"Ah~~"
"AAAH—!!"
A giant blue diamond-shaped object floated near the fortress city.
The Sixth Angel had arrived.
"Prepare to launch EVA Unit-01!" Misato Katsuragi ordered.
"Switch to anti-air interception armor!"
The Sixth Angel was beautiful, like a sapphire given form. Its body was completely translucent, so dazzling that gem lovers across countless worlds were driven nearly mad with fascination.
That something so beautiful had come to exterminate humanity was almost impossible to believe.
"Unit-01 is ready for launch!"
"Sortie—!!"
Unit-01 shot upward along the high-speed elevator shaft toward the surface.
Then, at that very moment, an enormous energy reaction flared inside the Angel.
"What!?" Misato spun toward the screen, startled by the warning showing a massive energy spike.
"Don't tell me—!"
"Get out of there—!!"
Eyes wide with panic, Misato stared at the screen, at Unit-01 just arriving on the surface.
Shinji Ikari looked blankly at the display showing Misato shouting at him.
He still had no idea what was happening.
In the next instant, the Angel's body began to transform.
Its three-dimensional structure shifted, composed of countless cubes. Then it flattened instantly into a two-dimensional bombardment form, like a cube split open above and below. From the crimson orb at its center erupted a searing beam of unimaginable heat that struck Unit-01 squarely in the chest.
SHRAAAAA—!!
Sparks exploded from Unit-01's chest as alarms screamed nonstop. In a single instant, more than half the armor plating there was melted away.
Shinji stared in agony at the blazing sphere of light blooming across his chest.
His entire body was wracked with intense pain, as though he were being burned alive from the inside out. Even drawing a single breath hurt beyond endurance.
He could barely breathe anymore.
He wished, in that moment, that he could simply die and escape the torment.
His synchronization rate with Unit-01 plummeted—
but it still remained high.
And the higher the synchronization rate, the more pain the pilot suffered when the Eva was injured.
Misato immediately ordered her staff to raise an emergency blast shield in front of Unit-01 to block the Angel's high-energy beam.
BOOM—!
The shield, dozens of meters thick and made from special high-temperature, high-impact materials, managed to hold off the Angel's attack for the moment.
Then, suddenly, the Angel stopped firing.
Its body began transforming again—cubes, triangles, four triangular structures, four red cores.
Four immense streams of power converged into a single point—
and then fired.
A piercing shriek rang through the air.
BOOM—!
An attack even stronger and more terrifying than the last burned everything in its path and instantly vaporized the blast shield.
The immense shockwave made the entire ground tremble. Even dozens of kilometers away, the quake could still be felt.
Alarm. Alarm. Alarm.
Warning signals filled every screen in the command center.
Crisis.
Danger.
Unit-01 was on the verge of being dissolved into nothing.
"Abort interception and pull Unit-01 back immediately!" Misato shouted at once, her eyes bloodshot as she stared at the catastrophic scene on the monitor.
"We can't! The launcher has melted and can no longer activate!"
The components beneath Unit-01's feet had already turned to magma and were dripping away. The surface of the Eva's body was rapidly disintegrating, and its AT Field had been pushed to the absolute limit.
"AAAAAAAH—!! No, no—!
"Let me out! Let me out, Dad—!!"
Shinji screamed in pure agony. He was in so much pain he could no longer think. This was the very edge of what a human mind and body could bear.
But Gendo Ikari remained silent, watching Shinji in his usual pose.
It gave the impression that he did not care in the slightest whether his son lived or died.
To have a father like that—
Shinji Ikari truly was unfortunate.
"Cancel the operation plan. Priority goes to protecting the pilot. Force-eject the entry plug!" Misato ordered the operators.
"No," Gendo said flatly.
Ritsuko Akagi explained, "If the pilot is removed, Unit-01's AT Field will disappear completely. The situation would become even worse."
