2010-07-18 - Third Impact: Terminal Dogma

Above, hell has erupted. A-LAWS, the JSSDF, and the EFA have -- apparently under the authority of Paptimus Scirocco -- sieged Tokyo-03. The battle is nothing short of a catastrophe, for it seems that NERV anticipated such a move: the entire city, which is at least half a facade designed to contain Evangelion weaponry, has been converted into one big artillery battery. In addition, a mysterious horde of Mass Production Evangelions came in -- and promptly went berserk, seeking to destroy both city and army alike.

Throughout the Geofront, JSSDF forces and A-LAWS automatons round up NERV personnel. Some surrender. Some die.

The Spiral King has come and gone and taken his due.

And Gendo Ikari, architect of this all, lies dead in a giant cross-shaped trench, his corpse turning cold as it lays sprawled atop the moldy bones of one of his failed Evangelions.

And underneath Hell is Terminal Dogma.

Terminal Dogma is not sleek like the rest of NERV's Geofront. It is not sterile or brightly lit, and it seems to share its spirit more with medieval occultism than modern science. A vast chamber, it is accessible via a titanic elevator shaft that runs deep, deep into the Earth, to the point where it seems like the trip is endless. Upon arrival, there is a platform for human beings to stand on -- which sits over one of two sources of light in the huge cavern, the pool of amber LCL. Well, 'pool' is an understatement -- it's more like a lake, deep enough that one could fall in and never be found. And towering over it all is the other source of light.

Lilith, Mother of Humanity, the Second Angel. Her body is lumpen, misshapen, doughy, given to boils and folds. Her legs have been severed and from the stumps grow a thousand miniature hers, hanging and writhing. Her face is hidden behind a purple mask with seven eyes, all dark and horrible. Her arms are nailed to a giant cross. NERV has crucified the genesis of all life on this planet.

In front of Lilith floats Rei Ayanami, hovering in the air. Her body is still, and completely uncovered, her nudity revealing the frailty of her shape. From the back of her head trail two long strips of sky-blue fabric, fluttering even though there's no breeze.

Rei turns and looks over her shoulder, as if she knows what's about to happen. Her red eyes shine, golden light bursting out of her irises.

JUST ABOVE

Cinco Budenda, simple A-LAWS Lieutenant, stands upon the precipice of Armageddon with Noriko Takaya and Excellen Browning. Johnny Domino is further behind, keeping their path clear and providing backup. He'll come in later.

The simple Lieutenant shrugs off his sleeveless greatcoat, wearing a black muscle shirt underneath. The aviators are removed as well, placed into the pocket of the greatcoat, which he folds carefully on the ground. Four stakes are driven into the rock there.

The thin moustache follows, stripped off without ceremony and tossed aside. He won't be needing it. Ever again.

Amuro Ray turns and looks at the two ladies from A-LAWS, raising his eyebrows as if to ask if she's okay with this. It's an awkward time for a startling revelation, but there's no other time for it. There's no other time for anything, not any more.

The harness fits across his torso and over his thighs uncomfortably but firmly, and as The White Devil leaps out into the darkness of Terminal Dogma, he finds himself wishing he had said goodbye to Beltorchika Irma.

BELOW

The Newtype zips down the high-tensile line for such a long time. There's so much extra time to think. He doesn't want it. His mind is made up, his path is set, and he has accepted that he may well die-- or kill an innocent-- to save the world.

When he lands, Amuro Ray immediately draws the pistol with which he fought Char Aznable during the War. The lake of LCL stretches all around him, glowing softly, harshly, beautifully, terribly.

And above it all floats Rei Ayanami, looking back and down at him, no longer herself. No longer anything human.

Amuro Ray raises the gun.

"Goodbye, Rei. I'm sorry."

COMBAT: Cinco Budenda has attacked Rei Ayanami. The Devil's Bargain added to their queue.

Huang Qin Shi has been waiting more than a month for a call from Leo Stenbuck and, naturally, it comes when he's taking a nap. The message, however, is enough to wake him up all the way. The advance warning was helpful, as it gave the engineer time to go through his usual pre-mission routine. He had to activate protocols that would transfer his research to someone in the event of his death, and then someone /else/ if that person was dead (Latooni, then Joshua, then Shine, then Sophia for the curious). He had to doublecheck certain special equipment he was planning on bringing in ase he needed it. He had to enable a few voice-activated protocols to broadcast prerecorded messages in the event contingencies were required. And then he had to be violently ill and curl up in a shaking ball on the floor of his bathroom for an hour.

You know. Important things.

Huang hangs near the back of the group, looking decidedly uncomfortable in his flight suit as he checks his gear for the eighteenth time. He has no idea why he is here. He is the least capable combatant here by far. He has no personal emotional stake in this mission beyond not wanting the world to end. And if what Johnny Domino said is true, his engineering skills will be of no use in making sense of the alien monstrosities that lie beyond this door.But ultimately he has no choice but to be here, because a little girl he once tried to murder asked him to with tears in her eyes.

Life can be a bitch sometimes.

As the elevator arrives, Huang's first reaction is to try to hop away from the LCL washing over his feet, but it doesn't seem to eat off anyone else's legs, and so everything seems fine. That is when Huang looks up and immediately wishes he didn't. Amuro Ray may be hardened enough to simply open fire, but Huang Qin Shi is no Amuro Ray. His legs buckle and he nearly falls onto his knees, empty stomach twisting violently. The taste of bile rises up in Huang's throat as he stares and stares, horror choking him. "What..." he manages to sputter. "What the /fuck/..."

What lay beneath Tokyo-03's Geofront is not what Sarah Zabiarov ever expected.

As one of several massive elevators comes to stop at Terminal Dogma, the sight that awaits the young Newtype is freakish. There's nothing but spanning darkness, seemingly endless as far the eye can see--expect for one specific thing at its core:

Lilith.

Sarah gasps in surprise. What on Earth were the people at NERV doing, Sarah privately wonders. Her main, pressing concern is what the HELL the thing is. Green eyes blink once, eyeing the eerie mask embedded on its face before, slowly, descending. The boils, the writhing parasite-like growths--

The amber-colored water. Is that...LCL?? The chemical used by the Eva pilots..?

Sarah briefly suppresses the urge to throw up.

She is, fortunately, distracted by something else present--namely, the naked, hovering Rei Ayanami. Sarah blinks several times before she finally emerges from the elevator with the faintest clicks of A-LAWS-issued bootheels. "What is...going on??" the young Newtype wonders.

Sarah can feel herself getting incredibly frustrated by everything around her.

Stumbling toward the light--toward the hovering albino before the large, crucified Lilith--Sarah just shakes her head and pinches her eyes shut. This can't be going on. This isn't real. Why is Rei /floating/ there? Why--why are her eyes glowing like that? Isn't she supposed to be /dead/? She was feeling guilt for the shred of RELIEF she felt upon hearing Rei was gone, out of her hair for good.

-FLASH-

"No."

Amuro Ray appears.

"NO."

Sarah's expression goes from 'confused and vulnerable' to 'uncontrollably angry.' He raises his gun. He has the /gall/ to apologize for what he's about to do. It makes her teeth gnash so hard she sees white.

With a scream Sarah suddenly breaks into a sprint past Huang, rushing in blind fury at the Newtype with every intention of /tackling/ Amuro Ray and beating the ever-living shit out of him as she screams, "I HATE YOU! WHY ARE YOU HERE?! I'LL KILL YOU!"

The gun fires. Rei's fate is of no concern to Sarah. Not now.

Or...ever?

SOME TIME AGO

As Unit-00X goes through its startup sequence, Leo Stenbuck's radio buzzes. He assumes it's Huang checking in, presses two fingers into his neck, and begins, "I'll be out in sixty seconds, it's still-"

Leo pauses, and then scrunches his face up in exasperation. "What are- no! Absolutely not. It's too dangerous, I can't- I- /no/. I forbid it. I d- I'm serious! I-"

NOW

Even Hell has a service elevator.

Several, in fact... and, slowly, one of them lowers into Terminal Dogma, carrying on it the Decisive All-Purpose Humanoid Weapon Evangelion Unit-00X. The thing stands in the dead center of the elevator, its arms hanging limply at its sides, staring straight ahead.

The pilot is not nearly so stoic. This all seemed like a much better idea before he was actually doing it... and the moment he actually sees Lilith, crucified in the center of Terminal Dogma, the color drains out of his face.

We're so fucked, the young man thinks.

Perhaps this is why he turns in his seat to look at the girl in the plug with him, and says, "I'm sorry I yelled at you. About Ralla, I mean. I don't want to be fighting when the world ends. I love you."

And that, it seems, is that; he turns back to face forwards, tightening his grip on the Evangelion's controls as the service elevator grinds to a halt.

Which, as it so happens, is about the time the gunshot rings out.

Latooni has never been in an Evangelion before today. She almost wasn't in this one, but apparently managed to out-argue Leo without ever quite raising her voice above a normal conversational level.

She hopes she never will be again.

It isn't the fact that she is breathing a liquid that does it. Though her memories are fuzzy because of other events, Latooni has vague memories of doing just that in the School, through some of the complicated procedures. It isn't even the fact that the liquid smells and tastes like blood, which she got used to by forcing herself to 'breathe' deeply.

Honestly, Latooni cannot point at any one thing and say 'this, this is what I don't like, this is what creeps me out'. It's only the sum total that is horrible... and she doesn't like Leo piloting it, either. So many things could go wrong. So many things she doesn't understand about the Evangelions...

Latooni is wearing her green piloting suit and is carrying what appears to be a large sealed Ziploc. There are two heavy pistols in the bag and some extra clips of ammunition. Latooni did not have time to test what LCL did to guns and so has decided to deal with it the simplest way possible. Her glasses are in the bag too, for much the same reason.

"It's all right," Latooni says, on the endless elevator ride. "It was important to you." She doesn't think it is the time or the place, though - except for the last part. "I love you, too."

Latooni twists around so she can see out. She has never seen Lilith before. Her eyes widen very slightly, which for her is an incredible amount of visible surprise. What the hell is that? she thinks, her eyes tracking from Lilith's crucified arms to its bulbous body and then down, at the comparatively tiny figures -

One of them has a gun. Latooni's hand jerks forward, pointing, to guide Leo's vision to the proper place.

Shinji has made his way down the corridors toward his destination. There was no turning back now. He had to make it to the Evangelion. He had to find Asuka and Kaworu...Asuka was likely fine. They probably moved her out when they evacuated the hospital section...Shinji thinks this but he doesn't believe it. There was a very real possibility that the JDSF got to her.

Kaworu was another matter. Shinji had not seen the 5th Child. He didn't have any way to check up on him either. He would just kind of show up when Shinji's guard was down. This was a fact that was very inconvient for Shinji right now. He was worried about him and didn't know what to make of this whole situation.

He had lost a lot over the past few hours. Misato was....Shinji didn't want to think of that either. Shinji keeps moving, holding his pistol tightly as he reaches the end of the platform.

Shinji freezes and stares in horror, staring at the large lumpy white Angel. This was Lilith, the thing Nerv was hiding under the Geofront. The Third Child gulped once as he spotted Rei in the distance. He wanted to call out but was too stunned to really do much but stare at Lilith. "What is going on? Is this what my father was doing?" He suddenly wanted to get to Unit 1 a little quicker but didn't know the way.

He notices Unit 0, frowning to himself. Leo was here. He holds on the rail, bracing himself for what happens next. Whatever it was, it wasn't going to be good.

BEFORE

Noriko Takaya insisted they take Buster Machine One down to the surface. It's an enormous machine, not cheap to operate, but...more than being Noriko's personal half of Gunbuster, for her and her alone, it's a symbol. Noriko Takaya has always been big on symbols. And even if Buster Machine Two is busy being repaired, even bringing half of Gunbuster, to Noriko, means that she is serious. This is the end. Gunbuster should be there, if only in spirit.

Halfway to the docking point, they encounter the Weissritter, and Noriko opens up BM-1's hangar for her. They may as well show up together.

SLIGHTLY LESS BEFORE

Noriko does not figure out what is going on until the mustache comes off. Her eyes widen, her mouth dries out in an instant. "You're--" she stammers, but...

Sighs, the kind of rueful smile you can only have when you're about to face destiny and need something to hang your sanity on. "So that's how it was," she murmurs. "Amuro Ray...so that's where you were hiding in this."

She reaches for her harness, saying, "I guess if it's anyone, I'm glad it's you."

NOT BEFORE AT ALL

Noriko zips down the line. Breathing, slow, in and out. Focus. Meditate. Understand. This is the moment. She's not sure...what she's expecting. What she's doing. But something feels...terribly, terribly wrong.

The heart of the chamber is impossibly horrid. But Noriko has seen impossibly horrid. Noriko served with...him, after all. She does not buckle and vomit, but her teeth do grate, seeing that horror above, the lake at her feet. The whole thing smells like blood. And above--

"REI!" Noriko yells, and takes two steps forward. A smile on her lips, but...worried, confused - she thought she was gone. She /accepted/ she was gone. That vision told her she was Gone. And perhaps that's why her feelings at seeing Rei Ayanami (floating - naked, shameful, her body floating impossibly, and Noriko feels some comfort at seeing that her headband has come this far) is tempered with a feeling that something is Very Wrong.

A gunshot.

Noriko whips her head, her hair flowing behind her, eyes widening in surprise.

Amuro Ray has shot her friend.

