27's arm jerked back. Flesh and bone tore as the razors were wrenched from the Angel's body and flew away. The force was not enough to regain the beast's balance, though, and the Eva fell on top of its mutated brother. Rev groaned. His eyes blurred, the cockpit began to disappear. At Nerv, a screen displayed his ratio.
98%
Even as his own senses dulled, those of the Eva sharpened. He felt great pain, a terrible sensation unlike any he had felt in his own body. But another sense sharpened. One he could not place. Below him, a girl was crying. She was in pain. Horrible pain.
Rev's eyes opened. His Eva groaned, propping itself up on its arms, looming over the thrashing, dying angel. 27's spindly-fingered hand lifted itself, looming over the Angel's breast. It groaned in pain, and anticipation. It knew what Rev wanted.
"I..." he cringed, pain coursing through his body. His arm seemed to be flaking, blue shards falling from it. He ignored the sensation.
"I can save you."
The hand shot down. Green eyes turned a bloodied, raging red. Mikhael wasn't sure what he was about to do. But whatever it was, he was going to try it.
Rev's Eva falls on top of 15's Angel, and he starts to feel the full effects of his injuries. His Eva begins to berserk again as he attempts to find a way to pierce the Angel to free 15.
"Just in time for the party..." Lisa called out to the plane's pilot. As he was the rest of the trip from England, he was silent now. The girl peered at the monitor in the cabin where she was sitting, seeing the monstrous Angel decapitate an EVA. She cringed as the great machine was tossed aside like refuse and the other units attempted to engage it. However, the great behemoth easily fended them off. Her fellow pilots seemed slow. She hoped dearly that they were merely fatigued from their battle and not just bad pilots. She did not want to pick up after them, it would require great effort to pilot for five instead of one.
The pilot hollered at her, breaking her concentration. "You have your plugsuit on, right, LT? Get in your unit. I'm going to drop you." Lisa's eyes lit up. She had hardly been in her newly assigned area from more than a few minutes and she would already get to prove herself in glorious battle. She smiled as she yelled back, "Dossier on the enemy, or any of the other pilots?" The man was once again silent. She turned to leave and heard his final words to her, "You'll have five minutes. Make it count, LT."
Minutes later she was in her Entry Plug, filled with fluid, prepared to fight. She took a quick hit for good luck before she got in, putting her in the mood to fight. Her unit held its mighty spear in its left hand, having the Positron Rifle mounted on its back and the MAS pistol in its wing dock. The plane came directly over the angel when, without warning, she was dropped to the Earth below. Taking that as a cue, she activated her EVA and called out to the other pilots over her radio, "Lisa Leonidas, in the Coffin, entering battlefield!" Her unit hummed with delighted at the sensation of having a pilot, and entered into a dive towards the ground, spear out ahead, ready to strike the Angel.
"Syncing, syncing... Sync levels at 90%! LET'S GO!" Her inner beast awakened moments before she touched down. The Angel, with another EVA atop it, dove out of her way, causing her to hit the land with full force. However, she was quick to recover and drew her MAS pistol with her EVA's free hand, pointing at the Angels torso, expecting the other unit to more away.
4 minutes 45 seconds to go.
Lisa enters the battle, and aims down the Angel, not firing due to Rev's unit's proximity to it.
After several minutes of re-soldering electrical components, and stripping a half dozen other electronics Owen had managed to pick up, Owen was ready. He reactivated the phone-like-device and "called" his prototype frequency.
The sound from the other end was sanity cracking. screams of pain and suffering beyond human imagining emanated from the small device expressing torment beyond what any human had likely ever felt. Owen's stomach convulsed and he nearly lost it's contents at the inhuman sounds that arose from the young woman on the other end.
In a strange sense of observation, Owen became aware that the battle cry's from the angel had the same timing and pitch. The knowledge disturbed him more than the girls cry's. This Eva-Angel cross breed had been awoken into pain that no creature, not even an angel, deserved.
At this realization, Owen's lunch was discharged.
Moments later, after some heavy breathing he fortified his will - while he could not end the pain directly, he could perhaps at least save one little girl from a fate that truly merits the term "worse than death"
He called out to her over the jury rigged intercom, but the effort proved to be in vain: Fifteens pain was neigh unimaginable and not even the strongest of minds could hope to function under the conditions - much less a fresh formerly-innocent mind.
