Control center.
"Is Shinji ready?" Katsuragi asked curtly into the microphone.
"Almost, he's finishing putting on his jumpsuit," came the answer in Akagi's voice.
- Great, let him get into Eva right away and...
- Yes, I know, I know, don't lecture me.
"Sorry, I'm nervous," the captain chuckled. "By the way, how is he?"
- As usual - complete zen. He seems to be the only one here who is not bothered by the upcoming events.
"Well, it's the only one, because there's also Rei," Katsuragi chuckled again, although she unexpectedly felt a pang of envy towards the pilots.
- Well, maybe...
Then Makoto's tense voice echoed across the bridge:
- Visual confirmation received! Breakthrough into territorial waters! - Katsuragi's smile instantly disappeared.
- Display on screen! All personnel, first level of combat readiness!
- Eat!
An image of an elongated insect-like body flying several dozen meters above the ground appeared on the screen. A huge diamond-shaped head with two eyes located on the top and a narrow, long abdomen covered in red chitin.
"This time it's a bug... How original," Katsuragi, outwardly trying to appear indifferent, folded her arms across her chest, looking at the screen. "What's up with the civilian population?!"
"We've already received word that the evacuation is complete!" Aoba responded.
- Well, at least one problem less... Maya, how soon will this thing be here?
- Judging by the Angel's current speed, not earlier than in an hour!
- Okay... - Misato chewed her lip for a second, looking at the Angel. - Move the central block to cover, prepare the anti-aircraft batteries!
- Yes! Tokyo-3 is entering combat mode!... - the distant dull hum of working power mechanisms spread throughout the command center building. Silence fell on the bridge. The angel covered the distance from the coast to Tokyo-3 with feigned leisure, arrogantly ignoring the landscape stretching out below him. The tense silence of the command center was broken by Makoto's voice:
– The previous one gave us fifteen years of respite, this one – only three weeks...
"They don't care about our affairs at all..." Misato echoed, smiling sadly. "And some men behave just as disgustingly."
"You shouldn't be so categorical towards our pilot..." Akagi walked up to the bridge, holding her hands in the pockets of her white coat. Rei followed her, "after all, he's doing his job."
"I'm not actually talking about Shinji," Misato narrowed her eyes, looking at her friend.
"Maybe, but he fits the description," Ritsuko retorted calmly, standing next to the head of the Operations Department. Katsuragi grimaced slightly in response, briefly raising her eyes to the ceiling.
- How is he, by the way?
- Already inside.
- Fine...
- The central block and districts one through seven have been moved to shelter! Armed buildings and anti-aircraft systems are working at 48%! - Maya's clear voice cut into the conversation.
At that moment, the Angel on the screen reached the first line of defense outside the city and the troops that had taken their positions in advance struck. Missiles, bombs, cannon artillery shells, all of this fell upon the Angel in an instant, but the efforts of the ground and air forces, as expected, did not bring any results, except perhaps the visual detection of the boundaries of the AT field. The Angel continued to slowly move forward, completely ignoring the efforts of the military and simply flying over the positions.
"A waste of money," Katsuragi muttered under her breath. "All we can do is dispose of the old shells."
"Captain Katsuragi!" Aoba abruptly put down the phone he had just been holding to his face. "The Committee demands the launch of the Evangelions!"
"What idiots, as if we weren't going to do it ourselves," the captain grumbled discontentedly. At that moment, the Angel had left the range of ground troops and was now suffering attacks only from aviation. "How much longer do we have to wait for him?!"
"Twenty minutes until contact!" Maya responded immediately.
- Hm... Shinji! Are you ready?! - Silence. - Shinji!? Shinji, can you hear me?!
"There's no need to yell like that, Misato. I'm not deaf," came a sleepy voice from the speakers, ending with a frank yawn. Katsuragi closed her eyes trying to drive away the obsession, but Shinji's face, full of indifference and universal boredom, stubbornly stood before her eyes, after which she slowly asked:
- Were you sleeping?
"I was dozing," he answered calmly, which momentarily interrupted the work of everyone in the command center.
- How can you sleep in a situation like this!!? No, stop. How can you even sleep in a capsule filled with LCL??!
"Easy and easy," another yawn. Katsuragi's eye twitched. "Relax, Misato, everything will be fine, I'll do it."
- Don't be so self-confident! You don't even know anything about his capabilities! - "And what kind of word is "bunch"?" However, Katsuragi wisely did not voice the last thought, remembering a similar situation during training.
