2022-11-13: life ⇔ death( birth + growth ) ~BATTLE~
- Log: 2022-11-13 life ⇔ death( birth + growth ) ~BATTLE~
- Cast: Rei Ayanami (as the Ninth Angel), Kaworu Nagisa (cameo only), Neo Getter Team, Mari Makinami Illustrious, Shinji Ikari, Lucine Azul, Rikka Takarada, Alloy Kaas
- Where: Tokyo-3, Free Japan
- OOC - IC Date: November 13, 0096 (2022)
- Summary: As a volunteer team of on-foot infiltrators seek out the core of the true Ninth Angel, the remaining Evangelions and their allies do battle with its manifestation of a perfect storm.
<Pose Tracker> Rei Ayanami has posed.
"The data is coming in. Melchior's judgment has shifted. Standby... stand by..."
The great holographic screen grid lit up. It was expected, predicted, known as a certainty if not the hour nor the day, but now it is happening.
> SEVERE TYPHOON "CINERARIA" METEOROLOGICAL SCAN COMPLETE..._
The residents of the command center - save, perhaps, one - held their breath.
LEVEL 2 ALERT! LEVEL 2 ALERT!
ANALYSIS COMPLETE
Pattern Analysis : Blood Type BLUE 09
3rd INSTANCE of 9th ANGEL
> TRACK ANALYSIS...
> Impact in 00:09:32:22.3601--
> OPERATIONAL CORE DETECTED
> 35.4747 N, 138.6680 E
"That close?!" exclaimed Lt. Maya Ibuki.
"It's a stroke of luck. Staging won't be difficult," said Ritsuko Akagi. "Commence the operation!"
-=-=-=-=-=-
In the end, they only had seven hours and a little more.
Perhaps it will be enough.
Tokyo-3 is a fortress city. Seven hours was time enough for evacuation. The city's life drained into the great armored blocks and fortresses; weeping children and screaming pets and the doddering elderly, all of them were brought away. Last sweeps in the final twenty minutes before the block descent found most of the stragglers. Perhaps some will be missed. The towering buildings marked for shelter and protection descended to the Geofront, which shall be something.
Perhaps it will be enough.
In the emptied streets of civilian construction, the public loudspeakers recite a message on repeat. Who speaks it? Perhaps someone recorded it - perhaps the MAGI have generated it, as a rare moment of loving-kindness for the small made explicit. It echoes in the emptiness as the air becomes tense, thick, curdled.
'A special state of emergency has been declared in the western Sagami Bay area. All residents and visitors must report to emergency evacuation shelters. If you cannot reach an emergency evacuation shelter, please move to the ground or second floor of a large concrete building and stay away from windows. Strong winds and storm conditions are expected. We repeat: a special state of emergency has been declared in the western Sagami Bay area...'
The first raindrop lands on a classic glass Ramune bottle someone had left in the gutter, an uncharacteristic spot of litter in a Japanese city.
Then the second.
And then it begins, as does the wind, rattling down empty streets and testing and pulling at the myriad structures of Earth's life...
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
So how do you fight a storm, anyway?
One could argue that they don't need to. This battle is a holding action. Perhaps they could simply throw some N2 weapons at it to look good.
But could they? Sandalphon, through deceit, has now survived two conflicts with human forces, broadly defined. Sandalphon has been learning and developing, despite its inauspicious first foray. Sandalphon, in other words, would *expect* to be attacked by the figures of human innovation and defense in the face of threat. If it were not, it might think that something is wrong... and change its strategy.
A fourth attempt is all but certain destruction.
But this establishes the why, and not the how. Consider the structure of Typhoon Cineraria. The outer rain bands which have already passed over much of the peninsula southwest of Tokyo-3 as well as the nearer islands are, so to speak, typical for cyclonic storms: immensely high and destructive winds and intense rains, but not anything anomalous. Devastation, flooding, high winds... but the sort that simply happens, despite the Federation's experimentation with weather engineering; despite the net energy imbalance of Earth's elevated greenhouse gasses, only faintly balanced by the Orbital Ring's subtle shadow.
It is the inner rain bands that have changed. Even the towering, overweening power of an Angel may have its limits - because the space under the Angel's direct control is "only" seventy or so kilometers of diameter. These areas have changed from the usual spiral-mode structure into something more like interlocking rings; a mandala that seems to be *optimized*, drawing from the immense energy of the ocean's thermal inertia to drive its way to atrocious levels of force, pressure, and intensity. Though there is an "eye" to the storm, it seems shrouded in thick clouds, faintly ovoid from its relentless passage.
So much can be told by the best weather radars of the OCU and Britannia. NERV's degenerate-matter probe array reveals slightly more: the Angel's AT Field has been spread out, spread almost impossibly thin, throughout the organized space. The Angel's made the storm of itself, or perhaps it made the storm; it is a semantic difference, in the end.
NERV's hours of advance warning allowed for the preparation of means of transport, of assistance, for the Evangelions stationed in Tokyo-3 and others alike. Weapons are available. Anything. Everything. They've turned out the arsenal. There isn't time to make new, but it's all there.
Means of transport may be more important. Air-pack equipment, with reinforcing back-up power supplies, are available for the Evangelions. Thruster packs, hastily-constructed Minovsky effect equipment, at least one derivative lifting body inspired by the Gundam Maxter's air board; all are available. With a sufficient altitude envelope, one could simply rise above the worst; the storm is no joke 8,000 meters up, but the intensity is much less.
And one can always go beneath the waves.
But even so, the boundary where the storm becomes the Angel is easy to spot once you're near enough. The dense clouds become dense enough, a gun-gray wall of clouds, shot through with strange threads of light. They could be taken for regular and vigorous lightning if they did not seem to have a certain regularity to them: a hexagonal perfection, a *grid*, perhaps, or a *net*, something containing the clouds and guiding them. The natural forces of Earth, driven into something beyond what has been seen in human memory. Perhaps in Earth's history. Perhaps no storm could match this, save the towering turbulence of Jupiter's Great Red Spot.
It is that wall that you must break.
KTS: Rei Ayanami has deployed in The True Ninth Angel - Sandalphon (IMAGO). KTS: Rei Ayanami has deployed as a Boss for 6 opponents.
<Pose Tracker> Kaworu Nagisa has posed.
At the same time that NERV prepares to meet Typhoon "Cineraria," a separate, smaller team is being formed. Not long after the MAGI made their determination on the true nature of the storm, they reviewed the data so far and triangulated the energy signatures of the three instances of the Ninth Angel. That pinpointed the location of the true Ninth Angel, the "mother" that has birthed all these new variations with increasing power and might: in the depths of the Sea of Trees in the foothills of Mt. Fuji.
If there was a little extra data fed in from somewhere within NERV to help this triangulation along, then surely so much the better for everyone.
Kaworu, at the controls of Unit-00, remains at the Geofront, extending the Evangelion's A.T. Field to shield the gap between the underground cavern and any of the torrential rain and flooding that will rush in due to the storm. It's a finely created Field, permeable to gas but not to fluid; no one will drown, and no one will suffocate, either. As this is defense is crucial, he's been assigned to focus on that and that alone. If he is actually capable of monitoring many situations from within the entry plug, he doesn't bother to mention this to anyone. He simply does his assigned duty with his usual faint smile.
And out in the Sea of Trees...
KTS: Mari Makinami Illustrious has deployed in Evangelion Unit-04. KTS: Rikka Takarada has deployed in Synchrotank. KTS: Neo Getter Team has deployed in Neo Getter-3. KTS: Shinji Ikari has deployed in Evangelion Unit-01. KTS: Alloy Kaas has deployed in Evangelion Unit-Null-Sigma. KTS: Lucine Azul has deployed in Dianthus Mk. 3. <Pose Tracker> Neo Getter Team has posed.
Seven hours, with a solid chunk of NERV's Evangelion pilot contingent missing. It's time to call in the ringers.
Among that collection of contacts, a trio of lunatics charged with highly experimental and dangerous technology.
"So," Go Ichimonji summarises, pulling his helmet on. "Lemme get this straight: Our job's to break through the stormfront, find whatever's makin' it, and... what, keep it busy while the ground team does the real work?"
"Angels are a hell of a fight," Sho Tachibana counters. "No matter where the core might actually be. And every one's been different so far, so we have no idea what we're really gonna face."
Gai Daido claps his hands against his cheeks before pulling his helmet on, psyching himself up. "People are countin' on us to do our jobs. No different from a dinosaur attack. Let's do this, guys."
====== OVER SAGAMI BAY ======
(To fight a storm, we bring an appropriate soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmkTUY69fC0 )
A trio of jet fighters, one blue, one magenta, and one a green so dark it's almost black, streak through the rainy sky. Sho, in Neo-Jaguar, grits her teeth. "High winds are gonna make maneuvering tricky, and if it stays out over the water Getter-1's off the table."
Go punches Neo-Eagle's dashboard, cutting off a "Hey!" from Gai at the damage to his painstaking maintenance. "So if I'm not the hotshot today, what's the plan?"
Getting over his irritation, the big guy piloting Neo-Bear grins. "Okay, guys, come in low and follow my lead."
Seaspray kicks up behind the three jets as they form up, cutting a line perilously close to the turbulent water surface as plasma lightning crackles between the craft. Three hearts beating as one, they grab the levers that precisely control the combination and transformation sequence.
"CHANGE! GETTER-THREE!"
Neo-Eagle folds half-drills out from its fuselage as it twists around into the backpack position; Neo-Jaguar reforms into magenta-red, heavy-duty legs equipped with treads and turbines for additional traction and undersea propulsion; Neo-Bear forms the head, bulky arms and a colossal primary turbine taking form as the memory-alloy responds to the surge of plasma.
Neo Getter-3 crashes below the waves in a cannonball, ready to proceed under the Angel's stormfront barrier.
"Alright!" Gai barks. "Let's start this party off right! HARPOON CANNON!!"
One half-drill on Neo Getter-3's back rockets out towards the target, trying to find something solid to latch onto.
KTS: Neo Getter Team targets Rei Ayanami with Harpoon Cannon! KTS: Rei Ayanami's EN Barrier activates, negating 1500 base damage. KTS: Neo Getter Team anchors Rei Ayanami, forcing her into close range. KTS: Rei Ayanami fails to react to Neo Getter Team's Harpoon Cannon, taking 3520 damage! KTS: Neo Getter Team has engaged Rei Ayanami! KTS: Neo Getter Team begins a Formation attack!
<Pose Tracker> Mari Makinami Illustrious has posed.
How DO you fight a storm?
To Mari Makinami Illustrious, the answer is simple:
o/` "I wanna believe
In the time I spent holding you in my arms,
In the future I'm going to spend with you~
If my arms can't hold you,
Until we cross into eternity
Then is there any point in them~?" o/`
With a song in your heart.
