From: "J.Soboroff" Subject: [Eva/Ranma][FanFic] Blue Pattern Neon Genesis Evangelion and all associated names, themes, and circumstances are property of GAINAX. Ranma 1/2 is the work of Rumiko Takahashi...ah, I'm already sick of it. Let's get on with the fic. BLUE PATTERN by Shane Soboroff March 17, 2110 "We've already gone over this a thousand times, Miaka. There is no other way. If we had the time to regroup...maybe. I can't make you any promises, other than that we are doing our best to break the chain of circumstances surrounding the children." Hally said this to the back of the young major, sitting quietly as she stared out into the starfield beyond her cabin. She turned to see Miaka shake, seeming to collapse into herself. "I understand the necessity of what we are doing. I just can't handle it any longer. These...children...they're my only pride. If I can't give them something more, I think maybe they were born in vain." With a sigh the major turned to face her friend. Her face was a line drawn in the sand, and Hally knew it. Yet she also knew that she had no say in the matter. With the little courage she had left to muster she stood, staring down the woman who for so many years had worked for this day...and now had turned against both NERV and herself. "I'm sorry, Miaka. You know I have no other options." Miaka let the tears flow as she inspected the weapon pointed at her head, and knew her fate was set. "If you had done one thing in your life differently, Hally, what would it have been? Any regrets?" "Only one..." Hally sqeezed the trigger. It only went about a millimeter before her throat collapsed, and she fell to the ground. "I never meant it to end this way...it was supposed to be perfect." Straightening from her stance, letting her ki retreat into herself, Miaka Saotome walked to the door. NERV would not forget this day...and she would never forgive herself. *They're screaming!* it thought as the silence was broken by the echo of a thousand voices in its mind. *They are in such pain!* Its body could cleanse them if only it could reach them. *Let me go, let me help, the pain, God the pain!* The ship hovered silently in space above the green moon. No light played across its surface. With a gentle nudge from an unseen engine, it began to move a bit closer to the atmosphere. The blues and greens from the planet sang to the ship, and it echoed the melody throughout its bowels. It was a living ship, and its unseen crew tended the great creature who had folded them to a point beyond their homeworld, wrapped in lightspace. Now they would bring this new world, and its people, to actualization. Several shapes moved in the space below, gleaming with the new light of morning as they rose to space on their great thrusters. The ship saw this, and warned its crew of the danger. There was but one possible action to take. The decision was made in an instant. Throught he canopy of his shuttle, Lok-nil looked onto the great ship and could only gasp. His sensors told him it was over two-hundred homs in length, far greater than they had been told before launch. How could he and his squadron fight such a thing? "Sir...please advise! What good can biomechanoids do against that?!" "This is Colonel Rookto. Cut the chatter. Maintain radio silence until we are within 500 homs of the target." "AYE!" came six voices over the set. Moving closer to the ship, Lok-nil began to run data through his heads up display. With a flick of his wrist, he hit the separation engines, and his shuttle broke apart, revealing his biomechanical suit. His companions did the same, and soon seven ten-meter long warmechs took up position. Bringing his particle cannon to bear, Lok-nil began to hum a tune his mother had taught him. He normally found it soothing, but today it served only to tighten him up further. Mother...she would never accept this decision. He knew, however, that there was no choice. Either fight, or whatever this thing was, it was going to kill them all. That was when he heard it...a vibration running through his cockpit. Around him, Lok-nil could almost HEAR space expanding. That was when it all went black. *Who are you?* *Lok-nil* *Is that what they tell you, or what you truly are?* *Where am I?* *You are where I am* *Where are you?* *Why is that important?* *Am I going to die?* *We are all going to die* *I don't want to die. Not like this* *Then don't. Come with me* *To where?* *Let me touch you* *Where will you take me? *..be inside you* *Please...no* *Love you...* "NO! NO, MY MIND! STOP IT HURTS OH GODS NO!!!!!" "Sir, Lok-nil has gone silent. Radio is out. Permission to retrieve him." "Permission denied. Scramble and regroup at point three three eight!" The lone green mech, its pilot now a translucent liquid, continued to convulse, its guiding mind now gone. As soon as the attack had begun, it was over, with no damage to the suit whatsoever. It hung limp now, shining in the new morning's light. "Sir, we're picking up something from the ship! Sensors are finally showing a reading. My God...it's blue pattern! How in the seven hells..." "I ordered radio silence. Take up evasion pattern delta tau. Prepare for starburst formation. If these things want to challenge the Salomor-Nefesh, they are going to prove their worthiness to me first! Open fire at point zeta!" The fur on his neck standing on end, Rookto brought his suit's AT field online. He would destroy the newcomer and still get back in time for his morning meal. He could feel the sweat form on his muzzle, and began to mutter his mantra. "Position target in the center, pull the swit..." "Sir, an object has been detected leaving the