Neon Psychosis Evangelion Discussion

[Mizagium]

your notes are the best.

[TEAM_DERRICK]

Got bored. Figured I'd write this. Use it as you will.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Shinji awoke with a smile on his gasping face. Sweat drenched his clothing and bedsheets. The entire room reeked with perspiration.

"Best...Dream... Ever," he said between breaths.

He turned on his side to check the time. 3:47. 'And I'm wide awake. Damn.' His thoughts returned to his dream and what had happened therein. Neither of them knew what would happen if they tried that. Well, now they knew.

'I need to use a PASIV next time. That way I'll stay asleep rather than just waking up at the last second."

Looking down, he realized that sweat wasn't the only thing making his clothes wet. "Ewwww. Guess I'll need to bring an extra pair of pants too. Ughhh."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yeah, that just happened.

[TEAM_DERRICK]

We have nine days till we fight Rameil.
lol

[Mizagium]

“Jesus, Cobb, is it too much to ask for you to bring him to me in once piece?”

“My apologies, Dr. Agaki,” Cobb replied halfheartedly, “but things didn’t go exactly as we had planned.” He and Arthur had the bleeding man between them, holding him up by his shoulders. Rei balanced on Shinji’s shoulder, hopping on her uninjured foot.

“I can see that,” she replied sarcastically. “He’s going to die from blood loss if we don’t move fast – what the hell; did you have to shoot him twice?”

“Shinji actually made the first shot, but he didn’t go down.”

“That so?” Ritsuko raised her eyebrows. “I wasn’t sure if he had it in him.”

“I know, right?” Arthur grinned. “Can we get him to a chair or something? He’s kind of heavy.”

“Of course. Lay him down of there.” She gestured to a surgeon’s table. “Yusuf! Get here and bring some anesthetic and a coagulant! And some bandages.” The Indian Chemist came through the sliding door moments later carrying two bottles of chemicals and a roll of bandages. He handed one to Ritsuko and one to Cobb, each filling a syringe.

“I’ll get a mop, then,” Arthur muttered and hurried off.

“Hey!” Shinji shouted. The entire room froze. It was several seconds before he realized that he had even spoken. “R-Rei is injured, too. She needs help.”

“No.” Rei shook her head. “I am alright. Please do not worry about me.”

With a sigh, Ritsuko waved Shinji over. “Bring her here, then.” As Arthur returned with a mop and began cleaning up the blood, Ritsuko sat Rei down in a chair. She lifted her injured leg without much care, causing the girl to wince. “Not bad; she’ll live. Yusuf.” She held out an open hand and the Chemist deposited the coagulant bottle. “I wouldn’t let her go down even one level, though. Rei, you’re going to have to sit this one out.”

“I understand, Dr. Agaki.”

Shinji turned pale. “That means that I have to go in alone again, right?”

“Sorry, kid,” Cobb smoothed his hair back. “But it’s looking that way.”

The silence that followed was broken by the man lying on the surgical table. He coughed up blood and moaned.

Twisting the mop, Arthur spoke. “We should hurry; it’s going to be angry when it wakes up.”

“If it wakes up,” Ritsuko retorted. “You cut it close, guys. He lost a lot of blood.”

“I know, I know. You heard Cobb, it’s not our fault.”

“Then whose fault is it? And don’t even think about blaming Shinji.”

Arthur grimaced and tossed the mop to one side. “Fine. Come on, kid.” He took Shinji firmly by the shoulder and led him away with Cobb to the Command Bridge.

Behind them, Yusuf leaned over the body and raised an eyebrow. “You know, this could have been an excellent chance to determine how an Angel’s ego behaves without a host. Think about it: a wild consciousness without an ego barrier!”

“Perhaps at a later date, Yusuf, when one of our pilots isn’t bleeding.” She fixed Rei with a cold glare.

[TEAM_DERRICK]

"wild consciousness without an ego barrier!"

Technobable or foreshadowing?

[Mizagium]

Mostly technobable; is it foreshadowing if I end using even though I hadn't planned on it?

[TEAM_DERRICK]

Sounds like Mana is all.

And sure, why not.

[TEAM_DERRICK]

NPE in a nutshell

I was walkin’ through the city streets
and a girl walks up to me and hands me the opportunity to love her like nobody else.
Run faster. Jump Higher.
Man, I’m totally gonna let you poison me.

I woke up on the floor!!!!
I think I’m a joke!
I ain’t gonna be part of this PASIV!
Man, pump that garbage in another man’s veins!

I go to fight some giant marble freak
and the dude says, “Shit son, it's the girl from your dream. Maybe she can help!”
I said, “Man, what I look like, a charity case?”