So Owen was forced to change tactics. If he could not talk her down, and if he lacked the equipment to reduce her synchronization rate, than ejection was the only option. Owen prepared the signal and moved his finger toward the button... then hesitated. "If I do this, The angel will no longer be constrained by the pain and fear of fifteen. it would attack the Eva's with renewed vigor. He held his finger in the dilemma. To save the child and risk the lives of the pilots and, by extension, all humanity so soon after the return of the angels or to sacrifice a new, innocent life for the good of the world...
Owen nearly surrendered, until he became aware of one other truth: the Eva pilots. They risked everything whenever duty called, to save as many lives as possible. they were the best of the best and they were not even old enough to drink. If anyone could handle the newly created beast it was them. And he would do anything to make sure they got that chance and every chance hereafter. Every last one of them - even Fifteen.
And with one more agonizing yell over the makeshift radio, his decision was made and his will steeled. He pressed the button that would free her from the angelic prison, the consequences be damned, and watched as the entry plug rocketed from the beasts back and far from the battlefield. He pivoted and ran toward the entry plug turned escape pod, praying to any being that would listen that his hesitation had not cost fifteen's life. As if to answer the prayer, Sametos shouted in delight and restarted his rampage anew.
Owen freed Fifteen from Sametos but, in doing so, made the angel stronger. He then ran help Fifteen.
Salty air filled Piggy's lungs. He rocked in the plug, swaying on the waves. Massive air hoods kept it afloat, and he crawled out onto the surface of the plug. Before him, the battle still raged.
There was the sound of a plane overhead, the huge fixed-wing aircraft used for high-altitude Evangelion deployment.
[hr]
The Angel powered on, it's eye glaring malevolently, but loosely rolling in their sockets from Unit-02's savage assault. The flesh was regenerating, forming into spikes that sought Rev. They razored through the air when the Eva fell on top, diving like a bullet.
For a few seconds they wrestled. Then Sametos slashed upwards in a quick, tight arc. It met with such force that Unit-27's lower jaw was split in two, and blood poured from it's throat. The Angel clamored in the dark- a high, shrieking sound that was followed by hideous squishings and slobberings.
Unit-27 ripped it wide open.
"FUCKNUT!" One might never have guessed such a Norse-warrior sound could issue from Piggy's blubbering young chest, from lungs afflicted with HIV. But he was screaming. "WHO ELSE WANTS SOME!!?"
There was a watery ripping sound, followed by a mewling that Rev did not so much hear with his ears as with his mind. The Angel was regenerating even as Unit-27 plunged her hands into it, ripping, tearing, parting, seeking the Entry Plug. And suddenly it was in it's hands, a metal capsule that pulsed against her palms, alive with electricity.
ROOOOOOAAAAAARR!
Huge fingers closed in a tight grip, then lurched back with all the force The Eva could muster. There was one final shriek as the Entry Plug exploded from Sametos's chest, a crystaline spine running with it and shattering in the Eva's fingers in glimmering shards. Sametos's chest was turned inside out, essence bleeding from a hole twelve feet wide in the torso.
Finally the Angel could take no more and abandoned it's body. The Core glowed, black matter sliding off it as it freed itself, then accelerated to great speed over the ocean.
A new Eva is flown in. Unit-27 rips the plug out of Sametos, wrecking it's body. The core detaches and flees.
"Ugh, t-this is still th-the worst kind of p-p-pain..."
Pollux's umbilical cord was cut long ago and after about a 2 minute run at high speed, his eva was finally worn out and now dragged itself to the docks. He'd seen the explosions, heard the attacks and had tried all he could to get there. In Pollux's unconscious absence, his eva had berserked...for about 5 second before giving out itself. After a long drag and a skip, Unit-31 was finally a few yards away, just slightly out of view from the other pilots.
"Finally! I may have only less than a minute but I can still-"
...only to see that all the fighting was over, as the core rocketed away across the bay.
"Oh you have got to be kidding me! I miss the entire battle and we didn't even kill the bastard."
Pollux fires off a few rockets in vain and a few seconds later, Unit-31 times out and shut down. Pollux lets out a frustrated sigh.
