Aeon Natum Engel (NGE cross-over)

[EarthScorpion]

~'/|\'~

“Is this everyone who could get to the rally point?” asked Captain Kora “Really? Everyone?”

“No,” answered the amlati Lieutenant, one of the three survivors from his squadron, “but we're the only ones who made it this deep. There's more comms chatter up above, but down here, they've got some kind of sorcery up.”

The high powered lights mounted on the Engels lit up the corridors, displaying the blasphemous, unnatural pictures that covered the walls, pictures within pictures, hieroglyphs within cuneiform within letters. Against this mismatch of colours, the constructs of the New Earth Government were hideously obvious, their deep-water, chemically camouflaged greenish-white paint blatant against the decadence that surrounded them on all sides. Now, there were only eleven Engels; nine Hamshalliam and two Ish, and both the Ish were out of the long-range torpedoes which were their primary armaments, reduced to a single large laser cannon, and their natural armaments. They were actually exceptionally dangerous in these close confines; their long, sinous, eel-like shape as well as their superior LAI systems giving them a real advantage over the humanoid Hamshalliam, but if they were to have to go back to open waters now, they'd be little better than hit-and-run attackers and the closest thing that the amphibious Engels got to scouts.

A mish-mash of squadrons were the ones who had made it down to the depths of the Dagonite city, right down to the bottom of the rift, where the orders had said that the geothemal plants were located. And they had gone deeper, and taken even more casualties, and fought their way down, through this confusing labyrinth (which, admittedly, had been made somewhat easier to pass through the judicious application of firepower). All of Captain Koru's squadron, those who had made it down, were still here, and they'd been joined by the remnants of other squadrons; three from one group tasked with hitting a laser site, an Ish-Hamshall pair they'd found, even deeper with than them, their main objective crushed by a sunken frigate, the sole survivor of a squadron who'd been too close to the blasts, and another lone Ish, who'd been engaged in a fight against a thirty metre long shark.

“Ready to breach?” asked Zuly, levelling her charge beam at the point her targeting LAI highlighted, hyperedged blade (not an integral one, an auxiliary one issued in cases where extreme close range fighting was expected) in other hand.

“Ready.”

“Ready.”

The underwater thwumpth of the firing of charge beams, into the spots that had already been weakened by strategically placed laser fire, echoed through the structure of this place, and through the water, making the hulls of the arcanocyberxenobiological organisms creak under the immense pressure. Braced onto the walls, the Engels weathered the pressure wave from the flash-ionised water around the blasts, temperature gaugues rising precipitously before falling again.

Really, it was very fortunate that this labyrinth had been built to this scale. The Engels could actually fit; it would have been less of an issue for the Ish, as their narrow cross-section was fully advantageous here, but the Hamshalliam were just short enough to move down these corridors, well over ten metres high.

“Bloody hell,” whispered one of the Ish pilots, one of the survivors from a mixed formation. “Streaming image.”

There certainly wasn't a geothermal plant down there... at least, not immediately down there. For there to be a geothermal plant, there would have had to be geology, and there was only a vast, space, almost a kilometres high, from what they could see in the light that was there. And it was populated, too, or at least decorated; they were emerging from buildings, hanging down from the roof, and there was some kind of vast statue which reached all the way to the ceiling, towards the centre of the hemisphere. The immensity of the thing, so vast, made it almost unreadable, the details lost in the titanic size of the architecture.

From what they could discern, it was for the best that they could not grasp the full being, only able to concentrate on small details.

“I wish... I just wish I had torpedoes left,” the same pilot muttered. “This is the kind of place I could make a killing, hull down up here.”

“But you don't,” said Captain Koru, curtly. He paused for a moment, his intake of breath audible over the radio. “The Ish, hold this position. This is our only way

“Sir,” asked Samantha, cautiously. “Did you have any idea that this place was here? It's... wow.”

“It's dangerous, Lieutenant Border,” the Captain answered. “This is hostile territory, right in the middle of enemy territory, and it was hidden. And, no, I didn't know that they'd built some kind of...” words failed him, for a moment, “some kind of giant black hemisphere underground. I mean, how are they even keeping the city upright. This thing means that they've got no foundations.”

liar emoted Azrael, simply. liar. calling, calling. depths. longing.

obvious..

shush emoted Zuly. danger. keep me/us safe, kill my/our enemies.

eat?

Inside the plug, Zuly made a nauseated face. Not just at the beast underneath and around her, its nervous system pulsing through her brain. No, the disgust was at how good the Engels... emotion? Thought? Desire? It wasn't quite clear... made it feel and sound. Everything had felt so much more... real, this mission, in Azrael. And he was feeling much, much smarter. His emotions were becoming more akin to thoughts.

She was still in control, yes. But how much of it was her control, and how much his influence bled through into her control, was becoming worryingly uncertain to the Nazzadi woman. She retuned her attention. The instructions were clear. The Ish, emptied of torpedoes and thus underarmed compared to the charge beams of the Hashmalliam, were to hold the exit in the ceiling of this place, while the other Engels explored, sticking together. She sheathed the hypededged blade on the storage rack fitted to her back; she'd want full aiming with both arm-mounted guns for this.

“And... go!”

The nine Hamshalliam dropped down from the hole that they'd blow in the ceiling, gliding through the water in a delta formation, their greenish-white armour much more camouflaged in the lighting that made up this place. The beasts inside relaxed somewhat, vents opening up and their feeder tendrils darting out, tasting the water for any strangeness, their long, guard tentacle-like tail extruding fully, lashing from side to side to aid the A-Pods. From above, the light from the biolumiscent plants shone brightly, the greenish light making the pale figures seem almost white.

“What's that?” asked the amlati lieutenant from earlier; Zuly thought his name was Tera. “Look, down there!”

She zoomed in, amplifying the display, while her Engel circled. Her eyes widened in recognition, as something she'd only seen in training kicked in.

“Holy shit,” said Pecna,voice strangled. “Star-Spawn! We've got a genuine, Grade 7 Knight-Type down there!”

“Everyone, flock-and-lock!” ordered the Captain, already pulling his Engel down to the bowl-like surface of the inverted hemisphere. “Kill that thing fast, before it can do anything.”

'Flock-and-lock' was a simple command, and the most common one when faced with exceedingly dangerous entities such as a Knight-Type, especially one as high as Grade 7. For amphibious Engels, such as the Hamshalliam, it meant to try to surround it, spread out (as to minimise who much damage it could do at once) get to the nearest surface, and activate the clamps, which stabilised the ACXB against the recoil from the charge beam.

The Star Spawn, tentacled maw twitching just gazed up at them. It was clad in some kind of armour, unusually; some kind of hybrid between plates of armour, and robes. And the robes were a concern, because who knew what might be concealed underneath. The loose garments wafted in the currents, as the Engels slammed down into the painted floor, smashing it underfoot as, at the last moment, their A-Pods flipped, inverting the direction of thrust. Knees bent as they absorbed the impact, manipulators extruding from the legs to become true feet, not just the hydrodynamic variant they were when swimming. Breaths shallow, Lieutenant Zuly could feel as Azrael's tail mostly retracted into his body, leaving only enough for combat uses, rather than swimming.

She straightened up, drawing the hyperedged blade from her back, and Azrael leered as she raised their head, blinded eyes, replaced by implanted sensors which hijacked the nerves, still gazing at their opponent.

There was one moment of perfect, eternal silence, as the nine Engels surrounded the one lone figure in the centre, particle beams levelled at their foe, blades in the other hand. It was unarmed, apparently. But it was still a Grade 7, still a Knight, and they certainly weren't going to take any risks.

They waited just a moment too long.

Fast, far too fast, the hostile beat those massive wings, thrusting it forwards in a way only aided by its swimming-tail. The sonic boom of displaced water filled the air, as it slammed into Sekhmet, both hands held together in a fist that it bought down, crushing the Engel's skull and sending dark ichor rushing forth from the ruined unit. Denser than water, the Hamshall remained upright for a few seconds, LAI systems trying to overcome the change in mass and death of the ACXB entity, and valiantly, yet briefly, holding out. Over the comms, Lieutenant Samantha Border could be heard screaming, the agony of the brain-death of her attuned Sekhmet flooding through her mind, before the morale filters kicked in, locking her out of the network.