The singing that comes from Evangelion Unit-04 as it is loaded onto an airboard in the face of the encroaching storm is one that is, for once, a little subdued. It's practically a murmur, compared to Mari's typical gusto. Make no mistake, of course: it is still full of her typical warmth and simple joy for singing in the face of a possible, encroaching apocalypse. But there's something different about it.
Thoughtful, maybe.
Within the entry plug of her Evangelion, Mari Makinami leans back in her seat. Her eyes, at the moment, are not on the rippling outer bands of the superstorm currently whipping wind and rain and unnaturally natural fury across Sagami Bay; they are listed off to the side, hooded and contemplative, as she lifts a hand through the weightless seat of LCL around her to press her index and middle fingers against the rim of her glasses.
o/` "... There's nothing I want,
But I'd get stronger for your sake!" o/`
Mari's eyes flash. She claps gloved hands against her cheeks with a grin.
o` "<3 I believe in love~! <3" o`
"Righty-o, partner! A tomorrow full of love is on the line -- so let's to get stronger!"
And she grips onto Unit-04's controls.
"Time to trounce up a typhoon~!"
And with that, Evangelion Unit-04 LAUNCHES off towards the stormfront barrier with a loud and sugary "WA-HOOOOO--", winds whipping violently at the protective chrysalis of its AT Field. Octagonal fields bloom around it in a solid perimeter of coruscating colors. Because Unit-04 isn't stopping for one second.
No, Mari is diving forward at -maximum- speed, intent on battering right through the barrier of the living storm's front.
With a song in her heart.
KTS: Mari Makinami Illustrious targets Rei Ayanami with EVA-04 Unarmed Combat Charging Strike!
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
Despite everything, the Angel attacks do not stop. The Angel attacks won't stop.
A foe they haven't defeated. A foe that's learning. A battle that promises to take place within a terrible storm. Of course Shinji understands why anyone would want to run away. He wants to run away. He wants to be anywhere but here, trying to control his breathing in his entry plug and keep his hands still against the controls with only the nostalgic smell of LCL to comfort him.
But that's a lie he doesn't know he's telling. Shinji could run away. He doesn't. He's right here within Unit-01, flight pack equipment fitted to the Evangelion for the sake of the mission, and a dozen warnings about its energy costs. The back-up power is meant to help account for that. Shinji still imagines falling into the choppy waves below and sinking into its darkness.
There's a greater pressure to make up for NERV's recent loss of strength. Muttering affirmations to himself, he pushes forward. Unit-01 deploys for airborne warfair, Shinji biting his tongue to keep from screaming while activating the air-packs and torpedoing into the storm.
Unit-01 is no more graceful in the sky than on the ground, battered by the winds in erratic patterns and limbs straining against the air pressure. It reorients in the air, awkwardly poised and its rifle shaking against the storm. But Shinji's been forced to make worse shots before. He steels every nerve for the one moment he needs to and cries out the rest of his stress, firing into the air of the storm while there's still too much distance for a melee strike.
KTS: Shinji Ikari targets Rei Ayanami with Type MM-99 209mm AU Assault Rifle Shot! KTS: Rei Ayanami's EN Barrier activates, negating 1500 base damage. KTS: Rei Ayanami fails to react to Mari Makinami Illustrious's EVA-04 Unarmed Combat Charging Strike, taking 1350 damage! KTS: Mari Makinami Illustrious has engaged Rei Ayanami! KTS: Rei Ayanami successfully avoids Shinji Ikari's Type MM-99 209mm AU Assault Rifle Shot
<Pose Tracker> Lucine Azul has posed.
Have the storms on Mars ever been this bad? The terraformation process had lessened the sting of some weather, but Lucine has trained in the further reaches, where the weather still retained some of its wilder Martian spirit. As for what she was training for...
It might as well be this moment. To volunteer herself and her unit in the place of others, not due to being ordered to, but because she wanted to, having volunteered her support to Kaworu several days earlier to make up for the loss of pilots to Tsutsujidai.
Over the radio comes Lucine's voice, the dark magenta and black colorations of the Dianthus approaching from the opposite direction of the typhoon.
< "This is Lucine Azul of the Dianthus, from Nergal. I don't have the weapons that can pierce an Angel's field, but you have my speed. Use it to your advantage." >
Using the available ground to her advantage before they are forced to move inwards, the Dianthus draws out the Beam Arbalest and lowers itself into a half crouch, taking aim.
In the cockpit, with rain beginning to plaster the visual view, Lucine begins to train her sight using the readouts on her screen. "... Alright... so this is what an Earth Typhoon can be like..."
KTS: Lucine Azul targets Rei Ayanami with Argen-21 Beam Arbalest Aim! KTS: Rei Ayanami's EN Barrier activates, negating 1500 base damage. KTS: Rei Ayanami fails to react to Lucine Azul's Argen-21 Beam Arbalest Aim, taking 4464 damage!
<Pose Tracker> Rikka Takarada has posed.
Rikka hasn't fielded Synchrotank for battle in a while. She may have helped ferry Yuta and Junk places, but since the encounter in France, she hasn't fought. But with the danger facing Tokyo-3 and many of NERV's pilots...otherwise occupied elsewhere, she can't really afford to sit back any longer. So of course the problem she elects to throw herself against is a literal storm.
It isn't her first time placing herself in danger with the goal of helping people, without entirely being sure of how she'll accomplish it. It undoubtedly won't be the last.
Synchrotank is in tank mode, presently - it was reasoned that that would be the easiest way to handle it. It has been equipped with thrusters and a subflight system, and so equipped it is now airborne. ...Of course, Rikka has never flown before. But that's fine - Synchrotank is never alone. Sometimes this is figurative, but today it's literal. With Max and Calibur having joined Yuta on the volunteer, that leaves Borr and Vit to support Rikka in Synchrotank - and flight is the latter's specialty. With Borr on weapons and Vit handling flight, that leaves Rikka to take command as Synchrotank flies into the storm, its shield arms raised to provide some defense against the hurricane-force winds.
Rikka frowns to herself, pressing buttons on her console and looking over data readouts.
Over the console, she hears Lucine's voice. Rikka doesn't know her, but it's good to hear a friendly voice.
"This is Rikka Takarada - Gridman Alliance. I'll do what I can to help." She chimes in. And right now, what she can do to help is... look over the readouts of the weather patterns.
"I've identified some potential danger spots... I'll send the readings over to everyone now." Rikka says, making a few transmissions.
<Pose Tracker> Alloy Kaas has posed.
E A R L I E R
"Please try not to destroy the Eva again. There isn't a surplus of parts for the special equipment."
Alloy chuffs at the remark. Her thick white braid whipping from one shoulder to the other with the look she shot back.
"Gee, I thought the pilots were the bigger worry. Hard to replace... some of us."
Her voice gets quiter towards the end. There's no time for this, she thinks to herself. Perhaps in empathy, she waves back to the crew.
"I'll do the best I can."
...N O W...
"Alouette Kaas, tugs at a wrinkle in the arm of her plug suit. An unwanted distraction. Anxiety of a battle has firmly gripped the atmosphere. Fortunately, Mari shakes it up, deploying with a song and launches from on high.
*chuckles* "The bell has been rung."
Alloy pets the inside of the plug with a gentle touch. She whispers to it.
"You and me, water is our thing. Let's go to work."
Alloy grips her controls and braces, as does Null-Sigma. The Evangelion crosses arms, and the G's spike as the giant humanioid falls backward out of the bay of the transport. Alloy seems to have experience with this, deploying from altitude. Keeping legs and arms tight and slim. She accelerates to the maximum speed of the fall.
For just a moment, she allows herself to enjoy it. Giggles and yelling as she bears down. Arms and legs break open, suddenly increasing drag and the Eva slows down. Just as she reaches the point where they had detected Sandalphon. The large frame does another manuver, and induces a spin within human limits.
So what happens when several AT-Field unstoppable forces meet an immovable object AT-Field? The extra limbs of the Eva, four dangerous tentacles, deploy to bring the combined kinetic energy and mass of the Eva itself at near terminal velocity, into blows that hit heavy, one, two, three, four of them slamming into...
KTS: Rikka Takarada targets Shinji Ikari, Mari Makinami Illustrious, and Lucine Azul with Caution. KTS: Alloy Kaas has activated the Spirit Spirit Command. KTS: Rikka Takarada suggests caution, raising Shinji Ikari's Intuition! KTS: Alloy Kaas: Will Barrier Activates. KTS: Alloy Kaas targets Rei Ayanami with Mariana Trench Warfare! KTS: Rikka Takarada suggests caution, raising Mari Makinami Illustrious's Intuition! KTS: Rei Ayanami fails to react to Alloy Kaas's Mariana Trench Warfare, taking 5160 damage! KTS: Alloy Kaas has engaged Rei Ayanami! KTS: Rikka Takarada has activated the Trust Spirit Command targeting Neo Getter Team KTS: Rikka Takarada has activated the Trust Spirit Command targeting Alloy Kaas KTS: Rikka Takarada suggests caution, raising Lucine Azul's Intuition!
<Pose Tracker> Rei Ayanami has posed.
The storm writhes, living, restrained. Perhaps it is being *ridden*. Into hurricane force winds fly the Neo-Getter Team. Three hearts beat as one as they bring themselves together into an enormous smashing wrecking-ball that dives BENEATH the sea, and the great news is that once you get more than ten meters or so below the surface, it is WAY easier to navigate...
And the bad news is why... because those stormfront-wrappings extend below the ocean, the water itself being turbulently churned as if by subtle pulsations. The harpoon flies inwards and-- the meshwork seems to follow it. Trailing afterwards, perhaps subvisual levels following as the spearing shot flies inwards. Gai and Go can see it easily. It's like they've torn a hole in a balloon, with water surging outwards. The harpoon hits SOMETHING -- big, heavy. Grimly, it's probably a fragment of a ship.
But there's a gap. Could it be that easy?
With a roar, Eva-04 and Eva-01 launch at almost the same time. One by air and one by sea. The aerial surfing of Unit Four means that its strikes take a moment - after all, to punch one's enemy one must generally approach them. Despite the great stress upon Shinji, despite being left with that curiously nostalgiac scent as he fires into the morass, perhaps more with desperation than rage... The shots tell; there is more of that impacting rippling, even if none of the bullets seem to do more than give the strange impression of a waterbed being struck with fists.
It might make one's heart sink -- but the battered, *undulating* 'waterbed' is struck instead with the mighty pink force of Eva-04, the tip of the board hitting the distorted space and PUSHING inwards, pulling it in afterwards - Mari finds herself sinking into a sort of tunnel of space that stretches, cobwebs glittering in the stormlight as she goes deeper and deeper and deeper and then:
Rip.
