On Fri, 2 Apr 1999 MercutioV@aol.com wrote:

Asuka jumped in another puddle, splashing Shinji again.  "Got
 you!"

Mercutio: Damn, Asuka DOESN�T melt when you toss water on her. Maya,
it looks like I owe you lunch.

Asuka:  It's Ritsuko who melts in water.
 

 hunched over the modified radar screen,
 wondering again exactly what the thing was tracking.

Hikaru: �We�ve got Tigger inbound on Vector 19, sir.�

Mercutio: �Relese the surface-to-stuffed animal missles.�

Biles:  Hehe.
 

 The NERV staff and their strange equipment made the US Army officer nervous,
 but he had been ordered to cooperate with them.  The base was now
'NERV--ALASKA' for the duration.

 The pudgy blond tech next to him wore a lab coat over his sweater
 and slacks.

Hikaru: Behold, Ritsuko�s long-lost brother.

Biles:  He'd be wearing a bathing suit in that case.
 

 "Observe the pole star, Polaris.  It seems to stay in place
 because the axis currently points towards it.  But if you slept for
 say...13,000 years, it would no longer seem to stay fixed in the sky."

Mercutio: In point of scientific fact, about 13,000 years from now the new
pole star will be Vega. Just thought you�d like to know.

Biles:  Cool.
 

 Baybrook Air Force Base had never been attacked.  In fact, it had
 never even been in the slightest danger of being attacked, except perhaps
 if World War III had actually broken out.  It had been built to deal with
 the contingency of the Russians sending planes over the North Pole to bomb
 the pine trees of the Northwest Territories into submission.  That most
 certainly couldn't be allowed.

Hikaru: Of course. We have to protect Canada�s vital Strategic Moose Reserve.

Asuka:  Something like that.

 The weather was bad for flying; a massive storm front had rumbled
 in and was dumping vast quantities of snow.  They were used to it; this
 happened all the time here.  This was a bad time for it; they needed to
 keep planes in the air.  The flight sent WITH nukes to
 destroy...something...hadn't come back.  Radio contact had gone dead.  It
 might have just been the EMP from dropping the nukes, but that hadn't
 happened in past tests of N2 mines.

Mercutio: <sighs> THIS mistake again...... Maya, please enlighten the people.

Maya(Lecture Mode): The N2 Mine is NOT a nuclear device. It is almost
completely dissimilar. In fact, the term N2 actually stands for �Non-Nuclear.�
The N2�s are many things, but a nuclear weapon is not one of them.

Biles:  So what IS it?
 

 "You're going to have to ride in the entry plugs all the way to
 Canada,"  Misato said, pointing to a map of North America.  "We won't have
 the facilities to load you properly there.

Mercutio: Oh yes, because getting getting a winch, pulley and sling to handle
the entry plug is SOOOO hard to do.

Biles:  In the middle of a forest hundreds of miles from the nearest town?
During a howling blizzard?  Thanks, but no thanks.
 

Maya: Yes, and loading them from the plane directly into the plug NEVER
happened in the regular series. Especialy not in the Jet-Alone Episode.

Biles: Doh.
 

 Shinji was revulsed at the entire idea of spending hours in the
 entry plug.  "How long are we gonna be stuck in there?"

 "Far too long, but it's the best we can do,"  Misato said.  "Once
 you reach Canada, we'll know exactly where we need to drop you.  Possibly,
 you may be going here," she pointed to a point in Alaska.  "But our
 target, the Angel of Winter, may have moved."

Hikaru: You know, why don�t they just call him by his real name? I mean,
cripes, even the Synopsis List gives his name as Ithaqua rather than
Shalgiel.

Mercutio: Yeah. I mean, it�s no big secret to anyone with even a modicum
of knowledge that this is one of the GOO, and seeing as how the Children
wouldn�t be able to readily tell the difference between an Elder God and
an Angel, why not dispense with the subterfuge?

Biles:  It won't fool the READER.  But they're trying to pretend to all
the various Cthuloid forces in the world that they don't really understand
what they are up against. 

 Maya grimaced as a sea of panicked reporters milled about below
 the podium she was standing at and tried to shove microphones in her face.
 This press conference was turning into a disaster; for once, the press
 couldn't be guided, in large part due to fear.

 I'm not trained for this, she thought.

Hikaru: Just out of curiosity Maya, what precisely ARE you trained for?

Maya:  I'm a scientist and technician, not a PR flack.
 

 Parachuting the EVAs to the ground proved to not be the best of
 ideas, but there was no way to land the planes in the middle of a forest,
 and they had to stop Salgiel before it reached the most populated region
 of Canada.

Mercutio: It�s already IN Ontario. That means it�s already arrived in the
most populated region of Canada.

Biles:  Yes, but the population isn't evenly spread across Ontario in a
fine mist.

Maya: There�s a certain person there who once wrote that Sempai was a
�worthless excuse for a human being.� Now he must DIE!!!!! NOBODY

Biles:  He was right.

 He looked up at the sky, and to his surprise, he could see a tiny
 hole in the clouds.  A few stars twinkled through the hole, and he smiled.
 It was good to see the stars.  One of them was very bright, and he
 realized in a few seconds that it was Polaris.  Several more stars arced
 away from it, part of the Big Dipper.  Or was it the Little Dipper?

Mercutio: One, Polaris isn�t that bright, and two, he seems to know an
awful lot about astronomy for someone who just learned Polaris existed
yesterday in class.

