Kaiju Slaying For Death And Profit Ch 33
Good morning y'all.
Thank you for your patience, and your words of encouragement. The dog's bloodwork is even further improved, and she's back to bothering me every time I try to write.
All is right in the world.
This past week was...not good. I got next to no writing done, and what little writing I got done I had to discard because it wasn't working.
Yesterday, I spent the better part of six hours trying to write this chapter, and barely managed six hundred words. So I discarded that and tried a different approach, and slammed 1200 words out in like, an hour.
It be like that sometimes.
On the other hand, I've had this fight percolating my brain for a few weeks, so it was pretty smooth once I settled on a direction.
I do worry that it'll come across as rushed, as, well, it was, normally I write enough during the week and then the weekend is finishing and editing, but this past week certainly did not allow for that. Let me know how I did in a comment, if it pleases you.
Here is chapter, hope you enjoy.
=][=
“Stupid, fuckin’, piece of, bullshit, fuck!” I growled as I used Unit 01 to wrestle against the Angel.
[Unit 00 is offline! Attempting to restart its systems!]
[Unit 04’s corruption levels falling! Its corrupted flesh is sloughing off!]
[Unit 01’s cells are being corrupted! It’s currently at point two percent!]
I could feel something wriggling inside my hands as I pushed against the long glowing body of the Angel, it felt like a snake, a warm, slick rope of sinew and muscle that wriggled in my grip as it tried to burrow into my flesh. I could see veiny growths spreading out from the palms of my plug suit’s gloves. I could feel it assaulting my mind through the contact, trying to burrow into my memories, into what made me ‘me.’
With a roar, I swung it like a whip, striking it against the ground, carving deep furrows into the dirt, causing localized seismic events that demolished a few of the buildings in the outskirts of Tokyo-3.
[Unit 04 is moving toward Unit 01!]
[The corruption in Unit 01 has reached one percent!]
[Unit 00 is completely inert! Dispatch retrieval teams and rescue the Pilot! Life-support will fail soon!]
[Shinji! Shinji can you move it away from the city!?]
I swung the Angel like a demented child with a new toy as I stumbled away from the downed Evangelions. I couldn’t spare the attention to listen to the reports in detail, but I’d heard something about extracting Rei, which meant they were going to need space because they didn’t have a whole-ass Evangelion to do it with.
“Conniving! Piece of! Shitting! Fuck!” I continued to shout, each curse punctuating a slam of the Angel against the ground, with each second that passed, the veiny growths in my suit and on Unit 01’s body spread ever father, it had already grown past my elbows, and it felt disgusting in the extreme.
[Retrieval teams dispatched! ETA two minutes!]
[Corruption of Unit 01’s cells has passed five percent!]
[Unit 04 starting to suffer cardiac arrest!]
The Angel undulated, folding into itself, wrenching in my grip and nearly throwing me off my feet. Its other end came around in a long arc, seemingly slow only due to its size as I could see a vapor cone forming around its tip as it swung in a wide arc toward me.
I let go of the side I was holding with one hand, tearing it away and leaving a large chunk of the Evangelion’s gauntlet stuck to it as I threw the freed hand to the side and called forth an AT field, the other end of the Angel slammed against it, a titanic thunderclap cracking on the heels of the seemingly silent strike.
The end I was holding wriggled harder, I did what I could to crush it in my grip even as the other end tried to bore through the AT field.
[Unit 01’s Corruption Index is spiking!]
[The Angel’s AT field is corroding Unit 01’s!]
[Evangelion rated ax is on its way! ETA one minute!]
The AT field collapsed, I grabbed for the Angel as it dove forward, the Evangelion’s grasping fingers failing to gain purchase as it plowed through the hastily assembled secondary AT field I threw up at the last second before it slammed into the Evangelion’s chest. I grunted as my vision whited out in pain.
I gasped awake, sitting up with a growl and reading to swing at…the air in front of me at the NERV infirmary?
“Oh, you’re awake.” Rei said to my left, she smiled softly. “I’m glad.”
I blinked.
Twice.
“Uhh…Rei?” I asked tentatively.
“Yes Shinji?” Rei answered.
Now, how to go about this…“I’m…I’m gonna make a few guesses, you let me know how well I do. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“I lost against the Angel?” I asked.
“You were definitely not doing very well.” Rei answered.
“And, I’m guessing Unit 01 went berserk?” I asked.
“Yes, it scared several people very badly.” Rei answered.
“And Unit 01 killed the Angel?” I asked.
“Yes.” She said.
“How!?”
“Well, there was a lot of screaming, but it tore the Angel apart one piece at a time until it found the core.” Rei said. “After that, it crushed it. Ritsuko is very angry, she wanted it as a sample.”
Of course she would. “Well, tough shit.”
“Indeed.”
“Anything else happen after I blacked out?”
