Chapter 46:
Yomotsu Hirasaka

 

SHINJI WAS BARELY holding on to his thoughts, which seemed to expand as much as his body.

Oooorgh!

He roared as he braced against Yomotsu Hirasaka. The two-hundred-kilometer-wide basalt and feldspar formation was on his back. Super Eva had become a giant of light after triggering the Third Impact. He spread his wings to support the whole of the detached lunar landmass in an attempt to slow its descent to Earth.

<<Kzzt…Ikari-kun…I’m beginning my approach.>>

Ayanami Rei Trois spoke through the harsh feedback. Yet he heard her voice as clearly as if with his physical ears.

<<Yomotsu Hirasaka is still acting on the moon’s orbit, so you have to push it east against the equator. That’s where it’s headed. If it accelerates any further…>>

He tried changing the position of his wings, but this failed to affect the rock in any significant manner. There was too much mass for him to stop, let alone move.

Yomotsu Hirasaka had appeared on the far side of the moon from where the spatial lens was positioned. Now it was closing in on the Earth’s crust at twenty kilometers per second.

Shinji attempted to slow the rock’s descent by cutting away chunks of it with well-placed A.T. Fields. He growled. There seemed to be no end of Yomotsu Hirasaka, no matter how many fields he produced.

Just stop!

He couldn’t let it land there. The Eurasian continent was wrapped in the darkness of night, while the Japanese archipelago was tinted orange to the east. His homeland was witnessing a beautiful sunset at this very moment. He imagined the bedrock attached to his back growing a mind of its own, and it felt as if it was specifically targeting everything he held dear.

Don’t come any closer, Trois! Asuka’s still with you…and I don’t have much time left!

During the Second Impact, records stated that when the giant of light had appeared, the mere pressure had engulfed everything within a four-thousand-kilometer radius, annihilating over half of the Earth.

Now Shinji was waiting to initiate the third rendition, instead of preventing it. The event was inevitable, so he thought he might as well take advantage of the power.

The heart of Super Eva, the giant of light, continued pouring out blazing particles as it drew closer to its breaking point.

 

If Yomotsu Hirasaka fell upon the Earth, and the Third Impact followed, it would truly be the end of the world. Given how small the Earth had gotten, it might actually split in two. Shinji’s plan was to use the force of the Impact to destroy the lunar landmass, or at least change its trajectory.

He continued chipping away at Yomotsu Hirasaka with his powerful A.T. Fields. He felt the violent feedback in his arms every time one of his fields broke. The loss of energy slammed into him like a brick wall.

The spatial lens had spectralized Yomotsu Hirasaka, which had been on the other side of the moon, and converged it right over the Earth. The lunar landmass was originally only supposed to graze the planet, but now it was on a collision course with it.

The spatial lens wasn’t all bad, however. It spectralized and converged everything on Yomotsu Hirasaka, including Asuka, who was falling apart on a particle level, and Mari, who had literally bitten off more data than she could chew.

Trois said Asuka is human again, and I believed her without a second thought…

No… If anything, I’m using Asuka’s return as an excuse to do what I’m doing now.

He made up his mind and stopped worrying about his plans.

 

Yomotsu Hirasaka was supported by the giant of light, Shinji, and the wings that had sprouted from his back. He extended his A.T. Field at an angle toward the Earth in an attempt to change the course of the two-hundred-kilometer-wide mass of rock.

The giant of light had suppressed the Armaros under the fringes of his field. Now the fields were falling apart, and Shinji could only focus on repairing the ones in front of him. In the chaos of light and tremors, the black giant revealed that he was still alive.

Armaros appeared, looking for his great bow. The weapon, excavated by Maya’s team from the bottom of Lake Ashi, had originally belonged to him.

Stay still, Brother! I’ll be done with this soon enough!

“Brother” was what Shinji called the giant who shared his voice. Although, now that Super Eva had become a giant of light, Armaros looked like a toy in comparison. Super Eva flapped one of his gargantuan wings and held down Armaros’ left arm as it reached for his bow.

But no one could have foreseen what happened next.

<<Shinji, behind you!>>

Six?! I thought I told you to get the lance out of here!

Behind me…?

Two dark shadows flew out of Yomotsu Hirasaka, their tails attached to the ground.

New Torwächters?!

Their broken back plates were as good as new, and each held a black spear in its hand. The black messengers raised their weapons, producing a bolt of black lightning in the space between them.

What is that?!

Shinji tried to bat the Torwächters away with his wings, but they nimbly dodged.

Gaaah!

The black lightning cut off one of Super Eva’s wings, which spanned over a hundred kilometers. Stored energy exploded all the way from the stump to the tip of his wing.

Damn it!

The Torwächters were closing in for another attack when a blinding flash of light suddenly incinerated one of the their feet. Trois had fired her gamma-ray laser cannon.

“Six! Provide backup for Ikari-kun on Yomotsu Hirasaka!”

<<You got it!>>

<<I’ll help,>> Hikari said.

Heurtebise initiated its N2 reactor-powered graviton wings and left Trois behind. Trois set a new course to approach Yomotsu Hirasaka. She was about to initiate her thrusters when alarms started ringing in Eva-0.0. Her screen was flooded with red COMMAND ERROR windows to the point that it caused her Eva to grow sluggish. A new mind had been recognized by the system, one that didn’t belong to Ayanami Rei Trois.

