, inside, somehow. I was going to take her back, no matter what.

Spoiler

I forced my hand inside the core, and it accepted me. I could feel the AT fields aligning, no, merging. In front of me, at the end of the entry plug, it was as though a window was opening as the merger deepened. Sensation fell away to feeling and I climbed out of the saddle to move forward.

I could see her, feel her in front of me.

I wouldn't lose her, not this time, never again. I wouldn't lose anyone, ever again!

"Asuka!" I yelled as I pressed my hands against the barrier I'd met, the last bit of the Angel's AT field that it could use to defend itself against me.

She looked up at me, she looked broken, wounded. Her eye glowed pink, the other still cool blue. "You can't save me."

I dug deep into that primal part at the bottom of my soul and forced my hands, my face, my upper body through that barrier all at once and reached out for her, even though I felt like I was on fire, like my skin was peeling away.

It didn't matter, I'd tear it all off, if I could save her.

"The hell I can't! Take my hand! Take it!" I screamed as I reached down. The heat was intense, the Angel was trying to kill me by force of will, but I wouldn't have it!

She blinked and reached up, almost enough, a few more inches, a few more… My desperation drove me and I forced myself down the last few inches and grabbed her hand as tight as I could and pulled with every muscle fiber in my body.

With a mighty heave I pulled her, and myself back into my entry plug and against the control saddle. Most of my plugsuit had burned away. I was peripherally aware that my arms now matched, and my scars were gone.

But Asuka was safe, she was in front of me, here, and alive. All of my failures, everything up until now, the hurt and heartache, made worth it by this success, somehow. I put my arms around her in a tight hug. "I couldn't leave you behind. Nobody else I care about dies today. You don't get to trade your life for anyone elses."

I felt a strange feeling inside me, a sudden fatigue, sleepiness. I leaned back against the control saddle as my eyes started forcing themselves closed. "I guess… I overdid it..."

The last thing I saw before the darkness took me was the sky, changing from red to blue.

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 31:
Against the Dying Light
"Do not go gentle into that good night."​

My eyes opened to bright white light and nothing. A void without shape, without form. Without gravity or sound or sensation or direction. I knew what had happened in the time, in the world, before, but trying to remember it was like trying to remember a dream from long ago, like trying to grab fog or catch the wind.

The first sensation to return to me was one of an overwhelming warmth, of a comfort. I felt a sensation of tugging, urging me into a direction and into the distance, and I felt myself following it. Pulled along on a thread of hope and love towards whatever it was I was meant to find in this empty place.

The sense of time and form returned to me, I felt my legs under me, walking across the hard white floor, left and right, my bare feet on the warm for what felt like minutes, or maybe decades. I felt the heart beating in my chest, the breath in my lungs.

The thread pulled me harder and my feet pounded the ground as I fell into a run. I felt as though I was running for my life but I wasn't afraid, I was relieved. A smile fell onto my lips and wouldn't go away, and I didn't want it to.

I saw a mop of brown hair in the distance and I ran harder, I wasn't alone. I'd never be alone, I was safe now, loved, wanted. The hair got closer, its owner resolved into form. A woman, something about her…

I was close, feet or miles, I couldn't tell and it didn't matter. I saw her turning towards me, she was familiar, warm, a memory like a faded photograph and yet…

I reached out for her, and she reached out for me. Our fingers touched and my eyes opened wide. "Mother?"

The sound didn't come from my mouth, and I didn't hear it with my ears. It was a question that echoed through the void and was answered by her soul. I knew the answer in the instant the question had been asked, and I felt that thread of love and warmth pull tighter than it ever had, felt my heart race.

"-elp!"

I flinched, and she looked behind me and frowned. I couldn't look away from her, I needed to burn her face into my memory for all time. I'd finally found her, found my mother, I couldn't--

"I need help!"

I twitched and almost looked over my shoulder. My mother leaned down and kissed my forehead. I would stay here forever in this void with her if--

"Damnit Rei, now would be a good time for some help!"

Rei was my name. Rei Ikari. Had I forgotten? I finally turned my head and saw in the distance a hole, a window, a portal. I saw Asuka, the girl who I'd saved. She was asking for my help. She was in trouble, she was fighting for her life!

I felt the fire in my blood, felt my muscles tense and my head clearing of fog. I had a duty, didn't I? I had a responsibility… didn't I? I had to do the things that I could do, on behalf of the people who couldn't.

I turned back to my mother with fear and purpose, anxiety and dedication. Would she understand? Could I bear to leave so soon?

She looked to me with a smile and nodded, the unspoken 'I will always be with you' echoed in my soul and I knew that it would be okay. This place, I may never find my way here again, but somehow I knew that someday she might find her way back to me.

But I had somebody else to find my way back to.

Need gave way to action and my eyes opened, really opened, for the first time in I didn't know how long. Full sensation returned and I felt the warmth of the LCL against my skin, felt the control yokes in my hands, felt the fire in my blood.

"Rei!"

The voice reverberated through the entry plug and I knew the owner. Asuka! Once more into the fire, once more into the breach. I closed my eyes and felt the Evangelion, felt the straps and bindings restraining me into position as if I was crucified.

It was irrelevant, duty and need mattered more than any number of bindings that could be placed against me, and I snapped them with a mighty heave. Asuka needed me, now, just like then, whenever that had been.

I felt something pushing on the sphere of my perception, of my soul, and I reached upwards through my prison and grabbed onto it. Felt the heat and metal in my hands, and twisted, pulled, tore it asunder. I'd fought gods and won, this pale imitation could do nothing.

I felt the metal break apart in my hands and the influence pushing at my perception disappear, and give way to another more familiar feeling. Unit Two! Asuka! I could feel them both, so close to me, so very very close!

The memories came back to me, what I'd done, what had happened. The fight with the Angel and my rescue of Asuka. It had worked, she was alive, she was here!

I let go of the control yokes and leaned back against the seat in the entry plug, let my eyes drift closed, just for a minute. I felt like I hadn't slept in years.

xxx​

My eyes snapped open again as I felt the jolt of some kind of impact. I felt myself accelerating upwards and backwards. The plug was being withdrawn. Would my father be there? Would Misato? After what I'd done, what I'd failed to tell her?

The LCL drained violently from the plug, as it had always done before, but it was only when that happened that I really appreciated how stale it felt. In a moment I felt the plug lock into place and heard the hatch unlock.

They were opening the escape hatch instead of the the upper hatch? That was different. What had happened while I was out there?

I rolled out of the seat onto the floor of the plug and felt weak, but I pushed onward and found my strength soon returning. My canary yellow plugsuit gave me the traction against the slippery walls of the plug that I needed to reach the door.

I reached the edge of the hatch and started to pull myself through when another set of hands grabbed onto mine and pulled me out violently and dropped me unceremoniously to the hard metal decking. I blinked away the sudden brightness and rolled away as I saw a man coming at me with handcuffs.

Soldiers, there were soldiers. I kept rolling and pushed myself back up to my feet. My adrenaline went from zero to one hundred like a snap. I put my back to the side of the entry plug and scanned the room quickly.

Half a dozen armed men, some people that looked like they might be technicians or scientists. I didn't recognize the uniform at all. Had I been captured by hostile forces? The gun was still under the control saddle, I could never get there in time--

One of the men approached me again with the hand cuffs in his hand. I dropped to the ground and drove my fist upward as hard as I could into his groin and made him drop the handcuffs around the same time he doubled over to grab his injured manhood.

I wasn't about to be some asshole's fuck-trophy, or worse. I grabbed the handcuffs off the ground and withdrew back to the side of the entry plug, put my fist through the doubled up cuffs and held them like makeshift brass knuckles. I didn't have a real weapon but nobody sane would want to get hit in the face with this either.

The man I'd punched drew his sidearm and leveled it at me, I saw his finger twitch on the trigger and threw my left arm up defensively. It wouldn't stop a bullet but reflexes would not be denied. His gun fired and my eyes closed, but I wasn't hit.

An orange hexagonal field had flashed into existence between him and me. My heart was pounding out of my chest, my skin felt on fire, I felt ozone in the air. An AT field. Was this mine? My mind drifted momentarily back to when I'd rescued Asuka, the changes that had taken place.

I bit my bottom lip hard to keep my adrenaline flowing and pushed towards the soldiers, they were between me and the door. My AT field flickered with each bullet impact but nothing got through. The orange field reached the first soldier as I approached and he was pushed back, his boots skidding across the floor as he tried to hold me back.

I felt none of it.

The gunfire stopped and the men stood back from my AT field, let me pass through them. I neared the door and saw my AT field flicker, felt a tingling at the edge of my perception. I was being watched. My legs felt weak.

I saw Misato standing in the doorway. She looked different, older, but I would have recognized her after a million years. I would have recognized her after the world turned to ash and the stars burned out.

She walked towards me and my AT field faltered, fell. I didn't care, she was here. I stumbled, almost ran for her. We met in the middle, I put my arms around her and buried my face in her shoulder. She put her arms around me. "Misato, I--"

I felt a pricking sensation in my neck, and the handcuffs fell from my hand to the floor, and I followed them.

My back hit the ground and my head bounced off the decking. I saw Misato standing above me, leaning down, her eyes were as wet as her cheeks. Ayanami stood behind her, equally upset. What had happened? What had I done? I didn't understand, couldn't find the strength to voice my concerns, couldn't hold back the darkness that overtook me.

xxx​

"Who are you?"

My eyes snapped open again. I looked up at the light, I was handcuffed to a chair. I saw an unfamiliar face in front of me. Short cut hair, around--

Akagi?

Behind her stood Ayanami, her red eyes piercing my very soul. I could taste the ozone on the air. I looked back to Akagi. "I'm Rei Ikari."

She looked at me with a strange expression, almost pained expression. She licked her bottom lip and looked into my eyes, "Are you sure of that? Have you seen a mirror lately? I know Rei Ikari, and you..." She trailed off and made a gesture to somebody in a corner of the room I couldn't see against the bright light shining into my eyes.

She set a small folding mirror on the desk in front of me and pointed it at my face. White-blue hair, pale skin… and red eyes. The contours of my face were the same, it was the same shape, the same face… but the eyes, the skin, the hair. I looked like Ayanami, but not.

I looked down at myself, I was out of my plugsuit, in medical robes. My scar was gone, my arms matched, my skin was a uniform pale color. It had happened, and that's why I wasn't believed. Rei Ikari couldn't project an AT field. Rei Ayanami could. An Angel could.

Could Asuka?

I looked back into Akagi's eyes. "This is what you were afraid would happen with Asuka, isn't it? After I pulled her from the plug."

She looked like she'd been slapped. What happened to Asuka? "Is Asuka okay? I saved her! I pulled her out!"

I felt panic rising, could I have failed? "She knocked Ayanami out of the way, she was taken, but I took her back! Right? Right!?"

The ozone smell got stronger, I felt my fists clenching, felt the armrests trying to give way to me.

"You did save her." I looked over to Ayanami, who had spoken now for the first time since I'd seen her again. "You took her from the heart of Zeurel's soul. You are Rei Ikari."

I felt the calm returning to me, and I looked back to Akagi. Would that have satisfied her? She was close to Ayanami, or she used to be. Would she believe that girl?

"I believe you, but..." she trailed off and frowned, "It may have been better for you if you had been something else. Time doesn't heal all wounds."
​

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 32:
Pushing Back​

"I did what I had to do, what I was made to do. You know I didn't have a choice." I muttered under my breath. Whatever it was I'd done, whatever it was Akagi was keeping from me, I hadn't had the choice. I never had a choice, had I?

Asuka was alive. I'd saved Misato when she'd jumped. I killed the Angels, I killed people when I had to. It was a war that we couldn't afford to lose, and I refused to lose the people who were important to me either. They should understand that. Anyone should understand that.

"Commander Becket wants to see you, in case you were wondering where we're going." Akagi offered in a strained, troubled version of what was apparently meant to pass for a conversational tone.

But then, that name rang a bell. Commander Becket? "Becket survived? I saw him take a missile, I didn't see a chute..."

Akagi remained silent for the final few steps to the end of the corridor, then pressed her hand against a touch sensitive plate. The door withdrew and she lead me into another room, one filled with circular glass windows. Portholes, leading to the red ocean outside. I was on a ship?

I scanned the perimeter of the room, there were control stations, with people sitting at them. People I didn't recognize, wearing uniforms I was unfamiliar with. I followed upwards from there and I saw--

"Misato?" I whispered. Somehow I couldn't bring myself to call out, to get her attention. Not after last time. She had felt betrayed that I hadn't told her, but I'd felt the same when she stabbed me in the neck.

But then, she wasn't why I was here, right? I was here to see Commander Becket. I'd been requested, but then the people with guns made it seem like compliance wasn't exactly optional. The ozone and tickling in the back of my throat also gave me the impression that I wouldn't be able to do much to fight back anyway.

At least they gave me some pants to wear. I couldn't remember the last time I'd worn anything other than a skirt or a plugsuit. Actual honest-to-god pants, an almost novel concept.

"So, it is you, right?"

I recognized that voice, I'd heard it before, so many times. Each time I'd heard it speak, tragedy seemed to follow. I felt my hand curl into a fist, my knuckles cracked.

"You're looking a little pale, but that is you."

I looked up, and she had aged, more than Misato had. More than I would have thought. But answers weren't forthcoming, and I had other things on my mind.

"Gypsy Rose." It was an accusation as much as a statement, but I'd know that face anywhere, I'd recognize those eyes and that voice until the end of time, burned into my memory as they were.

"I haven't been called that in years. You can call me Commander Becket," she said as she stepped down the stairs leading to the command platform above. "This is my anti-Nerv organization: WILLE. Well, It's not mine, it's a collective purpose, but for the moment you only have to understand that I'm the one who has the authority here."

I spit on the floor, felt the hair on my neck rising. "All I see are a bunch of traitors, Victoria. I had a purpose, I was going to save the world despite you. I knew the score, but then you had to run your mouth and got your brother killed. Killed saving me when I was trying to fix what you fucked up!"

She stopped and tilted her head, the smile that she'd been wearing fell from her lips, turned to what I might have almost thought was concern, if I hadn't known better. "Is that what you think happened?"

I shrugged and stepped forward, "Well, Asuka's alive isn't she? The world seems to still be a spinnin' so I must have done something right. Killed that Angel. But somehow I'm standing in front of you and nobody is telling me anything. So why don't you tell me what happened, because I'd like to know how any of it isn't your fault."

She stepped down to the ground level and I'd met her half way across the deck, my hand was ready to let fly with a right hook. Wouldn't be the first time I'd tried to hand her ass to her, but this time I wouldn't be stopped.

"You did save Asuka, but… Billions more, you didn't," she hesitated, swallowed hard. She was… upset? I felt my hand relaxing. "I put the gun in your hand, yes… You're not wrong about that, not at all. I put the gun in your hand, aimed at the head of the world, and you pulled the trigger."

I relaxed my fist and stepped back, she was older. Misato had been older. Akagi was older too. Too much. I was thrown off by Ayanami, she was the same, and yet… "What happened? What… What year is it?"

"It's been fifteen years since the event--" Akagi explained from beside me before her voice faltered. "It's been fifteen years since the Third Impact, initiated by Unit One, was aborted."

"What?" I whispered, I felt the world closing in around my, my vision tunneling. It has been… That is what I had done? All I'd wanted--

"It ended because she was done. The Evangelion shut down when her purpose was completed."

I turned my head to the side quickly, Ayanami had said that. She'd been there, Asuka had saved her first, right? I remembered that. Had Unit Zero still been functional? Had she watched?

The holographic displays lining the room illuminated a warning pattern and an alarm suddenly sounded, piercing my concentration.

"Wave pattern detected. Decoys five and seven are lost. Pattern is blue! Target identified as 4-C. Nemesis series!" A girl sitting at what looked like a sensor station yelled out.

I felt a slight tremor through the decking and turned back towards the commander, "Angel attack?"

"No, Nerv," she answered me before turning towards the front of the room. "Get Ikari out of here. All hands to level one battle stations. We're gonna have to take this one on the chin."

"Iowa and Missouri have engaged the enemy. Estimating fifteen minutes until outer defenses are breached."

I felt a hand wrap around my upper arm and start pulling me towards the hatch, felt my hand clenching down into a fist. "If..." I muttered under my breath, unsure of what-- No. I knew exactly what I was sure of.

"Hey!" I yelled and jerked my arm out of the guard's grip. I stepped two steps closer to Victoria and turned to Misato. "Let me fight. That's what I'm good for, right? That's what I'm good at. Let me help!"

Misato opened her mouth, but was cut off by Victoria before she could speak. "You're offering to fight for WILLE?" the commander asked.

I spit on the floor and jerked my head towards Misato, "No, I'm offering to fight for Misato, Ayanami, and Asuka."

She seemed to consider my proposal for a second, then shook her head. "No, you're going into containment. We're not sending you out in an Evangelion. You'll never touch one again."

I clenched both hands into fists, felt my hair standing up on the back of my neck, tasted and smelled ozone. "Look, Victoria." I said, my voice cold. "I'm no longer asking your blessing. I'll do whatever it takes to protect the people I love. You know you'd do the exact same thing. It's been fifteen years: I'm older now than Yui Ikari ever got to be, I can make my own decisions."

I felt the familiar fire in my heart, the tingling in my body. Adrenaline, and maybe something else, something Angelic. Ayanami might understand, might be able to explain it but I didn't have the time to ask her. Wouldn't have stopped me anyway.

Misato put her hand on my shoulder. I hadn't noticed her approach, but I was grateful for the touch. "You can't pilot Eva, Rei."

I reached out to her, touched the side of her face. Even after fifteen years, she was the same. I was more different than she'd ever be, and yet, for a moment I let myself imagine we were back in that apartment, one last time. I licked my lips and took a step back.

"You know I don't need an Evangelion to be dangerous."

"I said no," Victoria stated firmly, her face twisted a little, she was getting angry.

And I didn't care, I wasn't going to take it, especially not from her. "I don't follow your orders. Either let me go or put me down. I'm not accepting anything else. I'm not going to just sit here and watch people die!"

She looked like she was going to slap me, but Misato turned to her and put her hand on the other woman's shoulder and shook her head. That was… interesting. Unexpected. I had more questions than ever, at that.

"Fine, go. Somebody get her over to the Kitty Hawk. In the meantime, get Asuka and Mari deployed." She ordered while turning away from me. I was no longer important.

Ayanami stepped up next to me and nodded her head towards the door, "I will accompany you into battle."

"Ayanami, you can't--"

She cut me off and I caught the slightest hint of a smirk. "As you said, I am not asking."

xxx​

The Kitty Hawk looked like she'd seen better days. The years of combat since I'd last seen her had not been kind. Paint had peeled, rust had taken its place as the burdens of extended operation had exceeded what the surviving crew could keep up with.

Despite that, with my feet on her flight deck, I knew, could feel, that she wasn't done fighting yet. In the distance the six Iowa-class battleships barked out sixteen inch main battery fire in a continuous stream. In another time, I might have thought that it was cool.

But in the middle of this dead ocean, on this dead planet, fighting against what was supposed to be our salvation…

A man in a flag officer's uniform crossed the deck to greet us, and for a moment I saw a much younger man in his place. I felt the smile pull at the corner of my mouth. He'd made it, for that I was thankful.

"Clark?"

"I almost didn't believe them when they said you were back. You look different… but you seem the same. Come on, we don't have much time." He waved at us to follow him towards the fore end of the flight deck, and so we followed close behind.

"You don't seem as upset with me as others I've seen today," I commented from his side as the deck shook. The fighting was getting too close.

"Wasn't your fault. You were doing the best you could with what you had. I was listening on the radio that day, so I know why you did what you did. Wouldn't have done anything different myself." He admitted.

"Maybe avoid making the world worse, if I had a do-over," I muttered.

Ahead of us, locked into the catapult was something I'd seen only in memory, and something that should never have been seen on a carrier deck. A Mud Hen, an F-15 Strike Eagle. I licked my bottom lip and ran my hand along the edge of the wing, up to the side of the canopy.

Memories that weren't mine filled my head, but they were happy ones, and I smiled. "Where did you find this?"

"It was Victoria Becket's jet. She told us you would be needing it. We don't have as many pilots as we do machines anymore, so we can spare it, for you."

I ran my hand along the names stenciled under under the canopy edge. I knew this jet. In the other world, in that one from which my memories were borrowed, this was the last jet she'd ever flown. The one she died in.

I would endeavor to do better.

I turned back to Clark. "Can you get Ayanami some place safe?"

"Sure, we'll do what we can. I'll have the mess prepare something special for when you get back."

Ayanami pushed past me and shook her head, "No. I will accompany you."

She wasn't who she used to be, not the teenager I'd known anymore. She was still Ayanami, but she was an adult woman, despite what she might look like. She wouldn't be told no, not about this. I sighed. "Fine. Back seat."

I shrugged my shoulders, "Guess she's coming with me."

Hearing no reply, I looked over and saw that he still had that troubled look on his face that he'd had before, last time he'd seen me leave. "I'm sorry about… well everything that happened. I'm going to find a way to fix this. There's got to be a way."

"I don't doubt you will." He offered with a halfhearted smile and a shrug. An explosion lit up the horizon and the deck shook again. "That was the Fitzgerald. You should probably get going if that's what you really want."

"You know I have to."

He stared at me for a long moment, as though he might dispute my statement. "No, I think you're right. Do an old man a favor and try not to die, alright?"
​

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 33:
Giant Killer​

I pressed my fingertip down on the main power disconnect and the MFDs lit up. Every inch, every scratch, every screw of the cockpit I sat in was familiar, like a long lost friend. It had felt like years, and been many more since, but the memories still felt fresh.

A time long ago, in another world, with another girl... But here and now, it still felt like home. The cockpit of a fighter jet was a place where I felt that I could truly make a difference, where I could accomplish my goals, save the girl, save the world.

Or so it felt like. I wouldn't have ended the world from the cockpit of a plane, but I did from an entry plug. That's what she'd said to me, what I'd done, the trigger I'd pulled…

But I saved Asuka, I killed the Angel. If I'd stayed in the P-38 and did what I could from there, would it really have turned out any better? No, I'd have died, everyone would have died. Maybe Mari could have gotten to Unit One in time, but would it have been any better?

Maybe Victoria was right, I shouldn't be allowed back into an Evangelion. That didn't mean I would sit by idly while other people did the fighting, not while I could do this. The start-up went by in what felt like moments, memory and reflex carried me through it without much attention paid. Soon the engines were both turning and my ears popped as the cockpit pressurized.

"You doing okay back there Ayanami?" I asked while looking up in the mirror. With the helmet and O2 masks on, we looked the same. Sisters.

"It is not my first time. I will be fine." She answered calmly. Always calm. "I've had fifteen years of practice, without Evangelion I had to find a new purpose."

That answered the question I would have likely eventually asked, I filed it away in the back of my mind. I tapped through the MFD and stopped, I had seen some weird fittings on the pylons earlier but the MFD readouts confused me even further. "Ayanami, would you explain what I'm seeing here on the armament screen?"

"Direct fire weapons have replaced air-to-air and air-to-ground ordnance. As the primary threat faced by WILLE is Evangelion, standard anti-fighter munitions are insufficient." She explained while doing something in the back seat.

I toggled the armament selector over to the only two weapons systems being displayed and they seemed to activate in a 'pair' firing mode. That was certainly an interesting default. "So what do we have?"

"We have a pair of twenty-seven millimeter fire-linked railguns. The remaining weapon stations are occupied by charging and energy storage devices. Each railgun is provided with ten rounds of Anti-AT Field Ammunition, after which we are unarmed."

"Oh." I answered with a dumb look on my face that she was thankfully unable to see. "Good to know."

I shook my head and pushed the throttles up and keyed up the radio, "Ikari ready to go, fire the catapult."

I pushed the throttle all the way into afterburner and a moment later we were both slammed back into our seats as the catapult fired. A second or two of intense acceleration was followed by the less extreme but still substantial acceleration provided by a pair of afterburning jet engines.

Cross flares in the distance told me that time was up. The fifteen minutes that had been quoted had been more than spent. The line had broken and ships were being sunk, men were dying and--

Off to our right, the ship we'd left from originally, the flagship that Victoria was aboard, lurched violently and suddenly upwards out of the water and issued a sound that was almost agonized. The ship itself had a skeletal form that was burdened by man-made structures and components all around, but looked, to me, like it was built upon the back of some sort of Angelic whale skeleton.

"What in the hell is that thing?"

We didn't have enough airspeed yet to climb away, not as fast as I'd have wanted to. The noise it was making was drilling into my skull, rattling my teeth and my soul. I felt a fear forced into my bones and I stepped hard into the left rudder, rolled the stick over to get the hell away from that abomination. Abomination; the word was forced into the front of my mind and I found it apt.

"It is our flagship, the AAA Wunder. It is our final offensive option against Nerv, to end the threat they represent to the world," Ayanami explained. Her voice sounded… strained, almost. There was a slight hitch at the end. Had she felt it too?

"It's… wrong, somehow." I said as I pushed for distance. The fear and revulsion started to fade with the distance, but even looking at the thing struck some deep chord in my heart. I had a feeling of powerlessness, insignificance. I needed Unit One and a fleet's worth of backup, and even then I might not feel safe.

"Yes."

My hands shook against the controls, I felt my entire body trembling as that soul-piercing sound got louder. Marionette strings made of light descended from the sky and latched themselves onto the naval fleet below, hoisted dozens of ships into the sky along with the Wunder.

I caught myself with my finger hovering over the button that would have jettisoned all of the external stores, dropped the cannons and the charging equipment into the ocean, so that I could run. Still, the airspeed kept climbing and I kept pulling away from that repulsive…thing.

Shaking hands refused to pull the stick back towards the fight, even as the ship was attacked by ribbon-like foils, even when it fired cannons to attack the odd disk-shaped Evangelions. Their screams were… unsettling, but not equally so. They were more familiar in some way.

"Ayanami I can't… I can't…"

I felt a hand reach up and grab me by the shoulder. In the mirror above I could see Ayanami had crawled halfway over her panel. "Ikari, you must calm down. This feeling is… not unexpected. You will not be harmed. You can overcome this."

"Ayanami, I don't think I can. I'm… afraid." My hand kept shaking, so hard that the jet was fluttering, shaking from the control inputs that I couldn't stop.

I felt her grip tighten. "Ikari, you have faced greater challenges than this. You are a giant killer."

A smiled tugged at the corner of my mouth and I pulled the throttle back down to half. Giant killer, I didn't hate the idea, it certainly had some similarities to reality anyway. "Been reading fairy tales, Ayanami?"

"I had to occupy my free time with something."

"Alright. Fair enough. Giant killer it is." I tightened my grip on the stick and stepped hard into the rudder, turning the jet back towards the Wunder, and come what may--

Something fast and orange and big as hell rocketed past the canopy. The jet shook violently in the wake turbulence and I hauled on the stick to try to correct. Ayanami's hand disappeared from my shoulder and I heard her helmet clank against the canopy.

"Ayanami get strapped back in! If we have to punch out you don't wanna leave the seat without a parachute!" I yelled back to her. There was a fight to be had, and I'd faced fear before. Fear had driven me into that viper cockpit so long ago, hadn't it?

I turned my head to the right to track whatever the hell had buzzed us and saw something that looked… different. Another Evangelion, much more conventional looking, but with a weird white ribbon-cape hanging from its back, and it was flying. The head was a little bit like unit zero, and the color scheme matched, but the robotic eyeball in the center of the head broke me of any illusions that it was the same unit.

And Ayanami was with me.

"Ayanami are you okay back there?" I asked over my shoulder, or as close to over my shoulder as I could. The Evangelion's single cycloptic eye kept rolling back and forth between us and the Wunder.
The same feeling of revulsion I felt towards the Wunder was emanating from this new Evangelion as well.

"I am secure, Ikari. That Evangelion is not one of ours." She answered me. Her voice was disturbed, more than before. She was feeling the same thing, and she wasn't trying to calm me down this time.

I could think of no better way of curing that feeling of revulsion than to destroy the source of it. I was a giant killer, she'd said that much. I pushed the fire selector to the railguns and was rewarded with a green ready-to-fire status indicator and a CCIP readout on the heads up display.

I rolled hard to the right and pulled back, a maximum rate turn that bled a ton of airspeed, but then that was the point. The CCIP drifted over to that cycloptic eye and I mashed down the firing stud. The whole jet bucked with the recoil and I slid forward into my harness. Those things definitely packed a punch.

An instant later the Evangelion's head, north of the lower jaw, evaporated into a cloud of red mist… and nothing happened. That kind of damage would have knocked any Evangelion I'd ever seen out of a fight, maybe permanently. Pilot wouldn't have been doing a whole lot better, but this unit didn't even react.

In panic I stomped into the rudder and held the firing stud down, dumping the remaining eighteen rounds in raking fire across the Evangelion's chest. Each impact pockmarked the orange and white armor, but seemed to do no further damage after punching through. And then the indicators turned red. Ammo spent.

Very not good.

I slapped my hand down on the jettison stores button and every pylon on the jet dropped its payload, lightening up the plane substantially, and more importantly cleaning up the aerodynamics. I rolled the throttle up into afterburner and pulled back on the stick, angling away.

"Ikari to Wunder. I'm… having a bad day. Please send help." I called into the radio, hope for a miracle. The orange and white, now headless, Evangelion started moving again, towards me and tracking my movements.

That primal fear instinct kicked back in, and this time I knew I wouldn't be able to shake it. I'd fought Angels in a fighter jet, but they had something else to worry about, I wasn't their concern. This time I had an Evangelion that could fly after me.

I didn't feel like a giant killer.

I rolled towards Wunder and kept the throttle wide open, if I could get around the thing and get closer to the ship, friendly forces might have an easier time at covering my escape, or my landing. The headless giant was tracking in at my lower quarter, cutting inside my turning circle to physically prohibit me from getting a clear line of approach on the ship.

So, so much for that idea.

I rolled into the inverted and then pushed the stick forward to nose over into a climb. The negative G forces were sure to give me a hell of a head rush but the unorthodox maneuver might throw the Eva pilot long enough for me to get to where I needed to go.

I rolled hard through a left spiral after the turn, but the headless Evangelion was right in front of me, hand outstretched as if it was going to pluck me from the air. I hauled back hard on the stick and felt the whole plane shudder and shake, and then there was a violent jolt as the fingertip scraped along the lower fuselage.

