Hey everyone! I'm sorry for the long absence. I was hoping to have more material prepared before posting again, but...I've decided that I've waited too long already.

This segment has actually been finished for over a month, but I wanted to have a few more ready to make up for the long absence. Sadly, I have only this one completed, so I apologize if the wait was anticlimactic one.

I do least have the next one underway, however. So that's good at least I guess. I'll try not to keep you waiting too long for the next one.

But anyways, let's get down to it shall we? Lol

Fair warning, this one's a bit...grim.

Here's some mood music for the scene ahead (it's not the music/lyrical banner for this chapter, which will be revealed at the END of Chapter 9, but it's a fitting soundtrack for the setting...and it's a been a favorite of mine lately. Hope you all enjoy it too)

"Merriments in the centerpiece

Weird things in galore

Is the cradle of the disease that man alone must answer for?"

"Joy and delights forever ceased

Sufferings abloom

Eaten alive by the cauldron beast

Let the drones ring to the sound of doom"

-"The Garden Of Earthly Delights" by Apocalypse Orchestra

/5BhUPFwAFQo

•12:58 AM

It's been almost a half hour since we were all released from the shelters.

I almost dialed Kats-

'Misato...she's Misato to me now.'

I almost dialed Misato's number...before remembering that she must already be dealing with a veritable hell of chaos in the wake of the battle.

Having elected instead to stroll around the city, surveying the aftermath of the battle, it quickly became evident that I was entirely correct in my assumption.

Numerous buildings lay in ruin around me, including several of the skyscrapers and high rises that had once cast their imposing shadows over the fortress city. Numerous smaller buildings also laid in ruins, many having been crushed by falling chunks of concrete and steel. In some places, the streets were still choked with debris, and in a few cases, still impassable despite the valiant and ongoing efforts of the heavily understaffed cleanup crews.

From what I'd gathered, it seemed that there was at least one consistent trail of destruction carved diagonally from the northwest to the southeast, straight through the heart of the city. If one were to look at the trail of wreckage from above, I'd imagine it would look similar to the damage path of a tornado...if you ignored the clearly visible Evangelion-sized footprints anyway.

'One can only imagine...' I thought darkly to myself, 'If the damage looks this bad in the darkness of early morning, illuminated only by street lamps and flood lights, just how horrific will it appear with the rising of the sun in several hours' time?'

It was little trouble simply blending in with the shifting masses of people making their myriad ways back to their homes or calling out for loved ones in varying states of distress. Adopting an air of fearful bemusement while still looking as if I had a specific place to go wasn't difficult either. After all, I certainly did feel real fear and confusion...and I still do.

'How did an Angel manage to completely bypass the detection array?!' was but one question that has raised my hackles since the warning first sounded; a warning that came nearly a minute AFTER the Twelfth Angel first appeared in the sky!

Not to mention...

'What's become of Misato? Of Asuka? Of the other Pilots? Of NERV itself?'

Presumably, the Angel is dead and we've won if the civilians are being released, but still...

'If this Angel was capable of avoiding detection, there's no telling how dangerous its other abilities were...'

I nearly broke down and called Misato despite my determination not to trouble her...but then I was distracted by something; something that I'm now on my way to see for myself.

It started with frantic whispers and shouts that I only overheard fragments of, but that all seemed to center in around the southeastern part of the city.

"I guess I'd better see what this is all about."

I begin to make my way there, noticing as I do so that the crowd traveling the same direction around me is thickening with alarming rapidity.

Eventually, the throng comes to a general halt, and the crowd begins to jostle one another, trying to push their way forward.

'What are they all looking at? I don't see anything ahead of-'

And that's when I realize...

'The buildings...there's nothing but empty space in the distance where there should be buildings!'

Chills erupt in the back of my skull and send waves of cold, paralyzing fire down the rings of my spine as my heart begins to pound. And before I know it, I find myself fighting my way to the front, not caring about how many shoulders, elbows, and fists try to push me back or how many shouted curses and mumbled death threats follow in my wake.

I don't know how long it takes, but eventually I get close enough to see it...

The crowd has formed a massive ring over half a kilometer in diameter around...nothing.

'...what the hell happened here?!'

I remember...back in 1997 when I was in junior high school, our class hosted an American exchange student. One afternoon, near the end of May, I listened in on a conversation they were having with a friend of mine.

Apparently, they'd just received news from home that on May 27, a section of their hometown...Jarrell, Texas if memory serves me correctly...had been completely destroyed by an exceptionally violent F5 tornado. They'd described how they'd been told that the tornado's intensity and torturously slow forward motion resulted in damage that was extreme even for a tornado; fields were scoured nearly two feet deep in some places, asphalt paving was peeled off the roadbeds, and even sturdy, well-constructed homes were completely swept away until absolutely nothing but foundations and cellar pits remained...not to mention, many of the deceased were so badly mauled that their remains were at times indistinguishable from those of the hundreds of dead cattle scattered around the area, and had to be identified by their dental records.

'I can only imagine that the result must have looked something like this.'

Where there were once homes and a smattering of small businesses, cars, trees, grass streets, and sidewalks...nothing remains. Nothing but exposed soil and gaping holes where there used to be buildings and strips of base course where there used to be strips of asphalt and concrete.

'It's all been wiped away...swiped clean, as if smote by some divine entity.'

I grimace at that last thought.

'We call these damned monsters 'Angels'...and their abilities are powerful to the point of being miraculous. In a way, they might be the closest thing to divine beings to have ever been witnessed by credible human eyes.'

