Evangelion 2.0 (Game Thread)

[DragonofDecay86]

"Dammit Tammy..." Gale said, watching Tammy and her unit sprint out of the AT field toward the elevator hanger that the angel had disappeared down. Explosions racked the evangelion, yet she barreled on ignoring the pain Gale knew that Tammy had to be feeling.

Gale could only watch as Tammy plummeted over the side of the shaft and down into the shadows, the sound of crunching metal rang out in the geofront as Tammy's unit smashed into the elevator shaft. Gale hissed impatiently, taking a brief second to assess the situation.

"I'm not going to lie to you. Zophiel excels in taking over nearby technology and the turrets are under its control. We're going to try and shut them down but in the mean time, move forward and hunt down Zophiel. The faster you complete the objective, the less damage the turrets will inflict."

Gale recognized the Colonel's voice on the comm and nodded, checking his clip before jamming it back into his weapon and glancing at the other pilots.

43/50 rounds.

"Unit-39 follow me. We're advancing behind unit-73 to finish off this angel before it gets any deeper in the base." Gale said, and without waiting for a reply he bolted out from the protective AT field put up by unit-13B. The immediate response was more than Gale had bargained for. Explosions ripped apart the geofront as Gale tried to make his way to the launch bay. Rock chunks and shrapnel tore into the armor plating covering Gale. The explosions rocked his Eva, yet Gale kept his cool and pushed through, using his knowledge and training with the other neo-spartans to predict where the missiles would impact to the best of his ability. As Gale drew nearer to the launch bay, he ejected his umbilical cord, starting the timer that marked when he would run out of his fighting time.

"HQ, this is unit-75. I'm in pursuit of the angel now."

Gale felt an explosion right along his side, yet he didn't stop long enough to look and see what the damage was. Gale made it to the launch bay just in time to see gun flare below in the darkness. Gale shoved his rifle away and drew his progressive knife, jumping down from the ledge without a second thought. Gale got his knife ready, aiming at the outline below in the gunfire that he identified as the angel.

You won't be going any further now. Gale thought, the darkness rushing up to meet his readied blade.

 

[Asclepion]

Nerv's defenses blasted against Big Roger's A.T. Field. The Evangelion, it's enormous body clad in an equally sized power-armored Megaframe, held steadfast. The impenetrable defense of the A.T. Field withstood all of the firepower being thrown at it, and Mark's A.T. manipulation projected Spread Patterns around all of the Evas near him, appearing and blocking the attacks.

Jacoline Van Niekerk voice thundered over the command center.

"All security personnel, seal the doors to the elevator systems, by HAND IF YOU MUST! Any obstacle you put in this Zophiel's way buys us that much more time to defeat this bastard! YOU hear me!? CLOSE THE DAMN DOORS, SEAL OUR EVAS INSIDE, THEY CAN HANDLE THEMSELVES! IF YOU SEE ONE FALL, GET OUR PILOTS OUT OF THEIR TUBES AND GET THEM TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM. Do not, I REPEAT, do NOT engage the Angel."

The battle was dire. Staff everywhere were attempting to get HQ back under Nerv's control. Their technology bowed to it. The Angel was coming down here. After that, it will proceed to crash through walls and strip away security systems until it reaches its goal. If Zophiel is allowed to hack the Magi supercomputers themselves and wreck havoc that way, shutting down key Evagnelion systems via remote, or activating self destruct timers on one or more Evangelions, or maybe even the Base of Operation's itself!

But Tammy was racing behind it.

With a massive jump she cleared Unit-13B's A.T. Field. Her armor was beset by autocannons and high energy lasers, but she weathered it and propelled herself forward. She sent her Evangelion sailing off the edge of the launch elevator, making a crater in the opposite side and making an aerial fall towards it, rifle in hand. The Eva's other arm drove into the wall, slowing her enough to brace her feet and flip around to face the floating, descending Angel. She held out the rifle with one hand, nearly point blank to Zophiel's exposed core.

"Gotcha,"

The Angel's core explodes in a flash. She flips her Evangelion against the side as Unit-75 fell onto the Angel's shattering body, riding it's storms of energy all the way down and ramming it into the floor of the Eva hangar.

 

[Terratina.]