I had almost missed, so nearly close that the impact didn't destroy the jet outright, but the airframe started shaking violently and alarms started sounding in my ears. I still had control authority, but it was twitchy and the left engine was surging.

"Ayanami, I don't think we're gonna win this fight!" I yelled through the intercom channel. The MFDs in front of me shorted out, sparks started flying from the panel and sparked a fire. It was how that first Victoria had died, the one who'd never borne the name 'Becket'.

But I would endeavor to do better.

The fire started to lick at my flight suit and I screamed into the intercom, "Eject! Eject! Eject!" My hands gripped against the striped levers and I pulled hard, an instant later the canopy blew off the top of the aircraft and I felt my legs jerked out of the rudder wells and against the seat. It felt like my head was being driven down through my spine as the rocket motors launched me and my seat out of the jet.

It felt like I'd been hit by a truck when I entered the airstream. We hadn't been supersonic, but we weren't going slow when I'd pulled the loud handle and now I was feeling the full brunt of that. I tried to clear my head from the sudden shock of the ejection, tried to look around as the seat rotated so I could be sure Ayanami made it out.

I caught sight of her seat for a moment, and she was still attached to it, it had only been a few moments. I could see that she was okay, that she'd made it out. An instant later I felt my own seat collide with something before I had the chance to separate from it, and my head and helmet slammed back into the headrest, and I saw nothing more.

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 34:
Wayward​

I felt cool air against the lower half of my face when I first woke. The smell and taste of LCL filled my mouth and nose a moment after and I felt a brief moment of nostalgia. Notes of machine oil and kerosene mixed with the lingering odor of spent rocket propellent and evoked the feeling of being in a place where things get done.

My eyes finally opened and I realized that despite being unceremoniously heaped upon a metal grate, I was still in my flight suit, still had my helmet on, and had the sun beating down on me, but not warming me as much as I might have expected.

I tried to sit up and my entire body gave a violent spasm and my muscles and joints burned in agony. The ride here must not have been a pleasant one, but then riding an ejection seat into an object never really ended well.

I felt around with my left hand while I remained lying supine on the grating. I should have had a survival pack strapped to me when I punched out, so I was trying to find the tether holding it to me. More grating, more grating, another hand?

My head rolled to the left as gently as I could manage and I saw Ayanami laying next to me. Her eyes were closed and her face was twisted up in a grimace. She clearly wasn't feeling much better than I was.

I squeezed her hand, then continued reaching down until I found the strap. I pulled it up slowly as to not agitate my sore muscles any more than I had to. I reached across my chest and grabbed onto the pack to hold it in place while I worked the zipper with my other hand. There wouldn't be much inside, some basic medical supplies, a couple days of MREs, and if Victoria hadn't removed it, a loaded pistol.

We were, for all I knew, deep behind enemy lines. With Ayanami with me, I wasn't going to take any chances. I'd feel better with hard cold steel in my hand than without it at any rate.

The sound of shoes clicking against the steel grating forced me into motion and I pushed myself up into a sitting position against the protesting of my body, at the same time I slid my hand into the opening of the survival pack and found my hand wrapped firmly around the grip of a forty-five caliber pistol. I'd have recognized the feeling of that handgrip anywhere, but not without help from a dead girl.

I pulled the pistol and held it up in front of me while my vision swam from the sudden movement. I'd suffered a head injury, that's why I'd blacked out. It made sense I wouldn't be all together there all at once.

But if they got close enough?

There were at least two people based on the sound of the steps, and I could make out that many through my blurry vision and the tinted helmet visor. I pushed myself forward and upward, onto shaky feet to put myself between Ayanami and whoever it was that was approaching.

I passed the pistol into my right hand and thumbed the safety off. I was half leaning, half holding myself up against a railing to my left, my hand wrapped firmly around it. I caught the rear sight of the pistol against the side of my flight suit and pushed down to rack the slide and make sure a round was chambered. The 'shink-click' sound was a comforting threat.

The figures approaching didn't slow, but did start to resolve into distinct shapes. I could make out colors, black on the right, white and black on the left. A girl on the right, probably in a plugsuit? The left looked more like normal clothing. The hair of the figure on the left looked like a grey-white, and the one on the right looked more like… like mine?

I felt the taste of ozone in the air, but it was different from when Ayanami used it, or when I used it. It felt more… alien. More like that surge of fear and adrenaline I felt when the Wunder finally powered up. This was more subtle, restrained, reserved. I felt my finger twitch against the trigger without pulling it.

"Stay away from Ayanami!" I croaked out. I closed my left eye and raised the pistol in my hand. They were close enough now, I could see them both clearly, or clearly enough. It was a boy on the left, about my age, for whatever that was worth. On the right was a girl who was the spitting image of Ayanami.

I blinked hard. Another one? Mine was still alive, so how did he…

"I promise I won't hurt you, Ikari. I've been looking forward to meeting you." The boy said in a soothing voice that seemed to reach the core of my soul and made me feel like everything was alright. But his eyes were red, his face pale. He was like me, which meant--

"Kaworu?" I asked softly, felt my voice trying to die in my throat. He was… real? Those memories were so very old, but he still stood out in them, pushed to the front of my mind when I saw his face.

His smile grew, turned into something genuine instead of the default expression on his face and he laughed. "You know my name? I had thought that you might. I had hoped that you would, Ikari."

I lowered the gun and my eyes darted back and forth between Kaworu and other Rei. Her existence was surprising, I wasn't sure what to do about that. She didn't seem very human though. She was as though she was actually what Ayanami had only faked being.

"Why are we here?"

He reached out to me, put his hand on my shoulder. The other Rei stepped past him to tend to Ayanami. I took a deep breath and he stared into my eyes like he was looking for something, some kind of understanding?

He frowned almost imperceptibly before his smile was back. "You have been gone a very, very long time, Ikari. Your father wanted to see you." He nodded towards the girl in the black plug suit, "So Rei went and retrieved you for him."

I shook my head. "She's not Rei."

He laughed and shook his head, and his hand never left my shoulder. "No, she is most definitely Rei. She is not Ikari, nor is she Ayanami, but she is Rei all the same."

Behind me I heard Ayanami gasp. The other Rei had her half way up off the floor in her arms, and their eyes were locked. I could see the terror in her eyes, I could imagine her having nightmares about being replaced, I know I would, and she could just as well have been a surrogate for myself.

I dropped the gun to the grating and reached to grab onto Ayanami's hand. "It's alright. It'll be alright."

I felt her squeeze my hand and I turned my head to face Kaworu again. "Where is my father?"

He knelt in front of me and picked the gun up off the ground, then stood and stepped closer, almost as though he was moving in for a kiss. I heard a zipper unzip and a moment later felt him pressing the gun into my pocket.

He smiled his little smile and tilted his head in the direction behind him, "Come along this way."

xxx​

Ayanami had spent the entire walk clinging to my arm, or nearly so. She had made certain to keep me between her and the other Rei the entire time, at the least. She was almost thirty years old but for that fifteen minute walk she was a child again, fearful and seeking protection.

I had to wonder what I counted as. I had truly only been fourteen years old back when I went into Unit One's core for fifteen years, but I had the memories of a dead twenty-eight year old woman jammed into my head.

How much of that counted? After fifteen years, was I twenty-nine or still just that little girl I had been?

But Ayanami was looking to me to protect her from Other Rei. That was the strongest endorsement I could ever hope to receive.

Nerv headquarters hadn't aged as well as Ayanami had. Once familiar hallways had fallen into the disrepair of faded paint and cracked flooring, burnt out lights and broken tiles. Familiar but not. Even as a place that hadn't held happy memories, it drove home to me that you really can't go home again.

You could travel back in space, but you could not travel back in time. What I would give to live yesterday again…

The door popped open with a wheezing hiss, long un-lubricated and having seen better days, much like the rest of the facility we'd seen so far. Fifteen years of not caring, or perhaps caring about something else instead. It hadn't mattered; to me it had been yesterday.

When he stepped from the doorway into the hallway I recognized him, for I could never have forgotten him, though with the way he'd aged I could have been forgiven if I had. Gray hair had replaced black, and his glasses had been replaced by a visor that was familiar in a way I couldn't quite put my finger on. His dress code had slackened, but still familiar.

"Father, I--"

He moved with a swiftness that I hadn't anticipated, and where I had expected a strike, what I received was something else entirely. A warmth, a nostalgic embrace, a scent from my early childhood. His arms, strong despite age, wrapped around me and pulled me tight into a hug. It was an unexpected affection, but as his hands rubbed my back, I put my own around him.

Maybe, just maybe, you can go home again, just for a brief visit.

"I have missed you both so much. There are so many things I want to share with you, with both of you!" He said as he pulled away from me. His manner was animated, almost cheerful. I wasn't used to seeing him like this, hadn't seen him like this since… ever?

"You… what?" I spluttered out. "Why did you attack if you're so happy to see us now?" The accusation came out before I could stop it, regardless of the consequences. Mouth before brain.

He turned to Ayanami and hugged her as well, her own shock stopped her from protesting, though her cheeks did tint. Finally, he pulled away from her as well and turned back to me.

"I just needed to delay them. I am… working for something important, something that will benefit everyone. They wouldn't understand. They refused to understand..." He trailed off, his face turning red. He was agitated, angry. I could see his fist clenching.

Maybe we weren't so different.

"What have you done?" Ayanami accused and took a step towards him. Gone was the scared girl that had been clinging to my arm, the fierce Ayanami had taken her place. "You have made this… this thing, this other me. What have you planned?"

"It's… not like that. You were gone. Both of you were gone. Kaworu had come, but he alone was not enough. It doesn't matter. What is done is done, but with your help, with all four of you, I will be able to… un-ring the bell." The corner of his mouth curled up into a smirk as he said the last part. Always with a plan, old man?

"With the use of the Cassius Lance and Eva Thirteen you will be able to repair the damage done to this world, Ikari." Kaworu said softly in my ear, his hand gently pressed to the small of my back, his other on my right wrist. "Undo what happened fifteen years ago, and fifteen years before that. Bring back a world like the one you remember."

I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. The world I remembered? Did he mean what I'd had pushed into my head? What did he know? He was getting entirely too intimate with me in any case. I pulled away from him. "What?"

"You are going to control the awakening of an Evangelion in order to direct an impact of your own design." Ayanami said suddenly, flatly. She would have known, wouldn't she. At least, enough to explain it in a way I would understand.

"Will that work?" I asked, still edging my distance from Kaworu. Something about his touches triggered a fear in me, even though I knew he wouldn't force himself on me. It seemed like that it was his way, that he lacked taboos, but…

"It could work." Ayanami admitted. She almost seemed to be considering it.

"It will work." Father said simply, his voice was not cold but at the same time the tone he used left no room for doubt.

"Then..." I trailed off, looked between the girl who was the closest thing to a sister I could have ever had, and the girl who looked just like her and was nothing like her at all. My eyes drifted to the red eyed boy with no boundaries, and finally back to my father. "I'm in. What do I need to do?"

"We will use the dual entry system and pilot Eva Thirteen together, and--" Kaworu started before Ayanami cut in.

"No, I will pilot with Ikari."

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 35:
The Midnight Hour​

It was comforting, in a way, how Ikari had not changed from her time in Unit One. She had become more like me, she had changed on a biological and particulate level, but her personality, her drive, had remained intact. We had spent fifteen years looking for her, trying to recover her, trying to bring Unit One back.

We had fifteen years to be afraid of what we would find when we succeeded. Fifteen years for resentment and fear to ferment. Fifteen years for Katsuragi to grieve and doubt, to second guess and, when it had finally come down to a decision, she'd ceded her command.

Ikari was not really to blame. She couldn't have known. I hadn't known, but I should have. That was what I had been born for. On that day, my purpose had been lost. Ikari had done something different, something unexpected. I wanted to blame Commander Becket. I wouldn't have been wrong to blame her, but everything that had happened was bigger than the decisions of any one person.

I felt a responsibility to her. She was my burden and my bond. We were the first to fight, and we'd fought together. She'd risked herself for me, and I for her. But then, she'd recklessly thrown herself into danger as well. She had fought against Angels without an Evangelion, because she had something in her heart that made her do it.

Too much of her father? Perhaps too much of her mother; I had felt those urges before but I hadn't had the ability or force of will to act on them.

For all the ways Ikari had not changed, I believed that I had. When given the choice, I had departed Nerv. I had abandoned Commander Ikari, and Unit Zero. I had left my purpose to find another one with Akagi.

I didn't have the drive or the single minded force of purpose that Ikari seemed to possess, but she had shaped me more than I had at the time known.

But she had not changed, and I was fifteen years older and wiser.

The locker room had not changed in my absence. Of the areas of the facility that I had seen, this was the area that had been maintained the most. My plugsuit was where I had left it after the end of that final fight. I hadn't set foot in an entry plug since.

I had made a decision that I would no longer pilot, and I had kept to that decision. It had been a solidification of my resolve to find a new purpose, one distinct from the one that had originally been decided for me.

I pressed the switch down on my wrist and the suit constricted to my skin and conformed to every curve of my body. The white plugsuit was as familiar as the last time I'd seen it. A long forgotten friend, come back one last time to visit before the end.

I felt a deep certainty that no matter how this day ended, I would never wear a plugsuit or pilot an Evangelion again. If this day went the way it was supposed to, there would never be a need to do so again.

Commander Becket would have had me shot for what I was about to do. Katsuragi would have pulled the trigger to do it. But Ikari had made up her mind, and I had to be there for her, to help her, to make sure she was safe.

The world was on borrowed time anyway. Akagi could see it, I could see it. Commander Ikari could see it too, but he had seen it for far longer than any of us had. There was no future in this world, no matter how it turned out between Nerv and WILLE. The planet was too far gone, too many dead.

The duplicate followed me out of the locker room. I felt a sense of confusion from her, an uncertainty of purpose. I had feared she was meant to replace me, even here and now, but having been able to calm myself in her presence... she was more lost than any of us.

I would try not to think about it. The cages were not far, and no matter how many years had gone by I would never forget the way.

Ikari walked along to my left, clad in a spare of my own plugsuit. We were close enough that it had fit as well as her own, though she differed in that she had refused to be disarmed and had strapped the pistol that Nagisa had given back to her to her upper thigh.

I was burdened by the thought that she might have had the right idea in doing so. Even though a large part of me wanted to believe Commander Ikari, to take everything he said at face value, to once again fall into a routine where he was fond of me and I of him...

My true purpose was to ensure the survival and success of Rei Ikari. Commander Ikari's first Rei. I was the second, and the third. Perhaps he had named me that because he could not fully let go of his real daughter. Perhaps he had named the duplicate because he could not let go of me.

The part of me that was still loyal to him, the part that begged me to obey him, demanded that I protect Rei Ikari. It was not difficult for me to listen to that voice. I would follow her to the end of the earth, and it wasn't unlikely that I would.

The cages were as I remembered them, though worse for wear. The roof was largely destroyed, and the sunlight trickled in through myriad gaps in the torn steel plating. Unit Zero stood closest to us, looking as clean and shiny as the day I first laid eyes upon it, and a wave of nostalgia washed over me.

It was obsolete, even back then. Always the weakest of the first three, the slowest, the one with the most flaws and malfunctions. He'd kept it, repaired it. Had it been waiting for me, or was it Commander Ikari's own nostalgia that had made him keep it, his inability to let go?

I tore my eyes away and beyond that was Eva Thirteen. It looked the same at first glance as Unit One had so many years ago, but different in ways that became apparent the longer I kept my eyes on it. I felt a discomfort when I looked at it, but given what we were going to try to do I felt that it was to be expected.

Beyond lay what I had come to know as the Mark Nine. Where it had once been a pale imitation of my own Unit Zero, it now lay as a headless reminder of what Rei Ikari could do. Still, it had remained active and had brought us here.

And it felt wrong. Wrong in a way that I had only ever felt once before. When I was a much younger child at the south pole with Commander Ikari.

"It is good that you're ready. We can begin now. I will take the Mark Nine, the two of you will board Thirteen." Nagisa explained. He had been waiting for us. His smile was disarming and disquieting at the same time, as though he was not completely familiar with wearing it. I knew he was like me though, but not the same... source.

"What of the duplicate?" I asked. I found myself unsettlingly concerned about her. A surrogate for concern for myself, or maybe I was growing to be empathetic towards her.

"Are we bringing Other Rei with us on this adventure?" Ikari asked. Her eyebrows raised and her mouth twisted into a smirk. Of all the ways in which we were the same, now almost identical, she had a more natural way of behaving than I had ever perfected. I envied her that.

"I am afraid her purpose is now at an end. She will be here when we get back, have no worries about that!" He laughed, the practiced, forced laughter of someone who understands the emotion but not quite the expression of it. I understood that all too well.

"The sooner we begin, the sooner it will be done." I offered, and raised my arm towards the entry plug gantry. The sooner we begin, the sooner I will never have to see an Evangelion again.

"And right you are. Let us begin."

xxx​

The LCL was every bit as I remembered it, a warm and calming embrace, the way a fetus must feel while in the womb. I had not realized how much I had missed it and the comfort it brought. I had been born in it, born from it. It was the dust to which I would someday return.

"Eva Thirteen is descending through the main shaft, fifty eight meters till the seal." I announced flatly. I had been here when this was formed. The closest to total annihilation we'd ever come and I almost couldn't see the point in having tried.

"The two of you will be able to break the seal together once Eva Thirteen reaches the surface. We have almost done it." Nagisa answered through the link between ourselves and the Mark Nine.

"Yeah, we're the wonder twins. I get it." Ikari replied from beside me. Two different entry plugs, and yet I felt like I could just reach out and grab her by the hand.

Our feet touched the obsidian plug at the bottom of the main shaft with a subtle vibration and I closed my eyes and opened myself up to the Evangelion. I felt the link of synchronization strengthen between the Evangelion, Ikari, and myself. The seal shook for a moment, and then collapsed from below us.

Our descent resumed and Terminal Dogma came into view. The place of my birth, or, perhaps the place of my conception. The cross had fallen, skulls littered the landscape, and Lilith--

"What in the fuck happened down here?" Ikari blurted in obvious surprise.

"This is where the world almost ended. The autonomous Mark Six was sent in to subdue the Twelfth Angel and succeeded, but the Cassius spear was lost. That is what we are here to recover."

Skulls were crushed underfoot when we finally reached the floor of the chamber. No time was wasted and I pushed forward towards the desiccated form of Lilith, towards the spears. I was uncomfortable, the sooner we were able to leave, the sooner I would never have to be in this place again. Never have to see her like this again.

"Mother?"

Ikari's voice was little more than a whisper and I felt my blood run cold. I turned to look at her, afraid of what I might see, where she might be looking. Was she truly the same as me now? Had everything been robbed from her when she was changed?

She was looking upward through the top of the plug, up towards the main shaft. She wasn't talking to Lilith? That could have only meant that Wunder had arrived, and Ikari had sensed Unit One.

There was no time left.

I pushed the sticks forward and pushed Thirteen into a running leap onto the back of what had once been the progenitor of all mankind. Behind me I heard and saw the flashes of cannonfire. Unit Eight had arrived, Unit Two wouldn't be far behind. The part of me loyal to both Ikaris knew I had to be swift.

"What are you doing?! Stop!" I heard through the open link. Shikinami's voice. She would have come to stop us, but Commander Ikari had to be right, this had to be the solution.

"Asuka!?" Ikari yelled, "Asuka! We're going to put it all back, I'm going to fix what I broke when I saved you!"

"Ikari? It doesn't work like that! You can't just un-ring the bell like that! You don't know what you're doing!"

Unit Two started running for us, but the Mark Nine intercepted it, blocked her advance with the massive red scythe and then pushed her back, further from the center of the chamber.

If Nagisa could hold her back, we would be able to finish our mission.

I felt a sudden calmness overtake me, an acceptance of fate. I had to surrender to hope, because there was nothing else left in this world, for anyone. The only chance there was for any future was to do this.

"But I do." I said, then reached out and grabbed onto each lance. A second set of arms unfolded from Eva Thirteen's chest and grabbed the lances and together we pulled them free. We had the power in our hands to reshape the world, as Commander Ikari had said.

"I have lost control of the Mark Nine. Dummy plug override. Ayanami, Ikari, something has gone wrong!"

"What?" I turned and the Eva turned with me. Mark Nine was standing still, turned toward us as if watching, even without a head.

Below us, Lilith violently returned to LCL, and we fell into the lake below. In front of and below us the freed form of the Mark Six twisted and spun as if writhing in agony. The displays in the plug lit up that a blue pattern had been detected. The Twelfth Angel had not perished, it was in front of us now.

"We've failed?" I turned to Ikari, her head was in her hands, I could see tears dissolving into LCL. Her hopes had been shattered, like my own.

Mark Nine ran past us carrying the scythe weapon it had brought with it down into Terminal Dogma and cleaved the head from the stricken Mark Six. The Angel poured from the wound in the form that looked like a bundle of graphite threads, twisting and turning upon themselves as they enveloped and trapped us inside.

The Evangelion started to shake, at first it seemed to be due to the Angel but... it felt different. This came from us, I felt it through the link to the Evangelion, through the link to Ikari. It was a trembling of restrained power.

"Your job isn't done till you're on the ground. No matter what happens in the air, you keep trying, you keep flying the plane until you're on the ground." She said softly, as though she was trying to convince herself, or maybe convince me.

"Ikari?"

"Ayanami, we're not done yet! If we're still alive we can still fight. If we can still fight we can still kill! Let's do it!"

I felt something change in the Evangelion, it was moving again, drawing the Angel in, compressing it, shaping it. Forcing it into conformity.

Because Ikari could, because she'd done it before. I'd seen it then, when she'd saved Asuka. The graphite threads condensed into a red angelic core and the open, screaming mouth of Eva Thirteen bit through it, shattered it into oblivion.

I had to cover my eyes to shield from the light, and we were moving upwards. We cleared the main shaft in moments, passed through Central Dogma and were in the sky, glowing bright as a white hot star.

High above the sky turned to red and a hole opened in it, the Chamber of Guf had opened. Above us, a mirror of the world floated in the void. The world below shook and broke apart, the remnants of third impact were drawn towards the portal as the black moon rose from the earth.

"Ikari! This... This is the Fourth Impact." I found the energy to yell had left me. The brief flicker of hope that we had, had been extinguished. Thirteen had awakened, and killing the Angel had been the catalyst. The lance we needed was lost to us, had this been Commander Ikari's plan the entire time?

I heard the sound of metal on metal to my left, through the link I had with Ikari's plug. I turned to face her and froze.

"I do have a way of stopping it," she said to me. "If I had done it before, if I hadn't been afraid, I could have stopped any of this from happening. I'm sorry I dragged you into it, and I'm sorry I made it worse. Tell Victoria she was right, and tell Misato I love her."

She had taken the gun from earlier from her side, she'd pressed it against her head, and she'd pulled the trigger. Nothing I could do could have stopped her, but I still felt like I was somehow responsible.

I felt the synchronization falter, and then break. I could not open myself to the Evangelion, not after what I'd just seen, what I'd felt. I needed to turn off the monitors, I needed to shield myself from what I had seen, but I could not bring myself to do either.

"Ayanami. I have boarded Unit Zero. I feel... there is something that I should do, but I do not know what that is."

I looked over, the Duplicate had opened communications? Too little, too late. But Mark Nine was still out of control, wasn't it? I could not help anyone.

Ikari lay dead because of the impulsive actions I had made in removing the spears...

"Ikari would fight."
​

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 36:
Absolution​

I hadn't died immediately. The sensation of having a bullet driven through your brain was not a pleasant one, nor particularly unpleasant. The feeling of having your thoughts disconnect and lose form while your awareness bleeds into the aether is one that... well, not one I was eager to repeat.

But I suspected that I probably wouldn't have the opportunity for such things in the future. The place I found myself, once I had finally died, was a lot like my father's office. If this was my own personal afterlife I couldn't be sure if it was heaven or hell. Maybe I was doomed to limbo for eternity.

"You took long enough to get here."

The voice triggered something in my memory, some kind of familiarity, a familial link even. "Well, I was just dying to meet you, you know how it is." I called out to the unidentified voice. Masculine though, about my own age, not too adult sounding.

"You did have to die to meet me, that's the second time isn't it? First time for this soul sure, but the second memory. Was it better the second go round?"

I turned around to look for the voice and saw a mirror. I was my old self again, that young girl. Undyed hair and brown eyes, normal skin-tone, back in my old school uniform with the yellow vest. "It wasn't great either time, but when it has to happen, it has to happen, right?"

"Or when it's made to happen."

I turned sharply and caught sight of him. My height, a slim build. Those eyes... I could have sworn I had seen him before, almost... in... the... mirror?

"Give it a moment, I'm sure you'll figure it out." He said with a wry grin. It looked creepy on his face.

"What do you want with me?"

"I want you to do everything you've already done, Rei. I needed you to do those things because I couldn't do them." He leaned casually against the edge of my father's desk.

"So you've been controlling me?" I accused, I took a step towards him. If he thought that he could manipulate me, I had a right hook for him.

"Nothing that crude. I just... granted your wish. The other Rei Ikaris never made it as far as you. They never even made it to Unit Three, either having died... or worse. More than a few became some high ranking official's personal concubine... but then you would know, wouldn't you? You were different, but only because I granted your wish." He explained, continuing to talk in a conversational tone as if he hadn't completely changed the course of my existence.

"Oh, is that the only thing then? Why?" I demanded. I stepped closer to him, then found myself ten feet away from him in the blink of an eye.

"Because our father would only truly open up to his daughter, and his daughter would never survive as long as I did. I had to make one of them stronger, strong enough to make it to the end, so that they would keep Ayanami and Asuka and Misato alive. You did that for me, Rei. You kept Asuka alive, even killing the world in the process, you did what I needed you to do, puppet."

"You're a bastard, Shinji Ikari." I spit on the floor. Maybe it wasn't real, but he was... reprehensible.

He shook his head and his lip pulled back, the rage I had felt when I had seen Asuka taken was mirrored on his face. "Maybe. I watched them all die though. Arael killed Asuka's soul, and the mass production units killed her body. Ayanami was killed by Armisael and again by my own indecision... but I became god because of it, so I guess everything worked out in the end didn't It?

"But then I was the only one so lucky. I was the only Shinji Ikari to ever finish the game and even then I couldn't save them! No Shinji ever could, no matter what changes I was able to make, no matter what manipulations I put in place! My father's son and I couldn't even manage that much!

"You! You were different! Father could love you, he could show it without being afraid. You could be enough like mother for him to feel nostalgic, but different enough not to torture him. You could be someone he could love, someone he'd change the plan for."

He seemed to calm down, having burnt out his energy in his rage. He sat down on the floor next to the desk. "I watched Ayanami and Asuka, Misato, Mari, Mana, I watched them all die. Hundreds of times, thousands of times, I watched them die in screaming agony and I could not stop it. Each iteration I watched I loved them again as I did the first time, and every time it ended with their deaths.

"You were my pawn who would topple the queen and take the board. You gave me the opportunity to ensure that just once I would be able to make sure they didn't die, that they could live a full life far away from the worries of war. That's why I killed Victoria and gave you her memories. I have influence on all worlds touched by Lilith, some more than others, but yours and hers most of all."

"Well, I caused Fourth Impact and killed the planet. There's nothing left for them to have a happy ending in. I'm sorry that I couldn't save them, but I'm sorry for them, not for you," I spat at him. No matter his motivations, even if he was powerful, it didn't justify the pain he'd caused by my hand. It could have been better if I hadn't survived as long as I did, and maybe it wouldn't, but that wasn't up to him.

"You don't know what you did, but I do. And you did just fine."

"Well, I'm dead now, so it's not like I'll get to see it."

He smirked at me and waved his hand dismissively. "Your father wouldn't let go of you that easily, puppet. You'll be there soon, puppet. Tell Kaworu I said hello."

I looked down at my hand, clenched it into a fist and relaxed it. Took a deep breath and released. One, two, three, four...

Hell with it.

I swung a right hook against the side of his face, god or not I wouldn't let it go. I was already dead, right? "No--"

xxx​

"There are no strings on me."

The words left my mouth as the world snapped into brilliant focus. I was standing, then I was falling, down to my knees. I hit the floor painfully and retched, LCL poured from my mouth and nose, my lungs and stomach emptying themselves of the substance as I tried catch my bearings.

My body felt... weaker, but lighter. A certain je ne sais quoi about it. I felt... fresh. The skin on my hands felt softer and smoother than I had ever remembered it being, either before or after my change. The tone was paler, like it had never seen natural light.

I felt a hand reaching under my armpit and lifting me to my feet. Strong masculine hands, hands that had seen work, hands that were...

I blinked hard against the light and looked up to who was helping me. I had seen him not so long ago, but I had felt like a lifetime. I had died... and then I wasn't dead anymore after all? "Father."

The assistance to my feet turned into a fully body hug. He lifted me off my feet and squeezed me so tight I thought I might die. He looked as though he hadn't slept in months, his hair was a mess, his visor absent and I could see his eyes, his unkempt facial hair. "Father..?"

"I thought I had lost you the way I lost your mother... I... I couldn't leave it like that. I had to bring you back!" He half-yelled. His voice was shaking as though he was on the edge of a nervous breakdown, as though he'd been powering through on applied pharmacology and willpower.

He finally released me and I was able to sit down on a stool next to the tube I'd been flushed out of. I was in some room in Nerv, the facility was still run down, trashed, but the equipment itself looked new. I was cold, naked, but alive. My father was beside himself at his success.

I heard rapid footsteps coming down the hall and the door was knocked open so hard it nearly left the hinges, an Ayanami that likewise looked like she hadn't slept for months rushed through the door. Her hair was matted, she was panting, and she locked eyes with me.

I swallowed hard. I remembered everything, I knew what I had done in front of her, what she'd had to see. I gave a half shrug and waved my hand "Ayanami, uh, hi?"

She crossed the span of five meters almost before I could blink, and her hand struck the side of my face with a ferocity I had deserved, if not expected. Her followup was a hug that nearly knocked me to the ground.

