Kaiju Slaying For Death And Profit Ch 40
Sorry for the late post. The week and weekend were...ugh.
Been working on something I think is neat, I'll share later. Also poll for side story! Soon(TM).
...
Gods I'm a mess.
But bitching aside, here is chapter 40, the original plan was for it to go for longer, but I reached what felt like a good stopping point.
Here is chapter, lemme know if you liked.
Or don't, I remain as always, not the boss of you.
=][=
Misato stared angrily at the plain ceiling in the office room they were using for the after-action meeting. She could really use a cigarette and a drink right about then…Or twelve.
Drinks not cigarettes, she wasn’t at the point of smoking a pack a day.
Yet.
Of all days for Ritsuko to decide she wanted to goddamn disappear with the excuse that the Director had her working on something ‘extremely important.’
“What’s the status on the Evas?” She demanded.
“Units 02 and 04 suffered surprisingly little damage when they were incapacitated, their armor of all three Evas is significantly damaged, but our techs have become very good at bending it back into shape and filling in cracks with weld, it’ll be less protective than getting newly cast armor, but it’ll be faster and more budget friendly.” Maya said, looking over the contents of a clipboard. “Unit 04’s abdominals will need to be swapped out, but the line of severed tissue that severed its head was surprisingly clean, we foresee no issues reattaching it. Unit 02’s damage is significantly more extensive, we were able to salvage less than fifteen percent of the tissues of its head, we were entertaining the thought of assembling a fourth Evangelion Unit out of the spare parts we had in stock, but that plan will have to be scrapped. Unit 02’s computer-to-biological interface tissues have already regenerated twenty percent of their mass, we suspect they’ll be fully regenerated within the next few days.”
Seriously, couldn’t they just call them brains?
“Status of the Pilots?” Misato asked.
Another analyst, Kaede, began speaking. “They’re pretty shaken up, Miss Soryu in particular did not take the commandeering of Unit 02 very well. That said, Soryu’s own response to the situation was a lot more mature than I suspected it was going to be. Rei is…well Rei is Rei, she disappeared during the attack, but once she was found she wasn’t hurt and she didn’t miss a beat. Mister Shinji was recovered with minor injuries, he has a few contusions but nothing significant, last I knew of him he was brooding in the infirmary. Miss Horaki seems to be blaming herself for the attack, it would appear that she tried to warn Mister Shinji about the threat, but she was too startled and panicked to explain herself well. Mister Nagisa…”
Misato sighed as Kaede trailed off, she really could use a drink. “Nagisa turned into an Angel.”
“Yes.” Kaede said after a long pause.
“Alright people, how did we miss this?”
“Well ma’am,” Maya said, tapping her clipboard. “Angels share over ninety-eight percent of human DNA. Without the differences in physiology that made it obvious…”
Naomi, one of Maya’s friends if Misato recalled correctly sighed. “I thought he was just a weird kid, who would have thought that Angels came in non-Kaiju forms and sizes.”
“During the entire attack our hands were tied.” Makoto said, his voice trembling with a low growl. “We have at our disposal one of if not the greatest arsenal mankind has ever amassed, and we couldn’t use any of it.”
“We would have blown ourselves to kingdom come if we’d tried.” Kaede murmured. “If Mister Shinji hadn’t stopped him…”
Misato grunted. Truth be told, that entire encounter had been utterly harrowing. When the Angel’s AT field had strengthened to the point that none of their sensors could pierce it, Misato had feared the worst. She’d ordered the N2 cluster mine to be armed and readied for detonation. The only telemetry they’d had left was whether or not The Door remained closed.
Had it been opened, Misato would have detonated the cluster mine. Turning just about everyone in the Control Center into vapor and glass, and causing the deaths of tens of thousands across Tokyo-3.
And she’d have called it a fair trade.
“What really grinds my gears is that Kaworu was killed by a human firearm!” Makoto growled. “I’m not even going to touch on how Shinji found a way to smuggle a shotgun into the Plug! Thank goodness he did. But imagine if we’d had a single man with a sniper rifle who we could have sent in there! Or a squad! Sure, we have a few guards, and we’re issued with sidearms to defend ourselves because we’re a military unit. But if we’d had actual trained personnel whose job it is to deploy and fight…”
Maya sighed. “I get where you’re coming from Makoto, but we simply haven’t needed them to date. Who could have imagined that Mister Nagisa might turn into an Angel? By our prior understanding, being several stories tall was a requirement for being an Angel.”