I push my way forward and finally reach the perimeter of the ghastly phenomenon, and it's then that I see that there are in fact groups of people moving about in the blasted expanse, clustered around a seemingly innocuous rectangular opening.

Judging by their uniforms, they seem to be medical personnel. And off to the right of them, laid out in numerous orderly rows are...

'...bodies. Dozens...no...HUNDREDS of them!'

And as I watch, silent as a lonely grave amongst the din of frantic questions, panic-stricken whispers, cries of horror and disbelief, and the occasional sobs and wails of despair, I see the rows of corpses increasing endlessly, dragged up from the rectangular maw of, what I'm beginning to realize, must have been one of the shelters.

'So that's it then...'

Whatever bizarre ability this Angel possessed as its weapon did this. It somehow managed to obliterate everything within a perfect, half kilometer circle; buildings, trees, animals, grass, the top layers of the streets and sidewalks...

'...and killed every human being unfortunate enough to have been caught within the circumference of annihilation.'

Before my mind has even finished comprehending all of this, I find myself ducking beneath the yellow tape and stepping into the almost perfectly circular wasteland, tersely brushing off an approaching guard with my credentials as 'NERV Special Inspector', once again feeling thankful at the relative freedom allowed by my meaningless yet 'just vague enough to seem legitimate' job title.

The earth beneath my feet is strangely damp...and saturated with an ominously familiar metallic odor.

'It smells like...'

And sure enough, looking down at my feet, I see the unusual dark red color of the 'water' as my shoes press down into the mud beneath them. Indeed, now that I look down, I can see vast splotches of partially-congealed blood covering the ground, particularly in places where there used to be paving rather than grass.

'It must be from the Angel...even from this many bodies, this amount of blood is too much. Not to mention, they were all likely underground when they died. If anyone was above ground when the Angel unleashed its attack, I doubt there'd be a body left behind...let alone any blood.'

But even knowing that the blood most likely isn't human doesn't take away the dull pangs of horrified disgust that assail me when I get close enough to look down at the bodies.

Nearly all of them have a purplish blue discoloration to their skin; cyanosis...a telltale sign of death by asphyxiation. And many of them also bear various mutilations...bruises, scratches, lacerations. In a few cases, including at least one child no older than three, the cause of death was not asphyxiation...but rather blunt force injuries consistent with being trampled to death or crushed against walls.

There is one thing the dead ALL seem to have in common however; expressions of wide eyed agony and terror are visible on the face of nearly every single one of the corpses, open mouths still screaming silently at the dark, uncaring sky above.

'They were all killed in the place they were told they'd be the safest...' I think to myself bitterly.

Looking around the circular scar, the ground seems too perfectly flat to be the result of violent winds or some other equally chaotic method of destruction. No, it looks to me as if everything was simply shaved away with surgical precision, leaving everything, except where a now barren hillside rises near the edge of the circumference, almost completely flat.

Given that the vast majority of the victims from the shelter seem to have died from asphyxiation, it can be assumed that whatever the Angel did somehow cut off any oxygen flow to anyone trapped underneath the affected area.

'As for the nature of what the area of effect itself was...'

My speculation is cut short by the ringing of my cell phone.

'Misato! Thank goodness, she's alive!'

An unbelievable pressure I hadn't really noticed weighing me down until now seems to evaporate, and I feel myself smile with relief despite the horrors surrounding me.

"Inspector Kaji here," I answer, trying not to sound too giddy with relief.

"Ryoji? Where are you right now?"

The grave tone of the voice that replies immediately takes the wind out of my sails.

"What is it? What's happened, Misato?"

A conga line of varying emotions surge through me as Misato reveals what's happened since the Angel was defeated...relief, concern, relief, fear, relief, and a mixture of anger and sympathy at the last bit.

"Is there anything I can do?"

"No. Except..." she pauses for a moment, before heaving a weary sigh that makes her sound as if she's aged ten years since we last saw one another. "Just...just please hurry back. I want to see you. I NEED to see you. I...I need you, Ryoji."

Another pause follows this, and I myself do not dare open my mouth.

"I'm sorry. After what happened back then, I...I have no right-"

"I'm on my way," I reply, cutting her off.

"I..." she sounds flustered for a moment, before sighing again...but this time, I can almost see the weary smile behind it. "Thank you."

The call ends, and I turn to leave, heading towards the nearest entrance to NERV's medical facility I can find.

For a moment, I feel a rush of elation...which quickly melts into shame.

'I know what that might have sounded like...but what's important is that she needs me right now, because she's scared and has no one else to turn to. She's vulnerable right now...and I'll be damned if ever exploit her for anything again. It's bad enough that I did it once to get her account of Second Impact out of her. I won't ever sink that low again. Never.'

The determination to do the right thing doesn't quite manage to wipe my imagination clean of what could happen...but I know that whatever happens, I'll do what I must.

'I'll be there for you, Misato. No matter what happens...or doesn't happen, I'll be there for you. However you need me to be...I'll be there for you.'

AN: The tornado referenced by Kaji actually did happen. This is a brief video of the Jarrell, Texas tornado of May 27, 1997.

The worst damage was done to the Double Creek Estates, where the tornado reached its peak intensity and its ground speed slowed to perhaps 1 or 2mph.

At the 0:40, you can see what remained of the Double Creek Estates in the immediate aftermath of the tornado (it's been rebuilt since then though). Twenty-seven people lost their lives...among them were at least two entire families.

(The tornado at 0:53 is actually a different one that was spawned by the same supercell on the same day, a few hours later near Georgetown, Texas, if memory serves me correctly)

/yc1O1d_7HPU