NERV Headquarters - Central Dogma
T-0 Seconds
"Report!" Misato yelled over the screams of every single alarm and klaxon they had in the control room.
"Angel detected!" Lieutenant Hyuga typed furiously into his console. "Blood type blue confirmed!"
"Do Asuka and Rei have it?!"
"Negative!" The lieutenant looked up at her, his eyes wide. "Enemy is above Unit One!"
"What?!"
***
Unit Two
Asuka shook her head as the spots faded from her eyes. "What the hell --"
She looked up.
The vast creature filled the sky. Its wings, feathered with insectoid forms, seemed to stretch across the city. At its center, an immense globe -- like a massive neon eyeball, shorn free from the socket -- pressed down against a thin orange shield...
... at a point that was far, far away from her.
"Oh, that is not fair!" she shouted.
She saw a sudden blur out of the corner of her eye as Unit Zero hurdled past her, straight towards the Angel's center. Asuka swore. She ejected the umbilical and sprinted after the other Eva.
***
Unit One
Okay, yeah. This -- this hurt. This hurt a lot. It felt like the mass of the entire world was pressing down on Shinji. Like he was ten years old again and back at the evacuation school and those older kids had forced him under the bench press bar in the gym and made him try to lift too much weight for laughs, only this time they expected him to raise it with his brain somehow, 'cause his arms just weren't funny enough --
"Um," the Doctor said in a strangled whisper. "Wow."
Shinji opened his eyes just a little. He found something staring back down at him. A massive orb, patterned in nauseating colors like an eye, filled the viewscreen. He could feel that the Eva had dropped to one knee, its arms spread out, AT field flickering above it. Behind his ear, he heard the warning chime of the battery clock counting down -- because of course the generator truck couldn't have survived all this, that'd be too convenient...
"Yeah." The Doctor swallowed. "That's... a bit bigger than I expected..."
"Doctor?" Shinji whispered. "Little... help?"
"Um, right... Right!" He heard the Doctor leap to his feet. "C'mon, think. Screwdriver's down... can't signal... maybe the radio? No... so the rift -- no, no, that won't work now. Urrrgh!!!" There was a sound not unlike a man knocking his own skull against a metal column out of pure frustration.
Have to move, Shinji thought. Can't stop. Don't stop. Don't stop don't stop don't stop...
He tried to straighten the Eva's knee. Inch by painful inch, he felt Unit One start to rise...
***
NERV Headquarters - Central Dogma
"Get me telemetry on Unit One!" Misato shouted.
"Voice comm is offline. Some kind of interference from the Angel. Switching to the LOS backup..." Lieutenant Hyuga's hands raced across the keyboard. "Got it. He's on reserve power, two minutes fifty seconds left. Based on current speed, ETA of Units Zero and Two is... three minutes, sixteen seconds!"
"They're not going to make it," Ritsuko croaked, her eyes wide.
***
Unit Two
Come on, faster! Asuka thought as the buildings blurred past her. Go faster!
***
Unit One
"Okay, okay --" Shinji really didn't like how desperate the Doctor sounded. "If I open myself up -- synchronize to the telepathic field in here -- I could..."
He caught a glimpse of motion on the viewscreen. Shinji willed his eyes all the way open. "Um. Doctor?..."
There was... something descending towards them from the Angel. A skeletal figure, growing out from the surface of the pupil. Bone mask. Black as night. Impossibly long arms. It pressed its spindly fingers down through the AT field, the barrier slowly giving way...
***
NERV Headquarters - Central Dogma
"Captain!" Maya shouted. "Reading a massive temperature increase within the Angel! Some kind of energy buildup!"
***
Unit One
The Doctor groaned. "Awwww, no... can you feel that?"
"What now?" Shinji could see the Angel's core. The red sphere hung from the edge of the Angel's iris, just past the descending figure. Maybe if -- if he could get ahold of his knife somehow...
"It's pulling in more power through the vortex transformer. It's trying to overload itself!"
"Meaning...?"
"Meaning boom. Very big boom!"
The fingers were almost past his AT field. No time... no time for the knife...
He had to... he had to...
Please, Shinji thought desperately. He imagined words flowing out of him and into the Eva's brain. Please, if there's really anyone in there... I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. They didn't tell me, I didn't think -- I'll do whatever you want. Just please. Please help me. I don't want to die. I'm scared. I don't want --
The figure pressed its arms down on the Eva's hands. Shinji felt his fingers break --
***
Outside Unit One
Unseen to anyone, out of the view of its own cameras, Unit One's eyes -- for the briefest of moments -- glowed red.
***
Tokyo-3 City Limits
Unit Two skidded to a halt.
Asuka's jaw dropped, her eyes wide in disbelief. "N-no way..."
***
NERV Headquarters - Central Dogma
The room fell silent. Everyone stared at the main display.
"Can they --" Misato edged towards Ritsuko. "Can they actually do that?"
"I --" Ritsuko moved her mouth wordlessly for a moment. "I... guess so."
***
Unit One
"Well. Um." The Doctor swallowed. "That was... um... direct..."
"Uh." Shinji stared up at the Angel, frozen in place. Almost shocked enough to forget the pain in his hands. (Almost. Oh God ow ow aaagh it hurt why did it have to hurt so much ow they weren't even his fingers...)