"Eh, don't get mad about it. Sure, you missed all the real action. But you were already pretty worn out. Be thankful the cameras still have some power left so you can at least see whats going on.. And besides, at least you didn't take anymore hits."
And this would be about the time Addison-15's entry plug rocketed into the side of Unit-31's head. Unit-31 tilted backwards and hit the ground with a loud thud.
"Oh this is fantastic, get hit with the last cheap shot of a dying angel. So, I've been burned, mocked by you, and ***** slapped by an angel. Fine way to end the work day. What the hell was that anyway? So glad I didn't really feel it hit-"
Pollux looked over and saw an entry plug. A strange entry plug. What was with the hull? It looked like it was made of crystal. And then it all came flooding back, the eva-angel he'd found hidden away, everyones frantic-ness this morning-it was all connected to that plug. Whoever was inside that plug. Who could be a threat.
"Pollux calm down. Whoever they are, they're probably pretty harmless. They're as stuck as you are. They can't even see whats going on. Take it from your dead brother trapped in your head. Things cannot get any worse. Hell, you guys beat two angels in one day! Everything will be fine."
There were a few cracks in the plug, but among the leaking fluid, there was a red glow that shortly emanated from the plug but stopped soon after.
"Yep, just fine. Just fine."
"See, now you're getting the right attitude."
Pollux arrives late to the party, and shuts down next to Addison-15's plug, where he notices a bit of strange activity.
The entry plug, abandoned, laid on the ground, embedded in the dirt. There was no sound, only the heavy weight of absolute silence. Then, mechanical whirring combined with the pained groans of a gruesomely wounded creature. Unit-27 dragged itself along the ground with its one remaining functional arm. Its legs were shattered, unable to move after the intense trauma it had sustained in the battle. Its face was torn open, blood and ooze leaking out. Its eyes had dulled, no berserker rage left to spend. A ragged, shallow breathing could be heard from Mikhael as he pushed himself just a little further. He did not feel like Rev anymore. He was weak, and tired, and wondering about what he had just done.
Even as the frame of the black beast attempted to reach the core, Mikhael wondered why. Why should he have gone to so much trouble to save this plug? Why should he put himself through so much pain? To question his pain was a mistake. There was more pain than he could nearly bear. He felt as if his face had been split open, his legs broken. Blood was gushing from his nose, he felt himself go light-headed. Why all of this for one life?
one life
That was his answer. If he could save a single life, he would. That was his pledge. With a single, desperate pull, Unit-27 positioned itself over the plug. Even as it continued to bleed, it hunched over the plug. It would be shielded by the machine until more help could come. Even as he felt his breathing grow more shallow, a smile cut itself into Rev's face.
"You're safe..." he told the plug.
"...whoever you are, you're safe."
His head bowed, and his eyes closed. The Eva's followed suit. A sparking tail protruding from his back showed that Mikhael had lost his umbilical cord during the fighting. He had hardly noticed during the insanity of it all. The husk, now motionless, was crouched on the landscape, just another scar of a battlefield.
Rev's Eva is pretty much decimated at this point, but places itself as a shield over the entry plug before Rev passes out from over-exertion and pain. At about the same moment Unit-27 runs out of power.
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!
- Wllliam Wordsworth
[hr]
Piggy stagger to the shore, soaking wet. He walked in a circle around the massive slain enemy and dormant Evangelions. Some were still upright, and the dfference in scale hit home. Piggy was grateful to be alive, and grateful that the Angels had been something tangible. Physical enemies, not this living shadow or ring of light or spreading fungus shit. Because monsters should look like monsters. He stayed on that thought when he watched Dr. Owen pry open the plug, shove his hands into LCL and pull out a slime-covered girl in a skintight plugsuit, who flopped like a ragdoll. Monsters should look like monsters.
The sun rose on New Masau. Rescue workers, civil engineers, construction crews, and the media slaved all day. Crisis after crisis resolved, the rubble cleared, the city coming back to life. Again, Nerv was a savior. Pilots were accosted by reporters determined to make them full blown celebrities. Politicians submitted requests to meet such people, for their support and the support of Nerv through them. Fundraisers, conferences and crowds sprang up everywhere. It was pandemonium.
