Fifth Times the Charm

Shinji gulped in an LCL filled breath and began to cough beginning to comprehend just how close to death he had come. A few more seconds and he would have...but that didn’t matter there was still an Angel and Asuka was still inside of it and did he really just see a massive plane being ridden by a grey Evangelion fly into the back of the Angel? These thoughts were at the forefront of his mind as his blurry vision cleared. Shinji supposed he should have been happy that he was seeing anything but as he looked around at the torrent of fire that was quickly spreading across the basin like a flood, the inferno giving the dusk light an even greater reddish hue, the flames erupting several dozen meters into the air consuming everything in their path from twig to building and hot enough to boil the water in near my pounds and weaken the metal in the nearby pylons which began to twist and groan under the heat.

Shinji wondered if he really hadn’t died and gone to hell as he saw the silhouette of the black corrupted Eva; a hellish figure, its eyes glowing a deeper red than the flames could ever hope to be as it slowly rose to its feet surrounded by the raging wild fire.

“If anyone’s alive in there watch ya heads!”

Shinji started. Though he couldn’t really understand the English words, he began to look around for their source and when all other possibilities failed his eyes bolting to the sky; just in time to see a grey Eva with silver highlights and black arms plummet towards him. Shinji’s expression never changed from its look of stunned uncertainty as the falling Eva crashed on top of him.

He groaned as the earth stopped shaking wondering if today could possibly get any worse?

“Sorry bout that didn’t really have much control over where I landed once I jumped, you ok?” came the same male voice this time with a hint of amusement, all Shinji understood was ‘sorry’ and ‘ok’.

“Hey,” said the grey pilot leaning forwards grabbing his Evas horn and giving it a bit of a shake, “anyone alive in there?”

“Who…who are you?” said Shinji, not sure he wanted to know the answer.

“Ah, fantastic your still alive, good days, good days, wait…” the Evas face leaned closer to his, “Japanese? Have you understood anything I’ve been saying?” he finished off in Japanese, his accent atrocious but understandable.

“No.” said Shinji paying more attention to the grey Evas face than the words being said.

The physical features of the grey Eva were identical to his and every other Eva he had ever seen the only individual uniqueness (other than the color scheme) was in the head. He supposed it shared most similarity to Reis Unit-00, though the face was completely smooth and fitted to resemble human features; also, it had a less pronounced chin, no apparent ‘mouth’ and two eyes. But, where Unit-00 had a simple ‘bucket-like’ helmet this ones was a little more…complicated.

Starting as a ‘V’ between the eyes, over what would have been the bridge of the nose, the thick grey metal stretched up and back over the forehead then twisted down and around the side of the head and ended in points, a giant set of Ram horns. Under the main horns and made from a much thinner metal than he had ever seen used on an Eva before were smaller fins jutting forward and down from the cheeks, marking the underside of the eyes and the edges of the face. The whole thing curved up and together at the back to end in a point raised off the under armor at the back around the middle of the head.

Shinji blinked making sure he was seeing it right. No way would NERV make an Eva that looked like that.

“Well too bad,” said the boy in the grey Eva straitening up and stepping back, stretching a hand down to him, an offer to help him up, “give ya a hand up?”

Shinji, after a moment’s hesitation, accepted the offer taking the rams-head-Evas hand and was pulled up.

“Thank you.”

“No problem,” said the boy, “now shall we deal with our big friend over there?” the grey Eva gestured over its shoulder towards Unit-03 which was hunched over and watching the two unsure what had just happened and how to proceed.

“What? No, I can’t;” yelled Shinji, “you can’t!”

“Huh? Why the hell not? It’s an Angel, we’re Eva Pilots and we fight Angels so what’s the problem?”

“Asuka’s still in there, we cant we’ll…”

“Asuka? The pilot? I know she’s still in there but we still….argh, you know what we don’t have time for this,” Unit-03 began to move forward again, deciding that this new threat wasn’t really a threat and would fall just as easily was the purple one did, “you don’t want to fight fine all the more fun for me. Just,” he added turning away from Unit-01 to face the enemy waving his hand over his shoulder, “stay there and don’t get in my way!” and leaning forwards Jason charged through the flames at the Angel which, upon seeing the attack, roared and charged all four of its arms getting ready to grab the thing and rip it apart.

“Pilot Ikari,” Shinji started at the unexpected words, his attention drawn to the unexpected arrival and the fight currently insuring before him, “Pilot respond!”

“Y-yes Sir, here Sir.”

Gendo smiled on the inside, well at least he was alive Yui would have killed him if…he mentally shock himself, now was not the time.

“Father who is that, is he…?”

“He is someone who can not be trusted Shinji, you must get out of there right now.”

“But…”

“Obey the order pilot or…”

“Hey Japanese!” yelled the grey Evas voice, “catch!”