Slowly, though, through the dense water, surrounded by the dark clouds of its own blood, Sekhmet toppled. The Star Spawn, though, grabbed the body and supported it, slumped over its killer. And, so, the round of retaliatory charge beam shots, tearing through the water as arcanomagnetic fields, tunnel-shaped, pulsed into existence for just a fraction of a second, enough to guide their cargo to its destination, hit the wreckage of the Hamshall instead, both layers of armour plating and the organism between them serving as a shield for the monster.

The charge beams immediately began their cooldown-recharge cycle, dumping vaporised coolant into the water, bubbles rising in a matter more akin to a shockwave than a stream, as they built up the charge on the capacitors, the power required for the particle beam beyond even the capacity of the onboard D-Engine to provide. And that was when the Star-Spawn acted again, back into motion with an organic elegance which only a highly trained expert at Engel communion could possibly hope to match.

The flash of something that was not mere awareness, nor limited sapience, but genuine, superhuman (in both nature as well as capacity) intelligence in its eyes said everything. This was not some dumb animal, equipped by its masters to fight, nor was it a lobotomised warmachine, implants in its brain linking it to a lifeform it could have torn apart without a thought had it been whole. No, it knew about the charge beams that the Hamshalliam used, knew their performance characteristics, and knew that their low rate of fire was what they sacrificed in return for firepower that could even hurt a being like it.

Pulling the hyperedged blade from the limp hand of Sekhmet, it made one, violent movement that ended with the sword embedded in what would have been the throat (had the ACXB organism been human) of another Engel, twisting and pulling up, in a way that shattered the monoedged weapon, shards of metal shrapnel tearing into the flesh of the mecha. The hilt remained in its hand; it slammed the remains of the blade into the open wound, ichor flooding the already worryingly opaque waters as it opened up the wound, twisting as it hurled the dying Engel at the seven remaining.

“Where the hell has it gone!” yelled the amlati lieutenant, Tera. “Sonar and thermals are wrecked by the cee-bee venting, and now visuals are d... Lucy! Behind you!” he yelled at one of the other surviving members of his squadron, who turned and spun immediately with the hyperedged blade; a wise move, as the sword flicked into the arm of the Star-Spawn, its own blood joining the vital fluids that filled the water, causing it to flinch,slightly, but just enough that the blow that was aimed at the Engel's skull went wide.

There was slightly hysterical laughter over the radio, the pilot flooded with the hunger and rage of the machine, as the Hamshall latched onto the arm that had tried to crush its skull in, feeder tendrils tearing into the flesh and entangling the limb, opening the wound that her blade had caused as her war-beast ate of its foe's flesh and drank of its blood..

“Swamp him, you fuckers!” yelled the pilot, Lucy, as she tried to grab the other arm with her own, the integral charge beam still venting superheated gas. “Pin it down and kill...” her voice was broken with by a scream that her Hamshall echoed, as the tail of the Star-Spawn darted out, punching right through the thigh of the Engel. A beat of its wings, and the entangled pair were launched from the bottom, arcing to slam down with more force, rolling over and over.

The Star Spawn, maw spread wide, managed to end up on top in the rolling mass of armour and alien flesh and tentacles, and promptly began to consume the feeder tendrils of its foe with its own, tearing them off its arm only to pull them into its gullet with the prehensile manipulators. A blow from the newly freed arm to the torpedo tubes on the front of the Engel crushed the seals on the remaining weapons, detonating them in a blast which smeared Lucy against the inside of her entry plug and left the Star Spawn bleeding from the wounds to its face, flesh flayed off its unnatural endoskeleton.

Through the clouds of dilute ichor and the chaos and confusion of the fight, a particle beam reached out, and stroked the back of the ancient monster, right at the joint where the left wing merged with the back. There was no blood this time; only a shockwave that forced the oxygen in the water out of solution, fizzing as it superheated. And then the wing detached, the lack of damage to the now-severed limb a testament to the unnatural toughness of the flesh of the Star Spawn.

“Got him!” yelled Captain Koru, as his charge beam began another lengthy recharge cycle. “Hit the limbs!”

The Star Spawn began to sink, as it paused, limp with shock, its tail, more akin to the guard-tentacle of a squid than anything that a mammal might have, twitching frantically.

Pain flooded through the depths of the mind of Yul'uth-ca. He was aware, through a process akin to how other creatures might know were their limbs were without seeing them, that his left wing was detached, floating loose. And despite this academic knowledge, his wing-muscled still contracted, the imbalance causing its remaining twin to slam him once again back into the floor of the sacred place, tearing up the delicate murals and crushing the mosaics, as the impact cracked through the decorations and flattened him against the dark stone of the walls of the bowl. Worse still, the impact opened up the charred flesh from the severed wing, a fresh current of ichor polluting the waters.

And he could see the crippled shapes around him, in the higher dimensions. It was a feeling akin to being surrounded by the living dead, crude lurching shapes that hungered and screamed and raged, but lacked any traits that would have shown that they were really living, really aware.

That was perhaps what did it. He had removed Лu-hvean'tahæn from the place it had rested since the construction of this holy place and, indeed, before the least caves of what had become the city of now-doomed Guh'thya-leh'yi had been inhabited by the ancient Deep Ones, prior to their Choosing. But he had not intended, once his hands had closed around the blessed artefact, to actually use it in anger.

That had changed.

This was one of the holies of holies, a sacred place ancient beyond belief. It was sanctified, and it was blessed in ways that the feeble religious delusions of lesser races could not understand, uncomprehending of the sorceries which empowered this place. And these... things, these lobotomised... blasphemies! They would dare intrude upon it! They would dare try to hurt him! He would forgive them, for they knew not what they did.

But their human pilots? That was another matter. There truly was no better place to unleash Лu-hvean'tahæn than in here.

He spoke, a deep bass rumbling that pulsed through the water, and, had his foes been unprotected by their armoured blasphemies, would have been felt in their bones. And, coincidentally, left them writhing on the floor in pain, bleeding from all kinds of interesting orifices, some of them which they would not have possessed before he had spoken.

If only.

Лu-hvean'tahæn he said, speaking the tongue of Ry'lehan the way that it was really meant to be. This was not the inaccuracy rendition of either of the lesser species, who lacked the correct apparatus to even hear some of the differences, let alone pronounce them. No, this was Ry'lehan as spoken by its native race. r'kgehq'r lbhe-fr'ys se'bz gur r'kgen-q'vzraf-v'bany ubyqvat fu-ryy, naq fr'g 'hc!

Broadband electromagnetic radiation flooded the vast chamber, a pulse of light which, to the human eye, appeared white, but to a being that saw more of the spectrum (or indeed, a technological device), spoke clearly of its unnatural nature. There were no absorption lines, no refractions, and no phase delays. It was not so much that the light had been emitted, as that it had come into being, photons flashing into existence only to interact with that which was already there.

There were gargled screams from the Hamshalliam, as they saw the light too, the first thing they had seen in their unnatural lives, the vat-grown constructs implanted with their cybernetics before they had been permitted even the low levels of intellect that they possessed. The ruined Engel that lay on its back, chest-cavity crushed by the detonation of its munitions began to spasm violently, the sensation too much with Lucy, its pilot, her communion with the thing broken by dead, no longer there to function as a higher mind.

But the light did not fade entirely. Arising from the hole which its impact had cracked in the elaborately painted floor, the Star Spawn stepped, the one remaining wing aloof. It did not look the same. Where once it had worn (and worn was the right word, for they had obviously been garments) what had looked like robes and armour, now a whitish-purple carapace extruded over the skin underneath, horrifically organic in appearance. Each contour of the limb was mimicked, each trait exaggerated, until the figure in imperial purple and corpse-like white which rose from the place that it had fallen, was more like some twisted angelic parody of its former self, more akin to a scaled version of the titanic statue that stood behind it than that which it had once been. The flowing hieroglyphs of Ry'lehan covered the armour, picked out in gold and silver and colours that shifted and crawled across the surface, never constant yet eternally the same.

In its hand, it held a sword, bearing most resemblance to the twisted cousin of a straight-edged European blade. It was not one of the ornate, curved blades of the Deep Ones. It was a weapon of war, designed for killing by edge and tip, although it would, if needs be, settle for irrevocably maiming. And it was the source of the light; sick fractures, like a broken diamond refracting light from distant stars, rippling and twisting, tightly embracing the blade and leaving it surrounded by ghostly refractions of what might be and what once was. Or perhaps what would be, and what used to be, but was no longer.

Such distinctions meant little to the little shard of divinity, constructed through procedures of such unspeakable complexity and requiring such knowledge of the universe, that they were nigh-akin to the greater beings of the universe in their own right.