- This is a temporary phenomenon.
Misato closed her eyes and took several deep breaths.
"However, I must admit that he distracted me from the jitters before the battle masterfully," a traitorous thought flashed through the captain's head. And then a second one: "Although in theory, it was I who should have calmed him down... What a bastard!"
- Angel is within the sensors' range! The registered intensity of the Angel's AT-field is 475 units! - Maya's excited voice rang out over the headquarters...
***
- Angel is within the sensors' range! The Angel's AT field strength is registered at 475 units!
I grinned, also feeling through the thickness of the earth separating me from the surface, a powerful source of spiritual energy. A little more and the fun will begin...
Having removed my right hand from the control stick, I adjusted the seat belt more comfortably. They did install them, albeit in a makeshift manner, by simply screwing all the necessary fasteners to the chair. This design looked somewhat comical, especially considering the general futurism of the institute and the contact capsule in particular, but it seemed to hold firmly, and more was not required of it. But our valiant "students" of the NERV institute did not have time to repaint Eva and change her helmet. However, I did not focus on this, if they really want to disgrace themselves - that's their business.
The movement on the bridge became much more active, reports and reports came one after another and not always were the familiar voices of technicians. Misato and Ritsuko were distracted from my modest person and for the next five minutes I had the pleasure of enjoying the sounds of controlled chaos, that is, the standard work of NERV headquarters in an emergency situation. Finally they remembered me, by that time the Angel had already reached the suburbs of Tokyo-3:
"So, Lieutenant Ikari," Akagi addressed me in a tense voice. "The Angel is currently located twenty kilometers southeast of Tokyo-3, its size is about one hundred and twenty meters, the type of weapon is unknown, the vulnerable point is also presumably the Core. Judging by the video recordings, it is located on the Angel's belly and facing the ground.
- And also, Shinji... - Katsuragi joined the conversation, - the government has decided not to use N2 bombs until fire contact with the Eva, so you will have to deal with a completely healthy Angel, since all the military's efforts have predictably yielded no results. Are you ready?
- Yes sir.
- You'll take the rifle from the arsenal near the exit point...
- Try to neutralize the Angel's AT field first and finish him off with artillery fire...
"Got it," I chuckled at the excited advice of the heads of the operational and scientific departments. The Eva platform began to move, accompanied by commands from the operators on the bridge, and ten seconds later the Evangelion was secured to the launch pad.
"Good luck, Shinji," Misato wished and then barked like a seasoned battalion commander: "Eva-01! Launch!"
I was suddenly pressed into the seat and, after several long seconds of flight, was also suddenly thrown upward, pulling on the seat belts.
The elevator brakes hit, the sharp knock of the locking mechanisms, and a panorama of the city outskirts opened up before my eyes. Eva, just like last time, immediately appeared on the surface, without any elevator cabins in the form of houses that were supposed to mask this appearance, although they, as I already knew, really existed, it's just that most of them had not yet been put into operation.
- Exit D-22! Eva's transportation was normal! - a female voice of an unknown operator, not very similar to Maya's voice, rang out in my head.
– Unlock the safety locks!
- Yes! - there was a click, a creak and a quick hiss of the limiters disappearing underground behind me, and I felt a pleasant feeling of freedom of movement. - The safety locks are unlocked! - the operator reported again.
Another hissing sound came from the right side and, looking sideways, I saw the mechanism for opening the arsenal in action - the wall of the building standing there literally folded up and down like an accordion, revealing a rack with two fixed GG-2 rifles. Taking one in my hands, I waited a couple of seconds for the gun to synchronize with the Eve's onboard computer and connect the aiming system, after which I slightly stretched my shoulders, looking around.
The angel could be felt beyond the nearest greenery, the mountain range to the southeast, and several dots of helicopters were visible in the air there.
- Shinji, the Angel will come to you in about two minutes, get ready! - Katsuragi shared valuable instructions. After all, she was now overcome with strong jitters, because neither the Commander nor his deputy were in Tokyo-3 and the responsibility for the operation rested entirely on her fragile shoulders.
Having snorted something contemptuously life-affirming in response, I slowly walked towards the "insect", simultaneously deploying an AT-field, weak - about 300 units, but I didn't need more for now.
After a minute of leisurely walking, an Angel lazily floated out from behind the mountains towards me, hanging at a height of about seventy meters. It looked almost the same as in the anime, except that the coloring was richer and the general features were more predatory and real - a huge, red zucchini, elongated and with a gaudy diamond-shaped head. It flew stretched out in a horizontal plane and in the shadow of its body, small legs, relative to the rest of the body, were visible, very similar to similar limbs of a fly. Several squadrons of helicopters flew after the Angel, continuously pouring shells and missiles at it, without any result. The Angel completely ignored them.