It is only the confusion, the feeling that something is wrong more than just the /existence of this situation/, that stops her from grabbing Amuro and knocking his head off: "Why," she demands. "What...why!?"

Saturday, July 17, NCA 120

11:47pm

Ignoring the trail of steam nipping at her heels, hands busy themselves with the matter of massaging terrycloth against damp hair as the blonde emerged from the shower, mindful not to drip on the uniform abandoned lazily on the floor.

Heaving a sigh, cloth is draped about her neck as she rolls her head to one side, fine fingers rubbing against the sore muscles as she sits at the small vanity some how fitted into the corner of the room. Temporary quarters for the displaced or not, hot showers are /wonderful/ for soothing tension.

Blue eyes open, regarding the tired vision in the mirror, before Excellen smiles ruefully at herself and reaches for her comb -- when something else, something new, shifts her gaze several centermeters to the left.

To the pale blue vision staring back with red, red eyes, sitting on her bed. Staring without blinking.

She almost falls off her chair in surprise as she spin around, words -- a word, a name -- caught in her throat. But there's nothing, no one there, not even an impression on the sheets. Swallowing words before they can squeak free, they taste like ash on her tongue, and the blonde ATX pilot can feel an icy finger curve up and down her spine.

Less than five minutes later that she's all but dashing down the corridor, still only swathed in flimsy white towel, utterly ignorant of the catcalls and startled noises from people she passes by that at any other time would have earn a Cheshire Cat grin. But not today.

No one can pass through the common room, situated at the end of the residential block, without being noticed. And certainly wouldn't get by her two teammates; Bullet, who turns so many shades of red tomatoes might sue for copyright infringement, (for all he's seen her in less), and Kyosuke, who barely suffers her a glance before looking back to the last of the paperwork left over from the 'failboat of Linjun's broken dreams'.

Neither of whom have any idea what --who-- she's talking about when she stammers if they've seen 'her', and she doesn't wait for an answer when the answer is obviously negative. Doesn't wait to see the bemused exchange of glances behind her back.

Sunday, July 18, NCA 120

00:15am

'she broke our promise for us'

Thumb jabs against the keypad of a slim mobile phone, bright pink in colour with a red lipstick mark on the back; the message is short and to the point, before she rolls over and tries not to think.

Sleep is quick, and dark, and empty. Five minutes later, the mail symbol blinks in the dark with the reply. Doomed to go unnoticed till well past morning.

Sunday, July 18, NCA 120

The Afternoon

<>

Giggling as Kyosuke snaps at her playful wave, Weissritter's actions cease as requested - but not because he requested it. Antics are, in fact, cut short by the orders that finally arrive. Orders that bring pause to Assault-2, as they neatly dissect the experienced team, scattering their forces to where the higher ups deem fit.

Course plotted to the Geo-Front, there's only a few moments as the tesla drive warms up, burns to its brightest shade of blue, and green visor glances back at her team. Her friends. And salutes.

Before white and blue burn through the sky.

Sunday, July 18, NCA 120

Now

She's not quite the cavalry anyone else might have been expecting, when Weissy docks with the Gunbuster, a shortlived reunion and recap bringing a return to the chill down her spine.

Cinco Budenda, however, he might be, even if she didn't expect the revelation that came from him peeling away such a subtle disguise. Then again, Excellen Browning has always been about as psychic as a buttered brick, and this is one of the less unpleasant surprises of the hour. At least she wasn't the only one who didn't know -- but Johnny will probably hear more from her later when they get out of this.

If they get out of this.

She's dressed in /her/ A-LAWS uniform, now superior to the regular version in every way -- because it's red. Not the colour of blood, not the colour of Rei's eyes, but ATX red. The gloves are black, with yellow accents, and she's rediculously glad the boots are thigh high and black right now, because she doesn't really want to know what LCL might do to other colours.

Her face is rigid with shock as, finally, she touches down behind Amuro Ray, behind Noriko, fixed not on the girl-who-looks-like-Rei but the bulbus -thing- behind her. And then, to the newly arrived EVA, arriving stage left.

And then to the gunshot. Huang chokes out the questions in her own mind, but Excellen can't help but think that maybe, just maybe, this might not be something she can laugh her way out of.

COMBAT: Amuro Ray has struck a minor hit on Rei Ayanami's Evangelion Unit-00 using The Devil's Bargain.

Knock Out! Rei Ayanami's Evangelion Unit-00 unit has become disabled!

In one shot, it's all over.

Rei Ayanami's last act is to turn her eyes upward to stare at the arriving Evangelion Unit-00X. Its pilot is possibly the only person in this confluence of events to recognize the glow of her stare -- the golden hallmark of Innovation in action.

And then Amuro Ray shoots her dead.

The bullet enters Rei's back and erupts out of the left side of her chest, piercing her heart. Blood doesn't just exit her body, it /erupts/ -- it /spews/ in hellacious torrents from both entry and exit wounds, far beyond what the human body is capable of. Many of the people in the room have seen the result of an Angel's core being breached. This is not dissimilar. The red showers stain the sea of LCL below, and Rei's hovering ceases, causing her to fall, limp and lifeless.

She lands on the distended, grotesque belly of Lilith and sticks to it like flypaper. Blood still pumps out of her, but the pressure lets up and subsides until it's only a few lingering squirts.

It's all over.

Until Rei's body starts rapidly /sinking/ into Lilith's viscous, gooey un-flesh. Her form is quickly subsumed, ribbon and all, and in that moment things shake on not a physical level, but a metaphysical one. It's a noise that can't be heard, a sight that can't be seen, a feeling deep in the hearts and minds of all present that an Atrocity is about to occur.

This is when Lilith starts to quiver. Her body begins to change shape. Her legs smooth out and lengthen, feet appearing at the ends, hips moving from fat and squat to narrow and sharp. Her stomach flattens and her breasts no longer sag. Her head lolls back as white hair sprouts from her skull.

Her perverse glow intensifies as her mask falls away to reveal the face of Rei Ayanami.

One nice thing about thought-control interfaces: it takes about a third of a second after Latooni points for a tiny window to pop up on the screen, magnifying the area around the assembled group.

Despite the distance, it's as good as having a front-row seat to the ongoings; Sarah's furious rush, Excellen and Noriko and Huang's shock, Amuro's-- wait, what?

"Jesus Christ, Huang," Leo mutters under his breath, "It's not a potluck..."

He doesn't get to be much sassier before his eyes flit to where Rei Ayanami is lying into Lilith's stomach. He has just enough time, before she vanishes into the Second Angel, to parse the fact that her eyes are glowing.

Glowing. Her eyes are glowing. Her eyes-

"Oh, /fuck me/," Leo barks sharply. There's no /possible/ way that can be good.

Leo would pale further, as Lilith begins to transform, but that would basically require all of the blood leaving his body, which is unlikely to happen for at least a few moments yet.

Okay, Leo tells himself, tightening his grip yet further, until his knuckles whiten, to keep his hands from shaking. The soul would be in the core, right? So... step one, find the core.

Oh, and don't step on the people down there, he adds as an afterthought.

"Hold on, sweetie," Leo warns Latooni, as Unit-00X takes its first lumbering step off the elevator and advances towards Lilith, the GN vents all over its body beginning to emit streams of burnt orange particles, its arms still dangling at its sides. "This might get... uh, complicated."

THEN

Amuro Ray and Rei Ayanami combine their powers to hold off the falling Angel.

Inside, the confluence of Angel DNA and Newtype hyperempathy collide with all the grace of two drunk drivers on a country highway. Each soul spins away from the point of impact wearing parts of the other all over themselves. The White Devil and the Blue Angel trade memories, thoughts, feelings, /selves/.

Nothing will ever be the same again.

THEN

Amuro Ray, covered in grime and stubble, wearing a surprisingly expensive bathrobe in the cockpit of a stolen Lion. Rei Ayanami floats in space opposite him, within a Galbaldy.

Understanding is reached.

THEN

Cinco Budenda, a simple A-LAWS Lieutenant, speaks with Rei Ayanami in a quiet moment near the end. He understands her desire without asking. She understands his determination without words.

The deal is struck.

THEN

Johnny Domino is conflicted, angry at the older man. "You're not going to ask me to kill her, are you?" he demands, ready to go on the offensive.

"Kill her? No. No, no." Amuro Ray shakes his head, fingering his Char Killin' Gun in its holster. "No, that's my job."

NOW

Amuro Ray kills the creature who has taken Rei Ayanami's form.

It doesn't work.

"Shit," he hisses, even as-- ///FLASH///-- "Sarah?! Get off--" he moves without thinking, lowering his shoulder into her gut, lifting, flexing his shoulder, rolling her over his back and into the lake of LCL. "-- me!"

The questions come flying, and he's not prepared to answer them because /oh my God/ the world is /ending right now/. "It didn't work...!" he gasps, unnecessarily. "She said it would work-- we've got to stop her, before... shit!"

Amuro dives out of the way of Unit 00X's foot as Leo steps forward, hitting the ground and rolling as gracefully as he can. When he comes up, he glances back at Noriko and Excellen, face trying to communicate what words can't in the time alloted. He can't waste any more seconds when each one could be Mankind's last.

The gun snaps up again, firing again at the giant girl.

Latooni Subota leans over the 'seat' (such as it is) so she can get a better look at the window. She cannot control the Evangelion, but she can sure take advantage of Leo doing so.

She does not know what the eyes mean. She is aware that they mean something, of course, but she does not have the details. Her own eyes narrow slightly as she squints through the LCL, making out details. The resolution of the image makes it hard, even though her eyes are extraordinarily sharp.

And then Lilith starts to change.

Latooni, for probably one of the first times in her life, says a bad word out loud. The word is actually two words, an indrawn "Pizdabolstvo mat'," and she is very glad moments later that Leo does not actually speak Russian (as far as she knows) to pick up on it.

"Turn those off," she says a moment later, in English, as she realizes the GN particles are being emitted. "They don't belong here - and I might have to get out, and I'm not going to get out through that." Can she get out? She's not sure she can - it might dump the LCL.

Her finger jabs down again at Amuro. She doesn't recognize him from the back. "Why is he shooting? Leo, what are you going to do?"

Shinji's eyes widen more when someone just...shoot Rei. He feels his eyes water as his heart quickens. This isn't happening. This isn't HAPPENING! "....! REI!!!" Shinji shrieks, looking away as her lifeless form hits the LCL. She was really gone. There was nothing he could do...Why is that monster starting to take her form?

Words can not describe the mixture of feelings going through him at the moment. First, he's confused on why Lilith the mother of all things just absorbed his "sister." He missed that plot drop guys. He barely knows she is a clone. Secondly, there is anger. He is pretty angry Cinco just shot Rei and left her to die. He is so angry he really can't think to do anything. He has a gun but he isn't sure he will hit Cinco from this distance. But most of all, Shinji is pretty fucking scared there is a giant Rei Ayanami standing up in a sea of the stuff he breaths when he pilots his Evangelion. All of these feelings combine into the look of shock currently on his face as his eyes water. "Damnit. I said I'd be stronger but I couldn't protect you. DAMNIT!!!" Shinji lifts his gun despite his better judgement. Maybe he should shoot Cinco. Maybe he should take revenge. He stares, looking between the Lovecraftian horror and the man who just killed the girl the Lovecraftian Monster currently looks like.

Amuro Ray's choice to shoot the little naked girl and not the existential horror seems questionable, though since the little girl was floating around with glowing eyes, it's possible there was a reason behind the tactical decision. But Huang Qin Shi is in no state to object to Amuro's tactical decision, as he is instead trying not to gibber in terror at what he's seeing. His skin crawls all the way up his body, tingling along his scalp as Rei is...absorbed into...and then the face...Huang drops to his knees then, LCL soaking his legs as he struggles to tear his eyes away from it. But he can't. He came here to save her, Latooni asked him to save her, but...

The GN-00X's foot sends LCL fluid washing over Huang Qin Shi, and animal instinct causes him to sputter, releasing the breath he didn't even know he had been holding. Oxygen pours through his bloodstream, the brief rush tearing through the haze, forcing him to think. Deer in the headlights, an analytical part of his mind notes, the rest of it screaming as it tries to process what's going on. What just happened.../can't/ have happened. But after all he's seen...Shinji screams, and Huang grits his teeth and bites down on the inside of his cheek. Scared child. Needs protection. /Focus./ He sucks in another breath and closes his eyes, falling into a mental exercise he's been practicing since he was old enough to walk, visualizing his emotions flow out of his body as he does. He has to be able to look at that thing if he has any hope of helping Latooni. Of saving the world. Of saving her. But he can't function if he has to look at that thing.

And so Huang takes a step back from his mind and opens his eyes, looking up at Rei Ayanami's smiling face. She's taken on the form of that ADAM or whatever it is somehow using SUFFICIENTLY ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY. The engineer lets out a breath and looks around the room. No cover to speak of save the cross and the ruined Evangelion...which may be worth making a break for, actually. Huang notes the GN-00X closing on Rei-ADAM and nods. Good. Leo had told him only Evangelions' SUFFICIENTLY ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY could pierce the SUFFICIENTLY ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY of Angels. But still...Huang clicks on his radio. "This is Qin Shi," he says, sounding slightly detached. "All right, Stenbuck. What do we do?"

A corner of his mind gibbers off in the distance, miles away.

