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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        468%
        That's what Shinji's synch ratio with Unit 1 had jumped to in the
last few minutes.  It had started just after Asuka had been ejected from
Unit 2.  It rose sharply from it's earlier value all the way to 390%,
appeared to level off, and then jumped again to it's new reading and
leveled off.
        Ritsuko couldn't keep the horror from showing on her face.  'If his
synch ratio goes much higher...' she started thinking, but then stopped.
Feelings have no place on the battle field.  'Moods are for cattle and
love, not fighting,' she chided herself, remebering the quote from that old
movie.  She tried, but couldn't recall it's name, or anything else about it
other than the quote.
        'Major Katsuragi looks like she's either going to pass out or just
fall to the ground', Fuyutsuki idily thought.  'Not that there's much
difference,' he added.  And he was right.  Misato's face was going white
with the realization that Shinji was out there, all on his own, against
eight enemies, one of whom had the Lance of Longinus.  If he got hit with
it...  it would be over.  All of it.  There would be nothing left to do,
the UN would've won.  'Seele would've won,' he corrected himself, then
focused his attention on the screen.
        It was enough to make anyone scream.  Unit 1, Shinji, was
surrounded by a solid wall of white Eva's.  Everytime he'd hit one, an
attack would come from behind before he could capitalize on his attack.
With a gowl and a slight gesture from Unit 5, who was still floating in the
sky above the city, the other Eva's shrank back from Shinji, with one
stepping forward.
        The sound of the door opening dragged Misato's attention away from
the screen for a moment.  Rei and Toji stepped in, only to be shoved out of
the way by an angry Asuka.  Misato saw this and tried to diffuse the
situation before it turned explosive.
        "Look, Asuka, we had to do what we did in order to sav-"
        "Save it, Misato," Asuka interuppted, her voice oddly devoid of any
emotion.  Her face soon followed suit, all indications of anger fading.
Misato looked at Kaji, who could only stare back at her.  'What did Shinji
say to her?' Misato thought.  While he was on a private channel and they
couldn't hear what he said, the people of Nerv knew that he had said
something to her.  Something that shook her attention enough not only to
get through her barrier that prevented her ejection, but it was enough that
she wasn't pissed off, like she normally would be after loosing.
Especially to Shinji.
        "Asuka, what did Shinji say to you?" Misato asked after a she spent
a few moments regaining her equilibrium.
        "That's none of your concern," Asuka answered, still without any
emotion in her voice.  Misato blinked.  And blinked again.
        "Say that again?" Misato asked.  Asuka, with the smallest of sighs,
repeated herself.
        "I said, 'That's none of your concern'.  Happy now?" she added,
almost as an afterthought.  Misato tried to form a response, but anger
prevented it.  She settled for glaring at Asuka before she turned to Kaji,
as if he could say something that would mollify her.  He only gave a little
shrug with a small smile.  Now, totally pissed off at both of them, Misato
ripped her gaze from the two people and returned it to the screen.
        Unit 1 was facing Unit 9, with the others still standing back and
Unit 5 in the sky.  Unit 9 charged.  "Umm, I'm almost afraid to ask," Toji
said.  "But what the hell are they doing?  Wouldn't it make more sense to
keep the pressure up?  They outnumber him eight to one."
        "Yes, it would make sense," Fuyutsuki muttered to himself.  "So
what do you think they are planning?" he asked Commander Ikari.
        "What makes you think I know that?" the Commander answered with a
small smirk.  Fuyutsuki, momentarily put off balance by the response, could
only gape the man sitting beside him.  'He's never answered like that
before' he thought to himself.  'But, then again, before he knew what was
comming, or he at least had a good idea,' he answered himself, then shook
his head.  "Besides, what does it matter?" The Commander pressed on,
interuupting Fuyutsuki's thoughts.
        "What?" Fuyustuki asked, not sure he had heard properly.
        "What does it matter if I know what's going on?  That won't change
the outcome of the battle."
        "And is that outcome fixed?  Do we know for sure what will be?"
