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leliel_12[Trigger warning: Body horror, sexism, violence, sexism, infection, childbirth, incest undertones, fetishzing of disease, GENERAL INSANITY. We’re beyond the Rubicon with this one, folks.]
[Link to das_sporking.]
Leliel: [Dead stare] Every time I look at it…it never gets less weird. It’s impressive.
Futaba: Yeah, I…uh…I read the summary of this chapter and the next and…Futaba hurt herself in her confusion. She had to punch herself back to sanity.
Diego: [Low susurrus in a strange, clicking tongue that seems to be in disbelieving agreement.]
Nocht: Erm…can I ask why Diego is currently a colony of xenos fungi? And…I don’t think that’s Low Gothic.
Leliel: Wait, sorry, translator’s not on-[Clicks something.]
Diego: Sl’rezk-ahem! Thanks, much better. I’m not actually physically present, my real self is currently gestating in a chrysalis in a sea of LCL - I had Clarence, my mi-go friend, rig up this as a radio while I complete my ascension to Elder Godhood. Trust me, I’ve seen where this leads from a front-row seat, and sweet merciful All-Mother’s embrace. You are not prepared. None of you are. I wasn’t.
Sophia: Well, it certainly seems things have escalated since I left. Which, given the degree of idiotic heresy we were at last time I was here, doesn’t help much.
Leliel: [plug]Read the spitefic.[/plug] But yeah, you know you’re in for a wild ride when the author’s note tells you Weird Gross Shit Is Going Down.
Thanks, and apologies, to my beta-reader Crazy-88, who I appear to have mentally scarred with this chapter. Prepare for awesome and mindfuckery rarely seen these days. I recommend you bring metal music and a barf bag.
Emma: Mindfuckery, yes. Awesome, no. And I wouldn’t sully any of my beloved Dynazty or A Sound of Thunder by associating it with… this.
Diego: And trust us - we will need a barf bag, but not for the reasons Academia Nut thinks…hopefully. There was a reason Nicholas Cage in one of his distinct roles was the preview image.
Chapter 19
[Link to das_sporking.]
Leliel: [Dead stare] Every time I look at it…it never gets less weird. It’s impressive.
Futaba: Yeah, I…uh…I read the summary of this chapter and the next and…Futaba hurt herself in her confusion. She had to punch herself back to sanity.
Diego: [Low susurrus in a strange, clicking tongue that seems to be in disbelieving agreement.]
Nocht: Erm…can I ask why Diego is currently a colony of xenos fungi? And…I don’t think that’s Low Gothic.
Leliel: Wait, sorry, translator’s not on-[Clicks something.]
Diego: Sl’rezk-ahem! Thanks, much better. I’m not actually physically present, my real self is currently gestating in a chrysalis in a sea of LCL - I had Clarence, my mi-go friend, rig up this as a radio while I complete my ascension to Elder Godhood. Trust me, I’ve seen where this leads from a front-row seat, and sweet merciful All-Mother’s embrace. You are not prepared. None of you are. I wasn’t.
Sophia: Well, it certainly seems things have escalated since I left. Which, given the degree of idiotic heresy we were at last time I was here, doesn’t help much.
Leliel: [plug]Read the spitefic.[/plug] But yeah, you know you’re in for a wild ride when the author’s note tells you Weird Gross Shit Is Going Down.
Thanks, and apologies, to my beta-reader Crazy-88, who I appear to have mentally scarred with this chapter. Prepare for awesome and mindfuckery rarely seen these days. I recommend you bring metal music and a barf bag.
Emma: Mindfuckery, yes. Awesome, no. And I wouldn’t sully any of my beloved Dynazty or A Sound of Thunder by associating it with… this.
Diego: And trust us - we will need a barf bag, but not for the reasons Academia Nut thinks…hopefully. There was a reason Nicholas Cage in one of his distinct roles was the preview image.
Chapter 19
Leliel: First, a backpoint; a friend of mine on TV Tropes pointed out that Misato acted…awfully damsel-ish after killing someone in a rage. And guilty. And very stereotypically feminine.
Futaba: [Shivers] That kind of hidden reduction of female agency won’t get better…just skeevier.