I took her, and we killed the angel!
I need your handouts!
I’m an adult!
Please, you can’t buy me hot dog man!

At the farmer’s market with my so-called “girlfriend”
She get's self destructed, says she loves me.
Man, this Kowaru's an angel too?!

I threw him on the ground!
What you think he reiped Rei?
I’m a part of this system!
My dad’s a member of SEELE! Duh!

Some poser hands me an offer of friendship in his room
What you want me to do with this, eat it?

Happy birthday to your face!
I killed the guy out of my dreams too!
Welcome to the real world, jackass!

So many things to throw on the ground
Like this, and this, and that. And even this.
I’m an adult!

Two SEELE phonys trying to give me their Instrumentality
Limbo! Nobody wants your Insrumentality! Phonys!

Then the two phonys got up. Turns out they had a taser.
And they tased me in the butt hole.
I fell to the ground.
The phonys didn’t let up.
Tasing on my butt hole, over and over.
I was screaming and squirming
My butt hole was on fire!

The moral of this story is: you can’t trust the PASIV!

Man!

[Mizagium]

I...what?

[TEAM_DERRICK]

Just post the next part of the chapter already.
The wait is killing me.

[Mizagium]

I posted all I have. And I'm being a nerd tonight with Guild Wars. but i'll write some inbetween stuff

[TEAM_DERRICK]

OKAY

[Mizagium]

Shamshel felt control of the Lilim slip from its grasp. Its vision dimmed and a strange sleep overcame it, one with similar qualities to the space between minds that it so frequently traveled. But this was not the emptiness between; this was still the mind of his host. What then, was happening? The blue flame that was the mind of the Angel wandered alone in the darkness for an indeterminable amount of time.

Suddenly, the darkness gave way to light as a world was constructed around it, a world of dreams, where you could be whatever you envisioned yourself. A moment passed before the Angel recognized the world as a recreation of the city above. It hovered over the waters as a machine recreated the world of its creators.

A maze; a labyrinth. Lilim knew what Shamshel was after and has hid it within a maze of dreams. Had it a mouth, or the mental capacity to understand emotions, Shamshel would have grinned. Challenge accepted.

Here, in the world where one could be what one envisioned, Shamshel expanded its existence out from its core, becoming the form chosen for it. It lengthened, becoming longer than a typical skyscraper was tall. Its head was shaped like a spade with spots that resembled eyes, but were not; Shamshel needed no eyes. Odd little fins protruded from either side of the now armored form. It colored itself purple, the Lilim color for royalty. Testing its abilities, it extended two whips of pinkish energy from the side fins, snapping them over the sea. Satisfied, it retracted them. Its core was well protected, as the head covered it like a helmet and the energy whips could reach anything that posed a threat to its existence.

Turning horizontal, Shamshel advanced on the labyrinth.

[Mizagium]

Shinji found himself dressed in his Plug Suit, seated at the controls to Evangelion Unit 01, already submerged in LCL. Two weeks of rehearsal dictated his next few actions. According to Cobb, in order to operate properly within a dream environment, Shinji had to imagine himself as always possessing his Totem – the SDAT player. In addition to always carrying it around with him, he had to envision it as part of himself, to the point that he would be incomplete without it. He slid the headphones of his SDAT player over his ears and pressed the play button. Nothing. He skipped through the songs until he reached track 25. Still nothing. He was dreaming.

A few days prior, he might have panicked and hyperventilated, but not today. For whatever reason, today was the day his monotonous training decided to kick in. To confirm what his Totem told him, Shinji did his best to recount the events that lead up to him arriving here, in the Entry Plug. He couldn’t remember. They had chased the Angel’s host, caught him, and brought him back. Then they…things got fuzzy after that. And then he woke up here.

It was odd that they placed him inside the cockpit, already suited up, and the LCL charged. Usually they started at the beginning, having him actually put on the Plug Suit and A10 Nerve Clips. Without actually counting, he was sure they had skipped at least ten or eleven steps. Could they do that?”

“ Sorry about dropping you right into the Entry Plug, Shinji,” Misato’s voice sounded over the radio. “But we’re short on time. The subject was losing a lot of blood very fast. We couldn’t afford to take our time.”

“I understand,” he said. After all, it was his fault; his gunshot had been ill-placed, causing Cobb to fire a second round. Two untreated bullet wounds now pumped rivers of blood onto the neatly polished floor of NERV headquarters while Yusuf struggled to keep the man just alive enough.

“Give us just a moment. We’re still trying to obtain a fix on the Angel’s location.”

