Chapter Eight
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"Hey..."
A tipsy brunette tugged on the shoulder of her equally staggering companion as they walked down the street, out for some fresh air after a night of partying. The man's grin faded as he followed the edges of her painted nails, out into the sky.
"What the... what's that?"
In the second it took him to breathe the words, the massive object had swung towards them on a collision course.
There was no time to think, the man put his hands on the woman's shoulders, shoving her out of the way just as the unknown object slammed into him. He was killed instantly, never knowing what had caused his death, broken body flung through the front store window, both legs snapping above the knee as he was tossed down into a corridor and through another door. He never knew that someone had seen him die, that it had not been one object but two that had fallen from the sky, two warriors now standing in what remained of the building's first floor, slowly circling one another, hoping to make the kill...
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"Shinji?! What happened?!"
"... hit a building... /another/ building..."
Shinji could see what looked like blood, just over the Angel's shoulder, at the end of a long corridor... Oh god, there /had/ been someone on the street, he thought he had felt something, seen something, before they hit the window...
//I'm sorry. I'm so sorry...//
The Angel lashed out, Shinji quickly backflipped out of the way, all thoughts of casualties, of the city, everything gone as the battle flared back violently into life. He sprung up from his hands, back to his feet, and immediately into another roll, moving swiftly backward as the Angel continued to attack, lashing out with increasing fury in swipes that /almost/ met their target, Shinji barely able to move out of the way...
The Angel finally managed to anticipate his defense, and though the dark-haired man dodged one of the dual lashing blows, the second caught him completely by surprise, hitting him full across the chest and throwing him helplessly back out into the street.
Shinji hit the ledge below the broken window with enough force to tear his leg out of its socket, but the suit absorbed the damage, and he barely felt the impact, using the rest of that force to roll to his feet, raising his arms to send another blast of energy back into the building.
The initial shock must have ruptured a gas main, as Shinji was thrown back by an incredible explosion, still managing to stay standing as the entire first story erupted into flames, smoke and fire rolling in a molten wave up the sides of the building...
They hadn't reached downtown yet, the center of the city, but Shinji couldn't imagine, not at this late hour, that there wouldn't be even more people there... they had already passed so many before reaching this point, thankfully, too quickly to cause any real carnage, but he remembered the kind of damage Tokyo-3 had taken, and though Tiphereth was miniscule compared to his old Eva...
//I don't want anyone else to die... why can't SEELE... why can't /I/ figure out a way to stop this?!//
He continued to watch the building burn in front of him... this had to end...
"Shinji? Have you been able to immobilize the Angel?"
He grimaced. He had been chasing it through the downtown area for more than long enough, in his mind, for SEELE to come up with a plan... but there seemed to be /none/, not the first idea of how he could win the fight.
//Just beat up on it, and let it beat up on me...//
He couldn't help the weary bitterness in his reply.
"No... but I think he's /tiring/..."
Shinji swallowed a curse, dodging a sudden blast of hot concrete and near-liquid asphalt, as the Angel's body threw itself out of the fire, landing with a wet, sticky sound on the street.
//Or not...//
Shinji could tell, already, that fire had done little to hurt it, let alone stop it.
//... and it can breathe underwater, and I can barely /hit/ it, if I even /wanted/ to try and beat it into submission... even my energy balls keep missing, and those were at best, partially successful...//
There were more than a few chunks missing from the New York City skyline, as the creature had dodged his blasts again and again, moving with a speed at times too fast for even Tiphereth to track.
Electricity had driven it off, but his suit could only produce one of those mega blasts at a time, and not without leaving him completely helpless for minutes afterward. Shinji had no idea how he might lure it to a power plant, or anywhere else with a ready transformer... no idea how to do much of anything except try to goad it into a fight...
//... which /isn't/ working!//
He bit back another snarl, as, without warning, the Angel took off again, barreling down the street before leaping into the air, poised for only a moment against the side of a building before jumping to another, and another. Shinji followed, easily able to keep up with the pace, although he was now more tired than ever... and even though the creature hadn't hit him as hard since the initial attack, the dark-haired man knew he couldn't go on forever, and probably not as long as the Angel could.
"Toby, do you have /any/ idea how I'm supposed to stop this thing?!"
