Chapter Seven
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"The dominions... angels who have abandoned servile fear and serve God voluntarily."
The pale-haired man's too-smooth voice was like a brick on Shinji's already trembling stomach...
//Angels with... free will...?//
He could believe nothing was impossible anymore, and how was he to know, that Kaworu had not returned, had not been summoned once more, to lead this new attack?
"Shinji... you're heart rate's a little unsteady... are you all right?"
"I'm fine."
He managed to croak out the words, though he felt lightheaded, dizzy... not simply because he was being shot to the surface, in a chute much like the Evas had used. Shinji wished he could have used it as an excuse, wished he was anywhere else... wished...
The gray-haired man's voice droned on, oblivious to his troubles.
"There are four chiefs of the dominions..."
Shinji had never studied the angels, the hierarchy, not after NERV and SEELE and... everything. It had been too hard, even if he had been curious... it was worth more to escape the pain than to search for answers. He regretted the decision now more than ever, because he wasn't sure what he might hear next. There was no reason... no reason at all that Kaworu... that Tabris...
//Not Tabris... not Tabris... please god please god please please /please/ don't mention his name...//
It didn't slip from his attention, that he was quite possibly praying to the same God who had sent Kaworu to his fate... and would have no reason not to do so again.
"Hashmal, Muriel, Zacharael and their leader..."
The dark-haired man held his breath.
"Heart rate's climbing... Shinji?!"
"Zadkiel."
The world around him was little more than a speeding blur now, but Shinji was suddenly much more stable, standing steady, and exhaled as his heart slowly caught up with his head.
"Shinji, get ready... you'll hit the surface in five... four... three..."
What had he seen, then? Who had been in the store, if Kaworu /wasn't/ chosen to lead this new attack?
"Two..."
Had it really been Kaworu? Was it even possible? Or was it all only what he wanted to believe, nothing more than the desperate cry of a lonely heart? He had wanted things that badly before - his father's love, his friend's acceptance - that he had convinced himself that, somehow they were attainable... all the while knowing he was only lying to himself
"... one."
The platform disappeared beneath his feet with a flash of bright light, the emergency lights flashing as he passed them, launched into the air by the force of the acceleration.
Shinji tipped his head as he slowed, could see the city below, sweeping out, down the valley in front of him, a spiraling, inverted galaxy with lights brighter than the stars, glittering hard and sharp...
He could feel nothing inside the suit, hear nothing but his own breathing, but the dark-haired man knew the wind was blowing hard, and since he had been gone, it had become an uncharacteristically cold night...
"Igniting base heel thrusters... adjusting for wind speed and deceleration..."
Shinji felt something tap sharply at the bottom of both of his feet, twisted his head to try and see... and blinked in surprise as a view of his entire body, a solid computer diagram of the suit appeared right in front of his eyes, resting in a hazy, green image over his view of the New York skyline.
A small circle appeared near the feet, highlighting the change, enlarging the diagram of the boots until they filled the screen... The dark-haired man blinked again, staring at the half-transparent complexity, the schematic more detailed than he would ever have need of...
... and only then did Shinji realize he had stopped moving completely, and that he was hovering in midair.
"Heel thrusters working perfectly... how does it look to you, Shinji?"
The dark-haired man let out a sharp breath, staring at the screen in front of him... green, the schematic showed green... green was good, right?
"Everything looks fine... how..."
Shinji blinked, and the scene before him shifted, the technical schematics of his suit dropping away, and all at once, a generated map of the city lay itself in yellow lines around all the buildings, down the streets... and as his eye traveled, street and building names appeared, flickered, vanished in the sky next to each location, only to reappear as his gaze passed back over them.
"How are you doing this?"
Toby laughed, he could hear the pride in her voice.
"The computer screen? Oh, I can overlay anything you want... time, temperature..." Shinji watched, amazed, as both measurements appeared and just as quickly vanished in front of his eyes...
"I can give you an eagle's eye view of anywhere in the city, or building schematics..."
For a moment, although the tiny figure was almost hidden past the horizon, Shinji had a perfectly rendered, 3-D model of the salvaged Statue of Liberty, electronically recreated and stripped of its copper skin, hovering what seemed to be a few inches in front of his nose.
"You don't even have to worry about an external power supply, given that this suit's so small compared to your original Eva. It can go for days on the internal power, as well as support all the optional systems pretty much full-time if necessary... infrared night-vision, internal readings on the suit on a three-centimeter square basis, a road-by-road database of the entire tri-state..."
