[Marvel/EVA][fanfic] The Evangelion Four, Chapter 1 of 5
By Henry J. Cobb
All of these characters are the creation of Hideaki Anno or Stan Lee, but
the inspiration for this story can be blamed on a throw away line from John
Biles & Rod M.
Chapter One: The Third Child
I sat on the ledge of a giant footstep and looked down at my hands. I had
been under there. That thing had stepped on me and somehow hadn't broken
any of my bones. Just what had happened?
The noise wasn't as much as before. I looked up and saw the monster
standing there, many blocks and several footsteps from where I sat. It was
looking around then it turned around and looked right at me.
I couldn't bear to look at it. I turned away and heard it walking back
towards me. Then I looked up as a smaller shadow fell over me.
It was that girl from before, they called her Rei. She still had her right
arm in a sling and a bandage over her head and right eye, but now she wore
a tight fitting blue jump suit, a darker blue than her hair.
"Wear this, it will protect you," She tossed another blue jump suit at me
then turned back to the monster and raised her left hand. There was a
shimmering in the air like over hot asphalt and the giant monster was
thrown back 20 meters.
"H - how did you do that?" I looked down at the jump suit she had thrown
me.
"We are the Children of the Power Cosmic," Rei continued her assault on the
monster.
I looked down at myself and realized that I was naked. I fumbled with the
suit for a few seconds then found a seal in the back of the neck that
opened it in a zipper-like fashion and put it on.
"Shinji, can you hear me?"
"Misato?" I looked around, but I didn't see the woman who had picked me up
at the train station.
"There is a communicator in your suit. I know you said you didn't want to
fight, but can you please help Rei with the Herald?"
"Rei?" I looked up as the monster Misato called a Herald shot a beam from
its top, it's head I suppose. The beam stopped a few meters in front of
Rei, but she was thrown back anyway.
I reached out my arms to catch her. I couldn't let her fall, not when she
was hurt like that already. She impacted on my chest and pushed back into
me, but it didn't hurt. Somehow, even though she's about my size I wrapped
completely around her and curled up into a ball.
We bounced a few times. I tried to cushion her as best I could. Hitting
the ground didn't hurt me. It was just bounce, bounce, bounce then we
stopped at a wall.
I unwrapped myself from Rei. She didn't seem all that hurt, just stunned
and winded. I stepped in front of her and looked up at the Herald. It was
so tall, taller than most of the buildings around it. How could I fight
something so big?
Suddenly the world shrank around me. No, it was me, I was growing. I got
as tall as the Herald and tried to swing my hand at it. My hand was huge,
but paper thin, and billowing like a ship's sail. I was moving too slow.
The Herald struck me in the chest and knocked the wind out of me. I
returned to my normal size and was flying through the air. I curled back
into a ball and waited for impact. I bounced back high in the air then I
bounced again a little lower and again. Four more bounces and I came to a
stop. I looked over the buildings at the Herald. It was fighting. It had
to be Rei, she had recovered, but she was alone. How could I get back
there in time?
"Apparently you are not immune to air resistance," Dr. Akagi's voice
sounded in my ear, "favor linear over planar motions."
"What?"
"Move like a snake, not a sheet of paper," Misato said.
I reached my arms at the top of a building and stretched and stretched and
grabbed hold of the railing at the top and pulled myself up. Then I looked
over at the next building. I counted six more buildings to go.
"Shinji. Please hurry, Rei hasn't much time," Misato said.
I reached over to the next building and pulled myself to it. Then I
stepped over to the next one. From that point I ran from building to
building. It took a few seconds for each step, but I was traveling as fast
as an automobile.
"How do I fight something like that?" I wondered aloud.
"Your strength seems to be focused mostly on your stretching ability,"
Dr. Akagi said, "try to bind or engulf."
"Shinji," Misato interrupted, "find two anchor points and become a trip
wire."
"O - Ok," As I got closer to the Herald, I saw Rei strike it with her
power then she ran around a corner.
I wrapped my legs around a support beam in one building and stretched
across the street to grab another building, just as the Herald moved its
foot forwards. I grunted as it pushed against me, then I pushed back and
it fell forwards.
"Blue - Orange contact!" "Confirmed!" Two unfamiliar men said.
"Shinji," Dr. Akagi said, "You've just given us a data point inside the
Herald's AT field. I need you to touch it all over so we can map it."
"What's an AT field?" I tried to slitter away, but it grabbed me with both
of its hands, got to its feet and and started to squeeze.