Of course, he knew where the creature was headed, although the Angel seemed to be a bit confused about where SEELE headquarters, the underground base actually /was/... Shinji wondered if the liquid Adam was suspended in now somehow threw it off the scent...
//Blood in the water...//
/Adam... in your father's hand.../
Shinji pulled his mind from those thoughts just as the Angel turned sharply, sent another black spike hurtling at him, slamming into the concrete wall just above his head as he quickly dropped Tiphereth down, twisting to escape the rock and steel rubble that plummeted after him, dodging with only a few inches to spare, if that...
"We don't know, Shinji... we're still... working on it..."
He tried not to get angry, no doubt everyone in SEELE was focused on this problem now, and hell, with the old Angels it had always been this difficult, almost nothing had ever worked twice, and more than once Shinji thought they had just gotten very /lucky/ coming up with an answer...
/I miss you... Misato... I really do.../
Misato... what would she suggest? How would she win?
//Explosions... not that little one, but something much bigger... like the one Asuka and I took out in the sea... if I could just blow the hell out of it...//
"Remember, Shinji... we need the orb intact."
The dark-haired man fought back a snarl at the calm voice of the gray-haired man... just like his father, demanding things from him but feeling no obligation to provide any solutions, or even possibilities.
//At least my father usually had /some/ idea of what I was supposed to do. If you want that damned orb so badly, /you/ come up here and get it!//
Shinji continued criss-crossing the buildings, always with one eye towards the Angel, trying to ignore the lights of the city around him, the cars beneath, the crunch of glass and the creak of steel, when his step landed too heavily against the side of the building.
He couldn't get it out of his mind, though, that so many people could die here, and that he couldn't begin to try and help them, couldn't think about their safety, not when all his energy had to be focused on the Angel, on fighting the creature in front of him...
//Wait - he's not in front!//
A moment's inattention was all it took, Shinji had no idea how the Angel had managed to get behind him, but all he felt was a crushing blow against his back, his grip loosening immediately as he dropped in a long diagonal to the pavement, far, far below. Concrete didn't forgive the way water did, Shinji felt every inch of the solid ground as he landed hard, plowing a path up in chunks of asphalt as he slowed to a stop.
//... ow.//
Toby was yelling at him again, or perhaps it was Lae, but he could hear neither, the ringing in his ears too loud, bracing himself for the feeling of that crushing weight wrapping itself around him, the darkness descending... until he realized, a few moments later, that it wasn't coming, that the Angel had taken off again.
Wearily, the dark-haired man scraped himself off the pavement, distantly hearing the buzz of a car horn, as his sudden fall to earth had caused a nearby car to run straight into a lamp post, but Shinji had no time to check on the driver, no time to do anything but leap back in the air, desperately trying to close the gap despite his lagging strength.
//It's got to stop... next time, it'll have me...//
Shinji barely noticed where he had chased the Angel to, until he saw that the city had fallen away behind him, that they had reached a bridge. Shinji couldn't remember the name, which structure it was connecting yet another part of the near-island chain that was now New York. The bridge had been created in a suspension style, long iron cables gleaming like candles through his night vision, and though it was late, the headlights of many cars moved in and out of his sight like speeding comets.
He looked up, computer-aided vision zooming in on the swiftly moving figure of the angel, already a third of the way across...
//Damn it!//
Shinji leapt from the building to the sidewalk, and onto the roof of the nearest moving car, using the traffic like skipping stones, barely aware of what he was doing, all his concentration on the black speck still making its way across the bridge...
//Trust the suit... you /have/ to... there's no time...//
Shinji sprung up onto a low rail, two shorter hops bringing him quickly to the top of the first tower. The dark-haired man's mind reeled for a moment as he looked down, eight stories now separating him from the ground, but Shinji gave himself no time to breathe, no time to think...
He leapt, grabbing for the first of the iron suspension cables he could reach, swinging himself up until he was running along the curve of the main cable, and the Angel was in sight.
It looked up, a flash of white in the darkness, and Shinji dove down, back to the safety of the thinner iron strands as another set of dark spikes lunged for him. The darkness twisted around the cables as Shinji wove his way between them, darting, dodging... perhaps, if he could get the creature twisted somehow, tangled...