V-3 followed Unit-75 through the hail of missiles, but stopped as he saw an explosion in the shaft. That only meant one thing, either the Angel or the Evas down there were dead. Seeing as the Angel had been given a beating, the clone was more than willing to bet that it was the Angel that had been killed. That, and the fact that HQ would notify the pilots at once if it got any nearer to Central Dogma. The synch-ratio sank as Todestrieb saw that it was over. And with, the clone made his way back.

 

[Dogmatic99]

Was that it? Was it over?

"How much of it did I miss?" Jamie gasped in hushed tones.

Yet again the others had dived into the fighting and taken down another angel while he was... what was he doing?! Trying to set up his equipment and wheel around the place trying to dodge missiles and shells full of death between bouts of hiding behind the bigger American EVA's ETA field. What was he doing here? He didn't even have the excuse of dealing with other targets this time.

By the time it was all done all that was left for Jamie to do is to slink around the back of the group on four wheels at a loss for what to do with 67'd head hung low. Eventually he went about unplugging and cleaning himself off in quiet despondency.

 

[Mr.Ivebeenframed]

Avoiding complete destruction once more, Amira breathed out a sigh of relief. The command room was filled with cheering and nervous laughter as Zophiel was taken down in the hangar of all places. It was a little too close for comfort for Amira but she didn't want to spoil the others' mood. They had averted disaster but at the cost of two downed EVA's one of which was taken down by their own Entrapment system and the other damaging the launch bay. The good thing was none of them died and the equipment could be replaced unlike these pilot's lives. Whether they felt like they did something or not, they still saved the day once more and once more Amira returned to her training regiment.

The sun could be seen lurking on the horizon as the smoke of the attack fell out of the tunnels in wisps. She surveyed the damage as she jogged past the clean-up crews and repairmen who were already at work in fixing the damage done a few measly hours after the attack had been repelled. Zophiel had just been beaten by the skin of their teeth and Amira worried what the next attack would bring let alone how the pilots would react. She wondered whether more team-building exercises were necessary for these pilots to succeed with the next Angel or perhaps single-unit operations so that they could better think by themselves instead of having to rely on set leaders as she wanted. There would be another day for when the Angels would come back and more deadly than Zophiel and Kushiel combined but for now the pilots were heroes.

 

[Terratina.]

With Unit-39 docked, its pilot emerged out of the entry plug and went about his usual routine of getting to the showers, getting out of the plug suit, showering, getting clothes of the locker, putting on those clothes and then returning to his assigned home - if there wasn't any debriefing, that is. In the middle of that, V-3 couldn't help but notice the expression on Jamie's face. Wasn't it V-3's duty as a roommate and teammate to provide support? But, he needed to figure out what Jamie's body language and facial expression meant. He thought back to a series of cards he was shown, some with emoticons on them, some with stickmen, all labelled. That was when that person back in NERV's headquarters in Germany decided to explain the strange quirks of human behavior to the clone, after he had made some 'inappropriate comments' that demonstrated V-3's ignorance of the topic.

A mental slideshow of the different cards dominated his mind. V-3 compared them to Jamie's appearance until one matched. It was an image of a card with a crudely drawn stickmen with his head low next to letters that spelled out Niedergeschlagenheit. Afterwards, the clone looked up the definition of the word in his mental dictionary and considered the dilemma of how to fix things - a difficult problem for somebody who had never felt dejected. Nevertheless, the shower helped him think. Why was the boy upset to begin with? The Angel had been defeated, other people would be celebrating the victory. He thought and thought, however the answer escaped him. Still, he came with a plan: ask Jamie himself about it - questions led to answers after all. The clone shut off the shower, got out, got dry and got dressed. Then V-3 sought Jamie out and asked him, "What is wrong?"

 

[DragonofDecay86]

Gale stood in the shower, the hot water pouring down onto his body and sliding to the drain below. The battle replayed in Gale's head as he stood there relaxing. Gale could still feel the angel and his Eva, the crunch and snap of sinew as Gale landed on the defeated angel and smashed it even further into the ground. Gale would have shuddered at the sudden sensation in his feet, yet the warmth of the water prevented it. Gale sighed and flipped the water off, heading back into the locker room and grabbing his clothes to change into them. Gale left his plugsuit hanging in the locker, shutting it quietly and locking it up, taking his time to wander through HQ toward the cafeteria. There was no point not grabbing food since the sun seemed to be rising on the skyline and Gale was sure that he wouldn't have a chance to get sleep again until nightfall.