"I think he gets the idea, Toby."
Shinji smiled slightly as a spluttering murmur could be heard, the sweeping display of both sight and sound coming to an abrupt halt. Despite his prior misgivings, the man was actually grateful for Lae's presence, seeing as he was the only person who seemed to be able to rein his fellow scientist in.
"So..." Shinji looked around, amazed that when he squinted, the computers automatically registered the movement, zoomed in on the object he needed to see without any outside help... this really was an amazing suit... "Where do we go from here?"
"We received first contact with the Angel closer to the north side, over the New Brooklyn Pike... If you want, we can bring you in on autopilot until we get some kind of confirmation..."
"Sounds good..." Shinji took a deep breath as the suit around his legs moved, tilting him slightly... he moved forward, and only slowly for a moment, gaining surprising speed... The dark-haired man clenched a fist against his side, momentarily comforted by the power that thrummed through this flexible shell, the time and commitment he knew must have gone into this, those steady voices murmuring to each other, just audible through his radio. It was nothing like his first time in 03, not in the way it felt, not in the way he felt.
//Funny... I wasn't scared that first time, because I didn't know... ignorance really is bliss.//
The man could tell himself he still didn't care, that the thought of death held no more than some instinctive, primal fear... but if nothing else, that fear was most definitely with him now, the echo of that vicious stabbing still with him in pain and scars, setting all his nerves on edge.
He wouldn't have to fight Kaworu, not ever again, but Shinji /still/ didn't want to face any other angels, didn't want to see what a decade had done to change them, improve on them as it had upon this new Eva. The dark-haired man had developed a bad habit of thinking too far ahead in the future, knew there would have to be a time after this, a tomorrow when he could look back on this battle he hadn't fought yet, and know how he had survived...
...or he would be dead, and - Shinji swallowed hard - it would probably involve a lot of pain.
There was no angel of mercy, each battle the old Evas had fought had been more brutal, more devastating than before...
//... and then there was Kaworu.//
Shinji couldn't imagine what these new Angels might do, that might make him hurt worse than that.
//They can't. It will be only physical pain, and it will hurt, a /lot/... and then you'll be dead and it won't matter anymore.//
"Mr. Ikari... we have to tell you, we're not entirely sure /what/ these angels will look like, or what their capabilities may be..."
Shinji wasn't surprised by Toby's admission, still a little stunned by the way SEELE had almost immediately launched Tiphereth after the alarm had sounded, promising to explain everything in the air... unfortunately, except for Toby's outburst, it seemed that the man in gray was supplying most of the commentary. Almost at once, he cut her off, continued speaking about these new Angels, these Dominions.
"Traditionally, and by that I mean the biblical, the Dominions have been known to hold a sword or scepter, or possibly a golden staff in the right hand, and the seal of God in the left... though you probably remember well, that the angels you fought on behalf of NERV came in many kinds, nothing like what was expected... Please, though, do tell me if you see any sort of green or gold when we contact this one... I'd love to see if that particular detail holds any truth at all..."
Shinji rankled at the man's casual, almost cheerful tone, along with the way he had explained away Shinji's former life with a single sentence...
//"Fought on behalf of NERV"... as if I were some sort of mercenary, as if being in that Eva wasn't /everything/ in my life, everything I knew and learned, the core of /who I was/...//
It had been his life, and he had spent the last decade trying to replace what had been stripped away in less than an hour.
"The weakness of these Angels, we believe, lies in an orb they carry with them, somewhere on their bodies, though size and location are a complete mystery... It is /very important/, Shinji, that whatever happens, you /do not/ break this orb... As soon as it leaves the angel's possession, they will be powerless, destroyed, but you /must/ return the orbs whole to us, to be taken care of..."
Shinji raised an eyebrow, at the sudden, fervent tone that entered the usually cool voice, though he said nothing, knew that asking why SEELE needed those "orbs" so badly, why Gray Suit seemed to take a even stronger personal interest in them. Asking those questions, of course, would gain him nothing.
//How far do I /want/ to get involved, anyway? How far can I go, before it stops being about Asuka... and I get sucked in myself?//
Did he even have that choice? Had it stopped being about her already? Inside the suit, Shinji's eyes narrowed dangerously.
/No... it /won't/ be like that. I /don't/ have to get involved I /don't care/... this time I don't have to care, I'm not a part of NERV anymore... and I don't want to get into this.../
Shinji didn't want to be a part of any of it, and most definitely didn't want to have the feeling that was sweeping through him now... that he and the man in gray would not escape some sort of conflict, and that no matter how well he did, SEELE would never allow him to walk away, to disappear again.