"I hate to push this on you as quickly as I must... but you were successful in doing what needed to be done with Eva Thirteen. We did not save this world, but we did get an outcome that... well, we were able to save who was left." My father explained as he crouched next to me and put his arm around my shoulders.

"Push what on me? What's going on?" He sounded like he was writing a suicide note, not welcoming me back from the beyond. Ayanami had gone silent as well. "What aren't you telling me?"

"We have to leave. We're going to a place that is... better," Ayanami explained. "The Wunder has already left with everyone who was still alive. I stayed behind for you... but time is running out. We must leave soon if we are to meet up with them." She seemed... fidgety, not something I expected from Ayanami.

"I hate to ask you this so soon after you've woken up, and I wish I could spend years here with you, but you can't stay. Do you think you can pilot?" My father asked me. His eyes were pleading, a genuine concern for me. He had brought me back from the dead. He could have left without doing that, right?

"I think you're fresh out of Evangelions," I joked with a nervous laugh. Wasn't this supposed to be the part with the happy ending? We did it, that's what he said right?

I couldn't help but think of the conversation I had had in that other place, when I was dead. Was this more of Shinji's puppeteering? Were my strings being pulled even now? I supposed that it didn't matter even if I was his marionette, I still had to keep going didn't I?

"You won't need an Evangelion."

xxx​

Back in the locker room again, I had no idea how long it had been since the last time I'd been there. Days or weeks? Months? Years? The canary-yellow flight suit I'd worn years ago was cleaned and pressed and waiting for me. I supposed it didn't matter if I was really up to the task, since it lay before me and needed to be completed.

"So Ayanami, got anyone special waiting for you back with WILLE?" I probed conversationally. Chances to just sit and talk had been few and far between for us, but she'd stayed here and waited for me, so... I may as well try.

"What? That is... That is none of your concern, Ikari!" She protested with a blush on her cheeks. A reaction? I must proceed.

"I'll take that as a yes then. I didn't know you had it in you, Ayanami." I teased as I pulled the flightsuit up my legs.

"Ikari, I am twenty nine years old. I am not without experience in the matters of the heart," she protested. She was less off guard than she was when I had first asked, and her tone of voice had slipped back into what I thought of as 'Ayanami-normal'

"Ah-hah! So you have had it in you." I shot back with a maniac cackle. A moment later an interface headset bounced off the side of my head and into a locker.

"That is not what I meant!" She yelled back while trying to maintain a look of cold fury... which slowly cracked into a smile and a soft chuckle. "Well... Maybe."

I pulled the zipper up on the flight suit and rolled my shoulders around to settle the fabric out. "So who's the lucky guy... or girl?"

"Aida." She said simply and turned back to the locker, her cheeks had turned redder.

"Well, then I'm happy for you. He's a great guy, or he was when I knew him. You deserve someone like him."

She nodded and continued to load items from her locker into a green duffel. She seemed anxious, more than I was. And I'd just talked to... whoever that was. God?

Was that even real? It almost had to be, but then he hadn't said anything to me that I couldn't have dreamed up on my own. What was death really anyway? Was it just a hallucination caused by having my soul jammed back into a body, or was it something more tangible than that?

He claimed to have killed people and driven this world to the edge just to save those three girls... Of course, I'd nearly ended the world just to save one, even if I didn't know it at the time. I could try to forget, try to not think about it.

It had been working so far, hadn't it? Ayanami bonding time was as good a way as any to avoid thinking about the theological implications. Maybe in some other universe Shinji Ikari had become a god, but then for a few minutes fifteen years ago, so did I. Was it really so hard to believe?

"He's the hero I should have been."

"What?"

I licked my lip and looked at Ayanami, "Aida. He's the hero I should have been. He helped me before my last fight in Unit One. The P-38 was his idea, and he got in a fight to make sure I'd make it there in time. Gave me the inspirational speech and everything. I think if we'd had him on our side from the beginning, had his moral code, we might have done better."

She leaned against the locker and looked up at the cracked tiles in the ceiling. "You may be right, but are you sure you're not just trying to put yourself down? Everything that has happened has always been larger than the decisions of any one person. Do you really think he would have saved us from what happened?"

God Shinji hadn't thought so, that was my purpose, wasn't it? But maybe I couldn't accept that.

"Maybe. The right man in the right place could make all the difference in the world. I regret not knowing him better when I had the chance."

"You still can. He's waiting for me, for us, we'll all be together again soon."

I sighed and closed the locker. "But will he still want to see me, after everything I've done?"

She put her hand on my shoulder and squeezed. "I'm inclined to believe he is everything you've said he is. So, yes, I'm certain of it." She smiled.

The ground shook gently under us. Almost like how it felt when an Eva catapult was fired. Ayanami frowned and turned for the door. "It's happening faster than I thought. We have to leave now."

xxx​

"We had only finished it after you'd gone, but I knew you would be back some day. I had them finish it. I've had it waiting for you, for this moment."

I looked up at my father's face, his hand was on my shoulder. I'd recognized the place. This was the R&D hanger that the Viper Zero had been stored in, torn apart in. "So that's how we're leaving? What about you?"

The Viper had never looked better, it spoke to me in a way that no other aircraft had before. Something about it seemed so elegant, especially with the new white paint and the new lines of the air-frame. The extent of what had been done to it I didn't know, and I felt like he probably didn't have the time to explain.

"I have to stay, there are things still to be done here. I am afraid this may be the last time we see one another. There's no way back to here once you leave, not to where you're going," he said sadly. I felt his hand tighten up on my shoulder, "But that is something I have accepted. It only has two seats and both of my daughters deserve this chance."

I turned to look straight ahead at the plane as we crossed the hanger decking. The basic shape was the same as it had always been, but some of the angles were more aggressive, the control surfaces larger in some cases. Conformal fuel tanks straddled the spine, and a pair of large-capacity cargo pods sat under the wings, a drop tank sat under the centerline.

It was kitted up to flee, not to fight.

"We will not waste this gift." Ayanami said softly as she turned to look at our father.

I ran my hand along the edge of the canopy and choked back the tears that started to come. Everything had come so fast. I had finally come to a point in my life where my father could be open to me, and I was going to lose him. If not to this, I'd have lost him to age, while it seemed that I might life forever...

The ground shook slightly and my father's face turned to something resembling panic. "Leave, now! I'll make sure you get to where you're going, that is my penance for my part in killing this world. More than that, it is a father's duty to ensure his children have a future. Go!"

He grabbed me with a strength I didn't know he had and hoisted me up over the edge of the cockpit and I tumbled into the seat on top of my helmet. A brief struggle later I had it out from under me and on top of my head.

I saluted my father as he stepped backwards away from the plane. I knew enough about sacrifice that I wouldn't let someone waste one when it was right in front of me. I felt the jet shake slightly when Ayanami dropped into the seat behind me.

I reached forward and slapped the toggle to close and lock the canopy, then toggled the main power disconnect. The HUD and MFDs lit up quickly. Where the Mudhen had been a hodgepodge, everything about this fighter screamed state of the art.

I kicked over the jet fuel starter and the engine under us spun up rapidly. The radio crackled to life in my ear through the helmet speakers.

"Rei, Ayanami will help you from here. I'm opening the doors now. If you leave at full power you'll be fine. Make me proud of you."

The link died before I could reply, perhaps he couldn't bear to hear it. I couldn't bear to feel it, the tears flowed down my face. Loss and survival all at once, so many changes so fast and no chance to catch up with them.

I bit my lip hard just to make sure I was still awake and this wasn't a nightmare I couldn't wake up from. I clenched my fist tight around the stick and throttle. I was not a puppet, there were no strings on me!

This was for me. This was for my father. This was for Ayanami. I wouldn't let any of them down, that was enough of a reason, right? That was enough of a goal. Survive because I've been told to survive, because that was their wish.

I released the wheel brakes and flipped the switch to inboard. "Ayanami, we're going out now."

I rolled the stick in my hand and watched in the canopy mirrors as the control surfaces responded instantly. That would be fine. I rolled the throttle forward to the lock all at once when the wall in front of us fell away and the wide open sky greeted us beyond.

I was pressed hard into the seat as the engine launched the jet forward at a rate I had previously never experienced out of anything I'd ever flown. We cleared the floor of the hanger and fell into open sky in only moments. I remembered to retract the landing gear as the airspeed indicator shot past eight hundred. I rolled the throttle back and turned into a shallow left arc.

We had lift.

"Where are we going, Ayanami?" I asked, looking up in the mirror to see her behind me.

"Look up."

And so, at her command, I did. Directly above the remains of Nerv Headquarters was the doorway that I'd opened during Fourth Impact. It was much smaller, almost sealed, but still recognizable. There was still something beyond it.

"Ayanami?" I asked incredulously. She couldn't possibly have meant that? But that would explain the one way trip. It would explain why we needed this.

"Ikari, take us through."

I chopped the throttle back to idle and snapped the stick over to the left, rolled us into the inverted and held it. Leaving home forever, that's what this was. Wherever I ended up, there was no coming back.

I pulled the stick back sharply and pulled through a high-G split S maneuver and then slammed the throttle back to the stop. The Viper cut through the air like a knife and our speed grew rapidly, on a return vector towards Nerv. I rolled shallow to the right and stepped into the rudder to swing wide and right around the inverted pyramid. Still at full throttle I rolled to the left and pulled through a maximum performance pitch maneuver to throw us in a circle around the base.

The jet shuddered and shook in the turbulent air as vapor trailed off the wingtips. After a complete circuit I chopped the throttle back and rolled ninety degrees to the right and hauled back on the stick and pointed the nose directly for the gateway above.

I pushed back to half throttle and turned my head to face Nerv one last time. I could dry my tears later, but for the moment they proved that I had felt something, and that it had been real. I brought my hand up and held a salute until it was out of sight.

End Book One.​

Spoiler

​

 

[Jackie]

The Curious Case of Rei Ikari: Common Threads
Part One:
Rei/Zero​

"Ikari would fight."

Rei stared at the controls in front of her. It wasn't the same as her Evangelion, it was older, much older. Older than she was. It was different, and the same. She would succeed because that is what she was made for, and in that she and Zero were the same.

"I understand. Unit Zero is deploying now."

Rei had never done anything slow, and never by half measures. Her first stop was the armory, and the second stop was the edge of the inverted pyramid crater that held Nerv Headquarters. With her weapon slung across her back she dug the Evangelion's hands into the sloped rock, forcing handholds into the cliff face as she pulled herself higher and higher.

She had known the plan, she had known what Commander Ikari had intended. Mark Nine going out of control was not part of that plan. They had been betrayed by SEELE. She had known of them, he kept nothing from her because he knew she didn't care.

Until some part of her yelled out from the buried darkness of her mind that it was time to care. Betrayal as a concept didn't bother her, it wasn't in her nature to care.

She knew very few people, had spoken to even fewer, among those were Ayanami, Ikari, and Nagisa. One was dead, one had told her to fight, and the other was in danger.

Never for her own sake would she have taken up such a burden, but for Nagisa...

She grit her teeth and heaved the Evangelion upward, one last violent push and she landed on the top of the pyramid's edge with both feet. From her unit's back she retrieved the Evangelion-scale positron rifle and propped it up against the rocky ledge in front of her.

Ahead and in front of her, a few thousand yards out, she could see the Mark Nine drifting towards the Wunder. She knew what the plan for that ship was, and this was not it. She lined the sights up on the opposing Evangelion and squeezed the trigger.

The weapon let out a dull, low rumble, followed by an ear splitting shriek as the beam of charged particles lanced forth towards the target. She didn't wait for impact to fire her follow up shot. She knew better. Experience had taught her better. She snapped off four more rapid fire shots before the barrel overheated and she discarded the weapon.

Shots peppered the ground surrounding the Mark Nine and turned the impact craters into glass, the thermal impact from the strikes caused small scale explosions which peppered the target Evangelion's armor and peeled some layers of it back, melting other layers together.

From the far right of her field of vision, Rei could see the pink form of Unit Eight crawling out of a crack in the ground with Unit Two-Dash right next to it.

She did not know what she might be able to say to them, but she did know that actions spoke volumes. The battery counter started ticking down as the power cable ejected from Unit Zero's spine and she dropped into a sprint, leaping from the cliff and into the open sky.

The wind whipped past her as she fell like a rock through the open sky. The turbulence in the air from the continuing Fouth Impact violently buffeted Unit Zero, but she corrected almost unconsciously as she approached the ground.

Two hundred meters from impact she leaned the Evangelion backwards through a tumble to point the feet towards the ground. Her thumb popped a catch open on the left control stick and she pressed the button that activated the retro rockets embedded in the shoulder pylons.

Six solid fueled rockets rotated out of the back side of the shoulder pylons and lit with a thunderous roar and the Evangelion jerked back like it had been plucked by a giant invisible hand, its speed arrested rapidly.

Unit Zero landed in a crouch and started to roll forward, Rei used this momentum to convert her inertia into a forward sprint towards the Wunder, which the Mark Nine had finally reached.

She watched as Two-Dash leapt onto the grounded left wing of the Wunder and had moved to engage the rogue Mark Nine. A burst of full auto from the machine gun replacing Two's left arm peppered the Mark Nine, which responded with an energy blast from the void where the Evangelion's head should have been.

Rei felt herself disturbed when, a moment later, the Mark Nine had begun to grow a new head, one which resembled the Wunder and not the head that she was most familiar with. She felt a heat rising in her chest and she slid the control sticks forward to the locks.

Unit Zero pushed onward with a speed that it had never attained during it's former service as a front-line unit against the Angels. The armor around the knee and hip joints began to crack under the strain as vapor started to trail off of the Unit as it approached the sound barrier.

A scream of primal fury filled the entry plug as she stabbed her thumb down onto the retro catch and she commanded the Unit to jump. All six rockets ignited for the second and final time and the Unit leapt into the sky in a ballistic arc terminating at the Mark Nine.

The front of the shoulder pylons opened up and the main and backup progressive knives dropped into the ready position. Both hands reached up and pulled the blades from their containers as the distance closed.

Rei drew the two blades down and back, ready to strike as soon as she was in range. Her feet touched down on the surface of the Wunder's hull with a deep thud and she lunged forward the last few meters, blades slashing out for the neck.

Mark Nine brought its right arm up and forced Unit Zero's head down with its elbow. Rei grit her teeth against the pain feedback and jammed both knives into Nine's spinal armor and she pulled a catch on her right control stick. The left shoulder pylon opened up directly under Mark Nine's chin and seven large-caliber tungsten spikes were propelled by an explosive charge directly into its head.

Unit Zero's left shoulder pylon exploded, and a moment later Mark Nine went slack in its grip. The control circuit having been temporarily disrupted, the spinal armor over the entry plug ejected and an instant later the entry plug rocketed out and arced upwards towards the open portal.

Rei pulled back from the Nine and the Two-Dash jammed its machine gun arm down the empty plug socket and fired a full magazine of ammo down into it. She felt the blood running down the left side of her face. Sympathetic feedback from the explosion. It didn't matter.

The Mark Nine slumped for a moment before it stood back up and knocked the Two-Dash backwards against the primary hull of the Wunder and fired an energy blast at it for good measure.

Unit Zero circled around to get between the Nine and the Wunder, then Rei commanded it to kick off with everything it had left. Armor panels on the surface of the ship caved in with the force of the launch. Zero caught the Mark Nine in the midsection, damaged shoulder first, and the force of the strike tore it away from the Wunder's hull.

Rei leaned her head back against the headrest as they both fell towards the ground, away from the ship. With the Mark Nine no longer in control, the Wunder would be able to pull away, at least long enough for the plan to complete.

A blast struck Zero directly in the chest armor and cracked it with such force that her grip on the Mark Nine was broken and she was sent flying backwards towards the ship she'd just jumped off of. Rei reached for the retro controls and slapped the switch down to slow her speed, but remembered only too late that the left pylon had been destroyed.

A moment later, Unit Zero impacted the surface of the ship. Rei's head impacted the headrest, and she saw and heard no more.

 

[Jackie]

The Curious Case of Rei Ikari: Common Threads
Part Two:
Ave Victoria​

"I, Victoria, take you to be my wife, to have and to hold, to love and protect, to stay with through sickness and health, for the rest of my life."

I blinked and shook my head. She'd been on my mind more frequently as of late, a side effect of getting older and having more and deeper regrets. Memories of the life I'd never lived, but, well, I could remember the taste of that wedding cake like it was just yesterday. How do you really mourn someone you never met, who's been dead for thirty years? How do you mourn a life you never really lived?

But even so, I loved her. I loved her and I knew that in some other world, she was mourning the me she lost. The Victoria who had never done the things that I'd done, who never had to avenge her father, her real brother. The Victoria who'd never gotten her adoptive brother killed.

Rei Ikari had the right of it, it was what I did that started the mess. I couldn't deny it but I couldn't keep the whole blame. I had never confirmed it but if I was right about her, and I'd almost have to be, we were sharing the nightmare. She remembered the same life I did, but she wasn't actually me, and so she could tell herself it wasn't as important.

Maybe she didn't tell herself that though. Maybe it was killing her inside as much as it was killing me. Maybe that's where she found the fire to fight. I didn't have to pull deep to find a reason or an urge to start cutting throats and her brand of bloodthirsty didn't seem so different.

Even now, I couldn't decide if I'd have been better off trying to be her friend, or calling out 'fox three' the first time we met and strangling her influence in the crib. Either might have avoided the shit show that we ended up with: A Life Story spelled out 'B-O-H-I-C-A'.

"L-Barrier density is rising rapidly, readings are consistent with an impact event!"

No more time for self reflection. I stood up and stepped towards the front of the command deck. "That sounds like our luck. Signal the other ships to battle stations and prepare to take the whole fleet in. I want all sensor data piped to the main screen, keep from cluttering the visuals though."

The flurry of activity that surrounded my orders was nothing less than frantic, but then that's what life had become for me. I thought we'd been pushing back against the darkness, but some days I just wished it would embrace me. Take me into it's calm and cold bosom and then, maybe, I might see her again. Maybe she'd know me.

I shook my head. There would be time for that later, but if I was really lucky, there wouldn't be. "Katsuragi, you think it's her?" I asked the woman next to me. I wouldn't need to define who, there was only one person I could mean.

"I don't see how it could be anyone else. If Ikari got to her..." I could see the pain in her eyes, and I could see her white-knuckling the handrail.

"She'd probably eat up whatever ol' pops was telling her, hook, line, and sinker. You think you can fight her?" I asked. I had to know the answer, even if I wasn't sure which one I wanted to hear. There had been a reason she'd ceded command to me, of all people.

"Of course I can fight. You don't need to ask, I know the stakes." She hissed back, but she didn't seem to have her heart behind the venom, something more on her mind.

"You love her, so I did have to ask."

"That's why I have to fight."

I nodded at her. That was a fair enough reason, I knew that she'd make the right decision. I didn't, however, know what that decision would actually be.

The deck rocked under us, air turbulence to be certain, but pretty strong if it was affecting us. Our size and power would have made most turbulence irrelevant, but this gave us a bit of a buffeting. "Report?"

"Uhhh, it looks like two high energy targets are floating ahead. Contact is temporarily lost with Units Eight and Two-Dash, but the target signatures don't match. Turbulence in the local airflow seems to originate from a point one kilometer above the Tokyo-3 ruins." She explained. I should probably have taken the time to get to know her name, or any of the people on the command deck.

I couldn't spare the heartache, and that probably made me a terrible person. But I wasn't here for making friends, not new ones anyway. Clark was the people person. Katsuragi was the figure head. I was just there to make the decisions that got people killed, because they had to be made.

We were all seeking penance, absolution, but it would never come for me. Telling myself I didn't give a fuck, not learning their names, they were all ways to cope with the inevitability of mortality. I could order someone to their death if I didn't know their life story more easily than if I did.

Professional detachment.

"That's probably fine. Take us in at flank speed, AT field to maximum! Load high velocity Anti-AT field munitions in all cannons throughout the fleet! Wunder will designate all primary targets. Iowa-class is to fire on designated targets, all others catch anything too fast or small for main battery fire!" I barked out as the ship pitched and rolled from the growing atmospheric disruption.

I could see ahead the telltale opening of the Doors of Guf, the initiation of an Impact event.

I had never wanted my world to be that much bigger than a fighter cockpit. Everything I could do from there always made sense to me. Shoot or don't shoot. Evade, push, run, fight. Everything had a time and a place and a purpose, but this? Metaphysics and theological consequences weren't my thing.

They didn't need a military mind, they needed a religious one, or maybe they needed someone with an emotional investment. I by all rights, should never have been in the chair. It was pure chance, luck of this curse, that I was even in a position to be involved in this war, let alone at the front of it.

"Katsuragi, you have the conn," I announced simply, but loudly as I turned to leave the command deck. She would make the right decisions.

WILLE didn't need Commander Victoria Eleanor Becket. WILLE needed Marshall Misato Katsuragi. Maybe I needed her too, but she wasn't mine to have, not mine to keep from Ikari.

I needed to be Gypsy Rose.

I received no protest from the command crew on my departure, but I hadn't expected one. I had respect because I'd been right, but my authority flowed from Katsuragi; they would obey any order she had to give.

Rei Ikari had Evangelion to make her dangerous, and in fact we were in the middle of that, but I had my own way to be most dangerous. It made sense that it would have turned out this way. Neither of us really wrong, just in the wrong place at the right time. We were destined to fight.

The corridors passed me by without much thought to direction; I'd spent the better part of the decade on this ship and it hadn't changed much in that time. The only things that really marked the passage of time were the lines in the mirror and the unfamiliar faces walking the halls.

The hatch I was looking for was to my right, near the starboard aft compartment, behind the Evangelion canister. I'd had it installed off the books, a perk of command, but still an open secret. Officially we couldn't really approve it, but I wasn't above demanding favors.

I pressed my palm against the biometric scanner and the hatch hissed and popped inward. This had been my escape plan, if things went sideways on me. Plans that had kept me alive so far, but now there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

The Japanese engineers who'd done the work for me had called it 'F-5E Kai' and that seemed as good a name as any. Conformal fuel tanks built into the dorsal structure and ventral reinforcements to handle the higher velocity Anti-AT field ammunition fired by the nose mounted twenties, as well as the center-line mounted heavy railgun had been installed.

I pulled the hatch open and stared down into the open cockpit waiting for me below. What I hadn't told them is that I had planned on using it against the WILLE Evangelions if they turned against me, if that's what it would have taken to get away.

It was just as well that I was going to use it in defense of WILLE after all.

I dropped down into the seat and pulled the straps down to lock me into place and then pulled the helmet down over my head. Power on, canopy down. I was reaching for the toggle that would start the jettison sequence when the entire ship banked sharply to the left.

The entire plane vibrated around me in a way that wasn't immediately familiar, but if I'd had to guess I'd say the Wunder was dragging the ground on part of the left wing.

All the more reason to launch now. I pressed my finger down on the switch that would start the launch sequence and readied my other hand over the engine start switch. The panels in front of and behind the jet detached violently when the first explosive bolts fired.

I pressed down the starter switch and the engines started to rapidly gain momentum as the high velocity air-stream from the Wunder's forward flight ram-started them. A few moments after that the second set of bolts fired and the jet dropped downward away from the ship.

The buffeting as I dropped through the Wunder's wake tossed the F-5 around violently, but not so much that I didn't see an Evangelion get knocked into the side of the ship. I pushed the throttles forward to the stops and eased the stick to the right to take myself out from under the ship; flying under objects was never one of my favorite things, nor the safest.

I turned my head to the left as power came on and I stopped descending. The Eva that had kidnapped the Reis was falling through the air away from the Wunder and the gun turrets from the ship were lighting it up, for what good that would do.

Larger explosions followed the initial barrage from the guns on the Wunder, the five and sixteen inch high explosive shells from the battleships struck the Evangelion in repetitive waves of fire. Each explosion slung debris and pushed the unit further and further from its goal.

I still didn't have the energy I needed to engage in combat. My best hope was to perform high speed slashing attacks, but with this heavy gun hanging from the bottom of the plane even full afterburner thrust wasn't granting me the acceleration I'd have wanted.

But that was just me being impatient. I'd get to where I needed to be, and that Evangelion wasn't my target anyway. I eased the stick over to the left after I climbed over and around the Wunder, and set my sights on the white-glowing Evangelion that was causing the mess.

While I continued to close with the target I noticed my climb rate was a little bit... off. Too high for my air speed and angle of attack. For that matter, a look in the spot mirrors showed that the Wunder and the rest of the naval fleet were climbing as well. I experimented with the control stick and found that the plane wanted to drift towards the open portal overhead.

That made things a little more urgent.

I started charging the railgun capacitors off the generators and switched fire control over to the nose cannons. If I could bait Ikari into closing the distance to attack me I'd be better off overall, rather than losing airspeed fighting the pull of the portal.

I rolled into the inverted and pulled a few degrees of lead to compensate for the diminished effect of gravity, and pulled the trigger. Both cannons barked out full auto tracer fire that I steadily walked along the Evangelion. The shot arc was a little erratic, a lot like firing inside of a rotating reference frame, so I was thankful I had enough shots to re-calibrate where I'd have to aim to fire the railgun.

The air-frame started to creak from the gravity sheer, the two opposing 'down' forces were causing havoc with the targeting. The gryos were already set, so they would be fine even if my own reference frame flipped.

Not that it helped. I kept pushing the nose more and more towards the ground just to fly level towards the Evangelion, it was becoming more and more like flying a spaceship than a fighter jet.

And here I'd thought I'd never get to be an astronaut.

I rolled inverted to the ground, with my canopy facing the planet and the underside of the jet facing the 'new' ground, at least as far as gravity was concerned. I pulled back on the stick and brought the targeting reticle back onto the Evangelion, which I was above and being pulled away from even with both engines running at full afterburner.

Behind me, a few of the ships from the fleet had already been drawn through the portal, and there was nothing I could do for them. The Wunder wasn't far behind, Unit Two-Dash and Eight were clinging to the hull for dear life, trying not to be pulled away from it. Ikari's Evangelion was still stationary, unmoved by my attacks or the portal.

I didn't have time. I couldn't save everyone, maybe I couldn't save anyone. But I could try.

I switched fire selection over to to the railgun and fought the buffeting of the air being sucked past me towards the portal. I was losing ground even at full power. At least being pulled directly backwards made targeting easier; I squeezed the firing stud and fired half of the ten round magazine at the center of the spine, right where the entry plug hatch ought to have been.

My engines started to overheat and I was forced to throttle back, but the shots landed and the Evangelion tumbled forwards and began to fall towards the planet. A pair of bright flares lit up, streaking away from it. Entry plugs. Two? That was certainly novel.

The suction force from the portal started to relent, but with my throttle down to half and the recoil from the railgun I was too close to escape. I looked over my shoulder to see how long it would be until I met destiny, when I saw Wunder and units Two-Dash, Eight, and Zero pulled through the void.

And then I joined them, hoping that if this was the end, that I might find her waiting for me, and that she'd know me.

 

[Jackie]

Book Two



Chapter 37:
Drudgery​

Like most nights, right around eight thirty, half hour to closing, I found myself staring at my finger nails and listening to the monotonous drone from the other end of the telephone. The cotton polo I'd been issued was cheap, mass produced, and uniform. I supposed that in that way, it represented my job perfectly.

The flickering lights bathed the store in a subtly migraine inducing glow, just outside of the frequency you really noticed, but well within one your brain could pick up on. That, of course, didn't bother the spider that crawled down on its thread directly in front of my register.

And, of course, oil was on five for four, with a free filter and drain pan while supplies last.

"Sorry, we don't have that part in stock at this store. We can have it from our hub store by tomorrow at ten. Do you want me to reserve it?"

Click. Well, fuck you too buddy.

I dropped the handset back on the receiver and leaned backwards against the spark-plug wire-set display. Twelve feet tall, six feet deep, and full of boxes so bleached out from age that they gave my own flesh tone a run for its money.

And for my time I'd made seventy two dollars less taxes.

I glanced down at my cell phone at the time, eight fifty eight. Two minutes to go. I glanced up towards the battery display, then down the entire shelf of air filters. The alternator tester was next to that, and I briefly entertained the thought of rolling the bastard thing outside and setting it on fire.

My phone vibrated in the pocket of my black slacks and I tapped the logout on my register. "Raphi! Store's closed, let's lock up and go home!"

The short, hispanic man sighed as he came out from behind the plug-wire display and shook his head at me. It wasn't the first time he'd given me that look of disappointment, I was pretty sure it wouldn't be the last either. "It wouldn't hurt you to care a little more about the store, eh mija?"

Raphael was an older guy, late fifties with salt and pepper hair, where he still had the hair anyway. I gave him a helpless shrug. "If you paid me more I'd care more. Can we lock up? I need to go home and get my beauty sleep."

He let out a deep belly laugh and shook his head, "Ah mija, if I paid you more the others would get jealous and quit and you'd have that much more work to do."

"Well, if you gave me too much work I'd have to go too, so maybe you've got a point." I shrugged and locked my drawer, then grabbed my car keys and headed for the front door. It was at least a forty minute drive and I wanted to get to it as quickly as I could.

"Oh fine, be like that. You can go, I'll lock up." I heard the mock frustration in his voice. He was a nice guy like that.

"You're the best Raphi!" I yelled over my shoulder as pushed the door open and walked out into the cold night. Even this far south it still got colder than Tokyo-3 ever did. Middle of November didn't do the temperature any favors either.

The little blue Corvair waiting for me in the parking lot was a rather familiar sight, if not the most welcome at the moment. Forty five minutes in a car without a heater wasn't a thought I relished. It wasn't broken, it just never had one installed.

I slid the key into the lock cylinder that was older than I was and turned it, a crackling creak later and the lock popped open and I was able to open the door. None too soon, since the metal was cold as hell. I found the clutch and pressed it down while I slid the key into the ignition.

The choke knob was equally cold in my hand as I pulled it out and put my foot against the gas pedal. I turned the key and the engine chugged over behind me, one, two, three, four, five seconds. I gave it a little gas and the nearly sixty year old engine finally caught and started up.

The carburators were a little out of tune, but the idle settled down after a few minutes to let the engine warm up. I slid the choke in experimentally and was rewarded with the engine not stalling out on me. Good enough.

Turned on the lights and eased it into gear, and out of the parking space. It was not the most glamorous of cars, nor the most glamorous of jobs, but it was what I had. If I had known that this was where my life was going to take me, I'd probably have laughed at the absurdity of it.