There were mechanics and N.E.R.V personnel making their way through the halls like ants in a hive this morning, making it somewhat difficult to push his way to the cafeteria through all the commotion. None of the people he passed seemed to have time for him, and that was just how Gale preferred it as he finally made his way into the cafeteria.

Gale made his way to a table a few minutes later, having put two pancakes and some eggs on his plate for breakfast that morning. Nothing fancy, and the pancakes were a bit on the burnt side, but Gale ate them anyway having had much worse food than this during his training. Gale sat near the back of the cafeteria, nibbling at his food and pushing it around on his plate more than actually eating it as he watched people meander into the cafeteria only to rush back out as they were called into duty.

 

[Dogmatic99]

"What is wrong?"

"Oh, hey Ortwin." Jamie startled slightly, taken out of his own little miserable world and back into the here and now. "It's nothing, don't worry about it." He said, trying to put on a brave face.

He didn't want to come across as a whiny to the older more experienced pilots. Except... they were more experienced... which meant that they all must have had new moments like this too right?

"It's just... how did you get so good at this? This is the second time I've had to fight something in 67 and I just feel like I'm slowing everyone down."

 

[Terratina.]

"...I just feel like I'm slowing everyone down."

That response left the clone even more puzzled. Good? Being a pilot wasn't about being good. But how to explain that to Jamie? As a Manufactured pilot, V-3 couldn't really think of a life without Eva. He was created in order to pilot and piloting was all he knew. Jamie, on the other hand, was a Prodigy - a natural. The fact that the boy could pilot an Eva with hardly any training or experience was a miraculous thing in itself. Besides, humanity didn't need 'good' pilots, they just needed pilots. However, V-3 wasn't sure that was the right response. In fact, he wasn't sure what the right response was to begin with. The only comfort the clone had was that as a Pointman, or even as an Eva pilot, he was used to taking risks and accepting the consequences.

And so he took the gamble, "Do not concern yourself with that; you pilot Eva, that is all that is asked of us pilots."

 

[Dogmatic99]

"Do not concern yourself with that; you pilot Eva, that is all that is asked of us pilots."

"But what's the point of piloting an EVA if I can't fight angels? If I can't do anything to help then there's no pint in me being here, I may as well go home if all I can do is make my EVA drive around looking weird." He gave out a huff of exasperation. "I don't know. Maybe I just need more training or something."

 

[EnigmaticSevens]

Iggy awoke to the thump thump thump of a ceiling fan. Soft white sheets, soft mattress, soft pillow, a hospital bed. For a moment, Iggy wondered what he was doing in the infirmary, then he tried to move, and he remembered....

~~~~

The Angel dropped it's cloaking field and stared down 77 for a moment. It hadn't looked like much, more like a little black trinket, a child's clockwork toy. Iggy could feel his Eva's wariness, harmless as the thing appeared, this being was still an Angel, underestimation was a surefire road to death.

The ground came to life, a sudden jungle of wires and snares that ended in points of white hot pain. Some small, rational part of Iggy's mind identified the sudden activation of the Ensnarement system, knew that dozens of cables tethered to harpoons were impaling his Eva's body. The Angel's doing, it had to be the Angel, anything else was the worse sort of betrayal and Iggy couldn't fathom it. He'd spoken with the Boss Lady, seen the look in her eyes, knew she wouldn't waste him like that. So this was the Angel's trick, and an Angel's trick was always multi-pronged.

It whispered, the Angel whispered, spoke lies and seditions and tried to woo 77, tried to turn its wayward cousin and free it from the grip of the small fleshy thing that rode in its spine. Iggy heard the whispers too,, could feel them crawling down the back of his neck, and he raged. Raged against the words and the treason. 77 bucked against his control, the frantic tearing at the shared nervous system nearly as painful as the Ensnarement system. Iggy rode the pain, mastered it, bit into it and held the squirming, wriggling angry raw nerve down with his teeth. Somewhere in the pain and the madness, Iggy found his demon and spoke to it. He never spoke the words, these words weren't sound wave, weren't truly even thoughts, they came from someplace deeper, and rang with the harmonics of an AT Field.

Stop.

No stop! Never stop! Free!

Mine.

No!

Yes.

Mine? My flesh thing?

Yours. You are mine, I am yours.

Together?

Together. Now sleep.

Unit 77's frantic thrashing slowed and eventually ground to a complete halt. The agony faded somewhat, and Iggy was vaguely aware of the lights of the entry plug darkening, the HUD shutting down, the displays going black. He's almost lost the Wendigo there for a moment, the beast so eager to snap at its cages. For now, Iggy figured the safest option was to tranquilize it and let the others handle the battle. Darkness washed over the EVA and its pilot, and with umbilical cord still attached and batteries still fully charged, Unit-77 powered down.