[Mizagium]

The Bridge was a faithful recreation of its world counterpart. Actually, the real-world Bridge was a faithful recreation of this one. While up above it served only to monitor the ambient brainwave patterns of Tokyo-3 (doing so required a massive amount of technology; all of NERV HQ, including the MAGI, was devoted to this one task) the dream-Bridge could display a three different maps of the city, monitor the Evas power supply, synchronization ratios, the pilot’s vitals and brainwave patterns, track the Angels, and generate caches of weapons in the skyscrapers of the city maze.

Makoto, Maya, and Shigeru were working every scanner in their arsenal to locate the Fourth Angel, which had yet to appear. “It must still be out in the ocean,” Makoto said between keystrokes.

“Why do we even include that in the levels?” Misato asked bitterly.

“We have to,” Ritsuko replied, leaning over Maya’s shoulder. She had taken control of the terminal from her apprentice and typing out lines of code at an inhuman rate. “The ocean is the pathway between our dreams and where the Angels originate from. That and we can’t just drop the Angel in the middle of the maze, can we? That would defeat the purpose. It’s better to construct the ocean around the Angel and the city in front of it. We have what it wants; there’s no danger of it wandering off.”

“Found it!” Makoto exclaimed. The big screen in front of them displayed an image of the crustacean Angel coming in off the ocean.”

“My what big eyes you have,” Eames remarked.

“They look more like designs,” Arthur observed. “From what we saw with the Third Angel, they don’t actually need eyes to see. Not down here, at least.”

“So, what then?” Misato asked, crossing her arms.

“You know how some flying animals have marking on their wings that look like eyes to intimate potential predators – like moths? I think that’s what it did here.”

“It’s trying to intimidate us?”

“Perhaps. The Angels don’t have the same logical reasoning that we – “

Eames interjected. “Not that you’ll listen to me anyway, but might I point out that you two are completely missing the point? Mr. Shigeru, if you would, focus in on those fins please?” An enhanced image of the strange, bony fins overlapped that of the Angel proper. Various readings appeared around them.

“This is…” Ritsuko gasped.

“Very similar to Sachiel’s energy spikes. My guess is that this Angel’s main attack will come from there.”

Arthur shook his head, grinning. “Eames, I – “

“Don’t say it, Arthur.”

“No, I mean it this time. I am impressed.”

“What is the closest exit point for Unit 01?” Misato turned to Makoto.

“Route 2, but at the rate it’s moving, it’ll pass over it before Shinji reaches it. Route 4 seems a better option, Captain Katsuragi.”

“Right then. Launch Eva 01!”

Sitting high above the Bridge Crew, Gendo Ikari studied images of the maze. Something stuck out to him as odd. Fuyutsuki stood to his right, and Cobb to his left. He turned to Cobb. “Mr. Cobb, you’re an expert on this sort of thing: why haven’t we seen as many projections in this maze as we did last time?”

“There are a number of different possibilities, Commander. My guess? My guess is that our subject is dying faster than we thought. While killing projections doesn’t injure the mind, a dying mind will focus more on the conscious than the preconscious – usually. Of course it could also be that his mind is actually destroyed this time.”

“This time?”

Fuyutsuki spoke. “We got lucky last time, Commander. When we caught the host, the Angel had only just appeared. The subject’s mind was still partially intact, albeit corrupted. This time, it seems, the Angel has destroyed the other mind completely.”

“Couldn’t it fill the mind with its projections?”

“Impossible,” Cobb answered quickly. “Angels do not have the same capacity for logic and reason as we do. They are little more than animals operating on instinct. They can’t have projections because they can’t have unconscious desires or thoughts.”

Fuyutsuki nodded in agreement. “All of GEHIRN’s research supports this conclusion, Ikari. We’re in the clear this time.”

Gendo was silent for a moment, then utter a single word. “Interesting.”

[TEAM_DERRICK]

I love how the angels have no true form until they make one for themselves.

With this in mind, Ramiel should be trying to imitate a bacteriophage virus.

[Mizagium]

In this chapter: more technobabble.

But seriously, that just made sense to me, considering how they don't have a physical form - they can't imagine themselves as anything because they aren't anything. The Core is all that they really are.

I also figured out how Shinji beats Ramiel. When he's inside it, and the Core is appearing everywhere, he remembers Cobb telling him how, as an Eva Pilot, he can affect dreams without destabilizing them. So he alters the ENCOM Positron Cannon to be a repeating rifle and shoots every single Core.

[TEAM_DERRICK]

THATS.
FUCKING.
GREAT.
YES.

[Mizagium]

any notes?

[TEAM_DERRICK]

I'll make notes when you finish the chapter and lump all this into one post.

Unless you need them that badly.