“'Yn-ffra f'vr haf fvr ny-yr, z'rva Zrv-f'gre g'bgra. V-pu 'ova or-erv'g,” spoke the awakened god-mind of Лu-hvean'tahæn, in the archaic variant of Ry'lehan that it used; kin to, but not identical to the dominant strain of the language. It had already made itself open to Yul'uth-ca, and the Star Spawn reached out mentally towards it, gazing into the higher dimensions, and seeing the bulk of (the device? The entity? Which was it, and did it make a difference?) Лu-hvean'tahæn expanded throughout space, its merest projection this source of power. There were those who matched the power of this ancient race; the statue that stood in this underground grotto was of one who had exceeded them. But they were ancient beyond belief, and strange, almost beyond comprehension.

Still, it acknowledged his mastery. And perhaps that was enough.

A few paltry shots crawled through the air towards it, the mind of Лu-hvean'tahæn showing him their passage through this tiny bubble of the dream of the Demon-Sultan, even as his main mind watched the Guard of Yog-Sothoth come into being before him, such things absorbed and nullified by the fractured light.

The Star Spawn raised its blade, a trail of cracks in the very substance of reality trailing behind it, like a sparking after-trail, and charged the nearest Engel. The angel-like figure, lit by the strange wrongess of the light of its blade, may have only had one wing, but it could still swim, and it bought the blade down, both hands on the handle, on the head of the blasphemy before it.

Captain Koru dodged the approaching one-winged avenger, throwing Eremiel to the side, and so the blade only removed the right arm of the Hamshall, the unutterable sharpness slicing through the limb without any hint of obstruction. Fresh blood filled the water around them, only to be blown away by the impact of multiple short-ranged laser blasts against the Star Spawn's back, the steam explosions as the energy was re-radiated by the armoured carapace that now surrounded it clearing the water of blood. The stab of a hyperedged blade followed the blasts, which had been fired as the attack lunged, and that managed to penetrate one of the holes opened by the blasts, digging in, before stopping as Yul'uth-ca removed the offending limb at the shoulder, a diagonal slice which continued down, severing the Engel diagonally. The beast clad in purple and white spun, and finished off Eremiel, the coup-de-grace impaling straight through the entry plug.

There were only four Engels intact, now; the blood and bodies of the other thown around like dolls in the terrible currents that the fight was generating.

“Koru is down! I have senority,” barked Tera, the amlati Lieutenant. “Pull back, pull back. Back up to the entry! We can't hold that thing off here at close range with that sword-thing, we need long range firepower, Insha'Allah ... is it still a Knight-class any more? Fall back!”

The beast roared, as it saw its prey try to retreat, the ripple in the higher dimensions as the A-Pods tore at them for thrust.

z'lfrys pn-aab'g or q'rsr-ngrq! Cthulhu'ybeq jn'gp-urf bire z'r, it screamed to the statue of its god that stood in the chamber. They were retreating, and their weapons could hurt him, he knew. Pushing off from the bottom legs and tail beating, the remaining wing assisting as best it could, it headed for the nearest one.

Laser fire streaked down from the roof, as the pursuit finally bought the fighters into weapons range of the two Ish, up in the hole in the flat ceiling. Emptied of torpedoes, they were limited by the way their laser cannons diffracted in water, making them useless and unable to hurt anything armoured beyond a certain distance. The Star Spawn roared, taking the blows on its arm, but the Ish adjusted their aim, and it could not stop everything. But that didn't matter. Even without its wings, it was faster than the Engels. Notably so.

“It's catching!” yelled Tera, his grey face taking on a faint, haemoglobin-red tint. “Get away! I'll slow it down!”

He spun his Hamshall, now head down, while keeping the A-Pods leading him upwards, with the right arm stretched out, as if tempting the sword-wielding monstrosity. The charge beam was levelled right at the Star Spawn's head. And so the sword removed it.

Just as planned.

The other arm, wielding the hyperedged blade cut down, slashing as hard as the unnatural strength of the Hamshall could swing it on the arm that had just removed his Engels' arm. The impact generated a terrible screech, as the top layer of the purple and white carapace was stripped away lengthwise, peeling up the arm. The laser mount fired wildly, but the flow of movement did not bring the beam into contact with the Star Spawn, which jerked away from the motion, bringing itself back into position. The feeder tendrils of his Hamshall lashed out, though, and entangled the arm, even as the tail of the Engel acted as a new limb, wrapping around the neck of the creature and trying to throttle it.

And that was when Pecna slammed into the pair, A-Pods set to maximum, sending the three of them sprawling into the statue, tumbling wildly over its surface, smearing it with ichor. In the tumble, the AT-Field wrapped around Лu-hvean'tahæn carved deep gashes over it, until the Star Spawn, expressing an emotion best compatible to shock, willed the Guard of Yog-Sothoth not to be. They would have to rebuild the entire statue, now, for it had now been desecrated through his actions, even if they were in its defence. The revue was broken, though, as he was forced to raise Лu-hvean'tahæn into the way of an oncoming blow from a hyperedged blade, the two swords, each over ten metres in length, bouncing off each other with terrible recoil that left both arcanoxenobiological organisms spinning away from each other in the water. While that blasphemy was distacted, he grabbed the other one, bleeding from its head where all of its feeder tendrils had been pulled out, at the roots (Tera's pained screams filling the network before the morale filters locked him out), by its throat, and slammed it against the profaned statue. Once. Twice. Three times, until liquefied unnatural flesh began to seep out of the cracks in the armour around the breast plate.

With the one remaining arm of his Engel, Tera punched the Star-Spawn in the face, grabbing its armoured tentacles, beam laser set to maximum, carving into its purple-and-white skull-like face and pulling hard, even as he gasped for air as the pain of Jibril filled him. Without detaching its hand, he slammed its head into his own, using the fact that it was pulling him against that profane statue to get leverage. It relaxed slightly, perhaps stunned, and he used the opportunity to thrust his barbed tail into the root of the creatures own tail, trying to cripple its swimming muscles. He slammed his fist on the torpedo launch button, too, aware that they wouldn't have armed this close; merely trying to use them as a kinetic impactor.

Pecna bought the spin under control, and raised his charge beam at the back of the Star Spawn, enmeshed with Jirbil and Lieutenant Tera. He fired, and the beam slammed into the back of the creature, which let out a screech. The back was cracked open wide now, hideous organs and clouds of blood (the same colour as the Hamshalls) spewing forth, in a volume disproportionate to the size of the creature. It tore away from Tera, taking his Engel's other arm with it. The agony shot though the mind of the pilot, and he fainted, losing all communion.

Pecna was not so lucky. Лu-hvean'tahæn, aflame once again with the will of the Outer Gods, removed his swimming-tail, as he fled. The Star Spawn slammed its clawed hand into the breast-plate of the Engel, over and over, until it cracked, and it could reach in, pulling out the enrty-plug, cables and tubing surrounding it which had tied directly into the central nervous system of the lobotomised ACXB organism. It went into spasms, with the removal and death of its attuned pilot, with the tearing sound of its own flesh as it tried to force its own guts back in.

Two Hamshall left. Yul'uth-ca pushed off from the floating Engel, dead in the water beside him, and bore down on Lieutenant Zuly, who desperately tried to thrust away from the monster who had mission-killed, at the very least, seven Engels identical to hers in less than three minutes.

A sixth sense... no, that was not the right term, for the Star Spawn had far more than six senses. Even humans had far more than six. A higher sense alerted Yul'uth-ca to the danger behind him, and he spun, one raised in warning, as he called upon the fundamental nature of reality and of the powers of Лu-hvean'tahæn. The charge beam shot, arcanomagnetic tunnel popping into existence to guide the protons, and clashed with the AT-Field before its hand, fractured spacetime writing and twisting before its outreached hand. For just a fraction of a second, the explosion was frozen in space, up against the silvery mesh, almost digging into it, as the energy collapsed the phase space, each proton limiting the ways that the universe could be rearranged so that the next one did not hit.

In fact, it seemed like it was piercing the barrier.

But it was only for a fraction of a second, far less than was visible to the human eye, and the beam exploded outwards when the arcanomagnetic field, designed for the tiny amount of time it took a relativistic particle to propagate, disappeared, no-longer opposing the mutual repulsion of the charged protons. It bloomed and flattered itself against the Guard of Yog-Sothoth, and when the water around it, superheated to an opaque plasma, and the resultant steam explosion cleared, the Star Spawn still stood, shimmering field intact.