"But—" Hearing Shinji's screams of pain, Misato's chest twisted. This had been her failure as commander.
No matter how desperately Shinji cried out to be released, no matter how much he screamed in agony, there was no way out.
Unit-01 had already lost the ability to move.
He was a stationary target now.
If this continued, his end would be either suffocation…
or total dissolution under the Angel's beam.
The berserk reversal that had saved the day last time did not come.
At this moment, Shinji Ikari seemed to have no one left to rely on.
He looked pitiful—like an abandoned stray dog.
"Force the unit back. Ignite the explosive bolts!"
BOOM—!
BOOM—!
The support structure suspending the city block beneath Unit-01 detonated apart.
The entire city module Unit-01 was standing on dropped rapidly underground, evading the Angel's devastating attack that way.
The Angel instantly shifted back into a defensive posture and continued floating slowly above the fortress.
One minute.
That was all it had taken.
In a mere single minute, it had casually crushed the Unit-01 that had already defeated two Angels.
Its power was on an entirely different level from the earlier "shrimp-like" Angel or Sachiel.
Fortunately, it had no downward firing angle and could not fire freely in every direction. Otherwise, that one attack would have been enough to destroy NERV Headquarters outright.
Now it hovered above the underground fortress, manifesting a drill from beneath its body and using it to bore through the armor from above.
…
…
…
In Fate/Extra—
"What a strange creature. It can transform itself into two-dimensional, three-dimensional, four-dimensional, even eight-dimensional forms—
and yet it's using a stupid method like drilling through the target by brute force?"
Shinji Matou brushed back his blue hair and sneered.
"Why doesn't it just use that enormous energy to invert its body somehow?
"Or better yet, why not just lift the city block above it and have Unit-01 attack the Angel from below with ranged weapons?"
Then he added disdainfully,
"Well, I suppose it can't be helped. It's a stupid alien organism. There's no way its intelligence could compare to mine.
"Isn't that right, Hakuno? How could a thing like that possibly compare to humanity?"
Hakuno Kishinami stared silently at the Sixth Angel, Ramiel, looking dazed.
Something about it had stirred fragments of lost memory within him.
That blue appearance.
Those countless geometric shapes.
He had seen something extremely similar somewhere before.
In the world of Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone—
"What is Misato even doing…!? Couldn't they have used this method from the start!?
"Honestly, all that screaming and wailing is getting on my nerves!! It's ruining my mood for training.
"And when is Kaji finally going to come see me?"
Asuka Langley complained nonstop.
When was she finally going to get to Japan and start fighting Angels herself?
It was about time these people got to witness real skill.
An Angel with flaws this obvious could never possibly stand against her and Unit-02.
"That idiot can just stay behind me and watch how magnificent I look in battle!"
Meanwhile, NERV Headquarters had already begun formulating a plan specifically for the Sixth Angel, Ramiel.
Now that they already knew the enemy's hand in advance, humanity's job was simply to prepare the proper counter.
Even if the Angel had already revealed its method of attack, it had no way to solve the flaw in its own behavior.
Its vitality was immense. Its structure was bizarre. But it was precisely that strangeness that kept it from adapting flexibly the way weak little humans could.
"Sixth Angel—next time we meet, it'll be your last."
Misato slammed her hand down on the operation plan, eyes blazing, glaring murderously at Ramiel on the screen.
"Seriously… they've already shown way too many embarrassing details about me…
"I'm not even the protagonist here! Please skip the scenes about me!
"And why did they have to zoom in on the underwear in my bathroom too?
"I'm telling you, the one broadcasting all this has got to be some creepy old man."
Elsewhere, the old men trying to push forward their grand design were panicking.
Ever since this thing had appeared, their plan had been thrown utterly into chaos.
They were now even afraid that their own location might be exposed and turned into a target.
The Human Instrumentality Project—
that was not something that could ever be allowed into the light.
Not every human being wanted to be "completed."
-------
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