The Curious Case of Rei Ikari

[UrsaTempest]

The spider eva is alive, huh?

EDIT: still not ready to let myself believe that "her" is Mari, but I guess we'll all know for sure next update.

Click to shrink...

"Her" is Jackie's SO, dude.

Anyway, fun chapter. inb4 angel attack during dinner.

 

[theBSDude]

"Her" is Jackie's SO, dude.

Anyway, fun chapter. inb4 angel attack during dinner.

Click to shrink...

That's just the obvious answer.

EDIT: This sounded like I was joking or something. I'm not. It feels like there's an association building between Mari and "her." I don't believe in any significant percentage of myself that there's a connection, but the small remainder won't shut up.

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 9:

Cute Little Fleet/Viper Zero​

The ice cold air bit into my skin like a pit viper, the gust blew across the deck of the carrier and threatened to knock me over. I pulled my jacket tighter around my neck and turned towards my companion, and shook my head, "Misato, if you'd told me that Bethany was in the arctic circle I'd have told you no. I don't do cold."


"Rei, I hate to break this to you, but you do what I tell you, and right now I'll take the bitter cold over Japan's perpetual summer. Suck it up kid," She shot back as she lead me towards the carrier's island, the island with a big '63' painted on the side of it.


I shook my head, second impact changed a lot in this world, compared to the one I'd come from. And in this world, the U.S.S. Kitty Hawk still served on active duty. A testament to American engineering and resolve... and an indictment on their financial state.


Then again, maybe not being cozy'd on up to a nuclear reactor wasn't such a bad thing after all, and there were plenty of other carriers in the fleet. I'd counted four American, three Russian, and two I couldn't identify, British maybe?


Wait, three Russian? I thought they only had one...


I shook my head, the hatch in front of us opened, I felt the heat radiating out. So they had warmed this thing up, I was afraid I'd have to freeze to death while I was here. On the plus side, the cold numbed my arm enough that I couldn't be bothered by the ache and the itch.


"So where's the pilot? Where's the Eva?" I asked her as we progressed through the narrow, cramped corridors. I caught a few strange glances and hushed whispers from the crewmen, did they know who I was? Not that there would have been a lot of blue haired Japanese girls wearing school uniforms on an American carrier, and Misato was wearing her Nerv uniform...


How much of a secret was my identity anyway?


"Not here, the Eva is on the freighter we flew over on the way in, the pilot... well that's what we're going to find out right now," she explained as she turned and started to climb steep staircase. Had she been on this ship before? She seemed to know her way around. Better than that first day at headquarters anyway, this seemed natural.


I followed her up the unnaturally steep stairs, hobbled by my left arm, but then I made a few lunging hops and braced with my right arm, and made it most of the way up before I slipped and started over backwards. I flailed my arms forward, trying to regain my balance, but the handrails slipped further and further way as I tilted backwards...


...and into a pair of strong, firm arms. "Easy there, you're alright, I've got you."


I felt the heat rising into my cheeks as he helped me back to the steps and then finally up to the next level, where Misato where giggling like a child.


"Rei, not even on the boat ten minutes, and already throwing yourself at the handsome sailors?" she teased. I glared at her as her smirk grew wider.


I heard the sound of hard soled shoes on the metal decking behind me when the man who'd caught me finally made it up to this level, and I turned to look at him, nice, well tailored uniform, and that rank insignia... oh.


"Captain, actually. Glad as I am that you're not hurt, what is a teenager doing on my ship? I was told there would be a party from First Branch to take over for the Evangelion on behalf of Nerv... That would be the two of you then, yes?" the man asked.


"Rei Ikari," I introduced myself with a bow, still feeling that blush on my face, but for his part the captain seemed to be gracious about it, and didn't bring it up.


"Colonel Misato Katsuragi, head of tactical operations, First Branch," Misato introduced with a salute. I should have done that, had forgotten about it.


"Captain Phillip Clark, U.S.S. Kitty Hawk. Welcome aboard my ship," he introduced with a warm smile. I liked this guy already, not stuffy like I might have feared. He hesitated for a moment and then turned back to Misato.


"So, if you're the head of tactical operations, and you've got a young girl here with what looks like a broken arm... I suspect the rumors are true then," he said with a slight frown and an edge to his voice, then turned to look at me. "So, which one of those things are you the pilot of?"


"The purple one," I answered with a frown, "how did you figure it out?"


"Lucky guess, still, I trust that the circumstances surrounding the last time I met the colonel have ensured that she sought every other option before putting a child in the cockpit?" he asked as he glanced back towards Misato.


Misato looked like she'd been slapped, her jaw dropped, "Captain, we've never met before, and I would have you know that Rei's safety is and always has been my top priority!"


The man held up his hands and shook his head, "I meant no disrespect, but we have met before, fifteen years ago. September eighteenth, the year two thousand. I was only a first lieutenant then, but I remember that day well. My statement, well, I do truly believe that you would have exhausted every other option, after what happened back then."


Misato looked ready to slap him and I intervened, stood between them and shook my head, "It's not like that. I fight because I can, not because she makes me. If she could have done it, she'd fight instead, but that's not the way it works, Eva won't move for her."


I took a deep breathe, and looked back at Misato, and then back to the captain, "It's not like this was the first plan, but we're all just working with what we've got. This ship has been in service since sixty one, do you think she'd still be sailing if the situation wasn't as desperate as it is?"


The man stood there for a moment, then nodded slowly and turned towards the open hatch in the end of the compartment, "I understand then. You have my apologies for the implication, Colonel, Rei. The IPEA pilot you're likely looking for is on the Kuznetsov, the Evangelion is on the cargo ship Tbilisi."


He started to walk away and hesitated, "Later, if you're amicable, I'd like to invite you back aboard, for dinner. An apology if you will. It's not every day I get to meet people who have saved the world, I'd like to show my appreciation for that."

XXXXXXX​

"You know I'm starting to wonder if this entire war against the Angels is sponsored by Bell Helicopter!" I yelled to Misato over the whine of the single gas turbine engine perched above us, over the 'thuck, thuck, thuck' of the two bladed rotor. They could have at least closed the doors on this thing.


"You're a weird kid Rei!" She yelled back with a grin, "Besides, the UH-1 is inexpensive, reliable, and utterly immune to EMP, what more could you ask for?"


I gestured behind me to the open side door that arctic air was currently pouring in through, "A closed door and a space heater!"


"We're not going to be in the air that long, look, the Kuznetsov is right there, we'll be down in a few minutes!" I could see her shivering though, her cheeks red, her teeth chattering. At least I wasn't alone in that.


I never really minded the cold, actually, I rather liked it, before. Winters were always a welcome break from the intense summer heat of the American south, but the time I'd spent here, in this perpetual summer? Well, I hadn't been here that long, but still, my body wasn't used to the cold.


But then, it wasn't really the same body was it?


I shook my head, shivered against the rush of cold air, and felt my ears pop. I looked out the door, the water was getting closer, we were descending.


The red water, the real dead sea. The color of blood, no smell, no sense of life. The world with no marine life, how did we keep going on? If they could kill our oceans, even if we won, how long could we last?


Were we even meant to last?


No, I knew better than that. Before the fire, we were thriving, there was no global calamity, no second impact. We had our problems, but we were going to make it, not snuffed out by some alien menace.


No, we were meant to survive, we were meant to overcome this, like we'd overcome everything that had come before. We were the apex species on this planet, and I wasn't about to let anything change that fact.


I closed my eyes and took a deep breath of the frigid arctic air. It was bracing, felt it deep within my core, and shook off the chill. The deck of the Russian carrier was almost close enough to reach out and touch.


Oh, nifty! There were fighters on the deck, a dark blue camouflage... those weren't flankers. I scratched the back of my head as the helicopter's skids touched the deck, and I shifted towards the open door. No, those weren'tflankers, those were Mitsubishi F-2Bs, three drops tanks each, with two rocket pods, two bombs, and two air to air missiles each. What the hell were they planning on fighting out here?


Russian, American, and Japanese ships, who was really going to pick a fight with a fleet that had nine aircraft carriers in it? Maybe a country run by lunatics, or maybe an Angel, and fighter jet was little more than a distraction for the latter.


"Rei, come on. Let's go talk to the Russians."


Oh, yes, let's. That's absolutely the thing to do, isn't it?

XXXXXXX​

I leaned back in the, rather quite comfortable, chair, and let out a sigh. They hadn't found her yet, couldn't find her, she wasn't checking in, or whatever other excuse they needed to think of. Unit five's pilot was nowhere to be found on the Kuznetsov.


However, the guest accommodations were... nice. Not as spartan as one would assume when they first hear the phrase 'Russian guest quarters', although these were not exactly overnight accommodations, more of a small meet and greet lounge with food and drink.


Unfortunately, I'd only managed to sample a very small amount of authentic Russian vodka before Misato noticed and gave me a withering glare and I put back the rest, instead opting for the bread and cheese, some salami and some marinated herring. I always did have a soft spot for fish, where they'd gotten any on a planet covered in dead oceans, I didn't know.


But I was okay with it. Still, I had to wonder if maybe word had spread about who I was and my role at Nerv, it would explain the veritable feast. Captain's personal stash?


"Say, Misato," I asked with a mouthful of delicious Russian fish, "You think the Russians know who I am? We only told Captain Clark, and only because he figured it out." I turned to look at the other woman, part of the fish still hanging out of my mouth. Manners? Food is on the line, manners take a back seat.


"Well, as the captain of a ship, he wouldn't betray our trust and tell anyone. That said, I'm sure that half the fleet knew about you being an Eva pilot before we even made it to the helicopter," She answered with a laugh, "Rumors on a ship have legs, and radio operators like to gossip."


I nodded and put on my best fake Russian accent, "Little blue hair girl is Eva pilot, is save world, give her the good fish."


"I will admit, the conversation was very similar to that, but your accent needs work." I turned my head towards the voice, and then upwards to meet that voice's face. Large Russian man, very large Russian man.


He grinned at my blush and extended, "Captain-Lieutenant Alexander Siyanin Denisovich, I am pleased to meet the girl who has killed three Angels so far, and thank you both for waiting so patiently. It is unfortunate, but we have not been able to locate the IPEA pilot, she has, as far as we can tell, left the ship some time before you arrived, but beyond that we can not be more specific." He hesitated for a moment, looked over to Misato, and then back to me, and then over to the table of food and drink.


"You lost her? Wasn't it the Russian Navy's job to keep a handle on her during the transfer?" Misato accused as she rose from her chair. Five and a half feet of Japanese fury, you go girl!


I suppressed a snicker at the thought and watched the Russian out of the corner of my eye as I continued to scarf the fish, I had a bad feeling that the end of this conversation was going to be the end of my meal as well.


"Well, the girl is... difficult, spirited. I suspect that the only reason we were able to keep track of her as we had is because she allowed it. You must understand, while we are happy to participate in this transfer, in fact, we volunteered because of what Evangelion means to the world... we are not experienced in keeping guests confined to the ship when they do not want to be."


"So you're saying that if you wanted to keep her confined, you'd have had to throw her in the brig, and since she's an important guest aboard this ship, you didn't want to have to resort to that kind of thing?" I asked as I gnawed on a hunk of fresh bread. Where did they find fresh bread on a cruiser? Was there some kind of super special secret kitchen staffed with skilled Russian chef's I didn't know about?


"This is not an inaccurate statement," the man admitted, "However, the only craft to leave the ship recently are the helicopter you arrived on, and one other before that, which was headed over to the Tbilisi, you may want to begin your search there."


"Well, I'm not in a hurry, I could just sit here and eat fish for a while. I haven't had a good fish in forever, you know? And this is some pretty good stuff, maybe I could meet the cook and ask for a few tips, eh?" I asked, making eyes at the Russian.


"Rei, we really should be trying to find the IPEA pilot before we settle in, don't you think?" Misato interjected with an edge in her voice that bordered just on the edge of 'homicide.' Okay, yeah let's do what Misato says instead, yeah? Yeah.


"I will call for helicopter, excuse me," Denisovich offered as he ducked out of the room and closed the hatch behind him.


I turned to Misato, "Well, I guess I get to eat a little bit more eh? I told you I didn't have an eating disorder!" I patted my stomach with a grin and snatched another bread roll and slice of cheese off the table.


And then felt myself being dragged to the deck as a loud explosion rocked the entire ship, Misato had me by the back of the shirt and was screaming something that I couldn't hear over the reverberations through the deck and the explosion that hadn't quite subsided yet.


I shook my head to clear the fog and the confusion, but couldn't get the ringing out of my ears. The ringing... the buzzing? That wasn't the explosion, that was the ship's intercom, battle-stations perhaps?


"Misato, what the hell!?" I yelled, not at her for pulling me down, more at what the hell was going on.


"Stay here, I'm going to figure out what just happened!" She yelled as she got off of me and started for the door.


Stay here? Fuck that. "I'm coming with you, if the ship goes down I don't think it really matters which room I was in when it happened!" I yelled as I followed her, she didn't stop me.


The ship shook again and I stumbled against the hatchway, but Misato pressed on, oblivious to my peril. I shook my head, she was headed for the bridge, I was going to head for the flight deck. She could ask the command crew what was going on, but nothing beats the mark one eyeball.


I took a right turn at the junction and ran forward, the meeting room was in the island so it wasn't long before I reached a bolted hatch and spun the wheel, and pushed it out into the frigid air.


Oh. Damn. That's very, very, bad.


Half a mile off the port of the Kuznetsov, the Tbilisi was rocking in the waves, and aft of that the remains of the Novokuznetsk were on fire and sinking. And above that a terrifying amalgamation of metal and bone was flailing as it tried to shake itself free of some kind of hex-engraved binding.


If that wasn't an Angel, I didn't know what was, but how in all of the blue hells did it end up in a cargo ship? We captured one of those things? When the hell did that happen!


No, I needed a plan, I couldn't get to an Evangelion, but the IPEA pilot might already be at it. I couldn't just sit still and do nothing though, she had five minutes of power at most, and in the middle of an ocean? No, she needed back up.


I looked back out at the flight deck... and smirked, despite the situation. I'd spotted a locker room a few meters back, that would do.

XXXXXXX​

I licked my lip as my fingers worked their way across the panel in front of me. The helmet was heavier than I remembered, but I was a lot smaller than I was then as well. Them's the breaks.


Battery on, generator connected, fuel booster pumps on. Wheel brakes set. Okay... we can do this. I was lucky, in a way, that the rumor mill had been so active. I'd managed to bluff my way into the pilot's locker room, and again bluff my way into this cockpit. Pilot who killed the Angels? Well, one Pilot was as good as another, and I acted like I knew what I was talking about.


But then, it wasn't really an act, and Misato was about to find out everything that I'd been hiding from her, but desperate times call for desperate measures... and even if I couldn't do anything, I had to try.


I advanced the throttle half an inch and toggled the starter, and was rewarded with the steadily increasing whine of the engine behind me, at least I hadn't forgotten that part. It wasn't what I was used to, but it was close enough. It would do.


I tapped toggled on the targeting computer and cycled through the MFD on the right, switched it over to DSMS mode and examined my external stores pylons. Two LAU-5003 pods, two Mk 84s, and two AIM-9s. Yeah, that would probably be as effective as anything else.


I pulled the throttle back down to idle as the engine caught and the starter disengaged and... that was Misato stomping her way across the flight deck, but I'd prepared for that, had to, because I needed her with me, to make sure she was safe.


The ladder was still up against the side of the jet anyway.


She stormed past the ground crew, probably had seen me from the bridge, but that wasn't an accident either. I looked up in front of me, that Angel was still trying to get free, and it had mostly managed so far, the binding wrapped around it was cracking and splintering more and more with each passing moment.


"Rei what the hell are you--" She started, her face red, confusion, anger, cold? Yes to all of the above.


I grabbed the second helmet out of my lap and handed it to her, and nodded towards the back seat, "I'm doing something, because I'm not just going to stand around here doing nothing. Get in."


"Rei, you can't just take a jet, you don't even know how to fly it, why did they let you in the cockpit, why are they even helping you with this insanity?!" She yelled, pushing the helmet back into the cockpit.


"Misato, you trust me with an Evangelion, don't you? They trust me because I've killed Angels before, and the rumor mill calling me a Pilot didn't hurt that." I explained, then lifted the sun visor on my helmet, "Look, I know what I'm doing, I'm asking you to trust that I know what I'm doing. I'm asking for your help, because from down here, I can't do anything... but up there, I might just have a snowball's chance in hell at doing something, alright?"


"It's not that simple, you've piloted an Evangelion, you've been trained. You can't just jump into this cockpit and pretend you know what you're doing!" She yelled back, "I didn't bring you out here to die!'


"It's not that simple? Misato you threw me into unit one, something I'd never seen before, within two hours of meeting me for the first time, you sent me out to fight something out of a nightmare with no training. You trusted me then to get the job done, now I need you to trust me now, because this is something I can do."


I waited, and stared at her, could feel my palms sweating up, felt my stomach churning with anxiety, if she didn't play along, I couldn't leave her here, not with that Angel. If she pressed the issue, I'd get out, and go with her, because...w


She stared at me, silent for a long moment, and turned her head towards the MFDs on the panel, and back to me, and sighed, "You got this thing started up all by yourself didn't you? You're... you're not kidding are you, you really know what you're doing?"


I blushed and nodded, "It's not my first rodeo. I'll explain everything after this, I promise, and I just hope you believe it, but for now, will you please take the helmet and get in?"


"I must be out of my mind, but then it looks like you are too," she said with a sigh as she grabbed the helmet from my hand and slid it on, and climbed into the back seat.