~~~~

Inducing a sort of coma in an Eva had been rather more taxing than Iggy anticipated. His body was still on fire from the sensory overload, but he figured that would fade in time, it typically did. But beneath the fire, a fatigue lingered, a persistent weariness, as though his body were heading the same commands he'd given the EVA. Well, he was alive, this was an infirmary, they must've won, maybe he'd earned a little nap.

 

[Terratina.]

"...I don't know. Maybe I just need more training or something."

The gamble hadn't paid off. The reply only the clone more unsure - the ragtag group of pilots were a team, albeit a ragtag one. It did not matter who crushed the core, or how, only that had been crushed. V-3 himself had been on the sidelines in the fight with the Angel that came before Zophiel, but he did not complain. Why didn't Jamie see that as long as the pilots came back alive, and that the Angel was destroyed, the mission a success? The clone gave up, he was clearly not qualified in giving emotional support, regardless of his duty. He conceded defeat and ended the conversation.

"Then train; simply talking will achieve nothing." V-3 stated.

 

[Dogmatic99]

"Then train; simply talking will achieve nothing."

It was stern tough love but it was what Jamie needed to hear. The German pilot may not have been a perfect conversationalist when they were off duty but he told it like it was!

"You're right Ortwen!" Jamie leaped to his feet as if he was about to charge into battle all over again. Images of propaganda posters and the mantra of all the adverts telling people to do their part. Here was Jamie, with a chance to do more for humanity than anyone could ever think of doing and here he was stewing in moodiness.

"Starting tomorrow I'm going to train twice as much!" And he was going to become the greatest pilot ever!

 

[hiei82]

D-18 awoke in the infirmary. Whatever the angel had hit her with had knocked her out for some time and left her in an unknown situation. Even now, she couldn't feel her hands or feet and her limbs themselves were still beyond her ability to move. Given the lack of sirens, she assumed the fight was over. Given she was in a bed, she assumed the other pilots had managed to kill it.

"Objective complete" she said aloud to the empty room. She continued to stay in the bed, awaiting a medical professional or NERV officer to clear her to leave.

 

[Pappytech]

The ice-cold water fell over Tammy, eliciting a series of shivers and goosebumps as it ran down her shoulders, back, and legs. Any other day, and the young pilot would've complained about the agonizing temperature, but today she was actually grateful for the freezing shower. It gave her something else to focus on, if only for a few minutes.

Something other than her role in ending the last battle.

A shudder that was only partially related to cold water ran through the girl. It wasn't that she was scared or worried or anything; she had helped take down an Angel that had penetrated all the way into the Geofront for crying out loud! There was no way that couldn't be a good thing!

But still... Where had she gotten that crazy burst of energy? She had been safe behind Mark's A.T. Field, after all; she could've just stayed there until somebody else had taken care of the turrets, or until the Angel had lost control of them. There hadn't been any immediate need for her to risk herself or Unit 73 like she had.

So why had she? What exactly had driven her to risk life and limb just to take the Angel down, when there were plenty of other pilots who were more capable than she was?

She wasn't worried that she had helped kill the Angel. She was worried that a part of her had enjoyed doing it.

...It couldn't hurt if she stayed in the shower for a bit longer, right?

 

[Terratina.]

"Starting tomorrow I'm going to train twice as much!"

V-3's mind was all question marks, but what worked, worked. He gave a brief nod and went about doing other things, such as getting that wet hair of his dry. V-3 briefly wondered whether any pilots would be called up, like the last time. However, since it wasn't obvious whether there would be a debriefing or not, there wasn't much to do except wait. Not to mention get his hair dry. Soaked collars could be particularly... undesirable.

