Log inKaiju Slaying For Death And Profit Ch 47
Good morning! As promised yesterday! Chapter!
Forgive the cliffhanger at the end, it's just a good stopping point. XD
I tried pushing forward a bit more but it really would need to get exceedingly long so it's best to put a stop to it here.
I shall attempt to push forward and finish up ch 48! But for now, have chapter, hope you enjoy, lemme know your thoughts.
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“Ma’am, sector thirty-two has been successfully evacuated!” Kaede called out.
“Lock it down!” Major Katsuragi called out. “Consolidate our forces and tighten our defensive perimeter!”
“Ma’am!” Kaede acknowledged before turning to relay her orders.
“Any word on beating them back from the infirmary?” Major Katsuragi demanded.
“The firefight is ongoing.” Hana answered. “Though three powered armored individuals are making their way there, presumably to offer support.”
“Gee, if only we had someone who could act as a liaison to communicate with these allies.” Major Katsuragi said acidly.
“Such would—”
“Beyond the remit of your station I know.” Major Katsuragi growled. “Just what can you do to help, dammit!?”
“I have provided refreshments.” Virgo said, not turning to look at Major Katsuragi as she answered.
“Who is in command of your forces?” Vice-director Fuyutsuki asked. “Who is coordinating this effort?”
“Those girls are now adequate maids.” Virgo answered. “I trust them to take care of their duties without micromanagement.”
Major Katsuragi looked like she was about to say something very impolite but was preempted by Hana. “Enemy forces have been pushed back from the infirmary! Two squads of Judas mercenaries are harvesting it for medical supplies.”
“Good, keep an eye out on enemy movements and recall them when you think pertinent, we need those supplies too much to let them get bogged down in a firefight.”
“Ma’am.”
Maya continued monitoring Units 02 and 04, using the Plugs’ life support functions to stave off Pilot fatigue as best she could. Nonetheless, both Units were slowly and steadily racking up damage, no matter how many times they rendered the enemy Evangelion combat ineffective. Even worse, the enemy pilots were improving the longer the fight went on, by the stiffness of their movements, Maya would guess that, on average, their synchronization when the battle began had been around eight or nine percent, whereas currently she would put it around twelve or thirteen.
“No, they’re hardened against intrusion by the Magi.” Ritsuko explained to Major Kasuragi, Maya chastised herself as she’d missed the start of their discussion. “I suspect that, when they couldn’t use the other Magi to hack ours, they’re now being used exclusively to guard the enemy Eva’s systems. We could crack through it, but I’ll have to add a port through our firewall to do it, and I’ll remind you we have five Magi systems ready to pounce at the slightest chink in our armor.”
“Dammit all.” Major Katsuragi muttered. “Any idea where their second core might be?”
Ritsuko sighed, took off her glasses, and rubbed her eyes. “The Dual Core Evangelion program was still in its prototype state. There must have been parallel developmental research being done to miniaturize the S2 drive. Depending on how small it is? It could be anywhere.”
“We need to do something to even the field!” Major Katsuragi growled. “We can’t just continue to defend!”
Maya’s console beeped and her heart soared. “Ma’am! Unit 01 has activated!”
As the mood in the Control Room lifted, Makoto called out. “We’re reading a massive AT field, we haven’t had readings like this since the Fifteenth!”
Maya’s heart dropped. “Is it an Angel?”
Makoto shook his head. “Pattern Red! It’s human!”
A human AT field? One powerful enough to be measured by their instruments?
“Rei?” She murmured. Not knowing how she knew that it was her quiet lover, but she knew it to be true.
“Someone get me a link with Unit 01!” Major Katsuragi demanded.
“We’re being jammed!” Hana called out. “We cannot raise anyone without a direct landline connection!”
“Unit 01 has entered the maglev and is descending toward Central Dogma!” Kaede called out.
“What!?” Major Katsuragi snapped. “What about the source of the AT field!?”
“It’s descending with it!”
Maya furrowed her brows. Why would Mister Shinji head down to Central Dogma, rather than join the fight against the invading Eva?