Addison-15 barely escaped with her life, having to be rushed to headquarters for emergency surgery. Oversynching, proximity and mental contact from an Angel made her body simply shut down, like God flickin' her life switch. She survived only through external control of the plugsuit, and even then only with new kidneys and heart.
[hr]
Days after the battle, after the news media had covered the stories, the Nerv public relations films played. Heroic music, closeups of commanders and medal-winning soldiers, confused shots of suited men in Nerv installations. But here and there were other sequences: satellite views of the Angels maneuvering below, or, better still, the lights on plotting screens, showing the whole of a battle. It was hard, from the videos, to see all three dimensions, and the scenes were often short and unexplained. Some battles had been cut into many scenes, which were scattered through the various videos; only by watching them in sequence could one reconstruct whole battles.
The filmmakers loved images of human death. The movies reveled in it, gore and screaming as constant brute stimulation with as little context as possible. It became pornography, something the masses called appalling but no one wanted to miss. Piggy began to see things that the official commentators never mentioned. They were always trying to arouse pride in human accomplishments and simultaneously desensitize the population, but Piggy began to wonder how humanity had survived at all. The scientists were sluggish; responding to new circumstances unbearably slowly, while the Angels seemed to act in perfect unity, responding to each challenge instantly. They were the most terrible enemy, but without the fruit of knowledge they almost never did anything surprising, anything that seemed to show either brilliance or stupidity, even if the being itself defied all logic.
And there was one oddity. There was plenty of scenes with Evangelions but precious little video of them actually fighting. Some scenes were from early in the battle, the Eva units made to look small and pathetic against the vast power of the Angels. Angels wiping out conventional armies and making a mockery of the Prototype Evas- those films were often shown, to arouse again and again the agony and terror of an Angel warning siren. Then the Eva being released from below or shown running onto the scene, the cable blowing off, and then- one shot from a Positron rifle, one core blowing up. That's all that was ever shown. Sometimes there was hand to hand- An Eva would come in with chainsword and shield, and the Angel would be left in chunks. But no footage of the struggle, no killing in close combat except the most clean and graceful. The music would swell, the Angel would be destroyed, and the Eva would walk forward with an air of romance while the top of the screen fades to the faces of soldiers, engineers, and civilian laborers.
But rarely pilots. The pilots were only occasionally acknowledged. Nerv cultivated the idea that everyone contributes to a victory, that anyone could be a hero: not just a beefed-up 17-year-old who was abducted by the government when they were 6, or a lab experiment that acts like a freak. It frustrated Nikolai- the public could learn much from the pilots, but everything they did was so obviously censored and hidden from view.
[hr]
Over the next few weeks, Piggy sought the company of the other pilots.
She should have fired. Addison should have pulled that trigger and melted 15 from inside the entry plug. She couldn't stand the fact that they already had made another copy of her. It was one of the possibilities that she knew would happen but didn't know how to deal with. Jealousy played a part as well. She was supposedly smarter, more powerful, more agile, better than her in every aspect. The scientists saw the resentment when talking to her. They gave her more drugs to calm her down, to prevent her from doing something too rash. She didn't tell them that the drugs didn't work, that her hate for 15 still resided. Addison liked it, the feeling of going against them.
Instead of going inside the operating room and pulling the plug, Addison took to her Freerunning with a new fervor. Attempting jumps that she would otherwise avoid, pushing herself to her biological limits just to get over the fact that there was something that was her but better. She tried to avoid the other pilots, to not talk to them even with the new pilot as well. She looked just like the other beef-head neo-spartans out there.
But really, she did want to talk to them. To tell them that she thought it was wrong to move on with the clones when one was clearly functioning and exceeded their expectations. Instead Addison secluded herself to the urban jungles bordering the outskirts. She wanted to go to the docks, to see how much damage they truly did to the place but it was still being reconstructed from the mess they made.
Addison sat there, perched underneath the curved support beams of a bridge. The water sparkled below her, shining with clarity. It was a footbridge leading to a college, one of the very few that hasn't been expanded to accommodate cars or trucks. She looked at her reflection in the water, wondered for a moment whether or not she should check in. Then she hocked and spit into the artificial river below, watching her reflection part ways.
She climbed up and lifted herself onto the footbridge. Addison wondered if Pollux was still asleep.