That was when the second shot, from the Hamshall Azrael who was directly behind Yul'uth-ca, pierced the back of his helmet, breaking through the onee'vre-wn'p-x'rg that Лu-hvean'tahæn had built around him, and punched through his head, the relativistic protons leaving his skull through his eye. But it was not a clean hole, no; such things did not happen in real life. The impact of the high energy particles with the atoms in their way, protons into proton and neutron and the stranger matter that made up the creature, which had flown to earth from beyond the stars, left strange particles quickly born into a cold cosmos in which they were not stable; the uncharged ones leaving the arcanomagnetic field in all directions, while the charged ones bounced around inside the tunnel of discontinuous force, before its cessation left them free to escape, too.

Azrael began to make a strange noise, a gurgling, roaring noise which echoed through the chassis and left the fluid in the entry plug vibrating, a distinctly peculiar sensation.

hilarious he emoted, as he began to move towards the foe without any prompting from Zuly within, who was trying to deal with the sensation of the fluid in your lungs buzzing. She really wanted to throw up, right now. hilarious.

More shots lashed out, from the few surviving Engel units, punching through the armour that it had made for itself in many ways. Perhaps the damage done had weakened it, or perhaps it could only take a few hits before it became purely ornamental. Either way, the Star Spawn did nothing, apart from reach out with its free hand, towards the vast, kilometre-high statue that filled this underwater temple. The fingers twitched spasmodically, more through residual instinct than anything conscious. Through fading sight, it saw the third Engel that it had killed pull itself to its feet, ribcage wide open, a hint of red blood seeping from the crushed entry-plug revealed within, and swim towards him, feeder-tendrils waving.

“p'yri-re... t'vey...” it managed, through ruined mouth, voice quiet, before the first of the Engels bundled it, the arcanocyberxenobiological organisms jumping the arcanoxenobiological organism like a wolf-pack taking down a lion.

But it was only natural for the Hamshalliam to act like a social pursuit predator. They had a little bit of human in them.

One hyperedged blade lodged itself in his torso, twisted in through the onee'vre-wn'p-x'rg, then a second. They were firing at him from point blank range, too, blue-green lasers punching holes and vaporising flesh in small explosions.

And then, from behind, Azrael latched onto the hole in the head that the charge beam had caused, feeder tendrils thrust deep in, penetrating the wound. Yul'uth-ca began to die the Death of the Little then, the death of self, as the feeling overwhelmed him. The tentacles moved in and out, teasing the gap wider and wider, pushing more of themselves in as they scooped out the insides, and pulled them into the maw of the Engel.

Yul'uth-ca lost all sense, then, as his lobotomised kin, grown in vats, twisted and modified through the addition of alien genetics, implanted with controlling cybernetics, and used as weapons by uplifted apes whose kin had most resembled rodents when he had been spawned, tore him to pieces, tearing at his flesh and devouring his soul.

“Tasty. Eat. Love,” whispered Zuly, as she consumed the head of the Star Spawn. And the other Hamshalliam were doing the same, whether through piloted control or otherwise, eating of the flesh of the Star Spawn, and drinking of its ichor, a pack of ravenous predators.

The consumption of Yul'uth-ca went on for quite a long time, the Engels in a feeding frenzy, the pilots unwilling, dead, or simply unable to stop them.

Finally, though, it was over. The torn pieces of the Star Spawn, one shredded limb still reaching out to the statue that dominated the room, were spread over a wide area, the waters filled with the ichor of the thing.

tasty, emoted Azrael.

“Yes,” said Zuly, her voice filled with self-loathing and shame. It was horrible, it was unnatural, and it was true. It had been tasty, and her stomach now felt heavy and full, endorphins flooding her system.

look. there. examine. now added the Engel.

The Nazzadi could feel the Hamshall pointing, its thoughts showing her where she should look. She... no, Azrael, she reminded herself, reached out, and brushed aside the consumed remains of the Star Spawn.

And the hand rested upon Лu-hvean'tahæn.

~'/|\'~

Second Lieutenant Hupuna was, by most reckonings, a fairly good man. He was generous to charities, was happily married (without children, through their own choice), and (relatively) punctual and efficient in his duties as a monitoring officer.

It could be said,, therefore without much fear of correction, then, that he did really not deserve to be the one who discovered what he did. Strings of data poured down in front of his eyes, the hard contacts (permanently implanted into his eyes; among other things, able to manipulate his field of vision to produce realistic shadows for AR projections, and generally capable of supporting a much higher resolution and realism factor than the older, pre-implant AR glasses or goggles) slightly warmer than the surrounding tissue from the waste heat they produced.

He leant back, and ran a hand against the side of his face. Yeah, he really needed to shave tomorrow. But, really, what he wanted was coffee, and the nanofactory wasn't working right now. The thing had blackscreened, right in the middle of making a sandwich, and got stuck. The end result that not only was the nanofactory not working, but now all the break room stunk of ham, because it got stuck on a loop while weaving protein for the meat-substitute, and as a result had wrapped the machine in the white-pulpy mess of pre-flavouring protein, making it exceptionally hard to actually get to the power to turn it off at the mains. At least he hadn't been the one who had got rather more sandwich than he had asked for.

But, the problem was that he wanted coffee, dammit.

He opened his eyes, and looked around the room. The rest of the staff were sitting around, fixed at their computers, or sitting back, eyes closed, letting the direct manipulation of their visual system that the hard contact system provided give them the information they needed, hands on joysticks. The images in front of his eyes dimmed, becoming no more than pale ghosts. He closed them again, and they returned to full strength, as his retina was once more cut out of the loop, and moved his field of view to the two-dimensional projection of the northern radar scans.

“Amli katu wha disnu...” he breathed in shock, hands scrabbling for the time slider. He pulled it back. The massive number of signals, big ones too, not just recon craft by any means had just... appeared, ten seconds ago.

It couldn't be real, could it?

Could it?

“We have...” he paused, wetting his lips, which suddenly seemed far too dry to even speak, “we have... multiple massive anomalous signals on Grid Bravo-Alpha-069, inclination 078, azimuth 007. LAI is analysing veracity... uh, it can't be.... uh, the LAI can detect no technical problems. They're massive! So many returns! Right up, lunar orbit, but coming in fast! Really, really fast! Someone, someone else get a harangy look at this on a different set, see it isn't a problem with me.”

Behind him, he could hear the sound of chairs pushed aside, and footsteps. He continued to stare at the display painted across his visual field.

“Uh... we have matches for, oh... there's more... more!”

“Lieutenant Hupuna, report!” It was Iruly, the superior officer, and, technically, his younger sister. Well, younger half-sister. Younger, much more ambitious and intelligent half-sister, who actually wanted the promotions, rather than staying stuck as an radar operator (actually, it was more complicated than that, but the term “radar” had stayed) for all her career.

“Yes, Iruly,” he muttered. “Ah, looks like... 33... 34... no, that's a double blit, 36.” He swallowed. “I can't believe I'm actually saying this. Thirty-six Swarm Ships, forty-four, plus or minus anomalies, Drone dropships, and two anomalous contacts, which don't match anything that I've seen before. They're massive!”

“Get someone else on this data-set!” shouted Iruly, somewhere in the blackness outside his head. “It's got to be some kind of error!” He could feel her voice turn to him. “36 Swarm Ships,” she said slowly, her voice laden with doubt. “That's stupid. That's impossible. That's... impossible. That's more than they've deployed in one place... ever! That's more than they have active on the Eastern European Front.

Another voice spoke. “Uh... yes, we have confirmation. Multiple other stations are calling in, too, and we've been told to track the cluster with everything we've got. If it's a lie, then HQ are fooled, too.”

“Order of thirty-five Swarmers, forty-five Drones, and two anomalies?”

“Yes, Captain Iruly. That's... well, assuming that they're packed into the Drones like normal, there's ten-odd division-equivalents in them; anywhere from one-fifty thousand to two hundred thousand hostiles in those things, probably about half Blanked, half Bugs.”

“Impossible! Where are their targets?”

“At the moment they're high enough that they're covering all of Europe. Forces are scrambling, but...”

“What prompted this?” Iruly asked frantically, hyperventilating. “This is completely out of character! What are they doing? And where are those forces from? Where did they come from?”

Lieutenant Hupuna shrugged unconsciously, answering the question. “I don't know. I rewound it. One second... there, the next, not. And look at the gees that they're pulling. That's got to be 20-plus. That's red jam level, isn't it?”

“I think so, for us, at least.” There was a pause, as other voices talked. “You mean it's there? Could they have compromised our coverage? Are they radar ghosts? What's going on!”