I hit the canopy close switch and reached over to the throttle with my cast-covered arm, at least my fingers were free, I'd be needing them. My right hand felt slick on the control stick. I moved it experimentally and watched the control surfaces in the cockpit mirrors. Good there, alright.


I signaled the ground crew and they cleared out, I released the wheel brakes and tapped the throttle gently, just enough to ease us out of the parking spot and onto the main part of the flight deck. Little right rudder, the nose of the jet steered towards the ski jump and let it idle forward to the blast shield set into the deck, that hadn't been extended yet.

"So, Rei, I'm strapped into your insanity, what's the plan then?" She asked me over the intercom, her voice was colored with irritation and doubt, but she got in the cockpit, so that's all I needed. I've prove the rest once we left the deck of the carrier.


"I was hoping you could come up with something, honestly. Failing that, I'm going to hope to god that the IPEA pilot made it to unit five, and is powering it up. If she's there, I'll try to get in touch with her, and we can work out some kind of plan," I explained as I set the wheel brakes, and looked in the mirror to watch the blast deflector rise up out of the carrier's deck.


"And if she's not there, what do you think we're going to do with a single fighter jet?" She asked me, I could hear her in the back seat fiddling with the controls, It wouldn't surprise me if she actually knew what she was doing back there.


"We've got three drop tanks and our internal tanks are full to the top. If we can't fight, I'm going to run. That's the other reason I wanted you to come along, because I won't leave you behind," I explained, then keyed up the radio before she could reply, "Ikari, taking off now."


Well, time for a date with destiny. I shoved the throttle to the locks, and released the wheel brakes as the afterburner lit. I leaned back into the seat as the g-forced pinned me back, the jet lurched forward down the deck towards the end of the ramp.


A catapult would have been nice, but this jet could do it, wouldn't have been on the carrier if it couldn't, right?


Right?


Oh dang.


I clenched the control stick tightly in my hand as the nose pitched up on the ramp, I grabbed the flaps control lever and dropped it right as the nose gear cleared the ramp, and held back on the stick, gently, as the airspeed still crept up. Altitude dropping... dropping... steady, climbing! I changed a look at the mirror and saw the leading edge extensions retracting as we climbed away from the carrier deck.


I brought the flaps lever back up and pulled the throttle out of afterburner, and started a left turn to sweep over the fleet. I hadn't noticed before, the carriers had taken up most of my attention, but there were several honest to god battleships in the fleet, four of them, Iowa-class it looked like, were already opening up on the Angel with their sixteen inch guns.


If anything, it looked like they were helping it escape, unfortunately. They couldn't penetrate the AT field, but that didn't seem to stop them from damaging the confinement ring. I shook my head and rolled a little harder to the left, trying to get a good look down into the deck of the Tbilisi.Oh, crap.


"Misato, unit five has wheels, and it doesn't have hands. If she gets that thing going this it's still gonna be tricky. And for that matter why in the hell was there an Angel in the other cargo ship?!" I yelled into the intercom as I toggled on the master arm switch.


"That's a question I'd like answered too, Rei." She hesitated, and toggled the radio, "Katsuragi to Kitty Hawk Actual, come back."


"Colonel, you're not in that fighter are you? We've got a lot going on down here right now, If you've got anything to help that I'd be thankful." Clark responded, quickly too. Must have been having conversations like this a lot the last few minutes.


"Is the portable power supply installed for unit five yet?"


"It's being powered up as we speak, but it won't do any good if we can't get the Evangelion onto the deck." he radioed back, even through the relatively low quality link I could hear the stress in his voice.


"Kitty Hawk Actual, this is Ikari I'll make it work, stand by to approach Tbilisi. I've got... an idea." I called into the radio as I throttled down and pulled into a left corkscrew dive. I spilled a few hundred feet and lined up on the Angel.


"What's the plan Rei?" Misato asked from the back seat. She couldn't see the Angel, that was good, for her.


"Fish hook." I answered simply as I switched the cannon over to bore-sight.


"Which is what?"


"We're gonna be the thing on the end of a fish hook, you know, bait," I answered as I licked my lip and lined up the pipper on the Angel, right as that last restraint started to yield.


"I don't like that idea."


"You're not the one in the front seat though," I shot back as I pulled the trigger and fired a one second burst at the Angel, then pulled up into a steep climb. Come on, take the bait you bastard.


"Break left!" she yelled suddenly.


I snapped the stick hard to the left and hauled back out of the climb as a beam of coherent hatred streaked past the cockpit. Okay, yeah, we had that thing's attention. I pushed the nose down and throttled back to eighty percent and took us through a lazy right arc away from the Tbilisi and towards open water.


I saw the reflection of another flash in the mirror over my head and flinched, but I wasn't the target. It wasn't chasing? I turned and looked over my left shoulder. Oh dammit, it had fired on one of the nuclear super-carriers, I could just make out the '70' on the side of the island.


"The Carl Vinson just got hit, why isn't it following us?" I muttered into the intercom.


Another flash lit up the sky and another one of the carriers, on the other side of the Angel was hit, and immediately started to list. What the hell was it's game? I was shooting at it, why was it shooting ships that weren't fighting back?


A third CVN was hit a moment later, and Misato yelled from the back seat, "It's targeting the nuclear powered ships!"


"Katsuragi to all ships, the Angel appears to be attacking nuclear powered ships!" She yelled into the radio from the back seat. I rolled left and pulled back on the stick.


There had to be a way to get in touch with the IPEA pilot, if she was still alive, right?


I looked down at the fleet, the battleships were moving in to press the attack on the Angel, the Nuclear carriers were pulling out of the engagement... and it looked like a few submarines had surfaced and fired missiles.


I looked over to find the Kitty Hawk, and found it steaming towards the Tbilisi with a purpose.


Kitty Hawk must have some way of contacting the Eva!


"Ikari to Kitty Hawk, can you patch me through to the Evangelion?" I asked, as I twisted my neck to look down at the deck of the freighter. There was definitely movement, what was the plan?


"Ikari, Kitty Hawk, we've patched you through, whenever you're ready." The operator replied. Alright, now we're getting somewhere.


"Misato, I've got an idea. Looks like the core is in the head of this angel... So, if the pilot of unit five can neutralize the AT field, maybe I can kill it with the AP rockets," I explained as I started to climb and circle around for a pass.


"IPEA pilot, come in, do you read?" Misato asked into the radio. Either she'd agreed with my plan or had one of her own. I actually hoped, quite a lot in fact, that she had her own plan, because mine sucked, but a plan you have is better than nothing.


"Hey there, was wondering when you guys were going to call me, sorry I missed you guys earlier but I wanted to spend some time with my Evangelion, that's okay right? Well listen, I'm powering up right now, I've got about four and a half minutes in this thing by the time I've got it started up so if you could get that nice big boat just a little bit closer I'll hop on over and hook myself up, kay?" The pilot replied, I had to admit... she was a little grating, so nonchalant while the fleet was getting torn apart, I was a little more reverent, which was a pretty harsh indictment on her.


"Yeah, about that," I answered back on the radio, "I'm in the Viper Zero that's been buzzing the fleet and taking potshots at the Angel. If you can neutralize the AT field, or pin the bastard down I've got thirty eight armor piercing rockets and four thousand pounds of bomb to drop on him. Might not get the job done but it ought to soften him up. Think we can work together on this?"


I heard a laugh through the link and then she came back on, "Well, I bet you're popular, you know just what to say to a girl. Sounds like a plan. I'll stay in low power mode till the carrier is in range. I'll signal you then."


"Well, that's nice. She's out of her mind you know? You said I was insane, this chick is... like the polar opposite of Ayanami," I complained to Misato. "This is who you're trusting to replace me, by the way. Remember that when we're swimming home."


"You pick the worst times to complain, you know that right?" Misato asked in an exasperated tone, I could almost hear her helmet tapping on the back of her seat. Well, maybe that was my imagination, but I was pretty sure it was happening regardless.

"Yeah, but you still love me."


She said nothing to that, probably for the best, not the thing I needed to be thinking about when I was flying in combat. Now, if she wanted to give me a kiss of congratulations afterward, well, that part I could deal with.


I rolled my eyes and circled around on another pass, climbing steadily, turning my surplus airspeed into altitude, just in case I needed the extra energy, and kept watching unit five. It was upright now, standing on its four legs, each one ending in a wheel. The two pincer arms were also... different.


The entire thing looked like it was made on a whim, like they had a quadruple amputee Evangelion torso and needed something to fight with, so they just started strapping on half-assed prosthetics and said 'sure why not' to the final product.


And it was our only hope, but it could generate an AT field, so at least we had a hope.


There was a flash of light from the Tbilisi and I saw unit five rise from the ship on a pillar of fire on a ballistic arc towards the waiting Kitty Hawk. Unit five could fly? I needed to ask for rockets to be installed on unit one, that was some slick stuff.


"Unit five, are you ready?" I called into the radio as I continued to climb.


"What, didn't you get the signal? I'm ready to rock and roll! AT field to maximum!" The girl yelled back through the radio. She sounded... excited. Yeah this one was a lunatic. She'd fit right in.


"Alright, my turn then, I'll get his attention on you," I called back as I stepped into the rudder and rolled into an intercept trajectory with the Angel. I switched the weapon selector over to the mark 84s and cycled the targeting computer over to CCIP.


It wasn't exactly what I'd planned, but I had zero doubts that four thousand pounds of bomb hitting the angel at the speed of sound was going to escape its attention, especially with five dampening it's AT field.


I licked my bottom lip and pushed the throttle forward, lit the afterburner, and watched my altitude drop and my airspeed climb. The sound of the wind whistling past the canopy increased steadily and then... disappeared entirely as we passed mach one.


The pipper crossed over the Angel's skull and I pressed the weapon's release on the stick, felt the bombs release from the pylons. I cut the throttle, grabbed the air-brakes and yelled to Misato, "Hang on, boards out!" as I hauled back on the stick.


The g-forces pinned me against my seat and vapor trailed off the wing tips as the airframe shook and shuddered, pulling out of the dive with a few hundred feet to spare, the air-brakes spilled airspeed as we dropped back into the subsonic range and I leveled us out.


I rolled up on the left wing tip and started a high-g turn back towards the Kitty Hawk. The Angel was paying attention now, good. Now all I had to do was get it to engage unit five... Easier said than done.


"This thing is kind of a pig with all that fuel out there on the pylons, but should be a little better with the bombs gone." I said conversationally to Misato as I chewed my bottom lip.


"Ikari, looks like you got couple of clean hits. I'm impressed, now can you bring it over so I can play with it?" Five's pilot asked. I couldn't get a read on her, was she screwing with me or was she truly out of her mind? If the latter, I had to question the IPEA's judgment in the matter.


I pulled the throttle back to idle and deployed the air-brakes again to spill off extra airspeed, I wanted to make a slow pass before I took off, to give it something to follow. And hope it didn't blow me up with its laser attack.


"Rei, why are we slowing down?"


"I'm going to shake my ass at it," I shot back as I tapped the stick over in a lazy arc past the Angel. The skeletonized head slowly turned to lock onto us. Yep, got his attention. I retracted the air-brakes and shoved the throttle to the stop.


And we we off like a shot again, and the Angel started to close in behind us. Was it going to attack us directly, was it trying to get a better shot? What was the recharge time on that laser beam attack anyway?


Probably just long enough for me to get complacent. No matter.


I stepped on the rudder and nosed the jet over towards unit five, and boy was the jolly green giant ugly up close, a real hodgepodge. "I brought a friend, play nice alright?" I called out to the pilot as I rolled left and eased back on the stick to pass around the Evangelion.


"I don't know, I have a really bad habit of breaking my toys. Come on beastie, let's play!"I could hear the maniac grin in her voice, and was for the moment thankful that I didn't have a video-link with her.


I shook my head, and hauled back on the stick, pulled the plane ninety degrees to the carrier and looked up through the canopy. The Angel had decided that the Evangelion was a more important target than I was.


Presumably due to the fact that the Evangelion was grabbing it by the neck with both pincers and was trying its very best to pop the Angel's head off. The Eva had drilled itself into the flight deck and the carrier was listing terribly to starboard from the force and weight being pressed down onto it.


"Any time, fighter jock!" she yelled through the radio, and this time I didn't detect the playful mania that she'd been showing me before, this was an earnest request, she was struggling.


"Ikari, making my pass now. Switching to CRV7s," I called out as I pulled back and rolled level, lined up with the Angel's head. I licked my lip and focused on the CCIP pipper on the HUD, nudged the stick and rudders gently until it lined up on the core and then pressed the weapon's release and held it as all thirty eight rockets began to ripple out of the tubes.


I cut throttle, popped the air brakes, and dropped the flaps to spill airspeed and slow my closing rate as I toggled over to the cannon, switched it over to bore-sight, and pulled the trigger. Hundreds of tracers drew a line of light between the barrels of my Vulcan cannon and the Angel, twitches on the flight stick walked the tracers into the core as the rockets impacted.


Stall warnings sounded through the cockpit and I swore under my breath as I closed the air-brakes and pushed power back to the engine. I pulled back on the stick as the airspeed rose and passed over the Angel before the smoke cleared.


"Not dead yet? Fine, take this!" the pilot screamed. I snap rolled to the left and pulled back so I could get a clear line of sight to the Angel, just in time to watch unit five smash the Angel's cracked core with one of it's pincer claws.


"Looks like we did it, eh Rei?" Misato asked from the back seat, "Now how about we put this thing down and you start explaining stuff."


I nodded, she probably didn't notice, but that didn't really matter. Angel was dead, that's what mattered. Of course, both that Angel and the other Evangelion were nothing like anything I remembered or had ever seen before... but those memories were pretty old anyway.


I scanned the fleet below looking for a carrier to land on, the American CVNs were out, none of them looked like they were in very good shape, all of them had flight deck damage and looked to be taking on water, the Kitty Hawk had a flight deck full of dead Angel and unit five... and some holes that that IPEA pilot had drilled into it.


"Misato, help me out a little, try to find a carrier that's not screwed up, because the pickings are getting pretty thin from what I can see." I'd tried to act nonchalant, but the truth was it was everything I had not to start to panic. Stuck out over the ocean with no place to land was no fun, and I didn't even want to pretend to imagine what might happen if we had to ditch in that blood red ocean, be dead in minutes from the cold alone.


"I see the Kuznetsov... but it's listing pretty bad, looks like it took a hit to the engine compartment, the flight deck is damaged... and I can't find the other carriers, they must have gone down while we were fighting," She answered. She hadn't figured it out yet, but she would in the next couple of seconds.


"Ikari to Kitty Hawk, I can't find a clear flight deck anywhere in this fleet to set down on... what's our distance to Elmendorf?"


"What are you planning?" Misato asked from the back seat, I could see her leaning up in the mirror.


"If we ditch in this water, we're both dead, If we're close enough, we might have enough fuel left to make Elmendorf in Alaska, we can figure out something else from there," I explained. "It's not ideal, but sticking with the fleet isn't worth dying for."


"Ikari, Elmendorf is eighteen fifty on the money from your current position." The radio operator called back.


I turned the aircraft south, south east and jettisoned the rocket pods from under the wing pylons, and called up the radio again, "Ikari to Kitty Hawk Actual, I'm afraid I'm going to have to postpone that dinner engagement, we'll have to catch up in Yokosuka. Can you do me a favor and let Elmendorf know we're coming? Would hate to get shot down on the way in."


"I suspect that we'll be in Yokosuka for a while getting patched up, so you'll probably get that chance. I'll sent a message along ahead of you. We'll keep tracking you from here till you're off radar. Best of luck to you. And Colonel Katusragi? I you've got a good kid working with you, keep her close and we might just make it through this thing." Captain Clark called back on the radio, he sounded worn out. I can't imagine that the battle was easier on him than it was on us by any means.


"I'll hold you to it. Ikari out."


I licked my bottom lip and set the auto pilot to altitude and course hold and let go of the stick, leaned back in the seat. Yep, flying to Alaska. That was happening. I looked up in the mirror at Misato and keyed up the intercom, "So, this is going to be a long flight isn't it?"


She nodded, "Yeah, I have questions."


"I don't suppose we can let those questions wait until we land in Anchorage?" I asked hopefully.


"Not a chance."

 

[a2znut]

that voices face

voices->voice's

Click to shrink...

Would you like an awkward silence instead of nice conversation? XD

 

[carloisky]

She's a pretty good combat aviator. I wonder how is she going to answer Misato's question without looking like a crazy person. I would speculate that she had receive a ridiculous amount of training as a naval aviator (which was redacted from her files) before being inducted to the evangelion pilot corps... but thats a wild shot

 

[Slayer Anderson]

Awesome fight scene and a really interesting twist. I'm looking forward to "Rei's" explanation.

Although, if I was her, I'd probably go for the straight, classic, reincarnation angle rather than the 'replacement' which seems to have happened here. It just seems less creepy, for some reason.

Rei: "...so, yeah, this whole puberty thing? Gotta' say just as 'not fun' the second time around as the first."

Misato: "...just when I start to think you can't get any weirder, Rei."

 

[UrsaTempest]

Awesome fight scene and a really interesting twist. I'm looking forward to "Rei's" explanation.

Although, if I was her, I'd probably go for the straight, classic, reincarnation angle rather than the 'replacement' which seems to have happened here. It just seems less creepy, for some reason.

Rei: "...so, yeah, I was a guy during my last life and this whole puberty thing? Gotta' say just as 'not fun' for women, if not more so."

Misato: "...just when I start to think you can't get any weirder, Rei."

Click to shrink...

Fortunately, Jackie is a female.

 

[Slayer Anderson]

Fortunately, Jackie is a female.

Click to shrink...

Joke adjusted for accuracy.

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 10:
Cylon One-Three​

I closed my eyes and leaned my head back in the seat, and took a deep breath of the filtered, clean, cockpit air. How could I even start this conversation? Where would it lead? Where would we be at the end of it?


