Doctor Who: The Evangelion Error (Book Two)

E12 Part 1: Läuterung

Inside Evangelion Unit Two
Downtown District. Tokyo-3.
October 2015

"DAMMIT!"

To say that Asuka Langley-Soryu was in a foul mood would be an understatement. She turned with a snarl and fired the rifle twice. The first shot missed, but the second crushed three spiders beneath it, leaving just a crater in the street filled with a hideous yellow-green sludge. Oh, ew, she thought, wrinkling her nose in disgust. Just... ew.

Not that she didn't have revulsion to spare at the moment. Outside of her AT field, dozens of the spider drones swarmed over the wide central boulevard. The little bastards had just come out of nowhere. One moment, the Evas had been on a routine deployment to check out some vague sensor readings on the surface. The next...

She fired again. Her target leapt out of the way. "Stay still, you little --"

"Asuka! Your left --"

And speaking of revolting things...

"I know!" she snapped. She turned and punted another spider down the street. It bounced off of Unit One's AT field and shattered into a hail of gross meaty bits against a nearby hotel. The purple Eva stood a block away from her -- still too close for her taste. "And what did I tell you?! Consider yourself under the Cone of Silence! You don't get to talk to me, understand?!"

"Um..." The little twerp had finally deigned to pick up a gun -- though he seemed to be using the rifle as a large flyswatter, the barrel gripped in his hands like a baseball bat. "Asuka, is this really the time --"

"CONE!"

"Okay, okay..."

She turned back to her fire zone, silently fuming. She kept her back to a tall skyscraper, the headquarters for some kind of bank, from the look of things. A block down the street on her right, the psychopath in Unit Zero seemed to be holding her own against the horde. At least the spiders couldn't get past their shields, thank Gott... "Command, where's that air support?! I'm up to my Arsch in these things!"

"Still two minutes out, Asuka," Misato said through the comm. "Stay frosty. You're doing fine."

"Of course I'm fine! It's still gross!" She tagged two more creatures across the street. Gah. Last she'd heard, the spider drones released by the Ninth Angel hadn't been much larger than people. The Arschmaden swarming towards her, in contrast, looked to be at least the size of minivans. "How'd these things get so damned big, anyway?!"

"I don't think I want to know," Shinji muttered.

She made a warning growl at the back of her throat.

"I know, I know, cone. Sorry..."

A radar notification popped up on her heads-up display. She could hear the sound of jump jets in the distance. Gott, finally. The drones didn't seem to have AT fields of their own, so a simple bombing run should put an end to the whole mess -- and not a moment too soon, as far as she was concerned...

She felt something land on her back.

She shrieked -- much, much louder than she would have otherwise liked -- and flipped around, just in time to see two more spiders leap out at her through the upper windows of the bank headquarters. "Scheisse!" Inside her shield -- they were inside her shield! She slapped one out of the air -- the other landed on her arm and skittered up her elbow. The proximity alarms in the cockpit blared. She felt legs moving up her back and something else on her knee and ew, eww, eww!

"Asuka! Report!" Misato shouted.

"AUGGHHHHHH!" Asuka replied. She tried to shake them off, twisting and turning, but she could feel the spiders clinging to her. Don't just panic, idiot! She thought to herself. Use your shields! She shut down her AT field and brought it back into her body, then expanded it outwards in a bubble around her.

The drones went flying off of her. The bank building's remaining windows shattered inwards. She lost her grip on her rifle -- it spun through the air and landed in a shopping center across the street. (Dammit, she liked that place too...)

Then the first of the bombs fell. Outside of her AT field, the street flooded with fire. Blessed, wonderful fire.

When her view cleared, she could see no sign of the drones. Asuka took a deep breath. She straightened up out of the reflexive cringe -- no, no, she thought, fighting stance, make sure to call it a fighting stance -- she'd gone into...

Wait. She couldn't move.

She turned her head and looked back. A unsightly web, made from something that looked uncomfortably like human mucus, connected Unit Two's back to what remained of the bank headquarters. Its strands felt like steel cables. Glancing down, she saw the same material wrapped around her legs, rooting her to the street -- and still more entwined around her arm, binding it against her body. She sighed. "Perfect..." Hate spiders, she thought. Hate spiders so much.

She heard people shouting at her. Oh, right. The comm. "Asuka! Come in!" Misato barked. "Can you hear me?! What the hell's going on up there?!"

"Asuka?" Shinji asked, a slight edge of panic in his voice. "Are you all right?"

"Oh, I'm just great! I'm amazing!" she snapped. "And for the last time, Third Child, shut up!" She pushed some stray hairs out of her eyes. "Command, I'm fine, but those things sprayed some kind of gunk on me. Whatever it is, it's resisting my AT field. I can't move."

"Got it," Misato said. "Sensors are reading zero drone activity right now, so it looks like we're secure. We'll have a recovery crew out to you as soon as possible. Just hang tight, okay?"

"You say that like I've got a choice." Asuka sighed again and rubbed her eyes. Blech. How humiliating could things get? She made a mental note to vent this on Shinji, somehow... if she could find a way that wouldn't get her murdered by Wonderfreak, anyway...

Something caught the corner of her eye. She looked up and squinted. What the hell was --

***

Inside Unit One

Shinji blinked again in the sunlight that seemed altogether too strong. Gah. Going into combat directly from solitary sucked. He gave up on trying to pull the rifle loose from the nauseating collection of spider guts sealing it to the pavement and stretched Unit One's arms. At least Misato had hinted that his time in the brig was finally over. Time off for good behavior or something. Not that he could see this whole Cone of Silence -- whatever that was -- situation getting any more fun once he was back in the apartment...

... wait. Something didn't feel right.

He glanced up the street. Two blocks away, Rei seemed to be having issues with a pile of rubble stuck to Unit Zero's foot. Above him, the jump jets circled around. Unit Two stood frozen in place by the bank building, stuck inside the webs, its head craned up towards the sky.

He accessed the comm options and set up a direct link to the red Eva. "Sorry, sorry, last thing, I promise. You really are okay, right? You're not just being... um... you again?" He winced. Oh, nice. At this rate, she wouldn't be talking to him until at least the next century...

He waited for the expected biting retort. Nothing.

Wait, was she just ignoring him now? No, that didn't feel right... "Uh... Asuka?"

She started to scream. Not shriek, or yell, or shout. Really, actually, genuinely scream. Without words or pause.

"ASUKA!"