“And it almost cost us everything!” Makoto groused, refusing to let the point go. “For all our weapons we had nothing we could use! If we’d had one soldier with a rifle, we could have killed the Angel with a thirty-cent bullet!”
“We had no way of knowing an Angel could take a human form.” Naomi said with a scowl.
“And yet the Angel that got the farthest of all of them, the one that brought us closest to Armageddon, was killed with a shotgun. For crying out loud, one of them was a literal shadow in the floor! We have no way to counter human-sized enemies attacking NERV HQ.” His eyes turned to Misato. “It almost seems like an intentional design flaw.”
That thought made a chill run down her spine.
Misato pursed her lips in thought as the others began to argue. Supposedly, they had just killed the last Angel. Mankind was now safe.
Yet the Director had not called for NERV to stand down, orders had come from on-high to repair and rearm the Evas as soon as possible. But Kaworu turning into an Angel had shown that they had a blatant hole in their defense strategy.
They were woefully ill-equipped to handle any enemy that wasn’t at the very least fifteen stories tall. And whether the Angels were dead or not, the monster that held the key to the Third Impact was still securely locked away in NERV’s basement.
“How much would it cost to hire enough reputable mercenaries to bolster our defenses?” She asked, cutting through the argument.
Aoba spoke up for the first time since the meeting started. “A fraction of what it costs to fix a dent on Evangelion armor. Our budget may have been slashed, but hiring a PMC, even a reputable one, may as well be a rounding error.”
Misato grunted. “Okay, hire a PMC, a good one, I don’t want any of those bloodthirsty bastards who raped their way through the world after the Second Impact. We need people who stick to the letter of their contract and above all things are disciplined.”
“That’ll be expensive. NATO may already have all of those.” Aoba said.
Misato raised an eyebrow. “Will it still be a rounding error?”
“Yeah.”
“Then do it. The rest of you…Well done. Now, we need to make a decision on how much of the infrastructure that was wrecked we’re going to repair…”
=][=
I sat in the observation room over Unit 01, I’d stripped the top portion of the plug suit off, leaving me in the blue ‘pants’ and currently shirtless, my right palm itched, the phantom feeling of blood coating it, no matter how many times I washed my hands, the feeling did not go away.
‘I refuse to join something so morally bankrupt, so corrupt, and so unprincipled.’
I scoffed. The fuck did he know? He was dead. He was the fucker that could have had everything he wanted. Charity? He could have gone to a million different worlds, used the Company’s resources and bettered the lives of billions, trillions even.
He could have amassed greater power and saved countless realities from doom, halted threats that would have caused genocides. If he played his cards right, hundreds of Kaworus would have made the multiverse a better place.
And all he’d need to do would be sell his soul to a multiversal organization, one whose only reason for not being wiped off the face of the multiverse was that they are not bad enough to be a priority over the many other significantly worse threats.
Yeah, they were a disgusting organization that the entirety of everything would be made better if they were all destroyed. Yes, their preferred pool of recruits had a tendency to sunder marriages, destroy families, ruin lives, sterilize worlds.
But for every one of those…well for every ten…
…
Point being, you eventually got Contractors like me, those who wanted to do right, be the Big Damn Hero, make people safe.
Yes, the goddamn Company profited either way but…But that was just part of the buy-in? Hell, there were ways to minimize the profit the Company saw!
And all it would have cost him would have been…accepting furthering the goals of a disgusting organization that made everything it touched worse, one who provided nothing more than temptation and incentives.
But again, what does he know? He’s dead.
A heroic sacrifice? Ensuring the continuation of humanity? Don’t make me laugh.
I grit my teeth and clenched my fists as I glared into Unit 01’s malevolent gaze, trying to wipe away Kaworu’s grateful look as I squeezed the trigger.
Seriously, where does he get off? Looking at me with all that fucking pity? He was dead! I killed him!
I killed the guy that, the moment he had learned that he enjoyed helping others, donated the entirety of his salary to soup kitchens. He gave as much of his time as he could helping those in need.
Kaworu, an Evangelion Pilot, one whose days he knew were numbered.
And he’d chosen to spend what little time he had on this green and blue ball of mud, serving food at soup kitchens, after buying their groceries.
What had I done? I’d demanded an exorbitant salary, one that was paid by NERV’s coffers, coffers that were kept full by bankrupting other nations. People starved so my bank account could be padded.