“Please...” he said, screwing up his eyes, even though it did no use, the hard contacts having subverted his optical nerve. “I'm trying to work out what the 5 klom anom... harangy! Harangy!” He clutched at his forehead.

“What happened?” Iruly asked, concern in her voice even over her panic.

“You can't see it? You can't hear it? The noise!”

There was a pause. Then;

“No. Because I don't have an active set of hard contacts,” she said, slowly.

“Gods, so many alarms. They're screaming in my head. And the heat!” He moaned again, and took several shuddery breaths. “Massive energy signal from one anomaly, then another. Like some kind of nuclear blast or something, but directional. Can't read a rad-count, might be weapons, might not...” he traced a finger along a line invisible to everyone else, “it's still there, and still flaring. It's like a continuous blast or something... rapid delta-v.”

Iruly stared down at her half-brother, slumped down at his command console, one hand at the keyboard (rendered in the hijacked optical nerve exactly as it was in the real world), one finger waving in empty space. “Hupana,” she said, taking a deep breath. “You said that they were five kilometres long, right?”

He nodded.

“And the energy signature... it couldn't be an engine, could it? A real, actual, reaction drive, not arcanotech A-Poddery?”

“Uh...” he sucked in air between his teeth, “... I guess it could be. It's directed, if that helps.”

Captain Iruly looked around the room, left and right, wringing her hands together. “Right,” she said, finally. “Make sure that everything we get keeps on going straight to Int-HQ. I don't want any excuses. It has to work. And, now,” she said, trying to keep the wobble out of her voice, “I have to make a few phone calls.”

She managed to get to outside the room, before her legs gave way, and she slumped against the wall, dry sobs welling forth. At least her subordinates wouldn't see this, she thought pathetically.

A multi-kilometre anomaly with a reaction drive. That's not a in-atmosphere craft, like the Swarm Ships they use, which just happen to be void-capable. No, we've seen torch-flares out in the outer system like this. That's what I did my PhD on.

That's a real Migou warship.

And two of them have come to Earth, in the middle of the biggest single bug deployment I've ever seen.

...

We're all going to die.

~'/|\'~

[kingdragon]

Okay, that I saw coming.

It's just me, but it looks like you left off several sentences without completing them when you transferred it from whatever word processor you were using. "They had to avoid" was one.

Gladys Chell? Shall we see Corianna Spartan and Shodan von Braun as well?

[Jonen C]

Yeah. There's a couple of formatting errors and lost words in there.

Running commentary:
NEGA: "We would exterminate the Dagonites with ONE Evangelion."

Dagonite Commissar: "Double Heresy!"

Gladys Chell? I foresee trouble in that future.

"An open mind is like a castle with its door unbarred and its gates spread wide." Cute Fettel.

Also... Am I reading this right? Levantine?
My god. And I suppose the Great Cthulhu has a cosplay fetish?

[bullethead]

So is the kraken thing something from CthulhuTech or your own invention, because I don't get what's so bad about it (besides probably killing everything in the ocean). A little more exposition could help with that.

[Jonen C]

I read it as a reference βehemoth.
Ergo - total biosphere killer.

[LatwPIAT]

Originally Posted by EarthScorpion

“Unit 00 is closer to Unit 02 than Unit...,” began Rei, before an impact jolted her, hair drifting lazily after her head through the LCL. Unit 00 fell to one knee, in a crashing impact, as the road's surface erupted, melted tar and projectiles thrown upwards like an erupting volcano. There was the sound of a pained gasp over the communications channel.

S'bepr'fh-crevbe Phu'hului'yi stared at the viewscreen on his binoculars, the screen mitigating the inferior long-distance eyesight he had, out of water, compared to the invading blasphemers. Such atrocity! That they would disguise their already sacrilegious war machines... he tried out the word in his mouth, “Ehn'ghul. Een-guhl,” as one of the blessed Dagon'puvyqera... well, it was much more than just one heresy. It was doubly heretical, if not more so.

That was why he was so exceptionally pleased that he had been given command of the III Z'nxvat Haz'nxvat, one of the engineering companies, to use the human term, in charge of local defence. He had not been so before; the task, being on land, was one which was not held highly, and even the increased breeding rights did not make up for the discomfort of the syhvq'xr-rcvat, the water retention suit he had to wear for extended periods of time on land. He had even asked revered Pth'thya-l'yi, the revered high priestess and matriarch of his lineage, why it was necessary that one of the Chosen hold this position, why it could not simply be left to a trusted Blooded. He had not asked why it could not have been a human, for such a minor role, but he had thought it.

The answer, of course, was that it was not done to permit the Blooded too much authority. There must be a clear line of delineation between those who had taken to the water, and those who had not, for the good of society. If those who remained too human were given the powers which should remain the preserve of the Chosen, then then the Homo genus would have problems seeing the natural order of things, the simple fact that they had not been Chosen and so their faith, pitiful and childlike despite its sincerity, was not worth as much.

Of course, Phu'hului'yi suspected that it was due to his lack of breeding, that he had once dwelt on land, and although not as low as the almost-mass produced Blooded soldiers that the current conflict had spawned, he did not rank highly in the society beneath the waves (though the humans here treated him as one akin to a saint or an angel). And the fact that he had made some... foolish decisions, long ago (though not as the gehr'pu-b'fra (for that was what the Chosen who possessed a pure lineage called themselves) reckoned it), could not have helped. It was not his fault. He had not known at the time.

But, now, as he observed the plume of molten tar and dust splatter down on the ground through the binoculars, it all seemed worth it. He had positioned those inferior, un-Blooded humans near to the shaped charge for exactly that reason; to make the blasphemies pause for a moment.

Wow. Heh. Nice.

[EarthScorpion]

Originally Posted by kingdragon

Gladys Chell? Shall we see Corianna Spartan and Shodan von Braun as well?

Well, actually, this chapter has been split into two from the original plans, and so there are already 4500 words for the next one written. So, yes, Shodan von Braun is here, and so will Kory Tiana (her parents took a surname after AW1).

You see, the Achtzig Group has been busy. And they're going to be playing a larger role. Just think of the next few Angels Heralds...

Originally Posted by Jonen C

Also... Am I reading this right? Levantine?
My god. And I suppose the Great Cthulhu has a cosplay fetish?

*sniggers*

You see, that's how you can tell that I'm a nascent cosmic horror. I find that image hilarious, rather than disturbing.

Although Hayate does carry a crozier, and Cthulhu is a high priest...

That shouldn't be the most disturbing part of the scene. Think of what's happening with the Hamshalls versus the Star Spawn, the actual fight.

Originally Posted by bullethead

So is the kraken thing something from CthulhuTech or your own invention, because I don't get what's so bad about it (besides probably killing everything in the ocean). A little more exposition could help with that.

Oh, I think I gave an explanation. It's just a contextual thing, and happens quite a bit later in the document. Maybe because you didn't link "τitan" as being another example of the same phenomenon.

Originally Posted by LatwPIAT

Wow. Heh. Nice.

I aim to please.

I also aim to not-make-my-antagonists-idiots.

Or was that because of the implications about the specific Deep One?

[Sarpedon]

Kraken and Titan are from Eclipse Phase right?

[The One Char]

In CTech, could you make a GBE from BLAME! and could it be used to kill the big squid face? Because causing the space an object occupies to cease to exist might do the trick.

[kingdragon]

Oh, I just remembered. On the Ctech forums, they said that next year they were going to release a new sourcebook, Unveiled Threats, which is supposed to detail some new advances in Arcanotech for all factions, The NEG, the Cults, the Migou, etc.

[EarthScorpion]

Originally Posted by The One Char

Because causing the space an object occupies to cease to exist might do the trick.

Not by precedent, given that Units 01, 02 and half of Shalim-Shaccar survived immersion in a Zone, which does sort of the same thing. Also, trying to kill higher dimensional beings by only removing things from three of their dimensions is probably a poor plan.

Originally Posted by Sarpedon

Kraken and Titan are from Eclipse Phase right?

Nope. Although they're inspired (by which I mean, I like the idea of horrific things being named after mythological creatures with Greek characters replacing the first letter,) by Behemoth (still haven't read his books, though), they're my own thing, broadly fitting into the ANE Eva/CTech Mythos.

Why, I wonder, would it be appropriate to use something called Kraken against Deep Ones, hmm?

