I do not own the rights to Neon Genesis Evangelion, or any of the characters, equipment, or locations written in this fanfiction. The purpose of this fanfiction is merely for the non-profit enjoyment of other readers. If requested by Gainax, Hideki Anno, or other parties which represent aforementioned objects in this story, I will remove it promptly.

Chapter XXXII:

It was another three hours at least before NERV's final move against me was revealed. It wasn't that hard to predict, but I didn't think they would be foolish enough not to call her back. Of course, Rei was there. They would clearly send her out to keep an eye on me while I was making my escape. She made an effort to hide, but there is only so much you can conceal from radar.

But there was something else that gave me the hint. I couldn't describe it then, but the more that I think about it, the best way to explain it would be some kind of psychic bond between Angel hybrids. It's seen in the series quite a few times that Rei does some pretty interesting things when she allows her powers to be seen. I wondered as I toggled the display controls if she would have the advantage.

"Rei, I know you're there," I called out on the tac-net. "Talk to me. How are they?" I waited five minutes until I was sure there was no response coming, then tried again. "Rei, you know what I'm going to do, right? It's foolish for you to follow me, as you are the key to Third Impact."

That last part got her attention. "Only if you reach Lillith are you a threat," her voice replied calmly. "The other pilots are... not well."

"Tell them I'm sorry."

"But you are not."

I brought the Eva to a stop and maneuvered behind a ridge. The landscape had changed from it's bright green fields to dingy, red-hued dirt which covered the rocky terrain. There was little plant life here, and what was left seemed to be on the verge of death. So much for the recovery from Second Impact. "You don't know I'm not sorry," I answered. "How can you say that?"

"You shot them."

"What would you do in my place?" I yelled back. I didn't mean to, but they were starting to piss me off, all these mindless cattle who just followed a clearly corrupt dictatorship. While it was a military organization that required a chain of command where decisions were left up to the commanding officers, who in their right mind would blindly follow orders that dictated children in a first world nation would be used as soldiers without consent? At least I had accepted the role of villain, but these people still tried to rationalize their unethical choices. "This is war, and we are enemies. You don't sit around for three episodes just shouting banter back and forth while you power up."

Rei gave a short, quiet sigh, as though she didn't grasp the reference. I suppose there is no room for anime in the life of a lab rat.

"Your attacks were unprovoked," her voice recited, a slight hiss coming over the radio with the static. "You murdered and willfully supported the Angels." Unit-00 began to advance slowly along the face of the ridge. Ayanami was trying to keep her radar signature down, but I had a few other tricks up my sleeve. I was approximately twelve kilometers from her last reported position, the black Eva standing out amongst the red tinted cliffside. I needed cover, and the ridge was too short to offer any protection. Proceeding along the ridge would only leave me exposed. I was also in a position where the only direction was down. Anyone in a defensive position knows they want the high ground.

"Cake or death," I muttered to myself as I scanned the horizon, forcing the Eva forward. I could die while standing still, or I could die while moving. At least while moving, though, I had a slightly higher chance of survival. "Ah ah ah, you said death."

"I do not understand," Rei answered.

"Just a joke," I breathed, disengaging the safety on the palette rifle. The ridge split in two as the mountains joined just about two kilometers away. I didn't care if Ayanami spotted me. She probably couldn't, if she was hugging the cliffside to avoid exposure to my radar. But even if she did, if I could just outrun her fire, get behind the Y-split of the ridge, and penetrate her AT-Field in close combat, there was a chance. Then I remembered she was supposed to have the strongest of all AT-Fields. My decision to ditch the remaining gear was beginning to annoy me. "You don't happen to have a spare positron rifle, do you?"

"I would not give it to you," she answered.

"Again, it's humor, Rei." The Eva moved slowly over the ridge. It was awkward to maneuver something so big along such uneven terrain, especially with such a high center of mass. Crouching wouldn't improve my speed, though, and I needed Unit-04's arms to carry my remaining gear. "How do you suggest I penetrate an Eva's AT-Field with minimal firepower?"

"Why would I tell you?"

"I suppose you wouldn't. In that case, I'll just have to improvise." I kept Unit-04's head down below the split of the ridge, and was about to switch off the S2 drive when the woman in the blue dress spoke to me again. "I'll explain in a minute," I mumbled, but not fast enough. My right hand started to feel stiff, my arm locked in place just above the control panel for the S2 drive. "Let me go! This is imperative, don't you understand?" Another ping from the radar gave her location. She had just entered the region without any cover, meaning I had ten kilometers or less before she was right on top of me. "If we don't shut down, we're dead! She'll sense us!"