Would she let me pilot again? Would she have me arrested, deported, institutionalized?


I looked up at her in the mirror and sighed, "The truth is, Misato, I don't know who... or what I am."


"That's... I'm not sure what to make of that Rei, why don't you start at the beginning and we can work from there alright?" She said, the edge from before, from when she was angry was gone, as if she could feel the conflict I was having.


"If you'd asked me to explain it before, when we'd first met, I would have had a different, much simpler answer for you, but right now, I just don't know." I took a deep breath and held it for a moment, then continued, "I have memories in my head, how to fly this plane, how to drive a car. There was this horse, and his name was Blue, and I remember that he used to snap branches off of trees and chase the cows around with the branch in his mouth, hitting them in the butt with it. Rei Ikari never owned that horse, but I remember it."


"So you're not Rei Ikari? You look like her, you fit her profile..." Misato protested.


"That's... not what I mean, I don't think, not exactly. I've got these memories, these feelings in my head, but when I tried to think of the name of the girl, the woman they came from, I can't find it. I can feel feelings for the people she knew, love the people she loved, but her name won't come to me, and when I think of myself, the only name I can think of is 'Rei'..." I trailed off. I had tried not to think of it, tried to avoid it, but when I said those words their meaning rang true in my mind, try as I might, the name, the name of that person who died in that cockpit fire, was lost to me.


"Try to help me understand, Rei. Are you talking like... brain washing? Some kind of mental contamination? Maybe Ritsuko can help, do some kind of test or something..." Her voice was... wavering, she was grasping, she thought she was losing me, or maybe thought I might just crash the plane after I lost it.


"I don't remember the life of Rei Ikari, I don't remember being sent away by my f-f-father, I don't remember what happened the last fourteen years, not really, but my yearnings are still there. If you'd asked me this question the day we met, I would have told you that I was that other person, trapped in this body that isn't mine... but when I think about it, when I really think about it, I don't think that's true. I think..." I hesitated, I felt the tears starting to stream down my cheeks, empathy. Empathy for the dead, for what the dead have lost, for what she, what I, the old I, the me from my memories but not the me I am now, had lost. The people she'd left heartbroken, left behind.


"I think, it all started with a wish. A wish that the Rei Ikari you picked up from that phone booth made, before I woke up in your car. 'I wish that I could be a stronger person.' Those words are in my head, spoken in my voice, but I don't really remember speaking them. It was a wish that I had made, and was given these memories, these feelings, to let me be a stronger person," I choked out, my throat started to get tight, the tears started to flow more steadily, I could taste the salt in my mouth, felt my sinuses loosening up and draining.


"That... That doesn't really make any sense, how could that be possible? Rei that's just... so unbelievable..."


"Well, how else could I explain it? What's the difference between a lie you'll believe and a truth that you won't believe? What would you have me tell you that you'd listen to? How do you explain what I know, how I can fly this plane, how I knew how to shoot that Angel? I've been doing what I've been doing because that's the kind of person my memories tell me I am, that's what I have to live up to, but... I don't think that person is really me. And maybe I'm not Rei Ikari, and maybe I'm not this other girl, maybe I'm some combination of the two of them, I don't know, I can't know. Is it really so hard to believe?


"Angels, Evangelions, the end of the world, second impact? It's science fiction Misato, but it's happening to us right now, right here, in this world. If something like that can happen, AT fields and second impact and Angels and a dead ocean full of blood and a scar on the moon... is it really so far fetched... that somewhere, somebody took pity on a scared little girl... and granted her that one wish?


"I wish that I could be a stronger person; I am a stronger person because of that wish, but I am still the scared little girl too," I finished and clenched my eyes shut against the tears, slumped down in the seat and... hugged myself. Forced to actually look and examine myself, forced to look at the uncomfortable truths that I probably should have suspected all along. So easy to discover the substance of my fears when I actually had to put voice and words to the feelings.


"If that is the case, Rei. If what you're saying is true... and I know that you believe it, and I know I can't think of anything else to explain it, not really... and you have a lot of good points. You're still the same person I've known, who's gone into battle for me, who's lived in my home, no, our home. You're still my friend, so, that's what matters," she said after a long moment. I felt her hand reach past my seat and grab onto my shoulder, I reached up and touched her hand.


"Then I will keep being Rei, or her or... whoever I am. I'll keep doing that, if that is..." I hesitated, was I asking her permission to exist? Granting her authority over my existence? Would it matter if I had? She couldn't write me out of existence, she could kill me, but she wouldn't, even if I let her.


"You're fine, we can talk about this when we land. I don't know what I expected you to say when this whole thing started, I know it wasn't this... But I know you're not lying to me either. Your honesty is more important than the substance of what you have to say. I can still trust you, I do still trust you, or I wouldn't be here with you right now, alright? We'll take this one step at a time, and we'll figure it all out together... and it will be just between the two of us, because I don't really, really, understand, and I know that the rest of Nerv won't be willing to take the chance," She said, her tone warm, comforting, she squeezed my hand against my shoulder.


Motherly, sisterly, a friend. All of those. Commanding officer? Yes but... more, much more. I had a crush on her, I could admit that, I wanted that crush to turn into something else, if I was to be honest. This was more than that, deeper than that, a connection, a lifeline in a whirlwind of confusing emotions and fractured memories.


The more I tried to grasp onto that other life and make it real to me, the more it pulled away, the more it felt like an instruction manual, or a movie I'd watched. The more I reached out for it, the more the hand on my shoulder felt like what was real, like that connection with another human being, the one right behind me, was what I needed, not to cling onto a false past.


Was I losing myself in the role, or was I truly Rei all along? If you lose all your memories, are you still the same person? And if your memories are replaced with the memories of another person, are you yourself even still? Are you that other person? Or are you some kind of combination of the two?


Who's soul is it that resides within my body, what is the self that is me?


If I dug deep, if I picked at that wall between the memories I was using, and the memories of Rei Ikari, if I braved that fear, and tried to remember her life, if I tried to find it buried deep within me... would that fix this crisis? Would I know who I was?


Or, are some things best forgotten, is there something so dark in her, in my past, that I wanted to forget, that I was willing to lose myself to not remember?


I shook my head and squeezed Misato's hand, "As long as you're with me, to help me through it... whatever happens, I think I'll be okay. I'm still the girl you first met, I'm just... I'm just trying to figure out exactly what that means."


Misato laughed, "Well, to be honest it either means you're completely out of your mind, or you're telling the truth. But, in either case your heart is still in the right place and you wanna do good, so that's enough for me, you know?"


I couldn't stop myself from snickering, if she was trying to cheer me up she wasn't doing a bad job, "Well, I know now. But if all of this turns out to be a bad trip or some kind of perpetual hallucination I'm going to be really disappointed."


I leaned forward in the seat and checked the autopilot, made sure the course setting still matched the compass, that was good. Fuel levels good... so far. I flicked the gauge face with my finger, yeah it wasn't sticking.


"Misato, I'm going to jettison the center drop tank, it's empty and we can't really afford the drag right now. We'll have to hope that Elmendorf has some that will fit or it's going to be a tricky flight to get back across the pacific," I announced, my voice flat as the tears dried on my cheeks. Think about the objective at hand, push the emotions away. Cope.


"Alright. So you were planning to fly back to Japan, not just catch a ride on a transport? I guess I'm okay with that, this is probably faster and safer..." she trailed off, she sounded exhausted. Processing what I said or just stressed out? No, stop thinking about that.


I rolled through the MFD and released the center drop tank, the aircraft lurched slightly with the change in weight and then the engine dropped in pitch slightly, compensating for the loss in drag with a reduction in power to maintain airspeed. That probably bought us more than just a few minutes of flight time.


"Well, I guess I just assumed we'd keep flying this jet till we got back to Japan, or at least until we got back in touch with headquarters," I said with a shrug. I looked over the side of the fuselage and down, through a gap in the clouds, I could make out the coast. "We're over land now, so at least we'll stay dry if we have to bail out."


"Neither of us is dressed for arctic survival, so I don't think that's going to help much," Misato answered back.


"Just trying to find a silver lining. As long as everything continues on like it has been, we should make Elmendorf with fuel to spare. I'd dump the Aim-9s to increase our range but I don't want to be defenseless in case something happens," I rambled as I cycled through the pylon inventory. I could have just looked out the canopy, sure, but I wanted to make sure that the DSMS was inventorying properly.


"If something happens? The angel is dead, and I don't think another one would try to track us down, and for that matter I don't think a couple missiles would make a difference, Rei."


I shook my head, "No, but I wouldn't be surprised if word has spread about who's flying this jet, and I think either one of us would make a pretty good hostage, don't you think?" I asked.


"Well, when you put it that way you sound paranoid."


"Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean I'm wrong, people suck."


Misato groaned into the intercom, "God, you're so cynical, you know that?"


I snickered, "Well, it does have survival value."


"Survival of the most paranoid, huh? Sounds about right for Nerv personnel."

XXXXXXX​

The shrill whine in my ears snapped me out of my haze. I must have drifted off for a moment while we were cruising. That could have been bad, but the shrill beeping was worse. I looked over the front panel--


"Rei what the hell is that noise?!" Misato yelled from the back seat.


My eyes snapped over to the radar warning receiver, two inbound radar spikes? "Contact, two high, try to get a visual! Radar going active... now," I announced as I toggled the active radar on, and saw... very little. Stealth? What was going on.


"What's going on?" Misato yelled from the back seat.


I clenched the throttle and prepared to push it to the lock, hesitating only because I knew I needed to save the fuel, was it a missile, or was it an escort? Were we going to be lead in, or shot down? "Two contacts on the RWR, might be friendly..."


I licked my lip and toggled the radio over to transmit, "Ikari to approaching aircraft, please identify and state intent, over."


"Cylon one-one to Ikari, we've been looking for you. What state?" the voice came back, smooth, calm, collected. Fighter pilot. Yeah, professional.

"Cylon one-one, two sidewinders, one-niner-zero-zero pounds fuel remaining," I called back as the inbound jets resolved into actual recognizable shapes instead of pinpricks.


"Roger, Ikari is assigned as Cylon one-three. We'll guide you in to Elmendorf," that smooth operator voice called back. The voice sounded young, but confident in a way that I'd rarely experienced. The kind of voice that belonged to a person who was probably the coolest cucumber in any room he entered... or at least a master at making it look like he was chill.


"Cylon one-three, roger," I called back. I licked my lip, so this wasn't that bad after all. I looked down and noticed that the internal tanks were starting to drain, and reached over to punch the last two drop tanks, then hesitated. No, I would hang onto those, probably had enough fuel for a landing and there was no sense in being wasteful.


I switched back to the intercom and looked up in the mirror at Misato, "Do you still have your pistol?"


She hesitated, "...why would you assume I've got a pistol?"


"Because I'm not stupid," I answered simply, then shrugged, "If you've still got it, hang onto it. Paranoid I might be..." I trailed off as the two jets formed up on either side of us. F-22 Raptors, interesting.


"But?" she probed.


"Well, as far as welcome wagons go, sending a pair of Raptors was a little heavy handed don't you think? Stealth fighters to escort an F-2B? The only thing they'd be able to hide from out here is us, if anybody else rolled though they'd still see our radar return and still know that we were out here, even if they didn't see the Raptors," I explained, turning my eyes to the jet on my left.


The pilot flashed me a thumbs up, I gave one back and nodded. Yeah, why would they send the Raptors? Those things cost a fortune, both to build and to fly.


"Maybe they just wanted to send their best, not everything is a conspiracy, Rei. You are pretty important, maybe more than you can fully appreciate. It wouldn't be out of the question for them to pull out all the stops, ya know?" She asked, though I wasn't sure if she was trying to convince me, or convince herself.


"Well, I hope you're right. If it comes down to it, I could probably only take out one of them, if I was lucky. Two sidewinders and a hundred fifty rounds left in the cannon don't exactly make for a threatening offensive posture," I explained as I leaned back in the seat. I hadn't even needed to adjust the autopilot, those Raptors had just settled in on their own.


"Rei, do you plan out how to kill everyone you meet?"


I shook my head, "no, no I don't... I'm just not really in the greatest place right now you know? That's... well that's part of the reason I wanted you up here with me, to make sure I didn't do anything stupid."


"Well, you'll have to define 'stupid' for me, because attacking an Angel in a fighter jet wasn't the brightest move that's ever been performed," she chided.


"Well, yeah, but it did work, and you did get in the back seat."


"That was probably a little dumb on my part too..." she admitted.


I hummed and disengaged the autopilot, then nudged the stick forward gently and watched the altimeter drop. I licked my bottom lip and eased back the throttle as we started to drop under the clouds, saw the Raptor off my left keeping on my wing as I finally got a good look at the ground.


At least Alaska didn't look any different. Trees as far as the eye could see off to the left, blood red ocean to the far, far right, on the horizon.


"Cylon one-three, Elmendorf Tower, cleared to land, runway one-six."


I blinked, I hadn't even requested landing clearance, had one of the Raptors called it in for me? That was irregular, were they being considerate of the fuel situation or was it something else?


I shook my head, too late for that now.


"Elmendorf Tower, cleared to land, runway one-six, cylon one-three, acknowledged."


I looked over my shoulder at a flash of movement, the Raptors pushed ahead and away as I descended towards the airfield, nudged the rudder to line up on runway sixteen. I licked my lip, throttle back, flaps, gear down...


I felt myself pressing forward in the seat as the drag slowed the aircraft, altitude dropped. I bit down on my bottom lip, it had been a while, too long even... no, I had this, I just killed an Angel and flew a few over a thousand miles, yeah, I had this.

I stepped into the left rudder as a crosswind buffeted the aircraft, and pushed the nose down slightly. One hundred feet... seventy five. I cut the engine back to idle and deployed the air brakes. Fifty, thirty, twenty. I licked my lip. Ten, five, touchdown. I hit the wheel brakes and kept the aircraft centered on the runway as we slowed down.


"Cylon one-three, proceed to north parking. Welcome to Alaska."


"Tower, proceed to north parking, cylon one-three acknowledged."


"Well, we're on the ground, we made it," Misato called from the back, I could hear the relief in her voice, saw her relaxed posture in the mirror.


"Well as long as they don't arrest us on sight, right?"


"Oh, ever the optimist, Rei."

XXXXXXX​

It's difficult to appreciate how heavy a helmet becomes when you've been wearing it for hours until you have the chance to take it off and realize just how much better you feel. It felt like I grew an inch just from my neck no longer being compressed. Or, maybe I un-shrank? Either way, it was a good time.


By the time I had the canopy open, the ground crew already had a ladder and a fuel truck out to the side of the aircraft. They were nothing if not efficient.


I set the helmet down in my lap and took a deep breath of cold Alaskan air while I looked around. We were a hell of a stand-out on the tarmac. A blue camo painted F-2B next to a row of F-22 Raptors painted in dark gray.


Oh, and the pilot, she had powder blue hair, and it did get a few stares. I shook my head and stood up in the seat, stretched out, and turned to step down the ladder. I had to avoid screwing this up, broken arm and all, since there wasn't an aircraft carrier captain to catch me if I fell this time.


Grabbing a ladder with a cast was still a pain in the ass though. One step, two, three. I started to slip, and felt strong hands grab me around the waist and help me down the ladder. "Easy kid, I gotcha. Can't believe you were flying that thing with a broken arm."


That voice, I remembered that voice. The Raptor pilot? He must have landed while I was trying to figure out where the hell 'North Parking' was. I turned to look at him when I hit the ground, looked up at him and turned a little pink.


"Thanks for the help..." I said to him, my throat felt dry, the cold air probably, I needed a drink, and a shower, and a fifth of Tennessee's finest bourbon. The last part was optional.


"Hey, not a problem. You know, you don't even have an accent in your English. I almost didn't believe it when they told me that a little Japanese girl was flying that thing," He said with a laugh as he patted me on the shoulder.


"Well, I wouldn't say little girl, I'm fourteen, that's like, teenager, totally different thing," I deflected with a laugh, "So, I'm Rei Ikari, and you are?"


"Lieutenant John Becket, at your service," he answered with a small mock bow, "and who is that divine creature climbing out of the back seat?"


I looked back over my shoulder and saw Misato climbing down the ladder with a dexterity and grace that I clearly lacked. I looked back to Becket, and he was... well not quite leering. He was looking at her with a look that was clearly intended to be smooth and attractive.


He wasn't doing a bad job of that.


Her feet hit the tarmac and she turned around. "Colonel Misato Katsuragi," she answered with a smirk and a strong emphasis on her rank.


Oh, snap, she was pulling rank already? Misato knew how to shut a guy down.


He laughed, "Oh, Colonel is it? I guess that makes Rei your personal driver then?"


"Yeah, it's exactly like that," I grumbled, "Anyway," I coughed, "So, where can I get a shower and a bite to eat and something to wear that isn't olive drab? This flight suit is a little past it's expiration date."


"Yeah, I think we can do that. Get both of you fed, cleaned up, and then we'll go from there." He explained and gestured to a parked Humvee, "They'll take you where you need to go."


I nodded and started to walk towards the awaiting vehicle, then took a look back at the F-2, "And the Viper?"


"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it." He said with a shrug.


"I'll make some phone calls," Misato said, "We'll come to... an arrangement I'm sure."

XXXXXXX​

Heat, and moisture, and hard tile. It wasn't perfect but it was everything I wanted. I could taste the thick clean steam as the hot water rained down on me. I leaned my head back against the tile as I sat in the bottom of the shower stall. I'd long since finished washing, but I couldn't bring myself to actually leave and face... whatever it was that was going to happen after.