There is a breach now. Hot air - yes, it's hot! Hot in relative terms, perhaps seventy degrees in the Farenheight scale Britannia steadfastly refuses to completely abandon. This is the differential that drives all cyclonic storms, and it has been furthered by the dark actions of the Angel itself. There is a shuddering as the rifts made by Neo Getter-3 and the Evangelions join together; the tear rises upwards, shimmering and visible as the cloudfront splits. The seaming seems to stop, straining as the horrid twenty-kilometer-high cloudbank seems to begin to tense upwards, drawing inwards while growing visibly more turbulent.
Things get even more complicated for the Angel. EVA-Null Sigma is designed for water battle. It surges forwards, perhaps not quite visible to Getter-3 but in the general neighborhood. The tentacles cling and pull and the field begins to rip again, underwater as well as Lucine's enormous beam lights up the night. The surging rises upwards out of sight, into the sky -- a storm's breath washes out over them, a sense of something BURSTING producing a gravitationally anomalous flood tide that rocks the subaquatic machines...
Rikka gets a staticky transmission from the Geofront. It's Lt. Ibuki, that nice younger lady. Sometimes she seems like she could still be in high school with them. "Takarada! We copy - the attack's working! The Angel's front is collapsing; we're reading pressure fluctuations in the outer band!" And indeed that mesh-net of light seems to be collapsing in front of them, as if a wall was breached...
Except...
... That this is only the OUTER REACHES...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UUKKYrMfOk
"Ah!! It's shifting!!"
The sky in front of them had been expanding outwards like a burst balloon in slow motion. Now it suddenly pours, veering improbably and wholly *counterclockwise* - leftwards, from everyone's general perspective - with a hundred-miles-an-hour surge. The thing that Getter-3 had grasped with its anchor suddenly jerks, aiming to jerk the anchored Getter up with it. Whatever-it-is bobbles around before suddenly smashing up towards Lucine, the outwards storm pivoting into a downwards vector that tries to catch up Mari and dash the other aerial units into the bay's surface, fast enough for the experience to be like hitting concrete!
But the wall is falling back before them -- leaving a space perhaps ten kilometers wide with another, darker rain-band-wall ahead, this one thickening visibly. The space between them is strewn with broken trees and flindered fragments of ships, and the wind speed abruptly falls off to 'just really bad gusts,' with the contrast seeming almost like a relief.
This time, there is thunder; a sudden thoom-whoom-THOOM-toom that echoes outwards from the Angel's boundary.
It knows you're here.
"The operation is proceeding!! Keep going!!" Lt. Ibuki exhorts everyone. "Estimate you're thirty percent of the way to the eye-wall!"
KTS: Rei Ayanami targets Shinji Ikari with Outer Rainband! KTS: Rei Ayanami targets Rikka Takarada with Outer Rainband! KTS: Rei Ayanami targets Alloy Kaas with Outer Rainband! KTS: Rei Ayanami targets Mari Makinami Illustrious with Outer Rainband! KTS: Rei Ayanami targets Neo Getter Team with Transverse Front! KTS: Rei Ayanami targets Lucine Azul with Transverse Front! KTS: Lucine Azul fails to evade Rei Ayanami's Transverse Front, taking 3375 damage! KTS: Alloy Kaas's Will Barrier activates, negating 500 base damage. KTS: Alloy Kaas blocks Rei Ayanami's Outer Rainband, taking 2380 damage! KTS: Mari Makinami Illustrious successfully evades Rei Ayanami's Outer Rainband KTS: Rikka Takarada blocks Rei Ayanami's Outer Rainband, taking 2925 damage! KTS: Neo Getter Team partially guards Rei Ayanami's Transverse Front, taking 2250 damage! <Pose Tracker> Neo Getter Team has posed.
"Crap!" Sho yells as the Angel's stormfront burst ripples through the water. "With an attack like that, even if we Open Get we'll all get hit for sure!"
"No problem!" Gai calls out confidently. "Getter-3 can take it! Sho, give me a portside burst for two seconds! Gai, slacken the harpoon cable and retighten it on my second mark!" He raises Neo Getter-3's chunky arms to ward off most of the attack. "Mark! ... Mark two!"
A glancing strike from the offensive current knocks Neo Getter-3 away and around the spot where the harpoon has latched onto, and suddenly the cable retracts, pulling the combiner towards the unseen latch point.
"Alright," Gai nods in satisfaction, lowering Neo Getter-3's arms and leaning forwards. "Let's clear the way for our Evangelion friends, huh? GETTEEEEEEER TORNADO!!!"
Plasma coruscates around the giant fan serving as NG-3's neck structure, and it emits a whirlwind of force to rip apart the heavy cloud cover even as the harpoon cable continues to retract and pull the team deeper into the storm!
KTS: Neo Getter Team targets Rei Ayanami with Getter Tornado - Disrupt Spin! KTS: Shinji Ikari's EN Barrier activates, negating 1000 base damage. KTS: Shinji Ikari fails to evade Rei Ayanami's Outer Rainband, taking 2175 damage! KTS: Rei Ayanami's EN Barrier activates, negating 1500 base damage. KTS: Neo Getter Team rattles Rei Ayanami, making her next maneuvers more difficult. KTS: Rei Ayanami fails to react to Neo Getter Team's Getter Tornado - Disrupt Spin, taking 3813 damage! KTS: [Dynamic Hit] Neo Getter Team's Sho's Mastery activates, causing Sparkle!
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
Shinji drinks in every breath as he watches the bullets fly and seemingly do nothing. Every battle has his nerves on edge, his every sense devouring information about how it's going and how to react so he doesn't die or so someone else doesn't. He's better at it than he thinks.
Rikka uploads data, and Shinji tries to think at all enough to respond. "Um. Readings received. Thank you." He never knows how he's supposed to sound during these communciations. He's not military trained.
For a brief moment, it seems this might be manageable. A stable situation. But that's not how Angels work, and everything shifts.
The surge of the storm, all its wind and its water, smashes into Unit-01 as it's sent flailing through the air and yanked down toward the sea. The resulting splash, however massive, is lost in the storm itself as Unit-01's limbs flail and struggle to tread the churning waters.
Keep going. He has to keep going. He can't sink here...! Shinji desperately tries to cling to memories of floating in the sea, how to do it, as if it matters while piloting an Evangelion. It does. He can't fight the current so much, he'll terrify himself and run out of power.
Regaining control, he moves with the currents and finds a way to launch back from the water, flinging Unit-01 closer and trying to take advantage of the Getter Tornado to fly a clear path toward the Angel. Prog knife ripped free as Unit-01's whole body launches as close as it can to the eye of the storm and drill into the Angel's AT Field.
"I'm -- I'm going in!"
KTS: Shinji Ikari has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Shinji Ikari targets Rei Ayanami with Progressive Knife Thrust! KTS: Rei Ayanami fails to react to Shinji Ikari's Progressive Knife Thrust, taking 3780 damage! KTS: Shinji Ikari has engaged Rei Ayanami!
<Pose Tracker> Mari Makinami Illustrious has posed.
'This is Rikka Takarada - Gridman Alliance.'
Mari's brows lift just above the rim of her glasses as her -- extremely, extremely pink hoverboard (did she get it custom-painted before the Angel made landfall somehow--?!) punctures into the AT Field-scattered space of the Angel's manifestation, widening the rip within its cyclonic shield to enable them to push in deeper.
"Oho."
Rikka mentions danger spots. Mari considers the data offered as heat billows across her Evangelion in a sudden, telltale expulsion. Her smile widens to the exact curve of a mezzaluna.
"Thanks, Rikka, my gal~! I know exactly what to do now!" <3
Which is exactly why, when Lt. Ibuki announces, startled,
'Ah!! It's shifting!!'
Mari shifts too.
Directly towards one of those danger zones.
This would be suicidal, generally speaking. But Mari has data. She knows SCIENCE! (legally distinct from normal science). And most importantly--
She's got lots of experience throwing herself into suicidal situations.
All this to say -- when the outward storm pushes -downward-, Evangelion Unit-04's AT Field suddenly intensifies -- but Mari doesn't try to actually -resist- the momentum so much as push -forward-. The result is the downward pivot of the storm's winds and waters gushing and slamming Unit-04 down beneath the waves -- before it and its hoverboard explosively -breach- the waters' surface a second later past the sentient whipcrack of winds. Unit-04, bursting into the skies in a deliberately grandiose ollie airwalk, grips fast onto the top of its board with one hand, tilting it up to catch the upswell of waters that accompany Sandalphon's aggressions against Lucine and the Getter Team. Its AT Field burgeons beneath it, catching the kinetic force while shielding itself from harm to ride itself even HIGHER still, and then --
"Don't forget this simple wisdom! Into this world we're thrown like a dog without a bone--"
Out pops a prog knife from its shoulder pylon, caught before the torrential winds can whip it away so that Mari can STAB it into the broad side of the thickening band of rain and force and Absolute Terror and -drag- it along in a wild spiral that follows the whip of the winds.
"Riders on the storm~!" <3
Within her entry plug though, Mari heaves a sigh. Her expression is bittersweet, despite her wild actions.
"It's just not quite the same without her here to tell off," Mari remarks quietly. She looks upon the fraught chaos, the absolute danger of the moment. It's a situation no one should wish on anyone. All the same...
"... You should really be here to see this, Princess."
KTS: Mari Makinami Illustrious has activated the Spirit Spirit Command. KTS: Mari Makinami Illustrious targets Rei Ayanami with Progressive Knife Cut! KTS: Alloy Kaas has activated the Spirit Spirit Command.
<Pose Tracker> Alloy Kaas has posed.
Where she had been laughing and enjoying the drop, the sudden downpour slams into Evangelion Null-Sigma. Effectively the same as crashing down a waterfall, the extremely heavy battering of the water, only gives way to a hard, concrete like slam of hittin the surface of the water. The disruption by the hurricane disturbs and breaks the surface, so it's not fatal.
"Zut zut ZUT! Null-Sigma, is in the water. Diving for umbilical power!"
It takes under a minute for the kraken like creature. The hardest part is connecting under water. For Alloy, this is made easier by the use of her exteneded limbs. The countdown timer that had been scolding her on remaining power closes itself.
"Null-Sigma, umbilical connect is complete. Re-engaging!"
Alloy flips and toggles some controls. The tentacles are positioned to increase underwater speed, moving like fins or flippers. It takes no time to make an underwater approach to the Angel, only targeting is so much more difficult when there is a hurricane. Underneath the waves, things seem calm.
The calm gives way to enviromental chaos, as Alloy in Null-Sigma winds up and tries to show why water is her environment. It's still fighting a hurricane.