Originally Posted by kingdragon

Oh, I just remembered. On the Ctech forums, they said that next year they were going to release a new sourcebook, Unveiled Threats, which is supposed to detail some new advances in Arcanotech for all factions, The NEG, the Cults, the Migou, etc.

Yes. And after the disappointment of Damnation View, and the really massive disappointment of Mortal Remains, I won't be getting it. Because it will just be something silly like "Power Armour, but it has Gravikinesis", when I'm really looking for the cutting edge proto-transhumanist human-LAI synthesis units and, well, the stuff I've developed / stolen from other settings and reworked into Ctech.

...

Also, I'm surprised that no-one has worked out what Agent Andersdottir is.

Please update please update please update

[Robo Jesus]

Is there someplace online that can help me translate the Dagonite speech, as I have no clue what in the fuck is being said in that language.

[Shockz]

Excellent, as expected. If I have any real complaint, it's that the Children are starting to seem...not irrelevant, not by a long shot, but less central to the plot than they should be. (Even Rei seems to be taking a back seat to her big brother.) Of course, considering AEN's Project Evangelion is just an offshoot of a much larger shitst...uh...situation (and only one out of many things that could potentially end/alter beyond recognition all life on Earth), perhaps that's appropriate.

Okay, let's see what we've got.

NEG has a biosphere-wrecker, and it comes in both localized (or at least theoretically containable) and global variants. It is also an LCL derivative. Oh Fuck Rating: 6 "Oh Fuck"s out of 10.

Fettel (and, by extension, Alma?) seems to be up to something quite a bit more complex than "KILL THEM ALL" this time. Or at least he's going about the omnicide in a somewhat more complex way. I think. Haven't played Reborn, so I could be missing something here. Fettel also was capable of going mind-to-mind against fucking Dagon. Oh Fuck Rating: 7/10.

The Migou are pissed and/or scared out of their minds (I'm guessing both) by one or more of the very nasty things that just happened. They are thus launching what is, unless I've misread it, their largest attack ever against Earth. Oh Fuck Rating: 7/10.

Given that we're, at best, halfway through the plot...SOMETHING will inevitably disrupt this massive Migou attack. Given what would be necessary to do so compared with humanity's current firepower...Poor Migou. Poor humanity. Poor everyone. Oh Fuck Rating: 9/10.

So in addition to the Bah'ri Diß, we now have the Лu-hvean'tahæn. The Tsab, or at least their artifacts, are going from "throwaway reference with a couple explanatory notes so they fit in with the Mythos" to "major potential plot element". Given that the first had goddamned Cthulhu trapped in it, and the second is an AT-field sword (a sapient one, no less, with what's referred to as a "god-mind") wielded by a Star Spawn (and now by an Engel that seems to be (re?)gaining full sapience)...Oh Fuck Rating: 8.5/10.

Of course, that's assuming that Лu-hvean'tahæn is, in fact, Tsabian, and that you haven't just run out of things to make references to. Still, even if there is no connection, the Engel-regaining-sapience-and-having-AT-sword part still rates a good 7/10 on its own.

Also, until the reference was pointed out in the comments, I kept imagining the Star Spawn in "battle mode" as a tentacled, Lovecraftian Space Marine. Rereading it now, the comparison still holds.

EDIT:

Originally Posted by EarthScorpion

Also, I'm surprised that no-one has worked out what Agent Andersdottir is.

HOW DID I NOT CATCH THAT?! ARGH! Hm. Well, depending on a couple factors you haven't elaborated on yet, that could mean a couple different things. It could simply mean that the NEG's producing arcanobiotech super-soldiers, which honestly isn't that big a deal considering all the other shit going on. 1, maybe a 2 on the Oh Fuck meter.

On the other hand, it could mean Hellsing is part of AEN's backstory. Which would actually be pretty low on the Oh Fuck meter as well, since that would imply the existence of incredibly powerful eldritch horrors that are more or less on humanity's side, which is exactly the sort of positive thing this story seems to be trying so hard to avoid. So probably not.

EDIT2: A couple more things I noticed on a quick reread:

The NEG president is named Helen Nyanda. Though I doubt the Crawling Chaos would be so obvious and consistent, you'll pardon me if I'm automatically suspicious of anyone in this story who has a name starting with "Ny". Oh Fuck rating: Probable Red Herring/10.

Fettel is apparently working for AHNUNG. Big emphasis on "apparently". Oh Fuck rating: ?/10 until we know more, but at least a 5.

The First Infant. He is, in some form, alive, and he's psychic-resistant. Other than that, not much. No point even guessing who it is unless he's an already-introduced character.

Tome is most likely a throwaway reference to Shepherd Book and his past as an Operative. Other than that, can't guess on his significance yet.

Foxtrot 813. Not having played Reborn, I have no idea where this is going to go, except that it will definitely go somewhere, and most likely somewhere *fun*.[1]

[1] *Fun*, like Orz *parties*.[2]

[2] Goddammit, now you've got me doing the footnote thing.

[kingdragon]

Wait, we saw River Tam before.

That was Book!

[Lavanya Six]

EarthScorpion,

I just realized today, looking at the mark-up next to this thread title, that I've never posted in it to tell you how much your fic here rocks. So I'll say it now. ANE is really great. I spent a whole weekend (about a month back) sitting down and just reading it all in one go. I could talk until I was blue in the face about all the awesome you've packed into it but I'll just mention one thing: Misato's sense of taste. That was a hell of a twist on canon. I actually said out loud "Ooof!" That's how great a moment it was.

Anyway, I look forward to seeing how it all falls apart in ANE's EoE scenario. I'm sure it will be utterly horrific. Keep up the good work!

[Cpl_Facehugger]

*Jaw drops.*

Well that was certainly well worth the wait.

And Azrael is awesome. It's definitely smarter than it's letting on.

[violentpotato]

-crazed laughter-

Oh how I loved reading Fettel rape and steal the mind of a Deep One with it screaming 'Impossible! Cannot be! Does not exist!' was beautiful!

Andersdottir -more crazed laughter- if Hellsing IS being introduced into this unholy terror of a story; I'm imagining Alucard is gonna get stuffed into a missile and launched at those Migou warships and some perversion of the events of Alucard v Rip van Winkle on the Eagle will take place. Might even destroy or commandeer the ship and ram it into the other.

If eldritch horrors on the side of humanity are gonna make an appearance and save they day, so to speak, you just know that EarthScorpion's gonna have to balance that out somehow with something on the order of the awakening of an Old One. That's just the way shit always turns out in this story.

[Cpl_Facehugger]

Originally Posted by violentpotato

-crazed laughter-

Oh how I loved reading Fettel rape and steal the mind of a Deep One with it screaming 'Impossible! Cannot be! Does not exist!' was beautiful!

And not just any Deep One, either. This was Dagon. The big cheese, the head fish in the whole damn school.

It was amazing. Amazing.

If eldritch horrors on the side of humanity are gonna make an appearance and save they day, so to speak, you just know that EarthScorpion's gonna have to balance that out somehow with something on the order of the awakening of an Old One. That's just the way shit always turns out in this story.

A Migou invasion fleet with genuine Migou warships, plus Cthulhu awakening would just about do it.

My only complaint about this update was that we didn't see enough replica porn. Oh yes, what we had was amazing, but I'd have liked to see more from the replica infantry, even though Foxtrot 817 is awesome, with clearly big things awaiting him.

[Jonen C]

Originally Posted by EarthScorpion

Well, actually, this chapter has been split into two from the original plans, and so there are already 4500 words for the next one written. So, yes, Shodan von Braun is here, and so will Kory Tiana (her parents took a surname after AW1).

You see, the Achtzig Group has been busy. And they're going to be playing a larger role. Just think of the next few Angels Heralds...

*sniggers*

You see, that's how you can tell that I'm a nascent cosmic horror. I find that image hilarious, rather than disturbing.

Although Hayate does carry a crozier, and Cthulhu is a high priest...

That shouldn't be the most disturbing part of the scene. Think of what's happening with the Hamshalls versus the Star Spawn, the actual fight.

It's not disturbing - it's effing awesome. I'm just wondering - did you just have Zombie Cyborg Pirate Pod-people kill this universes version of Signum, or am I reading to much, or to little, into it?

Originally Posted by Shockz

NEG has a biosphere-wrecker, and it comes in both localized (or at least theoretically containable) and global variants. It is also an LCL derivative. Oh Fuck Rating: 6 "Oh Fuck"s out of 10.