I licked my lip and shifted, listened to the crinkling of the plastic bag over my cast. Damn broken arm. I could have done without that, but then, what I did to break it, I wouldn't change. Ayanami. It was funny, all that had happened recently, and she was what I thought about.


I needed to get back there, back to Japan. As much as there was a part of me that wanted to stay in America, to go further, even, and reclaim that old life... I shook my head, I couldn't do that, it wasn't mine to take.


I pushed my hand through my hair and sighed. I was a mess, this whole situation was a mess. We'd probably have been fine if we'd just let that IPEA pilot do her thing and stayed out of it.


"But I could never let myself stand by and just watch, could I?" I asked myself as I leaned forward and onto my feet and then stood. I reached over my head and stretched, arching my back and rolling up onto the tips of my toes... a satisfying crack echoed through the shower stall as my muscles stretched and my joints popped.


You never really appreciate how satisfying cracking your back can be until you're stuck in the world's smallest cockpit for an extended period of time.


I turned the water off and pushed my hair back, it would probably fall back down into the low maintenance bob cut once it dried, but wet hair in the eyes was irritating as hell so at least it would stay long enough to keep me from being too bothered.


I shut off the water and leaned against the wall. Legs felt like rubber, back hurt, and my arm felt like it was clamped in a vice. Yeah, I needed to sleep it off probably, but the shower had to come first. Never been able to sleep without having one first.


I grabbed the towel off the stall door and wrapped myself up in it. I shuffled through the empty shower room over to the mirror and regarded myself. That face that I'd become so accustomed to, the little imperfections, the slightly crooked smile. Brown eyes with bags under them, black like I'd been punched in the face, and that powder blue hair slicked down to my head with water.


I chuckled and shook my head, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Keep up the fight, because you can, because you can't let yourself do anything else if you have the chance. Fight, kill, and win, because it's what you're good at, and because you're already broken.


So break yourself more, to stop somebody else from being broken.


I licked my lip and spit into the sink, "A hero of war, is that what they see? Just medals and scars, so damn proud of me."

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 11:
I remember, therefore I am Rei Ikari.​

The acidic burn scratched at my throat, cleared my sinuses, as I heaved into the bushes again. I gripped the corner of the building as another dry heave wracked my body, blinked the burning tears out of my eyes.

Fuck.

I shook my head, blew my nose into a rag and threw it against the side of the building, then collapsed against the wall and pushed my hands up into my hair and grabbed my head.

Fuck.

Of all the things to remember, of all the times to remember it... What the hell had I been through, before this, before now? What made that Rei who became me want to forget her life, who she was? I was afraid that I knew, through the miracle of nightmares.

What was holding all of those memories back? They were still in my head, her head, our head. We were all the same person though, if the soul is the seat of the self, then it was just a memory transplant, and that other girl was dead.

So were feelings of love and affection in the heart or the mind? Maybe both. Or maybe I, as Rei, would still have loved her, the one who I missed so much, if she'd had the same memories?

I shook my head, couldn't get that nightmare, that memory out of mind.

The pungent stench of alcohol, thick on his breath for the third, no, fourth night in a row. Had to drink for courage, too ashamed of what he was doing to do it while sober, and lacked the self control to stop himself. So he made me bear it, as my payment for shelter, or something else, I didn't know, couldn't make myself care.

I clenched my fist and slammed the bottom of my hand against the wall and bit down on my lip to avoid screaming, of all the things to remember, that? The parts of myself that I lost when this new self was written in, that other scared girl, I had to remember this? I couldn't remember the good parts, the parts that made her, made me, who I am, or who I was?

I couldn't remember myself, the real me, Rei Ikari, but I could remember why I wanted to forget. Forget because of the waiting, a life of waiting. Waiting for class, waiting to come home. Waiting to sleep, to eat, to bathe. Just waiting for something to change. Waiting for the night time, waiting for him to be finished. Waiting for the date on my father's letter, wondering if I could wait that long without taking a broken mirror to my wrist.

I wretched again as a sob wracked my body, like trying to hold in a cough, I kept the sound down but couldn't stop the tears, couldn't stop the heaving. Of all the damn things to remember...

Did Father know? Had Misato known? Was this in the file? Were they expecting a shattered little girl? An obedient doll? Something else?

Had he condoned it?

I shook my head, no. I wouldn't accept that. He was many things, but he cared, he had a heart, I knew that. Talking to him, seeing him, being around him, and the feelings in my heart, no, Gendo Ikari didn't know, wouldn't have condoned it. Everything he did, everything he was working for, I could feel, was from love. Love for... my mother? Rei's mother. It didn't take a lot of reading between the lines to figure that much out.

Maybe it's why he was able to talk with me, be open with me, did I remind him of her? No, he smiled at me, accepted my offer for dinner, he was willing to give us a chance, maybe not to be the family we could have been, but for him to at least be a father now.

What would I say, could I say anything? Maybe when we got back to Japan, when we could settle back into a routine. Not while we were here. She wouldn't let me fly, wouldn't let me take us back, would do it some other way. Couldn't have that, needed the release, the freedom.

Freedom as a person... and the freedom you get at mach two, thirty five thousand and climbing? No comparison, closest thing to being able to fly like a bird, better in some ways. I needed it, needed it for now, while I could have it.

An escape handle on what sucks about the world.

But for now, I was stuck remembering, as if it had just happened, as if I'd lived through all of it, fresh in my mind. I suppose that I had in fact lived through it. Was that why I wanted to forget?

I looked down at the bottle in my left hand, twisted the cap off with my right and started drinking. The sharp sting of cheap vodka stung, but I didn't care. I'd stolen it from the hotel minibar, probably not more than four shots in the whole thing if I was lucky, but I was tiny and it had friends.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Old habits, or maybe the habits of an entirely different person. Coping mechanisms are learned behavior, and I knew everything she ever learned. And what she learned, and what I knew now, was that the alcohol might not make me forget, but it would make me care a whole lot less.

I hurled the empty bottle into the distance, across the street, and pushed myself back to my feet. It was cold, but maybe a walk would do me some good, give me something else to worry about. At least it wasn't a skirt. Jeans, which I wasn't sure I'd ever worn, at least, not as Rei Ikari. A t-shirt, with a sweat shirt on top, and a jacket in that same canary yellow as my school vest.

Clothes I hadn't purchased but had been provided for me, and they fit perfectly, right down to the underwear size and the bra size. That was a mystery for another day, either somebody had really good eyes, or Misato had been spilling the beans. Or this was just one big hallucination.

That last one might not be such a bad thing after all.

I slipped another bottle out of my pocket, cheap bourbon, close enough. Uses included: getting drunk, partying like you're south of the Mason-Dixon.

Misato would probably miss me come morning, but whatever. She was out like a light, didn't even notice when I woke up, or when I went outside to purge myself of both dinner and memories.

North, I would head north, that was a good direction to walk in the middle of the night with a bottle of eighty proof in hand. Maybe I'd sneak back onto the airbase.

No, probably not that. Still, the scenery was a far cry from Japan as the blocks rolled by. The cold was bracing, and even with the alcohol in my body I still managed to stay awake and coordinated enough to make it across the railroad tracks without getting hit by a train or a car.
North is a good direction, yeah. I was heading south when we had our conversation in the jet, so north should take that back, just gotta walk a few dozen hundred miles...

I shook my head and looked down at the bottle, empty. Alcohol was definitely getting to me, dropped the bottle and leaned against the concrete barrier on the bridge. A few cars passed by, some even slowed down a little, but ultimately nobody stopped.

Punk kid with blue hair? Maybe she knows what she's doing, they would think. Maybe she deserves to be alone, maybe she's running away. Not my problem, not my problem.

I tossed the bottle backwards over the side of the bridge and stared at the cast on my left arm. Punishment, for doing the right thing? Was I not allowed to be happy, to protect the people I cared about? I fought, I won, I hurt my arm ejecting.
I fought, I won, I pulled Ayanami out of that boiling LCL. I finished breaking my arm for good measure.
Killed that Angel back with the fleet, broke down in front of Misato, had that nightmare, ended up here.

And it would have been so simple to just stand up and fall backwards over the railing, let a train finish the job. Angels can't kill me, alcohol can't kill me, but Union-Pacific could certainly do the trick. Wouldn't that just be Japanese as hell of me? Go out in front of a locomotive.

I spit on the ground and pushed myself back onto my feet. No, not that. No matter how bad I felt, it wasn't my decision, not in my hands, not till all of it was over. I slapped the side of my face, hard, with my good hand. The sting woke me up a little bit.

"Listen you little shit, you can die when you're done, right now people need you to get back up and fight so snap the hell out of it!" I yelled at myself as I leaned against the barrier. Not my best pep talk, but oddly close to one I'd been given before.

The squeal of brakes got my attention. Not the loud shriek of somebody braking in panic, that quieter screech of worn brake pads clamping down on the rotor right before the car stops moving. I turned slowly to see the late nineties Jeep fuzzing in and out of focus, ever so slightly.

Four door, black as night, with a man behind the wheel. No, a man getting out of the car. He looked... concerned? Maybe pissed.

"Rei?"

Oh, that voice, I recognized that voice. "Hey bucket, what's up?" I asked with an exaggerated shrug and a tilt of my head. Heh, bucket, see, it's like Becket, but--

"Are you drunk? Jesus... get in the car, come on..." He said as he grabbed me by the arm. Firm, but not rough, there was no question in his statement, he wasn't asking me to get in the car, he was telling me, and I was pretty sure he could have just picked me up and thrown me in if I resisted.

At that point, I didn't care. What could he do that was worse than--

"Little drunk, you want some? I drank it all, but I think there's still some in the minibar..." I slurred out as he buckled me into the passenger seat, on the right side of the car even. The little things you miss about America after you spend your entire life in Japan.

Alcohol really brings out the conflicted thought patterns in me.

I heard the door slam shut from his side, looked over to see him sitting behind the wheel. Hadn't put the car in gear yet, just sat there with his hands on the wheel, "So, can't say I know you that well but don't you think that maybe this was a bad idea? Can't imagine Nerv makes a routine of letting their underage pilots go on drinking binges and then an unattended walk through the city, right?"

I licked my bottom lip and resisted the urge to spit, shook my head and reclined the seat, leaned back. "Just... memories. Shouldn't have to have them, tried to forget, couldn't forget. Remember tonight, nightmares, you know? Wasn't ready for it, thought the alcohol might help. Thought about jumpin, didn't tho."

He nodded as he listened to my ramblings, I felt a shift and the Jeep started to move, a soft rumble from under the hood. Must have been the big engine, the me from before, the girl who gave me her memories, she had one with the big engine, the sound was the same.

"Kids shouldn't have to fight..." he muttered under his breath, didn't expect me to hear probably, but I did. He probably didn't know what to say to me, but he seemed like a nice enough guy. Watching out for me, felt like he had to, or maybe he was just the kind that took in strays.

I shook my head, "No, I do it because I can, have to. Nobody else can pilot Eva, won't work for anyone but me, or Ayanami, not really. Have to fight, s'why I can't jump. It's what makes me fight, lets me keep going. Find something worth dying for, then fight for it for as long as you can before you do."

"You're still just a kid. When I was your age I couldn't decide which girl I liked more, and you're fighting wars. It's not all right, it's no wonder you're so upset. Look, we'll get you sobered up and keep you away from your C.O. for a while till you're more presentable alright? Lucky that I've got friends in the local P.D. and found you before she did, or hell, before my C.O. did," he explained. His voice was tense, nervous. Not... nervous, he didn't seem intimidated, just not quite sure how to proceed. Was he supposed to treat me like a subordinate or like a kid?

"Heh, you know, I could tell you a story. You wouldn't believe me, not without seeing the fight we had up north of the strait. I've seen more than you might think, old soul you could say," I finished with a bitter laugh.

"You might be surprised what I might believe, not every day a little blue haired girl flies a fighter jet into town," he said with a hint of a smirk and a glance out of the corner of his eye.

"Like I said, old soul. Besides, fighting world-ending horrors has a way of changing a person. You should come to Japan and check it out some time. You might enjoy yourself, could be fun," I offered with a shrug as I started to lean on the door. Alcohol hadn't really fully kicked in, I was just along for the ride at this point.

"I might think you were hitting on me if you didn't seem to serious. Say, this doesn't really seem like it's your first rodeo, how good are you at faking sober?" He asked as we stopped a light, he turned to face me.

"I'm alright, why?" I asked, straightening up and licking my lip.

"Let's get some food into you and try not to get arrested for contributing to the delinquency of a minor."

"alright," I answered. "I'll take steak."

XXXXXXX​

"Denny's, not what I expected, but I'll take it," I said with a goofy grin. First real American food and it was.... well actually Denny's was a pretty good representative picture of hangover dining and late nights filled with regret.

"You've had it before? And here I was hoping it would be your first time," He said with a shrug.

I coughed into my hand, did he actually mean to say that or was it one of those things that just came out?

"Ah yeah, show a girl to a Denny's and she's putty in your hands, as long as she's from south of Tennessee, right?" I asked as I sipped on my coke. Coke, god how I'd missed coke. Somehow they managed to never have it when I was in Japan. The little things.

"And here I thought you were supposed to be from Japan."

"I think making fun of the American south is something the whole world can enjoy isn't it?" I said with a laugh. I poked at my food, and ate another bite. No steak, but pancakes and eggs was a decent substitute. He was buying, couldn't really complain.

"You may be right. So, how do you get away with the hair?" he asked, pointing is fork at me. Gesturing with food utensils, a glorious lack of manners, how I'd missed thee.

"Well, my dad is the Commander of Nerv, I think that helps," I said with a grin, might not have been the truth, but never let the truth get in the way of a good story. Not that it wasn't technically true, I was just pretty sure that wasn't why they gave me any shit about my hair. Not that Ayanami's hair was any better, but I was pretty sure hers did not come out of a bottle.

"I don't think it would hurt, no. So if you're the commander's kid, why does he send you out to fight?" He asked, chewing on the corner of his sandwich. Cheese steak, damn, I should have had that. Pancakes were fine though.

I shrugged, "Nobody else can. Don't know the specifics of it, anybody born after a certain year... bad things happen. You pilot with your brain, combination of physical controls and a mental link. Kinda like wearing a bigger body over your current body, pretty weird. Doesn't work too good with the pre-impact people I guess."

"That does seem a little weird. I think I'll take the hands on throttle and stick approach to my combat vehicle operation, thank you very much," He said with a chuckle.

I had to fight the smirk off my face, ah, euphemisms how I adore thee.

"Yeah, I can see that. I don't suppose you want to trade jets? You know, straight across. I'll take the Raptor, you can have my Viper Zero, I'll even throw Misato in. She doesn't really know how to WSO, but you're a smart guy so you can probably handle the extra workload up front, eh?" I offered with a suggestive waggle of my eyebrows.

"That sounds like a spectacular deal, but I don't want to go to prison, so I'll have to turn down the offer. If I hadn't seen it, I'd probably not believe that you can fly that thing," he continued, taking another bite of that steak sandwich... thinking with my stomach again, damn.

"That's not, strictly speaking, my skill set. You should see me in the front seat of a mud-hen. Single engine isn't really my schtick," I said conversationally around a mouthful of pancake. Maybe I was sobering up, maybe not. Food was a good distraction, as was conversation.

"Which then begs the question of where you found one of those to play with," he said with a cocked eyebrow, pointing is fork at me again.

I shrugged, "Girl's gotta have her secrets."

"There are certainly enough of those going around. Well, I was going to wait and tell the both of you, since I've somehow been volunteered to be your keeper. We're going to leave tomorrow for California to finish the refit on your F-2, there are some parts we don't have, then we're going to escort you across the pacific," He explained. Just sharing classified intel in public? Then again, the place was empty and the waitress was on the other side of the dining room chatting up the cook.

"I break it or something?" I asked with a frown.

"Overstressed the inboard pylons, cracks in them, or that's what they said. You must have really beat the hell out of that thing, eh?"

"Well, supersonic dive to release the mark eighty-fours, then a high-g pull out with full drop tanks... I can see that being a little much, yeah." I leaned back in the seat and looked up at the ceiling tile. Yeah that was a hell of a thing wasn't it?

"That seems dangerous and excessive."

I shook my head, "Angels are... well there's really nothing else like it. They've got this thing called an AT field, can't get through it without one of your own, so until another Evangelion neutralizes it or weakens it, you can't get through without something on par with a nuclear blast. Even after you get through it, they're almost supernaturally tough. You've got to destroy the red orb in their chest, the core."

He nodded, "So, how tough then?"

"I put a two hundred millimeter AP round out of an auto-cannon into it and it didn't penetrate, got stuck half way in. I had to punch it the rest of the way in with the Evangelion's fist, then yanked on the loud handle because these guys like to self destruct to try to take you out with them sometimes," I explained. Yeah, that was... not the very best thing I'd ever done.

"Explode? Speaking from personal experience? How'd that work out for you?" He seemed interested. Two pilots sharing war stories eh? Alright.

"Like a daisy cutter to the face. Cracked my arm. Finished the job in the next fight when I was trying to get the other pilot out of her entry plug. Pulled the release latch too hard and split the bone. Felt like heaven," I explained, waving my cast-encased arm at him.

"So, that's like an escape capsule then, I guess?"

"Entire cockpit slides completely out of the unit, you get into the plug, then they screw it into the Evangelion's spine, and fill it with breathing fluid. You also get these really tight rubber-ish body suits that leave absolutely no curve to the imagination. Modesty doesn't exist for Eva pilots, apparently." I shrugged. If I was to be completely honest, I looked good in the thing, but that didn't mean I wanted to show off for the whole world.

Misato on the other hand....