        "You have to ask?" Commander Ikari replied, a slight trace of
humour entering his voice.  Unruffled by the response, Fuyustuki pressed
on.
        "Are you sure about that?" he said, gesturing towards the action on
the screen and choosing his words carfully.  "Your son is doing not all
that badly, on his own."  As if to justify that statement, Unit 1
sidestepped the charging Eva, and stuck out it's arm.  Unit 9 ran straight
into it, getting closelined by the blow.  Unit 9 flipped head over heels in
the air, and landed on the back of it's substantial neck with a sickening
crunch.
        Not wasting a moment, Shinji raised his foot, and brought it down
on the exposed head of the white Eva.  The head exploded like a giant,
overfilled balloon of blood, brains and gore.  Realizing the odds of his
survival, Shinji figured that he'd need more than a Prog Knife to stay
alive, never mind win.  He bent down and grabbed one of the fallen Eva's
arms, and started to pull.  After several tugs and snapping sounds as
armour and flesh were torn from each other, the arm came away from the body
at the shoulder.
        Hearing a roar from in front of him, Shinji looked up to see Unit
11 charge at him.  Standing up and rotating his body at the same time,
Shinji swung his improvised club at the Eva.  It connected with a crunch,
partly caved in the armour of the enemy Eva and knocked it off balance.
The instant that it was vulnerable, Shinji pounced on it, slamming his
fists into it's abdomen.  Unfortunatly, it regenerated any damage that he
inflicted almost as fast as he could inflict it.
        Pounding pavement dragged his attention away from the enemy below
him, and he snapped his gaze up, just in time to see the rest of the Eva's
charging at him.  Letting a little sigh out, Shinji decided the best way to
fight would be to take the offensive.  He leapt into the air from his
crouch over the fallen Eva, soared up and over the charging mass of white,
and landed in their midst, lashing out with his feet and club.
        Momentarily taken back by the sudden change in tactics, the UN
Eva's allowed Unit 1 to score some hits before recovering and attacking
with their own blades.
        To Misato and the rest of the human's watching the battle on the
screen, it looked like a wall of white was trying to close on a purple and
green whirling dervish.  Unit 1 was spinning around like a top, attacking
and defending itself against all of the enemies that tried to hurt it; a
stalemate.  And, like all stalemates, something had to give in to break it.
        While he was smashing his club down on Unit 8, which had fallen
when it's head was bashed in by Unit 1, Shinji stumbled a bit on a piece of
building that had collapsed earlier in the fight.  He fell to the ground
with a deafining thud and dropped his club.  Sensing early victory, Units
10 and 11 charged at him from opposit directions.
        Seeing was has going to happen, Shinji, who'd started to sit up,
fell back to the ground as soon as Unit 10 was within reaching distance,
and grabbed Unit 10's leg and threw it over his head.  He lept to his feet
and twisted at the same time.  He was out of time, as Unit 11 had closed
too close to be thrown.  Shinji desperatly put up his arms and tried to
push it away.
        Unit 11 stopped in it's tracks and flew back several hundred meters
as if some giant force had grabbed it and threw it like a rag doll.  The
reddy orange octagon of an AT Field appared moments later, right where Unit
11 was standing.
        "What the hell?!" Misato exclaimed, knowing full what Kaji was
going to say.  When he opened his mouth to say it, Misato reached over and
covered it with her hand.  "Don't you dare," she said quietly, so only he
would hear.  He opened his mouth, while it was still covered by her hand,
and playfully nipped the palm of her hand with his teeth.  Misato simply
glared at him a little, then pulled her hand away from his face.
        "How'd that happen?" Fuyutsuki roared from his station.  "I thought
Unit 1's AT Field was neutralizing the other Eva's Fields?"
        "It is!" Maya yelled.  "That shouldn't have happened!"
        "Explain how that happened, then!" Fuyutsuki yelled.
        "I can't!"
        "Find a way!" he yelled, and started another barrage when Commander
Ikari whispered to him.
        "What does it matter how it happened?"
        "What?" Fuyutsuki asked, perplexed.
        "Why does is matter?  I think we should put the good Leutenant's
talents to other purposes, don't you agree?"