HETERONORMATIVE HEDGEHOG: 892
The halls of Central Dogma were a vicious battle zone that swept up and tore apart anything caught in their wake. While the commanders of NERV were inexperienced in this sort of fighting, they merely had to hold at the chokepoints to inflict horrific losses on the JSSDF troopers. The damage done to their back-up had meant that heavy weapons had been expended early only to break up defensive lines only for no resupply to be available once NERV hardened up their defences. Of course, the advantage of defensive terrain was pretty much NERV's only advantage, so it was a massacre on both sides.
Futaba: [Bored] Though clearly only actually an issue for the JSSDF.
Oh, and the slaughter by the Rubric Marines had certainly not helped the JSSDF forces at all.
Nocht: What she spoke…
TALON ON THE SCALES: 472
Diego: Ugh, skipping to the end - Tzeentchji rampages through the base while carrying Misato’s body to the command bridge, helped by the Rubric Marines, and…
It thus took him almost no time to go from the detention block to the bridge, a trail of burning and exploded bodies in his wake, not all of them JSSDF soldiers, some of them being NERV guards stupid enough to shoot at him when he really didn't feel like taking time to explain that he was on their side.
Nocht: Instead of just raising telekinetic barriers and ignoring them, which would cost less than exploding them and allows for focus on the push. But that wouldn’t gratify his ego.
Sophia: Now that’s just wasteful idiocy. I don’t care about petty moral concerns, but I do care about getting the job done and not doing too much friendly fire.
GENDO’S FATED BASTARD: 980
There was of course a rather large amount of confusion and fear when Shinji swept into the cavernous chamber surrounded by four giants in armour that looked suspiciously like the armour on his Eva carrying weapons that looked like they should be crew manned. The command staff was fortunately not stupid enough to open fire.
Leliel: Quite amazing trigger discipline when Tzeentchji would otherwise murder them, and be more obviously in the wrong, on-screen…
Of course, the fact that he was floating through the air, witch fire radiating from his eyes didn't exactly reassure those who were uncomfortable with his guardians.
Nocht: Interesting side note - that’s generally a sign of psychic overexertion and bordering on the Perils of the Warp breaking through. Tzeentchji is liable to be stabbed from the inside by a Bloodletter. No points, as this was draining for him, and it’s a warning sign rather than actual danger to the wielder as yet, but it is a nice thought.
"Where is Rei-san?" Shinji asks, his voice echoing with power.
There was stunned silence for a moment before Shinji nodded. "You don't know. Very well. Where is Asuka-san?"
Leliel: Fun fact - in the original, these lines are bolded. I consider my obliteration of them an act of spite.
Again, an uncomfortable silence as everyone assembled tried to figure out if he had simply taken those thoughts from their minds. However, someone had enough presence of mind to bring up an exterior camera on the main monitor, showing the white with purple trimmed mass production Evas landing in a long line with Unit 02 squaring off against them.
"Come, we must make haste to the Eva bays," Shinji tells his retinue while gently setting the disc carrying Misato's body on the ground.
Nocht: …that’s it? Not even enlisting them or telling them why the literal Major died?
Angharad: Why would you tell anything to or enlist these… objects? They aren’t him, so they aren’t people.
After he departed, his Rubric Marines carried aloft with him, Shigeru asked what everyone else was thinking in the stunned silence of the Command Centre
"What the fuck just happened?"
Magdalene: We’ve been trying to figure that out!
Leliel: Seriously. Absolutely nothing stopped anyone from skipping to the MP Evas, nothing of importance happened apart from Tzeentchji going to the Eva bays, nobody even got hurt, was that whole exercise just to show off how cool-oh, wait, mystery solved.
TALON ON THE SCALES: 473
The Mass Production Models of the Evangelion series were truly a marvel of modern engineering and research into the Angels. While being built in secret by SEELE as their counter to NERV, they had been refined and upgraded countless times in response to the latest data gathered from the battlefield.
Futaba: Oh look, the MP-Evas have been upgraded to convince us this won’t be an utter curb-stomp or adhere to the stations of the canon. Ooooh. [Yawns]
And they needed as much of an advantage as they could get, seeing as they didn't have the much heavier L-type equipment available to them.
Diego: It’s interesting how even this seems to be portraying SEELE as the underdogs…and also, the MPs have Replica Spears of Loginius. They’re very something you don’t want to armor overmuch, that would ruin their speed and actual ability to slip their armor- and AT-piercing weapons through the defenses of their targets. Any research should be aimed at overcoming the armor of other Evas, not bulking them up.