I coughed. "Anyway, in that fight, her unit got superheated and I was afraid she'd be done for from the heat if I didn't get her out, so I just kept pushing till the hatch popped open and I could get her out. Broke my arm but, eh, worth it you know?"

"Sounds like you've been through some shit then, I guess I didn't really consider what it would be like. Figured if they had a kid doing it then it was some super robot like in the old Anime. Just sit in the cockpit and win with ease. Should have known better. You're alright kid. Stay away from the bottle, and when you come out the other side of this, you'll see it gets better," He put his hand on my shoulder across the table. It made me feel... small, like I really was the tiny little girl.

Friggin' Japanese Genetics.

I was absolutely within the proper size for my age!

Hmm, yeah, get mad at the things that don't even matter, you're totally sober.

"You're probably right, just having a hard time the last few days, keeping my head in the game. Lot going on in my life, this war and everything else. Nightmare woke me up, threw up, and hit the bottle. Things that you don't wanna remember. I'll be okay, got this far right? Just dig in and keep going. Maybe get a therapist who's name isn't Beam, Daniels, or Walker, eh?" I slumped down in the chair and sighed,

My head felt light, off balance. Alcohol still had me firmly in its grip I was no good like this, couldn't handle the alcohol, too small, too inexperienced. That was fine, maybe I'd forget, but I doubted it. I never forgot when I drank, or, well she didn't forget. We weren't the same person, I could tell that more, the more I looked at it. She wouldn't have done what I did, wouldn't have reacted like that.

I licked my bottom lip, "I think I should get back to my room, sleep this off."

"You're not wrong. Let's go."

XXXXXXX​

I woke up with my face smashed between the mattress and the headboard, the pillow was under my right arm and pressed against the back of my head, the covers were kicked off, and I felt the cool air on the bare skin of my thighs.

The wonders of drunken thrashing and western beds. I'd lost my pants at some point between the Denny's and this morning. He wouldn't, would he? I cracked my eyes open and rolled over, shirt was there, bra intact. Underwear... yeah. Okay, so that didn't happen.

Good.

I groaned as I sat up in the bed, the sudden movement set off the hangover I knew I'd have when I popped that first bottle open. I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them again. Pants, there they were, hung over a chair on the opposite side of the room. Neatly folded.

Further proof that shenanigans didn't take place last night. Good. That wasn't something I was ready for, and I was pretty sure that Becket was better than that, wouldn't take advantage of a drink minor.

I heard the lock rattle and turned as the door popped open, a dressed and groomed Misato greeted me as the door swung open. "Enjoy your walk last night?"

"Yeah, super enlightening. What's up?" I asked while wincing away from the light.

"Hangover face huh? That's something I'm used to only seeing in the mirror. Shower up and put your pants on, Nerv just spent a few billion yen on you. We're leaving in a few hours to California, then headed back to Japan," She explained as she walked into the room and set down a burlap sack.

"Few billion... Did Nerv buy me a fighter jet?" My eyes widened, eyebrows rose up under my bangs. Hell of an impulse buy.

"Nerv bought themselves a fighter jet, because you stole it... technically speaking. The Japanese government insisted that they foot the bill... so I insisted that we keep the jet."

"I guess my paranoia is rubbing off on you huh? Nerv's own fighter jet wonder what we'll use that for," I mused as I crawled onto my feet and shuffled towards the bathroom.

"Well, I'm sure I'll think of something to justify it to the budget committee, but the truth is it cost a lot less than the repair costs of unit one after the last battle. At the very least we can use it for surveillance," she explained as she started to unpack the bag.

I winced as my shirt caught on my cast, then threw it in the corner of the room and poked my head out of the open bathroom door, "I was thinking more along the lines of 'emergency run-away' vehicle."

She turned and looked at me, then frowned, "You should eat more."

I blinked and looked down. I wasn't fit or anything, but I wasn't fat, couldn't see my ribs. Not built, not fat, not skinny, just... average. "Why? I think I look fine."

"Yeah, but you're making me look bad!" She shot back with a pout, and then a smirk and a laugh.

I sighed and pushed my hand up into my hair. Yeah, definitely not the only teenager in this room. I turned back into the bathroom and spun the shower knob to let the water heat up, "You know, you'd look better if you drank less and worked out more, if you're that worried about it!"

I closed the door and finished undressing, and it was as I was stepping into the shower that the door slammed open and the pair of neatly folded jeans that I'd left hanging on a chair crashed into the side of my head.

Definitely not the only teenager in the room.

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 12:
Gun Shy

​

The ride to the airbase was less eventful than the previous night's activities. An unmarked car had picked us up at our hotel. The interior had smelled like fresh adhesive and new carpeting. Either a refurb or a brand new car. I wasn't familiar with the model, but it looked like Ford had built the thing.


More changes. If I'd have really put thought to it, there should never have been an F-2 on an aircraft carrier, let alone one with a naval arrestor hook, and yet that's what we had. A world that made little sense and seemed to operate on laws of physics that made the square cube law look more like a polite suggestion.


Whatever it was that had made the Evangelions able to exist, if you could apply those same rules and techniques, you could probably make a flying battleship.


That was an interesting thought. Maybe that was just an inevitability of the technology though. Given enough time, hydrogen will start to wonder where it came from. Evolution.


The new flight suit, in the same canary yellow as my plugsuit, as my school vest, was a nice touch, actually being cut to fit me was a welcome change from the borrowed suit from before. The name-tape said 'Iris', and the package that it arrived in indicated that it had been sent Federal Express next day air.


Apparently they never changed their name in this world. More changes.


The walk from the locker rooms to the flight line was silent, whether anything had needed to be said or not, we held our tongues and walked. Just as well, I hadn't any idea what I would say, what I could say, anyway.


But then, the smell of jet fuel and truck exhaust hit my nostrils and a wave of nostalgia for a life I'd never lived rushed through me, and I couldn't help but crack a smile. What I enjoyed, what she had enjoyed, in this one thing, I was sure that given the chance, even without those memories she gave me, this would have been fun for me.


And like her, I had people counting on me, people I cared about, people I needed to protect. The sooner I got back to Japan, the sooner I could end all of this, win this war, and... well, I'd have my whole life ahead of me then, wouldn't I? Could do anything.


I licked my bottom lip and stared across the tarmac, at that deep blue fighter jet sitting on the pad. Looked like it was going mach two while sitting still. I could do that, after all was said and done. Stay a pilot, just a different kind, not an Evangelion pilot anymore.


Maybe.


The external weapons racks were replenished, surprisingly. The center fuel tank wasn't replaced, that made sense, Becket had said the pylon was damaged, that would explain why the entire thing had been removed.

Two tanks would be enough to make it to where we were going, if not, that's what a KC-10 was for, right? More surprising were the six AMRAAMs and two Sidewinders mounted to the wings. They either trusted me, or were more afraid of somebody else than they distrusted me. I wasn't sure which of the two would make me feel better.


If they trusted me that much, they either knew something I didn't, or somebody was lying to them, or they were just too trusting in general. The last one seemed the least likely.


I cracked my neck and stepped out of the truck and down onto the tarmac, felt the chill in the air and stretched my muscles. California time, or however much of it was left anyway. I had to wonder that. The other me had never been to Japan, so I had no frame of reference for a pre-impact Japan.

But I did know what the United States had been like, I had to wonder, then, how different the rest of it would be.


"Hey there Iris, I see you got my present."


I blinked and turned my head, Becket was walking over, grin from ear to ear, "Hey there... bucket..." I muttered out in confusion. "You got me the flight suit?"


He laughed and shook his head, I felt my cheeks heat up. "No, not the flight suit, the name! It's an acronym," he said with a smug grin as he pointed at the name-tape over my left breast.


Oh god, he'd given me a call-sign, and it was an acronym. I could think of many things it might be, and none of them were good.


I sighed and slumped my shoulders, blinked slowly and then looked up at him, "Alright, let's hear it..."


Defeated, vanquished, conquered. He had won, I had only await my fate...


"I Require Intense Supervision. Iris. Thought that was appropriate for you. Now you're one of us, at least for the time being," He explained as he ruffled up my hair.


I blushed and fidgeted, frowned. At least it didn't involve genitalia or sexual proclivities. Small favors.


I turned back towards my jet and frowned at the fully populated pylons, "We expecting trouble? That's a lot of boom hanging off my fighter."


"You can fly unarmed if it'll make you feel better--"


"No, no that's fine!" I answered hurriedly, "it's perfectly fine."


XXXXXXX



I swallowed hard, my mouth dry from the processed air, my hand shaking on the stick. Easy girl, you got this. You've done it before, you can do it now, even without an Angel bearing down on you. I clenched my eyes and then forced them open, let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding.


My left arm had a dull ache inside the cast, but my fingers were firm on the throttle, the vibration of the turbine under me was soothing in its own way, reminding me of the power of the vehicle I was strapped to.


The jet to my left, the other to my right. Raptors, flown by people who I'd only just met, and yet could count among my friends. A fraternity of rare membership indeed.


Far below the clouds, the coastline stretched out in front of us towards the horizon. Our course, as I'd been told, would take us along the coast the entire way, avoiding the open water for reasons that I wasn't told, not that I'd asked anyway.


I didn't really know the political climate of this world, with the second impact having just been fifteen years before... well, we felt the attack on the world trade center for just as long, there could be any number of military concerns with straying too far from the coast, even with the Angels around.


People would fight for the best, and for the worst reasons.


My mouth felt dry, I licked my lip and pushed the throttle forward as the escort Raptors started to pull ahead. The airspeed indicator rose higher, higher. "Bucket, what's up?"


"New Intel, Iris, accelerate to best speed for Travis. Maintain formation."


I blinked and slid the throttle forward, felt the lurch of the afterburner lighting, then the radar warning receiver chirped in my ear, my eyes slid down to the panel. "Mudspike, bearing two-five-zero, range unknown--" A harsher shrill tone pierced my ear, my blood ran cold.


I turned my head and looked out at the ocean, saw that plume. Fuck. "SAM Launch, bearing two-five zero, range fifty."


Becket's voice crackled back through the radio, "Cylon one-two sliceback, slapshot two-five-zero. Cylon one-three, scram one eight zero."


Telling me to run away? Fine, fine just this one time. I was the most likely to die here anyway right? Not flying a stealth fighter, I was the high value target here. "Roger Cylon one-one."


I pushed the stick forward and rolled to the left, diving down and towards the coast, "Misato hold on back there, it's going to get rough!"


Rough, that was not even the half of it. The engine screamed as the aircraft shook, and then in an instant we passed through mach two and I leveled off, keeping my eye on the RWR as we cannon-balled towards the coast. Endurance would be hampered at this speed, but it gave me time, and we had the fuel to make Travis either way.


But I was getting sick of this. Fight, run, fight, run. People trying to kill me, Angels trying to kill me, what was the difference? I was tired of my life being in peril, being at the mercy of fuel quantity and mechanics, having to run, being helpless.


The RWR pinged again, this time ahead and to the right of me, what the hell was going on? "Cylon one-three, radar spike one eight zero, range one zero zero."


I looked into the mirror, and back down at the RWR, the SAM was locked onto one of the raptors, not me, it wasn't tracking with my evasion, good enough for now. The airborne contact was more troublesome.


I toggled the master arm switch to on and cycled through my weapons stores to the AIM-120s, and looked down at my radar display as a contact lit up. "Cylon one-three, contact, bogey at one eight zero, tracking zero one five."


Becket came back on the channel, his voice strained, "Bandit at one eight zero, weapons free."


Adrenaline pumped through my veins. Fighting the Angel had been one thing, engaging in an air to air battle was entirely another, and my hands shook on the controls for a moment as my heart pounded in my chest.


I throttled back out of the afterburner and came right to one eight zero, rolled the hat switch over to the radar contact and locked on, the shrill tone sounded in my ear and I hesitated. No, this is important, isn't it? This is what she trained for, this is what my burden was. This was an inevitability from the moment I climbed up the ladder into this cockpit on the Kuztnetsov.


And I had every reason to keep going, sitting right behind me in the back seat. I blinked the tears out of my eyes, and shook my head. No, I couldn't think about this right now, not what I was about to do. That was something later, for when this was over and I had a chance to decompress. It wasn't a person, it was a plane, a contact, a radar blip.


Right.


"Cylon one-three, fox three," my voice cracked into the radio and I pressed the firing stud. The aircraft jolted slightly as the missile released from the pylon, then streaked out ahead of me, towards the rapidly closing bandit. The enemy aircraft.


The opposing jet broke in a sharp ninety degree turn and started dropping chaff and flares as it tore away from me, my missile still tracked in on it. Target fixation, that's what they called it, but I couldn't help myself, my eyes zeroed in on that jet and I pushed the throttle up, nosed over for an intercept shot.


He hadn't fired a missile at me, for whatever reason, but that was his mistake, and now I had the upper hand.


The missile tracked in on the jet... and missed wide. I called up the twenty millimeter and pushed the attack, closing in enough to see... an F-4 Phantom? Who the hell was attacking me, the nineteen-seventies?


"One-three to one-one, bandit is an F-4, repeat, bandit is an F-4. Bucket what the hell is going on?" I yelled into the radio.


"One-three, press bandit."


That simple? Just the two words, were two lives worth that? No Rei, it's fine, I see you're concerned, go shoot them down anyway. The Phantom was a two-seater, just like my F-2, "Misato, this feels wrong," I said into the intercom, "one fighter, and it hasn't fired? Something is wrong here."


I looked at the jet in front of me, he had missiles, I could see them, along with the drop tanks, and he was running hot. What was the game here? Missiles, I could fire a sidewinder right up his exhaust at this range and yet...

There were two people, two human beings in that plane, and maybe that other girl would have been able to call out 'fox two' and sleep at night afterward.


But I couldn't. Not if there was another possibility, a better way. No, we were different, different in that way. I wasn't ready to kill, not just yet. "Misato, I'm... I'm going to try something, I... It might work. I'm just glad I'm not in Becket's chain of command."


"Rei, whatever you have to do, I can't... I can't, I won't order you to shoot them down, but you've got to do something, alright?" She said from behind me, why did she had to keep deferring to me on this? Did she think I was an expert here? Maybe, maybe I knew how to fly it, how to fight with it, but making these kind of decisions? Isn't that her job?


Fine.


I toggled the radio over to the guard frequency and keyed up, "Unidentified F-4 fighter, disarm immediately and come right to one eight zero, reduce airspeed and lower your landing gear. You will be escorted Travis air-force base. If you fail to comply I will shoot you down. Do you understand?"


The waiting was the hardest part, the seconds each felt like a small eternity as I stared at the jet in front of me, perfectly centered in my targeting reticule, his RWR must have been screaming that I had a lock on him.


In a moment, he started to slow, and I eased back on my own throttle. Well, that was part of the compliance, right? I still waited, as he had yet to turn, just slow down, what was his game?


The radio crackled and a woman's voice came through, "So, it is you in that aircraft? If you were willing to fire another missile you'd have done it already. You don't have the stomach for killing us... but as it happens, I seem to have the same problem when it comes to killing children. There might yet be hope for you, Miss Rei Ikari."


"What the hell?" I muttered into the intercom, "She knows who I am? Misato who did you tell where we were?"


"Rei, it's not like it's a very well kept secret, you weren't exactly covert about any of this. It's no surprise that somebody else knew who was flying this jet. It stands out." She explained.


She wasn't wrong, and I was stupid for thinking otherwise. Fine. That didn't really explain who or why though.


I was distracted by my thoughts and nearly reacted too late: the F-4 pulled up and leveled off above me then jettisoned the external stores. I jammed the stick forward and pulled the throttle back to idle, felt myself pressing into the harness strapping me into the seat as we pulled a few negative G's.


I gritted my teeth and pulled back on the stick, we'd lost altitude and airspeed, I looked up through he canopy, the phantom was running afterburners and pulling away. Running, wouldn't let me take them alive, but not willing to kill me?


I shook my head, not worth it. Not worth dying or killing over, right?


"Cylon One-Three, aborting intercept. Returning to original course for Travis."


"You let her go," Misato said from behind me. I couldn't read the emotion in her voice.


"You don't approve?" I asked with an edge in my voice. Was she really going to...?


"No, it's fine. You're a compassionate girl, Rei. You didn't do anything wrong... But Becket might not see it that way. No, I'm more worried about what that woman said to you. And I'm worried about everyone that heard it, now."


I blinked and leaned back in the seat, my eyes scanning the radar display. She had a good point, the guard frequency was completely unencrypted, and with that information being broadcast, everyone in range would have been able to hear the conversation.


I had a nagging fear in the back of my mind that instead of arresting the flight crew of that F-4, I might be the one wearing new silver bracelets instead, once we landed at Travis.


"She could have pulled the trigger. That other girl." I said simply as I leaned back in the seat and closed my eyes, "I really am someone else."


"Don't say it like it's a bad thing."


Something was still nagging at me though, beyond my introspection and inability to pull the trigger. We 'd split up, not by a lot, the Raptors were still close by. One phantom tried to intercept me, but didn't fire, then... confirmed who was flying the aircraft in a radio transmission, and fled. Phantom couldn't beat me in a turning fight, I could out maneuver one even on a bad day,


But it could outrun me. She never even tried to shoot back, she just got my attention, got me to talk to her, confirmed who I was... and got me to chase her. She knew where I was, knew where my escort was...


Oh no.


"Cylon one-three, one-one, There's a second SAM site. Possible S-400 missile system. Phantom was a decoy, they have range and bearing, one-three's identity has been compromised."


"Proceed on course, one-one and one-two will merge in fifteen, stand by." Becket called back over the radio. I looked up in the mirror, sure enough the raptors were closing in fast from my six.


"One-two, RWR is clean and naked, no inbound radar detected." The other Raptor pilot said.