“Close every gate on the maglev, we can’t let him reach Terminal Dogma!” Major Katsuragi called out. “Hyuga! Arm every N2 cluster charge along the maglev and Terminal Dogma!”
“But ma’am, that will—” Aoba began.
“Just do it!” Major Katsuragi snapped.
Maya stood up. “Ma’am, I believe that is a rash decision.”
“Rash or not, it’s what we’re doing.” Major Katsuragi said.
“Makoto, I’m going to need you to stop.” Kaede said, stepping out of the lift bringing her to the Central Command tower.
Major Katsuragi glared. “Return to your station.”
“Unit 01 has passed level four!” Hana called out.
“Ma’am, Shinji has never let us down.” Kaede said, stepping out of the lift. “He has more than earned our trust.”
“I can think of a few times that he gave me reasons to doubt his judgement.” Major Katsuragi ground out. “Now, I will not say this again. Return. To. Your. Post. Hyuga, arm those N2 mines.”
Kaede drew her service weapon and aimed it at Makoto. “Makoto, I need you to stop.”
Major Katsuragi’s pistol was out and aimed at Maya’s friend in an instant. “Stand. Down.”
One of the nearby guards aimed his rifle at Major Katsuragi, prompting his partner to aim his rifle at his erstwhile companion. What followed was a long series of sounds; chairs scraping, clothing rustling, and many loud clicks as weapons were readied and safeties removed. Before Maya’s disbelieving eyes, just about everyone in the Control Room had drawn a weapon and was aiming it at people they’d worked beside for years.
“What are you all doing!?” Vide-director Fuyutsuki screamed. “Stop this instant!”
“I don’t know what lunacy prompted this.” Major Katsuragi ground out. “But I will not allow the big 3.0 to hit. I don’t care what I need to do or who stands in my way.”
“Shinji will not allow the Third Impact to happen.” Kaede said, her aim not wavering from Makoto’s head.
“Shinji was quite willing to let us all die rather than fight, purely to spite his father.” Katsuragi said. “Forgive me if I refuse to put my trust on so fickle and petty a savior.”
Moving slowly, Maya tried to insert herself between them but was unable to due to Virgo stopping her. “Hey, maybe let’s all calm down? There’s definitely a logical explanation for this.”
Katsuragi scoffed. “You seriously expect me to believe your judgement is somehow uncompromised, Ibuki?”
Maya felt her face color and swallowed her first few responses to that. “Be that as it may. This is not the time for us to kill each other. There are enough forces arrayed against us as it is.”
Katsuragi hesitated.
“Unit 01 has reached the final gate!” Hana called out, tension in the control room ratcheting up. “The gate ignored all commands and has opened!”
A wounded janitor drew a pistol and shot a guard.
The following events happened so quickly that Maya had trouble parsing them out as individual actions.
The guards up at the Central Command tower both fired. Makoto turned for his station, working frantically at the keyboard and was subsequently shot in the back of the head by Kaede. Aoba dove under his desk as Katsuragi staggered back, Ritsuko fell in a spray of blood. Katsuragi opened fire, and Virgo was suddenly there, her head moving slightly as the bullet pinged off her helmet.
The guard that was still standing turned toward her, only to be shot in the neck by Kaede, he gagged and staggered back and fell over the short wall.
All through that, there was a thunderous rattle of gunfire as contagious fire caused a number of isolated firefights, blood and grey matter spraying through the Command Center.
Virgo walked toward Katsuragi, stepping into her line of fire at every pull of the woman’s trigger, her armor taking every shot without so much as a scratch, until she gently took the weapon away from the bleeding woman.
It seemed to last an eternity, but in truth it was only a few seconds. In those few seconds, several dozen of the world’s most educated people had lost their lives, more were writhing and clutching at horrible wounds. Industry leading experts leaking their blood onto the floor.
Kaede rushed to Hyuga’s station, dragged his body aside and very carefully undid the frightening progress the man had done toward arming enough N2 mines to turn all of NERV and most of Tokyo-3 to vapor and glass.
Mechanically, Maya walked to Ritsuko, checked that the woman was still alive if unconscious, grabbed the blood-spattered first aid kit beneath Hyuga’s station, and pressed gauze into Ritsuko’s wounds.
