UNS Fearless
1200 kilometers west of Guam
September 10, 2015.
1:30PM Local Time

Rear Admiral Izuo Takaya leaned against the rail surrounding the
wing of his carrier's flag bridge, forty meters above the white-capped
waters of the western Pacific, short black hair blowing in the breeze
generated by the ship's passage. Sipping hot tea from an engraved mug
his daughter had bought him for his fiftieth birthday, and which he had
refused to part with in the years since, he surveyed his command.
Spread before him was a large minority of the UN Pacific Fleet's
firepower, though his entire force numbered less than a dozen ships.

Officially, and most of the time in practice, the UN Peace
Enforcement Forces functioned more as extremely well armed and trained
police rather than a traditional military. The naval branch was no
exception, most of its approximately one hundred vessels were destroyer
size or smaller, sailing in squadrons of around half a dozen to show the
flag and provide a small quick response force should a crisis break out.
The Fearless' battlegroup, and its sister formations centered around
Terrible and Nike, were the 'muscle' their smaller comrades called upon
when a more measured response had failed.

The Admiral's staff kept busy inside the glazed in confines of
his domain, familiar with their boss' after lunch ritual. A pair of
young lieutenants arranged the manila folders containing the routine,
and most likely eye-wateringly dull, briefing concerning proposed
changes to fleet maintenance procedures.

Izuo turned at the sound of the hatch opening to the wind swept
outside deck. "I trust we're ready to begin, Josef?"

"Yes sir," The Hungarian captain responded as one dark brown
eyebrow rose ironically. "Commander Simmons promises we'll all be
enthralled for the next hour."

"Coming from him, that's much less than reassuring," Izuo
grimaced, knowing well his chief of staff's perhaps excessive enjoyment
of his work. "Best be..."

A tremble in the deck plates beneath them stopped him mid-
sentence. Seconds later, the scream of tortured metal and 'crump' of a
collapsing hull reached them from the outer escort ring surrounding the
carrier and its companion transports Othello and Wayfarer. Izuo and his
staff stared in mute horror at the grave of the destroyer Hawkwing,
before he wrestled his gaze away and barked "Well?! Are you planning to
stand here all day?" The others sprang towards their stations like
magnetized billiard balls.

After sloshing his mug's contents over the rail, he followed at
a more sedate and, hopefully, confidence inducing pace. 'It seems its
going to be one of -those- days.'

----------

Asuka was spending one of her comparatively rare moments in her
cabin aboard Wayfarer when she noticed the first tremor. 'ASW practice,'
she surmised, remembering the last fleet exercise pitting the three Kilo
class submarines accompanying the fleet against a squadron of its
escorting frigates and destroyers. Again, the eighty thousand ton
freighter trembled, this time enough to swing the light fixture hanging
from the deckhead. She lowered the catalog she'd been perusing.
'Either the UN's taken to putting N2 warheads on its practice torpedoes,
or...' She leaped off of her bed and dove for the closet.

----------

"Tempest reports breaches across all decks, abandoning ship,"
The speakers in the carrier's Combat Information Center reported
dispassionately. "Osprey reports heavy damage to aft engineering
spaces and is losing speed."

Izuo tuned out the litany of the destruction of his command, and
focused on the illuminated plasma display making up most of the darkened
room's sole table. "All ships accelerate to flank speed and maneuver
independently, make sure they watch their separations. Jozef, turn us
into the wind and get the air group launched," he looked up at his chief
of staff. "Find out what Osprey's best speed is, and if they'll
need assistance. And contact Sydney and request N2 authorization," he
finished calmly.

He swore behind the iron mask of his expression as his aides
carried out his orders. The news of an Angel, and that's what this
almost had to be, striking so far from Japan would hit Pacific Fleet
headquarters like a thunderbolt, and that was all but certain to slow
any useful response. Napoleon Bonaparte had famously said, 'ask me for
anything but time,' and it was as true now as it was in the wars that
bore his name.

A sidebar on the screen listing remaining weapons in inventory
blinked slowly lower as he waited for his opponent's next move. So did
the shorter list of the ships in his care.

----------

"Activating first stage connections." Asuka muttered while her
view screens blinked to life and promptly hazed with static from the
inactive sensors. "Battery status...nominal. Core online. Life
support standby. Active sensors to standby. Optical array online.
Second stage connection...set." She reported out loud by sheer force
of habit, continuing her extremely abridged startup checklist.
"Propulsion self-test suspended." She took a deep breath, and
instinctively felt outwards along the traces of her connection
to her steed. "Third stage connection in two...one...synchro start,"
she firmly pressed the green button so marked on her console.