Rei ran up and knocked its feet away with a gesture and it released me to
steady itself.
"It's a force field," Misato said, "Rei projects hers, but yours is
internal. Somehow you're reaching through the Herald's AT field and the
sensors in your suit are able to look at it directly."
"Ok," I wrapped myself around its arms, but it tossed me off with a shrug.
I bounced off a wall then back to cover its head.
It hit me with its force beam from its head at contact range. I screamed
and was thrown through the air. When I landed I looked down at my chest,
it was red and the suit was burned away from it. But the suit was growing
back to cover the missing area and even recreated the white circle with the
number 1 in it.
"We've found a weakness," Dr. Akagi said, "Get back there and hold it off
for a few minutes and we'll have something to finish it off with."
"Ok," I slithered between buildings like a snake, heading back to the
sounds of the fight.
Rei knocked it down and ran back around a corner. I picked her up and went
around another corner while the Herald knocked down the first building.
"What are you doing?" Rei had her left arm wrapped around my neck as I
carried her.
"It's following us, it can sense us somehow."
"Yes, vanishing doesn't work against it."
"So I thought I could just run for a bit until Dr. Akagi is ready."
"I only have five minutes left."
"You've got somewhere to go?" I asked Rei.
"I will collapse," She didn't seem to be joking.
"Shinji, drop Rei there," Misato said, "Then turn left at the next street
and look for an ATM machine."
Rei stood where I dropped her and turned to the Herald.
"I don't have a bank account," I said.
"We've got a pod point to the right of it. We're sending you a weapon."
"I thought you couldn't build a weapon that would hurt the Heralds?"
"We didn't build this one," Dr. Akagi said, "We adapted it. We don't have
a second one like this, so please be careful with it."
Part of the brick wall slid down and a transparent plastic capsule big
enough for one person to sit in slid up on rails. Strapped to the seat was
a device. It had two gray plastic handles on either side of a white
sphere, about the size of a cantaloupe. The sphere wasn't plastic, metal,
wood or any other substance I had ever seen. As I picked it up it seemed
reluctant to move, as if it massed far more than it weighed.
"Why didn't you just shoot it on a missile?" I wondered.
"A missile can't reach through an AT-field, like you can," Dr. Akagi said,
"Now you need to place this on the back of the Herald's neck, right at the
base of the neck and push the buttons on both handles at the same time to
lock it in place. We'll give you a few seconds to get away and cover your
eyes before we detonate it. Now hurry, Rei can't hold up much longer."
"Ok," I circled around the block.
The Herald had Rei trapped in a corner and leaned over her as it pounded
her with its force blasts.
I hopped up, and put the device in place, then slithered down as the Herald
reached back for me.
Sliding between it legs, I grabbed Rei and darted around the corner.
"It's trying to remove the device, we have to blow it now," Dr. Akagi said.
I wrapped around Rei and even behind a building with my eyes shut tight and
my body wrapped around my head I could see a bright flash.
"Brother, brother, where are you?" A half mile away from Shinji, a young
girl looked up from the rubble of an apartment complex and into the light
of a thousand suns.
We bounced for several seconds then we stopped and I looked back, "Did we
get it?"
"Yes!" Misato said, "You did it Shinji!"
I looked down at Rei, she wasn't moving, "Rei!"
"It's Ok," Dr. Akagi said, "She's fallen into the coma as expected. Don't
move her, just wait there and we'll send a hover ambulance to pick you two
up."
They took us back to the NERV complex, deep underground. They only needed
to apply some balm to my chest, it didn't seem to be as badly burned as I
thought. Then I went in to see Rei, but she was still sleeping.
I sat down in a chair next to Rei's bed and I must have nodded off, because
the next thing I knew I was woken up by her voice.
"Shin-chan. Let's play house. I'll be the daddy and you can be the
mommy."
I looked over at Rei, but she was just talking in her sleep. I felt
embarrassed and got up, walked into the corridor and looked at a TV set
that was showing a news report with the setting sun over the wreckage of
the city.
I heard footsteps and looked up as Misato walked over. "How many dead?" I
asked her.
"A few dozen we think and hundreds or so injured, but you saved everybody
today Shinji. You're a real hero. The entire world depended on you and
you didn't let us down. Let's go home and have a celebration."
"Home?"
"Yeah, you're living with me for the moment."
"You live alone?"
"No, we have another roommate, but he's not much of a bother. Pen Pen
stays in his refrigerator most of the time."
Next chapter: The Fourth Child, or It's Clobbering Time.