All characters copyrighted by Gainax, not me.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
In this fic, Yui Ikari is NOT part of Unit 1.  If you have a problem with
this, don't read.

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        "What the hell?!" Misato yelled as she finally got her voice back
after Unit 1 revealed itself and attacked the nearest UN Eva.
        "Don't you ever get tired of that phrase, Katsuragi?" Kaji asked
quietly in her ear
        "How's this possible?" she asked Maya, completely ignoring Kaji and
his stupid question.
        "I don't know!  That shouldn't be possible!" Maya answered.
        "Best guess!" Fuyustuki ordered from beside Commander Ikari.  He
glanced down at the Supreme Commander, only to see him stare at the screen
intently.
        "Best guess?  Somehow our loss of power, and possible something the
UN did, caused our sensors to be reduced to line-of-sight transmission,"
Ritsuko answered for Maya, who had looked completely dumbfounded.
        "What?" Misato asked, totally stumped.  "Is that possible?"
        "Apparently," was the answer.  Then all eyes turned toward the
screen to watch the Fight for the Planet.
        All hell was breaking loose.  Unit 1 landed on Unit 8, knocking
both of them to the ground, with Unit 1 on top.  Holding Unit 8's arms with
it's own, it was reduced to kicking, which did next to no damage.
Realizing this, Unit 1 let go of Unit 8's arms and put it's hands together
for a double-fisted punch.  Raising it's interlocked hands high above it's
head, Unit 1 narrowed it's eyes for a fraction of a second before it
brought both hands down and smashed Unit 8's grinning face.  A crack
developed in the hideous visage, but Shinji didn't let up, he hit it again,
and again, and again.  After the third hit, the face shattered.  On the
fourth, blood and brains flew everywhere, coated everything.
        Misato reacted the same as nearly everyone else in the room.  She
closed her eyes and silently swore.  It seemed Shinji was back.  But this
was a Shinji she'd never seen before, never even suspected existed.
        Shinji dived off the destroyed Unit into a somersault and rolled
away from the body.  He turned around, only to see two more Eva's running
at him, blades held high, ready to strike.  Shinji dodged to the side,
slipping inbetween two buildings, waited for a few heartbeats, and then
lept back into the main road.  As he had expected, most of the enemy had
started to run around the block to get to the other side.
        Seeing an oppertunity, Shinji leaped into the air, flipping head
over heels, and kicked one of the Unit's holding Asuka with both feet.  It
was the same attack that Unit 3, as the Thirteenth Angel, had used on him
just before he left.  With one of it's arms free, Unit 2 twisted around and
attacked her other captor.  Only after she broke free, did Asuka stop to
think about the turn of events.
        'Shinji!  He's alive!!' she thought, so happy that she thought
she'd cry.  Never before had she felt such a rush of feeling.  But, she
couldn't revel in it as she was preoccupied with staying alive and helping
Unit 1 out.  The two Nerv Eva's exchanged a brief glance before they turned
back-to-back to each other.
        "How's your power holding up?" Shinji asked Asuka.  Asuka did a
brief double-take as she heard his voice.  It was his normal one, but with
an... edge to it.  It was hard, metallic, almost electronic.  It took her
but a moment to recover and answer.
        "Fourty-three seconds."
        "Get to some backups!  I'll take care of things here and join you!"
        "What?!  You can't be serious!  You against the five of them!"  She
couldn't believe what he was saying.  He was nuts!  "Even the three of us
couldn't stop _one_ of them!  You'd ne-"
        "Just do it!  You're no help to anyone if you run out of power!"
He knew that the best way to get her to do something was to attack her
pride, to attack her ability to fight.
        "What?!" Asuka yelled back, indignant.  "Says who?  I can help i-"
        "Asuka!" Misato cut in.  "Do as he says, that's an order!  Get to a
new set of batteries!"
        "Bu-"
        "JUST DO IT!" Misato and Shinji yelled at the same time.  Asuka
cringed in the Entry Plug for a moment, thinking that her ears would never
forgive her.
        "Sheesh, they didn't have to yell," Asuka muttered to herself as
she turned and ran to a backup building.  As soon as she had turned to
leave, Shinji focused all of his attention on Unit 5.  'I'll deal with it,
soon enough.  It's weilding the Sacred Spear,' Shinji thought, and then
paused for a moment.  '"Sacred Spear"? Why did I call it that?' he asked
himself, before answering it himself.  'Because that's what it's called.'
        Unit 5 tunred it's head to look at it's four remaning teammates.
They glanced back and nodded.  They again divided into two groups of two,
with Unit 5 holding back, not moving.  'Like it was a general, observing
the battle,' Shinji thought, and then asked himself where that had come
from.  'Well, it's true,' he argued with himself.
        Two of the Eva's charged Unit 1, the other two ran off the camera
range, presumably to go after Asuka.  "Asuka!  Two Eva's inbound from the
south!" Misato yelled.