"All right, let's go," she murmured, and Eva-02 rose from its
slumber. The scene greeting her was a nightmare of pillars of smoke
rising to the heavens, with the blazing trails of weapons fire mingling
with the flames of burning fuel oil oozing from the wreckage of a once
proud fleet. Even as she watched the Angel locked onto the Wayfarer, a
Harper's Ferry-class transport accompanying Fearless. Streaking in at a
speed belying its bulk, the absurdly manta ray-like creature flicked
almost casually against the vessel's port side. For a long second, the
ship rolled drunkenly, but appeared unharmed. Only then did Asuka
notice the steadily widening breach becoming visible from below the
waterline. As the ship began to list ever more alarmingly, an ugly
blossom of soot streaked fire bloomed from its crippled side.

'The point defense missile magazine must have let go.' Asuka
realized numbly. 'My God, there was an entire battalion of Marines
aboard that ship.'

Eva-02's tactical system had automatically tracked the Angel,
now it directed her attention to the creature skimming just under the
sea surface like some sort of aquatic missile. Right for her.

She commanded her communications system to connect to Fearless.
In a clear, steady voice she announced, "Signal to the Flag. Eva-02
online. Launching."

//Metallica "The Call of Ktulu" _Ride the Lightning_//

The Angel didn't bother with any fancy tricks this time, it simply
rammed Othello head on, and the bow of the lightly built transport
crumpled like a soda can as the massive transport shuddered to a halt as
if it had run aground. Eva-02 was long gone. After leaping from her
doomed ship, she'd twisted midair to land on the forecastle of a UN
destroyer holding station nearby, smashing its forward 127mm gun to
scrap with her armor shod foot.

'I think I need a bigger boat,' Asuka murmured before spotting the
Angel coming around for another pass at her new and precarious perch.
She leaped again, this time smashing a frigate's helicopter pad in
passing on her way to Fearless. 'I'm going to look like such an ass if
this doesn't work,' a detatched corner of her mind commented at the top
of her ballistic arc, terminating at, she hoped, the flagship's flight
deck. "Eva-02 inbound, clear the deck!"

Two bus sized feet sledgehammered into the carrier's deck backed
with 750 tons of metal and mean, deforming the armored surface down
over a meter. After a harrowing moment correcting the rolling her
landing induced, she returned her attention outside. Her foe had
obligingly followed her, and even now was arrowing in under a rooster
tail of spray.

Asuka had never been a religious girl, but a psalm was on her lips
as she watched the Angel approach.

"Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I
fear no evil. For I drive the biggest, baddest, meanest motherfucker in
the whole damn valley!"

With that, she deployed a progressive knife from its forearm
sheath, her beloved pistols most likely on the bottom of the Pacific by
now, and set herself to meet the Angel's charge.

----------

Izuo stared in rank disbelief at the monitor reporting the
spectacle unfolding on his flight deck. Though he'd been courteous, if
distant, to his two passengers, within he'd been bitter at the
assignment his fleet had been handed by Sydney, a mere delivery run for
a jumped up civilian agency's newest toy. About the best that could be
said for it was that he'd have plenty of time to work out the rough
spots in some of his crews.

Five ships, and hundreds of lives later, he was a believer. His
fleet had engaged with everything from 65cm torpedoes from his
submarines to 152mm shells from the ex-Kirov, now Broadsword. He'd have
done as well to throw his coffee mug at it.

And now, it had come for him at last. With the transport
Destroyed and losses mounting, it was now pointless to continue the
engagement. Izuo had been on the edge of ordering the fleet to scatter
and clear the area for a nuclear strike when the girl had started her
insane hopscotch run to Fearless. Her machine stood with its left foot
behind the right and turned ninety degrees to one side, mass centered in
a knifefighter's stance, gripping its enormous boxcutter-like weapon in
its right hand icepick fashion. The monster unerringly homed in, and at
the last instant leaped for the Eva like a breaching whale, its massive
bulk seeming to impossibly float on the air as its jaws filled with rows
of monstrous fangs gaped wide.

Quick as thought, the Eva moved. A single shuffled step to one
side and a lightning fast duck got her below the Angel's trajectory,
followed by a twist of the hips and torso to place the full power of
its artificial muscles behind her blade to send the monster sailing past
trailing a streamer of bluish ichor into the sea off the carrier's port
side.

The order was out of Izuo's mouth without conscious thought. "All
ships! Time on target, now!"