"You just can't STOP, CAN YOU!?" Sarah screams, green eyes wide as she rushes the other Newtype. Her presence is painfully palpable, that aura of sheer anger and wrath pulsing from her like some sickly miasma. Right now, there is nothing around Sarah beyond Amuro Ray. She can only see red; not Lilith, nor the amber puddle, nor the grotesque death Rei Ayanami suffers as the bullet pierces her fragile body.

Her approach is quick--but Amuro and his Newtype senses are quicker. As Sarah sweeps her arms out to grab /whatever/ of the man she can he slams his shoulder into her small stomach, knocking the wind completely out of her lungs. Within seconds she's tumbling over his back and toward the endless lake of amber liquid.

She hits the surface with a broad splash, waves of glittering orange LCL splashing onto the platform. Thrashing angrily, Sarah struggles to reach for the surface, the dampness of her clothes weighing her lanky figure down.

Sarah Zabiarov begins to sink further, further. Panic sets in.

Through the surface of the water, she sees a distorted visage twist, the once-grotesque Lilith becoming Rei. Becoming--what? Sarah blinks, then gasps--oh, right. LCL. She can 'breathe' in it.

Anger begins to surface once more.

At the ledge of the platform, a hand shoots up from the amber lake. Clinging to the edge, Sarah emerges, looking like some sort of drowned kitten. Yet her face is twisted in a hateful glare ash she drags her body from the LCL. The second shot is ignored as it shoots at the now-giant Rei.

"First you try to kill my Master, now the subordinate he told me to look after? I should have /known/. She had your signature."

It's a convenient excuse, devised by her subconscious to get her to loathe Amuro all the more.

Whether he's paying attention or not, Sarah rips her standard-issue A-LAWS pistol from the inside of her coat, points it at /whatever/ she can of Amuro Ray and tries to shoot him /right there/.

/Screw/ the Apocalypse.

Noriko has to absorb a whole lot in about three seconds.

Rei bursts more like a balloon than a person. That's clue one. Clue two is that Amuro's response contains the words 'she said it would work,' which is what stops Noriko from joining Sarah in attempting to beat him to death. Instead she stops, stares, looks at him, growls...

"Why does nobody ever tell me the murdering-my-friends part of the plan!?" she mutters, angrily, because this has happened a lot to her. But she can't /stay/ angry, because THE WORLD IS ENDING.

It's like a knife in the back of her head. A certainty, a terrible understanding from the bottom of her soul. The thing that was Rei spurts more blood than that body has ever contained, and then...sinks into Lilith, and Noriko feels something unholy and terrible--

The body changes. Noriko knows it, because Noriko knows its owner.

The mask cracks and falls, and Noriko murmurs, "No...what...!?"

She doesn't have a gun. She doesn't even have her headband. (eaten by the reborn God) (she's not sure if she's so happy about that anymore)

She's not sure she can fight something like that. If she had Gunbuster, she could---

She could---

"A true Top pilot carries everything she needs in her heart."

Noriko speaks the words quietly, like a mantra. She doesn't know what to do, so she does the first thing that comes to mind, which is attempt to tackle Sarah Zabiarov back into the LCL, yelling, "What are you even doing!? WE HAVE BIGGER PROBLEMS, YOU IDIOT!"

The slaughter of a teenaged girl is not how Excellen Browning pictured the start of the end of the world.

The gush of blood is wrong. Excellen has seen people die before, she's seen people (impaled by shrapnel) shot in the head, in the heart, but this.. The fountain of blood is a mockery of death as much as Rei claimed herself to be a mockery of life.

Oh /Rei/.

And then instinct takes over, coat tails snapping out behind her as she steps forward.

"The moment she left A-LAWS, it was too late for her," she snaps at Sarah, even as one hand reaches under her coat, pulling her own pistol free--heaven knows how she keeps it hidden so we--and training it in line. "Don't lie to yourself about why you're here." Blue eyes turn, briefly, to the female newtype, though she cannot be certain if she feels pity or anger at the girl right now.

Then, she moves up alongside Katharon's Great Hero, the blonde setting the AlienRei in her sights. Trembling finger settling on the trigger.

She wishes she had Weissritter here. You know, even just, like, a three meter tall version. One that could totally guard her back and ferry her places and carry the shopping and shoot the crap out of all this crazy froofrahfrah going on right in front of her.

She swallows bile down, before glancing at the advancing EVA. She hasn't picked up on who the pilot is; at the moment, she likely wouldn't care. "...Where do we shoot?"

The shape of Rei Ayanami is now complete. She's so white that to look at her too closely is to risk going snowblind. Her lips form a crooked, uneasy smile, as if there were a sick thrill to be gained from the ascension to godhood. And then her eyes open.

They are not, strictly speaking, what anyone who's seen Rei's eyes would be used to.

It was certainly one thing to meet the teenage girl who never blinked, and whose irises were the color of blood, and come away thinking 'wow, that was a little creepy.' She stared at people as if they were foreign bodies in a petri dish, somehow looking through them as if their secrets were written on their sleeves, and yet not seeming to comprehend them on any deep level at all. But this is not that. This being, Rei, or Lilith, or Adam, whatever she is now, doesn't even have the small shred of humanity that Rei afforded those who knew where to look.

Her eyes are just dark voids, red pinpricks of light marking their centers, deep and endless.

The bullet does nothing -- it can't even be ascertained whether it even properly struck. It just goes /into/ the Rei-Lilith-Adam gestalt and doesn't seem to leave a mark.

Rei slowly pulls herself free of the cross. Her hands blorp around the nails stuck through them, like raw dough being pulled upward, the wounds resealing almost instantly. She lowers herself, her legs going deeper into the LCL, standing about a hundred feet tall. The amber liquid crashes around her thighs when she enters, causing deep waves.

Rei, or Lilith, or whoever's evil eyes turn down to regard her friends and associates and saviors. Her smile remains fixed. She lingers on a few of them. Amuro -- Noriko -- Shinji -- and then Unit-00X.

Suddenly, Leo doesn't have as much control over Zerogouki as he thought he did. The little girl inside his Evangelion tells him that it's okay now as 00X, in defiance of Leo's thoughts, raises its arms and outstretches its fingers.

Lilith does the same, and the two monsters prepare to join hands, like sisters, like halves.

Leo's eyes twitch, and a tiny window pops up in the corner of Unit-00X's monitor with one of those fancy wavelength readings in it, in sync with Huang's voice as it fills the plug. Even as Leo brings it up, he's responding to Latooni, a response that Huang gets the second half of.

"Because this thing is going to end the world," the young man says curtly. "And I can't just... turn it off, it's the power source!" That out of the way, he turns his attention to Huang's question. "That's, uh, that's a very good question, Huang. I'm going to-"

He doesn't finish the statement, because, suddenly, Zerogouki isn't listening to him. At the very least, though, Huang is treated to the sounds of Leo Stenbuck suddenly becoming very, very worried. "Uh," Leo says uncertainly, jerking back and forth on the controls to no avail. He shoots a nervous glance at Latooni, and then returns his gaze to where Lilith is reaching out for them.

"Zerogouki," he urges, still yanking furiously at the controls. "Zerogouki!" he repeats, panic surging into his voice. Not good, not good, not good-

Leo squeezes his eyes shut, takes a short, sharp breath...

... and then lunges forward in his seat, opening his eyes and slamming the controls as far forward as they'll go. "GOD DAMMIT, REI!" he roars, "LISTEN TO ME!!"

Lilith's outstretched hands suddenly collide with an invisible wall of force; orange octagons ripple outwards from the points of impact as Unit-00X's AT Field stops the Angel in its tracks, if likely only for an instant.

The impact is so great that it forces Unit-00X backwards a single, staggering step, its foot smashing anew into the lake of LCL, casting a ten foot tall wave of the stuff in every direction, which cannot possibly be pleasant for those on foot.

Leo is busy.

Latooni, who is hanging on the back of Leo's chair (literally at the moment) looks up at the window with Huang's voice readout in it. She realizes he cannot see her if she cannot see him, and speaks instead. "Huang, I am inside the Evangelion with Leo. I don't know what he's planning but he does have a plan, please trust us - "

She may be drowned out, of course, by Leo yelling at his robot. That kind of makes any plan uncertain.

When 00X staggers, Latooni falls, landing somewhere behind the chair with a yelp. This does not stop her from continuing to speak once she's sure she can, dragging herself back up with one arm. "He's trying to speak to her," she clarifies, as if he didn't get that impression. "What are /you/ doing down there?"

There is a pause as Latooni finally straightens up and gets a good look at Leo's face in the reflection of the view screen. "Leo, your - your eyes..." She has never seen that before, either. It's weird. Very weird. Given everything else that happened, and Rei's eyes an instant before she changed - well.

Excuse her for being paranoid.

"Tch!" Amuro hisses, wheeling around and stumbling over the craggy ground. Sarah's bullet takes him in the shoulder and he goes down hard, landing on the wound. "Agh! AGH!" he gasps, rolling on to his back and clutching at the bloody hole with his good hand. Noriko swoops in and tackles Sarah in the background, but Amuro's attention is firmly on the bullet lodged in his shoulder joint.

His eyes open long enough to see Giant Rei reaching for Little Robot Rei, and he knows that shit is about to get even realer. The bullets haven't done anything of note... he has to take his own advice. Stop. Think. Analyse the situation. Then act.

Giant Rei slams into Little Robot Rei Leo-Powered AT Field (LRRLRATF), giving the assembled defenders of Earth a few precious seconds to think.

"We've got... hng!.. to disrupt... disrupt their connection... somehow!" pants the Newtype, already sweating from the pain and from concentration and from stress. "I... shit! It hurts!"

Macronization, huh? Huang frowns. Whatever this thing is, its SUFFICIENTLY ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY is going to prove problematic. He certainly didn't bring ordnance of anything near enough strength to take it out, and with the AT field even a mountain of plastique wouldn't do any good. The enormous barely pubescent girl leaps into the lake

oh god it's happening again what can we do

and Huang sucks in a deep breath and grabs hold of the service elevator's railing, reaching a hand out in Excellen's direction and closing his eyes as the wave of LCL passes toward him. The force of the liquid is significant but not insurmountable given the distance it has to travel before reaching him, though his shoulder is aching by the time the swell fades away. He opens his eyes. Oh good, another one. Thanks, Leo Stenbuck. Huang squares his shoulders and repeats the procedure.

it's happening again

Huang peels his hand off the railing, the muscles in his left arm aching as he dashes his hand across his face before opening his eyes. He doesn't know how LCL will react with his implant and he doesn't want to know. He shakes his head, long, wet strands of his hair tumbling out of his ponytail as he tries to think of an answer. "You're inside the..."

if only you had the power to stop it

"...well," he says, rubbing his chin and looking up at the GN-00X. "I came here to apprehend Ikari and get him to tell us how to stop it," he answers calmly. "But apparently he's been killed. Don't worry, though, Latooni," he says, trying to project as much comfort into his voice as he can from his detached state of mind.

this is all you can do

"I'll back you up. But if Stenbuck's plan doesn't work..."

only one other way

"...then we'll do what we have to to keep it from getting free."

take it in the breath

"The Rasavatam's upstairs, and the reactor's on standby."

let it out

"So let me know if I can help," he offers. "I'd really rather not have to bring this place down."

and it'll all be all right

Shinji begins to sweat as he points the gun toward Amuro Ray. He takes a deep breath and fires twice, almost sure to miss because of what he sees but maybe it will be dumb luck. He sees Rei's smile and those eyes filled with a darkness that he can barely comprehend. When he meets eyes with Rei, he falls backwards, dropping his gun and scooting away as Rei towers over, well, everything. It was all over...Everything was over.

His eyes look toward Unit 00. Rei's robot. The on who was currently being used by Leo Stenbuck. He recalls what Leo and his father talked about. To get to his goal, he would need to make contact. Shinji's eyes narrow as he watches the totally Leo controled robot try to make contact with Reilith. Shinji can't stop him like this. He should've found Unit 1. He should've listened to his father. He should've listened to Misato.

Eventually, Noriko gets annoyed at Sarah and just headbutts the hell out of her, conveniently timed with the wave of LCL washing over them both. Noriko is powerful, and a little too good-hearted for her own health; she clings to Sarah with one arm and digs her feet in as soon as her feet find purchase, refusing to be taken away.

That regard has nearly physical force. Noriko swallows air rather than LCL and stares up at Rei during that moment when her smile stares at them, wicked-lipped and unholy-gazed. That's not Rei. Not anymore. It's something...else, something other, something terrible and profound. Noriko is completely un-psychic, but it's not a /psychic/ phenomenon, it's a /living/ phenomenon, a sense in the back of her head that EVERYTHING IS BAD AND GOING TO DIE.

Unit 00X reaches out. Mother also does. Noriko balls one fist, keeping the other firm on Sarah's arm, momentarily forgetting she's a crazy woman with a gun, and says, "Disrupt it how!?" Noriko demands. If she goes over there, she won't have the leverage to fight, but she's got to...there's got to be some way, doesn't there!? Rei said she had to finish it if Leo couldn't...did she fail already!?

That's not human.

What an /utterly stupid/ thing to think, Excellen mentally berates herself moments later as she backpedals rather rapidly, furiously trying to avoid the promise of drowning in the waves of LCL displaced as Reivangelian sinks into its 'ocean'. The smell of the place just seems to get even worse, and she can sense she'll be losing a battle with her gag reflexes soon enough. Now she really does wish that she had some sorta remote control for Weissy, if only to point the Oxtongue and fire it as many times as she needs to.