//Let's worry about that /after/ we defeat the Angel, all right?//
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The dark-haired man had grown accustomed to the vertical blue bar resting along the left hand side of his helmet, just intruding on his peripheral vision, a few wavering lines, what he supposed were his vital signs, moving in time with his breathing and heartbeat, and a few other small sensors that held at a constant green. His attention was quickly diverted, as out of nowhere, one of the tiny squares flared up brilliantly, a bright red bar that extended to the top of the screen.
"Shinji, we've got a reading!"
"I can see that."
Before the dark-haired man could ask, the scene around him suddenly switched to infrared, green haze around the buildings and the line of the bridge beneath, black for the waters he flew over... everything else a rainbow of ugly, shifting colors, the cars moving so slowly compared to how he flew, tiny dots of dark fire swirling against the steady green...
Shinji looked closer, unsure of what he was trying to find, but almost certain he saw nothing... and hoped it wasn't in the water... hoped it wasn't /big/. He was still not exactly sure why these Angels couldn't be as big as the others had been before, still harboring secret doubts that the only reason his suit was the size it was had nothing to do with the enemy, but SEELE's budget restrictions...
Shinji most certainly doubted the prowess, the skill of his new commanders... and prayed fervently that he was overestimating the strength of the enemy. He trusted the suit, and, for what it was worth, believed in Toby and the other scientists, in the dedication in their work... but would that be enough?
"I'm putting you down on the roof ahead of you, Shinji, it should be steady enough, though the area's been abandoned... The Angel's somewhere in this area, but we can't get a clear reading..."
The dark-haired man wasn't surprised at that, as he descended onto the rooftop, the skeletal remains of several buildings rising up around him, blocking off the view of the newer, brighter vision of the city.
New York had submerged just as swiftly as every other coastal city, but its inhabitants, and to no small measure the entire United States had gathered around the lost city as a symbol, stubbornly done their best to push the water back, to rebuild what was lost, usually building too soon, and losing two-thirds of what was created as the water rushed up again, the earth gave way.
In the time since the Second Impact, the survivors had long since learned to adapt, and lived their lives with the way the planet had changed.
Most of the buildings, however, had not, there was simply not enough time nor manpower to destroy what was no longer habitable, it was much less costly to simply move on. Downtown New York was as metropolitan, as urban as it ever had been, but it was surrounded by the ruins of its own excess, the waters in all directions studded with skeletal islands, iron beams spiking up from the middle of rivers, concrete windows staring with vacant eyes to the uncaring sky. The buildings too heavy to stand where they were had all sunk at innumerable odd angles, shifting beneath the loose, fissured soils into strange diagonals, frozen falls.
Shinji sucked in a breath as the jets cut out, and his feet hit the rooftop, staring around this nearly silent, midnight cove, straining to hear something he was sure would make no sound before attacking.
The light from the city was blocked, but still burnished the sky, no more than the soul's desire to see a star making it through the haze, the wish for constellations playing tricks on the eyes, while everything else was sunk in deepest black...
Shinji could see perfectly, of course, Toby had switched from infrared to night vision long ago, but the slightly hazy, completely green world he had been plunged into made him feel no more secure, certainly no more comfortable... it could be hiding anywhere, it could be waiting for him...
"It's close, Shinji... very close."
Movement, under the water, something massive turning in the cove beneath the building he stood upon. Shinji heard Toby gasp, but in the next moment almost smiled, as the shape moved in a very familiar way, a gentle, sinuous curve, slow and languid through the flat waters...
"It's a whale."
It wasn't that amazing anymore, to see them this far inland, for even here the waters ran deep, and despite the surging populations of aquatic life after the Second Impact, the United States held fast to their policies against most kinds of whaling, wouldn't allow it anywhere on this coast.
Shinji watched the creature for a few more moments, wondered if it was singing, if there would be any way to hear it, later, when this had end-
He stopped breathing, as another flicker of movement caught his eye, on the surface this time... /something/ moving in and out of view, between the shattered buildings on the other side of the cove.
Small... maybe just a little bigger than he was, but /fast/... and there was something dangerous, too smooth, too sure and not at all human in the way it moved, loping across the curve of the cove wall. The dark-haired man swallowed dry, reaching for his knife...
"Shinji... what is it?"
"It's here."