        "I see them, Misato!" Asuka yelled back.  "Sheesh," she muttered to
herself.  "First they yell at me to change batteries, then they yell at me
to be ready to fight.  I really wish they'd make up their minds.  And stop
yelling too, that would be nice."  Asuka looked up just in time to see one
of the enemy Eva's run at her from the side.  She turned to face it full on
and felt a sharp pain in her back.  Turning around see what happened, Asuka
saw the other white Eva with it's huge blade stuck in her Eva's back.
She'd been so intent on fighting Unit 9 that she never noticed Unit 10
sneeking up behind her to attack.
        Unit 2 reached for the blade and managed to wrench it out of Unit
10's grip.  It pulled the blade out of it's body, raised it high, and
brought it down on it's previous owner.  Unit 10 managed to move enough to
the side that the blade sliced into it's shoulder, not it's head.  It was a
deep cut, but the blade got stuck in the wound, so Unit 2 had nothing to
defend itself with as Unit 9 attacked from behind, scoring a glancing blow
to the back Unit 2's right leg.
        The pain made Asuka let go of the butterfly grips and reach down to
her own leg.  Eva Unit 2 went still.  The other Eva's did not.  A flurry of
attacks lashed out at Unit 2, it's pilot forgetting out her leg and
starting to worry about the pain that was now shooting through out her
body.
        With their prey incapacitated, Units 9 and 10 paused for a moment
to raise their heads to the sky and the quickly approching storm.  Off in
the distance, several bolts of lighting struck ground, creating a lightshow
that, except for the circumstances, would have been beautiful.  The
downpouring rain increased in vigor and redoubled in power.  If nothing was
done, it looked like the entire city of Tokyo-3 would be submerged in a
vast flood.  The city would join others at the bottom of a sea, in effect,
wiping the world clean of it's presence.
        Eva's 9 and 10 looked across the city to Unit 5, who lumbered
around a corner, coming into view.  It nodded, and then looked to the other
two, who'd stopped in mid-charge of Unit 1 to look back.  Unit 5 nodded
again, then looked up to the sky.  A red line appeared along the "mouth"
part of it's serpentine head.  Then it's jaw cracked open like Unit 1 and
it screamed.  It wasn't at all like Unit 1's scream.  This one was more...
evil, it was a sound that made every human who heard it to cover their ears
in fear and loathing.  After a few moments, Unit 5 stopped and the sound
ceased.  Misato took her hands away from her ears and looked over at
Ritsuko.
        "W... what... the hell...?" she tried, but just couldn't finish the
sentence.
        "'What the hell was that'?" Ritsuko asked her friend with a small
smile that seemed out of place given the situation they were in.  "I th-"
Ritsuko started to answer, but was cut off by the other four white Eva's
opening their own jaws and answer Unit 5's howl with their own.  Once
again, the message was pure evil and caused everyone who heard it to cover
their ears again.  Then Unit 5 screamed again, it's voice joining the
others.
        Maya, hoping to avoid seeing the sight, turned her eyes down to her
screen.  The data slowly scrolling up the screen made her blood run cold
and her pulse quicken.  "This data... it can't be right!  It just can't!"
she screamed.  All eyes turned to her, but she didn't stop yelling
histerically.  Suppressing a sigh, Ritsuko stalked over to her underling,
grabbed the chair, and turned Maya to face her.
        "What's this about?!" she demanded.  Maya only looked at her for a
moment, but didn't stop screaming.  "Get a hold of yourself!" Ritsuko
yelled, but Maya didn't listen.  Looking helpless, she looked over her
shoulder only to see Kaji let go of Misato's hand, come to Maya's station
with three quick strides, grab Maya by her shoulders, stand her up, and
backhand her.  Hard.  After a brief gasp, Maya fell silent.
        "Now that I have your attention," Kaji said, his voice low and
dangerous.  "Perhaps you'll share with the rest of us whatever caused you
to scream."  She only pointed to her screen as an answer.  Ritsuko and Kaji
both turned their heads at the same time.  They both got to the same
conclusion at the same time.  They turned their heads back and looked at
each other, confirming what the data had told them.
        "Well?" Fuyutsuki demanded.  "What's going on?"
        "Sir!  B-" Ritsuko started, but was cut off by the main screen
going black, then covered in red hexagons reading "Alert".  The entire room
was bathed in an eerie red light.
        "Blue pattern detected!" Ritsuko shouted over the multitude of
voices that erupted the moment the red hexagons appeared on the screen,
finishing her earlier thought.
        "What?!  Where?" Fuyustuki cursed.  "Great," he muttered.  "This
gets better and better.  You knew this would happen?" he accused the
Commander.
        "No."
        "No?"
        "No.  I did not."
        "Then that means..." he trailed off.
        "It means, Professor, that we now stand a very real chance of
loosing everything," Commander Ikari said, then he raised his voice to give
orders.  "Get that alert off.  Bring up both of our Evangelions on a split
screen," he ordered.