ship!" Lieutenant Tor-an broke through his line of thought, forcing him to take notice of the new intruder. "Pattern is also blue...please advise, sir!" Rookto brought up the sensor readings on his heads up unit. It read a small humanoid, but around it was a distinct aura. This thing had an AT field, and it was powerful. "All hands, prepare for hand to hand combat. That thing is armed, and probably very powerful. Do not approach it with AT fields down!" Willing his suit to pull a two meter energy blade from its holster, Rookto set his course, and engaged thrusters. His men, all trained in the highest orders of their clans, knew their chances against a being who could project an AT field, yet they knew they had no choice. As Rookto closed the gap, he realized just how diminuitive the object was. The ship was now projecting the field as well, and he had to make a judgment call. His men were waiting, some of them circling the body, some firing warning shots toward the ship. When both failed to move, they began to get cocky, coming closer, trying to provoke some motion, any motion. "Stop the horseplay. Change targets. The ship is now bogey 1, so forget the body. They're probably all like this. Most likely it's just residual energy from passing through the ship's field. It's dead in space." Rookto knew it to be a lie, but he needed his men to focus. A being engaging an AT field was no simple target. It may not have any weapons, but he could not be sure that the humanoid had not been responsible for Lok-nil's death. He prayed he had made the correct decision in choosing the ship. It was bigger...it must pose the greatest threat to the greatest number of people. He would eliminate that threat. Exhaling a roar from deep within himself, he threw himself, his suit, and his men at the waiting maw of the ship. *Amusement? Is that what I'm feeling?* The cold was unbearable, yet lovely. He could feel space around him, closing in. He had sensed for moments the warmth of the souls that had surrounded him. Now they had decided to engage his sister. *Do they not know me for what I am?* The pain...he felt it in each of them. The one who had been Lok-nil now howled within, only now beginning to feel the truth of his completion. He would be happy when he understood. It was time to make the others understand. They didn't need pain. There was a new feeling as well. Others, far below, on a world that felt alien to him. Their souls were not alien. In each was the pain of separation he knew so well. They could not be together, not yet. Only in him. *Will I miss being one? How will it be to be many?* Finally, he decided he had waited long enough. Stretching what corporeality that remained in him, he willed the others to join him. He could hear them screaming, praying, confused in their new home. He could feel himself filling up, the lines of separation blurring. It was only a matter of time. "Sir, we've lost contact with ground control. Radio silence across the board. Please advise!" Rookto began a long range scan. He knew what this meant. Instrumentality. Completion. The ship was a decoy. It hit him in an instant, and his sanity left him. With a feral scream, he brought the warmech around and set a collision course with the body. He would free them. All would be set right. Soon, he too was nothing more than liquid, trapped inside a boiling sea of souls. We are one...do not fight this. We have reached completion. Let us be one with more...others are incomplete. We will perfect them. We are perfected. We feel another... The great ship began to move away, as the AT field surrounding the boy's body began to expand. It felt the presence of its sister within the great belly of the creature. Both yearned for each other. Neither the ship, nor its crew, were ready for such a thing to take place. In the darkness of the central cavity, a hand flashed over a panel. It was done in an instant. The scream reverberated throughout space-timel, as the small nuclear device under the skin of the boy obliterated it and the AT-field from within. The souls of the planet, and of the new Angel, were shattered, relinquishing them to outer space. His sister, within the EVAship, screamed with rage, and attempted to engage her own AT field. The ship's own field won out, and its 'pilot' collapsed in exhaustion. In space, above an empty world, the starfield began to fold, and a ship disappeared into lightspace. No record was left of its passing, save for the silence of death. Its cargo had been both the salvation and tomb of an entire planet. And for the second time, judgment had begun for the Zy-Lor empire. ************************************************************ Space was nothing compared to lightspace. Miaka Saotome could remember her first trip into this firestrewn vacuum. Her mother, Akane Yui, had been pilot of EVAship 53. Most pilots didn't have children, but her mother's ability to manipulate and control energy fields, something she claimed was passed down through the family from her Great Great Great Grandfather, Ranma, had allowed her to accomplish many feats. Still, even with thoughts of the past she could not forget her present. In every moment she felt Hally with her. She had had no choice. If she were to fight for the children, there could be no other action. Hally had forced her hand too soon. Miaka forced herself to surrender such thoughts to space. Moving to the center of her small chartered cabin, she stripped to her shorts and undershirt and began a complex kata. Her parents had trained her in the Art, and it had led her through the most difficult of times. When it had come time to choose her