It wasn't as though this mundane existence hadn't come with its own share of costs, of that I was only far too aware, but it was nice enough. At least, I could tell myself it was.

Adjusting to this, after everything I'd gone through was still a work in progress, but with hair dye and tinted contacts anything was possible. It was a world without Angels, that was good enough, wasn't it? No Second Impact, no Third or Fourth Impact.

Victoria had died having only ever lived in this world, so maybe she'd got the better end of the deal. She'd died not having failed, or having failed anyone. It was every bit possible that it was my own world that made things turn into shit, or the people in it. The Victoria from my world messed a few things up on her own, and could she really be considered that different from the Victoria from here?

I leaned back in the seat and rolled my head to crack my neck. Just another day in paradise. I couldn't even bring myself to feel like I was being sarcastic. The planet was vibrant with life, with blue oceans and an intact south pole. We weren't in a perpetual state of war, the world wasn't in danger of ending, there was no existential horror.

Whether he was real or not, that God Shinji had gotten his wish; Asuka, Ayanami, Misato, even Mari were no longer subject to the possibility of Third, or Fourth, Impact.

But I felt restless. It wasn't like the job really helped that either, since it was six to eight hours every other day, and some Saturdays, of monotonous drudgery. There were only so many brake pads I could sell, or car batteries I could install before I wanted to jump off the roof.

And I was pretty sure even that wouldn't reliably kill me.

Romance was dodgy, I hadn't seen Misato in months and any other option ran into the problem of the fact that I was not exactly human, and that's the kind of thing that would eventually get out in an intimate relationship. I couldn't exactly go 'hey by the way you're sleeping with an alien' because they have pills for people who say things like that, and they're not optional.

And all else being equal, sex wasn't really a major concern of mine. Affection would be nice, but it didn't rule my life. My lament was the sum of all grievances, rather than any given one. Some kind of fulfillment and I'd be content with myself, but...

I had to mentally balance the relative boredom of a mundane life against the excitement that was surely taking place in the Kitty Hawk battlegroup. On the one hand they certainly weren't bored, but on the other hand; not my circus, not my monkeys.

The falsified documents that let me live the life I had were less of a bribe or a reward and more like an order. One written without words that said 'we don't want to have to deal with what happens when we let you off the chain'. Hogtied with a birth certificate and a social security card. Or maybe it was more akin to an anchor around my neck.

It was the better of the two options though. The other was that they could probably have tried to turn me over after the Second Battle of New Orleans. I wouldn't have let them, but they could have tried. I think everyone was just so excited not to be dead that they were feeling benevolent.

Or maybe it was Misato's doing. Probably was, on reflection.

Sleeping in a warm bed every night and not worrying about dying was, on the whole, desirable. So it wasn't all bad to be boring. I could have used some more excitement, but living as a normal human being, even if I wasn't, had more perks than drawbacks.

The headlights of a car in the oncoming lane blinded me, so I directed my gaze to the white line on the right side of the road. I wasn't far from the house, I must have driven most of the way in a daze. Not uncommon after an eight hour shift.

The rumble of the wheels against the road and the unique exhaust note of the air cooled engine were not unpleasant companions, even if the sharp cold of the night time November air was.

I slowed and turned down the spur that would take me the rest of the way. The lake off to my right reflected the moonlight. A lake not made by an explosion, but by the dedicated efforts of man, and filled with clean blue water. That alone was probably worth the trip through the portal.

The car's headlights lit up the little yellow house on the corner up ahead, my destination, so I eased on the brakes and pushed in the clutch. It was dark out, but the moon was high, and the lights in the house were still on. That meant at least somebody was still up, and that should be expected on a week night.

The gravel cracked and crunched under the tires as I pulled in, and then drove past the car in the drive and parked next to the one covered in a tarp next to the house. I turned the engine off a few moments later and popped the door open.

A yawn worked its way out of me as I trudged towards the door on the side of the house. All I really wanted was to grab a snack, crawl into bed, and sleep through till the morning. At least, assuming Rae didn't need anything. Fifty-fifty odds on that.

I pulled the door open and stepped into the kitchen, let the warm air wash over me and push the chills from my bones. I could probably have fallen asleep right then and there.

Instead, I turned to the fridge and pulled the door open, spotted my prey, and cracked it off the six pack ring. I pulled the tab and the can opened with a hiss and put it to my lips. The cool carbonated malty goodness of a Dallas Blonde slid down my gullet, satisfying my thirst and my desire to get buzzed all at once.

Rae was a beer snob, so I knew no matter what I took from the fridge it wouldn't be swill.

"Rei, if you drink too many of those I'll have to add it to your rent."

I turned towards the voice but didn't lower the can from my lips; the can wasn't empty yet. The woman stood about three inches shorter than I did, but she had a certain something about her that said she'd probably win in a fight.

She was a tiny Korean school teacher with the ferocity of a tiger. What she lacked in size she made up for in presense, so it was no surprise that Victoria had married her. From what I remembered of her it was likewise no surprise that Rose had gotten her to take me in.

I crunched the can in my hand after finishing the drink and shrugged helplessly "Sorry about that Rae, you've just got such good taste I find myself unable to not sample from your selection."

"Yeah, right. Well, you can make dinner to make up for it since I don't feel like cooking anything," she offered with a shrug. "Not that I ever do."

"I know, that's why I have Zenna on speed dial." I muttered, then turned towards the hallway, "I'm gonna change first, I smell like car exhaust."

As I walked down the hallway I heard her yell from behind me, "How's that different from usual?"

I raised my left hand over my head in a wordless one finger salute and grabbed the door handle to my room with my other hand. Out of the corner of my eye I sould see the open door of Rae's room, and the myriad of display cases within.

Rae was also a nerd. Anime, television, literature, it didn't matter. There was something surreal about seeing a glass display case with a six inch tall vinyl statue of Rei Ayanami standing inside of it, especially once you'd met the real person.

It was a true testament to people's refusal to believe what they don't want to that nobody had made the connection between Neon Genesis Evangelion and the fiasco that went down in New Orleans. Denial was a powerful thing and so was government information suppression.

The incident couldn't be denied, but somehow the news never reported on the eighty meter tall robots that participated in it.

I clicked the door shut behind me and pulled my shirt off, flung it into the corner, and then unclasped my belt.

People would believe the things that didn't challenge their worldview too much, they'd believe the things that made them feel comfortable, and they'd find any way they could to rationalize away anything with theological implications.

My bra hit the pile of dirty clothes with the speed and accuracy of a major league fastball, and I pulled a clean t-shirt over my head. The baggy, soft, comfortable fabric was a welcome change from the scratchy red polo I had to wear for work.

The black slacks found their way to the back of my desk chair and in a moment I was securely in the warm embrace of flannel pajama pants.

Oh, if those Russian sailors could see 'little blue hair girl' now. My elegance was matched only by my motivation, that is to say, I had none of either. Of course, I wasn't blue hair girl anymore either, it had been replaced by brown hair dye and brown contact lenses.

It was easier just to avoid the uncomfortable questions that my natural colors would bring, and I didn't want to give Rae any reason to suspect I wasn't perfectly normal.

I heard a knock on my door and turned in surprise. I hadn't been expecting that. She couldn't wait?

"Hey you didn't tell me your sister was stopping by. I didn't even know you had a sister."

My eyes widened and I turned quickly to pull the pocket pistol I had tucked under the mattress, slipped it into my pocket and then licked my lips and swallowed hard. "Yeah, sorry Rae. It must have slipped my mind. I'll be out in a minute."

Sister? Was that other Rei coming for me?

I kept my right hand in my pocket resting against the pistol and popped my door open with the other hand. I crept down the hall and listened to the conversation playing out.

"I'm sorry, I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Suzu Ikari. I hope having Rei living with you hasn't been too much trouble?"

I recognized that voice, the inflections, the accent. I felt my grip on the pistol relax and a smile tugged at the corner of my mouth.

In the living room, as I walked out, I saw Rae and 'Suzu Ikari' standing by the front door. The latter was wearing slacks, a jacket, and a white blouse, and looked every bit like a federal agent. Her hair was dyed, and she was wearing colored contacts, but I'd still recognize her face anywhere.

She smiled at me. "Hello Rei, it's been a while. Why don't we catch up?"

Rei Ayanami had come for dinner. Maybe life wasn't so boring after all.

"Your sister dresses much nicer than you do. Guess twins aren't always alike, huh?" Rae needled with a self satisfied smirk.

I rolled my eyes. Hard. "Well, one of us had to be lazy, right? I guess I pulled the long straw to win that prize."

'Suzu' put her hand to her mouth to hide her giggle. I had to wonder if it was just a social visit or if there was something a little bit more to it. What had brought her here?

"Yeah, I bet. So what's for dinner, Rei?" Rae asked with a raised eyebrow. It was that expression.

Of course, there wasn't really anything that great in the fridge, nothing that wasn't frozen anyway. I wasn't going to feed substandard food to 'Suzu'.

Well, that, and I was too lazy to want to cook after working all day.

I glanced back at the kitchen and then at my sister, then at Rae. "Right, so, I'm gonna go get my phone, I'll be right back."

I did have Zenna on speed dial, after all.

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 38:
Outside Context Pilot​

I loved Thai food. A nice chicken pad Thai with just the right amount of heat was probably my favorite thing to eat. This dish was no different. The hot chili mingled with the crushed peanut and noodle in a way that sang to me.

Across the table from me I saw 'Suzu' somehow managing to make the way she was hoovering down her vegetarian pad Thai look dignified and graceful. She'd always had that quality about her, or maybe I had just been looking at her through rose tinted glasses.

Rose tinted irises at least.

"So, Su," I started around a mouthful of noodle. "I'm happy to see you, but you're not dressed like this is just a social call. You know?"

Suzu glanced over at Rae and tilted her head slightly towards her. "Nihongo wa dekimasu ka?"

Rae cocked an eyebrow at my sister and there was a smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. "Hai, dekimasu."

I snorted and shook my head, "Is it really polite to try to find a language she doesn't understand to speak in front of her?"

"It could be one of those things people shouldn't know about, Rei," my sister said to me with raised eyebrows and a 'you ought not push this issue' expression on her face.

"So it's one of those things. So not just a social call?" I accused. I couldn't say I was unhappy to see her, it was quite the opposite in fact, but I would have liked it to have at least been just for me.

"It can be both," she admitted, or maybe asked. I couldn't imagine she'd want to have to ask me for something.

"You know," Rae interrupted, "Suzu's accent is a lot stronger than yours. That's a little strange now that I think about it."

I felt my hand clench under the table and then forced myself to relax it. "Oh, that's simple, we spent about fifteen years apart from each other, I'm far more Americanized than she is."

The best lies were ones based in the truth.

"Is that the lie you're going with?" Rae asked. She was sharp, smarter than I or Victoria ever were, so maybe trying to pull one over on her wasn't the best bet.

Suzu put her chopsticks down and gestured towards Rae, her eyes narrowed. "Zasluzhivayushchiy doveriya?"

"Da, viktoriya doveryayet yey." I answered with my crude understanding of the Russian language.

Rae started to glare at me and I slumped my shoulders forward with a sigh, "It's a long and complicated story. I'll try to cut out the irrelevant details." But where to start?

"I don't really have a dog in this fight, if you need to keep secrets you're certainly entitled to it. I have a few of my own. I'm just..." Rae trailed off, I could see her eyes watering up. "I've just had questions since you did show up with a woman who looks like she could be my wife's aged twin."

Alright, fair enough then. I knew where to start. "I was in New Orleans eight months ago."

xxx

Eight Months Ago​

The portal passed by and a moment later I found myself staring at the clear blue sky, altimeter climbing rapidly. Had it not worked? I looked to the left and saw clear blue water as far as the eye could see. To my right the green of land, with a small inlet breaking it up before going further inland.

I recognized the landmass, I'd seen it from the air enough. I could spot the causeway that bisected Lake Pontchartrain. We'd popped out over New Orleans, on a world that had never had the oceans turned red.

"I think we're home."

"What?" She asked in a confused tone. Of course she wouldn't understand, but I did.

This was a world untouched by the Angels, this was the world that Shinji had wanted. This was where my memories had come from, or close enough to it.

Wait.

The radar warning receiver screeched in my ear and I shoved the throttle to the stop and dumped an entire chaff bucket. I rolled the stick forward and put us into a sharp dive while rolling to the right. I hadn't yet confirmed a missile launch, but I didn't want to take the chance.

"Sis, get someone on the radio, figure out what's going on!" I yelled as I shed thousands of feet in a matter of seconds.

Down and below I could spot a small group of aircraft carriers being flanked on six sides by Iowa class battleships, and each of those was chugging out a steady stream of cannon-fire in the direction of another group of vessels, but not actually hitting any of them.

That would be the WILLE fleet, because the USN wasn't driving Iowas anymore, and they'd never had six of them anyway. The carriers were deep in the center of the formation, with the battleships, cruisers, and destroyers filling in around the edge. Most of the people were either on the carriers or the Wunder.

"No answer on normal frequencies, there's a lot of overlapping communication. Nobody is hearing us over the noise."

The RWR stopped screeching in my ear when we dropped under two thousand fee, so I pulled the throttle back down to half, with the WILLE fleet between us and the USN. I didn't need the radar to see all of the aircraft in the sky, but there was enough triple-A to keep them away from the fleet proper. I couldn't afford to engage them in combat because without radio I had no way of knowing who was on what side, since they were all flying the same damn aircraft.

Not that I had much more than the two heaters and two AMRAAMs on my wings. I started to thumb through the stores inventory when I rolled through and found no autocannon. Instead I found a selection for, the way I interpreted the readout, some kind of hyper-velocity gun with a fifty round capacity.

My guess was something similar to what had been hanging from the wings on the strike eagle.

"Alright, if they can't hear us over the noise, we'll just have to be louder. Power on the IFF transponder and fire up the active radar in continuous mode."

A moment later the radar screen started displaying much more accurate real time targeting information, no longer relying on passive reception. More importantly, we were visible as hell to anyone with the wherewithal to look.

I rolled the radio over to a frequency I remembered from long ago, one that the computer on his jet still had the cipher for. "Cylon One-Three in the blind, anyone got their ears on? I'm the idiot blasting my transponder for everyone to see."

"Cylon One-Two copies. I didn't think we'd see you again. We're covering the retreat but it's rough, their machines are a hell of a lot newer. And we're trying really hard not to actually kill anyone." He sounded old, worn out. I guess it had been fifteen years for him. It had been six days for me.

"I'll give them something else to worry about. I'm going after the 'Burkes. Are you able to cover me?" I called back as I rolled the weapon selector over to the HV railgun. I heard a clunk noise and looked over my left shoulder to see a panel had retracted, exposing the muzzle of the gun.

"Why the hell not. Cylon One-Two descending now. I'll cover you."

I angled the nose towards the fleet on the opposite side of the carriers and pushed the throttle back up. The speed piled on quickly, much faster than before the retrofit, much faster than anything I'd ever flown before. I kept the plane low, under two hundred feet for the majority of the run-up.

The RWR started to screech again so I set the countermeasures to automatic. The plane started ejecting flare and chaff from the forward buckets as the distance closed under a kilometer.

The IR targeting system lit up hot-spots on the lead 'Burke's hull, directly under the intake/exhaust superstructure at the waterline. I squeezed off a shot and stepped into the rudder to fire a second shot at the hot spot aft of that one; both main engine rooms.

A pair of blasts erupted from the ship's armor as the shots drilled through the plate and, presumably, out the other side. I stepped into the rudder as a shot flew overhead and tore the sensor mast completely off the ship I'd just shot.

I chopped throttle and rolled to the right, hauled back on the stick and bled much of my energy into a nine-G full performance turn back towards the WILLE fleet.

I looked up in the mirror and saw smoke pouring out of the destroyer's stacks, the angle meant that I'd have hit at least one engine in each room, and if the shell cleared the other side it would be taking on water.

She wasn't moving any time soon.

Ahead of and below me I saw a pink Evangelion standing on the left wing of the Wunder, which I had only seen for the first time in this fight. The water trailing off of it told me exactly where it had been.

The pink Eva was holding an Eva-scale sniper rifle and fired another round over me, probably knocking the comms mast off another one of the ships. Making them deaf and dumb was a good way of reducing their effectiveness, and preventing too much intel from leaking out.

"Looks like they're pulling back to let us retreat. Set down on the Kitty Hawk. You've got a few people who want to talk to you."

"Negative Cylon One-Two. Handcuffs aren't my kind of Jewlery. I'll have to catch you guys on the flip side."

xxx​

"I'm not sure that this is a better lie," Rae mused. "But supposing I believe you, why are you living here instead of with the rest of the people in the WILLE fleet?"

'Suzu' laughed at an unspoken joke and shook her head. "We were trying to keep her out of trouble."

I nodded, "So, I stashed the fighter jet, and we came back to face the music together. She got put to work, I got put on a bus."

Rae nodded and then rested her chin on her hand, "So why didn't we hear about flying battleships or giant robots on the news?"

I shrugged, "Human capacity for denial. Who'd believe it? I mean, there's an Arleigh Burke with holes in it that can't be denied, anyone with eyes could have seen the hundreds of tons of high explosive that got chunked around in the gulf, but those are things we understand."

"Evangelion and Wunder strain the human imagination." Suzu continued for me. "The ships were witnessed. Their origin can be denied, but they can be seen so their existence cannot be denied."

"Wait, what do you mean by 'Evangelion'? You can't possibly mean what I think you're trying to say. You're definitely off your meds, been watching too much TV or something." Rae accused with a slightly uncomfortable-sounding laugh.

"Well, you know I buy a lot of hair dye." I offered with a shrug.

"And? So you've got some gray hair, that's not that uncommon to gray a little early."

I shrugged, "Fair enough." I looked down into my lap and held my eyelid open and plucked the brown contact lens off of my right eye and blinked away the sudden tears from the irritation.

I looked up at her with my right eye still closed. "Well, that's only half of it. Victoria's cousin thought you might be a target if anyone figured out who she was, and who she's working with. I needed a place to have a normal life, and she wanted assurances that someone would be watching after you."

"Even if I believed that, you're about ninety pounds soaking wet. You're no bigger than I am so what could you do?" Rae accused. She was getting angrier, both from confusion and distrust, but...

I set the contact lens down on the table and opened my right eye, showing my blood red iris for all to see. "I have a few talents that go beyond that. I don't need a fighter jet to be dangerous."

"So you're an albino? That doesn't prove anything. You know what? Fuck it. I'm going to bed. I've got work tomorrow, you have work tomorrow, and I'm done entertaining this weird shit." Rae said before storming off to her room.

"That could have gone better." My sister admitted to me, then stood up from the table. "Although this was somewhat of a distraction from what I came here for originally. I do need your help, and I apologize for asking."

"If you want the F-2, you can't have it." I said and shook my head, "I've told them that a dozen times. It's not going to happen."

"I'm not here on their behalf, I am here on behalf of our sister. Officially WILLE can't support what I want to do. So I need your help.

I stared at her un-blinkingly for a few moments and then laughed, "Oh, you need my other parting gift don't you? What's the mission?"

"She found Nagisa." Suzu offered simply.

I felt my left hand locking into a fist, and then I forced it open again. "Rescue mission?"

"Yes."

I nodded without hesitation. He might have been creepy, but he'd tried, and without him we wouldn't have made it here. He was one of us, we owed him. "I'm in. Whatever you need."

I heard a door down the hall pop open and footsteps down the hardwood floor towards us. Rae stepped out and turned to look at me. Her face was tight, her eyes half open as she took a deep breath. "You know, I just made a phone call because I figured, hey, you're crazy, but there's a chance you're not. Victoria used to work with someone from the Kitty Hawk. The one from here. He said that somebody did try to sink the Farragut in New Orleans. Exactly the way you described it."

"So..." I ventured. "Is that better or worse?"

"I haven't decided yet. But if you're not lying about that, I tend to believe the rest of what you said, at least a little bit. When you're done doing whatever it is you have planned, I need you to take me to WILLE. I need to talk to the woman who brought you to me." Rae demanded as her expression shifted one that that was a little closer to 'fierce' than I felt entirely comfortable with.

Suzu looked between Rae and I a few times and then shrugged. "That can be arranged. Our mission will not be actionable for several more days, after the mission we can revisit this request, though I see no reason why I cannot accommodate you."

I turned away from the table and shook my head. I was all pumped and ready to go and with that she knocked the wind right out of my sails. "Well, that's great. Back to the daily grind tomorrow then. The couch pulls out into a bed, knock yourself out. I'm going to sleep."

"What, you're going to sleep after all that?" Rae demanded from behind me as I walked down the hall.

"Yeah, why not? This is a three out of ten on my weird shit-o-meter. I don't start losing sleep till my actions have theological implications." I waved my hand over my shoulder and pulled my door closed behind me.

The bed sure looked nice and comfy after all.

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 39:
Menace​

I stared at the handset sitting against the pillar in front of me, straddled right between the two parts lookup terminals with a deep primal hatred pulled from within the darkest recesses of my mind. I could almost taste ozone on the air as I directed every bit of my energy into willing an energy beam into reality that might smite the damned thing, that I may never use it again.

"Raphi!" I yelled with a level of hatred in my voice that I had reserved for one, and only one customer. Only one autonomous pile of human mayonnaise could earn this feeling, this ire. "Raphi that son of a bitch got me again!"

On the counter in front of me lay parts. Parts from the stacks behind the counter. Parts from every single aisle of the stacks, all for one single car, but from all corners of inventory. I'd been up and down a ladder eight times pulling them all. Eight times.

This, in and of itself, wasn't a big deal, it was a sale, and a sale was a sale. But this bastard, this human mayonnaise would do this to me every month. Call in with his generic sounding voice, order a bunch of parts, have me pull all of them, then say 'oh, never mind, I don't need them after all' and then hang up.

So then I had thirty suspension parts for a short-bed Chevy sitting on the counter that I had to restock, which meant I had to punch them all back in and get rack locations. Easily forty five minutes of fucking around, and that's if no other customers bothered me.

I heard the man come around the corner, of course he could do little to hide his movements. He wasn't exactly limber, advanced in age as he was. "Rei? What do you--" He interrupted himself when he saw the stack of Moog, Felpro, and Timkin boxes. "Oh dammit, again? Rei that's twice this week."

I clenched my left fist so hard my wrist cracked and then relaxed it out again. "You know Raphi, you've got a point. I think I let him do this so I can get my daily exercise, gotta keep the flab off somehow, right?"

"No, Rei..." He sighed and shook his head. "It's probably a pissed off secret shopper. Just push this all on the return carts and I'll get overnight to restock it all. Don't waste your whole shift on it."

Never let it be said that I missed an opportunity to pass the buck or make shit roll uphill.

"Yeah, let Chris do it. I don't wanna. That's fine." I shook my head and walked out into the main area of the store in front of the aisles, to the oil change display. The sale was still on, and I still didn't care.

The loud raspy exhaust note from the parking lot drew my attention as if it were a gunshot. My head snapped to the left and, through the glass along the front of the store, I saw a violently red Porsche 911 tearing it's way up the parking lot. Low gear, high throttle. Showing off, obviously.

Obviously.

I shook my head and walked over to the specialty oils shelf. Mostly cleaners, conditioners, gallon cans of WD-40, stuff like that. I was responsible for making sure that they were front facing and not all knocked all over the place. It was a job I took very little pride in. Fortunately, it took very little pride to accomplish.

I heard the red Porsche shut down outside of the entrance to the store and wandered back towards the parts shelves. Whoever was driving that car was probably an asshole and I didn't want to deal with any assholes.

I slipped around the corner behind the registers and camped out behind the plug-wire shelf. The area doubles as a break room, with a mini fridge, microwave, and the store's safe. In violation of corporate policy, the door was unlocked and open because it was easier to unlock it just once per shift. Situation normal.

A sealed bottle of coke sat on top of the safe and I licked my bottom lip unconsciously. I'd stashed it there earlier, out of the cooler out front, for emergency use. That is, for any thirst emergency. I cracked the bottle open and started to slurp the liquid down. I needed the caffeine anyway.

The chime from the door alarm told me that 'the asshole with the Porsche' had entered the building. Or maybe it was somebody else. I supposed that it didn't matter since Raphi wasn't about to work the cash register unless I was bleeding to death, and of course he'd ring the customer up before calling the ambulance. Just good business sense.

I sighed and pulled a stick of gum out of my pocket and popped it into my mouth. Tasted like Fireball. If only the taste came with the effectiveness of the drink. The substitute would have to do; drinking at work pissed Raphi off.

The repetitive ringing of the bell at the cash register filled me with a sudden impulse to shove it into the bodily orifice of whoever was hitting the damn thing, and I didn't really have a preference for which one.

I shuffled back into the customer-facing half of the store while staring at the floor. More of a trudge than a shuffle, but I got where I was going. A pack of air 'vanillaroma' air fresheners was sitting on the counter next to a five dollar bill.

The package rang up at an even four-fifty, and I looked up to give the customer their change.

"Ikari, you look like shit and you smell like Fireball."

I recognized that voice. I blinked and looked up at the woman I was handing the money to. Well of fucking course it would be her. "Nice to see you too Asuka. It's cinnamon gum by the way."

She shrugged at me and took her change. "Could have gone either way with you. You did have that drinking problem."

I shrugged, "No problem, I get it all in my mouth now. No spills. You come all this way for air fresheners?"

She gave a non-committal shrug and head tilt, "Could be. Didn't know you were into that kind of thing. Keeping busy huh?"

I shook my head and laughed. "Nothing like that. Romance has been dead since that brief interruption in being alive eight months ago. Other than that, you know, alcohol, work. The usual stuff."

She put the air fresheners in her purse and seemed to be studying me. Even through her sunglasses I could tell her eye hadn't changed since I'd last seen her, on Akagi's table. It did seem to be working just fine though. "So you can still get drunk?" She asked finally.

"Yep. Should I not be able to?" I asked. I felt my eyebrow creeping up under the tips of my bangs. Could she not? Interesting side effect of Angelic contamination. Maybe that was the difference between Lilith and Adam.

"I can't. Mari's hard enough to deal with, and I can't even drink to make it stop." She deadpanned. A moment later her lip curled up into a smirk.

I rolled my head and felt my neck pop, and it felt damn good. "So how are things going in the fleet?"

Her expression fell and she looked toward the front door of the store. "Well, Misato got wind of what's going on with you and Ayanami. She's sent me to warn you away from doing anything... mercenary."

"Oh is that all?" I prodded. She should have known me better than that. Did she think sending the girl I'd killed the world to save would sway me? "Our agreement is at my pleasure. I'm not going to leave him hanging in the wind after what he did for me. After what he did for all of us. This life is because of him, you know."

She nodded and took her sunglasses off. I could see her Angelic eye clearly now, and I figured that was the point. "I'm just the messenger. If you cause an incident with the Americans she's going to send me after you. Off the record though, I don't think I'll find you."

Dammit Misato, it wasn't enough to send me away? If you want to control my life you've got to be part of it. I spit my gum into the trash can. "We'll have to catch up some other time, I'd like to spend more time with you, but after work." I hesitated, then narrowed my eyes. "Wunder works because Misato has my mother locked in a cage. Ask her who she thinks Unit One will side with if I come calling."

"You really think that's the best play here, Rei? She's got a fleet, you have you. Is that a fight you think you're gonna win?"

I felt my hand clenching into a fist again. "Maybe, maybe not. Tell her if she wants to run my life she needs to actually be part of my life. If she's going to push me away I'll be away, but it'll be on my terms."

She laughed and shook her head at me. "Looks like that fire in your heart is still lit. I left a present for you in your car. I think you'll find it useful for... well, you'll see. I'll deny it so don't go telling anyone I gave it to you."

She started towards the door, keys in her hand. Part of me wanted to chase her, jump in the car with her, and wherever she went just tag along. Make it like the old days again. Get in a fight with a giant monster, sleep in Misato's apartment.

"Leaving so soon?" I asked suddenly, and perhaps a bit too urgently. I didn't want to be alone. Suddenly it felt as if everything that Victoria had given me had been stripped away and I was that scared lonely little girl standing on a deserted street waiting to get picked up by that cute woman in the picture that had been sent along with the letter.

The ones you let yourself love can cut you deeper than anyone else and Misato had cut me to the core. Those feelings were just under the surface, always waiting to erupt, to bubble up and turn me into a wreck. I kept them pushed down under a layer of alcohol and sarcasm but at times like this, times when I was reminded, when I had to think about her.

"I've got to get back to the fleet. I'm needed." She said simply. Her tone, more than her words, told me that I couldn't push the issue if I wanted to.

"If you ever need me, I'll be there." I choked out. "Can you tell her that for me?"

She put her sunglasses back on and nodded, "Yeah, I think so."

I didn't bother watching when I heard the door open and close again. I took a step back from the register and leaned against the shelf behind me. If I wasn't such a fuck up, she'd have kept me around.

If I wasn't such a fuck up we wouldn't be living in a healthy world, so maybe I wasn't completely wrong.

Don't... do anything too mercenary?

That's the word she'd chosen.

Mercenary.

"Hey Raphi!" I yelled to the back of the store where he was surely hiding from customers. "Hey Raphi, call in Chris. I gotta run."

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 40:
Plans in Motion​

The thing most people didn't understand about arms dealing was that it wasn't really the kind of thing that happened in dark alleys with large sums of cash and six different armed men standing lookout. Most of the time it happened from a smart phone or from a computer keyboard. Social media and web forums were the easiest and most common way of setting up meetings.

And it was all perfectly legal and above board.

Hollywood had this way of giving most people the impression that buying guns out of the trunk of a car for cash was the realm of murderers or vigilantes, rather than an astonishingly common occurrence every day in rural America.

The best way to run procurement for our little adventure would be completely above board, at least for as much of it as we could. Suzu had given me some stuff that I could barter with, something that nobody else in the civilian world had anyway.

It was amazing what people were willing to pay for cans of Mk 211 Mod 0. In terms of small arms, four or five cans would cover basically all of our needs. I'd have to turn a little more of it into cash for fuel, and then make sure I had enough left to actually use, but it wouldn't be too much of a problem to do that. Worst came to worst I could add ball into the belts to make up for the missing 211.