        "Like what?  What would you have her do?"
        "Figure out what exactly is happening with Unit 1, and if we have
any control over it at all."
        "Why?"
        "In case the UN Forces find the explosives and deactivate them.  In
that event, we could send Unit 1 to Terminal Dogma and have it destroy the
project," The Commander said, with a small smirk growing on his face.
        "And what if it turns out that we have no control over it?  What if
it turns out that Shinji has total control, and we can do nothing?"
Fuyutsuki asked, and was rather shocked when the Commander didn't answer.
On the lower spire, Misato was yelling instructions to Maya.
        "Nevermind _how_ it happened!  Figure out _what_ happened!"
        "It's rather obvious, Katsuragi," Kaji said.  Now, with her face
blazing red in anger, Misato again turned to him.
        "If it's that easy to understand, then what happened?!" she
demanded.  Kaji only pointed to the screen.  Turning to it once again,
realization slowly crashed over Misato.
        Unit 1 raised it's arm, howled, and brought it down in a broad
swipe.  The AT Field vanished in a blink of an eye, only to reappear right
in front of Unit 11, which was still on the ground after being thrown, and
it started crushing it into the ground.
        "He's using it as a battering ram," Toji said, his voice quiet with
realization.  Unit 11 broke into many bloody pieces as the Field crushed
it.  Everyone in Dogma felt sick to their stomach, though some showed it
more than others, while Shinji allowed himself a momentary smile before he
got back to work.  He turned around and leapt back into the fray.
        Asuka could've sworn that she saw Unit 1 curl it's lips into some
sort of ghoulish smile, but dismissed the possibility as she didn't want to
taste breakfast again.  Then she saw Shinji leap back into the fight, but
she wasn't really thinking about that.  She still was having difficulty
beliving what Shinji said to her before.  'He said he loves me,' Asuka
thought to herself.  'Did he really mean it?  Does he really love me?  Do I
love him?' she thought to herself.  The thoughts cintinued to race around
in her mind in a closed loop.  Every time she asked herself a new question,
she somehow ended up right back where she started, with 'Did he really mean
it?' in her mind.
        Unit 1 was still spinning around and around, attacking everything
that it could lay its hands on.  With a roar of anger, one of the UN Eva's
lashed out with it's blade in a blow that would've severed Unit 1's head
from the rest of it's body.  However, a split-second before impact, Unit 1
was no longer under the blade, and it hit the concrete street, rupturing a
gas line.  A massive explosion followed, hitting the Unit square in the
face and throwing it backwards several dozen meters.  The immediate area
and it's occupants were engulfed in a red and black fireball that extended
for hundreds of meters into the sky and leveled what buildings were still
standing.
        As if on cue, the clouds high above, now that they were directly
over city, opened up and let their loads of rain fall, dousing the flames
somewhat, but not nearly enough to stop the many fires that sprang up in
the aftermath of the explosion.
        The UN Eva's looked around, at each other, behind themselves, but
saw nothing.  Unit 1 was nowhere to be seen.  Unit 5 growled a little, and
the others took off in other directions, searching for their lost quarry.
        "Where is it?" Commander Ikari asked, still refusing to call Unit 1
his son.
        "We don't know.  With our sensors still working on line-of-sight,
it's making tracking the fight difficult," Shigeru said after a few frantic
taps.
        "Then start scanning the city manually," the Commander said.
        "How?" Shigeru asked.
        "The city's security system is still operational.  Use the security
cameras and look with your own eyes," was the reply, after a small sigh.
Fyustuki's eyes slowly grew wide.  It's been years since he's seen
Commander Ikari do that.
        "Yes, sir," Shigeru said somewhat sheepishly and then proceeded to
do what he was told.
        "This could take a while," Makoto whispered to him.  Unfortunatly
for them, however, Asuka overheard.  She stormed up behind him, her tenuous
hold on control utterly shattered, grasped the back of Makoto's chair, spun
it around violently, and snarled directly into his face.