The Angel was intent on its pursuit, drawing more and more of it's body's mass away from its central core, and Shinji looked up as he pushed off from a cable, a flash of gold catching his eye... something /inside/ the darkness, not that horrible mask, that face, but...
"It's the orb!!! Get it, Ikari! Get it now!!!"
The man in gray howled suddenly, /hungry/, in a way Shinji had never heard before. The dark-haired man could almost feel the other man's hands clenched on the shoulders of Tiphereth, urging him forward... this was /everything/... this was what mattered...
//... but why?!//
Shinji didn't attempt to answer the question, ready to grasp at anything, any hope that this battle could end, and as the dark matter lunged at him again he leapt, not backwards, but up, straight towards the core, towards the golden globe...
So close, so fast - he shot to it like an arrow, the small glowing sphere not bigger than his fist... Shinji reached out, the dark shrinking back, away from the orb, as his fingertips brushed against the shining surface...
The Angel screamed, and before Shinji could react the darkness was upon him, throwing him backward, much too far to reach for an iron cable, no way to stop his free fall...
Shinji landed on his feet, slid back only slightly, his legs nearly bumping the front fender of a car that had already been motionless on the bridge. Traffic had slowed to nearly a dead halt, everyone watching, terrified of the enormous creature that had spread itself out, entwined along the cables at the middle of the bridge...
Shinji heard the shriek of twisting metal above a deep, guttural groan, and a shudder ran through the pavement beneath his feet. A sound broke the air, and it wouldn't have been strange save for the size of it, a tight ping, as if one of his cello strings had snapped... but only if his cello were...
//... eight stories tall.//
Another of the suspension cables snapped, this time he was looking at it, saw it disappear... and just as quickly, another went, and /another/...
Shinji looked up through the windshield of the car he was nearly touching, and into the eyes of a horrified woman, no older than he... cars were honking, driving into each other... some people had abandoned their cars, screaming as they ran... but there was no way many of them would make it, he could already see massive cracks tearing their way through the concrete. The Angel continued to spasm, ripping the bridge out from underneath it as the tangled darkness fought to free itself... Shinji stood transfixed, staring at the terrified girl... her hands were clenched against the steering wheel, and his computer guided vision amplified her eyes, until they were all he could see... brown... a ring of light hazel... so afraid... she was going do die...
"SHINJI!!! GET OUT OF THERE!!!!"
Toby's scream broke him from his trance just as the bridge caved in on itself, cars rolling backwards into a cloud of dust and screaming horns... and before he could think to move, to save her, to do anything... the car had slid back, tipped up into a high diagonal as the pavement buckled up underneath... and the girl was gone.
The concrete fell away from underneath him as Shinji turned, and ran. The pilot leapt up into the cables, feeling more than one disappear from beneath his grasp even as he let go of it, the scream of metal growing louder as the bridge continued to bend, crumble and fall...
He knew he should have been feeling something...
//Shame.//
He should have been able to save that girl.
//Hatred.//
If he had only thought a second ahead, if only he hadn't been Shinji Ikari... Toji, Asuka, Rei... they could have saved her... anyone else could have saved her, but all he could do was let her fall... her eyes...
He felt numb inside, completely empty even though he was running for his life, and all he could see were those depthless brown eyes, some anonymous girl, some innocent who had just died, because he had been the one chosen to protect them... and he /wasn't good enough/...
//I... I...//
"Shinji! Shinji, are you there?!"
Tiphereth landed easily on the other side of the bridge, quickly turned to watch the Angel make its own way across, untangling itself swiftly and easily from the rubble it had left behind as it leapt towards the nearest building, almost soaring across the sky...
//... somebody help me. I can't do this... I can't...//
"... Shinji?" Toby was still calling to him, and if he hadn't been frozen, hadn't been cut cold to the quick, the dark-haired man might have been able to answer her... As it was, all he could do was stare, watch the Angel come back to earth, landing solidly against a distant building...
"Shinji! Answer me!"
//I can't defeat it I can't I-//
Shinji turned sharply, all thoughts interrupted by the sound of a train whistle, far below ground...
The subway.
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"What's going on?!" Lae was watching Shinji's progression on the overhead monitor, and though his pattern of chase hadn't changed, the amount of power he was pushing the system to give him, to catch up, had increased immensely. The scientist quickly tried to regain control, fearing an overload, typing in the codes that would automatically lower the suit's power levels... but nothing happened...
