Chapter 29:
Black Armor

 

SHINJI SWUNG THE SPINDLE, changing the trajectory of the hammer. It caught the heads of two A.T. Field beasts with a satisfying thud, though the blow didn’t kill them. The horde of animals was smarter than Shinji had thought, and he needed to time the firing of his spindle to hit them. He finally saw himself as a giant and not merely a pilot.

He was now Torwächter B, one of the black messengers.

Damn it!

Shinji didn’t have the luxury of ruminating on his new identity. The other Torwächter, Asuka, was gravely injured behind him. In fact, she was leaning on his back, since she could barely stand on her own.

Their hyperspace connection plates rumbled whenever they touched each other. He wanted to use them to open a gate so they could run away, but he didn’t know how.

<<Stupid Shinji!>>

Her voice had been the one to awaken him. He felt like he’d met Asuka in human form, and she’d somehow regained her sapience and language.

How much of this is a dream, and how much of it is real?!

One thing was for sure. Their attackers were after Asuka.

 

The quadrupedal American Eva led a pack of twenty A.T. Field beasts. It had devoured the data of several thousand life forms from Asuka, severely injuring her in the process. It was now much larger than the first time it had expanded, back on Novaya Zemlya.

“I know it’s you, Mari!”

Mari kept attacking them. She’d already recognized Shinji and Asuka as enemy Torwächters B and A1, and that they were to be destroyed. In fact, she wanted to destroy them.

Shinji felt every sensation of the Torwächter as his own. He’d achieved synchronization rates similar to those with Super Eva. From the surface of his armor, he felt the violent lack of humanity and reason coming from Mari and her pack. They’d been dulled to nonexistence. She didn’t care whether she was up against Super Eva or a Torwächter.

Maybe I’m still dreaming.

But his heart, the dimensional window that had forgotten its own pulse, was billowing endless amounts of energy in his chest. The consuming fire felt real, and it tethered him to reality.

I have no idea what happened or how I did it…but I guess I got my heart back.

Even so, it was no longer fulfilling its purpose. It had reverted to the volatile state from before he’d learned to control it, back when the S2 Engine faced the threat of a meltdown.

Heat and pressure rumbled in his chest like a chaotic drum. He had no way of holding back the mounting energy.

Third Impact.

Not long now. I can feel it.

Shinji shot at the field beasts again, but Wolfpack easily dodged his projectile.

“Stop it, Mari! Please!”

She didn’t respond. Shinji wondered whether he could transmit his thoughts to her through the black messenger’s body. Either way, Mari seemed to have made up her mind about them both. His pleas for peace were ignored.

“Damn it!”

The U.S. Eva got on all fours again. It called the field beasts to itself, pawed the ground, and charged.

“Asuka, fly! Get out of here!”

The Asuka/Eva synthesis tried to get up but failed, unable to find her balance.

“You have your graviton floaters, remember? Those things stumped Maya because she couldn’t figure out how to make N2 reactors so small… Now, fly!”

Shinji wasn’t going to give up on her yet. Asuka remained on her knees, but she was now producing gravitons out of the tiny slits in her hair. Unfortunately, it seemed like it wasn’t enough.

“Keep going!”

Torwächter B turned and grabbed A1 moments before she was shredded to pieces by the claws and jaws of the field beasts. He kicked the ground beneath him and jumped, covering vast expanses of the monochromatic terrain. With half of its landmass vaporized, Yomotsu Hirasaka was now about two hundred kilometers across. Aided by the low gravity, his jump was strong enough to escape the small planetoid.

But he felt something pull at him from behind.

What?!

“The plates!”

The plates on their backs were mysterious tools of the Human Instrumentality Project, which could dislocate space as long as they were touching the ground. They were connected to a hyperspace tunnel network, which could reach to the other side of the sun. How much distance it could actually cover was impossible to calculate, but right now, the plates were refusing to let go of their supposed power source.

I can’t…break free!

The plates on both Torwächters had lengthened to over ten kilometers, pulling them back to Yomotsu Hirasaka’s surface.

As they fell, Shinji saw the Earth rise on Yomotsu Hirasaka’s horizon and gasped. He saw the moon, which he’d last seen from the other side of the sun. He saw the rocky ground beneath him. In that instant, he knew where he was and felt homesick. The plate on his back continued to pull him down toward the wild beasts.

“We’re so close! I can see it!”

He felt the absurdity of injustice as a weight that yanked him to the ground. The tether of relationships…an umbilical cord he could never sever.

We’re tethered to the ground!

Something like claustrophobia seized him at that moment. He remembered hearing that the black giant was a prisoner of the Earth.

<<Humanity must not obtain wings,>> Armaros had said when Super Eva received his Vertex wings.

“Damn it all!”

The Earth sank below the horizon again, and he watched as the cruel rocks below him approached with great speed.