----------

"Good thinking, Admiral. But it's not enough." Asuka opined as the
remaining ships abruptly ceased maneuvers and opened up with every
weapon that would bear, the concentrated firepower of the fleet ripping
at the Angel's AT field. Her foe staggered, but still forged ahead at
reduced speed. Gravely wounded, but obviously still game for a fight,
the Angel passed under the now rather ragged escort ring and reversed
course, bearing down on her once more.

Asuka was willing to oblige. Staring intently at her enemy as it
closed, she vaguely remembered seeing something very interesting as it
rose from the waves. If she was right, there might be a way to end this
quickly yet.

The Angel was a quick study. Disdaining attacking the Eva directly,
it scorched in just under the surface, intent on disabling Fearless. As
the jaws opened once more to slice the warship from stem to stern below
the waterline, Asuka saw it. Deep within the inky darkness of its maw,
a ruddy glow.

The escort's fire slackened as the range to the flagship dropped,
as did the waterspouts from the explosions against the Angel. Asuka
once more set herself, gauged the range, and threw.

Her left side Type 2 progressive knife sliced through the air, warning
light still glowing as it splashed into the sea at a significant
fraction of the speed of sound, and struck the Angel's core with the
force of an 18 wheeler.

Moments later, the ship lurched and rolled once more, forcing the
Eva to its knees.

Tokyo-3
September 11, 2015
9:00AM Local Time

Nami stood with her nose literally pressed against the glass of
the tram car as it circled the geofront walls towards Central Dogma.
The morning sun lit the interior of the artificial cavern in brilliant
shafts through the light collectors in the mountains, giving an almost
ethereal quality to the scene. She turned to Han for his reaction, to
find him sitting stiff as a board on his bench, staring fixedly at the
seat ahead of him.

"Han~!" she complained. "You've got to see this! Come on!" she
took him by the upper arm and tried to drag him to the big Plexiglas
window making up the front of the car.

"No~, no I don't," he argued quite emphatically in the same voice.

She gave up trying to pull someone nearly twice her mass and
Stepped back, hands on her hips. "Why not? It's a beautiful view from
up here and..." her gaze sharpened at his suppressed shudder. "You're
afraid of heights," she pronounced with the certainty of Solomon. "But
that can't be, you've climbed a rope and used a drag line plenty of
times, I've seen it," Nami continued in disbelief.

Han's lips tightened in a grimace. "I can keep it under control
most of the time, especially if there's something underneath me," he
admitted slowly. "But yes." 'Here it comes,' he winced inside.
'First she rips a strip off me, then she drops me like a rotten onion.
Well, having a girlfriend was fun while it lasted.'

Nami snorted to herself, Han's thoughts plain on his face. It was
obvious that should she so much as snicker, it would crush him. 'Idiot.
As if a coward would volunteer for this job. He must have been scared
out of his mind for some of the things we went through, but I never
would have known he was more than just a little nervous about screwing
up.' Nami thought in unalloyed admiration. "Well, we can't have
-that-," she held out her hand in invitation. "Come on. I'll be right
here."

Han looked up from his study of the seat back in front of him, and
into the gently smiling girl swaying automatically against the motion of
the tram. For a long moment he stared into a pair of chocolate brown
eyes. Finally, he took her hand.

"Ok, but this had better be worth it," he warned her with a
self-mocking smile.

Nerv-3
Boston
7:00PM Local Time

Tessa stepped out from the showers, scrubbing her hair with
the towel before putting it back into her accustomed braid. Upon
dressing back into the t-shirt and exercise shorts that were her and
Sam's unofficial uniforms, she proceeded to the small conference room
Mao used for their end of the day debriefing.

"Right, now that we're all here, I've got a special announcement
for you," Melissa began, privately relishing the swiftly hidden dread
on her trainee's faces. "The good news is, Director Walkerton tells me
Eva-03 passed its final checks with flying colors this afternoon."

"And the bad news?" Tessa asked after a moment's pause.

"None. The Atlas we were waiting on is due to arrive from Wichita
the day after tomorrow, so you two have that morning to pack and be
ready to roll by noon. Because we have a bit of time on our hands,
though, we're going to go ahead and do Eva-03's activation test later
on tonight."

The pair's eyes widened slightly. With an unconscious synchrony
born of eight weeks of living in close quarters, the pair turned to
each other. "One, two, three, shoot." Tessa called, her hand forming
'paper.' She repeated twice more, forming rock the next time and paper
the final one.

"Huh. Well, that's life," Sam shrugged resignedly. "When do you
need me, ma'am?" he asked his bemused training officer.