I pushed myself back away from the keyboard so I could stand up. I'd set up a deal for later in the day, not too far away either so that was a bonus. In the meantime, a bottle of hair dye demanded my attention and would not be denied.

My spine cracked as I stretched out upon standing. A quick keystroke locked the screen and I grabbed the plastic bag off the corner of the desk. I was fortunate enough to have a bathroom attached to my bedroom; it would serve my purposes just fine.

Little blue hair girl was making a comeback.

xxx​

I had never been a fan of pants but the weather required it. Victoria had never had an aversion to such garments, but as was more apparent with every day of my life: we were not the same person. Just as well, my feelings for Misato didn't make me feel guilty about Rae; I just didn't think of her like that. Not anymore, anyway.

It was funny, when I finally met her and the spark I was expecting just wasn't there. It was for the best.

The reason I needed pants was the forty degree temperatures made my bones cold. The Corvair didn't have heating, but it provided some shelter from the cold. Standing around in the middle of a parking lot waiting for the guy to show up didn't afford the same insulation.

Having three hundred-twenty round cases of Raufoss Mk 211 sitting in the front of my car made me feel a bit like a guard next to a broken down armored car. Of course, my saving grace was that even if somebody did pry the trunk lid open they wouldn't know how valuable that ammo actually was.

I caught myself cracking my knuckles and shook my hands to get the blood flowing. After spending my entire life in a world where the mercury rarely dropped under eighty, this was almost like a frozen hell. It wasn't even the coldest it was going to get either.

After the small eternity of fifteen minutes a three-quarter ton Ford came rolling up to my car. Having a distinctive vehicle always made these deals easier to work out, you were easier to pick out. It also meant you could develop a reputation as a reliable trader as well. 'Oh, the girl with the Corvair? Yeah she's alright.'

I'd left my contacts at home, and with my hair back to it's 'original' cornflower blue I would definitely stand out, but that was the point. I wanted the attention.

"Wow! That's a hell of a hair color you got there kid!"

I laughed and looked over at the now-stopped truck and the man climbing down out of it. "Yeah I suppose it is! So, you're Cotton, right? Rei Ikari." I said, extending my hand towards him as he approached.

"Nice to metcha. So, you've actually got some of that Raufoss huh? I gotta admit I half expected this to be a prank, but I need some for my collection so I figured I'd give it a chance." He was an older guy, probably mid to late fifties, jovial enough though. His handshake was firm without being aggressive and accent made me think of an old-school country boy who tripped and fell into a college education by accident.

I nodded, "Yeah, it's a bit hard to come by, but if you're a collector then you're going to love the seals on the cans. Check it out." I said as I popped the release and lifted the trunk lid on the front of the car. The three cans of Mk 211 sat, held in place by the telescoping brace I'd stuck behind them to keep them from rolling around.

"Willy?" He sounded out. Close enough to WILLE I supposed. "Those are the guys from that big knock down drag out in New Orleans, right? Where the hell did you get this stuff?" He asked as he leaned in to inspect the merchandise. "You know what, never mind. I know we made a deal for two cans, but I'll throw in the M95 and the glass I got on it if you give me all three."

That would be two fifty caliber rifles. I only needed one, but two was definitely better, and I had enough ammo to justify the trade. "Cotton, you got yourself a deal."

I reached down into the trunk and released the brace, then grabbed a can in each hand and hefted them out. It would have been a problem for me before, but red eyes and AT fields weren't the only benefit to my new biology.

"Hell kid, you're stronger than you look. I coulda got them. Aw oh well. Let me grab the rifles and you can have a look at em." He said with a laugh and a shake of his head. I kinda liked this guy.

I followed him back to his truck and set the two cans down in the bed while he fetched two hard cases from his back seat. We met back at the front of my car where he pulled the third can out and laid both cases down and popped them open.

On the left was a real beauty of a rifle, a Barret M82A3 .50BMG rifle. That's what I'd been after, because being able to drill a hole through an engine block with enough punch left to take out a horse could always be useful.

On the right, a M95 .50BMG rifle. The bolt action counterpart to the semi automatic M82. It wasn't what I had originally bargained for, but two was always better than one. I was sure we'd find a use for it. The glass sitting on top of it looked like it cost more than my car.

I turned to Cotton and stuck my hand out. "Looks good to me, you happy with the deal?"

He took my hand and shook it, a little more animatedly than before. "Yes Ma'am. Tell you what, if you get any more of that you wanna get rid of let me know first. I'll make you a real good deal."

"Sure thing, might have some more in a week or two, I'll let you know how it goes." I said as he turned to walk back to his truck, when a thought hit me. "Say, Cotton, what do you do for a living?"

I was curious about his demeanor, accent, apparent wealth. I wanted to know what a man like that did for a living.

"Oh, mechanical engineer. How about yourself?"

I tilted my head and thought about it for a minute, then let the smile creep onto my face. "Fighter pilot."

Cotton nodded his head and then his mouth worked up and down a couple of times as he tried to think of how to say what he was going to say next. "Pardon my askin, but, for who?"

I shrugged, "For me."

"Well I guess that's fair enough." He said with a shrug and pulled the door of his truck closed.

I closed the rifle cases and then the trunk lid and climbed back into my own car. On the passenger seat was the package that Asuka had given me the other day. I'd opened it before, but I'd left it in the car. I wasn't quite sure what she'd meant by it, but I chose to believe it was something good.

Leather jacket and a pilot's cap and goggles. Either she was telling me she knew what I was going to do, or she was telling me she knew what I was going to do and supported my doing it. Maybe she felt like she owed me something, but I felt more like I owed her. She'd given me a reason for everything.

I pushed in the clutch and turned the key and the still-warm engine purred to life. Cotton's truck had already pulled away by the time I slid into first gear and eased the clutch out. Off to the airfield to see what luck Suzu had with her own procurement efforts.

xxx​

The airstrip was a simple affair, a grass strip with a few tie-downs alone the perimeter and no control tower. Exactly what I needed it to be. I could see another car sitting down at the far end by a plane sitting under a tarp.

It might have been unusual to keep a plane under a tarp, especially that one, but if anyone who knew what they were looking at saw the propellers they would have more questions than I'd be able to answer.

The best case was that they assumed I was with the same group that had six Iowa-class battleships when only four had ever been built. They wouldn't be entirely wrong.

I drove down the dirt access road towards that final aircraft in the row and pulled up alongside the other car, and then turned off the engine. The tink-tink sound of the manifolds cooling was actually somewhat calming for me. I reached down to pop the trunk and then opened the door.

Suzu was already on her way over as I walked around the front of the car to lift the trunk lid. She noticed my hair color, at least I assumed that's why she was shaking her head and giving me that look while I pulled the cases out.

"I see you're back to old habits, Ikari." She chided me as she took the first case from me. "Given up on the contact lenses as well?"

I shrugged and hefted the second case up on top of my shoulder and closed the trunk lid with my other hand. "I talked to Asuka the other day. She said Misato didn't want me to act too mercenary. I figured that might get her attention, so I didn't want there to be any confusion as to my choice."

"Back to old habits? The Americans aren't going to like this." She reminded me with a tilted head and a knowing tone of voice.

"This feels more right anyway. The contacts were getting itchy and Rei Ikari was always meant to have blue hair. I'm certain of it." I answered with a laugh, then set the case down on the trunk lid.

"There are two cases, I only asked for one rifle." Suzu observed.

I popped the catch and opened the case still on the trunk lid, the M95 with scope lay out on the soft packing foam. "He threw in a second rifle for a third can of 211, I figured we'd either find a use for it or sell it for cash. You guys are doing the ground portion of this mission so it's up to you what you do with it."

"Unit Zero had a weapon very similar to this. I am sure I will find a use for it." She reached out and touched the bolt handle of the weapon and nodded her head. "Yes, this will do."

"So, how was your end of procurement?" I probed and jerked my head towards the other car.

She looked up from the case and then looked back to the car, and then to me, and the hint of a smile graced her lips. "You spoke to Shikinami, I spoke to Makinami."

 

[Jackie]

The Curious Case of Rei Ikari: Common Threads
Part Three:
The Sniper​

"You backed her up then, I'm asking you to do the same thing now."

I spit my gum out. The flavor had worn off anyway so it was just as well. "Yes, that's true. But you know why I did that." She was close enough to the situation, and always had been. I might have known more about Ayanami's origins than she did.

I was there for it, after all.

"I do not have to tell you how bad it would be if the Americans were able to discover what Nagisa is. This is what is at stake." Ayanami was wearing brown contact lenses, and had her hair dyed. I didn't really like it. It looked too much like--

"You're asking me to turn on WILLE. You're asking me to go AWOL at least. So why?" I asked. She had already left the fleet once on this errand, now she was back to try to draw me into it? And she'd do it looking like that.

Even if I did help her, that was no guarantee of success. We had failed more than we'd succeeded, but we'd always won when it counted. Which category did Ayanami's little operation fall into?

Ayanami... Ayanami had changed since fourth impact. She seemed more driven, but more reckless. I had noticed what she'd stolen from the armory on the Kitty Hawk, if anyone else had noticed she would have been in a world of trouble.

But then Katsuragi had let her take one of the civilian aircraft for her own personal use. I could not quite figure out what relationship there was between Ayanami and the Marshal. Whatever it was dated back to Nerv, and meant that Ayanami could get away with anything short of outright treason, or so it seemed.

"Because force is useless if it is not used for a noble purpose. We can not sit on our hands and let another world burn for our inaction. Human life is born of Lilith, and this world is no different. If we let this chain of events continue we may yet see an impact event on this world. Could you live with that?" Ayanami's eyes almost seemed to be glowing behind those contact lenses. A trick of imagination, or memory. I remembered another woman who had that same look, so many years ago. She had been gone for longer than she'd been alive, but I could still--

I should have looked after Ikari more. I should have been there for her, helped her. I should have made sure she wasn't sent to that place she grew up. Maybe I could have kept her from that pain. We'd taken an escape pod from our world, but if I had been better we might have been able to save the world we'd had.

I diverted my eyes from Ayanami and examined the metal wall of my bunk room. I could count the rivets as a distraction if I put my mind to it. "Ikari is going to get you in trouble again."

I felt her hand on my chin and she forced me to look at her. I saw... a ghost. My mind took me back to when I was just a teenager, before Evangelions and Angels and biological contamination. Back to that woman in a lab-coat and a pair of glasses. Glasses that I didn't need to see. Ayanami wasn't her.

"Is that the answer she would have given? Is that the answer she would have wanted you to give to her daughter?"

I felt like I'd been slapped. Hearing those words, in that voice, from that face. I was sixteen again, being chastised for my misbehavior.

"How could you understand? How could you hope to possibly know?" I asked her as the tears welled up in my eyes. My face and chest felt tight, I hadn't felt like this in years.

"Because Unit One moved for you. You are not her daughter, but you do have a bond. A strong bond. You're older than all of us and... You know that I am of her. That's why you are so uncomfortable isn't it, Makinami? Because of what you share with Yui Ikari? That does not change that Rei Ikari needs your help now. We all do." Her voice felt like icewater in my veins.

My hand struck her across the cheek before I really realized what I was doing. She may have been of Yui, but she had spent too much time with Yui's husband. Pulling at my heartstrings to do what she wanted.

She wasn't wrong, and she had made me see that I had an obligation to Ikari, but the means to her end were too cold and callous to have come from that face.

She recoiled from me and held her cheek, the alabaster skin had turned pink from the blow. She'd earned it. "You're too much like her father. Fine, I'll join your mission. I wasn't doing anything important here. Maybe this will be different. Maybe if I'm lucky the Marshal will show me as much leniency as she's been showing you."

"If we're lucky we won't need it." She answered. Her hand was already down from her face.

That was not wrong. "So if you need my help, what is it that you need me to do?"

"We need a sniper."

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 41:
Hail Mary​

I found myself wondering what Becket would have thought if he'd made it this far, if he hadn't died saving my life. Would he have kept going like the rest of them, or would he have joined me in trying to live a mundane life?

We were a people out of place, out of time. We were Pandora's Box, and the people of this world kept trying to pry it open to get at what was inside, regardless of the consequences. I had to wonder how Becket would have handled it.

He had been there for me at one of my darkest times. He had pulled me back from the edge when I was trying to do nothing more than find oblivion in the bottom of a bottle. It was pure dumb chance and luck that he'd been the one on rotation the day that I flew into town and if he'd never met me he might have lived to see today.

But maybe I'd be worse for wear.

So maybe his role was to make sure that I'd made it through, to make it to where I needed to be. And maybe there was no plan at all, but for the universal scale Rube Goldberg machine that was reality. Call it butterfly effect, or call it destiny, there didn't seem to be a functional difference.

Either Becket was meant to take that missile by destiny, or the sequence of events set in motion by the big bang were always going to end there. What purpose did human choice have in the matter? We could either sit back and absolve ourselves of responsibility and let destiny drive, blame everything on that. Or we could accept that our decisions caused everything, and that we had to shoulder the responsibility of every choice we make, that every choice I made led to his death.

But if I chose to believe the latter, if I chose to believe that I had a say in how things turned out. If I chose to believe that there was no puppet master, that there were no strings on me, well, that meant I had to make the only choice that I could make.

He chose to save Rei Ikari, because he believed in Rei Ikari. Therefore, the only choice I could make was to be Rei Ikari. Rei Ikari would never leave a man behind.

Absent a clear adversary, absent Angels or SEELE, my only enemy was anyone who stood against me. I was not at war with the United States, nor even the specific agencies responsible for Kaworu's predicament. My enemy was the individuals who tried to stop me from getting him out.

I took a deep breath and checked my airspeed. Two-fifty on the money. That was within range of what I was pretending to be, and it would hold up as long as nobody decided to look up. We wouldn't be active that long anyway.

I adjusted my goggles and pressed the microphone button. "Dragoon to Archer, what's the mission status?"

"Lancer and Rogue are nearly in position. Convoy in fifteen. Begin your run in twelve. I'll update targets on the fly. Bard will be in the pocket in eighteen... as long as this intel is good and it's not a trap."

"Archer, it's not a trap it's a target rich environment. If it goes sideways call it and I'll roll in for a second pass. Keep the head and tail boxed up and we'll have a nice little shooting gallery. Dragoon out." I released the mic switch and leaned back in the seat.

The P-38K was a smooth machine, even if mine was pushing ninety years old. The Kitty Hawk crewmen had kept it in pristine condition even though there was nobody to fly it. I imagine it must have given them something to do to feel useful given the relative uselessness of air power during the war against Nerv.

They would probably have revolted against the fig leaf insignia I'd painted on the plane after I'd taken it from them, but I needed to prove a point and that was a good way of doing it. I had one chance at this, and I would probably never be able to use the P-38 again afterwards, so I wanted everyone watching to know what I stood for.

If WILLE refused to stand up to the task of keeping this world safe, then Nerv would have to take up the slack. Even if I was the only person on the planet willing to wear that brand, that would be enough to make my point.

Because at the end of the day, Nerv's original and public goal was the protection of mankind against the threat of the Angels. Whatever it was that these people thought they were going to accomplish by reverse engineering Kaworu, or whatever they had planned, it stood against that goal.

And they had my friend.

"Dragoon, three minutes till convoy is in the target zone. I have visual. Roll in." Archer chirped in my ear.

From twenty-thousand feet the descent would grant me a lot of kinetic energy, which I'd keep when I punched the throttle to extend back out and back up to altitude. After that I'd have to get the hell out of dodge before anyone put jets in the air.

If the first pass didn't cut it, I'd have to loop back quickly for a second pass, then extend out of the mission area as fast as I could, as low as I could get away with. I had a place to stash the P-38, but that wasn't what was important anyway.

I pushed the nose down steeply and lined my eye up with the targeting cross-hair. I'd try to keep it to the fifties, but the twenty was loaded with APHEI if for some reason the Raufoss in the fifties didn't cut it.

"Archer to Dragoon, count seven vehicles. Pop one, two, three, five, six, and seven. Looks like a Stryker up front. Four is a tractor trailer rig, armored up trailer. Lancer says that's where Bard is."

I tapped the mic switch and fired off an "acknowledge" then pulled throttle back on both engines. The Stryker meant I'd be glad I had the twenty in the nose. Of course, I also didn't have a computer so I had to guesstimate ranges and bullet drop.

One of the major drawbacks to the older technology was that it was older technology. Analog gun-sights, manually adjusted aim points on the guns. Analog flight controls and instrumentation, fully manual engine controls. I had none of the high technology of the F-2, but I could hold my own against a few ground targets.

I dropped under four thousand feet and rammed the throttles to the stops, still in my dive. I'd have to risk over speed, I did not want to get chewed up by that thirty on the lead vehicle. I guessed range to five hundred meters and mashed down both firing studs. All five nose mounted weapons roared to life with a racket not dissimilar to an elementary school music class; all clanging and banging. Intermittent tracers that had been laced into the belts showed me my trajectory and I walked the fire through the IAV and into the two Humvees behind it.

The way the Stryker started burning before I even finished that half of my pass told me they were out of the fight. The two trucks behind it didn't have a chance even against the fifties, but I'd not let go of the trigger for the twenty and so they'd taken the worst of it. I released the triggers long enough to skip the tractor-trailer and then continued firing on the three Humvees bringing up the rear.

"Archer to Dragoon, one, two, three, five, six, and seven are all either killed or disabled. Rogue and Lancer are moving in on four now. Bard in the pocket in three minutes. I'm changing location to provide cover. Catch you at the rendezvous. Archer out."

I cut power to the phony transponder I'd been using to pretend that I was a Cessna 340 to ATC and kept the throttles firewalled. Altitude down under two hundred feet meant I could see a lot of terrain, up close and personal. Three hundred miles an hour meant I could get deep into the woods of east Texas by the time the sun finished setting.

"Lancer to Dragoon, we have Bard. He appears to be wounded and unconscious, but he is alive. We are proceeding with extraction."

I let myself breathe a sigh of relief at the news that they had him. He'd done enough for us that we owed him this. A successful mission was always a good thing, but saving a friend felt even better. The shit storm we'd stirred up would probably have repercussions for years, and I doubted they'd ever stop looking for me.

On the other hand, Archer and Rogue would both do a pretty good job of making sure that dead men tell no tales, so we might get away cleaner than I could have hoped. Given how good of a shot Makinami was, I wouldn't be shocked if she told me that nobody had been able to get a distress call out.

With Suzu's AT-field abilities it was also unlikely anyone had taken injury from return fire. That left Rogue, the clone. That was a wild card to me, I had spent very little time talking to her. But she was competent, I'd seen video proof of that.

And it was her intel that had gotten us the location of the convoy. The exact dynamic of that was not yet clear to me. She might have been working for Suzu specifically for this purpose, or she was more of a free agent. I'd have to figure that one out, and then figure out what I would even do with the information.

"Lancer to Dragoon. Bard is awake. He has a message." I heard what sounded like a radio being shuffled around from the other side of the link and muffled voices conversing among themselves.

A different voice, not Suzu's, came back on the radio a moment later. "They were done with me. I was never their objective. They've found the Mark Nine. They have been trying to reactivate it. I think that they may have succeeded."

"Well... That's really bad." I replied like an idiot. I hadn't expected news like that. I hadn't expected them to be so far, so quickly. But if those idiots had the Mark Nine activated, they were a danger to everyone including themselves.

I shook my head and eased the craft a little lower to the ground. I suddenly felt a lot more exposed. "Archer, we need to get this information to the people who can do something with it. I'd do it myself but I don't want to get caught over open water."

I had to try to get word to Misato. Failing that, Denisovich or Clark would probably do. Not that I had a better way of getting in touch with them than I did getting in touch with Misato. I found myself wishing Gypsy Rose was up here with me.

"What, you're not afraid of a little Evangelion problem are you?"

"Maybe if I had one of my own sitting in my back pocket, Archer." That, or if I had my F-2 instead of this P-38. If I had known what the score was I probably would have gone that route instead. "I'll be at the rendezvous in twenty-five. Let's hope the world doesn't end before then."

If it did, at least I'd tried.
​

 

[Jackie]

The Curious Case of Rei Ikari: Common Threads
Part Four:
Reaper's Sprint
​

There had never been a real choice, at least not one that I could have ever made differently. When someone begs for your help, you give them your help. That the world was potentially on the line made no difference to me. I just wasn't wired that way.

Not after everything she had done for us.

I was two minutes out from the Hakone region, three from Tokyo-3 proper. I could already see the results of recent battle. The big red one had been stomping its way through an entire armored column and had in large part broken their ranks.

Burning tanks and crashed helicopters littered the city perimeter but even that didn't seem to put much of a dent in the forces that were still active. They weren't our concern, that would wait for the Hornets. "Cylon flight, ignore ground targets for now. Primary concern is Cylon One-Three. Find her and plow the road."

The girl had more balls than most grown men I'd met. She'd have given my sister a run for her money in pure stubbornness, with the recklessness of youth to drive her further. She'd been crazy enough to try to fight an Angel with a fighter jet, then she chased down a nuke.

Attacking a modern army in a plane that hadn't seen combat in seventy years shouldn't have surprised me, even if it did make my job harder. I just had to trust that she was doing the right thing. Nerv was supposed to save the world, so what could we do without it?

"I've got eyes on air to ground tracers, two o clock low." I was almost surprised by the voice of one-two over the radio. I'd let myself slip into my thoughts. Dangerous even in a stealth fighter.

I looked over to the right and saw the long streams of tracer fire raking a column on the ground. I pulled the stick to the right and pushed the throttles up into afterburner. The quicker I could get to the merge, the quicker I could get her out of the shit. Get more fast movers in the area to mop up the JSSDF troops.

The profile of a P-38K Lightning resolved itself quickly as the distance closed and it became undeniable that Iris was completely out of her mind. Out of her mind, and, based on the aggression that seemed to be radiating off of her aircraft, completely pissed off.

She pulled up and to my left and I pulled through to follow in behind her. I could come up along side, hand-signals would get us a common frequency that wasn't guard. I'd escort her out of the fight, or at least provide anti-air support.

Launch detection screeched in my ear and I spammed active radar to find the launch platform. So many distractions, I kept ignoring what was in front of me. I started rolling frequencies over to guard, I had to warn her.

Directly ahead, beyond the P-38 I was nearly on top of I saw a Japanese F-2 bearing down on her, I saw the plume from the sidewinder. No time to warn her, it wouldn't matter.

"Misato, I'm sorry. I love you." Her voice came through on guard. She had accepted it, she was ready to go.

She was going four hundred miles an hour at best. I was supersonic. The speed differential gave me the chance to do something that under most circumstances would have been completely impossible. I kept the throttles pinned and fired off the entire flare bucket as I flew under the 38's belly. Give that seeker head something else to look at.

It was only an instant and I was out in front. No time for a missile launch, no time to even try for guns. I never had a choice. I fully deflected the stick aft and held on as the Gs pressed me down into the ejection seat, even as the entire aircraft tried to shake itself apart. A split second later the missile hit and helped that right along.

I reached for the ejection seat handle and then... nothing.

​

xxx

​

I woke with a start. It was that dream again, the one that felt so real and was completely insane at the same time. The one that made me doubt my sanity. I'd spent months trying to figure it out, trying to find the people in it. People who, of course, didn't exist.

But I couldn't let it go, and they'd taken flying away from me. Pending a full workup and a signoff by a head shrinker, I was grounded. All because of dreams about a girl with blue hair, and a sister who didn't exist.

My neck popped when I rolled out of bed. Feet hit the cold tile and for a minute I was thankful that the dreams had started before New Orleans, and that I hadn't shared everything in them. The parts that I hadn't told anyone about, the giant robots, the monsters. Those were just fairy tale, science fiction.

But then I'd seen video of what had happened in New Orleans. I'd seen the giant robot there. I saw ships that had never been built fighting the US Navy. When I'd seen that, the dreams felt less like a fiction.

I stood up and walked towards the bathroom. The day may as well start early, there was no chance in hell I was getting any more sleep, not unless I wanted those dreams to start all over again. They wouldn't tell me anything I didn't already know.

Whatever questions I had, the answers lay with the group called 'WILLE'.




​

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 42:
Unpalatable Truths​

The cold quiet of the barn was abnormally uncomfortable. The taste of spent powder was subtle but present, and the pinging sounds of the cooling exhaust manifolds echoed a little too loudly off the sheet metal walls.

The M4 sitting against my leg while I straddled the left engine nacelle helped to calm my nerves, but if things went sideways at this point I'd probably have been better off trying to make a run over open water for the Kitty Hawk.

Ideally nobody should be able to find me, nobody should know where to look. My paranoia, nevertheless, would not leave me. Every noise made my finger twitch towards the trigger. I'd killed people before, but this was different.

I had the backing of an entire organization before. I had control of a super weapon. I had a good reason.

Was rescuing Kaworu worth the people I'd taken out? I wanted to think that it was. But I also wondered if those men even knew why they were being killed, and we had killed all of them. They probably hadn't deserved it, but we also hadn't had a choice in the matter.

But even if I told myself I had the moral authority to pull the trigger, the fact remained that as much as I was flying the banner, I didn't have the resources of Nerv, or of any organization. I had a few thousand pounds of ammo, a car, a fighter jet with no ground crew or support staff, and a prop fighter from World War Two.

Kaworu might side with me, Mari wouldn't. Suzu could go either way, and I could probably count on the clone to fall in line for lack of anything better to do. That didn't make a compelling show of force. If I kept taking the P-38 into combat I'd eventually get shot down. If I kept raiding convoys and didn't get shot down, eventually the plane would fly itself apart from lack of maintenance.

The F-2Kai would be workable, but any ammunition I used I couldn't replace without resources I didn't have. I didn't have the money or connections to operate on any scale greater than the infantry level and even that was dubious.

And none of that did me any good anyway without something to point it at. A valid target that would get Misato's attention. The thing I needed most was to show her that I was willing to do the necessary things she was unwilling to do.

With Mark Nine being a real threat again, she'd have to listen to me. I'd have to make her listen.

But then all of my goodwill was spent, written out on checks cashed against an overdrawn account. Flying the fig leafed flag was a declaration of war. I had no illusions that any member of that fleet would swing to my side. Not after fifteen years, even if in the end I'd been right.

No, I'd just been lucky.

The sound of gravel under car tires crept through the open barn door. I thumbed the fire selector over to full auto and flattened myself down to the nacelle. If they were friendly they were fine, if they weren't...

A mop of blue-white hair crossed the threshold into the barn and my finger relaxed away from the trigger. The clone, call sign 'rogue'. Behind her were two more sets of footsteps, and then two more heads of hair made themselves known, brown and silver.

Suzu, the lancer. Kaworu, the bard. The M82 was slung over Suzu's right shoulder, and Kaworu was braced against and supported by her left. He looked like he'd had the piss beaten out of him, but he was alive despite the almost full body bruising.

Maybe lucky was better than right.

I dropped down from the engine nacelle and lowered my M4 against myself. "Where's Archer?"

"She's scouting. The getaway was clean but she's thorough." Suzu answered. "If we're discovered they won't try to take us alive."

I felt the impulse to say something sarcastic or irreverent, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Not after what I'd done right in front of her. "I won't let it come to that."

"You shouldn't act like you control it. These people are powerful and motivated and scared. Our arrival in this world started something that we're not likely to stop." Kaworu explained through a pained expression. I had to wonder how much information they'd beaten out of him.

"Even so--"

"Archer says movement ten meters out. She doesn't have a clean shot. One unknown with a rifle." I looked over to Suzu, who had her finger pressed to her ear.

I could hear a foot crunch against gravel just outside the door and brought my M4 to my shoulder. The sound was not what I expected, it was less of a grown man and more like if I or Suzu had--

I saw the flash of moonlight against steel peeking through the doorway, and the clone sprang into action. She drew a short-sword that I had missed before and lunged towards the intruder. I'd never seen her in action before, and I wasn't unimpressed.

The distance was closed in a few seconds and she drew the blade through an overhead slash, it looked like she was going for the neck in the first blow. The intruder lifted their rifle, and I could make out that the flash of light had been a rather substantial bayonet mounted to the front of a full-stocked rifle.

Something about that seemed familiar.

Rogue's wakizashi struck the bayonet with a thunderous crash and a shower of sparks. The intruder managed to get under the attack and locked Rogue's blade into her bayonet's crossguard, then pushed the attack and swung the butt of the rifle hard into Rogue's body.

Rogue brought her knee up into the intruder's crotch and kicked back, breaking the bind and opening up some distance, just enough for a second lunge, again aiming for the neck.

The intruder brought their bayonet up for another block and stepped back, keeping the distance open and keeping their blade forward towards Rogue. The wakizashi struck at the bayonet point again, keeping the barrel out of alignment with her as she pushed hard to close the distance again.

Something about it--

"Archer has a shot, she's taking it!" Suzu yelled over the sounds of the fight. Something was still wrong, this wasn't a soldier. This was something else. Fencer?

The intruder blocked another overhand strike from Rogue right in front of the stacking swivel and let the momentum of the strike swing the rifle around her forward hand. The butt struck Rogue in the side of the head, followed up with a swift butt stroke to the chin that knocked her off her feet.

I recognized the rifle, which meant I knew who the intruder was. "Negative! Archer needs to stand down!" I yelled as I leaped into a sprint. Rogue was on her back, and the intruder was about to deliver the killing blow. I had to stop this, before--

The intruder swung her rifle around and brought the point of the bayonet down on the supine form of Rogue and in that instant the bright orange flash of an AT field lit up the barn and the intruder's face. I could see the shock written all over it.

The muzzle flash that followed was nothing compared to the deafening sound that reverberated through the barn and caused my ears to hiss. The bullet splashed against the AT field and the point of the bayonet was still held at bay, but Rogue was pinned to the floor, unable to strike back.

"That's enough!" I yelled over the ringing in my ears and the temporary flash blindness from staring directly at the muzzle. Victoria wouldn't forgive me if I let it go any further, and I probably wouldn't forgive myself either.

"Raven, back off!" I screamed again.

The intruder stopped and stepped back as if slapped, the fear was evident on her face. She turned to me as Rogue withdrew and brought her blade back to ready, but stopped pushing forward. "Rei?! What the fuck is going on!?"