Alexander lay in his hospital bed, finally sick of this joint, especially since he wasn't being allowed to leave. It's not like he ever really did anything in his free time; he mostly sat around watching old shows and movies or tinkering with something that fancied his liking. But not having at least the option to get out of this place was beginning to wear him down. For the past few days, Alexander has simply been sleeping, reading, or watching TV. He should've been out of there a week ago.
The doctors had been checking his to examine how the sensation of being burned alive was actually affecting his skin cells. After a few tests, should've been clear to go, but they decided to do one minor MRI test. Simply see how his brain was doing, mainly to see if his initial fallout with the first angel had caused him any possible damage. At first, everything had looked find but the doctors had found something out of the ordinary. They weren't telling him anything, withholding all information on whatever was wrong with his head, from the guy with the problem. Not really fair, when you think about. And He had no idea what the hell was going on with his team. Last he'd heard, Piggy's eva got it's block knocked off, Rev exceeded the berserking synch ratio, and there was a new girl from jolly ole England running around. A commander. Swell. He had no idea where Addison was, but he could've sworn he'd seen some one running across the rooftops from outside his window. And then there was the girl who had flopped out of the angel's entry plug, just before his cameras finally shut off.
So here Alexander was, lying in a lumpy bed, doing something he had never actually done before:watching news reports. They were reporting on the cities latest angel attack. Destruction, people dying, eva, angels etc, etc, but certain things stood out to him. He'd always known that perhaps NERV wasn't the most clean organization out there. But the things he heard in the reports, minor snippets, were enough to send Alexander into deep thought. Spartans? Clones? Abductions? Absolute lunacy! What What the hell was up with NERV that led to such allegations being made? And more importantly, what the hell was up with his team? The only time any of these words were mentioned were when pilots were mentioned. Known of their names specifically, hell maybe not even them but eva pilots in general, yet the words still nagged him.
Alexander was still in the dark about his team mates. Why had they joined NERV? What parent just lets their child operate giant alien robots? Was there some kind of program? Alexander had had no other choice but to join NERV, he had no family or a home, and even if he did it's not like he could've stayed on The Tops. They were submerged only a few months after the initial evacuation. Why would a guy like Rev join? Or a girl like Addi? Or an eleven year old like Piggy? It appears that When Alexander had left The Tops and arrived in New Masau, distracted by everything new and shiny yet still earthly, he'd forgotten to look at the society and the people around him.
Then there was a knock on his window.
It is explained why Alexander is still in the hospital, and he begins to question NERV and his team.
White, sterile walls. His bedroom. The clock read Midnight. It was the first time he had slept there since the battle. The first time he had woken up, after passing out over the plug, he had been in a hospital. He had suffered severe trauma, they told him. They said that the injuries he had sustained had been a mixture of pressure loss in the cockpit, mixed with mental suggestion as a result of being around the Angel's A.T. field. Or, rather, Angels'.
This was the first time the scientists at New Masau had encountered an opportunity like this. A pilot who had been up close and personal with two Angels in such a short time. He had been in their face, taking the brunt of their force and coming into nigh-direct contact with their Fields. The opportunities were endless. After several days, they released him. They had extracted all the information they could from him. Just what that information was, they would not tell him. But he felt something. Underneath his scalp. A bump. Almost like... something was planted?
What had they done to him?
That night, he had had nightmares.
Midnight eyes cloaked in raven black
Stare endlessly into the wrapping void
Their embrace an end
No more sorrow
No more suffering
No more pain
No more.
The mouth opens. Red.
He awoke in a cold sweat at midnight. Exactly midnight. He tried to brush it off as coincidence. After everything he had been through, though, he couldn't.
He wasn't able to sleep, so he sat up and watched television. The media bored him, and he detested it. But at this time, there wasn't much else to do. He watched the news continue to blitz his screen about the heroic pilots of NERV. The same old propaganda films, spliced in with a little footage from last night. They only showed the hydra, though. The other one hit a little too close to home, Mikhael assumed. He figured, if the public knew that the Evas could turn on them at any given moment, they would likely panic.
Worse than usual that is.
And could he blame them? Even he was a little worried by the thought. Just what were they really piloting, anyway? Just what kind of monsters did they really possess?
He moved away from that thought, and on to something else. Onto the girl in the plug. That night, after he passed out, he was told by Pollux that a girl had been taken out. He tried to convince himself with being content once he learned that she had lived. And yet... his curiosity was piqued. He wanted to meet her.