A bank account that would mean nothing once I left. To me they were just numbers, a way to thumb my nose at Gendo, but the result was that for every Euro that went to me, someone in need across a sundered world went hungry.
The one who actually sought to make a positive impact in people’s lives had died, gotten his brain spattered across a large section of salt.
And the one who did the deed, the one who made life worse for those who didn’t immediately fall into line, the one whose very existence and every action ensured a morally bankrupt, corrupt, unethical, objectively monstrous organization profited, one that that, were the multiverse truly a just and good place, would not exist. That hypocrite got to continue existing, making the abomination against common decency a tidy profit at the expense of those around him.
What a fucking joke.
Unit 01 shifted, sending technicians and mechanics scattering, prepping the restraints that to date had barely managed to keep it quiescent. But other than shifting its not inconsiderable mass to be more comfortable, it continued to allow the technicians to keep working on it.
The fact that the me inside Unit 01 was almost wholly independent had not been a welcome surprise. He still needed me, or more accurately, a Pilot, in order to truly ‘start the engine’ as it were, without a Pilot to complete the startup sequence he was constrained to short-lived bursts of activity. Once the Eva was moving however, once he was pissed off enough, his rage fed the Eva’s, and that was enough for the Evangelion to run rampant.
That was an extremely dangerous state of affairs, one I could not let stand, so I’d finally caved and attempted to Stamp the Eva.
Only, because the Eva also had my soul, and I could not Stamp myself, Evangelion Unit 01 now counted enough as ‘myself’ that the Stamp wouldn’t work.
Perhaps it was time to try something more extreme? I’d have to research who I could purchase to try and extract that large chunk of my soul out of the Eva, I had a little over five hundred credits to work with. The real issue would be gaining access to the Eva long enough for the surgery, as anyone powerful enough to do what I needed with a snap of their finger was still out of budget unless I got a loan. And with Kaworu dead, I had run out of guilt-free capture targets.
I could make up the difference by Stamping many of NERV’s personnel, they were all world-class experts each in their respective fields. I doubted there was a single Tier 2 among NERV personnel. Each of the ‘named’ people would give me five points, capturing enough of the ‘unnamed’ members of NERV would net me a pittance at best, but quantity was a quality all of its own.
Dooming millions of clones of them to the tender mercies of the Company.
‘I refuse to join something so morally bankrupt, so corrupt, and so unprincipled.’
The ones that were allowed to exist, purely because they were boring enough and the damage they caused was deemed ‘not bad enough to bother with’ while there were greater threats to be dealt with. And, when the situation was dire enough (and their coffers would be impacted without intervention) aiding in the reestablishment and continuation of the status quo.
Kaworu had genuinely changed, he’d been infected by ‘humanity,’ something that always came with the good and the bad. And the first thing he’d done with that humanity was to aid those in need with everything he had. And when forced by circumstance to put those he’d aided in danger, at first opportunity, he’d sacrificed himself to ensure the species he’d adopted as his own would survive and hopefully thrive.
Whereas I reaped the benefits of my position to claim resources that would best be employed elsewhere.
The real monster hadn’t been the one that died.
“There you are.” I twitched at the sound of the voice of the last person I wanted to see right about now. “You know, you haven’t bought a celebratory soda or punched anyone, people are worried.”
I sighed. “Asuka, please tell me how good a job I did or how you could have done it better or whatever, and leave me the hell alone would ya?”
Asuka hummed, then walked in, sat down next to me and joined me in staring at Unit 01. “I’m sorry you had to kill him.” She said instead.
I turned a disbelieving stare at her. At some point she’d changed out of her own plug suit, she was wearing a knee-length green skirt, a red shirt that left a strip of her midriff bare, and a navy blue jacket.
She shrugged and continued. “Yeah, he turned into an Angel and stuff, most everyone will only see the monster he became but…but he was also just a weird guy, he had weird ideas about how the world works, he had weird gaps in his knowledge about the most basic things. But he tried to help in his own weird way until...yeah.” She bumped my side lightly with her shoulder. “So I’m sorry you had to kill him.”
I spent a while quietly looking at Unit 01. “He thanked me for killing him.”
“Hm?”
I forced myself to unclench my hands and stared down at them, grimacing at the feeling of blood that covered them. “In the end, he said he didn’t want to cause the destruction of mankind, but he couldn’t help himself. So, he thanked me for killing him so he wouldn’t have to do it.” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “He deserved better, but I couldn’t come up with anything, I was too stupid and too weak, so I killed him.”