Magdalene: I think it’s safe to say that even that tiny bit of subtlety is beyond the understanding of this story.
Emma: They’re giant bone-white mecha with Joker smiles!
Magdalene: I said “tiny bit”!
TALON ON THE SCALES: 474
DUMMY PLUGGED: 832 (They’re anti-Eva Evangelions. Why would they want to fight the same way as other Evas do vs. Angels?)
What had been produced though was terrifying enough. Every MP Eva had within it an S2 engine for unlimited operation that also granted regenerative abilities.
Futaba: Which is another reason why bigger armor is pointless, these things literally recover HP if they’re allowed to disengage for a bit! Again, wolves, not bears.
Mortarion: Fought against an Imperial Governor like that, once. I sowed all the intake vents to his citadel with the most noxious mixture I could find. We went in and hosed it out a week later.
Leliel: In all fairness, we don’t see them doing so in EoE…but on the other hand, one is shown still being alive even after being cut in half, so maybe they didn’t feel they needed to.
DUMMY PLUGGED: 833
This was rather critical as several of the abilities reverse engineered from studying the Angels actively used up the flesh of the MP Evas.
Futaba: Aaaand none of this is canon. They didn’t need it then, and while narratively, it makes sense given Asuka’s buff, I can’t help but feel this is ass-covering for how utterly incompetent SEELE has been all fic, and this is the first moment of them engineering anything like this. So no, hand me that button, it’s time to empty the Berserk Bar as we hit each individual bit.
For example, from Sahaquiel they had figured out how to take a bit of flesh and accelerate it using an AT-field, turning it into a deadly spike. For extra kick they gave each round so accelerated a tiny chewing maw to dig through armour and flesh, backwards engineered from Ramiels formidable drill
Nocht: …you know, Tzeentchji manipulates his AT-Field too. I suspect the only reason he wasn’t cited for inspiration was fear by the author that he wouldn’t be able to counter his own overpowered nature and SEELE maybe showing some small degree of awareness.
DUMMY PLUGGED: 834
From Matariel they had figured out how to charge the blood of the Evas to make them highly corrosive. One of the units even had a support weapon hooked up directly to its circulatory system, giving it the ability to shoot streams of acid long distances, a sort flamethrower analog only far more unpleasant.
Diego: Fun fact: There’s actually a canon instance of a chemical flamethrower in Warhammer, a chemical notorious for burning so stubbornly that the preferred way of putting it out permanently is exposure to hard void to remove all oxygen fueling it. It’s just that Phosphex weapons are more associated with Chaos, especially the Death Guard, than Imperium. Wow, it’s almost as if SEELE should have been learning from Tzeentchji to pose a fair fight, the Dark Gods would approve of the battle between champions to see whose vision was best.
Mortarion: Also, we don’t make it out of the wielder’s blood. That’s good for intimidation for, oh, about five minutes, when they run out and collapse.
Angharad: Ehhh, you might get a few minutes of ambush while your foes fall over laughing.
DUMMY PLUGGED: 835
The teams had also stolen the idea of using an AT-field to generate a particle beam, giving one member of the squad an enormous plasma cannon tied straight into its central nervous system and made primarily of Eva flesh to be better enveloped by the field to protect the mechanisms from the ravenous beam.
DUMMY PLUGGED: 836
And as the MP Evas settled on to the ground, their huge wings morphed from huge flat flight surfaces into severallong segmented limbs tipped with wickedly sharp scything blades, giving them a considerable advantage in close combat.
Leliel: …that sounds weirdly Aeldari, especially Harlequins…
(https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Harlequin)
Nocht: Agreed. There’s no canonical “wings of death” I know of, but it sounds like something you’d be able to make a dance out of when slicing people. Harlequins literally prefer close combat compared to other Craftworld-aligned eldar because it enables them to properly demonstrate the dance of death.
Emma: See, this can’t intentionally be a Harlequin thing, because if it was we’d be sitting through whole paragraphs about how much SEELE had fallen, to ally with them.
Nocht: Point taken. I’ve met less xenophobic Ordo Xenos Inquisitors than this fic.