Without really thinking, Mikhael jumped out of bed and threw on some clothes. A ratty-looking long-sleeved shirt, unbuttoned over a green t-shirt underneath, with a pair of baggy jeans. He preferred loose clothes; the plugsuits were a nightmare for him.
He hopped on his bike and began riding to NERV HQ. He suspected that they would be keeping their little secret as close by as possible.
Damn you, new laconic system D=<
Mikhael sleeps in his apartment for the first time after getting out of the hospital after thorough examination, considering he was just in close proximity to two angels. He suspects they placed some kind of chip in his skull.
He had nightmares for the first time outside of his Eva, relating to some dark figure, potentially to do with the Angels.
As he watches TV, he starts to ponder the hopelessness of the situation, and becomes fixated on Addison-15, and decides to go meet her.
Paperwork: the bane of human existence. After carrying Fifteen back to NERV HQ (a long walk by all but Evangelion standards), Owen had been saddled with more work than was reasonable. The Casualties of the recent Angel attacks were staggering and the collateral damage was perhaps even more so.
After his return he learned a sad truth, Sandor had been struck by a stray blast from Malakiel. While He survived the attack, Malakiel and struck a greater blow than most - taking out the Commander of NERV: North African. Of course, the talk of NERV was now who would get the promotion to Operations Commander. It all seemed trivial to Owen however: only a fool would accept a position with that level of responsibility. Endless stress, Unbearable hours, and the immediate blame when everything went to hell.
It had to be the paycheck.
All this of course had little to do with his current position. Owen, having returned to NERV, had been sequestered by NERV Security: apparently they did not take kindly to giving U.N. Secrets to GSED, gun to the head or not. And Owen could not truly deny the validity of their claim: If he had been the loyal little soldier they wanted, Samatos would have never awakened, the Eva's would have sustained significantly less damage, and the city would likely have had half as many casualties.
But he had saved Fifteen; probably the only reason he was not in a ditch somewhere. That and the New plug-suits. Apparently the design was good enough that they were willing to let Owen off with a comparatively minor punishment.
The punishment: Paperwork
With Sandors... indisposed, they needed the void filled until a permanent replacement could be appointed. As a result, He had two peoples worth of administration work to do. Not that it was all bad. His new plug suits were already lined up for mass-production and his research on the angel-Eva hybrid was being recognized. Whole new fields of study were being created out of the telemetry from the last battle.
Owen looked pulled his head from the foot tall pile of papers, his eyes bloodshot and ringed by black circles. He needed a break: even if this was better than a court-martial, it was still grueling and a break would aid him. he glanced around the room, barren to the extreme save the desk, upon which sat a small laptop, and the ancient folding chair that gave the room it's sole duty of "Temporary Office". Security had been kind enough to supply a number of safety devices, aware of his reputation of causing collateral damage with the most rudimentary of chores.
The room lacked any facilities that would allow a proper rest, so he made for the only solution: the door. Owen reached out toward the door with his still injured hand, turned the knob, and found the unusual sensation of resistance. "Locked" he scoffed to himself. It would not stop him. He was halfway to the fire extinguisher when the door began to open, almost of it's own accord. Owen tensed; with t turned to face the new occupant: Fifteen.
Owen, surprised that the girl could move already, relaxed; thrilled that he was not faced with a guard that would reprimand him for "misuse of safety equipment"... again. Fifteen was bandaged heavily, primarily around her arms which had taken a beating in the entry plug, and had with her an IV drip on a mobile stand. As he was about to ask he why she was visiting him, at the unholy hour of midnight-thirty no less, and why she was out of bed in her condition, she simply handed him a small portable hard drive and refused to answer any inquiries.
Surrendering to the unreadable girl and his own curiosity, he attached the device to the laptop. When the device auto-executed and the first file was displayed, Owen's face became as white as snow.
Owen returns to NERV, Fifteen in hand, then is arrested for aiding GSED (albeit reluctantly) Owens punishment: filling in for Sandors while the commander recovers from his injuries. As Owen resolves to take a break, the door to his temporary office opens and Fifteen enters and hands him a memory device. When Owen looks at it, he becomes afraid.