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"Where is he seeing...?" On the main screen, Shinji's view of the cove had been blown up to ten times its actual size, but as Toby scanned the scenery, eyes swiftly moving back and forth, she could not see what had caused the spike in his readings, his pulse and blood pressure, or why he had drawn his knife.
"Do you...?"
"No." Lae's eyes never left the screen, but it was clear from his tone that he saw no more than she did...
"Shinji, I don't think..."
Toby leaned back sharply in surprise, as a hand suddenly reached out in front of her, covering her microphone. The gray-haired man had his eyes fixed on the screen as well, but he was smiling slightly, the emotion on his face too complex for the scientist to understand.
"... don't worry... if he sees it, you will too, soon enough."
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Silence. Shinji could only hear his own breathing, could feel nothing but stark terror now, here in the dark, his heart nearly exploding each time he lost sight of the flash of movement along the rubble, as it moved nearer... it was coming closer. Whatever this Angel might be... it knew he was here.
Shinji had become accustomed to fighting in Unit-03, familiar with the way it moved, with its capabilities... and despite all that had happened, all he had learned about its origin, despite how he came to /loathe/ it, on some level the Eva had still been a machine, a barrier between him and his opponent, a weapon that also gave him some protection...
... but this suit was skintight, and no matter what he had seen it do, Shinji knew he was not a fighter, not hand-to-hand, not like this... and couldn't see how any technological advancement would change that fact.
//Not enough, anyway... not enough to keep me alive.//
Shinji blinked, felt the air leave his lungs in a rush, as his eyes continued to track the flash of darkness, the curl and ripple of movement past an empty window, to where it should next appear-
- and there was nothing.
He didn't move, breathing hard, while his eyes scanned desperately back and forth, in the space where it had vanished, to where it should be... and it had been close, close and closing in... how many seconds did he have, before it would be on top of him and he wouldn't even know-
Red lights, flashing sharply, and a high pitched scream, shrill and electronic, Toby was yelling, but he couldn't hear her over the warning, the lights and sound that filled his vision with a blinking, red haze -
The world clicked into slow motion, as Shinji watched the Angel curl over the lip of the ground he stood upon, no more than ten feet in front of him. It's body was smooth and dark, moving fluidly, inhumanly, but with deliberation, /power/, as if every fiber in its being were solid muscle...
Shinji choked, as out of the sweep of darkness, a face slowly lifted toward his, a mask, with round, empty eyes and an expressionless mouth of parchment white, the vacancy, the fear it caused cutting him to the bone... it was the worst, the culmination of terror on a primal level that left him paralyzed, and before he could think to even breathe, it leapt.
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Shinji screamed as he lunged backward, throwing his hands up instinctively to protect himself, his first impulse not to fight back but to flee... and the gesture almost certainly saved his life. He felt a surge of something from inside the suit, but had his eyes closed in the moment that the Angel hit, didn't see the readings that Toby and Lae were reacting to, as the shield thrown up by Shinji's instinctive reaction still nearly broke in the face of the Angel's massive first strike...
"Get more power up to those shields! We need to... damn it!"
Alarms and readings continued to scroll across the screen, as Lae and Toby madly scrambled through the computer systems to maintain control, the screen nearly vibrating with the force of commands, code leaping back and forth as the suit responded to Shinji, and the scientists responded to the suit...
"... trying, auxiliary power is up..." Toby's breath left her in a hiss, as Shinji finally recovered, struck out with the knife, all the power of the suit behind him with each blow... but not /one/ was connecting, the Angel swirling backward effortlessly, able to move and bend in any direction at will...
"Jesus, it's so /fast/!"
The scientist quickly typed in another set of parameters, raising more power for the shields, watching out of the corner of her eye as the synch ratio between Shinji and the suit continued to rise...
All her attention was focused on the fight, but later the woman knew her mind would be boggling... she had built the suit to adapt, but this kind of growth was amazing, the speed and power... and Shinji needed it now, needed everything they could give him, just to stay alive.
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Another impossibly powerful blow slammed against his side, too fast to block, though Shinji managed to arc away from the next, bringing up an offensive of his own as he moved the blade through a series of flashing strikes, part of him in awe that it was /his/ body managing such a complex attack. He could feel his body moving into harmony with the suit, a synthesis of thought producing instantaneous reaction... and even /that/ wasn't nearly enough against this Angel's screamingly fast attack.