Amuro takes the hit, that much she's aware of, but it's the hand held out to her as things get swept back and along that she focuses on and reaches for. Gloved fingers seize hold -- Huang might be surprised by the strength of her grip -- before Excellen attempts to attach herself to the railings too, gun still held in hand. Disrupting them seems like an almost /impossible/ task, and it's only when the second voice pipes up that she looks at Huang's radio. Then to the 00X.

Then another blink. "What's stopping us from bringing it down anyway?" the blonde suddenly demands, looking up, to where the darkness of the NERV elevator ascends to the heavens. Or, at least, the surface. Licking her lips, she pretends she can't taste the spray of LCL, before ponytail bobs as her head shakes.

Their friends and families are out there. They're depending on them, right..? "We can't let that.../thing/.. out of here." Awkwardly shifting her weight (Huang may find himself with a hellaview for a moment as she tips forwards), gun is once again raised.

And shots are fired, a crack in the dark, aimed for those ruthlessly inhuman eyes.

SOME TIME AGO

It's raining in Tokyo-03 and Leo Stenbuck arrives at NERV's little pet high school looking for Rei. Rather than being indoors where it's warm and dry, Rei has wandered out into the cold rain without an umbrella, and is currently kneeling, staring into a puddle with the same unblinking focus that she gives to everything else.

Leo approaches. He thought to bring an umbrella. "Rei--?" He's yet to understand her in a way that he can appreciate. His voice wavers a bit because he's still not used to the weird things she does. "What are you doing out here? Why don't you... have an umbrella, or a coat, or--"

Rei doesn't look up from the puddle. "Leo," she says, to the boy she's been dating. "Would you still want to be my boyfriend if you were dating the me that's in the puddle?"

Leo looks down at the mirror image of Rei cast in the water, its form distorted by the ripples of rainfall's impact. "I... what? What kind of a question is... Rei, that's just your /reflection/."

Rei stands up after a few long moments and takes Leo by the hand, without another word on the subject.

NOW

Bullets fired by Excellen strike the inside of Leo's AT Field, ricocheting off and pinging off of 00X's armor. The deployment of an AT Field causes the room to fill with its shimmering, mathematical glow, as if someone had just activated an overkill of floodlights.

The only thing that can defeat an AT Field is another AT Field. (But there's also something else.) The Rei-Lilith being deploys its own field, and as it roars into existence, its berth is so wide that it cuts into the walls of the cavern, causing the whole place to shake. Amuro Ray in particular can /feel/ the thing being launched, the blossoming of some depraved metaphysical flower.

Rei's AT Field suffocates 00X's, and that's when Lilith is able to take 00X's hand. For a moment, things become tranquil, as if an understanding is reached. 00X's soul tries to tell Leo that it's okay now, that she's going to be with herself again soon, and Leo can be there with them, and Latooni, and Huang, and Excellen, and...

...and then Lilith rips 00X's arm off and casually tosses it aside into the enormous pool of LCL.

Leo does his best to communicate to Latooni, with the wordless, very brief glance that he can spare, that he is /very busy/ right now and that they will talk about his eyes later, after the end of the world.

Mostly all he manages to communicate is mounting panic.

As it turns out, the glance is technically more than he can spare. Lilith negates his AT Field while his attention is away, and before he can react to the development, the Angel reaches out and... takes Unit-00X's hand?

Leo's still-glowing eyes whip back around to the creature, and for a few beats, he's stunned into stillness. Maybe... maybe things aren't as bad as they seem. Maybe Lilith can be reasoned with. That'd be better, wouldn't it? No one has to die... not even-

And then Lilith rips his arm off.

Leo's eyes widen, and he lets out a strangled scream of anguish, hunching over in his seat. His left arm snaps up to clutch at the shoulder of his right - the arm that his brain is absolutely convinced is now missing.

00X takes another staggering step backwards, collapsing onto one knee and letting out a scream of pain of its own. The EVa's hand, too, lifts to its shoulder... but unlike its pilot, there really IS no arm there, only a stump spewing blood into the lake of LCL the thing stands in.

For several seconds, Leo and the Evangelion can only scream and clutch at their respective arms. We're all doomed, Leo thinks. There's no way he can stand up to... to /that/, not alone.

But he's not alone. He has Zerogouki.

But Zerogouki can't do it, either. It's too weak.

Too weak? Zerogouki /is/ Rei. In a sense, Zerogouki /is/ Lilith.

But not exactly. There's something different.

Something that doesn't belong.

In unison, Unit-00X and Leo lift their heads back towards the Second Angel. The Evangelion's monoeye is the same as always... but the eyes of its pilot are full of what is known as, in the professional world, 'fucking crazy.'

Slowly, Unit-00X rises to its feet, wrenching its hand away from its still-bleeding stump.

Which would be more impressive if the thing didn't immediately plunge its hand into its own chest.

More blood streams out of the new wound, comparatively massive giblets of flesh tumbling down towards those below the battling giants. The Evangelion's hand plunges into its chest up to the wrist... and then, suddenly, its arm spasms, and it rips it out.

In the biomachine's grip is a glowing orange cone; a GN-T drive. Blood pours off of the machine and runs through the handful of translucent tubes still connecting the thing to the Evangelion's body. Still screaming, the Eva rips the Drive away from its chest. The tubes snap and break, and now the blood is spilling down its front, staining the blue armor, and the GN vents all over the things' body are going dark as their supply of GN particles dies out.

And then, perhaps just to make a point, Unit-00 crushes what was once its heart in its fist. The explosion isn't much, compared to the effect of the AT Fields, but it's enough to stir the lake of LCL into a frenzy, and certainly enough to fill the air of Terminal Dogma with a thick cloud of orange particles, like a swarm of fireflies.

As the explosion from the Drive fades, Leo is dimly aware, through the truly fucking abominable amount of pain he's in, of a countdown clock appearing on the Evangelion's HUD. 5:00:00 and counting.

It's okay, he thinks. We'll all be dead before then.

Unfettered by the poison in its body, propelled by Leo's steadily-climbing sync rate, Unit-00's bloody stump suddenly surges with activity. Matter ripples outwards in a disgusting blob, muscle and skin and bone writhing monstrously... and, after only a second, the viscera forms itself into another arm. An arm naked of the Evangelion's blue armor.

An arm that looks awfully and disconcertingly human.

Unit-00, still screaming, lunges in an almost drunken fashion, throwing itself into Lilith, its naked arm plunging towards the Angel's chest, to smash through, to take the thing's core and tear it out by force.

Huang glances down Excellen's shirt and then shakes his head. "It's a last resort!" he shouts over the insanity going on in front of them. "Between the GN particles and the fighting going on up there, a full remote wouldn't have been possible," he explains. "All I have is a beacon attached to the biggest signal booster I could slap together. I activate it and the machine powers up and just starts flying into bulkheads." And - given the unique properties of the machine in question - melting its way through them. "Once it gets here, the reactor will overload. There's no way to stop it."

Huang's face tightens as the GN-00X's arm goes flying. "I don't want to die," he says quietly. "And I don't want to get these kids caught up in it if I don't have to. But if it means there's a chance of killing that things before it can get loose..." Huang shakes his head. "This was the best I could---"

The sort-of-an-apology is cut off by the detonation of the GN core, and Huang tries to shield his face...uselessly, he reflects, since his flight suit isn't radiation shielded. "Well," he drawls sadly, "I'd always hoped my kids would be smart, but two-headed is a bit much." It's not much of a joke, even by Huang's standards, but he's pretty distracted what with trying to not curl up in a ball.

"Oh, christ," Amuro mutters, rolling on to his knees and trying to get to his feet. His body is not responding very well. The bullet probably doesn't help. Neither do the GN particles flooding the room, or the gout of Eva blood that slams into his crouching body, pushing him right into the lake of LCL. "Hrghk!" he gasps, before sinking into the orange waves.

Well, that didn't go at all how he thought it would.

SEVERAL MINUTES AGO:

Sarah shoots Amuro.

Noriko sweeps in and tackles Sarah toward Lake LCL.

Lilith conveniently provides a 10 foot wave of LCL that aids in Terminal Dogma's first (and last) wet t-shirt contest.

Then, Noriko Takaya headbutts the hell out of Sarah.

Sarah passes out.

NOW:

Green eyes flutter several times, followed by a soft groan. From her hazy, albeit brief, slumber, Sarah Zabiarov stirs, her lanky, soaked figure half-dangling from Noriko's grasp. Her vision is blurry and hazy, but /something/ is different from before--

There are fireflies.

There are fireflies..?

Blinking several times, Sarah shakes her head before pressing a hand to her forehead. When she looks /up/ toward the Unit-00 she catches last remains of its GN drive crushed in the 00's hand. She blinks several more times. When she focuses again, the Unit-00 has a human arm.

Looking to the side, she looks up at the girl holding onto her arm. "You're..?" Well, the girl that /headbutted/ her, but. "Lieutenant Takaya..?" Sarah blinks a few more times. "Wait."

She stopped her from getting to Amuro, didn't she..?

"Wh-why did you stop me??" she demands, pulling on her arm and trying to rip it from Takaya's grasp. "He's the enemy! He tried to kill Admiral Scirocco! He's a horrible person--why is he even /here/?? Wait--where is HE??" Looking around, Sarah is swiftly sobered when she sees something else:

Giant Rei Ayanami and her horrible black hole eyes.

"W-what is even going on?" Zabiarov nearly whimpers. "I j-just came here on orders. I don't even..."

Without a clue as to what to do, Sarah just slumps to the ground.

Latooni Subota keeps her eyes on Huang's broadcast even though there is no real need for her to. "I will," she promises. "But I hope that will not be necessary."

She cannot cut the connection, but she does stop speaking, letting Leo do his thing. It seems to be working, he's resisting - but then Lilith's own AT Field activates, and Latooni's heart seizes up. And after that, Leo screams.

Latooni does not panic. It is not in her to panic. She has probably never panicked in her life, or if she has she will not admit to it. But seeing Leo scream like that, after the Evangelion had its arm ripped off - that puts her close to it. She can feel her heart race.

She does not know what Leo is doing at first, when he makes the Evangelion attack itself. Has it gone mad? Has /he/ gone mad? Is their plan failing (inasmuch as they ever had one)?

Latooni realizes it only once the GN-T is out. "I told you," she says, quietly. "I told you it didn't belong." This is as close as she's going to get to intelligent conversation, because the Evangelion is twisting, distorting - Latooni can't see the arm form from her position, but she can see the arm that shouldn't be there reach forward at Lilith, grab for the core - that has to be what he's doing, just like every other Angel.

She puts one hand on Leo's shoulder (not the one that was the arm that was ripped off). Maybe the physical contact will keep him sane. Whether he needs it or not, /she/ does.

"It's more than I thought to do," the blonde 'replies', loudly, doing her best to project to Huang as the pair cling to what little they can. She too yelps in surprise at the sudden explosion; she isn't familiar with exploding GN drives, so the 'firefly' light show makes little to no sense to her. Save that it can't possibly be a good thing. Her uniform is even less helpful in defensive terms against the radiation filling the room, but given the events here, as the giant!Rei just /stares/ at the screaming 00X srises through LCL, she's not sure they're going to live long enough to worry about it.

Certainly not live long enough to regret their regrets. Ignoring the pang in her heart, fingers curl around her gun a moment in time to the screaming, before Excellen looks over at Huang. And grins.

"How high does the beacon have ta be to get through?"

Noriko...watches. Because there's nothing to do but watch.

"...I stopped you because he's not the enemy right now," Noriko says, needing something real to anchor her sanity on for a second, as the world ends in a way she can't stop. Leo's got to stop it. Because if Leo /can't/ stop it then...then it's up to Noriko. And Noriko has /no freakin' clue/ what to do.

"Even if you're right. Even if he has to be stopped...right now, we have a threat we all have to fight."

"The enemy is that," Noriko says, as Sarah relents, weakened by confusion and fear. "..I'm sorry," she adds, a whisper. "This is something you shouldn't have had to see. I'm going to fight. ...somehow, I'm going to fight. You should run. Don't ever look back."

She releases Sarah's arm as the violence continues. She feels only a little fear. She feels no doubt about her choices. She's going to fight - for everyone, she's going to fight.

She truly is mad, isn't she?

To all those worried about the world ending: well, now seems about as good a point as any for that to happen.

Possibly.

Leo Stenbuck pushes 00X -- 00 beyond its known limits. The prototype unit, Zerogouki has always been the weakest of the Evas, and the most fickle in what pilots it will accept. But Leo's synchronization ratio is exceeding... well, just about every record ever set. For one, the intense psychic power of Innovation is pushing him forward. For another, 00 itself, Rei Ayanami in her first aborted format, is dragging him with her. And for a third, as soon as he touches Lilith's core, Lilith pulls him the rest of the way into oblivion. The world turns into a rush of light around him and there's nothing left but to go forward, into the light.

The effect of this is something that has had no chance to be studied or even properly accounted for -- at least, not by any of those present. But they can feel what's happening in their souls. Even those not born of Lilith find something reaching out to them, deep inside, from out of the void and into their hearts.

Leo Stenbuck's vision takes him into a sea of flesh. Rei Ayanamis fill a space that has no limit. Their nude bodies float listlessly and a billion red eyes track him. It's like looking for a needle in a haystack, but somehow in the back of his mind a voice whispers that he has to go deeper. He may risk losing himself in the process, he may never be able to come /back/, but /his/ Rei is further in.