KTS: Alloy Kaas targets Rei Ayanami with The Bottomless Depths! KTS: Rei Ayanami fails to react to Mari Makinami Illustrious's Progressive Knife Cut, taking 3240 damage! KTS: Mari Makinami Illustrious has engaged Rei Ayanami! <Pose Tracker> Lucine Azul has posed.
< "Rikka Takarada... ah, I remember you. From the time NERV was attacked a few months ago..." >
To be more truthful, there was another reason Lucine was able to recognize Rikka-- Tsutsujidai has been on the mind, due to Liam's disappearance, as was the real question of how the town's residents can be able to exist, regardless of how close to realized their wills were. Or would people like Rikka and Yuta have to watch their home fade from reality? Leito thought otherwise, and Lucine has her hopes set on his theory.
But for now... Lucine's attention looks down to her screen, receiving Rikka's information. < "... Let's do our best, then." >
The Dianthus leaps for the wind-torn sky. The petals from its back are prematurely lit, glowing with a magenta pink glow that makes the unit seem more like an unfortunate firefly than a thing of metals and fibers.
She'd be even more useless in the water. Lucine will have to trust the ones braving the waters themselves to be able to hold their own. She'll just need to manage her own in the sky.
..... which is... going the other direction now?!
Something pokes a thread of caution in Lucine's brain, but it's already too late, the Whatever-it-is slams into the Dianthus, knocking it like a baseball into a typhoon.
The spinning display of land and air give Lucine no sense of what is sky and what is ocean, forcing her again to depend on the sensors, as well as her own senses, to keep from correcting herself straight into the waters below. Adjusting her flight in a positive upwards position (which is good), she gives everyone an official update on her status.
< "..... I bit... the side of my mouth.... ow..." >
Still, a challenge can only serve to make the pain fall to the backburner for the gardener. There's still an opening. Lucine swoops the Dianthus forward towards it, leaving a busy trail of explosive orbs behind her; a signal, as well as an attack.
Her heart beats fast; she feels alive. To Mari, Lucine responds. < "It thought it had a chance because of it... but instead it's just awakened the hornet's nest!" >
KTS: Lucine Azul targets Rei Ayanami with Lunate Crown v.2 Fireflies!
<Pose Tracker> Rikka Takarada has posed.
Lucine recognizes her...? It takes a second, but recognition flashes in her eyes.
"...Oh, yeah, that was me. Good to see you again - wish it were under better circumstances, though." She replies.
"You're welcome!" Rikka replies to Shinji and Mari. It's okay - she isn't military trained, either. And, despite the interference from the storm, she's able to get an interference from Geofront. The attack is working, the front is collapsing...
"Thank you, Lieutenant." Rikka replies gratefully. ...But, they're not out of danger just yet. The storm is shifting, and with it comes danger. The storm tries to force them downward, to smash them into the bay!
It's Vit's piloting that saves the day for everyone aboard the Synchrotank. As the winds bear down on them, the mobile suit shifts - positioning itself so that the force of the storm pushing against it is reduced as much as it can be. The thrusters kick in, then, and Synchrotank repositions its arms to cut a wedge into the storm with its shields. It accelerates, managing to escape before its sent sinking down into the waters below. Rikka exhales a sigh of relief.
They're not through yet, though - Rikka leans forward, looking over her systems again. After a moment of consideration, she presses a few locations on the map on her console.
"Borr, I need some missiles in these locations - can you do that?" Rikka asks. Shooting missiles in a storm like this is a difficult proposition - but fortunately, missiles are one their specialties. Synchrotank's arms point forward and, soon after, a series of missiles launch out toward the designated points and explode. Rikka doesn't expect they can just blow up a hurricane - but what she is expecting and intending is for the shockwaves to disrupt some sections of the storm just long enough to create air pockets they or any of their allies can duck into for safety.
KTS: Rei Ayanami fails to react to Alloy Kaas's The Bottomless Depths, taking 3840 damage! KTS: [Dynamic Hit] Alloy Kaas's Geass Directorate Survivor activates, causing Sparkle! KTS: Alloy Kaas has engaged Rei Ayanami! KTS: Rei Ayanami's EN Barrier activates, negating 1500 base damage. KTS: Rei Ayanami fails to react to Lucine Azul's Lunate Crown v.2 Fireflies, taking 2000 damage! KTS: Lucine Azul begins a Formation attack! KTS: Rikka Takarada targets Rei Ayanami with Jam! KTS: Rikka Takarada jams Rei Ayanami's sensors, reducing her accuracy.
<Pose Tracker> Rei Ayanami has posed.
The Getter Tornado begins. A direct challenge to the Angel's mastery of the flows of energy and wind and water; the burning nexus of force sending turbulence into the air, squeezing out rain from ambient clouds even as it propels that chunk of wreckage out into the clear zone and further on.
*WHAT* Getter-3 caught onto is now visible. It is fortunate that it is in fact exactly what it was anticipated to be; a large portion of a cargo craft. The containers were long ago shed and it seems to have stayed afloat (or perhaps aloft?) largely through catching wind inside of cavernous spaces that cracked open and made it something like a horrid box kite. But what works, works.
Right?
Unit One hits the water. It has hit many things with great force. The water, struck at speed, does not yield much; but can this be worse than a building? Worse than what Shinji has already endured? He's come a long way, however lonely and bleak things may be. The thrusters kick in as he drives forwards, accelerating over that open space - ten kilometers is surprisingly little space for something as titanic as an Evangelion or a Mobile Suit - and striking against the storm wall...
And there is something more classical to this now. The outer reach had a sort of mesh, a cobweb-net which could be torn rather easily. Certainly it wouldn't be trivial to do so, but Getter-3's harpoon and Lucine's titanic -- shall we say instead *powerful* -- ray tore through without much difficulty. What Shinji hit feels more like what he's cut before - an AT Field - and the enormous ripple, octagonal in pattern, shines and echoes outwards like a pebble thrown into a pond, orange light casting a strange sodium-lamp cast into the gloom.
And yet he's already carving through it. It's yielding beneath the knife. Beneath his intention. How much is the knife and how much is him? It's a good question, although Miss Mari throws herself forwards and may complicate the issue with good cheer when she ends up stabbing into the AT Field-bracketed space about one Eva's length above Shinji and rides gravity and the winds down - around - not QUITE impacting Eva-01 but there is at least the possibility -
There's a sound like cloth tearing, from just moments away. A great cosmic rent in the fabric of something. Lines that threaten to become cracks, glowing as if to kintsugi-weld back together as it struggles, but even with half their number in the thrall of some other situation, the Evangelions are able to erode the field vigorously. The light of the soul's boundary flickers. Perhaps the Angel is struggling to reinforce? Given the sheer scale of even a *relatively small* typhoon it would make sense for there to be delays, lulls...
What Alouette anchors makes the first scream happen.
It's thin and distant. Muffled, perhaps. It's on the other side of two stretches of remaining dense cloud bank -- but we get ahead of ourselves. Alouette seizes some invisible Part and it *hurts* and then the second wall begins to rip free and this time it does not rise outwards towards the other units. Explosive orbs rip forwards, buffetting what is happening *here*. It might be different elsewhere, but that's someone else's problem. Someone else who isn't fighting the Angel. Worry about that later.
Rikka's barrage shepherds storm water upwards.
And while it isn't visible to the group, either, some of it rises...
And rises...
And RISES further, entering the troposphere in a great waving arc and throwing a vast sea of miniscule seawater droplets upwards. They flash to crystals of light, placing a vast micro-snow sundog up there, doubtless to the confusion of the world in the days to come, if there is still a world.
The storm pours *upwards*. Stillness comes as a veil is lifted, like a grey curtain fading away before them. There is echoing thunder, but then there is another patch of stillness. Deeper this time. The air is windy but 'brisk spring day' breezy.
As EVA-04 recovers itself, a half-dozen exhausted-looking seagulls land on its shoulders and pylons, sagging downwards. How long have they been in the air?
"Hah... Can you see the eye wall from here? Check to your southeast," says Lt. Ibuki, more clearly. They're really rallying up. "We've been tracking the structure, you've gotten through the outer layers! You're nearly there - the Angel's operational body is in there. Just -- I mean, do your best!" Maya does not want to say the plan in case the Angel is listening. After all, what if it overhears?
But it may be important to *fight* and *survive* more than to *kill*.
Static on the line. "What?" Lt. Ibuki says. Then, stammering, "There's something - it's reconstituting its lines, h-hurry up --"
TOO LATE? MAYBE: It doesn't seem to come FROM anywhere, although Lucine and Rikka, being aerial, would have a better grasp than many. They tore a hole in the storm wall but it's not literally a wall in a corridor. It's a cyclonic storm... *there's more of it to either side*. And those sides are coming together now--
Howling winds seize at the Synchrotank and Dianthes, trying (not for the first time) to smash them against the sea and press them implacably downwards towards the ocean. One particularly savage gust is threatening to slam the Synchrotank INTO Getter-3.
It becomes dark as pitch - a far change from that welcome 'ill weather grey' which was, in relative terms, so bright - as the wind whips and whistles through the lower-down units - Eva-01 and Eva-04, to say nothing of the curiously stout form of Getter-3! Here it seems to be pushing them *inwards*. Nearer to what looks almost like a visual error - a wall of cloudy grey that doesn't seem to be so much 'a bank of clouds' as simply a "space that is grey," and which seems to be growing awfully fast. Is it growing? Are you being moved?
Null-Sigma's submersibility is an advantage but it isn't an exclusive one. The sea is moving too; a thermal current abruptly flooding forwards, cold water driven with invisible malice to force the Evangelion *upwards*, glimmering with threatening orange-yellow light. The AT Field guiding it - tighter, perhaps, to make up for the profound density of water versus air - and it makes for far more of a ram-rod, too.
KTS: Rei Ayanami targets Lucine Azul with Beta Drift! KTS: Rei Ayanami targets Rikka Takarada with Indominable Steer! KTS: Rei Ayanami targets Mari Makinami Illustrious with Beta Drift! KTS: Rei Ayanami targets Shinji Ikari with Beta Drift! KTS: Rei Ayanami targets Neo Getter Team with Indominable Steer! KTS: Rei Ayanami targets Alloy Kaas with Meta-fujiwara Effect! KTS: Rei Ayanami rattles Rikka Takarada, making her next maneuvers more difficult. KTS: Rikka Takarada blocks Rei Ayanami's Indominable Steer, taking 4130 damage! KTS: Neo Getter Team rushes into the attack! KTS: Rei Ayanami rattles Neo Getter Team, making their next maneuvers more difficult. KTS: Neo Getter Team partially guards Rei Ayanami's Indominable Steer, taking 2655 damage! KTS: Mari Makinami Illustrious's EN Barrier activates, negating 1500 base damage. KTS: Mari Makinami Illustrious fails to evade Rei Ayanami's Beta Drift, taking 4400 damage! KTS: Alloy Kaas's Will Barrier activates, negating 500 base damage. KTS: Alloy Kaas blocks Rei Ayanami's Meta-fujiwara Effect, taking 6045 damage! KTS: Lucine Azul fails to evade Rei Ayanami's Beta Drift, taking 6050 damage!