The distance between us was reduced to five hundred meters, when the Angel suddenly stopped and reared up, turning its belly with the Core towards me, following it, I also stopped moving, slightly bowing my head and lowering the rifle. I don't know what he was thinking, but personally, I took advantage of this pause to study the configuration of his AT field, trying to understand the principle of flight that he uses. Somewhere on the periphery, Misato was nervously commanding something, and Doctor Akagi was actively echoing her, the helicopters, having received some order, stopped shooting and hurried to hide behind a hill to the side, and we continued to stand there, drilling each other with a look and not paying attention to the world around us.
A moment - and the Angel, finally coming out of the trance, quickly rushes towards me. I raise the level of tension of my AT-field to five hundred units, covering the maximum possible space in front of Eva and raise the rifle. The Angel crashes into an invisible wall at full speed, forcing my AT-field to appear in the visible spectrum for a couple of seconds, and I pull the trigger...
Control center.
Captain Katsuragi pressed her lips and fingers together, her heart pounding and her insides tense. On the screen, an Angel had just crashed into Eve's field at full speed, and a report from Maya immediately arrived:
- Angel's AT field strength has dropped to 120 units! Eva's field is 450! The fields have stabilized, the neutralization of Angel's AT field has ceased!
Eva on the screen had already raised her rifle and began to steadily pump the entire clip into the frozen Angel. The shells fell in a group, all in the Core area, but despite the collision of AT fields, the Angel's field did not even think of disappearing, although weakened, it successfully repelled all the deadly charges. A few seconds later the clip was empty and the shooting stopped, without achieving any results, and Misato's excitement only increased.
But then Eva-01 stretches her right hand with a rifle to the side, and a doomed and indifferent voice comes from the speakers, the very first note of which makes the captain tense up in anticipation of some kind of mischief:
- I told you. A useless fart... - Shinji Ikari fully justified her expectations and unclenched the fingers of his right hand. The rifle fell to the ground with a dull sound, leaving a decent rut. But neither Misato nor Ritsuko had time to react, since the Evangelion, with some careless, single movement, snatched the quantum knife from the shoulder pylon and simultaneously moved towards the Angel. What struck Misato most at that moment was that there was no tension or fear in the Eva's movements, they were relaxed and even lazy, as if Shinji REALLY did not perceive the Angel as a threat. But the girl also did not have time to think about this revelation, since two events happened at once. The Angel's AT-field went rainbow-colored and burst, which was immediately confirmed from her place by Maya, loudly reporting on the neutralization. At the same moment, two whips suddenly appeared from the side branches on the Angel's body, instantly enveloped in a white glow and rushed towards the Evangelion, which had managed to get almost right up close.
"Be careful, Shinji!" the cry came out automatically, but it was too late.
Eva pushed off the ground with incredible speed and jumped back a hundred meters, and in the place where she had just stood, two deep scorched furrows appeared, in which a couple of tanks could easily be placed, standing side by side. Evangelion landed successfully on its feet, but the Angel was already close and the shining whips again rushed towards the armored figure.
The speed of the whips was enormous, for Misato their movements merged into blurred lines, but nevertheless, the Eva dodged again, moving a couple of steps to the side and tilting her body. Another attack, and again dodged. The Angel's attacks merged into a continuous shining whirlwind, but somehow Shinji managed to dodge and the further, the more confidently and calmly he did it. Katsuragi simply could not believe her eyes, it was some kind of delirium and unreality, but it was there - a fourteen-year-old boy, without any training, confidently and competently dodged all the blows of the Angel, and carried out at a speed simply inaccessible to human perception, well, at least without proper training.
"But there was no such training!" the captain cried out mentally. And at that very moment, one of the Angel's whips reached the Evangelion's body, drawing a deep furrow across its chest.
- Tch!... - came from the speakers, in a slightly irritated voice. - Well, that's it, I'm tired of you. Pray, feathered one, - the outlines of Eva-01 were enveloped in a transparent haze, very similar to a glowing fog.
- Eva's AT field is a thousand units! And it's still growing! Contact with the cockpit is lost! The AT field is jamming the signal! - Maya exclaimed with some panic notes, and the head of the operations department suddenly started sweating and his heart skipped a beat...