“The hell are you doing?” Katsuragi asked, her voice pained as Virgo saw to her wounds with quick, efficient movements.
“Merely my duty as the Young Master’s head maid.” Virgo said.
“Goddammit all.” Katsuragi growled but allowed herself to be treated. Once her wounds were expertly seen to, Virgo stepped over and took over treating Ritsuko, who started to come to.
“You are both lucky.” Virgo said. “The shots went straight through, though you’ll require surgery to replace a couple meters of your intestines, you should be fine.”
“The Final Safety has been disengaged!” Hana called out, looking over, Maya saw that her friend was working her station while a medic saw to a huge bloodstain in her thigh. “Heaven’s doors have opened! Unit 01 has entered Terminal Dogma!”
Katsuragi laughed, the mocking sound made Maya’s hackles rise.
“I sincerely hope we are still alive tomorrow for you to tell me ‘I told you so.’” Katsuragi said, baring her teeth in something that was certainly not a smile.
“We will.” Kaede said with complete conviction. “Shinji would never do this if he did not have a plan.”
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“Hey! Hey this is not the plan! This is not the plan!” I screamed into the radio, slamming my fist against the side of the plug in the direction of the Control Room, all in a futile attempt to be heard. “Close the gates! Blow the whole thing sky fucking high!”
As Rei levitated us down the same shaft where I’d fought Kaworu’s puppeted Evas, there went that hope of someone being able to do something to stop this insanity.
I closed my eyes, sighed, and resolved myself not to get that huge chunk of my soul trapped in the Eva back. I buckled my fuckle and brought up the Catalog. I had to either purchase a power that would let me halt this level of crazy, or purchase someone that could do the same.
The Plug suddenly smelled very strongly of Rei, I could all but feel her warmth and the satin softness of her skin pressed against my back as the Catalog flickered and I lost live access. The error message said something about localized interference and advised me to leave the effective area of the local reality anchor for the Catalog to resume service.
…
“FUCK!” I screamed. “Rei! Rei I am telling you! Stop! REI!”
As we floated over the great field of salt and neared the final gates, I grit my teeth and synchronized with the me inside the Eva. Strength surged in our limbs and with a desperate heave we flared out AT field, pouring everything we could in an attempt to shatter the shackles placed on us.
Rei smiled and patted our hand consolingly as a Will that had shattered through the barriers of every Son of Adam that had ever stood against us, failed to make Rei’s Will budge.
The final doors opened, bringing us into a large black chamber, gigantic for a normal human, but cramped for an Evangelion. Nailed to a cross directly opposite us was a stark white body, its proportions wrong, its arms were too long, its legs too short and lumpy, its belly was swollen, were it a normal woman it would be obvious that she was at most days away from giving birth. It hung suspended above a lake of LCL, the orange liquid streaming from her body where it had been impaled by spikes.
Rei set us down before the still-living grotesque corpse of Lilith then turned back to look into our eyes. “I know you’re angry, Shinji. It hurts me to disobey you like this but it’s for the best. I know you’ll understand the necessity of this. Eventually.”
With that, she floated forward, our bodies trembled with wrath, panic, and exertion as we did everything we could to rage against the shackles keeping us quiescent. The stark white living corpse of the enslaved god in NERV’s deepest pit absorbed her body instantly, its pillowy flesh immediately starting to bubble, its too-small head began to run like wax, the carved stone mask with seven eyes slid off with the skin as its arms flexed and tore themselves from the nails keeping it suspended. It fell to its knees causing a cascade of its orange blood that washed over our legs.
The ridges of its vertebrae were visible on its skin as if it were emaciated, but those too bubbled and shrank into it, its body morphing into a far more familiar and comely shape. Within seconds its marshmallow arms shrank and gained definition, its swollen belly melted away and firmed, its hips shrinking until they matched her thin waist, its legs gaining tone until they were the familiar muscle with the exact right amount of squish that I’d run my hands over so many times.