<Pose Tracker> Neo Getter Team has posed.
"Gai, what are you doing?" Go yells as Gai pulls Neo Getter-3 against the panelling of container ship they latched onto. "We gotta get deeper in or this is just wasting time!"
"First rule of underwater combat!" Gai shouts back - Sho dials down both their volumes in her helmet. "Go with the flow, or meet the undertow!"
"Why did you rhyme that you drive me crazy - "
"Yeah same to you monkey-man! Now shut up and let me work!" Neo Getter-3 grabs the sheared metal, an electromagnetic charge locking it to the peculiar steel box-kite temporarily, and angles it just so, the angled edge blunting the force pushing them inwards to the next layer of storm bank.
"This thing wants us up close and personal," Gai mutters, holding tight to the controls. "Fine by us, right Go?"
"Let's do this thing," the Neo Eagle-pilot replies with a grin. "Shunting plasma reactor to the launchers!"
"Hope you're hungry! GETTER HOMING MISSILE!" Neo-Bear's pilot roars as their combiner discards the ship chunk and looses its cable, shoulder-mounted backpack cannons launching a heavy warhead directly towards the centre of the cloudbank.
KTS: Neo Getter Team has activated the Trick Spirit Command. KTS: Neo Getter Team has activated the Trick Spirit Command. KTS: Neo Getter Team has activated the Trick Spirit Command. KTS: Neo Getter Team targets Rei Ayanami with Getter Homing Missile - Single Shot! KTS: Rei Ayanami's EN Barrier activates, negating 1500 base damage. KTS: Rei Ayanami fails to react to Neo Getter Team's Getter Homing Missile - Single Shot, taking 4880 damage! KTS: Neo Getter Team completes the Formation attack! KTS: Shinji Ikari rushes into the attack! KTS: Shinji Ikari's EN Barrier activates, negating 1000 base damage. KTS: Shinji Ikari partially guards Rei Ayanami's Beta Drift, taking 5400 damage! <Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
Within the Evangelion unit, Shinji mercifully does not experience the sensation of drowning, even if he does experience the sensation of smashing into concrete. Because at the right level of force, water may as well be. More familiar is the feel of trying to penetrate an AT Field, stubbornly forcing the blade in, muscles protesting, but attack needing to be relentless because hesitation only leads to more pain.
Sometimes recklessness does too. Most things lead to pain for Shinji, really.
Mari comes in Eva-04 and Shinji does this weird thing where he pinches his eyes shut and decides to trust her -- beyond refusing to look -- to not completely collide into him because Mari is the master of being wherever she wants to be at any point in time.
His eyes snap open at the sound, like something about the world around them is shredding apart, and then there's screaming. And then that rather damning line of encouragement Shinji has come to know: do your best.
In other words, don't die. Because that's about to be a very real possibility.
That powerful storm wind collides with Unit-01 and Shinji grits his teeth so hard he'd worry they'd crack if he had a chance to worry about anything besides the storm tearing Unit-01's limbs off like the leaves off of a tree. He's dragged back toward the water, AT Field smashing against it to keep him from completely sinking, and Unit-01 launching up and off before colliding back down from another surge of wind.
Scrambling like a drowning man, Unit-01 reaches out of the water in a wild burst, firing with its rifle wildly to do something, anything, to gain another moment of respite to move.
KTS: Shinji Ikari has activated the Dash Spirit Command and has disengaged. KTS: Shinji Ikari targets Rei Ayanami with Type MM-99 209mm AU Assault Rifle Reckless Fire! KTS: Rei Ayanami's EN Barrier activates, negating 1500 base damage. KTS: Rei Ayanami fails to react to Shinji Ikari's Type MM-99 209mm AU Assault Rifle Reckless Fire, taking 2610 damage! KTS: Shinji Ikari roots his unit, coming to a standstill and leaving him vulnerable.
<Pose Tracker> Rikka Takarada has posed.
Is that... a scream? It's faint. Distant. Rikka's not even sure it was more than the howling of the winds around her, but she thought she heard something... She isn't given much time to worry about it, though, as there's soon another communication from Lt. Ibuki.
"Thanks for the update!" Rikka replies. ...But, soon after that, they receive a warning - a warning that comes almost too late.
"...What is that...?" Rikka remarks. She's not sure what she's seeing. She doesn't get too much time to look closely, as winds grasp at Synchrotank. "Ah...!"
Synchrotank is hurled downward abruptly, dangerous.
"C-careful, I'm headed your way...!" Rikka warns Neo Getter Team. Thankfully, Vit's piloting is able to avoid a painful collision, if only barely. Synchrotank slams into the water and sinks... but the mobile suit is pointed upward and thrusters flare, sending it jetting out of the water.
"Looks like we'll have to fight back... I'm taking aim!" Rikka says. Water is channeled into Synchrotank's cannons and pressurized as she scans the enemy for signs of any weak points. And then...
"There!" Rikka calls out and she fights water with water, sending a pair of highly-pressurized cutting water jets straight into the storm!
KTS: Rikka Takarada has activated the Enable Spirit Command. KTS: Rikka Takarada targets Rei Ayanami with High-Pressure Hydro Cannons! KTS: Rikka Takarada has activated the Trust Spirit Command targeting Lucine Azul KTS: Rikka Takarada has activated the Trust Spirit Command targeting Alloy Kaas KTS: Rikka Takarada has activated the Trust Spirit Command targeting Shinji Ikari KTS: Rei Ayanami successfully avoids Rikka Takarada's High-Pressure Hydro Cannons
<Pose Tracker> Mari Makinami Illustrious has posed.
Alouette and the Null-Sigma manages to actually puncture past the density of clouds and strike -whatever- the Angel's form is that lies within its dense, storm-wrought cocoon of winds. Mari Makinami catches sight - and sound - of this on her happily-carving descent, making a swift landing as she observes.
With only the briefest detour as Evangelion Unit-04 gives its Unit-01 kindred a snappy salute in passing as they -just- barely pass each other by without horrific collision. See? Teamwork!
"We're so in sync it's like we're soulmates, Puppy Boy~!"
you can just -- hear the kissy face behind that
Unit-04 -lands-, for a given definition of it; the AT Field is used to buffer as much of the turbulence as it can, but even with -that-, the violent winds and churning crash of titanic waves sloshes it forward and back. All the same -- she sees the silhouette of what lies within, as Alloy strikes it. And she whistles.
"Cheers, Tako! Now it's gonna get really mad!"
She enthuses, like this is a good thing.
Which it is! It means it's more distracted, less likely to try to push past them into Geofront, and -much less- likely to notice its unwelcome company pushing deeper towards its core.
So the more focused on murdering them all violently it is, the better!
Not that there's time for them to appreciate that, in the heart of a typhoon. Mari's ability to see the unflagging positives in the middle of a roaming calamity is without parallel, but even she only has so much attention to spare; as the Evangelion settles, AT Field shimmering and pulsing around it, her attention tilts towards her side. She sees those seagulls, exhausted; she blinks. And then her brows lift.
"Look at you. Toughest trash birds I know," she remarks, as Eva-04 lifts a finger towards one of the birds. "But you're gonna wanna get out of here quick pretty--"
Heat gives way to sparkling cold up above. Wind slaps forward like the crack of the whip. Mari knows what's coming. Her eyes widen. The AT Field reinforces swiftly, the hoverboard starts to tilt --
-- just too late.
Wind. It's remarkable just how damaging wind can be. It's a fact that you can only really, truly appreciate when you see the sheer force of a typhoon's wind bands rip a roof off of a house or simply collapse a building outright.
It's a fact that you can only really, -truly- appreciate when you -feel- firsthand how it bends an Evangelion backwards like a reed with crushing force that translates its way directly across your spine.
"HHKKc"
This strangled noise is the sound Mari makes as she suddenly finds herself arching backwards against the throne of Evangelion Unit-04, LCL bubbling feverishly up the stretch of her spine. Her Unit is -ripped- off its board, the thing flinging through the air with it as it is drawn inexoribly -inward- toward the growing gray. Unit-04's right arm -snaps- back irregularly at the shoulder. It can fix itself fairly easily; the feeling of Mari's shoulder dislocating is harder to shake.
She's a ragdoll in a tempest for several, blistering seconds, as that left hand reaches -- reaches --
Evangelion Unit-04 is tumbling as it grips onto its board. The way it twists through the air is nothing short of transcendentally acrobatic as it lands on the broad side of its aerial assistance and -knifes- through the water. Back bent, it -lurches- forward with the bob of its torso just as Mari does. Her lips part, panting violently. She hurts.
Which is why there is a grin on her lips just as much as it ignites her stare.
"You've grown up so fast," she exhales. "So stop being so shy!"
And eyes wide with glee, Mari pops out Eva-04's right assault rifle, gripping it with that injured hand and -swinging- it forward to aim -directly- at that gray to fire in perfect sync with Unit-01.
"Let's get a -good look at you-!"
KTS: Mari Makinami Illustrious targets Rei Ayanami with Assault Rifle - Single Fire! KTS: Rei Ayanami fails to react to Mari Makinami Illustrious's Assault Rifle - Single Fire, taking 4600 damage! <Pose Tracker> Alloy Kaas has posed.
The impact comes suddenly and without any chance to manuever. A fist of water, or battering ram might be more appropriate, crashes with full force. It impacts Null-Sigma across the entire facing side.
For Alloy, it feels suddenly like she is falling. Her eyes wide, the sound of ribs breaking, a delayed cough. The latter sprays blood into the LCL. It's the neural connection. It must remain high for operation of the tentacles. The downside is, Alouette Kaas feels the injuries delivered upon her Eva unit. Another cough, more blood, as Alloy gasps for air, fighting the wind having been knocked out of her.
*urk*"Shin...ji, M-Mari..."
Her airway spasms, made more painful by the full immersion, inside too, of the LCL. It only let's up when the Eva strikes something hard, and there is a snap as her head experiences the whiplash of the sudden stop. Alloy feels the blood come up again, her arm comes up and she wipes her face with her sleeve, leaving a streak across its surface. She grits her teeth, readying for the next exchange.
"NERV, Null-Sigma *coughs* is below the water. Trying to, get to you."
Alouette leaves her seat, reaching for a cylindrical mechanism. The main system fuse has to be, manually reengaged. She pulls with one hand, but it doesn't move. Both hands wrap around the "handle" and finally it starts to move. The effort is excruciating, and she screams... until it comes out. She screams again as she turns the device clockwise to reset, and must push it back in. With a maddeningly slow *shunk*. Alloy takes a moment of pained breath, before returning to her seat and rebooting.