And as this happens, outside, everyone else suffers the consequences. Like Leo, they find themselves subject to visions of the world becoming emptier around them. As the psychic energy -- the vivid black magic of Metaphysical Biology -- ripples out from the two cosmic beings synchronizing, they are forced to look inward into themselves, where they have perhaps unwelcome visitors.

Everyone gets a Rei. It's a specific Rei, but not the same Rei across the table. It's not 'Rei-1' or 'Rei-2' or 'Rei-3,' it's whatever Rei was stored in the memories and feelings of these people. Some of them barely knew her. Some of them knew her as a teammate. Some of them knew her as a friend. Some of them knew her as a kindred spirit. But their own vision of Rei is there for them, ready to accompany them on a road trip through their own soul, ready to hear what they have to say, ready for whatever peace they want to try and make before the end.

One moment, Leo is looking at the rapidly approaching giant white breast of an alien that looks like his dead girlfriend... and the next, he's floating in a sparkling multicolored nebula filled with copies of her, that rotate as one to stare at him. A needle in a haystack is a bit of an understatement, really...

... but he'll know her when he finds her.

He lifts his hand - inasmuch as he has a hand, here - and reaches out towards the swarms of Reis, but his hand presses suddenly against an invisible pane of force between him and the Reis. Tiny octagons ripple where his fingers press against it. So he's just looking... but he needs to be inside. He can't go any further, like this...

So he changes.

In the real world - or perhaps 'the physical world' would be more appropriate - Leo has risen out of the pilot seat of 00's plug. His hand is pressed into the main monitor, palm flat, as he stares into nothingness... and then his fingers tighten, digging into the monitor, cracking the glass and distorting the image.

And then he pops.

The LCL in the plug swirls violently as Leo's body erupts into LCL, leaving only his hairclips and an empty plugsuit behind. It's lucky for Latooni that she's probably too busy to notice, at least for now.

Not so lucky is the fact that 00, suddenly devoid of a pilot, lurches and collapses backwards into the lake of LCL, throwing yet another huge eruption of liquid into the air.

Back in the realm of the metaphysical, a naked Leo drifts into the sea of similarly naked Reis, pushing as gently as he can through them as he searches for one in particular.

He is not the enemy.

This is obvious to Sarah when she locks her sights on the massive Rei, and the half-mangled half-humanoid Unit-00. Frowning, it's then that Sarah realizes that Noriko is right: Amuro Ray isn't the enemy here. Not right now. But, even still, she cannot help but feel anything but incredible loathing and disgust toward him. Never has she seen him out/side/ of a unit. There, he's as vulnerable as she. That means she can get revenge..!

But this isn't the time or place. Noriko Takaya is /right/.

Nodding her head slowly, the young Newtype yields as Noriko acknowledges Lilith. "Y-yes," she obliges, nodding listlessly again. Slumped at the ground, she just feels incredibly small. She overreacted--she is aware of that now, more than ever. The throbbing in her forehead only reminds her of it. That isn't the way /he/ would want her to act. It is not becoming of a lady, /he/ would say.

However, as Noriko swears she'll fight, Sarah blinks and cranes her neck. "What..?" is her weak reply, looking at the girl with disbelief. "Fight..? But..?" That is absurd! That thing is giant! It's impossible! It's a losing bet! She's crazy! That's dumb! That's a deathwish! Give up, that's the only option!

...is what crosses Sarah's mind before Noriko suggests she run. Run..?

It seems like a good idea, but--

"I-I can't," she weakly replies. "I-If this is a threat...to the world...it's a threat to my Master...I can't let that stop his dream..." Pulling herself from the ground in her wet clothes, Sarah looks (albeit sheepishly) to Noriko. "I...don't know what I can do, but I can't leave you to do that by yourself, Lieutenant." Sarah /tries/ to offer a smile. It comes out awkward and forced.

Just as she finds some shred of confidence, Sarah and her world seem to rip in half. There's a sea of amber all around her, but nothing else. It's just emptiness as far as the eye can see--except stars. Billions of stars. Space..? No. It's something else.

But she's not alone.

She looks to her left. Someone is with her. It's...Rei?

The blue-haired albino girl at her side is frail--incredibly frail, an eye half-covered by a bandage. She's in A-LAWS uniform, but it barely hangs off of her sickly body. She looks absolutely pathetic and pitiable, unblinking as she looks at Sarah with those eerie red eyes. There's a few pieces of paper in her hands. Photographs, of Johnny Domino and Leo Stenbuck, and--

A photo of Admiral Scirocco..? Silently, Rei clutches them to her chest.

"DON'T!!" shrieks Sarah, who immediately GRABS the frail girl's arm and YANKS it, the photographs raining down between them. "You can't HAVE those!" The arm rips off in her hands with a grotesque sound, like wet paper and grinding bone, blood flying. Immediately Sarah pales in the face--did she?

Horrified, she looks to the arm. But...it's got mechanical joints. What..?

When she looks back, Rei remains lifeless and empty, but there's...something in her one, visible eye. A spark? Life? /Something/? Sarah gasps before she staggers backwards with a deep frown. The Rei before her looks incredibly /pitiful/, like a kicked puppy. And she just hurt it.

"Ayanami," Sarah manages after a few minutes of silence.

"I was...a terrible person. You were human too, weren't you? I never saw you as that. But you had feelings, too, right? You were just...different. It was wrong of me. S-so...I guess...

"I'm...sorry."

In the physical world, Sarah falls to her knees again and just stares at the ground. She can't move. She doesn't want to move. She just feels wracked with immense guilt.

Shinji stares in horror as the world around him goes to hell. So this was the end of the world. As much as he thinks about it, he doesn't want it to be. He would die as lame as he ever was. He never even kissed a girl. He never had anyone to depend on except...Shinji stares at Lilith and frowns, seeing noone but his "sister" in there. This was his Father's work. To unite the family back to the way it was supposed to be. A family who cared for each other. Rei Ayanami was the vessel for that family. The vessel for a life that didn't produce someone as useless as him.

He feels his cheek sting, freezing in place.

"I believe in you."

Those were Rei's words. The words she said to him before she left his life forever. He looks away from Rei for a moment, not out of fear but out of shame. He was going to die like this...Sad and alone.

Kaworu said that his fear was loneliness. He was right. Shinji wanted to be accepted more than anything else. Recently a lot of people accepted him for who he was. There was the girl he promised to be a knight to. There were three men who welcomed him into their army. There was a strange older man who seemed more free anyone he had ever met. There was a boy who seemed as troubled as he was. There was a mysterious guy who only showed up when he wanted but treated Shinji in a way he never expected. There was those two guys who made up two of his stooges. There was the girl who kicked his ass...but cared....And then there was...

Shinji looks up and sees a smiling Rei Ayanami dressed up in a Zeon uniform...like in that one dating sim. His eyes widen before he just smiles. He looks over to her left and sees a Rei in a maid outfit. To her left and sees a Rei in some fantasy armor with elf ears. To her left and sees a Rei in a cow suit...who moos at him. To her left a Sailor Saturn Rei. Princess Rei. Witch Rei. Painter Rei. Ganguro Rei. Goth Loli Rei. Sweet Loli Rei. Sukeban Rei. Yankee Rei. Rei in a Disney Inspired Rei Suit. Rei in a Asuka Suit. Tree Rei. They all smile at Shinji, holding their arms out for him. Ready to take him away from this hell. Ready to make sure he leaves this place smiling.

He's ready to go with his many sisters. It seemed the only option.

Shinji stands up and looks toward his destiny.

He stands up only to be thrown back by a newcomer. This person is currently wearing a torn dress and several pieces of torn fabric over what look like gunshot wounds. She takes a drag of the cigarette between her teeth before opening fire on the giant with what looks like a JDSF issue assault rifle. With short bursts, she fires toward the giant, grimacing when she sees a Rei dressed up in a untucked blue shirt and red tie. Nothing. This was bad. This was really bad. She has stubble too so it's wrong.

Misato seizes Shinji's shirt collar and lifts him like some kind of die hard protagonist. She hurries toward the cooridor with him, heading toward the elevator that will get him to the Evangelion hangar. "This is bad."

Well, it's no surprise that Excellen didn't think to do it and certainly no fault of her own. After all, not everyone can be a highly trained and talented engineer with... "How high?" Huang repeats, then stares at Excellen. He frowns, then opens his mouth. Then closes it. Then looks up the shaft. Huh. "I, uh..." Huang says a little shamefacedly, "I don't know." He looks at the blonde woman. "Do you suppose we can get this thing..." he starts to say, then screams as icicles drive into his mind. He tries to gather his will, but it fades rapidly, faster even than Haman Karn could scatter it and then

some

thing

hap

pens

Huang sucks in a breath that echoes oddly in the void, and his head turns around in circles as he looks for...anything. "Excellen!" he shouts, glancing to his right. "Browning!" he calls out, knowing her well enough to know that would bring her out of hiding, if only to yell at him. "I...where the...Sten...Latooni!" Huang whirls, panicking now. "Latooni! Damn it, answer me! Where the hell..." Huang stops speaking, then holds his hand up in front of his mouth. "I'm not...breathing," he says, voice echoing oddly. He reaches a hand up to touch the right side of his face, not finding any scars...nor feeling cold metal under his eyelid. "I'm not...where...I'm..."

The voice trails off, and Huang's legs go limp with realization. He drops to his hands and knees, lips parting in an anguished scream, and he drives his left fist downward, striking some sort of surface in the void. "Son of a BITCH!" he snaps, pounding his fist again and again. "I'm not...I can't be dead, I...there's too much to..." Huang's jaw clenches as he struggles to hold it in, to compose himself. He's supposed to be seeking enlightenment in his last breath, not wasting it crying like a child. But he's failed them, just like he's always failed in the ultimate moment. Just like Haman Karn...

"It's all right," a soft voice whispers.

Huang looks up, vision somehow clear through the tears and without the glasses. He saw Rei Ayanami perhaps once in person, no more than that, and spoke to her a bare handful of times. All he knew was she had suffered greatly, like so many other children in the war. Someone who needed him to protect her. But now she's standing in front of him, no more than five or six - was she really so young? - staring up at him with sad red eyes. "Did you try your best?" Rei asks, tilting her head.

Huang's mouth opens and closes, and he stares down at the floor again, not willing to meet her gaze. "I tried /so hard/," he whispers, nearly choking on it. "And I was mocked for it. Pitied. I could never...all I ever wanted was to do my part. To protect the world," he whispers. "How could any loving god give me the will to do it...but not the power?" His jaw muscles work. "I tried. And I failed."

A hand reaches out and grabs Huang's chin, lifting it slowly, and Rei meets his gaze, red eyes drawing his pain away. "As long as you tried your best, it's okay," she says warmly, then reaches down and works her tiny hand into his. "Come on," she says, tugging. Huang looks up and sees a long corridor, lined on either side with doors. "Come /on/," she says, rolling her eyes and pulling him to his feet. "We've got a long way to go."

Elsewhere, blood drips down from the side of Huang Qin Shi's face as he lies on the floor of the elevator, seeping from a jagged cut above his temple where his head hit the railing.

Latooni was not born - not really. She is a hybrid clone, a Coordinator built to perform a task. Nonetheless she is, in the spiritual sense, born of Lilith. Whatever words she had for Leo, whatever instructions for Huang or even last words she had while living - they all remain unsaid. She does not see Leo vanish, or feel the sudden swirl of LCL ruffle her hair, because her mind has gone elsewhere. Away. Into a place that she never expected to see.

Latooni does not know where she is. She does not know what happened. A tendency toward introspection does not really prepare you for being pulled into your own spirit, such as it is. She was not even sure if she had a soul, before. She is fairly certain they were not on Adler's to-do list when he made the Latune series.

The Rei Latooni is with is - Rei. Latooni's memory for physical details is perfect. She has gotten every aspect of Rei correct in her mind, at least in a structural sense; she has remembered her as the last time she spoke with Rei, in Japanese because she no longer remembered English, failing but not yet fallen.

Latooni thinks of Rei, even now that she knows she is part Angel, part monster, part merged with an impossibility, as someone like her. Possibly one of the only people like her. A clone, meant to do one thing, and one thing alone - who nonetheless has done something that she was never meant to do. Latooni actually feels humbled in her presence. Compared to what Rei has done, trying to save the world, Latooni feels she has done very little - and she had so much more to do it with. She has a family, awkward as it is sometimes.

She does not speak at first. Neither does Rei. Latooni seems perfectly content to stand in silence with someone like her, at least for a while. But eventually, Latooni does speak, so quietly that nobody could hear her without being right there. Not that there is anyone else to disturb.

"I'm sorry," is what Latooni says. "You were right." She does not explain herself further. She does not feel she needs to. Rei will understand.

It's a straightforward question. Excellen can be very direct when she wants to be, and she doesn't have much reason to hide her intentions. Flipping her weapon in hand, it's clear she expects an exchange. "Get Zabirov and run," she tells him, frankly. "Run and make sure that--"

Whatever he needed to be sure of will remain a mystery, as, finally, Relilith is able to absorb the blue eva test type (at least, in part) into its very core. Taking Leo with it. Taking... "Lat.." the woman whispers in horror, eyes widening.