Asuka hummed and got to her feet, probably tired of my pity party. She then surprised me by stepping in front of me and hugging my head, pressing my face into her stomach.
I leaned back, her face was redder than her hair. “Asuka!?”
She tightened her grip on my head, once again pressing my face against her stomach. “Look, you big doofus, it’s obvious to everyone with eyes that you need a hug, and your girlfriends are busy. So I guess it falls to me, just sit quietly and enjoy my superior genes and feel better.”
I began to shake, half with a manic laugh, half with the need to scream, and half a sudden manic urge to bend Asuka over the nearest desk and have my way with her.
I reached up and took hold of her arms, and merely held her as my breathing sped up and suddenly everything I’d been keeping a lid on threatened to boil over.
Asuka for her part, made shushing noises and lightly ran her fingers through my hair, which did not help things any.
“That’s it.” Asuka cooed. “You don’t have to be the big invincible Angel Killer who will save the world. You can just be Shinji, the big doofus who somehow seduced an Evangelion Pilot and one of the smartest women in the world and took them to his bed at the same time.”
I pushed my face far enough away from Asuka’s midriff to say. “I can neither confirm nor deny that.”
She snorted. “I saw you lovingly fucking Maya’s throat in the infirmary while Rei ate her out.”
Oh…yeah in hindsight that may have been a poor decision.
It had been hot as hell, but I may have made a poor, lust-addled decision.
“Now shut up, be a good boy, and let yourself be comforted by my superior genes.” Asuka said.
“Your whole talk about superior genetics is really spoiling this whole thing.” I said with a wet chuckle, my shoulders unclenching, the relaxation allowing me to realize for the first time how tense I’d been.
“The patient will stay quiet.” Asuka said with a sniff. “If the doctor says her superior genetics are helping the patient, then that’s how it is. Simple as.”
I laughed some more. “I don’t think genetics work that way.”
“That’s because you lack imagination.” Asuka said, this time with a very exaggerated sniff. “Now sit quietly and bask in my feminine wiles.”
“Ah, so you do want something.”
“Of course, all interaction is manipulation, I’ll have you know.”
“That sounds like you’re referencing something.”
“It’s called being educated.”
I pushed her gently back so I could look up at her. “Out with it then, knowing you want something while being so nice is creeping me out.”
Asuka looked down at me with a stricken expression for a long while, before she placed her hands on my shoulders and slowly lowered herself until she was sitting in my lap, never once breaking eye contact, which I found rather surprising to say the least.
“I had a long talk with Rei, trying to figure out what I wanted, Shinji.” She said, wriggling in my lap to get comfortable in a way that had me doing complex math in my head to try and stay focused. “And frankly, when I saw you, and Maya, and Rei, I realized I want what they had. I’ve wanted it since my mother told me I had to be better than other children. I’ve wanted it since the empty praise of my adopted parents fell flat even after all of my achievements. I’ve wanted it since I demanded it from Mister Kaji, but he gently and rightly refused me for throwing a tantrum when he didn’t provide it.”
She ran her hands over my chest, her cool fingers tracing my pecs, my heart hammering against my ribcage, then she continued in a whisper. “I want what you give them. I asked Rei what I needed to do so I can have it. I ignored her, I told myself she was crazy, that she was wrong. But Hikari put a few things in perspective, and seeing what happened today? It made me realize I was being stubborn out of an empty sense of pride. Pride that kept me from what I wanted, and in return gave me nothing.”
She turned a pair of baby-blue doe eyes up at me, then leaned back, she slowly reached behind her back over her shoulders, the position pushing her breasts out, I could see the pulse point at her neck going a mile a minute as a rosy bush bloomed on both her cheeks, connected by reddened skin over her nose. She took a deep breath and said. “So…I’m here to claim my place, a place where I can belong, and get what I want and need. So, Shinji…I submit.” She swallowed, then licked her lips. “Please be gentle?”
My HUD dinged and informed me of the Capture via confession of one Asuka Langley Soryu, but I barely noticed as my self-control finally failed, my arms went around the willing girl, my fingers digging into the softness of her flesh as I drew her to me and pressed my lips to hers none too gently, I took hold of the back of her head to deny her escape as I slid my tongue past eagerly parted lips and swallowed her sigh as she melted against me, her hands moving forward to grip my shoulders.
It was a long while before we left the observation room.
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