“Ungh…”

The eyelids of the blonde girl fluttered in the LCL-filled plug of Trois’ Eva. The system immediately shut down all fine controls of the unit and switched to the clumsy manual controls. The output of the external S2 Engine, as well as its FCS, was now locked.

The Second Child took a slow and grumpy look at her surroundings and noticed Rei Trois’ lack of plugsuit. The first words out of Asuka’s mouth were, “Why are you naked?”

“Because I gave you my plugsuit.”

“Did you…? Nice hair, by the way.” Asuka played with the ends of Trois’ hair, which now reached to the nape of her neck. Her hair transitioned beautifully from aqua to black.

“Thank you. I’m quite proud of it. We’ll have to make today an anniversary.”

Asuka was still half-dazed, having just recovered her human form, but she looked at Trois with surprise. “I’ve never heard you say anything so cocky in my life. I don’t hate it.”

“The girl. Why is she here?” Trois asked while fiddling with the manual controls. Asuka looked down into her arms and finally noticed the sleeping girl. She raised her eyebrows as if to say, “Oh, right. Her.”

When Asuka had been reconstituted out of thin air by converging light particles, she’d brought Mari along with her.

“She was really annoying, saying how she wanted to be part of my team. She pissed me off so much I thought I’d drag her here so she could see what being around me is really like.”

<<Trois! Stay on course!>> Six called from the Pegasus that was the Eva-00 Type-F Allegorica. <<I’m sending something your way. Make sure you get it! Counting down from ten.>>

“Two… One… Mark!”

There was a bang, and suddenly Trois’ Eva-0.0 was holding a red spear.

“What, is that the Longinus…?!” Asuka cringed. The uniquely ominous vibrations of the lance reached even the inside of the plug.

<<Was that Asuka just now? You really did turn back into a human… Ugh.>>

“You wanna try congratulating me this time, kid?!”

<<What? Crimson A1 was so much cuter than you are.>>

Eva-0.0 looked at the spear she’d received from Six’s unit.

“Six, the me who is childish and selfish, this is…!”

The replica Lance of Longinus. The very same lance that Armaros had taken and stowed away on the Apple’s Core. The same lance that Shinji and Rei Quatre had flung toward Earth from the other side of the sun.

“Ikari-kun needs this right now!”

The more technologically advanced Eva-00 Type-F Allegorica was already using its compact graviton floaters to change direction.

<<Trois, the me who unifies—no. ‘The me who is in love’ is more like it.>> Six was now returning to the battlefield. <<Shinji told me to bring the lance back to Earth. He said it might be the key to deciding the world’s fate and that we couldn’t afford to lose it with him.>>

The spear was the final method of stopping an Impact. It was an instrument that appealed to an invisible logic higher than that of the tree of life. The lance was an instrument of intervention that could prevent the completion of the Human Instrumentality Project by its ability to destroy energy itself.

Lose Ikari-kun…? Is that what he’s planning to do with himself?

Asuka looked at the error messages, blinking her long eyelashes and trying to figure out what was going on. She finally realized that her consciousness was interfering with Eva-0.0’s systems.

“Should I go back to sleep?”

Asuka fiddled with the LCD screen embedded in the wrist of her orichalcum plugsuit. She was looking for the manual administration of anesthetics.

“What is… Look, I appreciate the new features and everything, but now I can’t find the one I want!”

Trois saw her contours blur into particles again for a moment before regaining solidity. New alarms rang, indicating a near miss. The lens had reproduced chunks of Yomotsu Hirasaka, which were now on a course to Earth.

“Just stay as you are, Asuka. Trois to Hakone command. Requesting permission for the release of the FCS lock and permission to shoot freely.”

Asuka’s human form isn’t stable yet.

Trois could still operate her gamma-ray laser even with Asuka in the plug. Hakone unlocked her FCS, and although her external N2 reactor remained in lockdown, she began charging her cannon.

I know why Ikari-kun doesn’t want to lose the spear, but I don’t want to run away from this. There has to be something I can do.

“You just gotta put your mind to it.”

Asuka’s words startled Trois. She turned away from the giant of light Super Eva had become to face her.

“Don’t see why he’s trying so hard when he’s that damn big…”

“Shinji’s not gonna die. Not before he does something flashy.” Asuka closed her eyes. She propped Mari up, still asleep, and reclined into her plug seat. “But I can almost guarantee you that he’s going to mess up.” Asuka relaxed, taking slow, deep breaths of the LCL. The more nervous she was, the faster her thoughts would contaminate the Eva.

“He’s cute when he’s like this, but don’t tell him that. I like listening to all the excuses he makes when I poke him about it.”

Eva-0.0 maintained its firing posture and changed its position with its thrusters. The gamma-ray laser cannon fired silently in the darkness of space. The blast consumed a large chunk of falling debris, ionizing it instantly.

The red spear glowed in the illumination from by Trois’ gun. She realized then that Armaros might call upon the original Lance of Longinus, like he had in North Africa. She looked up to see the Longinus Ring, a spider web spun around the world by the original lance, growing longer and longer.

Have our circumstances changed since then? The lance is still shrinking the Earth. Then again, it might have to do with spatial lens that transported Asuka and Yomotsu Hirasaka here…

“Is there something else the lens must do?”