I sighed and walked over to her. The ringing in my ears was starting to die down anyway, of course I'd never hear that frequency again, but what could you do? "I tried to explain it to you before. You didn't exactly believe me then. The truth is a little bit more difficult to grasp."

She threw her arms to the sides, the rifle rattled a bit when it hit the end of her reach. "Well fucking try! What the hell are you even doing here?"

"Well, I knew he wouldn't look here. I didn't think you would either. I guess if anyone was going to find me here it would have been you, though." I sighed and shook my head, "Rae, there's not a good place to start."

"Then pick a bad place."

"You mean like this? Yeah, okay. Maybe some real introductions." I turned towards Suzu. "Get Archer down here."

"Rei, I'm losing my patience." She stepped towards me. I was intimately aware of that bayonet and what I knew she could do with it.

"Alright, introductions. You've met Suzu. But her real name is Rei Ayanami. The gray haired guy with her is Kaworu Nagisa. The girl you kicked the shit out of is... Well, let's call her the 'Third Rei' for the sake of simplicity." I rattled off while staring at the other woman.

Her face went through a range of emotions, the most common being shock and disbelief, with anger and distrust as a close second. I could neither blame her nor claim surprise. She'd have to accept the truth because she'd seen it.

"Ikari..." she muttered under her breath. I could almost see the gears turning behind her eyes.

"Rei Ikari, designated pilot of Unit One. The third child. Daughter of Gendo and Yui Ikari. Yes." I answered.

Ayanami gave me a look from the side, one that said 'what the hell is going on' almost as well as words could have. She didn't appreciate the gravity of what Rae was trying to process, but I did. It couldn't have been terribly different from when I woke up in a blue Renault so many years ago.

Rae'd seen the AT field. The rest didn't really matter. I was Rei, not Victoria. Telling her anything else about that would only make it worse for her. There was no benefit for either of us. Maybe I didn't love Rae in the way that her wife had, but that didn't mean I didn't care about her.

I wouldn't burden her with the pain.

"This is unbelievable," she finally managed to say after working her mouth mutely a few times. "Completely unbelievable."

"The other option, of course, is that it's all magic. Is that more a more palatable truth?" Ayanami asked her. I could detect a subtle sarcastic tone, though the words themselves made her sarcasm obvious. She was slipping back into old mannerisms.

I stepped forward and put my hand on Rae's shoulder. "I told you I was with WILLE, but that's not exactly true. My allegiance was always to the people I care about. You're going to hear about what we did in the coming days... assuming the world doesn't end before then."

She stared at me and I sucked on my teeth nervously. "And, well," I continued, "WILLE didn't do that, and I didn't do that for WILLE. Whatever it is they'll say happened, I did what I did to rescue my friend, to try to stop the military from tapping into powers they can't control. I did it while wearing a red fig leaf."

I pointed at the P-38 cooling off behind me, and the large red leaf logos emblazoned on the wings and tail. It was a logo I was certain she would have been familiar with. With my hair dyed back the color I preferred and my contacts out, I certainly looked the part she was expecting.

"Why even tell me any of this? I'm a liability now right? Even if I can't help but believe you, you can't trust me with this kind of information, you hardly even know me!" She yelled. She was tearing up, upset, afraid.

"I need you to trust me. You walked in on us, I needed you to understand why. I can't protect you if you don't trust me, I can't keep what's coming away from you." I tried to explain even as my grip on her shoulder got tighter, tighter than I intended.

"Why would you even want to? I'm nobody to you."

I bit down on my tongue as a reminder of how much it might hurt later. "Because you were somebody to Gypsy Rose, to whom I owe a debt I can never repay."

As soon as the words left my mouth I could see it in her eyes, I could see the hurt and the pain. When she heard that name, it was as though she had died all over again. She grabbed my by the wrist and threw my arm to the side, away from her. "How do you know that name?!" She yelled at me. "What could you possibly even know about her!?"

I felt the tears welling up in my own eyes. Seeing Rae like this, I felt myself starting to mourn for a woman I'd never really met, whose life I could remember living, whose absence I could feel every time I was with Rae. What could I say about her? What could help?

I closed my eyes and felt the tears run down the side of my nose. "She loved you. She'd have killed or died for you. You were the first person she loved, and the last. She kept me alive. Without you, she was lost. We fought, we tried to kill each other, but at the very end of everything... at the end of everything there was enough blame to go around. She wanted me to make sure you were safe, and I told her that I would make sure of it."

She shook her head, I could tell she wanted to hit me, or hug me, or cry. "What are you talking about? She never met you. She's dead!"

Behind Rae, I saw Archer, Makinami, walking up through the pasture with her rifle slung against her back. She was wearing her WILLE uniform, even without the patches that much was evident.

I took a breath and looked at Rae again. "She has, and she's not. Not really. Not anymore."

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 43:
What you can't live without​

"They'll never let you land." Makinami's voice was not angry, but it was forceful. Of course it would be.

My eyes flicked from Rae to Mari, "Why do you bring that up?"

"Because I know what an Ayanami would do in this situation." Mari continued, "You're going to take her to see Commander Becket. They won't let you land, not after the operation we just pulled. They're going to be on high alert."

I shook my head. Of course she was right, that's the exact move I was planning to make. Rae needed me to do this, and there was a part of me that wouldn't let her go without it. I looked levelly at Mari, "You know, I'm not an Ayanami, even with these eyes."

She smirked but it didn't quite reach her eyes; in those I saw barely contained anguish. "Your mother was, though. You're not that different."

"You knew her?" I asked. Mari hadn't looked that old when I first met her, but she hadn't changed since then either. I didn't know her enough to know how old she really was, and with the way everything else had been going--

Unit One had moved for her, with no prior contact. She'd made it work when I left with Asuka after the Unit Three incident.

"We were close." Mari admitted, "I'm telling you this because I feel like I owe her that much. Give WILLE a reason not to shoot you down."

I felt my hand curling into a fist, tightening until the joints popped, and then relaxing again. I glanced at Rae, who seemed to be fine with not pressing on either of us for information on what exactly the hell we were talking about, for which I was eternally grateful.

Still, I felt an obligation to her, not just for what she'd done for me, but for what I knew she'd done for her wife. She deserved anything I could give her, didn't she?

I looked over my shoulder at the plane still covered in a tarp, and then to the still-cooling P-38. A reason not to shoot me down? A surrender? There was still too much to do that Misato wasn't doing. Someone had to.

"Alright," I finally said, "What do you advise then?"

"I advise that you be prepared to make sacrifices. You can't have everything, so pick what you can't live without and let go of the rest." Mari finally answered after a pause.

Maybe that's what she'd done. What couldn't I live without, what could I let go of? I looked back at that red leaf painted on the P-38's wing. What that had stood for when we'd all stood behind it. Maybe the ideals weren't identical, but I had the same force of purpose.

"Alright, let's get the Lightning refueled and load fresh belts." I announced. I sucked my teeth and turned towards Rae, "If you're willing to take on the risk, I'll get you where you want to go."

xxx​

The P-38 cockpit was not intended for two people. One short person could fit comfortably, a taller pilot would be a little more cramped, but it was always doable. With the pilot's rear armor plate and the original tube radio removed there was a little more storage space in the back, behind the pilot's seat.

It was this quirk of my particular aircraft that gave rise to one of the worst ideas I'd had. The F-2 was out of the question. It was my final bargaining chip, and flying in with that plane, after what I'd done, was too threatening a posture for them to let me through.

But in a pinch, if we tried really hard... Well, the P-38 would do.

I glanced up into the mirror and looked at Rae, who was curled up into a less-than-comfortable position in order to fit on top of the surge tank behind my seat. She was, fortunately, small enough that she could fit into the space normally reserved for the tube-radio that the plane was built with.

It didn't make me any less fearful that we were in a relatively safe world. There was no Angel to worry about and yet my fear was tenfold what it had been the day that I first took Misato into the sky. Maybe it was because I could pretend the Angel had other motivations, it didn't have an intellect, it wasn't targeting me.

But I'd been a menace. There were human minds involved, there were grudges and hatreds following me around now. The Americans most certainly wanted blood paid back in kind. WILLE wouldn't take kindly to the P-38s new livery. It wasn't thought out, but I couldn't just go live that boring life anymore, not with the mark nine in play.

It wasn't like I was even that suited, I didn't feel like I had anything to offer that Asuka or Ayanami or Mari couldn't do. I was at best the same, but I couldn't stand the inaction of just letting them handle it. I was probably selfish, but I wanted to be involved, at least so I could see Misato.

Maybe I could get Rae back her lost time. Maybe I could get back my own with Misato.

Unfortunately we couldn't have much of a conversation over the sound of the engines chugging along. It might have been a blessing, given how much confusion and stress we'd both been through the last few hours. A relatively non-communicative trip to WILLE's platform in the Gulf might be exactly what we both needed.

Radio silent over the Gulf of Mexico, water as far as the eye could see. I was a sitting duck and screwed if anything went wrong with the engines or fuel. Even so, it was still beautiful. Out on the horizon, just at the edge of what I could see was a little speck that I was hopeful would resolve into at least part of the fleet.

I still had the fuel to turn back, but by this point I didn't know what to do if we failed to find them.

If that was them, they certainly already had us on radar, but there was no stopping that. I'd reveal who I was as late in the game as possible. As far as they could tell this was a civilian aircraft.

I felt my anxiety building and rolled the throttles forward for a little extra airspeed. The faster we got there the faster it would be over, that's how it worked, right?

There was a click over the radio, on the guard frequency. It surprised me but didn't seem to indicate anything in particular. The fact that it nearly made me jump out of my skin was a testament to the adrenaline and stress I was experiencing.

The tail warning radar screeched a warning note and the red light on the panel lit up. My hands clenched tight on the yoke and I wrenched it over into a hard snap roll to the left and then hauled the yoke back towards my chest.

The plane screamed as it pulled through the roll and pitched until I was staring at water through my canopy and the altimeter screamed down under fourteen thousand. I could see Rae trying to hold herself in place behind me in the mirror. That wouldn't be the worst of it.

I looked up through the canopy and saw a plume dangerously close. I'd been shot at without so much as a 'hey' from the aggressor. If I didn't die in the next five seconds I'd have to figure out why that might be.

I pushed the throttles through the wire and kicked in war emergency power on both engines, for what good it might do. A quick movement of that same hand had both drop tanks released and free falling away from the plane.

I didn't bother telling Rae. She wouldn't hear me and even if she did there wouldn't have been time.

Both engines screamed as we tore through five hundred miles per hour and the plane shuddered from the constant pitch turn. Instrumentation would have made it easier, but my only hope was to try to notch the missile by hand, to get the plane into a fifty knot relative velocity window to hide it in the ground clutter.

I spared a glance 'up' through the canopy at the plume, five seconds, four. My eyes flicked between Rae and the missile. She hadn't noticed it yet, she could die without knowing why. Two, one.

The whole aircraft shook like it had been gripped by the hand of God and then nothing. It had been a radar guided missile, and the thing that saved our lives was a stupid quirk of engineering, and it wouldn't work again.

The center of the radar return was where the missile was trying to aim, it must have just barely missed by flying between the booms and behind the cockpit.

The attack had come from behind, from the coast. The Americans caught up to me? Intel must have gotten out after all.

I keyed the radio and started yelling, "Cease fire! I surrender! I surrender!"

No response, nothing. I could see contrails above while I leveled into a mad sprint towards the fleet. If I could get close enough they wouldn't have a choice, right? The fighters were still bearing down but hadn't fired again, they were probably closing in for a guns or heater kill. They could afford it, they could outrun out turn and out gun me.

I needed help.

I kept the radio keyed up on guard, "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. Cylon One-Three is under attack. Repeat, Cylon One-Three is taking fire."

The plane shook violently as it shed speed it earned through the dive and leveled out a couple of dozen feet above the water's surface. It would buy me minutes at most, and no reply on the radio. Behind me Rae had become aware we were in trouble, I only wished I could have done something to calm her fears.

Or my own fears.

"God dammit Victoria, Rae is in the plane with me!"

"Cylon One-Three, this is Wunder-actual. Maintain course and altitude." There was a brief hesitation and then Victoria's voice came back. "Attention American military aircraft, disengage or you will be shot down. If that P-38 goes down your ejection seats won't save you. If you don't think I'm serious I invite you to test me. Wunder out."

I felt a smile creep onto the corner of my mouth. They might have decided to help me anyway, but Rae's presence on the plane lit a fire under Victoria's ass and got me what I needed. Still, I knew and they knew who pulled the op against that convoy.

I could only hope that they found me to be in the right when I told them why.

In the sky above me shells started to burst, flare and chaff shells fired from the sixteens on the Iowas based on the range and intensity They must have been closer than I thought, or I was going faster than I thought.

In either case I would get to land soon and for the first time in a long time I was looking forward to being outside of the cockpit.

The tail radar screamed again and I looked up into the mirror to see one of the jets had closed in on me and was trying to line up for guns. He'd apparently accepted the invitation. I stepped into the left rudder and pulled back on the yoke as a burst of tracer fire shot past my right wingtip. He was definitely out for blood.

I couldn't let him keep me turning, he could get his energy back a lot faster than me and if he caught me in a position where I couldn't maneuver we'd both be dead. Not that it was that far off in the first place. I could force an overshoot but there was no way I'd ever be able to get guns on him. Not if he knew what he was doing.

"I'm in trouble!" I yelled as another burst of fire tore past the canopy far far closer than I'd ever be comfortable with. I reached over and closed the radiators for a little extra airspeed. I would overheat the engines in short order but cool engines wouldn't do me any good if I was dead.

My heart was pounding up into my chest as the lighting twisted and pitched through the air, each time only narrowly avoiding getting tagged by twenty millimeter cannon shells from the jet chasing us.

Jet. Fighter jet. Right.

I twisted the yoke as hard as I could to the left to tighten up the roll while I pulled the radiators back open. Engine temperatures started dropping immediately and so did my airspeed. The plane shook and the engines strained, I needed to seal the deal. Flaps down to the combat position increased my pitch rate substantially, then I chopped the throttle and stepped hard into the rudder.

The force of the plane rotating sideways into the air-stream pressed me forward into my harness, I could only imagine the difficulty Rae was having holding on, but the maneuver did what I needed it to. I bled airspeed and forced the pursuing fighter into an overshoot.

The silhouette of a twin engine fighter passed over my canopy and I immediately returned the throttles to the stops and hauled back on the stick to increase the separation, at least for a moment. The sky filled the front of my canopy before I snap-rolled back over and pulled through the corkscrew.

Ahead of us, the F-15, which I now saw it to be, was pulling into his own roll to deny me a firing solution. Rolling scissors. If he tried to break away and use airspeed to get away I could probably hit him while he extended out, at the very least I had enough ammo to last longer than he could as long as I could keep his nose off my tail.

But then he had the energy to outlast me in the scissors.

I was lucky enough that we were locked into the scissors in the general direction of the platform, and of Wunder.

"Ikari what the hell did you do!?"

"Asuka!?" I could use that. If she was on the radio she was in something: a fighter, maybe Unit Two? It didn't matter, I might not actually die today. The fight would be over the moment I had backup, but could a fighter really be in the air already?

I stepped into the rudder to bring my reticle over the flight path of the Eagle and pressed down on the firing studs; both the machine guns and the nose mounted auto-cannon barked out a steady stream of party mix towards the fighter jet.

It didn't connect and I hadn't expected it too, but I wasn't going to go down without a fight as futile as fighting might end up being.

Ahead of me the water started to ripple and a huge tracer shot past us, followed by a second and a third. I tried to follow it back to its source and--

Unit Two was standing on the surface of the water, slowly rising upwards on the back of the Wunder. So that's where they'd been hiding it. I spotted the muzzle flash of the rifle Asuka was using as another tracer lanced towards us.

It looked like she was trying to shoot down the F-15. It made me wish Mari was here, she probably would have landed the shot.

The F-15 pitched violently into the vertical. Asuka might not have hit, but she spooked the pilot into evasion. I squeezed both firing studs as I pulled back on the yoke and chased the enemy pilot into his panic climb. I didn't have the horsepower to hang with him, but if I was lucky at least one of my shots might land home, and I could turn inside of his radius any day of the week.

Clear blue sky once again filled my forward canopy as tracers lanced up towards my target as the much larger tracers bracketed it on either side. He was still pulling away from me though, I wouldn't catch up to him.

And I didn't have to.

As my airspeed fell and I started to stall I watched one of the tracers impact the tail section of the jet and remove it from existence in an instant. The ejection of the pilot from what remained of his aircraft followed soon after as we turned and fell into an airspeed recovering dive.

The water filled the canopy and I eased back on the yoke until we leveled back out. Wunder was much closer, but we couldn't land there. Victoria must have been prepared for this eventuality to have gotten to us so soon, though not soon enough to save us had Unit Two not activated.

"I told you I'd get you where you needed to go!" I yelled over my shoulder to Rae, hopefully loud enough for her to hear me. It hadn't gone the way I would have liked, but it did work out in the end.

I eased the power back on both engines as we popped up over top of the Wunder and eased the left wing down to raise my hand in a salute to Unit Two through the upper canopy. Of course, this also gave everyone who was looking a nice clear look at my livery.

"Cute paint job. Runway on the central platform is open and you're clear to land. I hope you've got a good reason."
I knew I shouldn't say it; I couldn't bite back my retort. "Yeah, my reason is that I didn't forget my job. Cylon One-Three, out."

I toggled the radio off after that, whatever Victoria might say back, I didn't want to hear it.

I rolled the landing gear handle downwards and brought the flaps out the rest of the way. With the platform and runway just ahead of us I wanted to be going as slow as I could be when I set down, so that I could make sure not to over-run the runway.

As expected, the controls loosened up as our airspeed dropped. I was either packing brass ones or completely out of my mind to land a plane bearing this logo in the middle of WILLE central. Why not both?

I was trying to make a point, and no better way than this, no better way then telling them what they let happen. Rae was as much a trump card as she was a passenger. They would never fire a shot at me with her aboard.

I would like to think I commanded the same respect, but with Victoria in a position of authority and Misato giving me the cold shoulder I couldn't be sure of that. No, I needed an insurance policy.

I added a little power to slow our descent and the plane smoothed out a little, controls tightened up just a little. Ahead of us the six ocean platforms strung together with an airstrip in the middle grew ever larger. Its size could have easily rivaled Nerv headquarters back when it was still inside the geofront.

At a guess the runway looked to be about two hundred feet above the water; when I passed under three hundred feet I cleared the outer marker and flared. The mains touched with a chirp and I chopped power down to idle and leaned into the wheel brakes.

The plane slowed rapidly, and I wasn't going that fast to begin with, as we approached a turn-off onto an open area flanked by aircraft elevators, that would be my destination. A little differential braking, releasing the right and leaning into the left, steered us onto the pad.

It looked like people were already waiting for us. Two officers uniforms in red, two more in a darker blue, and those two had guns. That was expected.

I killed the engines and pushed the canopy open. I felt my legs trembling as I pushed myself out onto the wing and then dropped onto the platform surface. I could hear Rae working herself out of the cockpit behind me, but I didn't look; she could handle herself.

I was more concerned with the people sent to greet us. Two women, one taller than the other. They approached while the armed men stayed behind. Even with the sunglasses the one on right, the taller one, wore, I could tell who she was.

My mouth dried up, my throat felt tight. Eyes watering. 'Pick what you can't live without, let go of the rest.' Mari's words echoed in my mind. My feet were moving before I could put thought into it. Hands clenched into fists and relaxed again.

I could remember the feel of touch, the scent of shampoo and perfume, the warmth of an embrace. Mari was right, and I had made my decision. I pulled my goggles and cap off and dropped them to the deck, they didn't matter.

I almost died, almost got Rae killed at the same time. The chances I took, even if there wasn't another way... Maybe it was the brush with mortality or the realization that we only had the time if we were lucky; I couldn't stand to wait any longer.

Misato stared down at me as I found myself in front of her, only a few dozen inches away. Her hand pulled back for a slap, and I took that last step forward. Something I couldn't live without, I put my arms around her and let her jacket soak up the tears.

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 44:
Getting the band back together​

The meeting room we occupied looked like it had been carved right out of an old ship, and it very well may have been. They had to get the materials for the platform from somewhere and they hardly needed every ship that had come through. Tenders and cargo ships and the like. They were more for mobility than storage and WILLE no longer had a need to run.

"So are we going to address the elephant in the room?"

I felt my mouth curl up at the corner and couldn't fight back a snicker. "Sorry Gypsy, are you talking about the convoy hit or the angry Korean?"

"I think your actions are more concerning to our stability at the moment. I'd like to hear an explanation for that first." Misato said levelly.

She hadn't pushed me away when I'd embraced her. After a moment her hand had even come down to rest on my back. Maybe there was still something there after all these years. The fifteen years had been kind to her, but my feelings wouldn't have changed a bit even if they hadn't been.

"They had my friend. I wanted him back." I answered simply.

"You know what happened last time you felt like that." Victoria interjected, leaning across the table.

"Yeah well, I don't think there's much of a chance of a P-38 setting off an impact event. Human beings don't require that much effort to kill. You should know what's at stake, what they could get from him. What they did get from him. I don't have any regrets."

I thought Misato might climb over the table and slap me. Victoria beat her to the punch and threw her clipboard at me. "No regrets?! Are you out of your goddamned mind? You declared war on the United States and your little stunt with Raven signed us up to fight it!"

I let the clipboard hit me and shook my head, "No, Nerv declared war on the United States. The P-38 wears that insignia for a reason. I'm flying that flag because yours doesn't seem to stand for much. They captured and experimented on my friend. He's as much a reason as any that you all get to live in this living world instead of our old wasteland."

I sighed and leaned against the table, stared down at my reflection in the glossy surface. "It doesn't matter. They got what they were after. They turned the Mark Nine back on. If they let that thing off the chain I can't stop it, not even with the F-2. I came here because you needed to know, you need to be ready to stop it."

"If that's true... we will need some kind of proof. I don't expect you to have any, but we will need to find some way of getting it." Misato mused, rubbing her chin and looking over at the wall as if lost in thought.

"Hey..." Rae started from behind me, "I really don't want to get involved in this really heavy shit you guys have got going on, but why did you back Rei up once you found out I was in the plane with her?"

"That's a complicated question to answer. I'm not sure that this is really the right time--" Victoria tried to explain. I could see the blush rising to her cheeks. Her evasiveness made my blood boil. Rae would be the only person that could take her from one hundred back to zero like that, knock the wind out of her sails and stop her rage in it's tracks.

I knew that for the same reasons she did, and I wouldn't stand for it.

"Gypsy Rose!" I yelled, "I swear I will tell her everything if you don't start telling her the truth right now."

"Rei--"

"No! Tell her your name, right now, or I swear to God I will!" I felt the bones in my right hand cracking and my nails digging into the soft flesh of my palm. I would do more than tell her, I had a right hook that was begging for another go.

Victoria took a deep breath and closed her eyes, then let it out slowly and re-opened them. "My name is Victoria Eleanor Becket. I was adopted after my father died in the second impact, my name was changed from J--"

"You're alive." Rae said simply. Two words that seemed to lift her higher than I'd seen her since we'd come here. Since I had met her for the first time outside of memories that weren't mine. She moved slowly around the table, crossed the few feet in what seemed like slow motion. Her eyes never left Victoria.

"I'm not... Raven I'm not the same Victoria, I remember but... she die--"

Rae grabbed Victoria by both shoulders and stared directly into her eyes. "August fifteenth two thousand five."

Victroria stared back at her and I could see the tears forming in her own eyes. I felt jealous, lonely, but satisfied. She wasn't mine, she'd never be mine. Her heart didn't lie with Rei Ikari, no matter what I remembered. That was okay.

Finally, Victoria's lips parted. "Yes."

Rae pulled Victoria against her and buried her face against her neck. "That's... good enough. I missed you."

I felt my throat tightening up; felt my eyes watering. I stepped back and ducked out through the door behind me.

I shuffled down the hallway until I couldn't make out the words anymore. It was... difficult, but it was not my reunion to participate in. I could never tell Rae that I remembered the same things Victoria did. I could never tell her that when she said that date I too felt the absence of the cold metal against my chest.

I wasn't Victoria, I never would be, but that didn't mean that I couldn't fall for a memory. It didn't mean I couldn't long for and ache for something I didn't have anymore.

"Ikari, hey."

I looked up, Asuka was standing in her plug suit. She'd washed herself off but it did make a certain sense that she stayed dressed for combat. I wasn't really surprised that she'd come to see me, or maybe to keep an eye on me.

"Shikinami. Good shooting. I owe you one." I shrugged back towards the room as a pretext for rubbing my jacket sleeve across my eyes, "bit of a tearful reunion between Victoria and her wife in there."

Asuka frowned at me and looked towards the door. "I didn't think she was married."

"Victoria Becket wasn't, but the Victoria from this earth was. Before she died." I shrugged again and reached up to tap the side of my head, "S'all up here. Can't get what I want, could get her what she wanted."

She leaned against the wall next to me. "I didn't think you two got along. You did spend the better part of a year trying to kill each other." Her surprise was evident in her voice, but she didn't seem any more put out than that. Not angry, at least.

"She's more like me than she's not. We're... it doesn't matter. She was trying to kill my dad, she's not doing that anymore. It was for Rae too. She's not the same Victoria who died, but she's got the same face, same memories. It was just a little detour, they met again at the end." I sighed and slumped down to sit on the floor against the wall.

"You seem so excited about it." She deadpanned while sitting down next to me. "I would expect you to be a little happier about playing matchmaker."

"I don't have the same face." I shook my head, "My heart lies with someone else. I just wish that she could go back to the way we used to be. I tried to live without her, live without this. I guess I just can't go home from the war... but maybe I could go home to her."

She chuckled softly, it was a little foreign to me, had been so long since I'd heard it, I supposed. "Can't live a life where you're not shooting things and causing trouble huh?"

I smirked and looked at her. "Come on, you're not any better."

She shrugged and put her arms behind her head, smirked, and took a breath. "Well, it's not like they could get by without their best Eva pilot. Mari's alright but she's no me, and her Eva is no Unit Two."

And her Unit Two was no Unit One, but that was out of my reach for the time being.

"Speaking of Mari, when is she going to be back with the fleet?"

"The Dallas is going to pick them up off the coast and bring them in silently. You've really stirred up a hornet's nest with the stunt you pulled."

"Ayanami put me up to it." I shrugged.

She rolled her eyes and put her right hand up to her forehead with a little more flair than was necessary. "Of course she did. There's something wrong with both of you. I don't know why I put up with either of you."

"I appreciate it all the same. You didn't have to do what you did for me today."

I felt her hand squeeze my shoulder. I looked over and she shook her head at me. "After what you did for me, I did have to. I was already launching Unit Two before Victoria gave the order."

I smirked and leaned back against the wall. Maybe things were looking up after all, Nerv insignia or not.

xxx​

I was more comfortable in the hanger than I'd been in the briefing room, the smell of lubricants and fuel and spent flare buckets was calming in its familiarity. The hanger I'd found myself in after departing Asuka's company was a hanger full of Raptors.

Cylon flight's hanger.

Despite being relatively devoid of people it was well populated with equipment. Missile carriages, spare drop tanks, and four F-22 Raptors to fill the six painted rectangles on the floor, each with a number painted in the center. The first and third slots were vacant, probably on a mission of some sort.

The click of my boots against the metal floor was the only noise as I walked past the aircraft. The size of the machines was only truly apparent when you got close. Somehow when they were in the air the scale just wasn't as clear. The last time I'd seen them in the air--

I shook my head and stepped back from the plane I'd approached. I looked down to find myself standing in the first slot, with '1-1' painted on the floor. This slot was cleaner than the others, without the spots or tire marks that the others had.

I at the far end, towards the middle of the hanger and away from the wall, there was a word written in English on the floor. Letting my curiosity get the better of me, I walked down the length of the slot until the word resolved itself. Red lettering on the edge of the yellow rectangle, reading 'Becket.'

The lump in my throat returned with a vengeance and my eyes blurred, filled with tears. After all this time, was the loss still as fresh for them as it was for me? I tried to blink away the tears and they dripped down my face and splattered against the floor.

A strong hand gripped my shoulder from the side, larger than Misato's hand, adult, male. I looked to the side and up into an older man's eyes. "Miller?"

He was older than I remembered, but he'd have to be. It had been fifteen years. Cylon One-Two. Alan Miller. We'd flown down from Alaska together.

"We don't blame you, so you shouldn't blame yourself. He did it because he wanted to do it. You were worth it to him." He squeezed my shoulder and pointed over to the other vacant spot. "Come on, I have something to show you."

We hadn't talked much, just in passing. Becket had always been the one I'd talked to, he'd been the one who'd taken care of me. My contact with the rest of the flight was limited either due to politics or discomfort, I didn't really know. Before now, I hadn't really thought about it.

I let him guide me to the other empty slot, passing by the occupied '1-2' slot. 'Miller' was written in red block lettering in front of the yellow border in the same way that 'Becket' had been. The '1-3' slot looked just like the first one had, clean and devoid of debris or stains. At the head of the slot, in red block lettering, 'Ikari' was written.

I tried to blink the fresh tears away and turned towards him. "Why? After everything that happened, after my mistakes, why?"

"Because you earned it. We didn't fly together for long, but you earned your place. Because when Becket went down you were as angry as any of us. You won't find anyone in the flight who doesn't feel the same way." He patted my shoulder and stepped few steps away, looking over towards the hanger door.

He smiled and looked back towards me and the empty space in which I stood. "When you're ready, as far as we are concerned, that spot will be waiting for you."

"How does Victoria feel about that?"

"I didn't ask her permission."

I nodded, "I guess time doesn't heal all wounds. You know I might have started a war with the Americans."

He shrugged and leaned against the side of his aircraft, "It's not my America."

I closed my eyes and took a breath, gave myself a moment to think. It wasn't the same as the world we left, but did that really matter? This was a place we could protect, had to protect, and could live in, become a part of.

"It could be."

"Maybe one day, but not right now. We've been paying attention to more than you know."

"Which means what exactly?" Cryptic nonsense was more of my father's forte, I was more about the straightforward, at least right now.

"That's enough for now. I should have guessed that you'd have found your way here. You really are her, aren't you?"

I whirled around at that voice. It was probably the most Misato had said to me since I'd come back from Unit One. Was that why she had shunned me? "Of course, I've always been Rei Ikari. Were you afraid I wasn't?"