The featureless too-small head grew until it matched the narrowing shoulders, strands of stark white hair growing from out of the white bubbling mass as Rei’s face pressed out of the featureless white ‘wax.’
All through this she kept growing. At first the enslaved god had been of a size with us, when its body gained Rei’s proportions it had been head and shoulders above us even as it knelt, now, if it were to stand, Unit 01 might barely reach its knee. Its mind overfilling and spilling out to those around it.
The creature before me was Lilith.
She was Rei.
She was neither.
And both.
She was the true Mother of every species on this world, she had been the one to seed the Earth with the microbes that would eventually claw their way to sentience, then sapience. Overseen by her ruthless eye as she favored not the beautiful, not the strongest, not the fastest or the smartest, and certainly not the kindest. The only ones to gain her ruthless favor were the best and most resilient survivors. Jealously guarding the benefits of the Fruit of Knowledge until this bubbling cauldron of excruciation, ruthlessness, and terror created a paradoxical being that she deemed worthy of its bounty.
And she was a lonely girl, raised in squalor, treated like a disposable tool, kept quiescent through chemicals, mistreated by the jealous urges of one who was supposed to be her caretaker. Content to exist as a tool for another until an angry boy stepped into her life, who introduced her to the wonders of tasty food, who gave her warmth, and care, and love. One who made her feel unique and needed, irreplaceable, one who put his unique life in peril for her safety and comfort. He did all of these things and more to show his love and care for her, and thus for the first time in her existence, made her happy.
Then, with a lurch, She finished assimilating the soulless body of Adam, the embryo She’d torn out of the hand of he who had nearly succeeded in making Her into his quiescent doll. And She was no longer Lillith, or Rei.
Her whole body shuddered, Her soul burning like a star as She assimilated the Fruit of Life, and for the first time in countless millennia, ever since They’d made a Sacrifice and split the Fruits so as to seed the cosmos with Life. A God opened Her eyes.
Their sclera were black, they held dozens of irises, each one a different color, each pupil shrinking and growing as they swarmed within that black void.
Every iris within those impossible eyes shuddered, then as one they all clustered, fighting for a place of prominence as they all sought to focus on us.
On me. I thought, as my link with Unit 01 was forcefully lowered by a Will that wasn’t ours. My head felt overfull, stuffed as if by cotton. An overpressure that pushed my brain against the confines of my skull.
The impossible eyes closed, and when they opened they were the same red orbs I’d lost myself staring into many a night, only writ large. Love, fascination, lust, jealousy, contentment, I was assaulted by Her emotions, my HUD beeped a shrill warning as I felt Mind Defense bend under the strain of this assault.
But it wasn’t an assault, it wasn’t an attack. This was merely the result of Her existence, this was the meekest share of Her thoughts and emotions as they spilled out of Her. The strength of Her soul was such that it abraded my own mind and soul merely by my proximity to Her.
Her lips curved into the same small, genuine smile I had come to love, Her mere attention enough to nearly buckle my mind under the pressure of Her gaze. I could barely force myself to breathe, if I weren’t sitting I’d have fallen over, pressed into the ground by the mere force of Her presence.
Her hands reached out, and carefully cradled Unit 01 in her palms.
She Spoke. It was meant as a reassurance. Her merest utterance carrying such power that time and space buckled around Her as reality attempted to forcefully rewrite itself and me so that Her utterance had always been true, my defenses flaring and nearly failing as my marrow burned. Through Her eyes I saw Her see the first time I had truly arrived in this world, standing in front of a public phone, our eyes meeting for the fleetest moment before the Third, Sachiel, unknowingly nearly succeeded in dooming this Humanity. Crashing nearby to me and severing the tenuous connection with the past that She had managed to secure.
“My Shinji.” She spoke again, Her utterance far more careful this time, merely vibrating the bones and marrow within me with its power. “Mine.”
My body attempted to pass out to spare my mind the agony, but it wasn’t allowed, She didn’t want it to, She wanted me to witness Her and so I would.
She Spoke a third time, Her control slipping in Her excitement. And as jagged knives of reality attempted to coerce me into retroactively making Her words be the Truth. I did the only thing I could and screamed.