Melissa's eyes crinkled at the edges, the sole sign of amusement
she'd allow herself in front of her charges. "Cute. But not what I
had in mind."

11:30PM Local Time

Sam stared up at the gargantuan form of Eva-03 from the waist
level catwalk in something approaching awe. It was easy to forget while
riding inside one the sheer scale of an Eva, especially since all of the
equipment in Nerv-3 was of matching size. Turning away, he glanced
upwards to the shoulder level bridge leading to the entry plug. Tessa
stood in her tan and white plugsuit talking to the Eva's crew chief,
before clambering aboard the entry plug racked nearby. After taking a
final look at the navy blue mecha, he ambled over to the small elevator
at the end of the bridge.

----------

The stars twinkled above Nerv-3, and the glow of Boston's light
pollution was just visible on the horizon. A series of rotating hazard
lights complemented by the mournful wail of a warning siren spoiled the
calm of the night. Seconds later, the massive doors built into the
side of the hill hiding the Nerv facility began to rumble open.

Waiting behind the massive doors was a platform on rails of equal
size, bearing the prone Eva through the gate trailing a thick gray
power cable. Once the assemblage had cleared the gate, a quartet of
hydraulic rams on the platform began to slowly tilt the upper surface
and its cargo perpendicular to the ground.

Tessa scanned her display panel after the thump signaling her
machine was in position. "Confirm platform deployed. Standing by," she
radioed after completing the last few items on the checklist.

"Roger that, Eva-03. You are go for first stage connection."

"Copy. Beginning now." Tessa's right arm reached around to the
side of the seat and closed a knife switch that had previously been
interrupting any signals from the plug to the Eva. With that, the
cockpit displays sprang to life in a series of test patterns before
settling down to the familiar logo of the OS starting up. Once the
center display of the stock, single seat, plug arrived at the default
screen depicting battery life, a compressed top down view of the
surrounding terrain, currently displaying only the geographic data it
had on-board, and power status, currently blinking 0:00 in red for
battery life and that external power was connected in green. The two
flanking displays were still dark, awaiting her choices in their data.
"So far so good," she murmured "though of course that's what the jumper
said as he passed the 10th floor," she finished one of Melissa's
favorite lines. "First stage connection complete. Power connection
nominal. Batteries offline," she informed the controllers still within
the base, and on the other end of the datalink to Tokyo-3.

"Very well. We confirm all monitors within tolerances. Begin
second stage at your discretion," Melissa responded, not even a whisper
of tension in her voice.

Tessa acknowledged, and tapped the controls bringing up her
external sensors, the big wraparound displays on the inner wall of the
cockpit flaring through their own test patterns before settling on a
crystal clear view of the outside world, a few data tags popping up
moments later as the tactical systems identified some of the radio and
infrared emissions from stored files. 'The 3:10 to Yuma is running
late,' she absently noted the European built airliner climbing from the
rebuilt Logan international, its passengers oblivious to the events
below them.

"All passive sensors online. Active systems powered up and on
standby. Fire control offline. Master arm safe," she double checked
the large white switch on her control panel with its distinctive red
cover, indicating the Eva's weapons were powered down and unable to
fire. 'Nothing in the guns anyway, but we might as well be thorough,'
Tessa quirked a pale imitation of her usual cheerful smile. "Core
powering up in 3..2..1...Second stage complete."

"Copy, Eva-03," A long pause broken only by the low, almost
inaudible hum of the power cable communication line. "We show a green
board here. Initiate final connections."

Tessa very deliberately did not think of a certain previous
post-refit activation, and keyed her microphone to acknowledge the
order. "Confirm go for final connections," she replied. Closing her
eyes, she laid one hand gently on the green button covered by its own
shield and took a pair of deep slow breaths, clearing her mind.
Finally, she pressed the button flat.

In previous simulator runs, she and the other pilots had
experienced many times the cardinal sensations of synchronizing with an
Evangelion. Transient nausea, disorientation, and a feeling of being
somehow stretched were by now so familiar as to be beneath notice. That
only made the -new- ones all the more intense. On the heels of the
initial nausea came a rush of a bone-deep warmth, as if she had just
stepped into a summer sunbeam from the chilly New England fall. Mixed
within the overriding sensation were strains of comfort and safety,
flickering across her emotional landscape before vanishing under the
overriding theme.

Slowly, she opened her eyes once more, the pinpricks of light
sparkling above her greeting her upturned gaze. "Eva-03 here," she
radioed after a long, quiet moment. "Synchronization complete."