Alloy, synchronized and systems restarted, secures herself. She gets her bearing again. Alloy yells a charge and comes at the target. All the inertia and mass she can erupting out of the surface, like an octopus shaped dolphin. Alloy refuses to let up, and attacks with the spined, cutting edge of the tentacles.
"Everyone ok? I hope so. Watch out for subsurface currets! Unit Null-Sigma, coming back at you!*cough cough*"
KTS: Alloy Kaas targets Rei Ayanami with Bloodboiling Pressure! <Pose Tracker> Lucine Azul has posed.
< "I admit... I mostly remember because it was the first time I had to try to fight without my Dianthus. You and Yuta made a difference. " > Lucine smiles, in that rare lull. < "There will always be next time. For now... we're here, helping them when they need it." >
For all the seconds of leeway it might provide, anyway. Lucine casts a glance to the side towards the distant scream. "... Was that... the units on the ground? Or, ah, in the water..." The Neo Getter crew and the EVAs- Shinji, Mari, and Alouette. "... Please be alright...."
She doesn't have long to ponder it, as static throws a veil over Lt. Ibuki's line. < "It's coming!! Bank--" >
Another dose of wind blows the Dianthus and that warning like dandelion seeds in a violent draftwind.
It's the fatal flaw of the unit: its only means of defense is countering or evasion. Beyond that, there is only the Dianthus's own armor, kept light to help with its ability to maneuver and fly. Which is To say nothing of the pilot's own state of mind, for all that she's masking it. But that isn't to say she doesn't feel more sure of herself in this now than in the past of yesterday, sobbing with Ryoko over their combined misfortunes over drinks. (Hers was nonalcoholic, because Ryoko is a good person.)
Because even as the world grows dark and whatever sounds the cockpit is making is overwhelmed by the assault of wind and rain, the blood from the inside of her cheek, she feels--
safe.
Gold eyes close, Lucine trusting the Dianthus like Shinji trusts Mari. Everything would be where it should be. She just needs to grab one final bit of leverage to give to the three of her companions that need that boost the most, then, set up her shot.
< "One final bit of help from me. I'm hitting my limit.... But I'm not going down without taking one final shot!" >
Through the dark comes a streak of light like from a shooting star, nothing titanic, yes, but perhaps, the stroke of luck to throw the odds in their favor.
KTS: Lucine Azul has activated the Foresee Spirit Command targeting Rikka Takarada KTS: Lucine Azul has activated the Foresee Spirit Command targeting Shinji Ikari KTS: Lucine Azul has activated the Foresee Spirit Command targeting Alloy Kaas KTS: Lucine Azul has activated the Focus Spirit Command. KTS: Rei Ayanami fails to react to Alloy Kaas's Bloodboiling Pressure, taking 4836 damage! KTS: [Dynamic Hit] Alloy Kaas's Geass Directorate Survivor activates, causing Sparkle! KTS: Alloy Kaas has engaged Rei Ayanami! KTS: Alloy Kaas begins a Formation attack! KTS: Lucine Azul targets Rei Ayanami with Argen-21 Beam Arbalest Orion Shot! KTS: Rei Ayanami fails to react to Lucine Azul's Argen-21 Beam Arbalest Orion Shot, taking 5760 damage! KTS: Lucine Azul completes the Formation attack! <Pose Tracker> Rei Ayanami has posed.
There is some thin good news. The group may be in the soup - they may not be able to hear the transmissions from the Geofront in the electrical chaos of the storm - but they have each other. Running lights are visible on the surfaced craft; helpful guideposts to the eye.
After the initial storm there is a thick oppressive atmosphere as if the sea is trying to reconstitute something new, but if there is one disadvantage this Angel has, it is that it is very hard to do *anything* fast on this scale. Before more than haze can form, three hearts beat as one. The GETTER HOMING MISSILE is loose, and it flies towards that strange gray blackness.
The missile hits - and sinks inwards. There is no result for two seconds, followed by a sudden kTHOOM as the warhead detonates; a ripple appears in that gray, and suddenly it all makes *far* more visual sense. This time the scream of the Angel - inhuman, unearthly - is a *lot* more palpable.
A bulge. A ripple. Shinji opens fire. It might be the last of his weapon - the 209mm shells each the size of an artillery shell of wars past, each of them bursting as it contacts the cloud bank. The AT Field isn't flaring to new strength. The storm behind them, while still profound and howling, isn't screaming as badly. As he fires he can see debris whip by too fast to identify - a small truck - an uprooted tree with some lingering tropical fruit of some kind - these are things that have been caught in the storm. Who knows for how long?
The wind is easing up, at least. He can move. That same firing point is barraged by high-pressure water; the impact adds up, and the curtain of gray seems to be... thinning? No, is that a seam?
In screams Mari. The storm has flexed her but she can bend. The tumbling, turning Evangelion Unit-04 has its weapon still. The gun comes up in the injured hand and fires, fires into the storm - converging on that same target point that's already getting decidedly rippling. There is a sudden streaking ray of light that strikes the curtainlike space - it billows out, parting... It begins to contract...
And that's when Alouette bursts forwards, porpoising up and smashing through it. There is a flash of orange as she strikes an AT Field, hastily developed and hastily eroded, and soon enough she has splashed down into the water again. Safe, perhaps. She does not get a good immediate glimpse of the Angel.
The mists part.
The Angel is standing on the water with its seven legs. The central body has that teardrop-like shape that Sandalphon had at Mt. Asama, so long ago. The eyes remain the same - two of them, off set. They have turned towards the approach vector of the group, and one of them saccades on its track, the almost-farcial white sphere with its big black opening taking in Lucine - Rikka - the Evangelions in the water, struggling or otherwise -
It flicks downwards, and the Angel steps with delicacy on its seven legs. They are long and thin. Like a water spider's, or a spider crab's. It does not seem to be standing quite on the water. Each delicate claw tip is staying over the stillness of the eye of the typhoon. The eye slides forwards, and it takes in Getter-3.
The black spot expands to engulf the entire white sphere, producing a deep black pit. There is a miniscule halation deep within it and then
LIGHT comes to the storm as the ray, invisible in the visible spectrum but with its eerie afterglow from where the degenerating electromagnetic radiation DOES become something in the visible spectrum, shoots directly towards Getter-3. Hit the Getter or hit the sea, there is an immediate, enormous eruption upwards; the howling violet-white cruciform pillar.
As it happens, something else is occurring in the air. For a moment it may almost feel good, with positive reports, because it isn't quite a direct attack. Then the spidering pancake ice starts to flow outwards, a twenty-degree cone in front of the Angel that encompasses almost all of the force save the submerged Alloy. Pancake ice blooms upwards, sprouts crystals, thickens, rises, forms *pack* ice, from pack ice begins to form *thicker sheets*. On the outer fringes the water can be seen boiling - the heat has gone somewhere - but in the water and the air that the Angel regards, the heat is *leaving*.
It is not, quite, an actual web - but the goal, no doubt, is similar. To trap the prey.
KTS: Rei Ayanami targets Neo Getter Team with Cross Beam! KTS: Rei Ayanami Changes attack to Alloy Kaas, Rikka Takarada, Shinji Ikari, Mari Makinami Illustrious, and Lucine Azul with Thermal Redirection. KTS: Mari Makinami Illustrious has activated the Attune Spirit Command. KTS: Shinji Ikari's EN Barrier activates, negating 1000 base damage. KTS: Shinji Ikari fails to evade Rei Ayanami's Thermal Redirection, taking 4290 damage! KTS: Rei Ayanami has engaged Shinji Ikari! KTS: Rikka Takarada blocks Rei Ayanami's Thermal Redirection, taking 5880 damage! KTS: Rei Ayanami has engaged Rikka Takarada! KTS: Mari Makinami Illustrious's EN Barrier activates, negating 1500 base damage. KTS: Mari Makinami Illustrious parries Rei Ayanami's Thermal Redirection, taking 1020 damage! KTS: Rei Ayanami has engaged Mari Makinami Illustrious! KTS: Lucine Azul rushes into the attack! KTS: Lucine Azul partially guards Rei Ayanami's Thermal Redirection, taking 5880 damage! KTS: Lucine Azul has been defeated! KTS: Rei Ayanami has engaged Lucine Azul! KTS: Alloy Kaas's Will Barrier activates, negating 500 base damage. KTS: Alloy Kaas blocks Rei Ayanami's Thermal Redirection, taking 3080 damage! KTS: Rei Ayanami has engaged Alloy Kaas! KTS: Rikka Takarada has activated the Resupply Spirit Command targeting Mari Makinami Illustrious KTS: Rikka Takarada has activated the Resupply Spirit Command targeting Mari Makinami Illustrious KTS: Neo Getter Team fails to rush. KTS: Neo Getter Team partially guards Rei Ayanami's Cross Beam, taking 8075 damage! KTS: Rei Ayanami roots her unit, coming to a standstill and leaving her vulnerable. KTS: Alloy Kaas has activated the Strike Spirit Command. KTS: Alloy Kaas has activated the Strike Spirit Command. KTS: Neo Getter Team has activated the Trick Spirit Command. KTS: Neo Getter Team has activated the Trick Spirit Command. KTS: Neo Getter Team has activated the Trick Spirit Command. KTS: Neo Getter Team has activated the Trick Spirit Command. KTS: Neo Getter Team has activated the Trick Spirit Command. <Pose Tracker> Neo Getter Team has posed.
"Sho! Go!" Gai yells as the energy coalesces in front of the Angel's body, now visible. "Brace for - "
THOOM
Gallons of water vaporised in a glorious violet-white cross-shaped explosion, plumes of steam whipped up and away by the parting storm. Silence, at first, but then -
Neo Getter-3 rises to the surface, battered, armour cracking, smoke billowing from its turbines - but whole.
In the cockpit of Neo-Eagle, Go Ichimonji whoops as he picks himself back up and straps himself back into the seat. "Now that's what I'm talking about! We actually FELT that one, you big ugly crab!"
Gai wipes blood from his mouth and cracks his knuckles. Neo Getter-3 slams its great fists together. "Finally. Something to cut loose on. Sho, you want to party?"
The Neo-Jaguar pilot chuckles, removing her helmet - its visor is cracked so badly she can't see. "Thanks, Gai, but you've brought us this far. Let's make it regret trying to blow us up."
"You got it, Squadron Leader." Gai grins. "Alright, guys, give me everything you've got."
The reactor surges, Neo Getter Team pushing their robot to its limit. Plasma energy crackles around Neo Getter-3 as it rushes in across the surface of the water before launching itself up towards the face of Sandalphon's manifestation. It coalesces at the tip of the two half-drill pylons protruding from the combiner's backpack as those great fists dig into crustacean-esque armour, ripping chunks away to find purchase. Gai takes a deep breath. "PLASMAAAAAAAAAAA..."