        "Well, you'd better work faster then!"  Makoto could only cringe,
while his friend Shigeru winced.  It had hurt him just listning to Asuka
yell in his face.  Suppressing a smile, he went back to work, heeding
Asuka's unvoiced warning.  For everyone in the room, the same question was
enveloping their thoughts: what had Shinji said to Asuka?  One of the
objects of their curiosity decided that an unvoiced warning was not
sufficent to spur them to work their fullest.  "If he gets hurt because of
your sloppiness...." she said, then let the warning hang in the air.
        Commander Ikari, watching all of this from high up in his command
chair, was both genuinly amused and thankful of Asuka's action.  She'd been
able to do something that he hadn't with just ordering.  She'd put fear
into them.  More than just the fear of loosing their jobs and someone they
liked, but the fear of the consequences if Asuka decided that they were at
fault.  And everyone knew what Asuka could do when she was angry.  For the
first time is many years, Commander Ikari found something he could find
amusing and not worry about it's effects.
        The last time that happend was just after he met Yui.  It was in a
small bar the two had agreed to meet at after she was done working for the
day.  They were sitting at a table in the back corner, discussing this and
that when suddenly she leaned over, and whispered in his ear-.  With a
force of will developed from dealing with Seele on a regular basis, he shut
out the memory.  It was becoming too painful to remember, and he didn't
need the added distraction.  If he allowed himself the chance to slip
again, it might be very costly.
        Hearing what sounded like a suppressed laugh come from his elbow,
Fuyustuki looked down, only to see a glint in the Commander's eyes.  It
almost looked like...he was laughing at something.  Fuyustuki tried to
remember the last time he saw that look in the younger man's eyes, and, try
as he might, he couldn't pick out a time.
        Then, with no warning at all, the glint disappeared only to be
replaced by the cold, emotionless barrier that surrounded the Commander at
most times.  It was simply shoved aside, as if it was something that
shouldn't have been there.  An unwanted intruder on orderly thoughts.
        Fuyustuki, who'd almost allowed himself the hope that Commander
Ikari was begining to open up, simply return his gaze to the main screen
with the hopes that he'd later have the chance to talk with the man about
it.
        The UN Eva's were still looking for Unit 1, with no success yet.
Finally deciding that this had gone on for too long, with what sounded to
the people in the control room as growl and a sigh mixed together, Unit 5
called off the search and proceeded to gather it's teammates around itself
to issue orders.
        While on the way back to it's teammates, Unit 10 passed a pile of
rubble that was once a skyscraper.  It vanished for a moment behind another
such pile, and when it reapeared, it was standing still.  Unit 5 looked at
it and growled a question.  In response, the Unit started to twitch and
shake.  It started lifting off the ground without deploying it's wings, and
it arced back
        Behind the Unit, lifting it up with it's hands buried into the it's
back, was Unit 1.  It had punched it's way through Unit 10's outer armour,
and the UN Eva's regeration had trapped them inside the body.
        With a terrifying roar and tremendous effort, Unit 1 pulled it's
hands apart.
        Unit 10 exploded in a shower of blood and gore that coated
everything in the near vacinity.  The droplets of blood that landed on
Shinji drove away some of the biting cold that was still prevading his
body.  Now, the smile that was on his face grew into a full-blown grin.  He
laughed as the blood smeared his body.  Opening his mouth, he let some of
the blood rush into it.  Grabbing a piece of flesh that had landed on his
arm, he slowly lifted it up and placed it into his mouth.  He couldn't
describe the taste; it was that good!  As he swallowed the mixture of flesh
and blood, he could feel some more of the cold leave him, to be replaced by
a nice, cozy warmth that slowly spread it's way through out his body.
        Sighing with contentment, Shinji allowed himself a tiny moment to
revel in the flavours and sensations that were flooding his awareness.
But, the siren's call to fight that prevaded his consciousness reassurted
itself, and he turned around.
        Just in time to see the twin prongs of the Lance of Longinus fly
straight for his face.

end

Cory Holmes
gholmes@rodeo.sd27.bc.ca

Thanks to: D. de Ocampo, Zero-XIII, Al-I-Bus, and Mark.