Once Addison got to the college dorms to find that Pollux was missing she had a guess on where a pilot of his condition would be. To make sure she phoned in with the scientists to check in, saying that she was okay and no mood swings were apparent. Of course that was the truth and one thing remained in her mind which was talking to Pollux.
There was something about a boy like him that attracted Addison to him. It wasn't only her hormones that pushed her towards him but it was his character that intrigued her the most.
"Some of your teammates are still in the hospital...Rev checked out but Pollux is still in his bed. Why do you ask, Thirteen?"
"Just wondering." Addison fired back. She closed her phone and headed for the hospital. Of course NERV had agents scattered about alongside regular police officers so she decided to bypass them and head directly towards Pollux. It would be too time consuming for her to get past all those checkpoints and file paperwork. Addison climbed the building parallel to the Hospital and sighted the rather bed-ridden Pollux. He looked indisposed on the bed like that but Addison was not for waiting. She took a few steps back from the edge.
The gap was at least a few meters apart and the edges looked concave enough for her to grab on. Especially the edges around Pollux's window. She looked at her jacket after walking a considerable distance back. It would only hinder her full range of motion to when it came to building momentum and Addison figured that she would have time to fetch it later. She pulled off her jacket and set it on the ground. What remained was a black undershirt meant for athletes. It was tight but Addison knew that she didn't have much to begin with anyway.
Then she began to run. Addison pumped her arms hard trying to give her enough speed to cover the gap. Her legs moved fast as well but she knew that she could go faster than that. Her feet pounded the concrete beneath her and pushed.
Addison hit the wall with an dull thud. She grabbed the ledge but with one arm then she slowly brought her other arm as well. With some effort she brought her fingers to the window and knocked on it.
Addison found out where Pollux was thanks to the scientists and went there. Not wanting to alert the scientists by going through the front she found Pollux's room and made it there, knocking on the glass window.
Alexander stared at the window completely baffled. How the hell had she gotten there? He quickly shoved those questions out of his mind, and rushed over to the window. He quickly opens the window and helps her get inside.
"Man, is it great to finally see someone who isn't a doctor! Though, you know you could've just used the front door, they could've told me you were coming..."
Alexander looked down at the apron he was wearing, temporarily horrified.
"I could've put on some clothes."
Alexander helps Addison in, glad to finally see someone from the team. Though, he wishes he could've put on some actual clothes.
As Owen sat with his little device, unable to truly comprehend his surroundings at the moment, the door opened.
Mikhael had pedaled his way to NERV HQ at an alarming rate. He vaguely remembered something a doctor had told him about not straining himself so soon after his intense trauma. He didn't particularly care. He could tell as well as anyone that he was weak. He didn't like that. A hero was supposed to be strong, and muscular. If that was the truth, then he had more in common with a particularly emaciated scarecrow than a hero.
He had blundered his way into the HQ in his typical Rev manner. Only a select few members of the organization, not even his own teammates among them, had ever seen him in his more calm state. The others knew him as the idiot boy with too much raw talent to let go. He had barely made it through the front door before he had accidentally knocked a stack of papers off a young officer's desk while in the process of trying to woo her. Whatever compliments he may have thrown out, even he forgot in the chaos that ensued. At least two passing men slipped on all the loose paper, one tossing his boiling coffee into the face of a nearby scientist.
The man in the lab coat slammed his fist down in agony, accidentally hitting the button labeled "Security".
Rev's face turned to abject horror as he realized what was unfolding before him. Even a pilot was not immune to a good roughing up by security. Belting out apologies like they were going out of style, Rev sprinted around a corner and down into the lower levels. Hopefully, no one there would know of what was going on up top.
The rest of his trip was uneventful. No one bothered to pay any mind to him, mindlessly going off to fulfill their own tasks. Rev began to feel hopelessly lost, realizing with a cold sweat he had no idea where any in-house infirmary might be. He considered abandoning the search before he passed by a cracked-open door. A strange feeling tickled his spine. Familiarity? He couldn't quite place it, but something in his head told him to look inside.
The door creaked open, and that was where Rev was in the present. Staring at an odd NERV employee he vaguely recalled meeting once before; Owen, was it, and... hello.