The energy grows brighter and brighter, pink and white sparks joining the coruscating blue, accompanied by the whine of the air itself heating up. The sound and light build together into a crescendo, and then, as one, all three pilots yell:
"BREEEAAAAAK!!!"
There is a thundercrack and a radiating shockwave as the Neo Getter Robo's plasma reactor discharges itself all at once into the body of Sandalphon, followed by an inrushing swoop of air.
KTS: Neo Getter Team targets Rei Ayanami with Plasma Break! KTS: Rei Ayanami partially guards Neo Getter Team's Plasma Break, taking 7068 damage! KTS: Neo Getter Team has engaged Rei Ayanami! KTS: Neo Getter Team roots their unit, coming to a standstill and leaving them vulnerable. <Pose Tracker> Lucine Azul has posed.
< "We're in the clear! One final push!" >
The pancake ice is Lucine's first warning. It's a vague one, however, without a clear direction of what to do. The oblong shapes of pancake ice are alien to Lucine, as is the shape of the angel, looking more like some sea creature with eyes pinned on one side. One could potentially occur on Mars in the colder parts, the other... one could hope not.
The Dianthus darts in the air, zooming past the crew, flying near Shinji, when a crystalline pack of dust freezes the very moisture out the air. The air *crunches*, encompassing the mech as well as any spider's web.
< "I... c-can't... move...." > Lucine's breath leaves clouds in her cockpit. .... this shouldn't happen. The Dianthus is built to handle the cold of the vaccuum of space. But now, her pilot suit feels like wet paper against the rapidly cooling air of the cockpit, as she tries to move the vehicle with decreasing gains of success. < "... I think... the temperature control was damaged by that last hit...">
Shinji's unit is nearby.
< "Shinji, when you can, if you can cut through the ice, I'll attach the Dianthus onto your EVA. This way, if we go underwater, as long as my cockpit remains airtight, I'll be fine. Just be aware of the extra weight." > She tries to hide the shudder in her voice. Shinji has enough stress to deal with as it is.
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
Shinji can hear the kissy face behind that, thanks Mari, his face is now blazing red to go with everything else wrong that's happening right now. "I -- I don't think that's what's happening!" But even in the chaos, there is a sync happening, their joint fire battering the Angel's AT Field as Shinji watches it weaking. The storm is screaming less.
Alloy's voice calls his name with Mari's, and Shinji tries to tear his vision through the storm and waves for Null-Sigma. "Alloy? Alloy, where are you?!"
Under the water. Shinji stares in wide eyed horror. "Alloy!"
For a moment, he contemplates leaping in. It's a terribly absurd thought -- one that would do more harm than good. Unit-01, and its pilot, are poorly suited to underwater combat. Null-Sigma is a different story. Mercifully, Null-Sigma resurfaces, and Shinji sinks back against his seat, limbs like jelly. "Thank goodness..."
There's little time for respite or relief. With everyone's assault, the Angel's form comes into greater clarity. An Angel that started one way and evolved... no, grew up, like Mari said...? Whatever tightening in his chest Shinji feels has to be ignored.
The sea boils, and frozen --
Unit-01 grabs hold of the webs of ice, yanking itself forward with lurches. Ice tears against the chassis, revealing the grotesque shapes under the plate. Where Shinji does not trust himself to fly or swim, he trusts himself to tear his way across a frozen web, even if he rakes himself entirely across the way. Unit-01's massive fingers sink into the sheets, vaulting up with a horrible lurch. By the time it rises, one arm is left dragging behind him, his own limp against the controls. His fingers twitch, and with a yell and pained will, he forces his grip back in place and demeands Unit-01's move for one final push.
"I'm -- I'm here -- hold on...!" he bids Lucine, not liking how calm she sounds when everything is awful. Or maybe he's supposed to be calm and never knows how to be. His prog knife is abandoned, exchnged for a longer blade to cleave into the ice around Dianthus and at the Angel itself. "A little bit more...!"
One final push.
Eyes red and jaw trembling, cold in his lungs, Shinji throws all his weight in a stab and twist at the Angel, and at the ice, wrestling Dianthus free. Unit-01's arm catches hold, shoulder threatening to tear. Shinji does not let go, even as they both hit the water, every effort now expended on keeping afloat. Lucine says it's airtight but Shinji trusts nothing.
KTS: Shinji Ikari has activated the Alert Spirit Command. KTS: Shinji Ikari has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Shinji Ikari has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Shinji Ikari targets Rei Ayanami with Magoroku Elegant Swordplay! KTS: Rei Ayanami fails to react to Shinji Ikari's Magoroku Elegant Swordplay, taking 6600 damage! KTS: [Dynamic Hit] Shinji Ikari's You Can (Not) Advance activates, causing Nullify! KTS: Shinji Ikari has engaged Rei Ayanami!
<Pose Tracker> Rikka Takarada has posed.
"...Yeah, that was my first time doing anything like that without Synchrotank between me and trouble, too. But, I'm glad. We'll have to hang out sometime when we're not under attack." Rikka replies, and smiles herself. That's the important thing - these people needed help, and they're here to give them that help. "...Yeah, definitely."
They fight against it. By now, she's stopped receiving reports from Geofront. The interference is too severe. And the mists part, revealing...
"...Is that the Angel?" Rikka asks. She's never seen one in person before. She's not sure what she expected - it doesn't look like anything she could've expected.
And then it attacks - ice surges, and the temperatures lower. If it weren't for Lucine's last-ditch effort to give her a chance to escape, Synchrotank might have been caught up completely in the surge of ice. This is... dangerous. Synchrotank's temperature is dropping rapidly, and her systems are reporting icing in the cannons from where the water is starting to freeze up...
"...If I don't fire it now, it's all just going to freeze in there..." Rikka mutters. From a survival standpoint, that'd be really bad - but from a practical standpoint, she really doesn't want to have to take Synchrotank's water tanks apart and chip the ice out by hand, even if some of it will met in the eternally warm Tsutsujidai sun. "...Guess there's nothing else for it."
And so, Rikka unloads. Synchrotank's cannons fire everything it has left, all of the water left in its tanks issues forth toward the Angel in a pair of massive waters jets, the sheer force enough to send the mobile suit recoiling back through the air.
"...Sorry, Vit...!" Rikka apologizes abruptly, as Vit has to fight to keep the mobile suit from dunking itself into the freezing waters in response. As for Borr, it might be for the best for everyone involved that the NGJHS's cockpits are currently muted.
KTS: Rikka Takarada targets Rei Ayanami with Extreme Extinguishing Burst!
<Pose Tracker> Alloy Kaas has posed.
Unlike when she commenced the air deployment that risked damage if she hit a non moving body of water, her fall back into the seas this time only hurt because of her injuries.
Before she alters her vector, a bright flash lazes it's way above the water. It is over as quickly as it appeared, but with Angels, that's not a good sound... or sight.
"NO!"
Cursing. Angry. Injured (again). Alloy is a blur of movement. Even as alarms and reports of damage pop up in her vision, she is focused. System messages and warnings to be overriden. Alloy pulls up the base script interface used for debugging. She squeezes her orange and blue eyes shut, to further concentrate.
Alloy resets the parameters and overrides the limiters by fifteen percent.
"Fuck. Commander Ikari is gonna annihilate me for this. Nulls... for what it's worth, I am sorry."
Alouette takes a deep breath, and holds it for a three count. Another explosion overhead. This time far larger than any yet. She cries out, which cements her resolve as she finalizes the settings. Alloy and the Kraken Evangelion speed towards the surface.
A blue and orange Evangelion explodes out of the water, in an deliberate arc. Splintering shards of solid ice break under the force and weight of thrust. Glinting in any light that reaches them, for a still moment it would look like a diamond comet trail behind her. Alloy throwing herself and her Eva at the opening. The tentacles lunge forward, their clasping pinchers diving like a falcon, open to become angry maws. Their mouths tear at anything they can, like a violent murder of blue crows. Until they are as deep as they can get. Alloy pushes closer, narrowing the colossal Eva body. The tentacles each get a deep bite, criss crossing one another. Suddely the reason for the system changes becomes clear, as the tentacles are pushed nearly to limits... they try and rip open the flesh/exterior, in gory fashion.
"Who the hell do you think you are!!! Shinji! Mari! I'm coming! Rikka- Lucine and Neo Getter Team, I'm attacking the opening, bring everything you can!"
KTS: Rei Ayanami partially guards Rikka Takarada's Extreme Extinguishing Burst, taking 4340 damage! KTS: Rikka Takarada roots her unit, coming to a standstill and leaving her vulnerable. KTS: Alloy Kaas targets Rei Ayanami with Death From The Abyss! KTS: Rei Ayanami partially guards Alloy Kaas's Death From The Abyss, taking 8760 damage! KTS: [Dynamic Hit] Alloy Kaas's Geass Directorate Survivor activates, causing Sparkle! KTS: Rei Ayanami has been defeated! KTS: Alloy Kaas has engaged Rei Ayanami!
<Pose Tracker> Mari Makinami Illustrious has posed.
Bullets ripple across gray. And as Null-Sigma makes its brutal offensive...
"Hoooooo..."
Mari Makinami Illustrious' eyes climb as she takes in the spindling, spidering sight of a Sandalphon reaching maturity.
"... what a big boy~."
She apologizes
for <3 n o t h i n g <3.
It's remarkable, how much it's managed to grow, in so little time. Part of Mari - an unapologetic part of her, as is all parts of Mari - wants to see what happens if they fail here. If the body isn't destroyed. If it learns enough to incarnate a fourth form. What would it look like? What would it -do-?
What would -they- do? ...
She really wants to know. She wants to know the mystery. Who wouldn't? But...
"... You don't really know what to do with all that knowledge, do you...?"
Mari stares at the shell of Sandalphon's creation. And for a moment, those dark brows soften in something like pity. As if seeing past it, even as the blinding light of the cross beam sears forth, blistering across Eva-04's visuals. She looks -past- -- to the hidden core of it, now on a precipice thanks to their efforts.
"Maybe it's for the best you don't. True growth isn't for the faint of heart. Sorry."
She wants to know. But it's a mystery she will have to let linger.
She feels it. A shift in temperature. Energy and heat is transferred even as the light of the Cross Beam fades. Bobbing on her air board, she takes stock of the situation. Alloy, calling out to them. "Keep it up, Tako," she murmurs. Lucine, fallen. The other units, already badly damaged. If the main thrust doesn't make it through, they might not last anyway. Maybe she will get to learn the mystery. But...
"... But I can't let you keep going. After all... I've got an important date I can't possibly let myself stand up~."