Shinji started again in so many minuets and looked up to see Unit-03s Entry Plug flying through the air towards him. How he had managed to pull the Plug out of the Evas back so quickly Shinji would never learn and didn’t care, all he cared about was catching the Plug as it neared him and holding it gingerly in his hands he looked down at it and smiled, Asuka was safe.

Jason smiled as he looked over towards the Test Eva from atop Unit-03s back where he perched, the black Eva roaring in anger and franticly clawing at him with his remaining two arms (the other two getting cut of by the two blades he had had installed in the fins on the forearms) trying to get him off. Huh, would have thought that the absence of the Entry Plug would have shut it down. Oh well. As he saw Unit-01 catch the Plug he had tossed over to the pilot he turned his attention back down to the Angel.

‘Time to finish this’ he thought as he let go with his right hand and, with a thought, the thin but highly dense blade shot out of the fin on the forearm. Now where to strike?

He supposed the most effective blow would be to the neck, decapitation usually brought anything down. But the angle was bad and he didn’t want to risk damaging Xavier more than he need to. The next best thing was to simply ram the blade into the empty hole left which was the Plug insertion point, it was accessible and wouldn’t risk self inflicted damage. It was this point of attack he decided on but, as he pulled his arm back getting ready to plunge the blade through the Evas back and out the chest one of the hands which had been trying to grip him finally got a perches.

“Oh,” he said in the seconds calm before he was flung from the Angels back and tumbled through the air to crash into the side of one of the surrounding mountains.

“Fuck.” He finished weakly as pain coursed through the whole back of his body. But now was not the time to lie down of the job as the Angel gave him no time to recover and was now on the offensive, having lunged into the air hulling itself towards him intent, Jason was sure, to rip him to pieces. What was worse those two arms he had cut off in his initial attack, well, they had grown back mid flight.

Jason instantly retracted the blade and flipped backwards and, when his feet touched the ground again, jumped up the mountain and landed near its summit as the Angel landed where he had been seconds before. The beast landed crouched, all four of its hands on the ground and looked like some kind of unholy spider scuttling around looking for him. Deciding that the old saying was true, Jason went on the defensive but charging down the mountain at the Angel. With a roar the Angel counter charged him, the two extra arms on its back held high, the originals held out in front getting ready to grab him, most likely around the neck like with Unit-01.

With a smirk Jason pulled out both of his fin blades and jumped at the Angel as it stretch its four hands up towards him. In a feat of accuracy which Jason wasn’t sure he would have been able to do if he was trying, he managed to pierce the palms of the first sets of hands and follow through into the wrists of the second flesh ones. With his forward momentum greater than that of the Angels, he forced the beast back onto the ground and thrust his blades into the ground pinning the roaring monstrosity. Detaching the blades from their housings with a spark he knelt on the Evas legs leaving the Angel struggling on the ground trying to wrench itself free.

He had to move quickly now.

Reaching down he grabbed the one white segment of the body carapace and with a monumental groan of stretching metal tore it off and flung it to the side. A quick command to the right shoulder fin opened the storage compartment there revealing a long cylindrical device, roughly a third of the size as an entry plug, with what seemed to be a red button on the bottom – which was actually the top once it was held. Reaching up Jason grabbed the device and, after placing the fist holding it against the exposed flesh of the stomach, punched into the Evangelions flesh in a spray of blood and lodged the thing somewhere in the intestinal tracked.

The Angel screamed in pain and thrashed even more trying desperately to get away from the thing on top of it but it was no use as Xavier slammed his free fist into the Angels mouth silencing the creature.

‘So much for minimizing self inflicted damage!’ he thought but aloud he yelled, to what would be his eternal shame, “Let’s see how you like this spicy meatball!” in a very bad mock Italian accent and he pushed the red button.

As the N2 Grenade, a highly experimental and until now untested device which was exactly what it said on the packet, detonated in the stomach of the Evangelion and caused an explosion which could probably be seen from low orbit and turned the Angel into vaporized carbon particles Jason smiled through gritted teeth. Pushing past the searing pain he was feeling from the bomb going off in his face and the sensation of a 1000 white hot knives stabbing into his right hand and forearm, as they were destroy along with the Angel he, thought of how glad he was that it actually worked.

Not only had the test of the grenade been a wholesale success but he had also confirmed a theory he had been unwilling to test on Xavier. The theory being that despite the Evangelions virtual imperviousness to all forms of conventional weaponry, because of the presence of the AT-Field, if someone was to lets say detonate an N2 Mine inside an Evangelions stomach, whilst the beast was fully functional, behind the AT-Field then the weapon would prove effective and rip an Eva apart like the flesh and bone it was under all the metal and cybernetics.

Happy that this theory had been right and that right now Unit-03 was nothing more that small partials of base elements floating in the air a stray thought popped into Jason’s mind.

‘Let’s see how you like this spicy meatball? Did I actually just say that? I so hope no one was listening.’