"It's there, I've got this sick feeling in my gut like I've got a gun pointed at my head. Phantom was bait, and we bit the hook. I think... I think that she was just up here to confirm who I was, but then she left like that? No, I'm telling you there's something else out there!" I yelled into the radio, felt my palms sweating up, cast on my arm was itchy as hell. Something was wrong, or I was losing my mind.


"Alright... That's not that far fetched. Take it down to the treetops. I'll contact Travis for AWACS support." Becket came back, again.


I eased the stick forward and kept the throttle high. It was a risky proposition but I'd back out of it when we got lower down. I had to conserve enough fuel to make it to Travis, but at the same time, I needed to get out of the area before the SAM I suspected was out there went hot.


None of this made sense though, was second impact that much of a game changer for the US? Hostile aircraft over the continental US? SAM sites on the ocean? This was wrong in ways that the most paranoid people wouldn't have even pretended to think, from what that other girl remembered.


This world though, my world, this was... this damaged? Was that the right word? What would I call it...


I licked my bottom lip and pushed the stick forward a little harder, the altimeter dropped as airspeed rose, the fuel gauge was dropping rapidly as the fuel pumps ran wide open to keep the afterburner lit. I wouldn't last ten minutes like this, but I wouldn't have to hold it for much longer.


I passed under five thousand and started to bring the stick back, and throttled down. The idea was sound, if there was a very long range SAM operating out there, being on the deck would dramatically reduce detection range, but it would also make us extremely vulnerable to any hostile aircraft.


If I was right, this would keep us safe. If I was wrong, it would burn a lot of fuel and piss off a lot of civilians on the ground. If I was right, but they also had more birds in the sky... well, we were dead anyway.


"Plume at nine high, looks like they fired in lock after launch. We're out of gimbal, no pings on the RWR. Good call, Iris."


I licked my lip and smiled, "Well, gotta get them right once in a while, eh, Bucket?"

 

[theBSDude]

What's the advantage of faking an ambush? Something to do with knowing for sure which plane was Rei's?

 

[Slayer Anderson]

What's the advantage of faking an ambush? Something to do with knowing for sure which plane was Rei's?

Click to shrink...

Knowing that Rei was in the flight at all, first off.

Then determining which plane was Rei's, if she was indeed on any of the planes.

If she survived, though, it would give the people behind a character assessment, too.

Also, being thorough in general is a good way to make sure mission objectives are accomplished.

 

[Jackie]

What's the advantage of faking an ambush? Something to do with knowing for sure which plane was Rei's?

Click to shrink...

The ambush wasn't faked, the F-4 was playing spotter for the second SAM site. The F-4 was confirming the pilot of the Viper Zero, to make sure of the pilot before they let the missiles off the chain. They then fired the missiles based on intel from the phantom, in lock after launch. this prevents the RWR from tripping in any of the jets in Rei's formation until the missile is too close to dodge.

Rei got paranoid when the phantom bugged out, and the plume that was seen overhead after they ran for the deck was the missile that the sam site had launched, going through the airspace they would have been occupying had they stayed on course.

The pilot of the F-4 may have been genuine in her desire to not kill Rei quite yet, she might not have been genuine, but it also probably wasn't within her authority to stop the launch of the missile. chains of command and all that.

 

[theBSDude]

The ambush wasn't faked, the F-4 was playing spotter for the second SAM site. The F-4 was confirming the pilot of the Viper Zero, to make sure of the pilot before they let the missiles off the chain. They then fired the missiles based on intel from the phantom, in lock after launch. this prevents the RWR from tripping in any of the jets in Rei's formation until the missile is too close to dodge.

Click to shrink...

I understood the plan that was executed, though my lack knowledge of air combat made it difficult. What I intended to ask was this: what advantage this plan had over actually ambushing them, say with multiple planes from the current decade?

I really don't know. I don't know the subject well enough. I strongly suspect that there are hints to the identity (or at least capacity: this plan is probably a lot cheaper than my alternative) of the enemy based on their tactics, but I don't have the background to see them.

 

[Jackie]

I understood the plan that was executed, though my lack knowledge of air combat made it difficult. What I intended to ask was this: what advantage this plan had over actually ambushing them, say with multiple planes from the current decade?

I really don't know. I don't know the subject well enough. I strongly suspect that there are hints to the identity (or at least capacity: this plan is probably a lot cheaper than my alternative) of the enemy based on their tactics, but I don't have the background to see them.

Click to shrink...

They didn't have any modern planes with which to attack en-masse with.

This plan also requires far less man power to execute.

Rei wasn't attacked by a government, she was attacked by a small independent group.

 

[Mr. Tebbs]

how the hell did an independent group get an F-4 with a radar package? one or the other is probably easy to get, both together would raise some serious red flags, methinks. unless they put all their eggs in one basket for this attack.

 

[Jackie]

how the hell did an independent group get an F-4 with a radar package? one or the other is probably easy to get, both together would raise some serious red flags, methinks. unless they put all their eggs in one basket for this attack.

Click to shrink...

F-4s always had radar.

 

[Mr. Tebbs]

I was remembering a plot point in Charlie Wilson's war. We (the US) were willing to sell F-16s to... i wanna say India or Pakistan, but we weren't willing to sell the radar package with it, making the missile payload of the F-16 useless b/c there's only so much you can do with cannons... I wasn't sure if the F-4s had the kind of radar that a ground-bound SAM would be able to tether onto for targeting purposes. That said, they could prolly gerry rig something together if they had enough techs, so it's a moot point, most likely

 

[Jackie]

I was remembering a plot point in Charlie Wilson's war. We (the US) were willing to sell F-16s to... i wanna say India or Pakistan, but we weren't willing to sell the radar package with it, making the missile payload of the F-16 useless b/c there's only so much you can do with cannons... I wasn't sure if the F-4s had the kind of radar that a ground-bound SAM would be able to tether onto for targeting purposes. That said, they could prolly gerry rig something together if they had enough techs, so it's a moot point, most likely

Click to shrink...

That's not what happened. The F-4 gave them a location and bearing for the USAF and JSSDF fighters, verbally over the radio. The SAM site then fired the missiles in lock after launch along the other Fighters' vector. Like when you maddog an AMRAAM.

 

[Mr. Tebbs]

Ahh, gotcha.
..
....
...wait, wouldn't that mean there was a non-zero chance the SAM would lock onto the F-4 instead of the F-16 given relative radar signatures of the 3 different fighter types in the air/area? especially given that all four fighters were converging in the same general area? Gutsy pilot in the F4 if so

 

[theBSDude]

Ahh, gotcha.
..
....
...wait, wouldn't that mean there was a non-zero chance the SAM would lock onto the F-4 instead of the F-16 given relative radar signatures of the 3 different fighter types in the air/area? especially given that all four fighters were converging in the same general area? Gutsy pilot in the F4 if so

Click to shrink...

The F4 was never going to be anywhere near the missile's path. It veered off way before, remember?

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 13:

2 + 2​

I reached a point where I was certain, without a doubt at all, that I'd fully and completely lost my mind. It would have been more comforting for me to believe that I was still that other girl, from that other world, that I was in a coma experiencing this elaborate hallucination and that none of it was real.


A desperate hope that everything I was experiencing wasn't real, that the stress, confusion, and fear weren't real. It would have made it easier to cope, easier to play along, right?


The pain in my mouth when I bit my tongue, that was real, too real. Fingernails digging into my palm, the itch and ache of my broken arm in the cast, the rough feeling of the textured throttle lever. No, it was all too real.


The rocking of the aircraft, the buffeting of the wind, the feeling of the G forces, sound of my own voice? All the things that dreams got wrong, things that would tip you off, make you realize you were asleep. I'd been able to lucid dream before, knew enough to notice.


I sighed and eased back on the throttle, blinked my eyes and shook my head. Pay attention to one thing at a time Rei, don't get lose in thoughts, don't lament what wasn't and what can't be, fly the plane. I licked my bottom lip and turned my head to the side of the canopy. Raptor on my right, there was another still on my left. Still in formation.


They hadn't ordered me to disarm, hadn't treated me like I'd disobeyed orders, but then... maybe I didn't have to obey them anyway, they weren't in any chain of command that I was part of, were they? No, Nerv authority superseded their own, at least in matters where I was concerned.


I toggled the gear down, deployed flaps, and eased back on the throttle some more. Runway in sight, altitude dropping, airspeed dropping. Formation landing, because why not right? I'd have preferred to come in solo, but Becket had insisted.


The airbase though, I remembered it, from those memories I was given. She'd been here before, I hadn't. It looked different than I remembered. Fewer buildings, lots of craters. There'd been a battle here, but it didn't look fresh.


I eased back on the stick as we crossed the runway threshold. Twenty, ten, touchdown. "and... boards out, brakes on..." I muttered under my breath as I throttled down to idle. The g-forces from the deceleration pressed me against my harness, but nothing I could deal with.


My eyes scanned the runway in front of me. As the plane on the left, I would take the taxiway first, and Becket would follow, but that meant I had to find it first.


Red. A big red head.


I blinked, turned my head to the side, between two of the hangers, under a camo tarp, there was red paint, a lot of red paint. I'd caught it out of the corner of my eye, and having looked at it, paled. Unit Two was here, for some reason. Was it that time already? The fleet was already on their way to Japan, how was Unit Two supposed to get to Japan from here? What was it even doing here? More IPEA shenanigans or something else?


My right hand clenched on the stick as I stepped into the left rudder. If Two was here, that meant the pilot was close by right? Was that why they'd directed us here, or was that just a happy coincidence? Was this the reason for the intercept before? They couldn't hit the base to take out the Evangelion, so they figured they'd do the next best and take out one of the pilots?


No, that didn't make sense, they'd only have decommissioned one pilot, and not the one for this unit either.


I steered the jet over into parking as a member of the ground crew waved me in, a fuel truck and a utility truck with the Nerv fig leaf were waiting for me.


"Moment of truth..." I muttered to Misato as we rolled to a stop, "Nerv's here, time to face the music."


"I'm sure it'll be fine Rei."


xxx



The thick nostalgic scent of the jet fuel mingled with the sweet coppery scent of the LCL in a way that almost made me vomit, and I still couldn't keep the grin off my face despite that. Unit Two, in the flesh, right in front of me. It was cool. I mean, aesthetically, Two looked awesome. The fact that I wasn't the only game in town made things even sweeter.


You never appreciate how comfortable that eighty meter engine of destruction made you feel until you no longer have it by your side and ready to go.


"Just when I was getting used to the cold," Misato complained, "we had to go and ruin it by heading south."


"Misato, do you ever feel like you've gotten way too Jaded?" I asked with a raised eyebrow. I jerked my head towards the gigantic leg of Unit Two over to our left. "I mean, we're standing next to an eighty meter biomech that can kill space monsters, while standing in the middle of a military base, and we just got out of a fighter jet. The future is now and you're complaining about the heat."


"It's hot out, it's uncomfortable and my legs hurt from being stuck in that cockpit for hours, I think I'm allowed to vent a little, Rei." she replied with a nonchalant shrug as she turned to walk towards a small portable building set up alongside a row of Nerv-marked crates.


"Oh come on Misato, where's your sense of wonder?"


"It's wondering where our contact is, and if this building has air conditioning. You're welcome to join me."


I rolled my eyes and followed her towards the door. The building was a sort of tan corrugated sheet metal rectangle, like the kind that they moved around on a flatbed trailer behind a semi truck. No windows, one door, and an air conditioner sticking out of the side of it.


Well, it was better than boiling in my own sweat. I couldn't exactly just sit in the Viper with the engine running and the air conditioner on, could I? I could not.


Although the mental image of sitting in a fighter jet idling in the parking lot of a 7-11 while Misato went inside for snacks was a delightfully hilarious one.


I shook my head and reached into the zippered pocket on the right leg of my flight suit, found what I was looking for, and stepped through the door and into the cold rush of air conditioning. I picked at the wrapper as my eyes adjusted to the room, shapes quickly shifted into focus and--


Red.


I bit down on the end of the granola bar and crunched it slowly between my teeth as my eyes drifted from Red and over to Misato, and then back again. Plug suit, nerve clips. Yep, Eva pilot. "So, Unit Two looks pretty red, eh Red?" I asked as I crunched another chunk off the snack bar.


The girl sneered at me, her face bordering between disgust and dismissal, "Rei Ikari I presume? Your reputation precedes you. Shouldn't you be in Japan, protecting everyone from Angel attacks? Reckless!"


I crunched down on the granola and stared at the person in front of me, the girl. My age, little slimmer figure, smaller chest. I could take pride in my superiority in that regard anyway.


I shrugged stared at her blankly, "Well, I did kill an Angel with a fighter jet, so there's that."


She snorted and laughed, "Well, you might be a rookie Evangelion pilot, but… I suppose I do have to give you that one, even if you had help."


Woah, crazy girl, totally shifting gears like that? What was she playing at? Testing me or out of her mind?


"What Asuka is trying to say," Misato started with a harsh look at the other girl, "is that she's pleased to meet you and is glad that we'll be traveling together back to Japan, and now that we're here we can get ready to leave, right?"


"Oh yeah totally that," Asuka replied, looking over at me with… amusement? "Let's go with that. California was boring me anyway."


I pushed the rest of the bar into my mouth and crunched down. It wasn't perfect by any means, not a steak, or even a hamburger, in terms of satisfaction. But, it took the edge off, and the crunchiness was satisfying.


I turned my eyes to Misato, then shrugged. This chance meeting, if it really was chance, wasn't really my thing. The flight over, the stress from that, the night before? I was more than a little exhausted, physically and emotionally and, well…


I dropped the wrapper on the table and turned around for the door and made it three steps when I heard something from outside, a sort of metallic squeal, and the roar of a diesel engine. My hand touched the door handle, and I shoved it open for a quick look outside.


My eyes took a few seconds to adjust to the brightness, then I saw the source of that diesel engine sound; an eight by eight boom truck was driving past, and my F-2 was hanging off the boom. "Well, that's different..."


I shook my head and stepped backwards back into the room, and turned around, licked my bottom lip. "Misato, some people are stealing our jet."


I almost couldn't believe it, not necessarily that the jet would be moved, that wasn't difficult to comprehend. No, that they were using a crane to do it? What the hell was the point of that? I looked out ahead of the truck, down the tarmac, towards the… oh.


"Rei? Who's doing what?" I heard Misato's footsteps approaching from behind on the steel floor, click clack. I heard, but I couldn't really spare the attention to care.


At the far end of the pair of parallel runways that ran the length of the airbase, and finally without the camouflage netting covering it, I witnessed the largest aircraft that I had ever seen in my life, possibly the largest that had ever been built. A twin boom flying wing with an elevated cavity along the center-line, more engines than I could count, and a large aerodynamic pod with two huge red feet sticking out of it.


The square cube law wasn't even a polite suggestion, it was bullshit.


That this thing could even pretend to fly, let alone fly with an Evangelion slung under it? The rational human being inside me couldn't fathom this thing flying without snapping itself in half, and the pilot in me wanted hands on throttle and stick.


Nothing like an F-2 or an F-16 though, it probably flew like a fright train. Fast by necessity and with a turning radius the size of Montana.


...were they going to load my jet onto that thing?


"I see you've noticed my ride. Pretty cool huh?"


My eyebrow twitched and I looked over towards the sound of the voice. Asuka was peeking out of the door next to me and she had a smug smirk plastered on her face.


"Eh… Mine's faster."


"Mine is bigger," She growled back.


I felt a hand on my shoulder and heard the chuckle behind me, "Girls, you're both pretty. If you're done bickering, I've got to make some calls."


I shrugged and waved my hand, "Don't worry about it Misato, I'm fine. In fact, I'm going to go check out that big plane."


"Well, take Asuka with you then. You girls are going to need to learn to get along with each other. I wouldn't want to have to turn the plane around half way to Japan."


xxx


Jet fuel, hydraulic fluid, smoke, and the acrid stench of a plasma arc. The kind of things that made a girl feel right at home. Well, made me feel at home anyway. Asuka probably wouldn't agree, but what did she know anyway?


The plane, this Evangelion transport, was bigger than I had imagined, at a distance it was really hard to get a handle on the scale of the thing. A gigantic flying wing with a cavity underneath it to hold the Eva, that much I had seen from the other end of the airfield, but once I got up close I figured out exactly where they were putting my plane.


The thing had an elevator on it, and it was this elevator that we took from the tarmac up to the small cargo bay situated above the Evangelion docking equipment. The compartment was expansive, you could probably have fit half a squadron of fighter jets and the requisite support vehicles and equipment in it, with room to spare.


I licked my lip and looked around the room, workers were almost frantically scurrying about, running through checklists or maintenance work. A few people were inspecting the shipping containers that took up a full half of the bay; likely equipment for the Evangelion slung underneath.


"So, how did you break your arm?"


I froze at the sound of the voice, I'd been lost in my thoughts. I looked over at Asuka, then back to my left arm. I rolled it over and worked my fingers. It still itched, but I'd managed to stop thinking about it so much lately, with everything else going on.


"I'm sure you've read the after action report," I said simply and looked away, towards the open hatch that the F-2 was being loaded in through. Why would she care? We just met and our first interactions weren't exactly full of love.


"I read the reports, but… I wanted to hear it from the horse's mouth," She answered with a non-committal shrug. Right, you want to hear me say it… because? Fine.


"I cracked it during a plug ejection, and broke it when I forced the hatch release on Ayanami's entry-plug. She was okay though, so it all worked out okay in the end," I explained, absently clenching my left hand into a fist.


"Well, okay except that your broke your arm huh?" She answered back. I couldn't read a motive in her voice, no inflection that would give away exactly what it was she was trying to get at. She wasn't being flat, not like Ayanami, she just sounded… bored?