The frown on her face, and the blush on her cheeks, told me what I needed to know. Had she expected this conversation to happen when she followed me here? "I was afraid you might not be."

I stepped away from Miller and walked up to Misato, looked up into her eyes. "You should have just asked. I'm sorry about... everything before, everything I never said. I was afraid everything would turn worse if I said anything at all."

She shook her head and put her finger to my lips. I felt my cheeks heating up in a way they hadn't in years, felt the butterflies in my stomach. "Don't look back, just look forward, Rei."

When her finger fell from my lips I moved in and pulled her into a hug. This time she wasn't restrained, this time she didn't pull back or tense up. Her arms wrapped around me and--

"Holy shit, Miller you gotta hear this!" The moment was ruined, we both turned to see a man sprinting into the room holding a radio in his hand, his cheeks were flushed and sweat slicked his skin. He skidded to a stop in front of us and tried to catch his breath.

"Anderson? What's going on?" Miller asked the panting man. His hand had already reached out to grab the other man on the shoulder to help stabilize him.

The other man, Anderson, shook his head and cranked the volume knob on the radio. The sound of static crackled and echoed through the hanger for a few moments before a voice came back on the radio.

"Unidentified helicopter please submit identification immediately, you are in restricted airspace."

"November Niner Eight Five Alpha Bravo requesting landing clearance. My name is John Becket. I need to see Misato Katsuragi immediately."

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 45:
John Becket​

We get what we deserve. Through action or inaction, everything always comes back to us in the end, and there were no exceptions. My pain was my penance, my solitude was my reward, for a time. Maybe the other shoe hadn't dropped yet, maybe this reconciliation was for moments, and then another fifteen years of pain. I could endure it, if nothing else killed me first I imagined I might endure that fifteen years fifteen times over.

At least, it felt that way.

But if I had killed the world, John Becket had saved it. For all the wrong I did to all the people I'd done it to, he sacrificed himself to save me. When the chips were down, and I was the last one standing, the last one between an Angel and the end of the world.

Maybe I'd flinched, or maybe I should have. Maybe I should never have run, but if I killed the world, John Becket saved every single soul that survived it.

If he was coming here, now, there had to be a reason for it. Was he given a second chance, like I had? Was this a blessing, or was it a curse? If we got what we deserved, what was it that he had earned? Why was he here?

I raised my hand to block some of the down-wash from the helicopter as is settled towards the pad. Of course, a group of heavily armed men awaited around the slowly descending UH-1H, just in case. I couldn't imagine they were necessary.

And if it was John, and if they did try to shoot... Well, even if it wasn't the same man, there were at least four people who wouldn't stand for it. If Victoria wasn't armed I'd be shocked, and if she engaged than Rae, who had at least two guns on her person that I knew of, would back her up.

At that point Miller would either throw down or call out. Cylon Flight would no longer obey WILLE orders in either case.

Question: Had the unity of the group always been so tenuous?

For my part, I had a snub nosed magnum tucked into my boot and a hold-out pistol against the small of my back. AT field in a pinch.

High stress situations and itchy trigger fingers being what they were, I couldn't absolve myself of responsibility for instigating the tense atmosphere with the shit I'd pulled over the gulf.

Of course, that didn't mean I had any regrets. At least none about the last thirty six hours.

I found myself smiling as the skids touched down on the pad. He'd died for me once, returning the favor was the least I could do.

"I'll go first." I heard myself say without even thinking it over. My feet were moving before the engines had even started to spin down. The soldiers behind me shifted their attention to me, but Misato raised a hand to my side and they held back.

Truth be told they probably didn't mind having someone else play canary.

Clearly he wasn't in that much of a hurry. The rotor wash kept blowing down and messing up my hair as I approached. The engine was winding down, surely enough, but he still hadn't come out of the cockpit. If my luck held out I'd be there to open it for him before he finished the shutdown checklist.

He was certainly more disciplined than I was.

By the time I reached the cockpit door the down-wash had reduced to a soft gale. I was about to open the door when I thought better of it; if for some insane reason he did remember me, I might not want to give him too much of a startle before I knew if he had a gun and a panicky temperament.

I opted to lean my back against the side of the fuselage aft of the latch and knocked on the glass with the back of my hand. Three taps, nothing fancy. Just enough to let him know someone was outside waiting for him. Someone maybe not pointing a gun at him.

He'd had to have seen all of us on approach; I would think less of him if he hadn't. He'd have seen all of us, and he'd have seen the armed men. If I could finish the day without the taste of burnt powder in my nose I'd be alright, better than average anyway.

I felt a smirk creep onto my face and I glanced over at Miller. If Becket did remember me, I had to fuck with him, just a little.

I heard the door crack open and I licked my bottom lip, "yōkoso! O-namae wa nan desu ka? Ikari Rei desu!"

His hesitation was almost palpable, but a moment later the door popped the rest of the way open and a very confused looking man stepped out onto the helipad. A man who looked exactly like the last time I'd seen him, over fifteen years ago.

He turned to me and I gave a wave and a smirk, "o hisashiburi desu ne."

When he locked eyes with me his expression shifted and he looked like he'd been struck, or perhaps that he'd seen a ghost. The latter wouldn't be far off the mark for either of us.

His mouth worked up and down in confusion for a few moments before he tried to string something together in stilted Japanese. "Uh... eigo... wa... dekimasu ka?"

I nodded, "Absolutely, but that's not as fun. So you here about that Eagle we dropped in the drink or is it something else? I have on good authority that he survived the journey if you're concerned."

The conversational whiplash had gotten to him, or at least it looked like it. His face went through a range of emotions before settling on unhappy confusion. "Yes, no, sort of. Glad he's alright, not why I'm here but a good excuse. And you... You're real, and that means Katsuragi is real, and that means I'm not losing my mind."

I nodded, "Yeah, that's always a good feeling. I guess this means you remember. How much do you remember?"

He looked out at the assembled WILLE personnel, those with and without rifles and then back to me. "I feel like this isn't the best venue for that kind of a conversation. It's been kind of a fucked up day and I don't know how I feel about spilling my guts around a bunch of guys with guns pointed at me."

"Yeah, you're not wrong. I'll see if Misato can set up a conference room or something. There are more than a couple of people who will want to see you, but I'm not sure how many of them you'll remember. And..." I trailed off, looking over at the armed men.

He'd died for me, I could return the favor if I had to.

"And what?" he asked, noticing my hesitation.

"And, since I owe you... well a version of you, more than I could ever repay. If it comes down to it there's a four shot three-fifty-seven holdout pistol under my jacket at the small of my back. It draws to my right side." I answered under my breath, loud enough for him to hear me, quiet enough that nobody else would.

His eyebrows rose a bit and he nodded, "I bet there's a really good story behind that."

"I've had kind of a fucked up day too."

"I'll keep that in mind."

xxx​

The round table we found ourselves seated at was much more elaborate than the simple room I'd been questioned in previously, and I supposed that was the difference between Becket and I. In him people saw a much more respectable hero, though around this table I certainly found friends of my own.

Clark, Denisovich, Miller, Misato, Gypsy Rose, and even Akagi were present, among many people whom I didn't readily recognize. Age had left its mark on each of them, everyone but me, everyone but Becket.

But then he'd never had to live those intervening years like everyone else had. Eyes were not on me, however, but this meeting wasn't about me.

It was about Becket.

"This meeting will be a little informal, as this is probably coming as a surprise to all of you. I know it was a surprise to me." Clark announced with a laugh. "That having been said, this is some pretty unfamiliar territory, which given the last fifteen years or so is really saying a lot."

It was funny, Clark didn't sound British, he was an American by birth as far as I knew, but that level of understatement could only come from an Englishman. Of course, WILLE was multinational in origin so he probably had plenty of time to learn it.

I wondered if that was a check I had written for them to cash when I asked for help. Kitty Hawk battle group backed Nerv in my final fight, but then ended up alongside WILLE. So, WILLE must not have been involved in the attack on headquarters. Coincidence or intel leak?

I wished I knew what happened after I was trapped in Unit One. Had Clark's fleet joined up because of the cause or because they had no other ports in which to weather the storm?

"Then maybe I should start," Becket said suddenly as he stood up. "I'm not going to pretend that I understand or am okay with most of this, but for the last twelve months I've felt like I was going insane. I kept seeing fantastic, amazing things. My head was filled with the names and the faces of people I'd never met... people who are around this table right now."

The room was hushed, it was not the hero's return that they had expected it to be. He was familiar enough with me though, was there a reason behind that? I wondered if a part of him remembered why he chose to die for me.

I found myself standing and clearing my throat. "And you came looking for answers. I don't know if I can alleviate your confusion or give purpose to what you've seen but..." I trailed off, looking for the words. I caught Miller out of the corner of my eye. I shook my head and took a breath.

The room was looking at me now, not all of them with pleasant expressions. Maybe it wasn't my place to speak, but maybe I didn't care. "Without being too poetic about it, you're wearing the face of a man who, in no uncertain terms, I owe my continued existence to. Maybe that doesn't hold true for everyone here, but the shock and glee everyone is feeling, that I am feeling is because it feels like our friend just came back from the dead and returned to us. I've missed you, we have missed you."

Misato stood abruptly, Rose a second later. Akagi joined, then Dennisovich, Miller, and Clark. The meeting hadn't been for intelligence gathering. Whatever it had been for, it didn't live up to it, instead it seemed to be solidarity.

And maybe, for a moment, I let myself stop feeling so guilty about his death. Faced with him standing in front of me I understood why Rae was so quick to accept Gypsy Rose as the same woman she'd lost; it was easy to lose yourself in a familiar face and believe it was the same person.

Rae could justify it, I could even justify it for her: Gypsy Rose remembered the life they had together, had the face to match, too. Becket looked the same, felt the same, but his memory was shadows.

Did he remember picking up a drunk, bitterly depressed girl up on the side of the road and taking her to get some food to put on top of the alcohol? Did he remember giving me my callsign?

To my side, Becket looked like he might run or pass out, fight or fall down. Did he remember the gun tucked against the small of my back? I wondered how that might go, wondered if I'd said the wrong thing, that I'd to drive him to it.

I knew that bastard was responsible for it. Was this his idea of a gift, a punishment, or some third option where he wasn't yet done fucking around with our lives?

My left hand spasmed and clenched into a fist so tight I felt the blood pooling in my palm. Had that bastard thrown Becket in front of the missile in the first place?

"You can stay here as long as you need to, use any of our resources to find the answers you're looking for. Rei explained it as well as any of us could have. If you're half the man we remember then you're worth the effort."

Victoria had said the words, the emotion behind them was true and from the heart. I did not envy her the emotional burden she must have been going through, though I did share in some of it. The wife that was never really hers back in her life, and the brother who, in this world, had never been her brother at all.

I felt his hand at the small of my back, still on top of my jacket, open palm against me. My right hand opened and I prepared myself to drop if that's what it came to. It would be a mess, Misato in the crossfire--

The hand slid up my back instead and gripped my shoulder. "If it's all the same," he started, "I need to borrow Iris. She might help me understand some things."

Victoria looked like she might object, her mouth opened about half way before an overly loud dropping of a notebook onto the table drew our attention. Miller was at the other end of that noise and he was giving her a look that could melt steel.

Clark cleared his throat and shrugged, "I imagine that will be just fine. She is not currently bound by any other duties, after all. We will revisit this in two days and see how everything is going then, shall we? Excellent. Meeting adjourned."

He waved his hand towards the door and shook his head. It had gotten away from him, but it had gotten away from everyone else too.

"Yes, that is acceptable. Stay on the ground, though, if you don't mind," Victoria finally said. She didn't look as happy about it as I would have liked. I couldn't imagine she was pleased with me overall, and perhaps she was upset he'd picked me over her.

But then, she should have remembered what path she had chosen all those years ago.

xxx​

The sunset and the salt air were a good companion to the cool Corona warming up in my right hand. Hard concrete and steel grid was a poor substitute for warm beach sand between my toes but the rhythmic crashing of the waves hundreds of feet below me had a way of making up for the loss.

Any excuse to wear a bathing suit was a welcome one, even if there wasn't a snowball's chance of my snow-white skin picking up a tan. It was a far cry from Victoria, who had a darker flesh tone than I'd ever had. Still, we did have our similarities and our taste in swim wear was the same: black and two piece.

"So," I started with a casual side-glance at Becket, or was it John now? Some people were always going to be known by their last names, I wondered if he'd be one of them.

"So," he answered back with a nod and a long drag on his bottle. The not-quite yellow liquid sloshed and sudded in the bottle as he tipped it back. It wasn't his first or his fifth, and I wasn't far behind him. He didn't have the biological advantages that I had but he was still holding on better than I was.

Not to say I was doing badly.

"So, I didn't think this was what you had in mind when you said you needed my help figuring things out."

He tossed his bottle off the edge of the platform and leaned back, laying down against the deck with his legs dangling off. "Most of the dreams, or I guess they are actually memories... Most of them are about you. Could have explained almost anything away, but that P-38 stands out too much; it doesn't make any sense... but there you are."

I nodded and tossed the rest of my mostly finished drink off the edge as well. "Chance came together in a weird way, for sure. Maybe I could have done it differently, maybe you didn't have to die."

He was silent for what felt like hours, just staring up into the sky, as I was, until the sun was all the way down. The stars came out and were little pinpricks of brilliance against the darkness. The view was amazing, more than anything I'd ever seen in Tokyo-3, or even before that. Out on the platform, with the lights off, we could see the galaxy.

"That was Alan Miller at the table wasn't it. Older, but that was him."

"Yep."

"Huh."

More delay, more stargazing. I could do it all night if I had to, even if it did start to get cold.

"That was you who flew the raid in Canton wasn't it?" He finally asked me. His voice was quieter, no hint of anger but no hint of intoxication either.

Canton, when we'd pulled Kaworu out. I didn't know how many died, didn't want to think about it so I'd gone out of my way not to find out.

Ayanami probably knew.

"Not a whole lot of Lightning's flying around these days." I answered without answering. Those were Americans I'd killed, his brothers in arms. His countrymen.

"I'm trying to figure it out. I wanted to get to know you outside of my memories. I wanted to try to reconcile you being worth dying for with you raiding that convoy. Men died." He sounded calm, but hurt, there was an edge under it.

"They had my friend captive. He'd done nothing wrong, but he's special. He's special like me. He can pilot Evangelion and... other things. It doesn't really matter, nobody was going to negotiate for him, nobody was going to trade for him. I had to get him out."

I started to sit up but I stopped, sighed, and slumped back onto the cooling deck plate. "I could tell you that I was trying to save the world or something else like that, and maybe we found some important intel about the Mark Nine... The truth is I couldn't leave him behind. Everyone in that convoy knew what their cargo was, they were all responsible for his situation."

He sat up and pulled his legs back onto the deck. I glanced over to see him looking down into the water. Part of me wondered if he wanted to toss me into it.

"If you were worth dying for, I suppose you'd be worth taking at your word." He shook his head and stood up, held his hand down to me. "Would you do it again?"

I took his hand and he pulled me up to my feet. I wobbled for a moment and then steadied myself. Maybe that alcohol had a bit more kick than I gave it credit for. "If I had to, I would. I've lost enough, I won't lose anymore. Would you do it again?" I asked him in return. I wasn't going to try to convince him I was worth it, either he'd see it or he wouldn't. I wouldn't be a different girl than the one he remembered. It would have to be good enough.


He turned away from me and started walking away, back towards the ladder leading down towards the main deck of the platform. His shoes clinked against the deck with each step and then stopped. He turned back towards me and walked the same number of steps back until he was next to me again.

"If it was worth it."
​

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 46:

Unsteady​

The bottle slid from my half-numb fingertips and shattered against the tarmac, but I didn't care. It didn't matter because I had five more in my left hand, the bottle in my right had been empty, and my stomach had room for another case and a half.

If I pushed myself, and I saw no reason why I might not.

The middle of the night and I was wearing a bikini and drinking alone on a deserted unlit airstrip on a platform in the middle of the gulf and I didn't care. There wasn't anything to care about, not with thirteen beers down and five to go.

Any worries or doubts I had died five beers ago. Anything that was left would die five beers from now. I needed her back, or him... I had to wait for my ship to come in, find myself in the bed of an Angel or find myself in the bed of my Angel, alcohol guide me because I couldn't guide myself.

I didn't want to guide myself. I had a startling tendency to guide myself wrong. Sure, I'd gotten Rae to where she needed to be, but that was just an excuse to get myself where I wanted to be. In her arms again, where I'd find absolution.

If she forgave my sins, I might accept the forgiveness and move forward with my life.

I snapped the pry-top cap off with the brass ring holding the two halves of my top together and tipped the bottle against my lips. Half-cold malty stout poured down my throat fast enough that I only barely tasted it.

Drinking for flavor died seven beers ago; tasting it at all died four beers after that.

Becket had gone, but that was fine, he had his own answers to seek and his own people with whom to speak. I had my loneliness and a six pack of Guinness, miles of trouble and a rooftop view of the stars.

I'd once dreamed of traveling out to the stars, leaving the world behind and finding a new one out there, one without the hurt and the pain, one without the smell of cheap Japanese beer on the breath of a man I was meant to trust.

And that's why I made my wish, that I'd forget and be stronger. For a minute I even was, but when it came back to it I was always going to be Rei Ikari, and I was always going to be broken. Sometimes, I didn't have to feel that way.

"You're trashed. What the hell are you doing up here?"

I hadn't heard the footsteps, but if I had, I would have heard all six pairs of them. At least, that's nearly how blurry the woman was. "Misato! Get... The fuck over here!" I yelled at her as I hucked the empty bottle into the air.

The crash of the glass bottle exploding and the sound of her angry footsteps echoed together in a not-entirely unpleasant cacophony of alcohol addled sensory input, and I was not displeased. I found myself sucking on my teeth, waiting for her to get close enough that I could really see her. Time and stress had left their mark but... up close...

I felt her hand on my shoulder, the grip was tighter than it needed to be, but not the tightest it had ever been. She was angry with me, but if anything that proved to me that she still cared. I had never stopped waiting, never stopped wanting. Now, if it was only this...

It wouldn't be enough.

"Why are you doing this? I thought you got over this!" She yelled at me. Maybe I was supposed to have, it wasn't the first time I'd done this, wasn't the second either. I wondered if she knew about the drink I'd stolen from his flask before she'd picked me up the very first time, before I woke up having forgotten myself in the passenger seat of her car.

I shook my head a little harder than I needed to and nearly fell down. "No, why aren't you? If you want me to stop you're going to have to drink 'em before I get to them!" A more clever or foolproof plan, not a man alive could make.

My bottles clanked together when she snatched one out of the pack and pried the top off with the corner of a handheld radio. She was still a professional, even after all this time. Maybe she needed the drink more than I did; I watched her put the bottle away faster than I was, and I wasn't being terribly slow about it.

I stumbled and transitioned from standing to sitting in a half-intentional stumble that bruised my ego and my ass. The beer bottles clanked against the bottom of the half-empty six pack but didn't break, a small miracle but not an unwelcome one.

"You know, I've missed you."

She looked over at me, her mouth had curled into a frown at my words. Would she have expected me to feel any differently? It felt like an eternity had come between us and...

"I don't know what you want me to say, Rei."

I fell over onto my back and stared up into the sky. Clear, perfect sky. Such a stark contrast to the way I was feeling, but then nobody drank till they couldn't walk because they were happy. But then, even just being this close to her...

"I want you to say how you feel."

"How I feel?" She sat down on the deck next to me and pulled another bottle out of the cardboard sleeve. "I feel like I wish you'd never left, that you'd never omitted. I feel like I wish I could go back and do it differently, do it right. I feel like..."

"You miss me too?"

I heard her lay against the deck next to me and I turned my head to look over at her. I could see the marks that time had left, but that didn't matter as much as the fact that she was there with me. She was the same... same enough, she was the woman I'd missed, the one I couldn't live without, the one I had found my way back to.

"Yes, I do."

My lips felt dry, dry as my mouth and my throat. Everything I'd wanted to hear, possibility stretched out in front of me, I just had to...

"So stop missing me."

I reached out to grab her hand. She didn't pull away but she didn't return my squeeze. My heart was pounding in my chest, my blood rushing in my ears.

"It's not that simple, Rei."

Her voice hitched, just a little. Just enough to notice, just enough to give me hope. I squeezed her hand in mine and blinked my eyes hard and swallowed against the lump in my throat. So close, so far. So many different possibilities. Alcohol and fear, loneliness. Eternity laid out before me and...

Grand romantic gestures worked in movies, worked in books and television but in the real world nothing really made up for the moments in-between, the ones where relationships thrived or failed in the everyday grind of life.

The parts where secrets and lies poisoned the well and love turned into jealousy and resentment and anger and betrayal. Maybe I'd failed her before, I'd caused her pain, and she'd caused pain back. I could forgive, I could try to forget. If I could hold onto her hand forever, if I could stretch this moment out and forget everything else...

I'd give up eternity just to push back the sunrise for another hour, just a little more time to stay here and keep the world from catching up to us. I could pretend that everything in between had never happened and we were together like we were back then.

I felt a tear roll down my cheek and her hand twitched in mine, squeezed gently around my fingers. That spark of hope in my heart blossomed into a fire. The adrenaline rush of possibility coursed through my veins.

I pushed the cardboard case away from me with my left hand, heard the bottles roll out against the steel decking as I turned over on my right side and pushed myself up on shaky limbs. She was next to and below me.

I smiled through the tears as my eyes met hers, and her lip curled up into a smile. Alcoholic courage and desperation boiled over, maybe, we could have this one night.

"Yes, it is."

I leaned in, faltered, but she caught me. Our lips touched and everything I'd been missing came back to me, for that moment.

I closed my eyes to force the tears away, to lose myself in the moment.

An eternity later, an eternity too soon, the kiss ended and I fell against her side, my head against her chest.

I ran my tongue against my lip and put my arm around her, held her close.

You're the closest to heaven that I'll ever be...

And I don't wanna go home right now.

xxx​

Angelic heritage and the metabolic cheating that this entailed did not protect me from the consequences of my actions, at least not in any way that I could discern. Standing in the direct sunlight made my headache anything but better, but I couldn't bring myself to regret the way the night had ended.

An hour of sleep and a quick shower, borrowed clothes and a hurried transit to the sub-pen punctuated my morning. I couldn't believe she'd kept the jacket for all those years, but I could believe it more than when she let me wear it.

And of course, it didn't work without that skirt.

I tried not to dwell too much on what it might mean that she'd dressed me entirely in her own clothing, other than that my own was on the other end of the platform from where our night had turned into morning, and I could hardly traverse the base wearing nothing.

I'd be dragging ass all day, but at least I was sure to get a good night's sleep afterwards, and to be fair a day of my brain not quite turning on was a worthy price to pay.

The hatch on the submarine's sail opened up and a gang-plank extended onto the upper hull. Ayanami and her entourage were back from the mainland and Misato and I were the only ones there to greet her.

The first person off the submarine was a Marine, or whatever WILLE's equivalent was. He was holding a sub-machine gun at low ready and had his safety off and his finger at the edge of the trigger guard. He looked tense and I was driven to wonder if he was protecting Ayanami or if his role was more nefarious.

The hair stood up on my neck and the smell of ozone greeted an electric tingle against my tongue. I didn't have my gun on me, but if someone had hurt Ayanami I wouldn't need one, I could feel that. My emotions weren't in check and my angelic gift wasn't far behind.

Emotional high and a predisposition to make rash decisions. There wasn't any possible way in which I screwed this up.

Next out of the hatch was Mari, who looked a little worn thin. I couldn't imagine she'd had a fun time of it after I'd taken off, to say nothing of the mission itself. I couldn't read her expression, or figure out what the look she gave me when she caught me looking at her meant.

Kaworu came out next, and, at least he looked better than he had the last time I'd seen him. He still looked more occupied with his feet than anything else. He wasn't in chains as he had been with the Americans, but it wasn't like he knew the WILLE people as anything other than the people fighting NERV.

The clone 'Rogue' came out next. Possibly the oldest 'friend' that Kaworu had, for whatever value of friendship she could provide. She was still in combat mode. He eyes were scanning everything. If things went sideways on us, I could count on her to bring her own violence to the party.

If I was lucky, she wouldn't go off before it was necessary. I didn't know her well enough on a personal level, but we were made out of the same meat so at least I knew what she was capable of.

I glanced down at my left hand. I wasn't really even myself anymore. Hair dye, contact lenses, they could get my close, but even looking in the mirror with those changes...

A man in a flightsuit was next out of the hatch. His uniform was dry, but salt crusted, like he'd been in the gulf and allowed to dry without rinsing. American flag shoulder patch, this was the pilot that had been shot down.

I didn't need to read his nametape; I already knew what it would say. I'd seen his face before, or one that looked just like it. It made sense, for as much as our worlds were different, they were still the same. Key events had changed, but other less world altering details would have played out almost identically in both worlds.

Which meant that I knew this pilot, or I had known him once before. Maybe it was nostalgia or sentimentality that made me glad he'd managed to punch out, or maybe it was a desire not to shed blood that didn't need to be shed.

In either case, the result was the same; standing on the deck in front of me, in handcuffs and covered in dried salt, was Alan Miller.

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 47:
One Last ____​

In one moment I was looking into the eyes of Rei Ayanami, who was standing on the gang-plank leading from the submarine. In the next moment it felt like I had a nosebleed and my eyes rolled back in my head, a moment before I crashed into the decking.

The smell of ozone reached my nostrils with the taste of blood and salt on my tongue. The ache of the bruises on my body was dull compared to the shrilling in my ears, a whine or a scream, too high in pitch and intensity for my ears to handle, the bones just resonated, like speakers turned up too loud and blown out, a buzzing.

And then it was over, but for a sickness deep in the pit of my stomach. My eyes re-opened to see I was not the only person on the ground; everyone else was in a similar state, knocked to the ground as though the legs were cut out from under them.

I looked back towards the submarine and locked eyes with Ayanami. Blood was dripping from the corners of her eyes, her nose, her ears, her mouth. She looked how I felt, and when I wiped my own cheek the hand came back red.

Rogue was bleeding in similar fashion, as was Kaworu, but the normal humans weren't. Nothing about that fact made me feel any better. If we were wounded so, it meant whatever happened had to be special in origin. The kind of special you threw Evangelions at until it stopped moving.

The alarms on the platform started to scream, but that was only a passing distraction, my attention was drawn upwards, towards the blood red sky.

I spit my blood onto the deck and pushed myself back to my feet. The world was going to hell, but at least I was vindicated. "Hey, Miller!" I yelled with a shakiness in my voice that I hadn't intended.

The handcuffed man's head jerked towards me, he probably didn't expect me to know his name, did he know I was the one who he tried to kill? He was about to.

"I'm the one you tried to shoot down! This is what I was trying to prevent, when we attacked that convoy! This is what your people did and it's going to get worse before it gets better!" I yelled at the man over the growing roaring of the wind.

I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and turned to see Misato clinging to a handrail with her left arm, and holding a radio up with her right hand. "Prepare the Wunder for immediate departure, we're going into battle!"

The deck pitched under us and I almost fell over in my surprise. The sea state was rapidly deteriorating, was this was second impact felt like? The look on Misato's face was one of recognition, not good.

I lurched and stumbled across the deck to get to the lift that would take us back up to the main deck of the platform and away from waves that were threatening to crash over the deck and knock us all into the ocean.

The deck pitched again and I started to lose my footing and crashed against a handrail. Half inch angle iron was the only thing stopping me from getting washed away to my death. Back the other direction the gang plank was hanging free while the Dallas desperately tried to pull distance from the platform. They'd probably crash-drive to get under the 'weather' to avoid crashing into us.

The world dropped out from under me with a loud snap; the rigging holding this gantry to the leg of the main platform fractured and fell out from under me. The deck fell to a forty-five degree angle and I bounced along the grating before crashing into and tumbling over the railing.

A strong hand wrapped around my wrist and nearly wrenched my shoulder out of socket arresting my fall. I flailed about to get a grip on the handrail with my free hand and got a good look at the hand holding me up. A man's hand with a handcuff around the wrist, with the other half of the pair empty.

The man heaved me back up onto the deck and we climbed together towards the elevator car. His other hand, I saw, was bleeding. He'd slipped the cuffs. This other Miller had slipped his cuffs and, looking at his other hand, broke his thumb.

And he'd saved me?

I hauled myself into the elevator car where the rest of the group was already waiting, The door closed and, for a moment at least, the roaring of the wind and sea was calmed. The car lurched under me and I felt myself nearly falling again. Two hands grabbed onto me, one from Miller, the other... Rogue? She had a stern look on her face and I could tell where she'd wiped her blood away.

I turned towards Misato and I could see the fear in her eyes and it terrified me. "Misato, is this...?"

"It feels just like Second Impact. I can't escape it..." She muttered under her breath.

I wrapped my hand around hers and shook my head, I'd give her what comfort I could. "We've got Evangelions this time. We'll end this before it starts. We've got power, we can do something about it."

The elevator halted abruptly at the top of the shaft and I felt almost like I came off my feet for a second before the doors opened up.

Outside was the main flight deck of the platform, and we managed to catch sight of three Raptors running full after burner, blasting down the runway in formation. With this kind of wind sheer they were insane, but apparently motivated.

"Who authorized that launch?" Misato asked into her radio. Her voice was shaky, nervous. I'd never seen her like this before.

"Miller and, er, both Beckets launched under their own authority."

"Fair enough. Tell Denisovich and Clark that I'm authorizing nuclear deployment. Ending this threat at any cost is our only priority." She was colder, calmer, more determined. The edge was back, she didn't sound quite like a scared little girl.

Victoria had taken the only action she really could, at least the only one she felt most confident in. She'd be a stick jockey till the day she died, and that might be today.

A gust of wind threatened to lift me off the deck and cast me into the sea, but I kept my footing, then grabbed onto the railing next to the elevator. How we were going to cross that wide open space I didn't know.

"It's getting rough out here, status on Wunder deployment?" Misato asked as she retreated into the shelter that the elevator provided.

"Wunder is online. Sit tight, we'll come to you." a different voice from before called back. Feminine, familiar but I couldn't place it.