        The images that were displayed made most of the people in the
Central Dogma want to curl up into a ball and give up the fight.  Unit 2,
struggling to stand on it's good leg, appearing to look at the demonic show
in horror.  Unit 1 was just standing there, not moving at all.
        "Misato!" Shinji yelled.  It was the first time they'd heard his
voice by itself, and it was the first time they'd noticed the difference in
his voice.  Everyone in the room reacted differently.  Misato blinked at
the anger more than the metallic edge.  Ritsuko narrowed her eyes, fearing
for the worst.  Kaji tried to think of a way that that could've happened,
but soon gave up.  Commander Ikari sat up a little straighter in his chair,
his curiosity aroused.
        "And so the plot thickens," he whispered quietly to himself.
        "Misato!" Shinji repeated.  "What's going on?"
        "There's an angel here somewhere!" she responded, then yelled to
Makoto and Shigeru, "Where is it?"
        "Unknown!  It seems to be coming from somewhere near the UN's
Eva's!  I can't loc- no!  Wait!  It's coming _from_ the Eva's!"
        "What!?" Misato, Shinji, and Asuka yelled at once.  For Shinji he
had a few moments of remebering what happened three years ago with Unit 3.
But those memories were quelled with the knowledge he'd done what was best
for humanity as well as Unit 3.  For some reason, he knew that Unit 3 had
begged and begged for Unit 1 to kill him.  And so, Shinji had givin him his
wish.
        "Major, sensors are now detecting multiple patterns!"
        "What?!" Ritsuko yelled, beating Misato by a heartbeat.
        "And not only that, but of the five patterns detected, they're all
identical," Shigeru informed.
        "What does it mean?"
        "It means that we have five, identical, blue patterns!  Locations?"
Ritsuko shouted.
        "No idea!  They can't be localized!"
        "I think I can hazard a guess," Shinji said.  He'd been listning in
on the whole conversation, and Nerv's data provided the last peice of a
puzzle that had been nagging the back of his mind.
        "You don't mean...?" Misato asked, her voice trailing off as the
implications set in.
        "I do indeed," Shinji said, then paused for a moment before
continuing.  "The reamining Eva's, 5, 9, 10, 11, and 12, are all Angels."
        "How's that possible?"
        "I'm not sure.
        "How'd you know?"
        "I'm not sure of that either.  But one thing I'm sure of, is that
there are no people piloting them."
        "What!  Dummy Plugs?!" Ritsuko yelled, incredulous.
        "Not Dummy Plugs.  They're Angels, they're autonomous.  The UN
never had control of them in the first place."
        "How do you know any of this?" Misato again asked.  The voice of
Commander Ikari prevented Shinji from responding.
        "Leutenant," he said, indicating Maya, "take your place.  Run a
systems analysis on Unit 1.  Find out what's going on."  Maya only looked
up at him, her mouth working up and down wordlessly.  "That's an order!" he
said, raising his voice slightly.  She turned and sat down at her station,
her hands shaking slightly, but the data scrolling nonetheless.
        "You shouldn't be so hard on her, Ikari," Fuyustuki murmered.
        "Actions like that are unacceptable, especially at a time like
this," came the steely reply.
        "It had to happen eventually, given the circumstances; someone had
to crack.  Would you've preffered it to have been Major Katsuragi, or
Doctor Ikagi perhaps?"
        "That's not funny."
        "It wasn't meant to be.  I'm just glad that the damage was containable."
        "Sir!  Unit 1's synch ratio!  It's..." Maya trailed off as the
implications set in.
        "It's what?" Misato demanded.  Instead of responding, Maya simply
typed a few commands, and several glowing numbers appeared on a side
screen.  They were Unit 1's sych ratio.
        The numbers read "362%".
        Everyone sucked in a breath.  Especially Ritsuko and Fuyustuki, who
knew what happened the last time someone had acheived this high a
synchronisation with an Evangelion.
        'Dammit!  Not again!' Fuyustuki thought, then glanced down at
Commander Ikari.  The man looked like some artist's sculpture.  He didn't
change expression, he didn't blink, he didn't do _anything_.
        "I know this," Shinji said, finally answering Misato's question.
"That sound is beginning to piss me off!" he shouted.  On the screen, Unit
1, it's jaw still open, let another roar loose.  It raised it's head to sky
and screamed.  The noise, while nowhere near as unsettling as the other
Eva's had been, still made Misato shiver and tears to form in her eyes.
        But the worst part of it all, was that in the middle of the scream,
Unit 1's voice started to sound less and less mechanical.  It gained an...
organic edge to it.  It started to sound like a person's voice that was
hard, had an electronic tinge to it.  Misato soon placed it.
        It was Shinji's voice.

end

Cory Holmes
gholmes@rodeo.sd27.bc.ca