DUMMY PLUGGED: 836
Perhaps one of the most terrifying abilities though was the way they were networked together. On a purely technological level, each MP Eva could share all of its sensor data with its fellows via a variety of uplink methods, but the designers had also been tooling about with incorporating the super-soul of Israfel, linking the Evas further together.
DUMMY PLUGGED: 837
When Tabris had died screaming at the hands of Shinji, the insane fragments of his soul had filtered into the various clones used in the Dummy Plugs.
Diego: [Voice suddenly changes up an octave, in Japanese] Do you think you could let me rest in peace? I think you have made your point, Not-Ikari-kun. [Audibly clears throat] My apologies, his whole AT Field seems to have slipped into my cocoon. I’ll let him go when I hatch, and he has a point. Why does he have to be killed again in several Plugs?
*An anime-style ojou-sama laugh, starting low and rising in pitch and volume echoes through the chamber as the lights flicker purple and pink*
Emma: Well, shit.
Futaba: Oh Dark Gods, who now-
An explosion covers everything in the chamber in about an inch of purple glitter. Standing at the epicenter is a towering albino woman, who would be beautiful if she didn’t look like a poorly fitting suit for something else.
Electra: Well, you see, his blinkered little worldview can’t handle any challenges, so he has to destroy it over and over until it’s gone and he can finally sleep comfortably at night knowing there’s no way he could ever be tainted by those desires. *elbowing her way onto the couch* Push over. Oh, could somebody get me a drink?
Angharad: Everytime you do this, it takes me TWO HUNDRED FUCKING YEARS to get all the glitter out of my armor crevices.
Nocht: A-CHOO! And…I’m apparently allergic. Welcome to the chamber, probably an alternate counterpart of Fulgrim. I am no longer surprised.
Leliel: But yeah. What she said, this is just being really fucking cruel to the Angel boy, because how dare he represent a non-Chaos, and worse, non-heteronormative viewpoint?
HETERONORMATIVE HEDGEHOG: 893 (WE GET IT. KAWORU BAD. STOP DESECRATING HIS CORPSE.)
Futaba: And uh, Dummy Plugs are computers. The Rei clones might be needed to program them in the NERV version, but the core is all silicon, no clone involved. So this is two points.
DUMMY PLUGGED: 839
The MP Evas were insane, fearless, felt little to no pain, and none cared for their own survival so long as the group survived. They were capable of acting as a single entity with one purpose: to kill.
Leliel: In other words…exactly like canon. Great experimental writing there…
TALON ON THE SCALES: 475
There were also a wide variety of other nasty surprises as well, put in by SEELE and the design teams to increase lethality even more.
Asuka knew nothing of this.
Nocht: Conveniently, neither did the author, as he ran out of ideas and clearly was running on fumes for these fight scenes at this point. Speaking of, she knocks down the plasma cannon-wielding MP Eva with a barrage from the shoulder pods, and…
Time slowed and thickened like molasses, Asuka's perceptions accelerated beyond all human capacities, even glimpsing into the future at times.
Diego: …well then. We can officially say that even Asuka’s faith has been completely dominated by a controlling Tzeentch boyfriend, as that isn’t a Khorne trait, author.
Angharad: *Whirls and punches Mortarion in the face*
Mortarion: What was that for?!
Angharad: You were closest.
Sophia: Yes, far be it from this girl to use any of the varying combat strategies Khorne affords. Why should she have accelerated reflexes, or creator endurance, when she can simply ride on her lover’s coattails?
PRIMORDIAL BRAINFART: 358
She was one with her mother and the spirit of the Eva. Her mother would always be with her, and the beast within the machine practically worshipped her ability to propagate slaughter. It was a hive mind of nine killing machines versus the perfect single warrior.
Futaba: First of all…a one, and a two, and a-
Sporkers: SAME! FUCKING! SPIRIT!
DUMMY PLUGGED: 840
Futaba: Second…you literally know that Eva has a mind. It’s a nitpick, but you’re not really one warrior, you’re two minds in coordination. No points, but the metaphor is shaky as shit.
Leliel: Anyway, we have the fight…but to be honest, it means little. Asuka keeps tearing the MPs apart, but their S2 organs heal them fast. We see a lot of descriptions that, if it hadn’t long outlived welcome and unsold the idea of stakes, might be intriguing. As it is…we just got a sudden dunk on Kaworu again.