"We've lost control... Toby, what the..."
"The synch ratio's too high..."
Toby murmured almost to herself, typing out a code of her own and quickly finding it just as useless as the other man's.
"I built Tiphereth that way, encoded all the software to adapt to the pilot's desires, so that we'd have to offer less and less secondary support over time... but it was supposed to take months, not days... not /a day/..."
The woman frowned, the sounds of her typing becoming ever more urgent as backdoor after backdoor refused to admit her... and though she could still hear Shinji's breathing, there were no other sounds... and she was afraid.
//... talk to me, Shinji, /please/.//
They had, of course, received all the psychological profiles on their pilot, along with the reasons that he was their last, best hope. The scientist had also been given all the reasons Toby thought they would ever need, for why Shinji Ikari ought not to ever have even /seen/ the inside of a SEELE facility again.
//Watching an entire bridge full of people die... It's bad enough when you're not right /there/ seeing it, when you're not a person who...//
Toby couldn't remember the exact terminology used to describe Shinji Ikari, but it came down to a profile of the last person the scientist would want as her pilot.
Shinji was mentally fragile, prone to bouts of depression, anger, self-doubt... if the right thing set him off, he was a warrior without equal, but at the moment he tapped into that ability, he also wasn't /Shinji/ anymore...
The scientist knew she had been walking a fragile line ever since she had signed on for this project, knew that she had sacrificed some of her own values, because the offer, the chance to work on such a thing as the Tiphereth project was an unparalleled opportunity, and not an offer that would be repeated in her lifetime.
//I took it, and I don't regret it... but I /won't/ lose my pilot like this... I won't.//
"Where are we going, then, Ikari? How are you planning to destroy this enemy?"
Toby scowled, though she did not turn to face her employer. The gray-haired man's words were low, meant for only his own ears, and extremely satisfied, obviously enjoying this fight, completely confident, it seemed, that Shinji would emerge victorious.
Toby couldn't share that opinion, growing more and more fearful for Shinji's safety with every silent moment, sure that the toll of this fight was simply too great on his body and his mind, more than he could bear...
"We have to pull the plug, even if it means finding the Angel all over again afterward. We have to start over, give him a few minutes of breathing room with the suit off."
Lae glanced up at her soft murmur, and she was shocked by the intensity, the honest worry his gaze.
"I /can't/, Toby!" His voice was a soft hiss, as they both fought to avoid catching their superior's attention. "The system won't let me in, not even the emergency overrides! It's adapted itself past that, to accept only /his/ commands, and I can't..."
"Toby..."
The scientist's eyes snapped up at the sound of Shinji's voice. Tiphereth was closing in on the Angel, Shinji dodging another attack with relative ease, barely losing speed as he leapt up to avoid a sweeping blow... though he wouldn't close in, didn't seem to /want/ to attack the Angel directly...
"Shinji, what are you..."
"I need a map of the subway system, /right now/."
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The dark-haired pilot knew Toby had questions, knew she was probably worried about him, but thankfully the woman remained silent, didn't ask anything... and in a few moments he was looking down upon glowing white lines stretched out all around him, superimposed above the city streets, the subway system as it was below the ground... red-lined boxes moved slowly along in several places, slowing, stopping, although it took him a minute to figure out...
//... the subway trains.//
Shinji couldn't help but smile at the scientist's unerring attention to detail.
"Shinji, what are you...?"
"I can't explain... just wait."
//Electricity, energy blasts, both hurt it... I just have to slow it down long enough to reach that orb...//
Shinji kept pace with the Angel, skirting the edge of an invisible line that he knew would goad it into attacking, losing ground whenever this line was crossed, and the creature rounded on him.
//Damn it!//
The dark-haired man swung out, evading another attack that reduced an entire corner of the building behind him to rubble, barely catching the edge of a spire at the top of a nearby church, and quickly swinging around, leaping out into space, catching the extended beam of a partially-build structure, and continuing the chase...
Keeping the distance was hard to manage, as the pilot was also trying to keep an eye on the ground, watching the glowing white lines criss-crossing beneath him... Soon, the Angel would emerge from this section of the city, and they would most likely reach another bridge, but Shinji couldn't wait, couldn't afford to take that chance...