And then the psychic storm descends, wrapping the would-be heroes up and smothering them, drowning them as thoroughly as the LCL hadn't (yet). There simply isn't any SUFFICIENTLY ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY to counter something that goes beyond the senses like this, and even Excellen is not immune.

The earlier comparison to a buttered brick really isn't as farfetched as might be believed. No one, for as far back as the records for ESP and psychodriver-related testing in the Federation go, flatlined the tests as hard as Excellen did. She isn't sensitive to anything remotely psychic, but even she can't escape the coils of primal force.

Even as she clings to the railings attached to the abandoned elevator, Ms. Browning is swept up into the dark, strangely aware as she's spun round and round and round and round that she isn't alone. Something brought sharply to a half when a small, pale hand seizes her wrist. She blinks owlishly, steadying herself, before regarding the shorter girl in confusion. Then, slowly dawning wonder.

She's still /younger/, but she isn't the bone-thin Rei who cried without blinking. Her hair's grown out, past her shoulders but trimmed elegantly, with subtle makeup applied as needed. Her pink t-shirt ('Angel' across the front, ironic in every sense of the word) is one of many they plucked from the racks - her, Noriko (..hey, where is Nori--) and Rei, together - and the skirt flares at the knees, suits the bluenette as it wouldn't suit the blonde.

and now this Rei tows her along as though she weighed no more than a feather. "Hey--wait, Rei! Rei, where are we going?" Dimly, she knows she should be alarmed, especially since there's nothing here, except this young, clearly confident young girl. The Rei she thought she saw in the shadows of neglect, the one she wanted to reach out to. "C'mon, Rei, answer m--"

The door is suddenly there, and familiar, even in the shadows of a nonexistant corridor (In the Minerva, without being on it..?) and swings open at happy!Rei's touch. Into a room filled with paper cranes, far as the eye can see, in colours as bright and varied as the people in A-LAWS itself. There's even a small zoo of unfamiliar figures ringed in by the cranes, not very animal like, but even as she peers, Excellen can feel her eyes glossing over.

And then she turns back to the smiling Rei, who offers her a simple sheet of paper.

"I'm terrible at making them," Excellen confides ruefully, reaching out to accept.

"It's okay," rei!Rei replies, smiling as she never smiled when Excellen knew her, but as she might have smiled eventually. Sitting down in the room of (field of) paper cranes, Excellen Browning stares blankly at the page again, then up at the other girl. "It's okay," she repeats, "I'll show you, just like you showed me."

In the darkness behind them, unnoticed, a pair of red eyes open. And blue lips press into a flat line that might almost be considered a frown.

Warm.

Bright.

Soothing.

Amuro Ray lets the LCL rock him gently in its arms, breathing the fluid as he sinks towards the bottom of the lake. If this is the end of the world, at least he doesn't have to feel the pain of the gunshot any more. The pain of failure. The pain of striving so hard against the odds, of fighting with every ounce of his being, battering his head against the wall of humanity's ignorance and arrogance, and losing every time.

The pain of living.

This isn't so bad, then, as ends of the world go. The Newtype closes his eyes, even as Zerogouki's impact rocks the lack, slamming Amuro's body into the rough rocky side, tearing open his flesh, laying bare his bones.

He feels nothing, because he has left this body.

ELSEWHERE

"I was wondering when you'd come," Amuro says, taking Lalah's hand. The dark-skinned woman smiles at him, gently, saying nothing. He can't muster his usual irritation at her presence, because hey, it's the end of everything. How can he hold her selfishness against her when the selfishness of an entire species has doomed existence?

Amuro turns away from her nude, glowing form, letting it blend along with everything else into the soft colours of this plane. His own lack of clothing means nothing to him here. The visual representations are only his mind making sense of the emotional input of the universe, after all. He could be anything he wanted, but he chooses, as ever, to be himself.

Lalah drifts over to put her hands around his neck, reaching down to his chest. He leans his head back into her chest, smiling. There's no sexuality between them any more; Amuro Ray is no longer a hormone-driven teen, confused by the proximity of a kindred spirit. "Lalah..." he murmurs, drifting away. "I'm sorry I killed you..."

ELSEWHERE STILL

Amuro Ray opens his eyes to darkness. He is confused. "Lalah...?" he calls. There is no answer. The colours are gone. He can't feel anything but himsel...ves?

Slowly he turns, looking into the eyes of a younger Amuro Ray. The boy who won a war, standing in his white-and-red flight suit, looking tired but proud after the final victory at A Baoa Qu.

"Wh--" Amuro begins, then frowns. Something isn't right about the younger he. That hair... when did he ever have blue hair?

Or red eyes?

The younger he holds out a hand towards him, expression neutral. "Come," it says, in a decidedly feminine voice. "You're not done yet, Amuro Ray." He puts his hand in hers. "You don't get to die before you're done."

He has said those words to himself so many times, but he knows that this child is not him, but rather... "Alright, Rei." She turns, taking a step towards a sudden, blinding white glow. He follows, resolve set.

HERE?

Amuro Ray rises out of the lake. Then he continues to rise. A faint blue glow surrounds his ravaged body-- even the blood which drips steadily from his fingers and toes has a blue aura. He rises, rises, rises until he is at the level of the giant woman's chest.

The aura grows, expands, takes on the aspect of a demon.

Amuro Ray opens his eyes, and they blaze with white lightning. He holds up a hand, pressing it against the Reilith's chest, between her breasts. The blue glow crackles and hums, rippling across the AT field protecting the monolithic girl's integrity.

Amuro Ray... /pushes/.

The blinding flash of light is accompanied by a sound of thunder. When it clears, there is no sign of the tainted Newtype at all.

Gone, too, is the Reilith.

The world is saved!

...

...

HERE

Amuro Ray's bloodied body continues to bump listlessly against the side of the lake in time with the waves.

Noriko looks back at Sarah as the girl offers to come, and gives her the kind of warm smile you can only get when you plan to die doing something stupid with a complete stranger. "Then, c'mon," she says, morbildy. She knows what she's doing - she knows she can't win. But a Top Pilot doesn't accept loss. Noriko Takaya will die as she lived - running down the path ahead of her, screaming at the top of her lungs, and praying whatever is watching her that when she dies, it means something.

"I don't know what I'm gonna do," she says to Sarah. "I just know that she trusted me to set this right. So I'm..." ghk. Noriko can't make words come out anymore, like she were punched in the gut, except Noriko hasn't been hit in the gut like that since the time Gentle Chapman had her pissing blood for a week, so maybe it's more like someone punched her in the neck, or--

Noriko Takaya is painfully un-psychic. She does not sense anything. Everything she has won she has earned, tearing it out from a world that gave her no gifts. Her power. Her strength. Her skill. Her friends. Her--

Everything is dark. The world seems to spin around her. She can hear herself breathe, and she remembers all the fear of that day, when he died and she did nothing, even if it seems like it happened to another person from another universe that Noriko couldn't comprehend. Darkness and loneliness and--

"...Rei?" Noriko murmurs, seeing it before her, the girl as Noriko remembers her - built from muscle that Noriko helped put there, in the Top Squadron uniform Noriko told her she didn't have to wear, but that she chose to anyway. The blue ribbon, that piece of Noriko's heart, the one thing she could think to give when she wanted to give everything, whipping in the turning silence.

"Did we fail...?" she mutters, her breathing slow, frightened. No. She reaches out, a tear budding in her eye, despite her strength, despite her oath, and she speaks and she hopes to God and Heaven that she can hear her, "You died...and I didn't even try to stop it...like every other time, I just told myself it was OK, because I couldn't..."

Tears, and her heart is bursting. "You died and I did nothing," she says, and tries to take her hand, and thinks nothing of the danger, of what it might be or should be or could be, because right now it feels like there's nothing left in the world but to try and make peace with her regrets. "They always die And I always..."

Everyone goes deeper into themselves. Maybe that's what Rei always was -- a cipher for everyone else's feelings in how she expressed none of her own -- a mirror of everyone else's desires in how she complied so readily to their wishes -- a means for everyone who knew her at all to see themselves even if they didn't know it. Rei's face was always so blank that it meant something different to everyone.

Everyone sees themselves through Rei, but Leo is actually in her heart. He's somewhere beyond words and beyond humanity, trespassing within the divine and alien. Leo is in the wrong place, but no one seeks to expel him. As he drifts through innumerable Reis, looking for his...

"HARO, HARO!"

That's probably what you /shouldn't/ hear when you're inside the soul of your girlfriend who is also the fount from which all life on the planet sprang.

"AMURO GENKI! AMURO GENKI! HARO, HARO!"

And there she is. She's curled into a ball at the deepest point of oblivion, so far down, so separate from the rest, that it /burns/ to come near her, that it causes imagined sparkling psychic flesh to blister and tear and shred, naked, bright, eyes closed. In her arms is a green Haro whose eyes flash happily at the incoming Leo. Slowly, Rei's eyes open and she turns to look at Leo.

She wants to tell him to turn back, to save himself, but -- Rei Ayanami has so rarely in her life done a selfish thing.

And she's even more rarely had someone do anything so selfless for her.

"You didn't let me forget," is all Rei says, as one of her hands reaches out, straining to try and touch Leo.

"You didn't let me forget."

That last sentence rings out in the minds of all present -- if they're still in the throes of their vision, those words, unexplained, signal its end, the fading back to reality, to the discomfort of life and the fear of death and the darkness of failure and the horrible beauty of rebirth.

Leo isn't sure what he was expecting, but he certainly wasn't expecting moving forward to become more difficult. By the time the Haro starts squawking, he'd have thrown up if he still had a stomach, which he is increasingly certain he doesn't.

The presence of the robot is... strange, to say the least, but Leo takes it with a grain of salt. Things can't really get any weirder, he reasons; he'll just roll with it. And besides, it proves an excellent beacon, guiding him ever close to Rei, to /his/ Rei.

By the time he drifts close enough for Rei to reach out for him, Leo's 'skin' is engulfed in blue flame. He can't really think, anymore; everything is pain, pain and the single-minded desire to rescue Rei Ayanami.

Wordlessly, he stretches his hand out for Rei; when she proves too far, he pushes deeper, arm stretching as far as it can go. His skin dissolves, like someone had started a fire at his fingertips, leaving behind only a humanoid mass of blood and muscle save for his eyes and teeth.

It's just barely far enough. Leo's hand closes around Rei's wrist, and he wrenches her up towards him, pulling her into an embrace. It takes all of his willpower to rasp out, through the pain, "We have... to go."

A gaping hole lingers in Lilith's flesh where Unit-00's arm plunged into it. Perhaps this has something to do with why, without warning, a tremendous geyser of blood erupts out of the hole, out of the Second Angel's core, geysering into the air like something in front of a Neo-Las Vegas resort.

It almost certainly has nothing to do with why, rather than raining down to the ground like the blood should, it instead twists and reshapes itself in midair, slowly forming into... a pair of Lilith-sized humanoid figures, made entirely of blood. Despite the nature of the images, the subject matter is perfectly clear:

It is Rei Ayanami and Leo Stenbuck, giant and naked and embracing and /made out of blood./

And then Johnny Domino descends into hell.

The Agent stopped receiving reports from the outside world a while ago. He has no clue what is happening above the GeoFront, nor does he know what to expect down below. All he knows is that he barely had the time to exchange even half a sentence with either Cinco, Noriko or Excellen before urging them onward. They had a destination to reach, and Johnny had to stay behind and make sure they got to their destination in one piece.

A pity. Domino really wished he had more time to talk with Excellen. There were so many things he still needed -- and wanted -- to tell her. Things like 'Cinco Budenda is really Amuro Ray' and 'Kaworu Nagisa did something to me, I don't feel so good' and 'We might die, did you know I love you?'.

Alas, Johnny Domino can not afford to linger on sentimentalities.

Having taken measures to ensure Terminal Dogma would remain inaccessible to any external forces short of people ripping open the ceiling, the young man makes double the haste to join up with his comrades. Having slipped into a harness generously left behind by Amuro Ray, Johnny hooks himself to one of the ropes that still dangles, beginning a controlled freefall into the darkness.

As he descends, Domino has a moment's reprieve from the chaos, and he shuts his eyes, rubbing at them with a free hand. He can't think straight. There's an incessant pressure in his head - a pressure that has been present ever since Kaworu kissed him. Johnny Domino can't stand it. That silent buzzing, that invisible /lump/ in his skull, what the hell was it?

He wished he knew what it was as much as he wished it would go away.

It doesn't go away, though. The Agent opens his eyes. What was the plan again? He'll reach the bottom, land in a well-practiced roll to avoid breaking any bones, catch up with Excellen and the rest... yes, that's the plan.

Unfortunately, this plan never even reaches the first phase. Moments before Domino is to make contact with the floor, the cavernous maw of Terminal Dogma opens up all around him, revealing the sight of the gigantic alien that has taken on Ayanami's form. It is a sight the Agent doesn't handle very well. The sheer size of the thing as it stands upright in all its naked glory, the white complexion that lights the darkness and stings at the eyes, and speaking of eyes...

Those empty sockets, containing nothing but a red ember.

Johnny Domino gasps, hands closing around the rope as he clings to it in fright. The freefall comes to an abrupt, jerking halt. Domino barely feels it as the harness bites into his flesh and bruises it. Left floating between heaven and hell, the Agent forgets about everything else. He doesn't see the people down below, doesn't get a taste of their trippy hallucinations. All that fills his vision is the white giant.

The white giant that looks like...