curse, it had been that of the fox. Quick and agile, she had honed her art under its example. Miaka was forced to laugh, remembering a time when, at the age of twelve, she had begun a fight with her father Bill over the tradition. It had been explained to her that ever since the patriarch of their family, Ranma Saotome, had fallen victim to the curse of Jusenkyo, their family had learned that strength comes with endurance. She had fought back, refusing to practice or even eat, until she could bear it no longer. Without the Art she was confused; with it she was unstoppable. Three weeks after her curse was cured in a ritual on her sixteenth birthday, she had enlisted at the NERV regional recruitment center, falsifying her birth records to meet the required age, sure of herself and her goals. Now, with what had been going on over the past twenty years she wasn't certain that she ever really had known what those goals were. The war with the Zy-Lor Empire had come quickly and without warning. She remembered the day EVAship 17 was destroyed by an unprovoked attack, killing hundreds, as well as the ship's pilot. When it was discovered that the Zy-Lor had gone through a similar judgment under the Angels, who they referred to as Salomor-Nefesh, or "Blue Ones", it was thought a common ground could be reached. But the revelation that they actually worshipped the monsters was enough to lead humanity into full-scale war. NERV began arming the EVAships, and had begun the program she had run until just a few days earlier. Marduk II. The idea itself made her shiver. She had read the stories of the first Marduk report and the subsequent Eva projects. Memories of such events were always tinged with horror and an almost species-wide regret among humans. Now, Evangelions were the bringers of peace. Or so they were all told. Miaka stopped her kata, and walked over to a keypad on the wall. Touching it softly, the lights dimmed, and the windows in her cabin veiled over the vista of lightspace. Turning on the datapad sitting on her chair, she shuffled through several old documents until she found her old journal. November 2, 2105 I was told today that Marduk II is complete. I'm going to be head director of operations in training and commanding the children that have been gathered under the orders of the Marduk Act. They still refuse to tell me where these children are from, and talk of anything beyond the program is strictly taboo, or so they say. I've been told that if the children want to talk, they'll have psychologists on hand to handle it. How can I help these kids to be their best when I can't even know them? I suppose they'll grow up pretty quick. I hope I train some of the best generals we've ever had. Hally came by today with a new guy...boy what a jackass. Starsky Hibiki, I think his name was. Who cares. If all I thought about were guys, like Hally, I'd be in a world of trouble. I have better things to do right now. Well, got early duty tomorrow. Better hit the sack. Miaka sighed. How naive she had been, thinking she knew what was in store for those kids. Mentally kicking herself for dredging up old wounds, she turned off the pad and threw it onto the floor, under the small table near the window. Stretching, she made her way to the bed, and turned out the light. *********************************************************** First Svetlana, and now Keiji. *Who's next?* thought Kirin as he lay on his bunk. Both children had been in school and training session the week before their respective disappearances. Neither was heard from again. He also missed Miaka. Kirin knew the rules about discussing his problems with the major, but he also needed friends, and almost none of the hundred children were very sociable. Certainly none were friends. Until Keiji. And now he was gone, and it made Kirin nervous. None of the original seventy-two children in the program had been going through the rigorous training he and the fourteen children of his group had. Svetlana had been with him from day one, and she had been a friend of sorts. Very empathic, and quick to pick up the exercises and skills their teachers wanted them to learn. When the third group arrived, Keiji had become his fast friend, sharing secrets that led Kirin to a fairly good understanding of what was going on. It was fairly obvious to him there was a war going on, and that they were more than a part of it. Often he found his ears buzzing, and his skin crawling after the multiple tests the teachers and doctors performed. He often wondered what good such tests did, and was never answered when he asked about the use of the machines he was continually using in simulations. The only letters he recognized on each machine were EVA. Keiji and Svetlana had each been the best of their respective groups, Kirin only a step behind. Now he felt a morbid gratitude that he had not been chosen for whatever fate the other two had met. He had wept for them, but now was not the time for tears. He had questions. Millions of them. But the first one was the most searing...Whatever happened to Major Saotome? To be continued...hopefully. Flames, comments, and criticisms can be sent to ssoborof@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu This is the beginning of what is promising to be a very long fic. I apologize for those who expected to see Ranma, Akane, and the rest here in this chapter. They will play a role later on, and trust me, they will be major. The major reason for this was to set the stage for what is to come, as well as to test out my development and writing skills. I love to get comments, from compliments to flames, so don't hold back.