The whine of engines scratched in at the edge of my hearing and grew stronger, rapidly. Diagonally from us I saw the form of a hull rise up above the edge of the decking, the Wunder. The ship moved gracefully through the air despite the chaos around us.

A testament both to her power and her origin.

The starboard Eva-bay opened up as the ship passed low overhead and a long red arm reached down out of it and pressed down, gently, to the deck. "That's definitely a way of boarding the ship."

xxx​

For every bit of grace the Wunder had displayed in aligning with the deck to pick us up off the platform, it tore away from that platform as though it had the hounds of hell on its heels. Acceleration that couldn't have been rivaled by a fighter jet running full afterburners knocked me into the wall and the railing was the only thing that kept me in place.

A glance to my side showed that Miller was the only other person to have such a reaction to the burst of speed, Mari, Misato, Ayanami, and the clone held themselves up with far more elegance and grace than I had.

But then they'd all probably had more experience with it than I had. I hadn't set foot on this ship since before fourth impact.

After a few harsh moments the acceleration died down, though I had no doubt that we were supersonic by that point. I would have loved to have been strapped in. The respite from the lateral force had given me a chance to catch my breath, for which I was thankful.

I heard the click of the button on the side of Misato's hand radio and her voice a moment later, strained. "Situation report?"

The voice that came through was rushed, familiar. "The readings match thirty years ago. Pattern blue. We're witnessing an impact event."

The color drained from Misato's face and I understood how she felt. It was confirmed now, even if she had already known what was happening. Even if I already knew what was happening. This was the only home any of us had left.

Mari dropped into a sprint before anyone had a chance to stop her or say anything, likely headed to he Evangelion in one of the cages that this ship had installed in it. I could have run too, run for the hanger, for that last raptor, maybe?

But what the hell would I have been able to do with that?

I couldn't use Unit One, they'd never let me have it. Never disengage it from serving as the ship's control node. I couldn't just sit around while the world ended and not do anything about it, no more than Misato could.

I glanced over; Miller was afraid. Even if I was certain he didn't understand the full implications of what was going on, I knew that much. The people who'd casually swatted him from the sky were terrified and that was probably enough.

The clone, Rogue, couldn't be trusted, even if she had eventually done the right thing. They didn't know her, I certainly didn't either. Same with Kaworu, even if he hadn't been rushed straight to medical after we'd boarded the Wunder.

That left me and Ayanami, and Ayanami wouldn't pilot, not after the last time.

The lift opposite us finally opened; it would take us to the command deck. Misato was the first in, followed by Miller, then Ayanami and Rogue. I found myself... hesitating.

I'd lost her before, I might have gotten her back, but if everyone died anyway, if she died...

"Ikari?" Ayanami asked, her hand extended towards me. To the command deck, right?

I looked down at my own left hand, the first part of me that wasn't really me. I could fight in a way that few others could, and even fewer would. "Ayanami, I'm trusting you to keep an eye on her. Misato, I'm taking Unit Zero."

Misato's face twitched, her mouth opened and closed a few times before she seemed to settle on something to actually say. "Fine, Bay 3, port side."

I blinked in surprise. "Just like that?"

"We don't have time for an argument that I'll lose anyway. Go, we'll provide direction from here." She tossed her radio to me as the lift doors started to close. "Don't let me down."

I stared down into my left hand, the one I'd caught the radio with. Just like that then, when it came down to it, she chose to put her faith in me. All of this time I'd spent wondering who I was, what I was supposed to be and what I was going to end up being, she provided my answer.

My left foot pounded after the right, I dropped into a run towards Unit Zero. Ayanami's unit, and, for a brief glorious moment, Rogue's. If I could make her move for me... I might just have a shot.

I rounded the first corner fast enough that I slid up against the wall, but I didn't let it slow me down. Every nanosecond counted when it came to an impact event. Whatever the Americans had done, they'd woken a Vessel of Adam. I wasn't certain what that meant, but I was certain that the situation we found ourselves in meant that wasn't just a fancy name they'd made up.

"Ikari, we're passing into American airspace now. Pre-checks are in progress, technicians are waiting for you at the plug. We're only going to be able to provide limited support, so if you want to back out now is the time."

I finally recognized the voice. I felt a smile tugging at the corner of my mouth. "Thanks for the heads-up, Akagi. I'll take my chances."

Five, maybe ten meters ahead the blast door separating this corridor from the Evangelion storage pods on the port side of the ship was opening for me.

In the last few steps before crossing the threshold, the ship tilted under me and I sprawled forward off of my feet. The radio launched out of my hand as I scrambled to keep from landing directly onto my face.

I managed to catch the deck plate with my shoulder and slid past the blast-doors on my back, just in time to see the pink of Unit Eight disappear over the edge of its side of the pod and into the air stream. That must have been the source of the lurch.

On the opposite side of the bay, Unit Zero was laying face down in a pool of coolant, with the entry plug extended. The oldest Evangelion, and the most buggy. Taking it into combat was an exercise in suicide, but then I'd been in a dogfight against fighter jets in a P-38, and this wasn't that bad.

A technician I didn't recognize helped me to my feet and peeled my jacket off of me. He could have asked, and might have, but I didn't hear him over the sound of the wind rushing past the open bay. The implication was obvious: I had to be ready to pilot.

I kicked my shoes off as I walked across the catwalks crisscrossing the bay, each of them looked retractable so I shouldn't have any trouble launching afterwards, anyway. Ahead of me two female technicians were working around the boarding hatch on the side of the plug, one of them had a folded up package that, I assumed, was a plugsuit.

My skirt hit the floor around the same time I felt someone press A-10 connectors against my scalp, and the familiar tingle of them interfacing with my brain. That I managed not to trip myself stepping out of the a-line was a miracle in and of itself given the speed at which we were walking, but I managed.

The tech closest to the hatch handed me the folded plugsuit and gave me a thumbs up and a pat on the shoulder, and I took it with me into the plug. It smelled old, stale. They hadn't planned on using this unit again.

They probably wouldn't use it again after this.

I peeled my shirt and undergarments off and tossed them out of the open hatch a moment before it sealed. We were clearly not wasting any time. I grabbed the plugsuit by the shoulders and shook it out and started to climb into it in the dark. I'd done it enough times, I didn't need to see to do it.

I was half way into the suit when the plug lurched forward and started screwing down into the unit. By the time it locked into place I had my fingertips pressed against the wrist activation switch and an instant later the loose garment was the skin-tight suit it was meant to be.

The lights came on a second later when main power was finally connected. The saddle was as I remembered it. I caught sight of my hand when I reached out to grab onto the control stick and pull myself up.

Canary yellow. My old colors. Despite the situation, I smiled from ear to ear. If she'd had this made, it meant she had always held out hope, for me, for us. She knew she'd see me again. It gave me hope.

We were going to win.

I hefted myself up and into the saddle while LCL poured into end of the plug from the filtration vents. If everything went okay, I'd be online in a couple minutes at the most. I tapped out a series of memorized commands into the controls set into the back of the control yokes, brought what I could online; sensors, communications, power management, fire control.

The first breath of LCL hit me with a wave of nostalgia. Memories, sensations, smells. Ayanami from a lifetime ago. Problems may have been bigger but they seemed to much more manageable back then. Sure, I'd been afraid, but I'd known we could do it, and she'd been there for me. They both had.

She'd never have to do this again, I'd do it for her. I would protect Ayanami, Misato, Asuka, even Mari. That's what he had charged me with. He was a bastard but he was right. He'd always been right. Just like Father.

An electric shock ran down my spine and the colors of the plug walls swirled until the interior of the pod filled my vision. Activation success, synchronization was online, according to my readouts, at eighty percent.

"Good, it still works. You've got twenty minutes in the extended batteries after you disengage from the ship. After that you've got your standard five minute timer. We'll supply recharge packages if we can, but don't rely on them. Get this done fast."

I jerked my head towards the voice, Akagi's face was in the vidcom window. She looked older, but she still looked good. She looked less... defeated, than she had before. She was going to need that.

I nodded at her and grabbed onto the controls. This was, after all, a fine way to die. A hero's ending if there ever was one; I'd already gotten the girl. "Pilot Ikari, Unit Zero. Ready to go."
​

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 48:
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

​

Allusions to horror and devastation came to mind, terror and mayhem, a sort of ordered chaos. In the moment, anything more eloquent than the obvious was out of reach; the visage of the wounded earth saw to that.

It would have made sense that they wouldn't have taken it far from where they found it. Hard to hide something that size, even harder to move it. This wasn't something that anyone could forget or forgive, even if we won.

Where once stood New Orleans, now stood scorched earth and a giant with wings of light and glowing eyes. The number of people who must have died in that one instant left a deep sickness in my stomach. Entirely avoidable deaths, if only they hadn't meddled with things beyond their understanding.

The hull of the Wunder shook under my feet, the shaft of the lance vibrated in my hands, pressed against the same hull. Range was a few kilometers, I could see Unit Two and Unit Eight drawing close to the target.

Three on one would normally have filled me with confidence, but something about this tickled the deep reptilian, fearful, part of my brain. I needed to kill it, I needed to be on the other side of the planet from it.

I clicked the control on the back of my yoke and ejected the umbilical tying me to the ship. The counter flipped over to twenty minutes. That would have to be enough.

"Ikari to Wunder. I'm dropping now, tap the brakes a little for me."

I felt the muscles in the legs tense up, and then the tension released and I was off the hull. Under me the Wunder slowed just enough to cast me out ahead of it, and then it turned away from the intercept course it had been on with... whatever waited for me below.

The altitude on my display clicked down rapidly, minute to live be damned. Forward velocity exceeded my drop rate by a factor of ten; I was going to hit the ground running. Two thousand, one thousand, five hundred. Braking thrusters fired. I hit the ground on my right foot and pushed off, carried to the left. Right, left, right left.

Speed across the ground rose and I brought the spear to my side. Target ahead, if I could pull off a one-hitter-quitter we'd be done. Asuka and Mari were more cautious than I was, they'd dropped earlier and approached with restraint.

I'd already been dead once, I could do it again.

Unit Zero had never been the strongest, the fastest, or the most agile Evangelion. I had to push her as hard as I could, but I wouldn't stop. The Mark Nine was looking directly at me with those glowing eyes and that cracked armor.

A tingle on the back of my neck, a flinch. I jumped on instinct a moment before an energy blast tore through the space I'd just been occupying. The arc of my jump carried me down on top of it, and I brought the point of my lance down directly into the chest armor. The blade sank deep and for a moment I felt victorious.

I was back in the air in a second, my chest felt like fire, the wind was knocked out of me. I hit the ground on my knee and managed to keep my head up as I slid to a stop a full kilometer away from the target.

The force of the strike that hit me had stripped the armor from the being in front of me, revealing what had always necessarily been true; it was more than an Evangelion, more than a Vessel of Adams. It was a giant of light.

A red streak sprinted in from my left, Unit Two. I needed a minute to collect myself, but I still had my lance. The point to point comm linked up and I flipped my grip around on the lance. "Asuka, catch!"

I tossed the lance into her path, with luck she'd catch it and have another chance to impale the thing, for what good it might do. We still had to try.

I was half way to my feet when rapid fire tracers started impacting the giant of light, fired from Unit Eight no doubt. I engaged both progressive knives and pulled them into my hands and found my way back to my feet. A little worse for wear, nothing I couldn't handle.

A flash of red caught my attention, Unit Two was tossed away. "I guess that means I'm tagged in," I muttered to nobody in particular, then dropped into a sprint. Five hundred yards, four hundred. I was in the air and off my feet again, an AT field stronger than anything I'd ever seen popped up and threw me backwards.

We were annoying it.

Massive tracer rounds lanced in from a steep angle from above. The screaming of the Wunder's engines pierced my entry plug and a moment later the massive ship collided with the AT field of the monster and eroded it.

The Adam fired a blast through the belly of the ship and out through one dishes on its back. Explosions and smoke poured through the wound. It could take out something that big and powerful? No it truly was an Adam if it could do that.

"We're losing power, we're going down. Primary control node is disengaging. Mayday, Mayday, Mayday--" The transmission was cut off by static. Misato, Ayanami!

No, no, no! On the ground they'd be helpless, I couldn't let this go on any longer. I had fifteen minutes of power left, I'd have to do it in five.

It was insane, dangerous. Zero was already unstable, but I had to risk it. The final card in my hand. I'd seen it done before, how hard could it really be?

I reached down to the MFD set into the control saddle and rolled through the menus until I found the one I needed. In autonomous operation mode, without a control center, I had the ability to do this without authorization.

I opened a broadcast to anyone still listening, they should be warned in case this didn't go the way I needed it to. "This is Pilot Ikari, Unit Zero. Be advised, I am disengaging all of my limiters."

That would have to do. I pressed my finger down on the execute button and held on as explosive bolts fired all over the Evangelion. I could feel plugs and bolts and restraints pulling and tearing themselves from the Evangelion as if it were my own flesh. I could feel muscles shifting as braces and armor plating pulled free.

It wasn't the worst thing I'd ever felt.

The power monitor dropped from fifteen minutes down to five when the external battery packs disengaged along with the armor that held them. From five minutes to an error message. Of course, she was unshackled now.

I felt the Eva pushing in on my mind and I pushed back. Just a few more minutes, that's all I need from you.

I dropped down into a crouch and launched myself with all of my might towards the Adam. An AT field rose to stop me and I screamed and tore at it, forced my way through the first layer, the second, the third. I fed my rage into the Eva and she fed hers into me. Two vicious beasts, uncaged together.

The final layer was down, both knives thrust forward with the force of all of my desperation behind them, buried to the hilt into the giant. There was a hesitation in its movement. I, for a moment, could let myself believe I'd really won.

A burning grip wrapped itself around my right forearm, a blow to my chest afterwards sent me sprawling. The warning messages flashing on my displays and the agony in my right elbow told me what I needed to know; the limb was removed from the Evangelion.

I hit the ground in a heap and didn't find it within myself to move from that position. This was what it was like to fight in Zero. Nothing else, nothing left under the surface like unit One.

The dust around me settled and I saw Unit Two making a valiant effort to put the behemoth down once and for all. She was doing better that I had been, actually parrying blows with the lance, but she was losing ground, getting pushed towards me.

Only a few dozen meters at a time, but they were adding up. Tracers kept impacting the glowing giant, to no effect. The anti-AT field rounds fired by Unit Eight weren't up to the task, it seemed. I couldn't get up to fight, Zero had taken too much damage. I could feel my sync failing.

I still had my own AT field, but I couldn't imagine it would be strong enough to fight on foot. Nor was it reliable enough. Still...

I punched the shutdown sequence into the MFD and set the plug to eject. The seat slowly withdrew backwards while the monitors went dark and the tickling at the back of my brain faded away. I pulled myself out of the seat while the feeling returned to the arm I hadn't actually lost. The cushion pulled away to reveal the air-tight sealed SERE kit.

The plug hit the end of its travel and the LCL purge started, as soon as the the level dropped below the seat I coughed the liquid out of my lungs and tore the plastic bag open.

A SIG pistol, and a knife. There were rations, a medical kit, but I didn't need those. I grabbed the two weapons and kicked the hatch open. Hot air rushed in and I climbed out onto the top of the plug.

I climbed to my feet and looked up at the way-too-close giant of light and held out my pistol. "God, or whoever might be listening. I could really use a miracle about now. I've got nothing left, so if you could throw me a bone I'll... try to be better."

To my left Unit Two was on the ground. She was trying to get up, but the bleeding told me she'd taken more than her fair share of hits. Unit Eight wasn't a close combat unit, and she was too far away to help anyway.

I squeezed the trigger, then again, and again, and again. The report of the pistol was almost silent over the roaring in my ears, and the magazine was quickly empty. The giant of light stared at me with what could almost be considered curiosity. I'm sure he could tell what I was, even if my bullets had done nothing.

But I'd killed an Angel that way before. I had to hope.

The plug started to shake under me and above me the giant pulled its fist back as though to wipe me out of existence once and for all. I'd died before, I could do it again. I could only hope that whatever distraction I could provide would be enough to give everyone else a chance to do something.

In a way it was calming, knowing I wouldn't have to worry much longer, that I'd done all I could. I felt the wind blowing in my face in front of the massive fist that was headed down towards me. The shaking intensified under me. There were worse ways to go.

A purple hand wrapped around the glowing fist of light and stopped it in place, then pushed it back. Slowly at first, but then faster, with a follow up from a second purple hand that sent the giant sprawling. The first ground it had been forced to cede in the entire fight.

My miracle, Unit One.



​

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 49:
Unbound

​

I could not, despite my vow, leave her to her fate. Not now, not ever. It would be worse than what I'd been forced to endure when we'd piloted together. Worse than the not-knowing if I'd see her again. Worse than leaving him behind.

Unit One was familiar to me in a way that I could not quite put my finger on. She welcomed me into her heart with open arms, she understood my purpose and willed to share in it. A purpose free of obligation, of my own decision.

Not because I had to, not because I was ordered to, not because I could do it.

The Adam was getting up, I didn't have time to idle. I looked over my shoulder, Ikari was standing on the plug of the damaged Unit Zero. She was reaching out, she expected... something that was not to be. She had done enough, this purpose was no longer hers.

"Ikari, stand back. I will finish this for you, because I want to."

My steps were calm and purposeful towards the Adam, the Progenitor Awakening. Of all of the Angels and Evangelions that had been, he had no equal among gods nor men. The power to create or destroy life was absolute, beyond contestation.

I would not let that hold true. Things had a certain clarity when I was synced to Unit One. Some part of me that had been too silent for too long. A part of me that I hadn't known I'd been missing. Ikari must have felt it, that must have been what allowed her to do so much with this unit.

I fell into instinct, raised my arm as the Adam rose from the ground. The shaft of Unit Zero's lance connected with my outstretched hand and I snatched it from the air. Controls forward, will to movement, I leapt and thrust the spear in one motion.

He knew what I was doing, and he knew what I was. I could feel recognition from it. The feeling was mutual. He parried my thrust and shattered the blade of the lance in one blow. I released the broken shaft and ducked low, raised a fist up from under and delivered a crushing blow to his head.

He wasn't used to being forced to cede ground. A left hook, a right hook. A kick to the knee. Each blow drove him further back, drove him down. Still, with each strike he seemed to recover faster, to move and counter attack faster.

I took a hit on the chin and retaliated with a kick to the chest, knocked us apart only to launch myself back against him. Punching, kicking, pulling, tearing. Feral violence, I let me hate and revulsion drive me. He was not the same as me, I would not let him live.

I felt my link to Unit One deepening as I had to push harder, move faster, react quicker. He could not knock me off balance but I was increasingly unable to do the same to him. I knew that I would not reach my limits first, I would force him to ground and end this threat.

I didn't bother to look, I could feel my sync climbing. I knew contamination would come soon, but I did not care. I felt more alive than I had ever felt. This was my decision, this was my genuine desire, my need. This was worth it.

I moved faster, supersonic punches, parries, evasions. I pushed him further and further from the crippled Unit Zero, further from the one I wanted to protect.

Deeper and deeper, I could feel the armor plating hanging from the Evangelion's limbs, I could feel the blood in its veins, I could feel--

Everything.

My armor was restrictive, I cast it aside. Steel plates and wires and bolts dropped to the ground, I wouldn't need them. My skin felt the sunlight, the wind, the warmth. I felt the energy coursing through my body, crackling just under the skin.

I raised my left arm and fired an energy blast into the Adam's head. Then another, then another. With each attack I fell deeper, deeper, deeper. Seeing not through a display, but through my eyes. Hearing through my ears.

I grabbed him, pulled him in front of me and held him at arms length. We left the ground together, rose towards the sky. This had been his objective. To end what he hadn't begun. To begin again on his own.

The armor over my face disintegrated and I could feel the wind and sunlight on my face for the first time. Finally bare of confinement, my true form for the first time in... ages.

The copy, the pale imitation of the being I was going to consume to fuel this re-imaging of the world, lay on the ground below me, with another copy standing atop it, watching me with...

Fear.

No. Something inside, deep in my core fought back against that. No, she shouldn't be made to be afraid. This was... This was for her, for me. This was wrong. Instinct was wrong, there was memory, there were bonds, relationships. Love.

Duty, obligation, empathy.

I couldn't forget what I'd never known, but I did, I was whole and incomplete.

"This has to stop."

Words, not mine, not hers. From something else within?

Energy cannot be created or destroyed. I violated this law of the universe, as it was understood. Matter and energy were two sides of the same coin, the amount of both was fixed, but each could change form.

No, it wasn't a stray thought, it was a message, from within. A suggestion? A request.

There was enough mass to do what needed to be done.

I collected myself, I collected that other... self?

That could be dealt with afterwards.

I would destroy this being, because Rei Ayanami wanted to.

I raised my right arm, closed my eyes. Matter converted to directed energy, I let my world explode.



​

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 50:
New Eden

​

I knew what was going to happen. I could feel it in my bones. Unit One had changed, cast off its armor, ascended to the sky and... become Ayanami. Every bit as large as the giant of light, the unmistakable form of a woman, with her own soft white glow and flowing hair.

What she'd become, what she'd been, it all seemed to come together. She was evolving or... returning to her complete form. I didn't know, it didn't matter. The despair must have been radiating off of me. This isn't what I had wanted.

She'd taken it too far, let herself sink too deep into the Eva. The impact would continue, we'd all die, and something else would come out the other side.

She looked down at me and her face seemed to curl into a frown. The glow dimmed, and she held out her right arm to the chest of the Adam. The glow returned, intensified. The plug under my feet shook. "I guess this is the end, after all."

The light grew, and grew... and disappeared. My eyes adjusted in an instant, I was covered by a wall of red. Armor, plate armor. Unit Two was shielding me.

A whip-crack followed by a deep roaring blast deafened me, but my protector, Unit Two, held strong. The blast wave washed out around us, sandblasting the ground and overturning any debris left from the city's destruction.

I could taste the electricity on the air, feel something chipping away at my AT field, digging into me, pushing through and past me, into the earth. I could feel my nose bleeding, I could see the red splatters against the white plug surface when I looked down.

It looked even redder as it rushed up to me.
​

xxx

​

I woke up on the surface of the plug with my face resting in a pool of my own blood. I didn't know how long I'd been down, but the sun was up and Unit Two was gone. In its place were... tree tops. That wasn't there before.

I pushed myself onto my feet and checked the magazine of the pistol I still had in my hand. Empty, so I swapped it out for a spare from the SERE kit. If I hadn't been found yet, it was only a matter of time, unless somehow I wasn't in Louisiana anymore.

Unit Zero was in a kneeling position, rather than the sprawled out position it had been in when I'd de-activated. The missing limb was replaced as well. Something was not adding up. How much time had passed?

I heard rotors chopping through the air in the distance. Close enough to hear, though. I couldn't see them, too many tree tops in the way. If there was any power left in the batteries, the radio in the plug would work.

I slid down the side of the plug and caught my foot on the still-open hatch, then slid myself inside. The saddle was how I'd left it, so I re-mounted and started punching commands into the MFD. A menu. At least it had power.

A clunk to my left told me that the hatch had closed, the rising sensation in my stomach told me the plug was screwing in. Orange LCL began to pool in the front of the plug. I hadn't commanded an activation, but if the telemetry links were online to Wunder than they could have commanded it once they saw me fiddling with the controls inside.

Or it was trying to eat me.

It might have looked fine on the outside, but most of my armor was still missing and, with the thrashing I'd taken, there was no guarantee it'd fire up anyway.

Ayanami blew herself up.

Somehow, I always knew it as going to end that way. From the first time I ever saw Evangelion, to the fight against Ramiel. Somehow, I always knew she was going to die for me.

I felt a sickness rising in my throat, I wanted to throw up, cry, scream, kill something. Anything or nothing, just to make the feeling stop.

It felt like a slap to the face, the colors in the plug swirled and resolved to the outside. The phantom limb sensations poured through my body, I was online, no power reading that I could see.

"--ing push them back then! They're not taking this ship! Wunder is the rally point!"

The communications array came online and the inbound transmission startled me. The Americans were fighting us now? Hadn't we lost enough? Hadn't they? Was a city and my sister not enough of a price to pay?

I pushed the Evangelion to its feet, if for no other reason than to get a better view of what was going on around me. With my head above the tree tops, I could see the crash site of the Wunder a few kilometers in front of me. Units Two and Eight were holding positions at either end, firing on advancing columns of armor.

It couldn't have been that long, or we'd have our navy at their doorstep. It didn't explain why Asuka had left me, but I'm sure she had her reasons. If they'd needed the help--

The sensor array chirped at me and an area of my forward display magnified for me, two IR readings a few dozen meters at the most in front of me. Two forms, one prone, the other hunched over the first. It would only be a few steps until I was close enough to get a better look.

I crouched low, back under the almost impossibly tall tree tops and advanced forward, clearing the distance in only a few moments, could have taken minutes on foot with the density of the underbrush. I toggled the infrared off and looked at the figures in visible light.

Two women, one of them was a brunette, and that was all I could really tell. The other... She had white hair. Ayanami? She couldn't have survived, and yet... if it wasn't her, I still couldn't leave someone out here in this impossible forest with fighting going on nearby.

I knelt down and laid my right hand on the ground next to the pair, hoping that simple act would be invitation enough. An unspoken 'let me get you out of here.'

Maybe, instead, 'come with me if you want to live.'

I felt a slight pressure on my hand, I knew that this meant they were touching it, on it. First one pressure, and then a second. A sidelong glance was all I was willing to give, to make sure they were there, before I gently closed my hand to stop them from falling off.

I couldn't bring myself to look too hard. Maybe I wanted to hold out hope, or maybe I just didn't want to change developing any hope at all. I couldn't bring myself to confirm who I'd picked up.

I pushed forward, towards Wunder. Any answers that existed would probably be there. Against all rational thought I had a functional Evangelion under my command, and the others could use the backup.

Trees crunched under my feet as I pushed forward, not quite-running through the dense forest that had somehow replaced the wasteland that had replaced a city. Still, even along the edges, it was obvious there was some areas where they didn't overlap, like two circles in a venn diagram. For as much as the forest was overloaded with life, the wasteland on the eastern edge was completely barren.

But, four kilometers wasn't much time on foot, if those feet were attached to someone eighty meters tall.

Wunder had seen better days. Grounded as she was, that damage wasn't too bad. She'd landed upright. The real problem was the wound where Unit One had torn its way out. Without understanding too much of it, I couldn't see how she'd fly again without Unit One, and that Evangelion was gone.

That didn't mean they could let anyone take the ship. After what had happened it was clear this was not a government that could be trusted. Misato would feel the same way. We'd have to hold the line.

"Ikari to Wunder, I've got survivors, I'm sure you can see me approaching. I'm not sure what's going on, but Unit Zero is still operational... somehow. I need some place safe for my passengers, and some orders. What are we gonna do?"

My words came faster, more frantic than I'd have liked. I felt like I was moving on inertia more than anything else. Momentum from the fight, maybe.

"Ikari, you're alive? Thank god. We're repelling boarders near the bridge. If you can get into the ship and get to engineering, I can have an engineer walk you through a reactor restart. It won't get us back in the air but we'll have guns again. You up to it?"

I recognized that voice. "Clark? What the hell are you doing on the Wunder? I've got survivors, is there a safe place to stash them?"

"Long story, don't have the time to explain. Safest place for them is with you. I wouldn't ask you if we had a choice, but we're all pinned down just holding onto the flight deck. There shouldn't be much resistance elsewhere on the ship."

Well, I did have a gun, so at least I had that going for me. I crouched down and slid myself sideways through the wound that had been torn in the side of the ship when Unit One broke out. It would be as good a place as any to board the ship from, and it was far enough away from the bridge.

​

xxx

​

That there was a catwalk at all to walk on was a gift, that Ayanami had left the access hatch open was a miracle. I could see the two women to my left, in my peripheral vision. Couldn't bring myself to make eye contact, not yet.

The footsteps approaching me told me I wouldn't have the luxury of not knowing for much longer. "Ikari?"

Don't hope. Don't hope. Don't hope.

"Ikari, I know the way."

I couldn't take it anymore, I turned, locked eyes. Red eyes met red. She looked like Ayanami, but she didn't at the same time. Something was... subtly off. She was wearing the familiar white plugsuit. The woman she was carrying was wearing a similar, if far more crude plugsuit.

Something about that should have bothered me, but I refused to let myself think about it. One thing at a time. "Leave her here, they won't hurt her. Lead the way, Ayanami."

"I'm not--"

"Just let me have this, for now, okay!?" I snapped at her. I felt a tear on my cheek. Fuck.

"Okay." She finally said, softly. The voice was a little different, there was more... experience in it. I watched her set the woman down against the bulkhead. She looked like she was sleeping. At least she had that.

I nodded my head towards the hatch and 'Ayanami' stepped through into the access corridor that ran along the belly of the ship. It would probably take us the whole way there if there was any sanity in the design of the ship.

We'd probably end up going down three levels, up five, and then at some point scale the outside of the hull to get where we were going.

I found myself staring at the back of her head as we walked through the darkness, lit only by the few emergency lights. The red lighting cast her in an eerie glow, or more eerie than usual. She was something else. Something new.

Or something very very old.

"So what happened out there?" I surprised myself by being the first to break the silence. I didn't know what else to do, other than maybe cry.

"Ascension. Unification... or Reunification. I don't have a frame of reference. It has been very disorienting. I would have carried on and continued opening the room... but Rei Ayanami wanted to protect you. I protected you." She explained. Her pace was stilted, like she was trying to find the words.

Or trying to frame it in a way I might understand.

"So who are you? Are you Rei Ayanami?" I asked. I felt my voice hitching, felt the lump in my throat. I tried to swallow it down, even as my eyes started to water.

She stopped, turned to face me, and frowned. "I... Do not know. Maybe. We are the same. It depends on your perspective. I feel her desires, her memories, her emotions, her soul. Is that enough?"

I felt a smile tugging at the corner of my mouth. Not one of joy, so much as one that appreciated the poetic irony. I could certainly relate to what she was feeling. I'd come to terms with it, or as close as I imagined I ever would.

I wanted Ayanami back.


"Are you Unit One?" She'd over-synced, it was a valid question, right?

"No." Her answer was simple, direct, free of hesitation or ambiguity.

I liked that. "Okay."

"Unit One was made of me."


​

​