"We only let you play this far because you were willing to take whatever measures were necessary," the woman's voice recited coolly. "But you refuse to harm this one? Even when we can cripple her so easily and spare the body for the sacrifice?" My right arm began to itch, then moved slowly back to rest at my side, the hand now on the right control yoke. Everything started to go black, and the voice reverberated with an echo. "It is time you learn what true powers we have given you, and what a duel of Angels is really about."

"Crap..." I grunted one last time, as my brain faded back to consciousness, the aura of the cockpit now eerily dark. It was then I heard that high pitched shriek, the kind heard by Ayanami when Unit-01 rejected her. I knew what was coming, but I could do nothing but hold on. "Change of plans, eh?"

•••••••••••••

I know what happened next was not my fault. I did everything in my power to avoid it, but it still happened. I had followed a sequence of events that had led to this, and there were no other options for my masters than to show me the error of my ways. More importantly, I still realize I didn't do enough. I only hope that somewhere, wherever Shinji is now, he can forgive me.

Radar was unnecessary for the Angels, as was the infrared video feed, the laser rangefinder, all of it. They had the power to sense each others' presence, after all. It was stupid for Rei to have gone that far down range with only external batteries. Had Unit-01 only accepted her, and let her fight in Shinji's stead, maybe she would have had a chance. Then again, sending Unit-01 after me was a stupid move in itself, given it's origins.

Unit-00 had to have been low on power, as Rei's movements were cautious, and very efficient. She did her best to minimize the Eva's motion, even to the extent of sacrificing her concealment. Just a kilometer away. It sounds far for humans, but for two giants such as the Eva series, it was only a distance equivalent to a city block or two. How I wish she had just retreated and waited for the others to arrive.

Unit-04 sprang from it's resting place, all active sensory systems disengaged. For a creature that was "born" blind, the Angels didn't seem to have a problem maneuvering over the terrain. It was dark in the entry plug. All I could do to tell we were still in the fight is that the impacts were of the magnitude normally experienced in running, not falling or getting shot. The acceleration was in the right direction, at least, retracing our steps straight back at Ayanami.

Finally I managed to punch in a few commands, and get an infrared video feed, just as something very big slammed into us. Or did we slam into it? The monitor went blank for a moment, then came back to full clarity as I saw... it couldn't be. Unit-00's armor plating, and the flesh below it, was melting, turning into a malleable goo. The tac-net burst to static and then to screams, Rei's screams.

Then I started to scream, but not from fear or disgust. It was from the pain. My limbs, chest, head, everything felt like it was burning. The whole cockpit began to glow a sick orange, like it had been redone in a seventies retro look. All that was missing was the shag carpet and a disco ball. It was then I thought the entry plug actually shrank. Had it not been for my sense of touch telling me otherwise, even under that excruciating pain of being consumed in flame, I would have believed the seat was folding in on itself.

The monitor became a twisted, shrinking polygon, slowly being pulled into an elongated, twisting cylinder, much like a coiling snake. I knew this had to be fake, perhaps the result of the Eva's core operating system being overloaded with sensory input or data it couldn't understand, or perhaps being incapable of translating what it did understand on a wholly theoretical level. Whatever the result, I was being fed the by-product of whatever the hell the Eva and the Angels were perceiving, the data being directed straight into my brain. It was then I had really hoped there was some kind of hallucinogenic drug kept in a syringe somewhere for emergencies. Perhaps Ritsuko should have thought of that. The case could have had a label "In case of distorted reality, break glass."

Then the hallucinations stopped. The plug went cold, then dark, just before the front was pushed in, the metal casing deforming under strain. Something was being rammed into the plug, through the Eva's neck. The metal howled and cracked, splitting into fragments, small slivers of shrapnel whizzing by my face. Whether by chance or direct Angelic influence, I was spared anything more than a few minor cuts. Ayanami, however, had a far more horrendous experience.

The First Child's head, then the rest of her plugsuited figure was pushed through the gaping hole in the main monitor, assisted by what looked to be a new throbbing, growing organ just outside of the plug. She flopped onto the forward control panel, grunting as she rolled over the sharp hand holds and toggle switches. Rolling into my lap off the controls, she stared up at me as if to ask "why."

"I didn't want this," I sighed.

"Killing is killing," the woman in the blue dress spoke again from behind my mind. "They are all the enemy. You must know that by now."

"Yeah..." I sighed. Ayanami cringed and slowly forced her eyes open. The LCL was being drained, the entry plug accelerating upward now. "No more use for me, huh?"

"You have outlived your usefulness, as you would say. Take advantage of what little time you have left to live."