For reasons that he didn't care to think about, Rev had failed to notice the stunning young woman to the side of the man staring at a laptop. She looked injured; badly injured. He could only assume she was the woman he--and the others, he supposed--had saved during the last Angel attack.
If one were to view the inside of Rev's mind--Rev's, as opposed to Mikhael's--they might find three switches, labeled "Hero", "Supportive Friend", and "Chauvanistic Pig".
There is no reward for guessing which was switched on at that moment.
With a cocked eyebrow, Rev leaned a bit to his right, slicking his hair back in a faux motion as he placed a hand up to the wall, putting on his best smoldering look.
"My, my. I didn't realize that when I pulled off my heroic deeds the other night, I was coming to the rescue of a woman as beautiful as you."
After a particularly embarrassing incident at the entrance to NERV HQ, Rev encounters Owen and 15 and proves without a shadow of a doubt he has no clue how to be charming.
"It's fine." Addison said. She grinned a bit when he had mentioned clothes. She patted down some of the dirt that had gotten onto her cargo pants during the jump. Addison politely smiled at Pollux and pulled up a chair that she spotted next to the cot.
"Are you okay?" Addison asked as she sat herself facing Pollux.
"Well, I feel okay. The doctors however think somethings wrong with my head and for whatever reason have decided not to give me even the faintest idea of what that could be. So it's test, test, test, every few hours. I could be working on my moped, catching up on shows, attending a few random classes but no, I'm here. It's probably nothing, just them wasting my time. I'm perfectly fine."
And at that precise moment, Castor drifted through the wall next to Addison. He smirked a bit, looked at Addison and gave Alexander a thumbs up.
"Yep, I'm perfectly fine. Bored, encased, but fine. The doctors are just idiotic. So, what brings you to my temporary base of operations?"
Alexander ignores his own question about his mental health and speaks with Addi
"Someone to talk to. I don't like Rev, Piggy, Grim, or the new girl. Santos is injured and the scientists don't need me right now." Addison said. "I understand how you feel. I was "made" by the scientists to fight, to be perfect..." She lingered on that word, almost contemplating its meaning in comparison to her.
She had thought about it. Why she was made to live in the first place and not put on this earth naturally. It was mind-boggling the amount of scientific work that had to be made in order to keep her breathing and she only understood a few of it. She gave a quick glance at her hands then back to Pollux, seeing the handmade veins in comparison to his.
Amidst all this 15 stood looking at him; her feet apart, her arms hanging readied at her sides, her stare level and unafraid, communicating nothing.
"My, my. I didn't realize that when I pulled off my heroic deeds the other night, I was coming to the rescue of a woman as beautiful as you."
The girl then did something for which he was quite unprepared. She raised her arm and pointed at him: not as in menace, but as though inviting Owen Laurence to behold him. At the same moment her face changed again, and for a second he thought she was going to cry. Instead she burst into laughter- peal upon peal of laughter till her whole body shook with it, till she bent almost double, with her hands resting on her knees, pointing at him.
For dangers he had been prepared; but to be an absurdity ...
"What? No, I'm really glad you're here. I love being able to finally talk to someone else. Someone I know is a real person and not just-" Alexander looked over at Castor who was leaning against the wall, listening. "-not just another doctor running tests."
Alexander truly was elated to be speaking to Addison. Plus, if he'd just heard right, she honestly liked him a lot more than the rest of the team. A bitter sweet victory he supposed. And he damn well knew what she meant by being made to be perfect.
"You know, some days I wonder what would've happened if I hadn't climbed into that fallen eva. If I'd just ran away. Would NERV have ever helped me? Could they have just seen me as another survivor, ever noticed the intelligence they decided to shape and mold. Would they have paid for my life? Hell are they paying for me to live or am I living so they can get payed? they were all too eager to get my life rolling while other Tops's civilians were left to scramble or get packed into buildings."
Alexander had never really thought about his role in NERV, not like this. He saw them as heroes fighting the good fight, but were they just the poster boys for this organization? Alexander tried to shake away these thoughts but they just sorta floated there. Maybe this is what Alexander had felt. A girl trying to fight between being a soldier and simply being her.
"I'm guessing the reason you took the high road was so you didn't have to deal with scientists and doctors, right?"
Addison causes Alexander to question his role in NERV and how their lives are shaped around it. The little what ifs biting at him.
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