I give it an eight. Think about it - two out of three theatre commanders have to agree to release it. And they don't agree to release it in the face of a nuclear attack. But then, the fact that you can do something like a weaponized βehemoth in a setting where all life on Earth is descended from living BCNaM constructs...

The Migou are pissed and/or scared out of their minds (I'm guessing both) by one or more of the very nasty things that just happened. They are thus launching what is, unless I've misread it, their largest attack ever against Earth. Oh Fuck Rating: 7/10.

9 for me. Think about it - warships. With reaction drives. At least interplanetary reaction drives.

"A reaction drive's efficiency as a weapon is in direct proportion to its efficiency as a drive."

"Any interesting space drive is a weapon of mass destruction. It only matters how long you want to wait for maximum damage."

"Interesting is equal to 'whatever keeps the readers from getting bored'".

The Kzinti lesson and Jon's Law.

Given that we're, at best, halfway through the plot...SOMETHING will inevitably disrupt this massive Migou attack. Given what would be necessary to do so compared with humanity's current firepower...Poor Migou. Poor humanity. Poor everyone. Oh Fuck Rating: 9/10.

Neh. 6. It's Situation Normal - End of ZA WARUDO.

So in addition to the Bah'ri Diß, we now have the Лu-hvean'tahæn. The Tsab, or at least their artifacts, are going from "throwaway reference with a couple explanatory notes so they fit in with the Mythos" to "major potential plot element". Given that the first had goddamned Cthulhu trapped in it, and the second is an AT-field sword (a sapient one, no less, with what's referred to as a "god-mind") wielded by a Star Spawn (and now by an Engel that seems to be (re?)gaining full sapience)...Oh Fuck Rating: 8.5/10.

9.0. Also - Hamshalls based on Star Spawn?

I'd downgrade most of the parapsychic oh-fucks, in particular Fettels little mindraep of Dagon. ES is doing good job making the Cosmic Horrors actual characters rather than scenery, so of course they are going have their brainmeats tampered with.

Of course, that's assuming that Лu-hvean'tahæn is, in fact, Tsabian, and that you haven't just run out of things to make references to. Still, even if there is no connection, the Engel-regaining-sapience-and-having-AT-sword part still rates a good 7/10 on its own.

Лu-hvean'tahæn isn't Tsabian, you know. The origin of the Knights is with the [REDACTED], just as the origin of the Wolkenritter is with ancient Belka.

Now... Who do you think were the ancient Belka to the strange and unknowable Tsab?

[Shockz]

Originally Posted by Jonen C

Лu-hvean'tahæn isn't Tsabian, you know. The origin of the Knights is with the [REDACTED], just as the origin of the Wolkenritter is with ancient Belka.

Now... Who do you think were the ancient Belka to the strange and unknowable Tsab?

Crap, you're right. I need to watch A's again.

...ohshit. I sense BACKSTORY!

[LatwPIAT]

You know, I've always liked Rei as a character; not those sickeningly cute projections of a submissive moé-blobs, or the completely reversed hyperactive cutesy-pies that appear whenever everything is supposed to have turned out better somehow; but rather the stoic, cold and last-but-not-least logical Reis, combined with a manner of behaviour that places them firmly within the deepest pit of the Uncanny Valley; that's the impression I got from the original Rei, and everything else just feels like the author is projecting some form of shyness onto her that wasn't there in the first place. (Whether I'm a hypocrite because the stocism I attribute Rei probably just is my own projection of abnormal desires is left as an exercise to the reader.)

I was therefore much overjoyed when I found that you (unlike, oh, everyone else) had written a Rei that was, in fact, the epitome of all these character traits, turned up to some arbitrary level of "Oh Fuck!" for the express purpose of making a Rei "like she should be written"

And when I read Chapter 14 you managed to terrify me to my very guts. By the ghost of Richard P. Feynman, I can really tell you: Your Rei is creepy.

[The Sun Emperor]

Quon Kisaragi out-Reis Rei, though.

[EarthScorpion]

Originally Posted by Shockz

Excellent, as expected. If I have any real complaint, it's that the Children are starting to seem...not irrelevant, not by a long shot, but less central to the plot than they should be. (Even Rei seems to be taking a back seat to her big brother.)

Well, technically...

... well, ah. I do actually have a chart plotting out the genetics of the Infants, and it's... well, it's complicated. "Half-sibling" is the closest you could get to describing the relationship of the First and Second, and, well, the Third and Fourth are really even more complicated. Oh, and impossible to occur in nature.

That is a problem with this chapter, though, I must admit. There was a larger role for the Children in the planning stage, but there were entire sections that got cut because I got bored writing them. They'd have made excellent scenes from a hypothetical ANE anime, but I get very, very bored writing "3-Evangelions-Curbstomb-Infantry-And-Power-Armour". Hence, fill in the gaps with massive Evangelion violence, Rei-being-creepy, Shinji-being-passive-agressive, and the Children bickering.

The next chapter should be more... interesting for them, and after that, we'll be back to a more normalised setting with all kinds of fun psychological traumas.

Of course, if ANE were an anime, we'd have used up most of our budget on this. I guess End of Engel is going to just be a lot of people talking with each other, not moving much and helpfully concealing their mouths, huh?

Okay, let's see what we've got.

Okay, let's got through and make non-commital vague statements, and maybe even correct a few assumptions.

NEG has a biosphere-wrecker, and it comes in both localized (or at least theoretically containable) and global variants. It is also an LCL derivative. Oh Fuck Rating: 6 "Oh Fuck"s out of 10.

Hmm.

Fettel (and, by extension, Alma?) seems to be up to something quite a bit more complex than "KILL THEM ALL" this time. Or at least he's going about the omnicide in a somewhat more complex way. I think. Haven't played Reborn, so I could be missing something here. Fettel also was capable of going mind-to-mind against fucking Dagon. Oh Fuck Rating: 7/10.

Remember, as of this point, that thing that happened at the start of FEAR hasn't happened to Fettel, neither did the synchronisity incident that happened to him as a child (the Fourth Infant was the one that succumbed... and, oh, wouldn't you like to know what prompts synchronsity incidents, yes?).

He's still a ... I think the term is "largely independent actor" with no more Alma bleedthrough than the other non-First Infants.

The Migou are pissed and/or scared out of their minds (I'm guessing both) by one or more of the very nasty things that just happened. They are thus launching what is, unless I've misread it, their largest attack ever against Earth. Oh Fuck Rating: 7/10.

Containment.

Given that we're, at best, halfway through the plot...SOMETHING will inevitably disrupt this massive Migou attack. Given what would be necessary to do so compared with humanity's current firepower...Poor Migou. Poor humanity. Poor everyone. Oh Fuck Rating: 9/10.

Well, normally there's a fucking good reason they don't bring warships in atmosphere; because they pre-date arcanotechnology, and so their reaction drives... well, you know that they don't like humans using nukes for the same reason. Yes, they were explicitly written with what Jonen C put about reaction drives in mind.

Also, they need to keep the Warships in orbit, drives cold, to stop a Tsab raid, because sometimes they breach the Sol Exclusion Volume and try raids.

So in addition to the Bah'ri Diß, we now have the Лu-hvean'tahæn. The Tsab, or at least their artifacts, are going from "throwaway reference with a couple explanatory notes so they fit in with the Mythos" to "major potential plot element". Given that the first had goddamned Cthulhu trapped in it, and the second is an AT-field sword (a sapient one, no less, with what's referred to as a "god-mind") wielded by a Star Spawn (and now by an Engel that seems to be (re?)gaining full sapience)...Oh Fuck Rating: 8.5/10.

It's not an AT-Field Sword. It's the intrusion of a higher-dimensional artefact/organism (the lines are kind of blurry on that) into normal 3D space, which just happens to be shaped like a sword because that's how the Star Spawn unfolded the projection through high level sorceries that no human knows how to do.

Oh, and, technically, you've seen three.

And it's not really being wielded by an Engel...

Of course, that's assuming that Лu-hvean'tahæn is, in fact, Tsabian, and that you haven't just run out of things to make references to. Still, even if there is no connection, the Engel-regaining-sapience-and-having-AT-sword part still rates a good 7/10 on its own.

Well, no, it's not Tsabian. The Tsab are a Migou-ish level race. The Tsab would kill (all the Migou) to get their hands on things like Лu-hvean'tahæn. They can only make very pale copies for their soldiers... only the sorcerer-matriachs can get their appendages (or, to be fair, have any chance of surviving it) on a real device such as this.