"..rei..?"

No. It can't be. That thing is /not/ Rei Ayanami. And yet, it looks just like her, and it's /bleeding/ -- it's shooting out blood as if it's the fucking Fourth of July -- and as he stares in horror, Johnny can't stop himself from crying out:

"/REEEEEI/!"

Latooni Subota continues to not speak with Rei for several long moments. Eventually, she opens her mouth, perhaps to apologize again, perhaps to ask what she can do, perhaps to ask if she is dead -

"You didn't let me forget."

That isn't what Latooni said; her voice was drowned out by the words echoing in her mind, her own words lost to time. Latooni has exactly enough time to look baffled before she comes back to herself, the edges of her vision blurring, turning red.

That's just the LCL.

Latooni is in a cockpit, facing away from the only seat in it and at a weird angle because it has half-fallen into the lake. She blinks, clearing something from her eyes - tears, maybe, or grit - before something hits her in the head, rolling off the chair's back.

It is one of those stupid little hairclips she keeps seeing the Evangelion pilots wear. Latooni reaches up, unsure what it is even as she grips it tightly in her hand, and then realizes that it was Leo's; she rises, turning fast, to see an empty plugsuit in the cockpit and no Leo at all, until she looks up and out the viewscreen, where she sees a tremendous Leo with an equally tremendous Rei, made out of fountaining Angel blood -

Latooni screams, gripping the 'hairclip' so tight she can feel it digging into her palm, threatening to draw blood. It is a short, whimpered scream, but a scream nonetheless, because she believes Leo is dead - and she has no idea what to make of anything. "Leo - /LEO/! Rei! Where - what - "

Latooni looks at the viewscreen of the Evangelion. Gripping the hairclip tightly - she finds the second one too, just in case - Latooni wills it to move, to stand up, to /go to Leo and Rei/. She does not expect it to actually move, not really. This isn't her place. She's just in it.

Huang blinks and looks over his shoulder. "Did you...hear something?" he asks, rubbing his temple.

Rei shakes her head. "It's okay. You're better off not knowing," she says truthfully, then tugs on the engineer's hand again. "Come on. We're nearly there."

Huang moves down the corridor slowly, glancing at the numbers as he passes them. Two hundred and twelve...fourteen... "Where do these go?" he asks, not expecting an answer. To his surprise, he gets one.

"Other places," Rei says. "Other yous. A lot of them...aren't very happy places," she whispers, then stops and looks up it him. "You came here sooner those times." Huang looks back down at her, then shakes his head and keeps moving. The journey takes an eternity - no shorter than a man's last breath. It takes no time at all - no longer than the birth of a sun. In this place, however, the journey is unimportant. The destination is what matters. And eventually Huang Qin Shi stops at a door, staring at the number.

4444

The engineer glances down the hall, which seems to continue on forever in the direction he was heading. He glances the direction he came from, and sees the same thing. Huang takes a breath, then shrugs his shoulders helplessly. Like she said - he'd tried his best. He releases the little girl's hand and kneels down beside her. "You step back now, little one," he says softly. "You helped me find the way...but you can't go through this one yet." A faint grin curls on his lips. "Not until you're old..."

"l' me..." the engineer's mouth slurs elsewhere as LCL splashes away from his lips.

The little red-eyed girl bites down on her lower lip, then nods and takes three large steps backward, /huge/ tottering steps without bending her knees. Huang smiles and then slowly rises, tugging his uniform into place. All in all, could have been worse, Huang thinks to himself. He reaches for the handle, then stops. Would have....would have been nice, though...

When Sarah slams back into the pain of reality, something tickles her face.

Blinking a few times, the young woman looks at the floor beneath her, the floor she'd fallen helplessly to. Her hands stir from her thighs, reaching up to brush at the feathery sensation lingering on her face, slowly tracing down her cheeks. What she feels is water. Is it..?

Is she...crying..? But why?

Giving her hand a swift brushing over of her face, Sarah shakes it off. Whatever happened, happened. A distant part of her feels a bit better--relieved even. A burden has been hoisted off of her shoulders somehow. But right now she has something /else/ to worry about.

"Lieutenant Takaya??" Sarah wonders, turning her attention around her. There, in the lake of LCL behind her, floats the young woman. Startled, the young Newtype turns to shakily stand on her feet and go toward the floating Top Squadron pilot. "H-hold on, just a se--"

At the edge of the platform, Sarah hears a horrible sound.

Pivoting around on her boot heels, she's treated to probably the most disgusting thing she's ever seen. Blood sprays from the core of the giant Rei-Lilith abomination, only to shape itself into blood figures. Giant figures of Leo and Rei she can vaguely make out.

Sarah frowns. She isn't sure what's going on anymore, but something inside her feels cold.

So, instead, she turns, silently moving to the lake of LCL to get Noriko back onto 'dry' land. "Hold on," she murmurs as she wades into the water. Her mind numbs. This is just a bad dream, she'll wake up. She'll wake up. She'll wake up...

Noriko tries to apologize to the ghost of her friend who may be neither of those things. She didn't do everything she could. She told herself it was OK to hold back. She told herself it was OK because it was what she would've done. She told herself...

They're crying together, because that's what Noriko remembers most, and she wonders if that's what she wants to remember the most of all. But it is, in a way. That sadness was deep and profound, but...knowing it was there, knowing and understanding someone else, really seeing someone she had helped need her...it might have been selfish, but Noriko never wanted anything more.

You didn't let me forget. The words are like a hammer to the back of her psyche. The world explodes, fragments, reconstitutes. Noriko jerks awake, coughing, once Sarah's gotten her back to the shore of the LCL lake, her eyes wet and her breath ragged. "What the--" she rasps out, trying to reassemble the situation in a hurry. She was with--but no, she wasn't, because--

And then her composure explodes again, because: "What the--heck!?" Noriko stammers, shoving herself upright. Sarah's at hand, Noriko spots her but can't focus any attention on her because Lilith exploded, and there is a giant blood Rei and Leo, and it feels like the universe is just trying to piss her off, now. Slow breaths. Deep breaths.

"...did he do it?" she murmurs, hoping he did, because Noriko still doesn't know what she'll do if he didn't.

HERE?

The world turns below, and the colonies orbit above.

The Earth is empty. All of mankind's follies have been erased from her surface. She heals, slowly, from the atrocities humanity inflicted upon her in return for giving them life.

In space, everyone understands each other. People communicate without the need for violence, conflict, constant competition and one-upsmanship. It is a new era of cooperation and peace.

Amuro Ray's work is complete.

He is dead, finally able to rest.

HERE

Bubbles rise through the LCL as Amuro Ray's mind is shoved back into his body by the unnatural reunion of Leo Stenbuck and Rei Ayanami-2.

Amuro Ray's mind and soul fight against it. No. No. Don't take me away from there. Don't make me go back to the helpless, dying shithole of a universe I live in. Don't don't don't don'tdon'tdontdontdontdontdontdontdon

"AGHUH!" Amuro gasps, inhaling a lungfull of LCL. He can see through the substance. The pain hits then, and he screams wordlessly into the orange lake.

He can see bones sticking out of his left arm, the one he was shot in, the one dashed against the shore. He is not used to seeing his bones that way. He is also not used to breathing underwater.

Panicked and in agony, he looks up towards the dark ceiling and sees...

Is it 'after', yet? Is this the 'after' he knew would come? The 'after' of which he told Johnny Domino?

Or is this just another stage in the horrifying end of everything?

Agonisingly slowly, he kicks and claws with one arm towards the surface, gripping the edge, trying to pull himself up. The sounds of his pain continue to escape his body. He can't do it. He can't pull himself out of the lake. He can't... do anything.

After all of this, he can't do anything at all.

Who would have thought that the folds of paper could be so complicated. A bit like people, really. Even with each precise line marked and mimiced, Excellen can't help but laugh at the poor, battered fird she manages by comparison. "Maybe birds just aren't my thing, you know?" She jokes, moving the crumbled beak up and down.

'You didn't let me forget.'

"Forget what..?" she then replies, glancing up--

And then the paper cranes seem to scatter in her wake as she falls through the floor that wasn't, the shuffle of paper a whisper in her ears that seems to scream as she falls faster and faster and--

--surfacing from the LCL with a huge gasp, blonde hair slicked back against her head, Excellen's confusion is clearly evident. She doesn't remember letting go of the railings, or Huang. But she still has hold of her gun, held in the same hand as the crane. It's only when she hears Domino scream Rei's name that she thinks to turn around, eyes widening in further shock at the sight of.....

She doesn't know what she's looking at, and truth be told, she doesn't /want/ to know. She's disturbed beyond telling.

And desperately wishing in the back of her mind that she'd told Kyosuke she'd be coming here.

The two blood effigies linger for a moment -- and then burst, splattering all present, as if they weren't uncomfortable enough with the idea.

Which may or may not be the end of the horrors on display. The world still seems to be here, doesn't it? Reilith staggers, the hole in its chest not healing. /Can/ a divine being recover from having its own soul broken into? The giant white monster, still in the form of a teenage girl, still smiling despite its apparent agony, woozily lurches backward.

Its attention is drawn, though, by the single figure shouting 'REEEIII' -- if only because the tendency of everyone else is to gape in horror. Lilith's arm moves toward Johnny Domino. Lilith could want to grab him and pluck him from where he hangs. Or it could just be a coincidence. Does anyone really want to find out?

Evangelion Unit-00 steadfastly refuses to move, no matter how stern Latooni gets.

In a plug full of LCL it's not easy to tell what LCL was in there when you came in, and what came from your boyfriend when he dissolved into a jelly after becoming one of an elite few humans who can say they've stuck their fingers inside the soul of a being more powerful than anything on the planet. It's also not easy to watch the process of him coming /back/, the LCL giving way to Leo Stenbuck's body in exactly the order it doesn't need to be seen, from nervous system to cardiovascular to organs to bones to muscle to skin to hair. Except he's not alone.

As disturbing as a pair of Rei and Leo giants made of blood were, it may not compare to Rei and Leo in the flesh. All of their flesh, on display, right there. Leo Stenbuck indeed brough her back -- a her, anyway -- and she's under him and they're both atop the pilot's seat and this is awkward.

Johnny Domino is shaking.

The white giant has spotted him. It isn't Rei. And it's reaching out to him.

Shit.

The Agent has enough sense to realize that he should do something, preferably something within the spectrum of 'get the hell out of there'. It's an action easier said than done, however.

Hanging in mid-air, there is nowhere for Domino to run, and while both going up or down are viable options, the young man's body does not cooperate. If only Johnny had never met Kaworu. If only he still possessed the same self-control he had the past few months. If only he had the strength of mind to act!

The white giant's hand is close. It's getting ever closer. A violent tremor passes through Domino's petrified body, his jaw clenched, teeth bared. Slowly, ever so slowly, the Agent's right hand releases its hold over the rope, pulling away in a stiff, painful motion. With his blue gaze remaining on the white giant at all times, Johnny Domino gropes around his harness, trying to disconnect it from the rope.

The distance Domino still has left to scale before reaching solid ground isn't optimal. Falling the rest of the way from his current position runs the risk of broken bones. But try telling that to the young man while the fake Rei Ayanami threatens to get her paws on him.

The closer the towering alien get, the more frantic the Agent's movements become. Struggling with the hook, Johnny Domino is rapidly going from passive shock into active panic. Tiny gasps begin escaping his mouth, pathetic and whiny as he tugs and jerks on the harness. The white giant is so close, its glow so painful. Tears well up in the Agent's eyes. Why won't the harness release itself?

The white hand is almost upon him.

WHY WON'T THE HARNESS LET GO?!

clink

Gravity takes over. Johnny Domino plummets, falling straight into the giant's open palm -- falling straight /through/ the giant's open palm. It is then, as Domino passes through the alien's hand as if it were nothing but air, that it happens.

As if someone turned on a powerful spotlight inside Johnny's head and directed it at the dark recesses of his consciousness, the young man can suddenly see. He can SEE. The dark shadow that Kaworu Nagisa left within Johnny Domino - he can finally /see/ it. And like a curious little gadget full of blinking lights and spinning gears, the moment the proverbial spotlight hits it, Tabris's final gift comes to life.

Unfolding from the inside out, unfurling in all directions and reaching out across Domino's mind, the young man become privy to knowledge and memories spanning an untold amount of time. And that is only the beginning.

Even as Johnny's body is pulled down, his soul is pulled up. Brushing against the white giant, Domino's AT Field -- for every human has an AT Field around their hearts -- contracts and then expands. It touches the AT Field of everyone currently inhabiting Terminal Dogma, and the young man sees them. He sees them all.

He sees Excellen, lying broken and bloodied at the site of a shuttle crash. He sees Noriko, writing an essay about how proud she is of her papa, the admiral. He sees Rei, one of her clones, opening its eyes inside a sterile tube after having a soul implanted in it. He sees Amuro, hurridly flipping through a manual and learning how to pilot a Gundam as if his life depended on it.

He sees Sarah, dressed in civilian clothing, looking up at Paptimus Scirocco for the first time in awe and wonder. He sees Leo, weak Leo, getting stabbed in the leg by Yazan Gable. He sees Huang, disillusioned with the EFA and making the decision to defect. He sees Latooni, strapped to a chair with a visor over her eyes and wires hooked up to her body.

Johnny sees everything, their past, their future, their present.