I shook my head, "I won't let anyone get hurt trying to protect me, if I can help it. I think… I think she was willing to die to save me, I just wasn't willing to let her go through with it."


"Well aren't you just the heroic soldier," She snipped.


I felt the cast material cracking in my hand as I clenched, "N-no, that's not it at all," I ground out through grit teeth, "nobody dies for me, not if I can help it. I haven't done anything to earn that kind of loyalty."


I relaxed a little and turned to her. All those memories coming back, now, in front of her? "I don't think… That I could live with the guilt."


"But you're okay killing yourself to save other people? That's a bit hypocritical don't you think, Ikari?" She pressed, she leaned towards me, invaded my space a little. I guessed she was trying to play on the Japanese propensity to avoid physical contact?


I signed and leaned against a crate and looked up at the ceiling, "Well… it wouldn't be the first time. You might be right Asuka."


"You take the fun out of it when you just agree with me, you know that right?" She said with a smirk as she leaned next to me, she seemed relaxed. Was she trying to piss me of or just figure out my limits?


"So," I asked, looking over her plugsuit-clad form. I felt a blush rise on my cheeks a little as my eyes traced along her-- "eh, so why are you wearing that anyway? Just want the world to know you're an Eva pilot? Is that why you do this?"


She curled down the corner of her lip and looked into the distance, "I guess you could say that. Piloting Evangelion is my way of telling the world I'm important. It's something I'm good at, so why wouldn't I want everyone to know how great I am, right?"


I stared into the palm of my right hand and frowned, "I guess that's as good a reason as any..." I trailed off. I was really looking at Asuka like this? With a blush and wandering eyes? I just met her, pretty sure I didn't really like her…


"So what about you?" She asked and leaned forward, away from the crate, and turned to face me. "What makes you pilot Eva?"


I stared back down into my hand and clenched it into a fist. What was the reason? The one I'd been telling myself? "Because I can. It's… an obligation, I guess. I can protect people, and because I have the ability, I have the obligation to fight. I can't just stand by and do nothing if there's something I can do. Hell, when I didn't have an Evangelion I stole a fighter jet and went five rounds with an Angel."


"So, you do think you're a hero eh, Ikari?" She prodded with a smirk.


I laughed and shook my head, "No, just stupid, but I guess there really isn't that much of a difference, huh?"


"Hah, stupid Ikari. I kinda like the way that sounds," She laughed, and my blush returned.


Great, that was just what I needed.


"So there you two are. We're leaving soon, non stop to Tokyo-3!" Misato's voice declared exuberantly from behind me, I turned and saw her grinning face and felt something inside me melt.


I blinked, "What about Beckett and his flight?"


"Headed back to Alaska for now, disappointed? Developing a crush?" She singsonged at me.


I frowned at her, "Well, no, but he was pretty cool..."


"Yeah, totally no crush there," Asuka chimed in from the other direction. Great, they're ganging up on me now. What did I do to deserve this anyway?


"Look, one pilot to another, he has cool toys, that's all. It's respect, not a crush!" I protested.


Misato smirked, "Well, if that's not it, maybe there's somebody else you have a crush on, hmmm?"


Target in the center; Pull the switch. I licked my bottom lip and smiled up at her, "Mmm, maybe there is."


"Oh? Is it Asuka? Rei you've only just met her!" She deflected.


Ah, no! My weakness is strong! I must recover, I've got to counter with something--


"I think that's enough of that. We're leaving right? Well we'd better get ready to go, shouldn't we?" Asuka interjected before I could respond to Misato's needling.


I sighed, sure it was teasing, but… as much as I wanted to get back at her, I wanted to tell her that thing that I was pretty sure she at least suspected. Tell her the truth about… well…


"Hey, Earth to Stupid Ikari, we're going. C'mon I'll show you the flight deck," Asuka snapped as she poked me in the shoulder.


Oh, right then, off we go.


The hair on the back of my neck stood up, a shrill tone pierced the relative calm of the cargo bay.


...an air raid siren?

 

[Slayer Anderson]

...Rei's just never leaving Japan again after this, is?

At least, not without her own eighty-meter biomech.

 

[nobodez]

Well, he F-2 is in the cargo bay, and Unit Two is already docked as well, so I'm not sure which would be easier to get ready to fight.

also, awesome chapter!

 

[Jackie]

Well, he F-2 is in the cargo bay, and Unit Two is already docked as well, so I'm not sure which would be easier to get ready to fight.

also, awesome chapter!

Click to shrink...

For this type of situation I've always been fond of a good pair of running shoes.

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 14:
Renegade Option​

Somehow I'd ended up in the lead, Asuka and Misato had lagged behind at the first hatchway; I hit the ground running. I didn't know where I was going, but forward and up seemed to be the sure bet to find the flight deck. If the shock-waves vibrating through the deck-plates were any indication, the air raid siren wasn't a false alarm.

I heard a loud metallic thunk echo through the corridor followed by the unmistakable whine of a gas turbine winding up. So, somebody was on the flight deck, and they were throttling up the APU. Not a good sign.

"Rei, wait up!" I heard from behind me, I couldn't tell if it was Misato or Asuka, it didn't matter. If they were trying to start up the engines it meant something really bad was happening, I couldn't afford to wait.

"Keep up or shut up!" I yelled over my shoulder as I grabbed the hand rail of a staircase with my good hand and started hauling myself up. I heard voices up ahead, I had to be getting close.

I cleared the last step and saw natural light from behind a hatch, that must have been it, I burst through into the light into something that was something like the half way point between an airplane cockpit and the bridge of a battleship.

There were two people, a man and a woman scrambling between different stations, it looked like they were trying to start the engines, and in a hurry too, without the benefit of ground power. The master caution panel was lit up like a Christmas tree, the adjacent station looked like a flight engineers station, the display showed that the aircraft had… twenty engines, two were spooling and the other eighteen were completely red.

This was nothing compared to what I saw through the cockpit windows: rows of surface to air missile trucks were flanking the runways on either side, and they were ripple firing into the air. Angel attack?

I walked to the front of the flight deck to try to get a better look, when a missile slammed into one of the trucks. No, not an Angel, humans. I wasn't sure if that made it better or worse.

"Hey you, kid. That flight suit for show or do you know how to fly a plane? Hell with it, sit here and help us get this thing started up," the man said as he grabbed me by the good shoulder and pushed me towards the chair in the flight engineers station.

I dropped into the seat and he immediately set in to explaining before I could get a word in. "Look here, engines one and twenty are spooling up, take the fuel from cutoff to idle once N1 hits thirty five percent and then hold the starters till forty five. Work your way from the outside in, start up in pairs. Once you've got six generators going you can spool the engines four at a time."

I stared at him for half a second, then my hands started working the panel in front of me. Thank god for consistent and clear labeling. I brought in fuel on one and twenty and watched the shaft rpm shoot up. "What's going on out there?" I asked.

"Anti Nerv terrorist group is attacking the airbase, they're trying to take unit two. Our orders are to get the hell out of here, so that's what we're doing. Who are you anyway?" the woman added, almost as an afterthought.

Sure, drop me in front of the engine control panel without asking who I am first, the panic in the air was almost palpable. I cut the starters out on the first two engines and cut in the generators, then started on the second set. The spooling was faster this time.

"Rei Ikari, pilot of unit one, nice to meet--"

"What the hell is going on!?" I heard Misato yell from behind me. I turned back to look at her, then followed her eye-line through the forward windows. One of the Raptors was running full afterburner and was trying to take off from the apron.

"Son of a bitch..." I muttered under my breath, then turned towards Misato again. "Those guys who picked a fight with us on the way in decided they wanted some more. We're firing this beast up and then I'm going to go out in the F-2 and--"

"'Fraid not, no way to launch a fighter out of the cargo hold, transport only. You're stuck riding shotgun with us," the woman said, "don't worry too much about it, we'll keep you safe. This thing isn't as defenseless as it looks."

"Generators one, two, nineteen, and twenty online. Main power is green, powering anti missile defenses," the man announced as he started toggling switches on his own panel, on the far side of the cockpit to the left of the pilot's station.

"Alright… well, where's the rest of the crew? There can't just be the two of you," Misato asked as she sat against the railing that separated the elevated central section of the flight deck from the lower, outer ring of control terminals set to either side of the main flight control stations.

"They'll be along, or they'll get left behind. Anyone already on-board will be doing their pre-flight checks, anyone else, well, we don't have the time to wait for them."

I threw fuel to the next set of engines and hit the starters on four, five, sixteen and fifteen. Just like that, we were leaving them behind? You don't leave people behind, you don't leave when you can fight, you just… didn't.

The people we'd flown in with, people who didn't owe us a damn thing, were up there right now, fighting, maybe dying, to protect me, to protect us, and I couldn't do anything about it? We couldn't do anything about it? We had a jet bigger than apartment building, with anti missile defenses and who else knows what.

We had an Evangelion. We had an entire, fully functional Evangelion, and two pilots for the thing. We couldn't just send that out?

"I'll launch in unit two. I can handle this all by myself," Asuka proudly announced, "send me out there!"

"Can't do it. We don't have the power cable for unit two, or a generator that could run it if we did. You would have the five minutes in the batteries, and you don't have any weapons to fight off an attack like this with anyway," the woman said with a wave of her hand. She dropped into the copilot's seat and pulled a headset on.

I turned to see Asuka staring daggers into the back of the woman's head and tapping her foot impatiently on the deck plating. I couldn't say I didn't share her feelings.

The world outside flashed and the aircraft shook around us, missile impacts on the runway in front of us. Some of the SAM trucks were just… gone. An F-18 trailing fire buzzed passed in a lazy spiral before auguring into the ground. I couldn't tell if it was ours or theirs.

So far, I hadn't seen a Raptor go down, so I still had that selfish hope that the people who died wouldn't be people I knew.

Misato stepped away from the rail and dropped into the seat set into the elevated central floor and looked down at the two pilot's stations, "Well, I guess I'm probably the ranking officer on board. I'll be assuming command. Current orders stand, get us the hell out of here."

"Misato! I… I--"

"You can't do anything right now Rei. The best we can do is leave. You'd only get yourself killed out there," Misato interrupted me.

I slammed my fist against the armrest of the chair. She wasn't wrong, no she wasn't wrong… but I still didn't like it. Didn't like leaving people to die. Wasn't that the whole point of what I was doing, to save people!?

I put fuel to the last set of engines and cut the starters out. If I can't save the people outside, I can do what I can for the people inside. "All engines hot, generators online. Ready to disengage APU," I announced.

The man finally dropped into the pilot's seat and pulled his headset on, and put one hand on the row of throttle levers over his head in the center of the overhead panel. "All hands, secure for takeoff. We're rolling in five seconds."

"Cutting it close?" the woman asked.

"No time to waste. Throttling up now," he answered as he pushed the throttle levers to the stops, then repeated with the second set of throttles on the pedestal between them.

The sound of the turbines winding up reverberated through the flight-deck and we started to roll forward, surprisingly quickly at that, given our weight. Somehow we managed not to rip a landing gear off in any craters in the runway. With all the ordnance flying around it was a missile festival out there, but we came through unscathed. The rapid fire tracers that seemed to be coming from us and hitting inbound missiles probably helped.

"Stand by for rocket ignition in three… two… rockets are hot!" the man yelled as he pressed down a bank of switches, and I felt myself pressed back in the seat.

The jet lurched forward and started to pitch up, I just closed my eyes and waited. We'd just left dozens, maybe hundreds of people to their fate… but then maybe once we were gone they'd try to track us instead. This thing wasn't defenseless right?

Still, the whole thing sat sour in my stomach. We were supposed to be saving the world, and to me that meant all of it, not just the parts that were easy. We couldn't call ourselves the saviors of mankind if we weren't willing to take whatever risks we had to to save everyone we could, could we?

I felt the rumble of the runway stop suddenly, and the far off thud of the landing gear retracting. We were in the air, what now though? I glanced back at Misato, her eyes were closed, but her face was tense. No, she didn't like this any more than I did, did she? Maybe I really was just a kid, thinking that we could be the heroes every time.

The man in the pilot's seat keyed up his microphone. "This is Pelican-Five-Five-Niner, we're clear of the runway and making our turn now. Good luck… and see you on the other side."

The sounds of combat, explosions and rocket launches, faded as we pulled away from the airbase, the occasional bursts of fire from our anti-missile turrets pierced the new quiet, but even that was starting to happen less and less often. We were safe, for now at least, but somehow that didn't make me feel better.

xxx​

There was a lounge on this thing. An honest to god lounge, with a refrigerator and microwave. The very best in microwaveable sustenance at my fingertips, all the food a girl could ever want… and I couldn't find my stomach.

It wasn't that the massacre we'd run away from made it any more real for me, I knew what was at stake, and I knew how dangerous and broken the world was. It was just that for the first time since all this had begun, I'd felt truly powerless.

If I had the F-2, I could have gone up and taken some of them with me, maybe saved a few people on the ground. At the very least I'd have gone down swinging. If I had unit one, five minutes of power and a pallet rifle is all I'd have needed to put every single one of those bastards in the ground.

I rubbed the bridge of my nose and dropped into the almost-soft chair in the corner of the lounge. Lamenting my inability to help wasn't going to do me any good, and I knew that, but knowing it and believing it were two different things.

I knew that we had to run, but I believed that we'd left a bunch of innocent men and women to their fate. I guess the two weren't really mutually exclusive. If I'd died trying I could have felt better about it, and it wouldn't have been the first time.

Couldn't eat, couldn't sleep. I'd had nothing to do but stare at the walls and avoid Misato and Asuka for the last eight hours. Not to say I wasn't tired, the sleep just wouldn't come, no matter how much I tried. Exhaustion was no match for my racing mind, apparently.

I sighed and leaned forward and pushed myself off the chair. Restless. I trudged over to the hatch and pressed my palm into the door, and stumbled out into the hallway. The cargo bay was off to my left, down the long corridor, so I decided that I would go that way.

The sound of my shoes clicking on the metal decking and the distant shrill of the turbofans were my only companions as I vaguely wandered my way aft through the dim light. The air tasted like machine oil and aluminum, it was the kind of smell that would probably never leave the place, as often as something of this size must need to be maintained.

I was absentmindedly tonguing my teeth when I heard the engines change pitch suddenly, followed by the deep bass rumbling of the missile defense batteries firing long bursts of fire. I felt the deck pitch up under me, we were climbing? We were followed or something else?

We were under attack, and suddenly I didn't feel quite so tired anymore. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out they were after unit two, the only question was what had taken them so long to jump us.

It didn't matter, I wasn't going to fail this time.

The cargo bay wasn't that far at a run, as wide as this aircraft was, it wasn't overly long. The deck shifted under my feet, they were trying to maneuver this monster? That must have meant the defenses were getting overwhelmed, which would mean--

The deck jumped under me and I almost lost my footing, an instant later my ears popped and the air pressure dropped. That was a hit, and it had compromised the hull at that. We'd lost cabin pressure. We were still climbing.

Surely they didn't think we could out climb… we couldn't fly higher than the missiles could reach, maybe they were trying to fly higher than whatever aircraft was attacking us? The only thing we might be able to fly higher than is a transport.

I shook my head, didn't matter. I jumped through the hatch at the end of the corridor and found myself on the upper deck of the cargo hold, rather than the floor. I had to be quick, the air was getting thin and I could already feel myself getting light headed.

The F-2 was down on the deck below me. I ran down the catwalks towards it, swaying and stumbling from the low oxygen. I slipped and fell as I made it to the section of the walkway over the plane and went tumbling under the hand rail, felt a brief moment of weightlessness and then the wind was knocked out of me when I crashed into the left wing of the jet.

The impact might have knocked the wind out of me, but the pain brought me back into focus. I was on top of the jet, and there was a strap about midway up the fuselage, right behind the open canopy, holding the jet down, almost like an afterthought.

We had really rushed out of Travis. It was an advantage now though. I pushed myself up onto all fours and crawled across the wing to the ratchet strap holding the plane down and snatched the release catch, pulled with my failing strength and was rewarded with a click as it released.

I was taking too long, eyelids were getting heavy again. I pushed myself, just a few more feet and I'd be in the cockpit. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. I felt the edge of the cockpit in my hand and pulled myself in, fell down into the seat and slumped.

No, Rei, no. You're not done yet.

I forced my eyes open and reached out, fumbled with the battery switch and managed to toggle it over. The MFDs started to light up as the on-board computer started to boot up. I reached over and pushed the switch to close the canopy. I was dimly aware of the whirring of the servos lowering the plexiglass dome, I was preoccupied with turning on the emergency oxygen supply. It took a couple clumsy false-starts before I finally managed to grab onto the knob and start turning it to let the oxygen generator start pumping into the cockpit.

My hands felt weak, I tried to grab for the oxygen mask, my hand wouldn't close around it, so weak.

Well… close enough. I could hear the oxygen hissing into the cockpit as I slumped down in the seat and finally, everything blacked out.

xxx​

It felt like seconds, but could have been minutes, or even an hour. I opened my eyes slowly and had the disorienting sensation of motion. I was on a plane, that was right. No, I was on a plane inside a plane. It was so bright, and my legs were stiff, my back hurt. I was slumped down in the seat with my knees up into the dashboard.

I blinked away the fogginess in my eyes and squinted out into the brightness. The roof of the cargo bay was… moving forward? No.

I was moving backward.

I picked up the helmet between my legs and pushed my legs down into the rudder pedals and slid up into the seat properly so I could look outside. There were men with sub-machine-guns standing on the floor of the cargo bay, they definitely weren't part of the crew, so how the hell--

The nose pitched up suddenly and violently. No, the tail dropped, in an instant I was weightless in the cockpit, the carrier in front of and ahead of me and flying away, flanked by six fighters.