Also, you know, things like Лu-hvean'tahæn have actually developed in cycles, as the sorceries were refined and new knowledge gained by their builders (often at great cost from Yog-Sothoth). But the roots of the weapon, the fundamental principles that they're based on...

You've seen Лu-hvean'tahæn's n-great grandfather, conceptually, where n is a bloody large number.

HOW DID I NOT CATCH THAT?! ARGH! Hm. Well, depending on a couple factors you haven't elaborated on yet, that could mean a couple different things. It could simply mean that the NEG's producing arcanobiotech super-soldiers, which honestly isn't that big a deal considering all the other shit going on. 1, maybe a 2 on the Oh Fuck meter.

Well, as it stands, the events of Old Blood may or may not, depending on what AN does with the story, have existed in ANE's backstory. I don't know, as of this moment. I just liked the idea, and it meant that I got to throw in another minor shout-out which does actually make sense.

And... yeah. The whole arcanobiotech supersolider thing is kinda... old, what with the Infants and the Replicas and the Engels and the Evangelions and the {REDACTED BY ORDER OF THE ACHTZIG GROUP} and the {REDACTED BY ORDER OF THE AMUNET GROUP} and the like running around.


[quote[The NEG president is named Helen Nyanda. Though I doubt the Crawling Chaos would be so obvious and consistent, you'll pardon me if I'm automatically suspicious of anyone in this story who has a name starting with "Ny". Oh Fuck rating: Probable Red Herring/10.[/quote]

Yeah, Nyarly is too busy with his modelling career (see Chapter 1).

Fettel is apparently working for AHNUNG. Big emphasis on "apparently". Oh Fuck rating: ?/10 until we know more, but at least a 5.

Yes. Apparently.

I trust him about as much as I trust Kaji, multiplied by how far I can throw him. And, yes, in terms of "involvement in mutliple layers of conspiracy (AHNUNG, GIA, Ministry of War, Gendo), while not actually working for any of them," they're doing pretty well, you know. Well, they do know each other.

Hmm. But do they know that they both know Misato (say that quickly five times), I wonder? And that she wasn't pleased to see either of them?

Ah, Misato. You and your past.

Just so you know, Kaji is totally not, in any way whatsoever, also involved with the Office of Special Services.

The First Infant. He is, in some form, alive, and he's psychic-resistant. Other than that, not much. No point even guessing who it is unless he's an already-introduced character.

Canon trait, the resilience. Maybe because he was the first prototype, so they did less tampering, but I don't know. That's why he managed to remain independent throughout the entire game (even when in the Vault), while Fettel succumbed right at the start.

Originally Posted by Lavanya Six

EarthScorpion,

I just realized today, looking at the mark-up next to this thread title, that I've never posted in it to tell you how much your fic here rocks. So I'll say it now. ANE is really great. I spent a whole weekend (about a month back) sitting down and just reading it all in one go. I could talk until I was blue in the face about all the awesome you've packed into it but I'll just mention one thing: Misato's sense of taste. That was a hell of a twist on canon. I actually said out loud "Ooof!" That's how great a moment it was.

Anyway, I look forward to seeing how it all falls apart in ANE's EoE scenario. I'm sure it will be utterly horrific. Keep up the good work!

Why, thank you! And, yes, I was really rather pleased with the Misato-explanation. It was specifically designed to make you (as in, the reader) feel guilty and like you're a bad person whenever I make jokes about it later. The corrosive influence of the Mythos seeps into even the lighthearted bits of Eva.

That may be a further sign of badpersonhood for me, but, hey, it works.

Originally Posted by Cpl_Facehugger

And Azrael is awesome. It's definitely smarter than it's letting on.

Well, it's been through multiple pilots, and each one leaves a little trace of themselves on it, and Hamshalls are smart for Engels, anyway. Add that to what happened at the end of the last chapter, and the sheer amount of mindrape on the astral plane that gets thrown around this chapter (and the source of that mindrape)... and, well. It doesn't think like the genetic material, and in a sense, it has a human plugged into its nervous system to do the complicated thinking for it.

It's something new.

Originally Posted by Cpl_Facehugger

And not just any Deep One, either. This was Dagon. The big cheese, the head fish in the whole damn school.

It was amazing. Amazing.

...

My only complaint about this update was that we didn't see enough replica porn. Oh yes, what we had was amazing, but I'd have liked to see more from the replica infantry, even though Foxtrot 813 is awesome, with clearly big things awaiting him.

Admittedly, this was more along the lines of Fettel metaphysically clubbing Dagon over the head with a 2x4 when he wasn't expecting it (yeah, he's good at that, isn't he), but, remember that Dagon is an uplifted, empowered Deep One (he probably classifies as a Knight-type under the Andrianov Protocols), not a real power. He's pretty low on the food chain.

And Paxton Fettel is built around mind-rape and playing with minds and their control. In an extended battle or a fair fight he'd have lost out, but Rei happened.

On the subject of 813, though. I mean, he's just in the middle of enemy territory, with his power armour destroyed, with plenty of Dagonites left, and with an oncoming Migou assault fleet. Whatever will he do?

True Fact: Through many years of hard research and several rather nasty under-the-table deals, the Herkunft Group managed to obtain a tiny fragment of Captain Price's genetic material, and incorporated it into random Replicas, to see if it had an effect, in a triple-blinded research test. 813 is one of those Replicas.

Originally Posted by Jonen C

It's not disturbing - it's effing awesome. I'm just wondering - did you just have Zombie Cyborg Pirate Pod-people kill this universes version of Signum, or am I reading to much, or to little, into it?

Well, no, actually.

Since it seemed that no-one actually got what was going on;

That entire fight? The 9 Hamshalls vs the 1 Star Spawn?

That was Cthulhuoid-Mass-Production-Evas versus Magical-StarSpawn-Cthulhu-Asuka, under the sea, in a black hemisphere, which ends with Magical-StarSpawn-Cthulhu-Asuka being shot in the head, and then torn apart by the ravenous Cthulhuoid-Mass-Production-Evas.

Yes. Really. Go reread it, and watch that fight from End of Eva.

9.0. Also - Hamshalls based on Star Spawn?

Oh, yes.


...

...

Two things. I forgot to thank LatwPIAT, for providing some of the help with the action scenes (seriously, you were a big help for getting me past some block).

And, also, videos! And spoilers for all but the last one!

PUT YOUR PEDAL TO THE METAL AND LISTEN TO FETTEL!

REBORN FETTEL, PLUS ALMA

A video of mummy when she was just a little girl, and wasn't even going to have your eldest half-brother for... six years, maybe

[Garlak]

I kind of got the feeling that Fettel somehow "attacked" or "reached through" Dagon's "soul" and into his mind, with the help of Alma or Rei.

I'm getting the feeling that having an AT-field is a big freaking deal in here, to the point that Heralds, Evas and a god-like artifact sword can use it... Other things might sort of.. emanate one with their "light of the soul" thing, but actually utilizing an AT-field is... it's big. It's like sorcery or parapsychic powers to normal, vanilla human beings.

Well, at least that's sort of the impression I'd gotten...


What I'm not getting at is... why was Fettel's attack "secret"? It seemed very hush hush, but WHY? Obviously Dagon needed to be removed so the NEG could summon a weakened Herald... so why be cloak and dagger about it--I mean beyond the usual Operational Security measures such a thing would have in place? Is Ahnung the one driving this, or the secret service folks... confusing...

[Shockz]

Originally Posted by EarthScorpion

It's not an AT-Field Sword. It's the intrusion of a higher-dimensional artefact/organism (the lines are kind of blurry on that) into normal 3D space, which just happens to be shaped like a sword because that's how the Star Spawn unfolded the projection through high level sorceries that no human knows how to do.

And my cellphone is in fact a multifunctional handheld computer capable of playing various forms of audiovisual media, accessing the Internet, giving me directions to the nearest bookstore, and playing Tetris. It's still a damn celllphone.

That entire fight? The 9 Hamshalls vs the 1 Star Spawn?

That was Cthulhuoid-Mass-Production-Evas versus Magical-StarSpawn-Cthulhu-Asuka, under the sea, in a black hemisphere, which ends with Magical-StarSpawn-Cthulhu-Asuka being shot in the head, and then torn apart by the ravenous Cthulhuoid-Mass-Production-Evas.

Yes. Really. Go reread it, and watch that fight from End of Eva.

*curls up into fetal position, screaming, crying, and gibbering at random intervals*

*pauses as he realizes he has no idea what that actually means/implies/foreshadows*

*remembers what story he's reading, and goes right back to the screaming, crying, and gibbering*