Higher and higher his reach extends, touching across the whole of NERV's facility. Domino sees every room, every hallway and every lab. He sees the JDSF forces swarming the GeoFront, he sees NERV personnel being rounded up and then executed. Every face has a name, every soul has a story, and Johnny Domino hears them all.

And then above the GeoFront - Tokyo-03 is under siege. The Mass Production Evangelion Units are murdering people and getting murdered. Johnny Domino hears the cries of the dead, hears the cheers of the victorious. The battlefield is overlaid with visions of Earth from different periods, long before Tokyo-03 came to be and long after it is demolished. And even higher still...

Johnny Domino sees things that have, things that are, and things that never will. What was or isn't come mingling together, dislocated from their logical timeline and thrown into a single moment that has no quantifiable place in this reality.

Johnny Domino sees the beginning -- he sees the dawn of humanity, he sees its decline -- he sees the ending.

Johnny Domino is everywhere. Johnny Domino is the world. Johnny Domino is-

Down in Terminal Dogma, Domino's body impacts the LCL-slicked floor. He lies there on his back, blue eyes wide and empty. No one can see what he sees. All anyone else can see is a young man who has just fallen from a formidable height, possibly suffering from internal injuries. And after a few shuddered breaths, this very same young man moves his arms, pressing the palms of his hands to each side of his head.

He opens his mouth and he screams.

The good news is that Leo no longer feels like his soul is on fire.

The better(?) news is that, when the lack of agony prompts him to open his eyes again, he's back in Unit-00's plug.

The best news is that he is still holding Rei.

The /bad/ news, Leo realizes as his eyes flit between Rei and an undoubtedly flabbergasted Latooni, is that he did not at all think about the social consequences of what he just did.

That's about as far as his brain gets using anything logic before he abruptly bursts into tears. He unwraps one of his arms from around Rei, just enough to reach out to grab at Latooni and pull her into an increasingly awkward multi-embrace, his shoulders spasming as he sobs, his tears mingling with the LCL filling the plug.

"I love you," he manages to choke out, after a few seconds. "I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you-"

It is unclear who he's speaking to.

Latooni Subota does not get terribly stern with the Evangelion. She did not expect it to move. She does not even know if it is alive, after Leo had it rip out its own mechanical, artificial core, or if it is dead; yes, the timer is not quite run down, but it took a lot of damage, too - it's not like it just turned it off.

She releases the two hairclips and slumps in the cockpit. She is failing again. She is sitting in here and she can't /do/ anything, she's helpless and useless.

LCL moves behind her. Latooni feels the motion more than anything else, as it reverse-messes up her hair, which already has a tendency to drift in the liquid medium. She rises again, looking over the edge of the seat and -

Well.

Latooni is, to be honest, just thrilled to have Leo back - and Rei too, a Rei, though she obviously doesn't know how she is mentally. Latooni may not have been that close to Rei, but that does not change the connection she felt to her. Social consequences be damned - people she thought were dead are not dead and that's worth any amount of celebration. She may not realize that Armageddon is still impending. Rei is back. Is it done? That seemed to be a core breach...

Latooni gets pulled into a very confused tangle of people. She does not tense up or freeze or pull away; she slips and goes down with it, one arm around Leo - and yes, one around Rei too. She does not speak. Leo is speaking enough for all of them.

Well, one sentence. "I'm glad you're both back..."

Ignoring the slip of her fingers on metal railing, Excellen struggles to regain her grasp and higher view of what's going on. Lost in the distraction of her mission, the sudden movement of the white giant!rei turns gaze upwards, and she gapes a moment as it seizes onto the young man who's managed to turn from utter nuisance into annoying little brother. "Domin--" she half-chokes, before the gun is pointed. Upwards. At the not-rei-lilith thing. But there's little use trying, as the chambers click-click-click. Too clogged by LCL to allow even the most futile attempt to stay that hand.

Surely this isn't what Rei wanted, she thinks, frown in place as his body falls, lies still as stone. She slips a bit, grasp lost, when the screaming starts, and it takes effort not to sink back into the stinking ocean below. Her heart twists, hope waning, unaware of Leo's success.

Then again, it wouldn't be their Rei he brought back, would it? Just his. Just..

So focused on the endless screams is she that when contact comes, Excellen barely suppresses a yelp. It's a feather-light touch along the length of her arm, startling the blond and her head turns in confusion at the sudden, improbable reaction interruption. And stares into a face she knows so well.

Bright iris seems to skip purple on the colour wheel entirely as blue flickers, then melts into red as Excellen's pupils dilate, even as the light behind them seems to fade so rapidly.

A loud GLOP heralds the splash of gun into LCL, rapidly sinking to the long lost floor below. Something then falls - already soaked, there's no way for it to flutter, as the red and black coat coming to rest atop the strange orange-yellow fluid, the colours dark as it seeps into the fabric. But of Excellen, there is no sign at all.

Reaching out, Sarah's arm extends, a hand offered to the Lieutenant. It takes a bit of effort, but she'll manage to get a grip as Noriko freaks out at the giant bloody Rei and Leo towering over the bowels of Terminal Dogma. No one can blame her; it's pretty gross.

"C-come on," she struggles, pulling the other young woman up and toward the platform's ledge, where she'll try to get her back onto flat, solid surface, rather than wash away to only-God-knows-where. When all is said and done, Sarah wheezes a bit, worn out both mentally and physically. The question Noriko asked...well. Sarah never responds. She has no answer for her.

The distant sound of splashing and thrashing in the LCL lake, however, draws her gaze.

Blinking, Sarah crawls across that platform, to the edge to see what is going on. It's--

"You." It's said with no compassion, as Sarah looks down at the thrashing, bloodied Amuro. She should turn and let him struggle, she thinks to herself. She should let him suffer and thrash like some wounded animal, like the wretch he is. But this isn't the time--Noriko was right. Now isn't--

Numb, Sarah reaches down with both small hands and grabs Amuro's arm. Struggling, she pulls, despite the sudden BURST of the bloodied effigies, and the 'blood' that coats her. She just pulls and pulls and pulls, to get him on the platform as well. It hurts, but--

Once he's on 'dry lands,' Sarah releases him and falls back, her body supported by both hands as she tiredly gasps. Her body aches, her mind hurts, her emotions are haywire. It's all too much. It's too frustrating. It's--

A flash of something tugs at Sarah Zabiarov's mind.

Looking up, she sees Domino free-fall toward the platform, falling helplessly toward the ground, where he impacts with a terrible thud. Immediately Sarah scrambles with a yelp, struggling against the coating of LCL that lingers on the floor as she calls his name. "Domino! Domino!! Are you okay!?"

He writhes in agony, screaming as he clutches at his head. At his side Sarah grips gingerly to his shoulders and carefully shakes as she begs, "What's wrong, Domino??" She remains unaware of the chaos still unfolding around her, like the dissolving of Excellen, or the naked pair and poor Latooni in the 00X. "Domino!"

Noriko coughs a little, just...completely baffled at this point. Nothing makes sense, and yet everything does. She's just...got to think about this. Hard, but she doesn't have time, /nothing is right anymore/, and--

Sarah's helping her up. Noirko helps, pushes herself back and up and onto solid ground, or rather, Sarah pulls her up and Noriko helps, and gives the girl a grateful little smile, and--

Blood on everything. Noriko just...looks down at herself, soaked and bloodied, and...

She's got nothing. She can't even make herself parse what the hell is going on anymore. It is simply beyond her comprehension. It seems...to ...be over? But Johnny--

"Johnny--" she manages, trying to find traction on something, anything. "Johnny--!" she adds, stronger, as his screams sink into her thoughts. He helped her! He helped her so much, and she's--she can't just--but there's other things, and...

She tries to find her feet, because she can't think of anything else to do.

"Sarah?" Amuro croaks, voice as we as he is. He tenses, waiting for her to finish the job she started mere minutes ago. There's nothing he can do to stop it, just as there's nothing he can do to stop the end of the world. He was an idiot for coming here. Arrogant to think he could do anything to stop this. Selfish to think that he, already worn out years ago, a faded celebrity, could have anything to do with the new generation battling God itself.

Sarah pulls him out of the lake. He is confused but grateful. His life is ultimately meaningless-- he can see that more clearly than ever now-- but he's still not ready to let it go. "Thanks," he mumbles, wincing as he slowly gets to his feet.

Just in time for Domino to come crashing down, touching everyone's mind along the way. "Hngh... Johnny...?!" he gasps, feeling the young man's consciousness literally explode. "No...!"

Amuro hobbles over to the fallen Agent, turning his back on the larger problem, because... well, because this is no longer up to him. It never was, and he was a fool to think he could change anything. He is as powerless as an infant in the face of the Angels.

But maybe he can help this one person, this one boy. Maybe he can still do /something/. The return of Leo to reality registers in his mind, and that is good. He feels something new and old as well-- it is almost like Rei, but... not. "So," he mutters, crouching down and reaching a hand for Domino's forehead. "This... is the shape of 'after'."

His mind opens, flooding towards Johnny Domino's expanding consciousness. The blue glow he fantasized earlier truly exists now, flowing through his soul and flooding in to Domino's wounded body, seeking the core of the young Agent's 'self' amongst the stars themselves.

"Johnny..." calls his soul. "Get back here."

Johnny Domino offers very little in the sense of an encouraging response to Sarah's inquiries. His eyes don't see her at the moment -- not in the traditional sense, anyway -- and his scream continues ringing out. As a Newtype, however, Sarah will be able to tell whatever has afflicted Domino is far deeper than any potential internal injuries he may have incurred.

For example, his emotions are all over the place, as the emotions of every soul he comes in contact with is reflected through him. And second of all... the mental vibes Johnny gives off... are wrong. No normal human, Newtype or otherwise, gives off vibes like the ones Domino emenates.

Indeed, Sarah Zabiarov -- and in fact any Newtype around who cares to pay attention -- will be able to tell that Johnny Domino just went through something that is Not Right.

It takes the concentrated effort of Amuro Ray to bring Johnny Domino back from the void. As the young man's soul is guided back into its body, Domino's scream finally dies down, replaced with tormented gasps. And as the scream fades, something up above answers it. A low rumbling that reverbrates across the abyss, creeping closer and closer down the huge shaft leading to Terminal Dogma.

A few long seconds pass before a heavy body lands in the middle of the LCL lake, giving rise to a tsunami of orange. As the liquid crashes against the artificial shore and rough walls, it becomes apparent what the low rumbling was and is: a roar.

Even as Johnny lies helpless on the floor, Chimera is alive. The Agent left it behind, giving it free reign to keep back any and all who tried to get close to Terminal Dogma. All the while, beast and master shared a mental link... one that was brutally disturbed by the combined embrace of Adam and Lilith. And so, pilotless, feral, without any restraint or mercy, the Bio-Mechanical Compound Organism Chimera is on the warpath.

There's a growl as the beast leaps at the white giant, yellow eyes leaving a trail of glowing vapor. Making to tackle the alien down to the floor, Chimera makes sure the white giant knows exactly what the bio-unit thinks of it. Opening its mouth and revealing its fangs, the Chimera roars once more, this time right into the alien's face, smothering the giant's features with its steaming breath.

Then the mouth, fangs and all, moves to bite down on the white giant's head with a crunch. The beast lurches, twisting its neck to and fro in savage gestures, mangling the shape of Rei Ayanami's face beyond recognition. What follows isn't any prettier.

Imagine a happy song about friendship and love and mutual respect and learning important life lessons and lay it over this description of one abomination destroying another. When the Chimera enters and bites away a chunk of Reilith's face, it reveals what lurks inside the godform -- nothing but blood and radiant Absolute Terror, like a hollow dummy, or a candy shell. The still-wounded entity is pummeled, broken, and torn. It is savaged beyond compare and very nearly beyond recognition.

It's like watching Rei Ayanami being murdered, but she's a hundred feet tall and there's nothing you can do about it.

As this happens, inside the plug of Evangelion Unit-00, something even more awkward is occurring. Leo's arm is around her -- Latooni's arm is around her -- and Rei is staring up at Leo with a face so blank that it's questionable whether she was revived as a vegetable or not. "I love you, too," Rei says, so flatly that it might as well have been read off of a cue card.

Rei glances over Leo's shoulders, seeing the time running out, seeing the monitors, seeing the /readings/ of something /yet to come/, and her arms outstretch, as if to embrace the pair. "Leo..."

"...move."

Rei's hands come up and snatch the neuromagical hair clips that connect her brain to her Eva. She sticks them on her head so quickly that it's clear she has years of practice, and after jostling Leo and Latooni out of the way, grabs the controls. The timer ticks down. 2 seconds. 1 second. Less than one second...

In that last burst of availability, Rei throws the Evangelion's body down, bringing it to a curled position over Johnny and Sarah and Amuro and Noriko and the others, giving them a horrible biomechanical shelter just as the unit shuts down.

A second later, Lilith pitches forward, beaten, wounded. Dying. Her light is dim now, her smile torn to pieces.

Is the world safe?

Suddenly, Terminal Dogma no longer has a ceiling. The earth above it rips asunder, as if the fundamental forces of the universe were playthings that could be discarded -- as if giant hands dug deep into the crust of the planet and pried open a gaping chasm.

And down this tunnel floats a comparative speck -- a single human form, dressed in a nondescript school uniform, hands jammed into his pockets, red eyes alight with the smirk on his face, silver hair fluttering as he travels, 'Ode to Joy' on his lips.

The world is in more danger than ever.