The creature had no definite structure, no bones or any kind of solid body to give it vulnerabilities, to restrict its range of motion or it's ability to shift it's inertia, and Shinji watched it dodge all of his attacks, and retaliate, suddenly coming at him from all sides -
//NO!//
He realized his error even as he made it, stepped off not onto dirt or concrete but into open air, and no one was there to start the jets to keep him aloft, the scientists completely preoccupied with simply maintaining his shields, and -
//NO!//
Shinji fell backward, missing the sloped edge of the cliff completely as it dipped toward the water, bracing himself for the expected impact... but the water was a much softer cushion than he could have hoped for, he barely felt it at all... and of course, he could still breathe beneath the surface, inside the suit... if he was lucky, maybe the Angel couldn't swim-
//... nope.//
The dark-haired man looked up, just as a mass of black swam into his already hazy vision, twisting around his torso before he could move, wrenching his arms back in a sudden, snapping motion that left them both startlingly numb and screaming in agony. Shinji realized he had been spun nearly upside down by the sudden attack only as he saw the blade of his Prog knife gleam in the water, floating past, down into the darkness...
-//My knife?! Oh shit.. oh shit...//-
Shinji strained toward where the weapon had disappeared just as the Angel tightened its grasp, a heavy second skin around his chest and torso that clenched, impossibly strong, against his struggles, against the suit, and even as he tried to scream the air was forced from his lungs - arms still pinned at his sides, Shinji couldn't even claw for air as the thick black darkness constricted again, and the suit, the suit wasn't solid, couldn't protect him from this enough to save his life. The dark-haired man swore he could hear his vertebrae cracking, ribs creaking beneath the pressure, tried to gasp for air but instead felt as if a sword had slid down his throat-
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"Shinji!!!"
Toby stared in horror at the screen, watching almost every part of the suit's diagnostic screen shift to red, as the Angel did its best to crush the body inside. The man's vitals were dangerously erratic, she could hear him choking as he struggled to breathe...
"We've got to use the EEO..." Lae shouted at her, moving towards another computer and drawing the system onto the screen.
"The EEO?" The emergency electrical overload had been a backup system Toby had long though about removing, so sure she was that it would never be necessary, that it was too risky to ever need to chance it. "That will drain /everything/, he'll be defenseless for too long, if it doesn't work-"
"If it doesn't work, he's dead anyway!"
Lae slammed down on the final key before Toby could say another word, and they watched as the screen lit up, all system power shunted into one massive, electrical blast, and the peripheral visual went completely white.
Toby bit her lip, praying hard that the suit hadn't been compromised... if there had been any water in the suit, if any of the voltage had managed to make it inside...
"Shinji? Shinji, can you hear me? Are you there?"
Silence. The display was back to normal, and the scientist struggled to distinguish between what might be water and what might be the enemy... searching for any sign of either hope or horror, listening to what she soon realized was very ragged breathing... the electricity, at least, hadn't reached the pilot.
"Shinji!? Come in!"
"... here... I'm here."
A voice croaked, rough and low, and Toby heard Lae exhale sharply, closing his eyes in a moment of gratitude.
"We sent a large electrical current through your suit, to try and drive the Angel off... you should be all right in a few moments, the systems just need to gather a bit of power... Are you all right? Did that thing hurt-"
The microphone was taken from her hand before Toby realized it had happened, her gray-haired superior moving closer to the screen. He had been the only one who had been watching all that had happened without making a sound, the only one who didn't seem worried when Shinji was in danger, and even now, his voice was as calm as ever.
"Mr. Ikari, we need you to get moving to intercept. It's already got a half-mile on you, you can't afford to wait around. I'll give Toby the coordinates, she'll be able to plot you a path right to it."
No answer.
"Mr. Ikari!"
The man's voice rose, but not in concern. Now, there was cold steel in it... and Toby had known her superior wasn't a kind man, believed he probably wasn't a moral man... but she hadn't wanted this position, hadn't worked so hard so that she could force a pilot into what was little less than suicide...
//We don't have a solution... even if he catches up with hit, how are we supposed to stop it?!//
"... I heard you..." Shinji groaned, dragging himself to the surface, staggering to his feet on the bank. "I'm on my way."
He moved more slowly through the first few steps, but had soon taken back to the air, Lae feeding power to the boot thrusters, while doing what he could to provide new energy for the other systems as they were brought back on-line... Toby turned to the man in gray, met those cold eyes without flinching as she put her hand over the microphone, muffling it from the Tiphereth pilot's ears.
"I won't send him to die, sir."
All the man's smiles were dead things, cold, inanimate... lifeless, but somehow still managing to hint at cruelty.