"Did you... know you could that?"
"Uh-uh."
"And now it's dissolving...? Oh, dissolving into blood. Lovely." The Doctor scratched his chin. "Do they... always do that?"
"Yeah." Shinji nodded dumbly. "Um. Usually. When they don't explode."
The Angel fell apart from the wings inward, torrents of crimson flowing down and over the AT field. The perfectly smooth, perfectly flat AT field.
Except in one place.
At a single point right above the Eva's head, the field rose into a long translucent spike. Straight through the Angel's core.
"Oh, now, see? That's just unnecessary." The Doctor sniffed as the last of the Angel melted away. "Not to mention unhygienic. Could've just as easily disintegrated into its component atoms, nice and clean, but no, can't have tha -- ooh. Oh. Oh, boy."
"What?" Shinji massaged his hand. At least the pain had dropped to pins and needles now...
"Here comes the rift." The Doctor pointed. Just beyond the fading AT field, the air seemed to shimmer and twist in an odd way. "Eject. Hit the eject..."
"Oh, right. Right!" Shinji dug around the side of the chair, searching for the emergency panel.
***
Unit Two
Asuka stared at the magnified image of Unit One on her viewscreen. She rocked slowly back and forth in her chair. Fluke, she told herself. Just a stupid lucky fluke. Had to be. It just had to be...
Suddenly, she saw something flare on the other Eva's back. Leaning forward, she saw the entry plug spiral away, carried by the emergency rockets. She narrowed her eyes...
... then opened them wide again as Unit One shimmered and vanished in front of her, like a mirage.
***
Unit One Entry Plug. Kannami Forest Preserve.
The screens were all dead. The only light inside the capsule came from the few dim emergency fluorescents built into the walls.
"Did it work?" Shinji asked, still enmeshed in the emergency harness.
"Think so." He heard the Doctor shift away from the column behind the pilot's seat, where he'd braced himself. "Universe didn't implode, anyway. That's usually a good sign."
"So what now?"
"Now we go home. Sound good?"
"Yeah." Shinji's head felt light, like it'd been stuffed full of air and suddenly deflated. He fumbled with the release on the harness.
"Oh." The Doctor stopped. "Wait."
"What?"
"We're... kind of on a mountainside, aren't we."
Shinji stared out into the dark. "Oh, yeah..."
"Downward slope straight to the ocean, wasn't it?"
"Think so."
"And this capsule... it's a cylinder, isn't it. Fairly cylinderish, anyway."
"Yep."
"Or cylindrical, rather. There's the right word. Had it on the tip of my tongue."
"Right."
"Though I rather like the sound of cylinderish, actually. Kinda has a nice ring to it."
"Doctor..."
"Right." The Doctor took a deep breath. "Okay. Don't move. Let's just take this nice and slow..."
He heard the Doctor carefully place his foot down.
***
New Atami. 0.8 km to the east.
Shinji finished dry-heaving the last of the LCL out of his lungs. He collapsed on the stone floor beside the abandoned entry plug. "That," he said through gasping, uneven breathes, "was a terrible plan."
The Doctor lay a half-dozen paces away, flat on his back, his hair twisted up like he'd been given a swirlie by the world's most violent toilet. "... yeah."
It was difficult for Shinji to tell, what with the entire universe still spinning around him, but the plug seemed to have come to a rest in the midst of a coffee shop, having rolled (and bounced, and at one point fallen) straight through the front windows. Not that he could be entirely certain of the building's identity, given that the entire room was covered with a thick layer of Angel blood.
"Hey," the Doctor said.
"What?"
"You did good, you know. Brilliant, in fact."
Shinji lifted his head. "Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"Huh." He smiled.
"Oh!" He sat up straight. This immediately turned out to be a mistake, as the universe responded by increasing its rotation. He tried his best to ignore it. "Doctor -- the spike! The spike thing wasn't me! You were right! The Eva --"
"Where are you?!" Misato roared.
"Gah!" Shinji looked up. A huge image of Misato loomed over them, projected from the side of the capsule. "Misato?"
"Shinji! Are you all right?"
"Uh." Shinji laid back down. "Yeah. Sure. Why not."
"I'm okay, too, thanks for asking," the Doctor grumbled.
"You!" Misato yelled. "What the hell were you thinking?! That Angel was right on top of you! You both could've been killed!"
The Doctor looked over at Shinji. "How's she doing that, anyway?"
"'s this holophone thingy." Shinji waved his hand in the air. "All the entry plugs have 'em."
"Huh." The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "I'll have to remember that. Could be useful." Something buzzed. The Doctor pulled out the screwdriver out of his coat, its end once again glowing blue. "Oh. Oh, of course. Now you reboot --"
Misato growled. "Look - just - just get out of there. The recovery team's on its way. I have no idea how I'm going to explain all of this as is."
"All right, all right..." The Doctor groaned and lurched up onto his feet. "I'll explain later. Really. Things didn't quite go -- yeah."
"You'd better." Misato slammed down her phone and vanished.
"Right, then..." The Doctor stumbled off across the bloodstained floor.
"Hey," Shinji raised his head again.
"What?"
"Thanks for the goldfish."
"... yeah."
Shinji lay his head back and shut his eyes. The world kept on spinning.