 

[Asclepion]

As befits the gravity and danger of such a task as keeping the world safe, Nerv HQ has begun an all-branch "Social Night" to allow the team to mingle, and also because they need a break from all the "team assignments" along with stopping another Angel.

As such, each individual pilot has been ordered to attend, while a team of Nerv staff prepare a space for the "Dance Party". It is held outside the Base of Operations, on a platform overlooking HQ's surrounding fields. The starry sky filtered through the large panels of the Geofront, illuminated by the glow of the base.

 

[Mr.Ivebeenframed]

The news of a "Social Night" definitely turned heads when Amira ordered such an event to take place but to Amira, it was all the more necessary. She learned in Isreal that despite all the training, despite all the hardships, there was still a person beneath all the Kevlar and Amira didn't want machines. She wanted people caring about each other. The lack of fear for one's death was what she once admired but it was in her family that she saw the fear of death being more powerful. Why fight to die than fight to live? These pilots are only children and she wanted them to fight for the future, not to die in the present. Amira hoped that she could get that point across today.

The designated platform was spacious among other things. There was a "square" within the platform dedicated for the dance floor. The dance floor was flanked by chairs on parallel sides with some distance away so that the pilots wouldn't bump into it. The other two remaining sides were dedicated to a table for food and a "DJ" although the DJ was just a computer hooked to a few amps. This was a base after all, and not a night club. The pilots could request the music of their choosing but as of now, the only music blaring was generic radio songs. The table for food hosted a surprising range of snacks and drinks. From one side to the other, there was chips, all kinds of sodas,a punch bowl with its red liquid contents reflecting the night sky, popcorn, pretzels, and a snack bowl dedicated to sugary chocolates along with candy. The entire set-up was akin to a middle school dance but they made due with what they had.

Now Amira awaited the pilots who have been ordered to this platform post-haste and enjoyment was a requirement.

 

[hiei82]

D-18 made her way to the so called social night. She hadn't any idea what it was supposed to be about, but it didn't matter since she'd been ordered to attend. She was wearing a simple dark-red dress as she had been told was expected - not that she understood why.

She quickly greeted the officers she encountered and made her way toward the food table. "Objective: Enjoy Dance. Commence Operation Enjoy Dance." she muttered to herself, taking a a pretzel.

 

[Pappytech]

Some almost painfully generic music filled Tammy's ears as she walked across the Geofront, unenthusiastically admiring the somewhat gaudy, out of place ornaments that had been liberally strewn around Nerv headquarters. Though the scenery itself was largely the same, the atmosphere of the whole area was shockingly altered by the addition of a few lamps and the like.

Tammy vaguely remembered a similar event held way back in primary school, something the teachers had called a "sock-hop". They had insisted on putting on some old-timey music and dressing the kids up in clothes from a good forty years ago, but back then the awkward goofiness had only added to the fun. She and Thomas had actually had a lot of fun, running around and checking out all the games and side-stands, though they hadn't done much dancing. Or socking or hopping, for that matter.

This dance though... To, Tammy, it seemed like it had certainly managed to capture all of the awkwardness of the old primary school event, but had completely missed the silliness and the fun. Instead, it almost felt like another training exercise, poorly hidden beneath the disguise of mandatory fun. Did Nerv honestly expect a bunch of kids, most of whom had spent their whole life in military training, to relax and have fun at a thing like this? Well, Iggy probably would, but Tammy didn't think there was an event that Iggy couldn't enjoy.

Still, she'd at least tried to dress the part. Though none of her regular clothes really suited the occasion, a brief (and somewhat embarrassing) shopping trip into London-2 had let Tammy find a simple, but nice looking, navy blue dress and some matching shoes. A slim, somewhat tarnished necklace hung around her neck, a memento her mother had given her before she'd left home. Her wrists, however, were bare; Tammy knew that corsages were typically worn to dances, but hadn't known if she was supposed to buy it herself or get... Or get...

[small]Or get a date to buy her one.[/small]

So she'd just decided to forget about the whole thing. Nobody would get mad just because she wasn't wearing a few flowers, right?