Chapter 30:
Hikari Redux

 

<<AYANAMI-SAN OF NERV JAPAN, this is Horaki in Heurtebise. I’m linking your Eva-0.0 to the Euro mission. Your designation will be Magus, for “magician.”>>

Trois was still fighting the corruption of the Q.R. Signum lodged in Eva-0.0’s left arm, and yet she noticed there was something off in how calm Hikari was.

“This is Ayanami of Nerv Japan. Copy that.”

Ayanami Rei Trois watched as the Euro-II Heurtebise approached her from the east, appearing first as a dot on the horizon. It sped past her, and she turned to see it disappear over the western horizon. Strange. Between the two of them, she was supposed to have the higher orbital velocity.

<<I’m here, Ayanami-san.>>

Heurtebise fully caught up to Eva-0.0 on its next run. It exceeded Trois’ orbital speed and came in from behind. Her Eva was floating diagonally now, and Heurtebise corrected her course into the proper elliptical orbit.

“Wow.”

Trois didn’t feel the same amount of danger that she’d felt when she and Shinji made the ascent into low orbit. Hikari had attended the school for pilot candidates, but she didn’t remember her ever going through maneuver drills. No wonder she felt strange about her calmness.

A parallel consciousness… The dummy plug system…

Heurtebise was unique among the Evas. The Euro unit utilized both a pilot and a dummy plug, though no test pilot had ever managed to survive for very long inside of it.

But it was different with Hikari. When she came along, an entity inside the Eva had protected her mind from breaking under the pressure of the dummy plug. Heurtebise was one of the failed specimens that had been cast away during the production of Asuka’s Eva-02. It was thought that the Eva responded to Hikari’s fond memories of Asuka.

Meanwhile, Hikari’s mind had melted and expanded into the Eva’s body, culminating in its split-second decision to take her own Q.R. Signum and transplant it into a dying Super Eva.

 

“Magus’s signature is linked to the mission network.”

Now that Trois was connected, parts of her data were shared with the other side. Her A.I. bombarded her screen with countless warning windows, protesting the fact that the Europeans were at her telemetry gates and anxious that she’d betrayed Nerv Japan. She closed her windows until she finally found the European timetable. The mission was already underway.

A shadow loomed over her, and she lifted her eyes, blurry from the scale’s corruption.

“Huh?”

Heurtebise was uncomfortably close. A lengthy container on its left shoulder split open at its edges, and Trois was shocked at what was inside. A dragon’s head—plated with scales, just like in fairy tales—twisted its neck to look at her.

“What?!”

The dragon opened its maw and bit the Q.R. Signum together with Eva-0.0’s left arm. Trois recoiled and tried to pull back, but Hikari spoke to her in a calm voice. <<Don’t worry, this is just the barrel of the Devil’s Backbone. Can you disconnect your plug and withdraw it to its initial depth?>>

“No…I don’t think so.”

<<I’ll have to ask you to cut your neural feedback and close your eyes, then. You might trigger your A.T. Field if you don’t. Ready?>>

Hikari waited for precisely one breath before saying. <<Brace…!>>

Heurtebise’s gigantic right arm started spinning as it brandished a halberd. A loud rumbling echoed inside Eva-0.0’s plug. Trois’ A.I. had already cut her neural feedback, but Rei had been synced with her Eva mere moments ago, and intense pain ran through her entire body.

“Eegh! Aaargh!”

Heurtebise had not only amputated the Q.R. Signum but the rest of Eva-0.0’s corrupted left arm with it.

<<Looks like you really had it, after all.>>

Hikari showed none of her usual hesitation when she was inside her Eva. It was almost as if she’d made its instincts her own.

 

<<Heurtebise to Kommandobrücke. Amputation was unable to stop the infection of Magus’s tissue.>>

<<This is Kommandobrücke. We’ve finished analyzing Magus’s chest and left arm. We’ll try stopping it using telemetry from our side.>>

Trois entered the emergency codes that would’ve let transmissions through to her unit, but some parts of her system were still barred from the Europeans. One of their engineers ended up using a virus to bypass some of her internal malfunctions and quickly began repairs.

The 3D bodies on her virtual display kept shifting from one shape to another. Red warning cubes turned blue and disappeared, and whatever cubes were left on the screen were now a cautious orange.

Her arm twitched as she held it down. The pain from the sudden amputation remained with Trois, despite her being disconnected from the neural feedback network. The black shadow was gone, though, and Trois didn’t know whether to thank the orichalcum-laced plugsuit for its mental shielding properties or Hikari’s borderline reckless decision-making.

<<Hikari, have you secured the Q.R. Signum?>>

<<On it. T minus thirty seconds.>>

Trois got the feeling that the people outside had forgotten about her as the busy transmission continued. She listened while holding her throbbing arm, but the only thing she could think of through her shallow breaths was the code name of the Euro Eva’s new weapon—Devil’s Backbone.

<<Ayanami-san of Nerv Japan? This is Clausewitz of the Euro Sixth Rapid Response Unit. I was wondering if we could use your eyes and scanners to monitor the status of Heurtebise.>>

The weapon’s “barrel” was in the middle of consuming the Q.R. Signum along with Eva-0.0’s left arm.

“Go ahead, Lieutenant Colonel Clausewitz,” she replied.

“Horaki-san…you don’t hold back.”

<<I can’t say I have the leisure to,>> replied Hikari with a smile. <<It’s not like I don’t have regrets. I felt crushed after I yelled at Asuka. I don’t feel remorse while I’m in the Eva, but it’s all going to hit me once I step outside.>>