//Wide brown eyes... another person so afraid... another person who /shouldn't have died/...//
Tiphereth followed the Angel's path as its shadow, leaping effortlessly from building to building, watching, waiting... hoping...
//- there!//
Shinji leapt short of his next mark, dropping below where the Angel was hanging, holding on to a building only two from his own, and the pilot pushed off hard as the dark mass leapt again, stretching out for its next target.
The impact was solid, as good as he could hope for, Shinji driving all his weight dead center into the Angel's core, the jets on his heels sparking into life as they rose higher into the air.
Toby was yelling, alarms on the suit were shrieking and pulsing, but the Angel was howling even above that incredible sound, thrashing in his grip, twisting with incredible strength as it tried to wrench itself free.
Shinji refused to let go, even as the Angel finally landed a few blows, two bursts of sharp pain against his side, a sharper, hotter slice just below his shoulder armor...
//Don't let go... don't let go don't let go don't let go...//
The suit and it's captive rose high into the sky, though Shinji saw nothing of the sparkling city below, noticed nothing as he looked back, but the ugly, white web of the subway, the one point that was to be his mark.
//Please... let this work.//
Shinji tipped his heels sharply, twisting his grip as the Angel nearly managed to wrest itself free, but once more he had caught it by surprise, jackknifing into a sharp turn, killing the power only after he had flipped above the Angel, and they were in free fall back toward the earth.
"Shinji, what are you doing?!"
He had no time to explain, no time to do anything but watch from the corner of his eye, as the dark sky was quickly replaced with steel, the buildings rushing past into a blur as they fell. Shinji reignited the jets, pushing power into them, and pressed one hand against the Angel's shining, shifting skin...
//I hope there's no one in the way...//
Shinji yelled, adrenaline surging up inside of him, and struck. Everything the suit could offer him went into the blast, a wall of white hot power tearing through the Angel, down into the street below, and then he and the creature hit, pounding down mercilessly hard through layers of concrete and steel...
... down into the subway, right onto the third rail.
It was a perfect landing, Shinji couldn't have aimed better with a month to plan, and the Angel, already hurting from his pulse cannon, was now in serious trouble.
It was screaming, writhing as its body jerked with the current, but Shinji held on, refused to let go as the darkness bucked and shivered beneath him.
Tiphereth protected the dark-haired man from the shock, though the suit did not like such close proximity to the Angel, warning bells still screaming, the world flashing red and white around him. Shinji focused on his hold, hand now white-knuckled around one of the Angel's limbs, and suddenly felt his grip strengthen, digging /into/ the dark skin, as the electrical shock continued to weaken the creature, and it struggled to hold on to solid form...
"Get the orb, Ikari!"
Gray Suit's order roared through his mind, and the dark-haired pilot didn't think to brace himself, to consider just what he was doing, only acted, immediately plunging his hand down, elbow deep, into the dark body that could no longer shield itself from him.
Shinji's scream was louder than the Angel's was as a surging, burning cold swept over his entire body. The suit seemed useless, unable to protect him, wave after wave of sickening, icy darkness pouring over his body... The dark-haired man fought to let go, but the Angel had somehow found the power once more to keep its shape, and by desperately trying to force him out, had instead managed to trap him inside... He was stuck, screaming, as cold agony shot through his bones, twisted him from the inside out...
"Ikari! The orb! NOW!"
In the midst of such pain, Shinji's mind supplied a new face to that voice - his father was now giving him the order, and his pain didn't matter to Gendo Ikari, the sick, horrible darkness wasn't important, because he had a job to do... and only a child would fail his father, only a coward, a weakling...
//NO!//
Shinji drove his hand deeper, moaning as the pain burst up again, each shock of frozen suffering more vicious than the last, but he would /not/ let go, flexing his fingers as best he could against the writhing darkness still trying to expel him, searching... he had /seen/ it, it had to /be/ here... and finally, the back of his hand brushed against something hard and smooth...
//... the orb!//
Shinji pushed further down, crying out, whimpering as he bit down hard on his lower lip to stifle his cries... and his hand finally wrapped around the globe, holding it tightly...