The hard acceleration had caused us both to black out, leaving Rei to wake first in the plug. She seemed scared, and refused to speak, or maybe couldn't speak, at least not for a few minutes. "Why didn't they take you?" I asked when I finally came to. "Aren't you necessary for Instrumentality?"

Ayanami started to sob. There was no "Why am I crying?" I stared at her, and she felt cold. Her body had gone a shade of pale beyond her normal albino look. Even her eyes had faded from their crimson color to a light pink, as though her very life essence was drained from her. Then it made sense.

"They already did," she answered in ragged sobs.

This wasn't Rei, or at least the complete Rei that I had annoyed before. This was the stripped down, economy model, sans Lillith's soul. "Software not included," I mumbled, and leaned my head back into the seat. The L.C.L. slowly leaked out of the plug from a gaping hole in the outer shell as the sun set, leaving the face of the remaining ridge dark, cold, and empty.

•••••••••••••

It was two days until the symptoms finally started to show. Reynolds was allowed into the cell to check on me when I refused to eat, and started vomiting heavily. My white blood cell count was falling fast, as was the quantity of proteins which formed the cellular membranes throughout my tissues. All the fluids in my body started to leak from the pores of my skin, or were lost in various, disgusting methods. It was about that time the junior technicians left in charge after I had killed everyone else finally allowed the doctor to drag me to the hospital.

"It's started," Ben told me as he shoved me into a clear, cylindrical tube filled with L.C.L. I was getting the Rei treatment. Apparently Maya had taken the time off after the First Child's and my recovery to study up on all the dirty little secrets hidden in Terminal Dogma. At least she was putting them to use. "The Self Defense Forces have all been annihilated, as well as those precious mass-production Evas you were so concerned about."

I tried to nod, but I felt even the bones and ligaments which formed my skull shake like gelatin. It didn't take a scrawny Star Trek nerd to tell I was losing molecular cohesion. I had lost the ability to speak only hours before, when my vocal cords dissolved, along with my sinuses. My eyes were gone. It was hardly painful, as the doctor did his best to administer as much morphine as he could. He didn't even need a needle. He just pumped the L.C.L. chamber full of the sweet drug, as my body let the fluids pass right through. I was more liquid solution than human at this point.

"There is someone here to see you," Reynolds spoke again. The footsteps reverberated through the chamber, causing my body to slosh around. "She... or he... doesn't have much longer," he said to the visitor.

"I am... afraid," Rei said, putting her head up against the plug. The last time I saw her, her hair had started to turn a mousy brown, and her ethics gave was as the craving for meat finally surfaced. Hunger for proteins and macronutrients, even if a person doesn't understand the chemistry behind them, makes itself known in other forms. "I am... becoming you."

I tried shaking my head, but felt my ears begin to slide away. If I was going to hear her voice still, I couldn't let that happen. Reynolds seemed to understand what I was getting at, at least, and relayed the message. "No, you aren't," he breathed. "You are becoming you, a completely new person based on your prior experiences and the byproduct of that... incident." Rei didn't seem to understand, until Ben went into further detail. "Conservation of energy, if you could call it that," he began. "You received something in exchange for the soul you once carried."

"What?"

Someone tapped against the case, causing my fingers to slowly dissolve. It was probably Reynolds, as he spoke next. "That must have been Yui's plan from the beginning. She created something to give her only true daughter the necessity for life: a living soul. The Angels and his actions were never known, but by happenstance led to the desired conclusion."

Rei started to cry again. She was getting good at it, I had to admit. "Ikari and Soryu will need to be looked after for a few more weeks, but at this rate, I don't think we have that much longer. That other byproduct is making its way back to finish the job."

"A world ruled by Evas... through Angel dominion," Ibuki said, sighing heavily. "And we'll end up turning into him eventually, right? Just more liquid humans?"

"If that is what Instrumentality is like, then yes," Ben answered. "But there is always hope."

"How?" Ayanami asked.

"The Eighteenth Angel, as he used to tell me, was the merging of all human souls into one being. But from that original being, we resulted as individuals. Remember the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It probably takes more energy to put us back in our original form that it does to make us decay, and for that to occur, something else needs to be given up. We just don't know what yet." The doctor sighed, and tapped the chamber again. "He's losing it. It won't be long now."

"But how do we return to this form again?" Maya asked.

"Just try to be yourself. Block out anything that isn't you." I could have sworn for a moment that I could see again, or perhaps it was just my mind's last attempt at maintaining neurological functions. I pictured Reynolds set his wrinkled, aged right hand on Ayanami's head, and smiling. "You have individuality now, Rei. Don't let it go."

"But do I want it?" she asked.

"You can't not want what you are. That's the true definition of ego."

The End

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