I was in freefall, they pushed me out of the plane, and I was in free fall with the gear down and the engine stopped. Not good. I pulled the helmet down onto my head and uncovered the emergency power unit switch, and slapped it over.

The hydraulic pressure came up almost instantly as eighteen hundred degree hydrazine rammed itself through a turbine in the right hand strake, electrical power came up rapidly and I stepped into the rudder to bring the nose into the airflow.

The red ocean greeted me so many thousand feet below, I still didn't have thrust, but I had control authority. Baby steps. My fingers danced over the front panel, gear up, fuel on, starter engaged…

The whine of the jet fuel starter resounded through the cockpit as the jet engine under me started to turn. N1 at five percent, ten percent, fifteen. Altitude at thirty thousand… twenty five, twenty, fifteen. N1 at fifty percent, starter disengaged, EPU disengaged, throttle to half.

I passed under ten thousand and eased back on the stick, the nose came up and I leveled off at five thousand. I looked up through the canopy, the carrier was still way up there, with those fighter escorts. They weren't coming down after me, did they know somebody was in the jet?

No, they were probably just dumping cargo they didn't need, they were after the Evangelion right? I started arming the fire control systems and looked out the canopy to visually inspect the pylons. The AMRAAM I'd fired before was still missing. That meant I had five left, and two sidewinders. I had plenty of fight left in me.

I snapped the oxygen mask over my face and cinched down the helmet straps, strapped myself into my seat and dropped off the throttle a little, let them pull ahead of me. I toggled the weapon selector over to the sidewinders and licked my bottom lip.

I rolled the selector over to Cat I and punched the drop tanks, then pushed the throttle to the stop. The jet lunged forward under me and I eased the stick back into a sharp climb, the fighters were just under my pipper as I shot up to meet them.

Radar off, heat seekers selected, at least two of them wouldn't see it coming. Distance closed, altitude rose. Twenty thousand feet, twenty five, thirty, thirty five thousand. The audible buzzed at me and I pressed the firing stud and a sidewinder dropped off the wingtip rail and streaked out towards the enemy fighter on my far left.

I stepped into the rudder and immediately got tone on the second jet, and snapped down the firing stud again. I throttled back out of afterburner and held my finger over the button that would turn on my active radar, once that first missile hit…

The explosion on my left signaled me to go active and I cycled over to AMRAAMs, the second missile hit soon after and the hostile fighters started to break formation. Two down, three to go. I rolled my radio over to guard and snapped off one of my radar missiles at the fighter under my pipper, it might hit, might not. It would get him moving though.

It all came out at once, the rage, the fury, the single minded drive. It was like being in Eva, but this was all me. My hate and rage at my inability to do a damn thing in California, and my refusal to let them touch Misato…

Maybe it was about time I admitted to myself what that really was? When this was over.

I rolled onto my left wingtip and buzzed past the carrier at mach one, then throttled back and leaned on the air-brakes into a sharp nine g hard turn into pursuit of one of the fleeing fighters. They were F-4s like before, they didn't stand a chance.

I called up the twenty mike mike and rolled the pipper over the phantom, he tried to pitch and roll, but my hand and feet worked together to keep him right in the center, I clicked down the firing stud and let a few dozen rounds of party mix pepper his tail and rudder.

I released the firing stud and watched him start to nose over with fire trailing from his engines, a moment later there was a flash of light from the cockpit and two ejection seats fired out of the doomed airplane.

They were the lucky ones.

I pushed the throttle back into afterburner and pointed the nose up, and started to climb while I rolled into a lazy left turn, I spotted two more signatures on the radar, that AMRAAM had missed, I spotted them out of the canopy and rolled in, throttled down, and pulled back on the stick to get a solution on the next fighter, another F-4. I rippled a pair of missiles in his direction to force him off and shifted attention to the other F-4 that was with him, two missiles left. More than enough.

My RWR screeched in my ear, I slammed the throttle into afterburner and threw the plane into a left arc, popping chaff as I looked through the canopy to figure out where the hell the missile came from.

There was a plume streaking toward me from under the carrier. That's right, there had been six of them, not five. One of them hid from me before. I checked the radar, still two contacts, those missiles must have splashed the other guy.

Two enemy fighters, and two missiles left, I could do this, if I didn't get shot down. I pushed the stick forward and dove for the deck, streaking vapor trails with the high-G maneuver as the missile tried to track on my arcing trajectory.

I keyed up my mic on guard as I screamed towards the ocean. "You think you can kill me? I was born to fight, you'd better know how!" I yelled into the radio as I pulled out of my dive and leveled off on the deck, still in my turn as the missile overshot.

I held the turn and rolled level to start climbing back up towards the fight, the two phantoms that were left were bearing down on me. Rookie pilots, trying to catch me on the deck. If they were in something made this century they might have had a chance, but Phantoms didn't have the juice to hang with a Viper Zero.

I mad-dogged my remaining pair of missiles in their direction and switched over to the cannon as they broke at one hundred eight out from one another, the missiles tracked left, and I yawed to the right to slide in on his tail.

The phantom had enough engine to leave me behind, but he had lost too much of his energy in that evasive turn, and I slid right up behind him and unleashed the cannon into his back, watched as his engines started to shoot fire and then the air-frame broke up around him. No seat, no chute.

Those other guys were the lucky ones.

I snap-rolled to my left and pulled through a high speed turn to check my six, looking for any sign of the other fighter. The only thing I saw was a parachute and a rapidly descending ball of fire and scrap metal.

I pulled through the turn and lined up on the carrier, it had slowed considerably and I noticed that we were actually pretty close to the shoreline, the fight had taken us more or less the rest of the way to Japan.

I slipped into position a couple hundred feet off the aft of the carrier, the cargo bay door was closed. I keyed up my mic, "Pegasus Five-Five-Niner, this is Iris, I've got a cannon pointed at you, and since you're not shooting back I'd guess that means your anti missile batteries are all out of bullets. I'd like to discuss terms of surrender."

I waited for a long, silent moment, and then the cargo bay started to open up. Were they planning on giving me a free shot into the bay? Fine by me if that's the game they wanted to play.

"Iris, this is hmm, how about 'Rose'? I think you're right, it is time to discuss terms of surrender."

That voice, the phantom pilot from before? That woman…

The cargo bay finished opening and the interior lights turned on, standing on the edge of the door was a red haired woman.

She had a gun.

It was pointed at Misato's head.

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 15:
Won't Back Down​

The tightness in my chest, the acrid sting of the bile rising in my throat, the blood rushing in my ears. My hand was tight on the stick and my eyes wide. I should have expected something like this to happen, did I think she was going to be able to take them all on?

Actually, why hadn't I been thinking about her until now? Or Asuka? They were in trouble and--

"Are you paying attention?"

My hand clenched down on the control stick and I had to fight the urge to fire the cannon. Misato was in front of me, and this… this 'Rose', who the hell did she think she was? This angry monster deep inside my clawing at my insides, trying to get out. This fury I was feeling, and she was feeding into it.

No, I had to calm down a little bit. If she pulled that trigger I'd paint the cargo bay red. All the people I'd killed today, what's a few more?

I took a deep breathe and keyed up, "you said that maybe there was hope for me yet, didn't you? That was you flying the phantom over California wasn't it?"

"So you remember me. Guess I left an impression huh? Good work not getting shot down by the way. You don't disappoint do you 'Iris' mmm?" she asked me in a maddeningly infuriating conversational tone.

Needling huh? Fine, I could handle that, I didn't want to handle it, but I could. I nudged the throttle ever so slightly, shifting from keeping pace to slowly closing range. Hopefully she wouldn't notice. "I remember. I also remember what you said. Guess you weren't willing to give me the chance to prove that, huh."

There was a delay from the other end of the call, I could hear some chatter, background noise. They'd kept their mic keyed up for some reason. Maybe she was trying to find something to say. It was a little reassuring to know that she hadn't had everything planned out at least.

But, on balance, that really wasn't enough.

"I think you lost the right to prove yourself when you killed my people," she replied simply. There was an edge in her voice, she didn't like the way the conversation was going, perhaps? Then again, she might have been pissed off about the loss of her jets.

I couldn't feel sorry for her, my blood was still boiling.

I shook my head and tightened my grip on the throttle and stick. "I think you lost the moral high-ground when you started taking hostages and killing people. Let me talk to Misato, prove that's actually her you've got a gun pointed at!"

What was the terminal velocity of a human being again? They didn't have Asuka, I could see that. As far as hostage went Asuka would have been the superior hostage, Nerv would care a whole lot less about Misato than they would care about a pilot, so that meant they didn't have her.

I looked down under the cargo deck at the big red feet, had she locked herself in unit two? She wasn't stupid, she wouldn't try to break free while there were still friendlies on-board… but then most of them probably were dead already.

Was she listening?

"Rei. I'm here, it's Misato." she sounded calm, I would have been surprised, but… she was definitely a professional, wasn't she? Calmer than I would have been in her shoes. Calmer than I was in my shoes for that matter.

"Misato? Are you okay? Where's Asuka?" I asked, couldn't keep the worried tone out of my voice, but then, who could?

"That's enough. You confirmed that we have her, now you will hear our demands," Rose came back onto the channel. That edge was definitely in her voice. Then again, she hadn't made me happy either.

I griped the throttle tightly in my hand and rolled it forward a little, rapidly closing the distance between us before I pulled it back. I was starting to feel the buffeting from the carrier, I probably couldn't hold the position long. Something inside of me had snapped, that rage monster finally broke free and I couldn't hold it back.

Maybe I just didn't want to hold it back.

"You don't seem to appreciate how this works!" I screamed into the radio as I rolled the targeting selector over to bore-sight, "I am the one with a twenty millimeter auto-cannon. I am the one who can kill every single one of you if I wanted to. Put her back on the fucking radio!"

I could see the woman tense up, at this range I could even see her face clearly, she brought the radio up to her mouth to say something, I saw her gun waver. Whatever she meant to say, I never got the chance to hear.

Misato took the distraction to swat at the gun in the woman's hand with her left arm, followed by a right hook to the side of her face. Both the gun and the radio went clattering to the ground. The woman hit the deck, stunned, and Misato ran for the radio.

And my shot still wasn't clear.

My hands went slick on the controls, whatever happened next, I had no doubts that it wasn't going to be clean. I heard the crackle of the radio and the sounds of gunfire from the carrier, they were shooting at her, but she'd managed to take cover behind an equipment crate.

"Rei, listen. The crew is dead, they shot Asuka when she was trying to escape. I don't know where she is, but they didn't catch her. She's probably locked herself in Unit Two, but she can't do anything without damaging the plane," she explained to me over the radio. It didn't make me feel better. Asuka? Shot?

"Misato, listen--"

"Rei, send it." She cut me off. One order, a simple order. She knew what she was asking. And then she tensed up, my blood ran cold, she couldn't have been thinking it, could she? But then, she knew I wouldn't pull the trigger if she was still in the line of fire.

She jumped and slid off the end of the ramp. I fired the cannon and stepped into the rudder, sprayed fire throughout the cargo bay. I only had a few seconds of fire left, and then the cannon ran dry. I didn't bother to even look at the handiwork, I knew the next step I had to take.

I snapped the stick to the left and chopped throttle back, rolled over onto my back and looked up through the canopy, trying to find… there she was. One shot at this, I only hoped she still had her radio. I threw out the air brakes and ripped the canopy jettison handle. The air slammed into my faceplate and the sound was incredible, but I had focus, I had purpose. I hauled back on the stick and brought the jet through a high G split-S maneuver, shedding airspeed and altitude. I never took my eye off her, at a time like this? No, I might never let her out of my sight again.

"Misato, get ready!" I yelled into the radio, I don't know if she could hear me, but… one shot. Flaps out, come on, come on! The whole airframe was shaking and shuddering from the maneuver, ten meters, five.

This was going to hurt, better than being dead.

I tapped the stick back and felt the impact behind me, I followed through till level. My canopy was gone, the mirror was gone, I could only hope…

I felt the hand brush against my shoulder, I had her. I keyed back up on guard, "Asuka, if you're listening, I have Misato. Repeat, I have Misato. Get out of there."

The voice on the other end of the link was rough, strained. Pissed. "Well, you gotta die of something. Unit Two activating."

There was a long pause, I looked up at the carrier, still flying away, even though the cargo hold seemed to be on fire. Then, there was a twitch in one of unit two's legs, and I watched as the metal aero-shell surrounding it started to break apart. First a few small shards, then the larger panels caught the airstream and ripped away.

A series of flashes erupted from between the shell and the carrier and in an instant unit two was free falling, I guess they prioritized their own survival over keeping unit two.

The hand that snapped up and ripped through the wing root on the way down, however, ruined any chances they had of getting away. The carrier started to shudder as the wing flexed violently, and then started to tear away in a shower of sparks and fire.

"Unit Two… is away…." I heard back through the radio. She sounded like hell, probably felt like it too.

I reached up to grab onto the hand on my shoulder, it felt warm, then… sticky? I looked over, blood, a lot of blood, she was hurt. Oh no.

Everything I'd just tried to do, it all came down to… had I failed? Was that it, what it over? No, no it couldn't be over because I wouldn't let it. If she died now… my father's plans would look tame compared to what I'd--

I looked out the forward section of the canopy, the only part still attached, where the hell was I? I wasn't that familiar with the area, I was near the coast, but that didn't help me much!

"Mayday, mayday, mayday, Cylon One-Three declaring an emergency, I have no canopy and a wounded passenger, requesting vectors for nearest landing site. I… do not know my location, altitude is four five zero zero zero and falling, bearing one eight zero. Please advise!" I called out as I pushed the stick forward. She wouldn't have much air up here, I had to get lower, a lot lower.

I pulled flaps in and put the aircraft into a slip, shedding altitude without gaining airspeed. I couldn't risk having her fall out. I caught her, sure, but I might have killed her in the process, I couldn't live with that.

A flash of red and white blurred past the cockpit, unit two was flying towards the coast, keeping pace off my right side, though her glide slope was a lot less aggressive than mine; she was wearing some kind of jet pack. They'd must have anticipated an air launch. I might have been better off asking her to catch Misato instead of me. Hindsight was like that though.

"Cylon One-Three, this is Kitty Hawk, we have you on radar. Ikari, is that you? We show you as twenty-five nautical miles north of Yokosuka. Come right to one eight five."

"Roger, this is Ikari. Coming right to one eight five and descending through thirty five thousand. What condition is the flight deck? When I left you guys it wasn't suitable for landing." I called back as I stepped into the rudder. Kitty Hawk would have doctors, surgeons. I could get her help there, quicker than a landing strip on shore anyway.

"Deck is clear and aligned for a straight in landing. Medical personnel are standing by."

"Roger," I called back, then reached up and squeezed her hand, I had to make sure she was alive, felt her squeeze back. I had time, I could make sure she lived. I had to.

If they were that close, why the hell didn't they launch an intercept when I was shooting down those phantoms? Why didn't they do anything when those people were holding Misato hostage? I wanted answers, needed them, but I had no illusions that I'd get them.

No, after all this I had the strangest feeling that any power I held would be taken away from me, and more questions asked than I had answers for. It didn't matter, I had to just this one more thing and then everything would be alright.

The buffeting started to get worse as we descended into thicker air, the jet wasn't meant to be flown topless, that much was certain. The cold air might have been doing as much damage as the lack of oxygen, so I didn't have a choice, I had to bring us down quickly.

Red smoke on the horizon, over the water, not inland. She was sailing? We hadn't been gone that long, what the hell would make them put back to sea so quickly?

I eased the tick forward and backed off the throttle, I had to drop faster, get us under ten thousand. Twenty five and falling, still damn cold. The carrier was getting closer though, I could see it ahead, she was kicking up a hell of a wake, where was she trying to go in such a hurry?

Or maybe they were trying to make the landing easier on me.

Ten thousand, ninety-five hundred; the air was getting warmer. The grip was still on my shoulder, she was still awake, still with me. Come on Misato, don't let go now, we're almost through this.

Six nautical miles out, I put the landing gear selector down and put in a few degrees of flaps, eased the throttle forward to compensate for the drag as we slowed closer to landing speed. I opened up the dump valve and started dropping fuel. I had one chance at the landing, I wouldn't be able to put power on quickly enough to get back in the air if I missed the wire, not without throwing Misato out. I had one shot, I had to make it stick.

"Cylon One-Three, we have you at one nautical mile. Deck is clear."

I shook my head and focused on the landing lights on the carrier, "One-three has the ball."

"Roger ball."

I slapped my hand down on the arrestor hook switch and brought the stick back, gently. Lined up, just a little further. I chopped throttle and pushed the flaps to full down. The controls started to loosen up, airspeed was falling, one chance at this, right.

I closed the fuel dump and watched the deck, just a few hundred yards. I threw the air-brakes out to full and flared for touchdown. I held my breath, three, two, one. The jet jolted and I cut throttle to idle. And locked up the wheel brakes.

There was a delay that felt like an eternity, and then the jet lurched to a stop, I'd caught the wire. Good. I cut fuel to the engines and started unbuckling my harness "Cylon One-Three, landed. Signing off."

I slapped down the main power disconnect and threw my helmet off. There were crewmen running across the deck, but they weren't my concern. I stood up in my seat and turned around, I had to know. Despite the bile in my throat, the sickness in my gut, that feeling of hopelessness, I had to know. I had to know it was worth it, I had to know I'd done something. I had to know I'd done the right thing.

It was bad.

 

[Jim Starluck]

Well, that's a Charlie Foxtrot if ever there was one.

 

[nobodez]

Excellent chapters, I agree with Jim Starluck, this was quite the CF, but hey, at least Rei has kept he record of one combat encounter per flight.