... and somehow, the pilot managed to pull in a deep breath, fighting against the pull of that darkness, gritting his teeth and twisting... pulling...
//Kill it! Kill it now!//
He screamed again, tearing at the Angel with all his might... and felt the snap, the body shuddering beneath him, and watched as the darkness slid back around his hand, no longer fighting, no longer /living/...
He drew the orb up, fully into the light, the Angel going limp as he looked down on the glowing ball in his hand.
Cheering... Shinji could hear cheering, and though it was at least as loud as all that had come before, this time it sounded distant, nothing but an echo, badly faded compared to the pain spreading throughout his body...
The pilot slowly pulled himself upright, exhausted, swaying, and listening to the last few bubbling moans of the dying creature at his feet.
One or two of the dark appendages flopped a final time, still caught in the electric current, and as Shinji watched, the body began to bubble, hiss and flatten, slowly melting away around the frozen features of the still expressionless white mask...
The pilot turned away, didn't need to keep watching, to know nothing would remain.
"Shinji... Shinji, are you all right?!"
The dark-haired man opened his mouth to reply to Toby, and quickly found he was too tired to speak, the air in his chest seeming heavy, stale, all his muscles overtaxed and aching...
He coughed, staggering back a step until he could lean against the wall.
"I'm fine... Is it over?"
"The Angel's gone, Shinji, you did a fantastic-"
Toby was unceremoniously cut off by higher management.
"We need you to bring the orb back immediately, Mr. Ikari. The suit holds a special container for it, just above your right shoulder."
Shinji sighed, expecting such a response, not thanks, just acceptance... of course, he had done the job he was required to do.
//Of course...//
He was grateful that Toby did not speak again, that he was asked no further questions. Certainly, they would interrogate him thoroughly when he returned to the base... but for now, he needed a break.
The hole for the orb was much like the barrel on his cannon, though Shinji could barely see the seam when he turned his head to look for it, relying on his fingertips to trace the lip of the newly emerged indentation.
He shuddered slightly as he tipped the orb over the edge, trembled harder as he felt it slide down inside his armor, nestling between his shoulder blades. It was an echo of that same cold fire, burning like a phantom against his back, and his skin crawled, unable to draw away. It had been the source of the Angel's power... perhaps even it's soul... and now, that power, a part of that burning light was with him?
//Prometheus... stealing the power of the gods...//
Shinji remembered, knew that for his actions, Prometheus had been punished... for eons...
Thankfully, he had to do nothing more than deliver it, SEELE would destroy it themselves... he was only the messenger...
//... don't shoot the messenger.//
Shinji fought back another shiver of revulsion, trying not to think about it as he leapt up, managing a slow, easy flip onto the subway platform, and immediately jumping back through the hole had left in the street, into the first light of a new day.
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"Shinji...?"
Toby met him halfway down the corridor to the training room, just as he was removing his helmet. The dark-haired man sighed heavily, wiping the sweat from his brow, and where it had pooled at the back of his neck, almost panting as he gratefully took in the cool lab air, irregardless of the smell of chemicals hanging in the air. It felt about the same as leaving the Eva and getting cleaned up had been, except that everything below his neck was still caught in the humid stickiness of the suit, nearly unbearable now that even a small part of him was free.
"Shinji, are you all right?"
He nodded, kept walking with his head down, closing his eyes for a moment against the glare of the fluorescent lights overhead.
"How many people...?"
"Eh?" Toby quirked a confused eyebrow.
"How many people died, on the bridge tonight? How many died in the city?"
Shinji knew he should have felt worse than he did about it, but all he could seem to manage was a detached numbness... nothing felt quite real, not even the still-burning sphere on his back... so close to his skin...
"I..." Toby frowned, eyes darting away from his. "We're not sure yet... but... it wasn't your fault, Shinji, you couldn't have known..."
Shinji cut her off with a slight wave of his hand. "No, no... I don't blame myself."
At the moment, it was the truth, though the pilot realized there was a good chance he was just too tired to feel guilty.
Suddenly, the shuffling sound of several pairs of feet filled the air, and Shinji heard Toby gasp, though he didn't have the strength to look up until a familiar voice barked his name.
"Ikari!"