Biles:  Shinji was already aware Polaris existed.  I knew it existed when
I was five years old.  But I didn't know MUCH about it.  I could find it,
though.  And the Polaris of Lovecraft's universe is rather adept at
getting people's attention.  See the short story 'Polaris'.

Hikaru: So, instead of wasting your time and ours with pathetic atempts at levity,
we�ve decided to break out a whole bunch of old books  and stuff, and basically
just �nifty quote� the hell out of the dream sequence. There�ll be some humor, but
not much; it�s mainly intellectual stuff. Think of us as a Greek Chorus, but wordier
and with more attitude.

Biles:  Cool.

 

 Maybe I'm dreaming, he thought as he looked around.  There was a
 reddish glow to the north, towards the crater.  It was the glow of fire,
 he realized, and decided to go take a look.  There might be people, and if
 it was a forest fire, he could easily outrun it.  He checked his power
 supply:  the infinity sign was showing.  That hardly seemed possible, but
 it beat waiting here to die.

Mercutio: �That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons
even death may die.�

Biles:  Yep.

 

 began to move.  There were several prisoners nearby, clad just like their
 captors, but being held in place by large, strong, ugly men with an odd
 sigil tatooed on their cheeks; it looked sort of like a 'bio-hazard' sign,
 but more organic, as if the lines were horns taken from some animal and
 turned into tattooes.

Hikaru: �No man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of
the beast�

Biles:  Yep.  Revelations.

 When his eyes opened, Unit01 was pinned to the ground, its limbs
 splayed about helplessly.

Maya: �I returned, and saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift,
nor the battle to the strong.�

Biles:  Ecclesiastes, which should be titled, 'The book of depression'.
 

 ~*~

 Shinji wiped his brow.  Something had to be wrong with the
 airconditioning at the Geofront.  He had been sweating ever since he came
 back to Japan, but the temperature normally never changed down inside
 NERV's base.  "Can someone turn up the airconditioning?"

Mercutio(Shinji): �I need to begin cryogenically prolonging my life.�

Biles:  "Cool Air"
 

 "It did seem rather strange to list someone imprisoned underwater
 as a water elemental,"  Fuyuutsuki said.  "Or the Haunter in the Dark as
 an earth elemental when so many of its forms fly or swim."

Hikaru: The Haunter in the Dark has swimming forms? I understood that he
was primarily a spacegoing critter.

Biles:  The Haunter in the Dark is one of Nylarathotep's 1001 forms.

 

 "Part of the problem is that he used the wrong elemental theory,"
 Gendo said.  "Four elements instead of five.  It's quite clear from the
 Ponape Scriptures that it should be five."

 "But which five?"

 Gendo blinked.  "Air, Earth, Fire, Metal, and Plants or Wood, of
 course."

Mercutio: What about water?

Biles:  D'oh!  Should be Air, Water, Fire, etc...
 

 Fuyuutsuki paused in the doorway.  "'Vanity of vanities, all is
 vanity.  There is nothing good under the sun.'

Mercutio: I do wish they woldn�t misquote Ecclesiastes like that.

Hikaru: And what�s a mainstream religious reference doing in a
Lovecraftian story anyway?

Biles:  What are characters who don't go mad by the thirtieth page doing
in one either? :)
 

Hikaru: I liked it. The battle scenes, while making our MSTing difficult,
kicked ass. And they were amazingly well done, considering the fact that
one of the writers has repeatedly avowed that he hates fight scenes, and
the other really doesn�t havemuch of a rep for earth-shaking battles.

Biles:  Thanks.  I worked hard on the fights; it's a skill I'm trying to
develop.
 

Maya: There wasn�t very much in the way of character development, though.
And since this is one of the very few stories that give actual
significant scenes to me, Makoto, and Shigeru, I was looking forward to
some.

Biles:  The episode was, simply put, long enough :)
 

Mercutio: I believe that was their intent. John and Rod appear to be working
on kind of an alternating format; one part is plot driven, next part is character
driven, and so on. Which means that the next part should feature some nice interactivity stuff, and maybe the two love triangles (Shinji/Rei/Asuka and Misato/Makoto/Kaji) that have been presented will get some attention.

Biles:  Yep. Current working title is 'Briefen von Tokyo-3'.  

 

Maya: Don�t forget the me/Sempai/Gendo triangle. That has potential too. Not
so much from the romance angle, although I WOULD like that, but because
from all appearences sempai�s gotten herself in some deep s*&@, and I�m
the kind of person who would try to save her from herself.

Biles:  There will be interesting developments here.  Or so we delude
ourselves :)
 

This thing took a week of back-breaking effort on my part. Not only was the
style and presentation set up to make traditional fic MSTing dificult, but the
way I decided to go for the dream sequence required me to get literally a
couple dozen books together and go hunting through them for quotes
that would fit. Special thanks go to Prof Lanning, my English Teacher, for
lending me his Keats.

Biles:  Thanks for the amount of work!
 

It�s worth it though. This series rocks, and is one of the very few Eva stories
out there that is both decent AND looks like it has a decent chance of actually
being finished, rather than petering of into nothing like most of them seem to do.
I enjoyed MSTing this immensly.

Biles:  We will finish if I have to drive to Houston and chain Rod to a
computer to do it. :)


John Walter Biles :  MA-History, Ph.D Wannabe at U. Kansas         
ranma@falcon.cc.ukans.edu       
rhea@tass.org              http://www.tass.org/~rhea/falcon.html
rhea@maison-otaku.net      http://www.maison-otaku.net/~rhea/

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