"If you built that suit well enough, he won't."
Toby paled, and at Lae's sharp shout quickly moved back to her seat. The man in gray turned his eyes back to the forward monitors, the smile fading but never quite leaving his lips. All the lines in his body spoke of pride, and confidence...
He was not the kind of man to make mistakes, not the kind to choose a pilot who would die... at least, not yet.
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Shinji fought the urge to curl in on himself as another wave of pain wracked through his stomach, trying to distinguish between what was merely hot agony, and what might actually be blood, internal injuries inside the suit. The knife wounds along his abdomen had not completely healed yet, though he was almost sure they weren't fresh enough to reopen...
//... almost...//
The pain abated slightly as he continued to fly forward, though Shinji wondered somehow if that wasn't the suit's doing, as only when he really concentrated on it did the sharp stabs of pain in his back and sides still cut into him. He was already tired, hurting... and this fight seemed far from over.
"Shinji... we're going to resynthesize your Prog Knife... you should feel it, a buzz just behind your right shoulder..." He felt it happen, heat, pressure... amazing, that Toby had thought to add such a feature...
The dark-haired man frowned slightly, remembering the fight, his fear, and how he had nearly died... and this suit /was/ amazing, it had certainly saved his life...
... but he just wasn't worthy to pilot it, not strong enough, or brave enough. Time had changed nothing, it seemed, not of the scared little boy he still was, inside, where it mattered.
If only, if only Asuka had really been as strong as she had seemed... she could be here now, instead of him, and the Angel would most likely already be dead.
"Toby..." he murmured softly, though he knew everyone would hear. "If anything... happens... it wasn't your fault. This is an incredible suit."
A light flared, before he could see if the woman would answer him, and Lae's voice was sharp and steady in his ears.
"We've got it... five-hundred yards and closing!"
Shinji looked up... now that the Angel was known, had been identified and fought, it was apparently much easier for SEELE to track it. A blue, glowing line appeared along the side of a building, the path the creature had taken highlighted by the computer screen, and then Shinji could see the dark mass, slightly hunched over, surrounded by the same dim, blue glow.
A white mask looked up toward him, obscured now and then by the shifting darkness, but most certainly watching... waiting...
A scream from it, wholly unnatural, and thick ribbons of darkness lashed out, speeding toward him even as he continued to approach, to crush, or perhaps simply impale-
Shinji lifted one arm, drawing himself to a halt with a slight turn of his heel, unsure of why the gesture felt so right, of what it would accomplish, but the dark-haired man pointed his hand palm out toward the creature anyway... and watched as a targeting screen came into view - just long enough for his eye to adjust, choose his target - and a blast of yellow energy sizzled in a white hot ball through several of the dark streamers, and then directly into the Angel's body.
Another scream, but this one of fury as the Angel staggered backward a few steps, drawing the dark tendrils back towards it as it fought to recover, though its wounded cry was still more one of pride than true injury. Shinji watched the sizzling darkness slowly reform, melding back over the hole he had left... though the healing seemed to happen slower than it's attacks... had he really managed to hurt it? And how?!
"Pulse cannon." Lae informed him, as Shinji looked down at his hand, saw the slight ridge of the muzzle lowering back flat into the suit, until it was invisible against his palm. Shinji didn't bother to ask how he had activated it, whether he or the scientists had been responsible for the shot, sure this suit held many more secrets than answers, and that even the detailed answers were likely only the beginning of the mystery...
The Angel was watching him differently now, he found, as he turned his attention back toward the fight... there was a flavor to the air, something hovering between them...
"Blood in the water."
The words belonged to the man in gray, murmured softly, in anticipation. Shinji didn't bother to answer, as the Angel suddenly moved, fluid leaps across the building, down the other side, over, vanished...
Shinji dropped onto the roof, racing across, faster than the thrusters could carry him, to continue the chase on foot, straight into the heart of the city...
... and he was back in it completely, back in the world of the Eva - he must have been bleeding, he could smell blood - this world of half-reality, swimming in lies and hope and sorrow, all of it thicker, more potent and real than LCL, meaning more than the simple battle ever could... but when it all came down to it, it was still a world of surprisingly few choices.
Blood in the water, leading right to SEELE and Lilith, Adam and the Third Impact...
Blood in the water, drawn by each of them, and Shinji realized he was more than ready for a bare-knuckle brawl now, and /not/ afraid anymore, no, not in this world... in this world, even if he died, he was still king.
Blood in the water, and all was right with the world.