Gray Suit had brought a mass of soldiers with him, and while their guns were not pointed at him, their presence alone was enough to make the dark-haired man wonder...
//... is he afraid... of me?//
"Do you have the orb?"
Shinji nodded, too tired to do more than jerk his thumb towards the pack on his back, and he stood completely still as a pair of scientists, accompanied by two or three soldiers approached him, carefully opening the suit's back compartment.
The scientist who retrieved the orb did so with a full clean suit on, wearing a pair of white mechanical gloves three times the size of his own hands that enclosed the orb completely. Shinji could hear the tiny motors whirring as the mammoth hands closed around it, felt the weight of it lifted away.
//They're afraid to touch it, but not to let /me/... and Tiphereth's nowhere near as insulated... Just how dangerous /is/ this thing...?//
Shinji was slightly curious, but much too tired to bother with worry, and could only sigh in relief as the chill, burning sensation that had spread all the way through his ribcage since he had received the orb slowly ebbed, draining away to nothing.
What was this orb that gave life to the Dominions? Why was everyone so afraid of it, and why did the man in gray seem so excited to have the orb in his possession?
//... what if... he doesn't destroy it?//
It was a stupid thought... even if it was powerful, what on earth could SEELE do with an Angel's power supply?
//Don't think about that... you might just come up with an answer.//
"Shinji, come on..."
The dark-haired man jerked at the sound of Toby's voice, the touch against his arm, and realized he had almost fallen asleep standing up, that the scientists had disappeared with the orb long ago.
"... let's get you out of that suit."
First, of course, there was a barrage of tests, diagnostic, physical, mental, all of which were easier to do while he was still inside the suit, using its systems to test his responses, to examine him thoroughly.
Other scientists were busy recording the readings the suit had made of the Angel while he had been fighting it, parsing down the entire battle to look for any missing clues, to what might help them against another Angel in the future, and exploring his mistakes during the fight, to ensure they were not repeated...
//No, next time I'm sure we'll make all new ones.//
The dark-haired man went along with all they wanted, too tired to argue, grateful just for the chance to sit down. He watched absently as Toby and Lae wrote furiously on their clipboards, attaching and replacing wires and plugs all over Tiphereth, moving to machine after machine to take new readings. Thankfully, they didn't ask him to put the helmet back on, Shinji didn't know if he could bear it.
//I'll have to... there are what... four of these? Three now...?//
He could fight three more fights like this, couldn't he?
//What if I can't? Or what if there's more? What if SEELE knows, that this is just the beginning? What if...?//
Shinji blinked, looking up, and stopped, as he realized Gray Suit was watching him. He hadn't seen the man come in, hadn't expected...
//stop watching me stop watching me...//
"... external container shows no damage, internal... no damage, but I'd like to run a chemical scan, to see if the orb left any trace residues. Damage to the internal suit is self-repairing on segments 2-B through 6-G... there are, however, a few deeper tears..."
Shinji hissed as a hand pressed against his slashed side, heard Toby murmur something to herself, looking up at him with a worried glance but saying nothing...
"The suit should be fully operational within 12 hours, including test times..." Lae was standing on his left, taking a final few measurements with a small computer plugged into the suit near Shinji's shoulder. "I only hope I can get these kind of results with Geburah."
It wasn't meant for Shinji to hear, he was sure, by the way Lae looked up at him, and paled. The dark-haired man had caught the tone of his voice, ran his weary mind back over the words...
//It sounded like he was talking about... another...//
"What's Geburah?"
His voice was soft, flat, barely a question, but the dark-haired man watched as Lae turned to Toby, and the two shared a long, silent glance, full of information Shinji couldn't decipher...
"Toby." A knot was forming in his stomach, Shinji didn't quite know what it was that he knew, not yet, but it was making him /very/ uneasy.
"Shinji..." Toby looked up at him, uncertainty and an alarming amount of regret and apology shining in her eyes. "I..."
"If he wants to see her, why don't we show him?"
All three of them nearly jumped, the gray-haired man's voice booming out as he approached, and Shinji couldn't help but avert his eyes... there was a sparkle in the other man's, ever since he had been given the first orb, that was nothing but unnerving.
"Come, Mr. Ikari..." The gray-haired man took his arm genially, as if they were old friends. "I'll introduce you to her."