Rei shook her head. “I got rescued, Unit 00 is heavily damaged, when you tore the Angel away from it, it damaged the connective cavity in the spine. It’ll be a while before Unit 00 is repaired.”
“Right right…say, whatever happened to Gendo?” I asked. “I seem to recall something about him getting shot?”
“It was the Seekers of Revelation.” Rei said as she fiddled with her flip phone. “A last-ditch effort to sabotage NERV and the fight against the Angels.”
“Well goodie. Did he die?” I asked.
“No, he’s at a specialist hospital in Tokyo-3” Rei said.
“Hmm.” I lay back, feeling of two minds. On the one hand, fuck Gendo, on the other hand, I wanted him to live a good long life so he could swallow the bitter pill of my vengeance. I would hold his grandchild in front of him and let that child know he was the fucking boogie man.
On the other, other hand, a ruthlessly repressed part of me did actually want the man’s praise and companionship. Because human instincts and absorbed baggage from the personality matrix, I guess.
On the other, other, other hand. The guy was good at paperwork, and him being incapacitated even for a few days would cause issues for me as NERV would work at reduced efficiency.
“Mr. Shinji!”
I looked up at the teary gasp, only to see Maya mid-flight as she threw herself at me.
Her impact, which under normal circumstances I would barely even register, hurt my bruised ribs a lot even if it didn’t knock the wind out of me.
“Mr. Shinji! Mr. Shinji! Mr. Shinji!” Maya repeated, rubbing her face against the medical gown on my chest.
“Ow.” I said reasonably.
“I was so worried!” Maya wept. The crybaby.
“I told you, I would be fine.” I said, only to pause as I felt shifting to my side. Turning, I saw that Rei was crawling onto the bed, making the small bed go from intimate to uncomfortably crowded. “And what are you doing?”
Rei looked me in the eye and shrugged. “I feel left out.”
Well…can’t argue with that.
=][=
I walked through NERV, getting the occasional nod from the people working there, until I reached the vaunted office of Bottle Blonde herself.
“There you are.” She said with a testy sigh. “Have you any idea how much I worried?”
I grunted noncommittally, causing Maya to lightly elbow me on the side with a whispered. “Be nice!”
Which, if that cinnamon bun of a woman was saying it, I was probably being a bit too much of a dick.
“You need to be more careful, Shinji.” The Blonde Wonder attempted to chastise me as she checked my vitals. “A lot depends on your ability to pilot.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I said dismissively. “Look, at least nobody died right?”
“The assailant, and your father got shot.”
“Nobody important died, right?”
“A few people who were unable to evacuate on time, they sheltered in place and died when the buildings collapsed on top of them, after Unit 01 rampaged through the outskirts of the city after it killed the Angel.”
Shit. That actually did make me feel pretty bad.
“I understand that it’s the first time it’s happened, frankly it’s a miracle that you have kept such tight control of the Eva so far.” Ritsuko said as she shone a light into my eye. “But you cannot allow what happened today to happen again. We cannot be certain that if the Eva goes berserk again, it won’t happen when the streets and buildings are crowded.”
“Fuckin’ fine, I wasn’t exactly intending that to happen, fuck’s sakes.” I grumbled.
“I understand, I do. But that doesn’t change the facts; your failure caused several hundred million yen in damages.” Ritsuko pressed. “You must be better. Not to mention, your lack of care cost people their lives.”
“Alright, alright, get off my back!” I huffed, standing up and walking off in a huff. Maybe I could catch up to Maya, wherever she went.
Or Rei, I had been looking for out of the way nooks and crannies I could maybe relieve some stress with them around NERV HQ. Yeah stupid, but the thrill!
That, and I could just set a room in my mansion to look like a broom closet and teleport us there for some fun, all of the thrill, none of the danger.
“Hey Shinji.” Said an older man I hadn’t met, acting like he thought he looked slick by leaning against the wall. Wait, wasn’t he Misato’s boyfriend?
I blinked. Vaguely recalling he was a triple agent or something. “The fuck you want?”
He smirked. “How much more time are you going to waste?”
I scowled. “The hell you mean?”
He levered himself forward with a sigh. “I mean what I said, how much longer will you stand there, wasting time.”
“Bitch I just finished fighting an Angel!” I snarled, instantly disliking him. “Maybe I deserve some fuckin’ R&R!”
“Wow, this is pretty awful.”
I blinked and turned to see Kaworu, when had he gotten there? “What?”
“I mean, how do you live like this?” He asked, staring at his hands as he opened and closed them. He had a wide smile on his face, his eyes watery, as if he were about to cry. “I’m finally starting to understand. How do you live like this? It’s horrible.”
“That’s humanity for you.” Kaji said. “You gotta learn to take the good with the bad.”