Evangelion Unit-04 crouches upon its board, one hand touching the surface. It braces, as pancake ice begins to bloom outward like blossoming flowers across the ocean surface.
And as all others make their final gambits, how can Mari do any less?
"Brace yourself, Evangelion Unit-04 --"
A metaphorical web of ice crystals spear upwards, and Eva-04 -- LUNGES. Ice encases. Entraps. It is lost within the perfect geometric folds of frost.
Until that hoverboard SHATTERS through that icy cage, splintering into so much sputtering, exploding scrap as it collides with the front of Sandalphon's manifestation.
A second later, through blooming ice and rapidly dwindling heat of the hoverboard's fireball, Evangelion Unit-04 BURSTS forth, literally SPINNING through the air straight horizontal, Rapidborers locked and shoved -forward- in front of its head, moving at maximum acceleration as icicles tear at and into and THROUGH armor platings. It doesn't matter. The pain doesn't matter.
"-- it's time to put it ALL ON THE LINE--!"
Not as much as rocketing straight through the dead center of the angel like a corkscrewing Psychocrusher, intent on churning through as much Sandalphon as it can until either the Evangelion STOPS, or it shoots STRAIGHT through the spidery entity.
It isn't the -most- she can do. But it is the most she can do -right now-.
And it even comes with a blood-curdling, barbarian roar on the part of Mari to accompany it!
If it sounds like the Evangelion is also roaring in some hideous nightmare-haunting way that is probably just a trick of the ice. Like the Bloop.
KTS: Mari Makinami Illustrious has activated the Detonate Spirit Command, reducing the Evangelion Unit-04 to 1 HP! KTS: Mari Makinami Illustrious has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Mari Makinami Illustrious has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Mari Makinami Illustrious targets Rei Ayanami with Rapidborer -Drillpocalypsing! KTS: Rei Ayanami fails to react to Mari Makinami Illustrious's Rapidborer -Drillpocalypsing, taking 8360 damage! KTS: Rei Ayanami has been defeated! KTS: Mari Makinami Illustrious has engaged Rei Ayanami!
<Pose Tracker> Rei Ayanami has posed.
The Angel strides forwards with delicacy. Great legs rise and fall. Almost immediately, it is faced with the oncoming rush of Neo Getter. The Getter Robot (would it be right to call it a Getter Robo, exactly?) seizes control of some of its outer carapace, where a mouth might be in some cases --
But Sandalphon has no mouth. (How did it scream?)
Gray-brown ceramide layers that loosely emulate a shell crack underneath this force. The power of Getter rings outwards and sends an enormous thermal-plasmic BURST through and into Sandalphon, sending the Angel staggering back one pace - two - three -
The head component shakes slightly. The Angel stops moving. Reorienting.
The eyes shift round. The one remaining googly eye unfolds. This touch, this peculiar moment of almost whimsy, is now entirely gone. Sandalphon turns itself and tilts its top down and to the left, orienting one eye towards Lucine--
-- at which point Unit-01 smashes down with the Magoroku sword; the blade carves through the ceramides that Neo Getter had already damaged, actually ripping INTO the front of the Angel and tearing a portion of its anatomy loose. Anatomy is the only word for it, because it makes not even approximate sense; the red, raw space which is revealed drips and oozes primarily red and a strange greenish-clear fluid in what's some sort of interlocking, interleaved layer. This momentary view will doubtless fascinate NERV's scientists, but there are greater problems.
Sandalphon screams again.
The oozed fluid begins to boil. SOMETHING was about to happen but it is abruptly and decisively presented by Rikka. Whatever noisome ichor the Angel is oozing or weeping, it is not doing so now. The enormous wound is laved by Rikka, though this may not have been her intention, and the Angel screams again, one of its seven legs raising upwards and lifting up as its joints pop into different angles, the delicate claw at the end suddenly extending into something ten meters long and thin as a wrap-strand of the Orbital Elevator. That limb swings down --
Alloy Kaas screams out of the water and strikes the Angel in its already damaged forepart. Regeneration has failed so far, and it has been repeatedly damaged. Alouette does not so much hit the Angel as go THROUGH the Angel. The leg that was being raised as well as the one immediately next to it go flying off into the sea. Sandalphon is silent even as the limb totters over and crashes into the sea, bobbing aloft.
The Angel steps back one body-width from Eva-0S-- and the dripping material begins to boil again. Forming a crude, coarse, but thick layer of its armor. And from within the center of that armor, two little budding limbs, like six jointed fingers, poke out -- and begin to expand, to grow...
AND TO GET RENT ASUNDER
For Evangelion Unit-04, riding on an out-sized minovsky craft board and mounting with rapidborers and icicles alike, smashes directly into the barely-set material. It flies off into the air, toppling into the storm, spot curing into strange shapes as Mari digs in and gets traction and rips inwards and CRACKS the shell, the entire top half toppling backwards and landing in the sea as more of that horrid innard is revealed. Grue and some sort of alien tomalley topple outwards as she finally ruptures the back, separating one of the rear legs and leaving the standing thing there, churning, steaming, utterly still.
Silenced.
Except...
The top half of Sandalphon's carapace floats... and the inner flesh begins to seethe.
The two severed legs spread apart. It shifts itself - rolling over. There is a miniscule cry - a tiny, tiny version of what it screamed before. And what is standing upright begins to sprout its limbs anew.
Rei Ayanami has changed Boss level to 18
<Pose Tracker> Rei Ayanami has posed.
But, near the Aokigahara Forest:
Crystalline fist. Spear. Heat-knife. A full discharge of weapons. And the howling blade of Gridman Calibur. Determination in the face of terror unites them. Something cracks. It is not them.
The scream is far away, and the storm shrouds it, but the Angel's regenerating components shiver - stop - abruptly seem to bloom in a ripple of some sort of larval shape, as if recapituating phylogeny - and with a spectacular suddenness, burst! Not into flames, but erupting into showering strands of deep red core fluid; the extrusion disintegrating into its constitutent material. The storm stills to a mere rough day at sea, the enormous chunk of damaged ice bobbing anomalously in Sagami Bay as the eye spreads outwards. The breath reaches up to the gray lid of this horrid stage, and far far above -
And spreading out like a pavilion if not a full glorious canopy -
Is the clear, blue sky of Earth.
Typhoon "Cineraria" has died with Sandalphon, but the storm's remnants will lash and pour over Japan's mountains and forests for the next several days. But it is not the first storm Japan has faced in its myriad years, and the pouring waters will saturate the land; erosion and devastation will come hand in hand with growth, or with a deep, pure snow in the higher reaches of the mountains.
Here, at least, all is right with the world.
KTS: Rei Ayanami's The True Ninth Angel - Sandalphon (IMAGO) has been disabled.
<Pose Tracker> Neo Getter Team has posed.
"Oh shit," Sho breathes as the ripped-apart flesh of Sandalphon begins to froth and bubble, "Is it regenerating?"
And then it bursts into a cascade of encarmine gore, absolutely drenching Neo Getter-3 at its point-blank range.
"Oh, that's just great," Gai grumbles. "As if I didn't have enough work to do."
Go whoops in his cockpit. "YEAH, TAKE THAT, YA STUPID - CRAB THING!"
"You already said that," Gai says tiredly.
Standing - barely standing, but standing - on the surface of the dyed-red water, Neo Getter-3 surveys the survivors. "Anyone need a rescue?"
<Pose Tracker> Rikka Takarada has posed.
They unite and attack the Angel as one. Their combined power is enough to do terrible damage to the Angel. And yet... it starts to regenerate. Rikka draws in a breath, her hands gripping tightly onto Synchrotank's controls.
...What are they going to do now? She spent all of Synchrotank's water reserves on that last attack - she doesn't have big guns left anymore. She has Utsumi's glue gun with her, she supposes - she can still do that. Maybe if she fires it at the regenerating points, she can stop some of it...?
...But, to her relief, she doesn't get the chance to try. There is a sudden scream from far away, and the Angel stops... and bursts. The sky clears, and Rikka exhales, letting herself melt into her pilot seat.
"They... they did it." Rikka says, relieved. She shuts her eyes for a moment. Yuta, Max, Calibur and the others really did it... She had been worried about them. She hopes they're safe - she has no idea what'll happen to them now.
"I'm here to help with rescue, too. Did anyone get hurt?" Rikka asks.
<Pose Tracker> Mari Makinami Illustrious has posed.
Sandalphon begins to regrow its manifestation anew --
--but it doesn't realize. It's too late.
Its fate is over.
Evangelion Unit-04, battered and brutalized and frosted, floats upon a massive segment of ice; its entry plug has already been ejected and opened, even before Sandalphon begins to regrow itself.
Mari Makinami bears witness to the Ninth Angel's end, seated upon the scarred and chilled head of her Evangelion, legs drawn up against her chest and arms folded against her knees as she watches the clouds split and spread outward toward a clear, blue sky.
Her smile is a bittersweet one, as she bears witness. Her chin on her forearms, her glasses glinting frost-cold light, her head tilts as she listens to the others.
"... Farewell, Ninth Angel," she declares, offering a brief wave of her hand. Her gaze turns, towards the horizon.
"They really know how to time things though, huh? I'm not going to have much time to prepare for my date at all. But that's okay. I like to improvise~."
And it is here Mari will stay for now, her Evangelion bobbing on the ice as she watches the spot Sandalphon once resided.
Her only response to Rikka?
A chipper thumbs up from her position. All good here!
<Pose Tracker> Mari Makinami Illustrious has posed.
A scream. A struggle.
A sentiment of desperate and confused impressions that only one, silver-haired youth can really understand.
understand
don't
grow
stop
live
live
li
And then silence, as a broad rainbow arcs out over a stretch of Aokigahara in stark defiance of storms and in singular proof of victory.
All is right with the world.
<Pose Tracker> Kaworu Nagisa has posed.
Far away, and not so far at all, Kaworu gazes upwards from Unit-00's entry plug, his faint smile bittersweet. "Goodbye," he murmurs to no one.
<Pose Tracker> Lucine Azul has posed.
As Alloy's EVA blasts through the ice crust, Lucine can only stare in wonder. These EVAs... what exactly are they, beyond large humanoid robots with uncanny proportions. And the Neo Getter, a force so powerful that it needs the combined wills of three pilots to pilot as one. Rikka's Synchrotank, showing Lucine what force the Gridman support team has beyond Gridman himself.
And then, screaming into the Angel, the Unit-04.
Finally, Unit-01, piloted by a young man who makes Lucine feel like a social butterfly in comparison. But there is definitely a reason why Kaworu likes him-- she can see it.
His heart, and his will.
< "... You did it, Shinji. Thank you." > Lucine then falls back against her seat, exhaling a sigh of relief.
She then begins to laugh, tears streaking down her face. They all survived.