“It truly is awful.” Kaworu said, looking up. “But…But now that I’ve glimpsed it, I don’t think I could give it up. Ever. It’s so…colorful.”
“The fuck are you two going on about?” I snarled.
Kaji sighed. “Maybe my friend behind you can make you understand.”
I blinked and turned around, and saw me, wearing the DOOM Marine’s armor. “What?”
‘I’ stepped forward, ‘my’ armored gauntlets darting out and wrapping around my neck. ‘I’ glared into my eyes through ‘my’ visor and snarled. “Wake up idiot!”
I slammed awake, the plug stank of blood, the plug suit was crisscrossed in tumorous veins, I could feel them wriggling beneath my skin. Through the plug’s screens, I could see Unit 04, it had crawled the rest of the way to me and was pulling on the Angel as best it could.
I felt a familiar rage surge up from the Evangelion.
It was not the Evangelion’s.
The rage sank into me, nurtured me, awoke me, strengthened me.
No, the rage fed my own, my own fed it, it took my rage and fed it back to me in return, a positive feedback spiral that made my sight turn red as all I could hear was drowned out by a howl that shook me to my marrow.
I cracked the welds on my helmet, allowing me to voice my rage as I grabbed hold of the intruder who had awoken me, and tore it out of my chest in a geyser of blood and viscera.
My blood. My viscera.
I grabbed the other end of the adversary, of the monster, of the rapist. And tore it out of my neck, my scream falling away into a sanguine gurgle.
The other Evangelion, the white one, on the floor, it was convulsing, incapable of processing the emotions it leeched from me.
I stepped forward and kicked it with such savagery the shockwave uprooted trees, sending it tumbling away. With that distraction removed I slammed the interloper to the floor and drove my foot down onto it. I would crush it, stomp on it until naught remained of it but a red-stained meat paste.
It wriggled, fighting to enter me, violate me, to sink into me and become me. I wrapped it around my arm so I could more securely hold it as I stomped.
It wasn’t afraid. It was eager. Every contact brought it joy, every stomp brought it rapture. It confused my wrath for affection.
I found this vexing.
My flesh writhed beneath my restraints, seeking to expand, to take a form more befitting of me. But the restraints held as I wrung and crushed and crunched the vile thing.
I screamed my frustration as no matter what I did, no matter how much blood both red and orange I wrung from the creature, it would not die! It would not die!
No matter how much of its body I turned into paste, it regenerated. No matter how many chunks of it I amputated, it regenerated. No matter how ripped and tore and wrung and crunched, it regenerated!
The Other whispered in my ear.
I listened to her whisper.
She offered me a way to kill this creature, in a way that it would stay dead.
I followed her direction, pulling the glowing rope of tightly coiled muscle. I ignored the pain and the burning its contact caused, I ignored the way my skin crawled beneath my restraints, the feeling of something crushing my chest, my mind was inviolable as it could not approach thanks to my anger pushing it out, and that was all that mattered.
I felt it, the hard spot, a sphere, smaller than its kin, but just as potent.
More potent, it had evolved, made it more efficient, this is why it could hide it within itself.
But I found it.
Before I could crush it, the Other usurped use of my arms and mouth. She brought it up, bit into it, tore the sphere out and swallowed it whole.
The act of cannibalism made me pause.
The creature howled, rapturous and despondent. Happy that a part of it would forevermore be within me, weeping that it could not become one with me.
As it whimpered its last, its body lost its luster, becoming dim as it crashed to the ground.
I felt that which was its core settle within me, a star, contentedly leashed, waiting for the call to flood my body with warmth and power.
The Other released it from its leash.
Pain.
I howled as plasma flooded my veins, molten steel churned in my stomach, my body expanded, the restraints cracking as my power exploded out of my skin.
‘And with that.’ She whispered. ‘All is ready.’
The pain cut out, the fire extinguished, my rage, the only thing that had kept me awake, guttered out like a flame in a vacuum.
She held me, whispered to me, told me she was proud of me. She sang a lullaby and coaxed me back into the place I had been awoken from.
I didn’t want to, I was finally awake, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open.
I closed my eyes.
I slammed back into the chair, choking, tears falling freely from my eyes as I hyperventilated.
[Synchronization falling!] I heard Maya say. [Nine hundred, five hundred, two hundred, sixty, twelve, synchronization has fallen to the single digits!]
[Ma’am, the umbilical has been disconnected for six minutes!] Said rocker-boy, I was going to have to learn his name sometime. What did NERV have against nametags anyway? [But Unit 01 still hasn’t shut down!]
[Ma’am! I’m reading the Pilot’s vitals!] Maya said with surprise and relief. [He seems unharmed!]
I contemplated talking, checking in, doing anything of the many things I was supposed to do in this situation.
Instead, I hit the emergency plug release button, making Unit 01 fall into slumber and promptly passed out.
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