No normal human could have known that attack was coming. A tiny part of Tabris, the one in the explosively bisected Eva that had time to be afraid, wailed in terror. It remembered what the Third Child had done, and feared what the Second was capable of.
The rest of the hive mind ignored that part and told it to keep fighting.
Nocht: …so, even when the xenos is smart, he is scorned. You are making me feel bad for an infiltrator sworn to the purpose of being an enemy of mankind. Stop it.
Electra: Poor thing’s probably wailing because they won’t let him out of this fucking story.
HETERONORMATIVE HEDGEHOG: 894
Diego: For once, though, the opposing mecha-scale enemies pose an actual threat, likely because Tzeentchji isn’t here. So, inevitably, we come to Asuka running out of battery…
She stumbled back a second step, her whole Eva starting to list over with the weight of the spear in its head.
She took one more step back before her power clock ran down to 00:00:00.
In the warp, a daemon clapped with glee. It had had its encore performance.
Leliel: Yeah, fuck you too, you perverted edgelord.
Angharad: That would have almost been a beautiful fight if it wasn’t for everything else intruding. Better to die in battle, with a smile on your lips and your enemy’s blood in your mouth, then to live on in this parody of life. I’ve accepted what Sophia did to me. I do not think Asuka will reach such acceptance.
Shinji was flying through the halls of NERV
Literally. And hauling his servants along with him.
Diego: This makes it sound like he was literally carrying the Rubrics by the ear or like equipment. This is our cynicism talking, but it’s an image as humorous as it is fitting.
Entering the Eva cages, he saw the empty stall where Unit 02 had once dwelt between missions. Asuka was out there fighting, he had to help her.
Futaba: …ah, hell. She’s going to keep fighting thanks to her MAAAAAN. Because how dare she ever succeed on her own when he’s the self-insert?
Magdalene: Help? What help? How about if you just stayed out of range and let the Khornate do the indiscriminate ultraviolence?
HETERONORMATIVE HEDGEHOG: 895
Nocht: And…I am going to show this entire subsection. Because something is bugging me about it…
As he opened up the Entry Plug for Unit 01, dissolving his Rubric Marines into the dust in their canopic jars, Shinji also took note of the other cages for the first time in many months. The remains of Unit 00 were propped up in one of the cages, the prototype Eva badly damaged by its fight with the Sixteenth Angel, its core still barely intact but most of its armour cracked and the area around the core burned out.
The broken limbed doll of Unit 04 sat next to Unit 02's cage, the Eva not quite destroyed but so badly mauled that only a half-hearted attempt had been made to repair it in the past two months. It was doubtful it would ever be operated again, especially with current events the way they were.
Going through the start up sequence as quickly as he could, Shinji had only one thought on his mind: to get out there and assist Asuka in her fight. He desperately hoped he wasn't too late.
He couldn't take any more loss today.
Nocht: This entire section is a little more than four paragraphs long. It interrupted the entire fight, which makes up a good portion, perhaps half, of the chapter. Tzeentchji literally just showed up enough to “support” Asuka. And so make it seem like she could only have done things with his support, before vanishing from relevance.
Leliel: And as we’ll see…minimum effect on End of Evangelion’s stations of the canon. Tzeentchji was only there long enough to steal credit. Which is…really rather a perfect descriptor of this, isn’t it? Ten points, for making a devaluation of a female character as sudden filler.
HETERONORMATIVE HEDGEHOG: 905
Fight. Fight for me. Fight for you. Fight for us. Your soul blazes with such fury and passion, is it any wonder I was attracted to you in the first place, like a moth to a candle? So long as you fight, I can guide my way by the light of your soul. Fight, it was what you were born for.
Diego: How pleasant that you are still putting your welfare on her, even when she needs your help.
Mortarion: He… does know what candles do to moths, right?
Electra: “I was attracted to you like a moth to a flame, something which always ends in the moth being the dominant one in the relationship!”
GENDO’S FATED BASTARD: 980
HETERONORMATIVE HEDGEHOG: 906
Futaba: Ugh…and here’s the sad part, the fight’s still good. In fact, it’s probably the best in the fic, as it finally embraces the fact the Evas are mutating now, while the MP Evas still manage to put up a fight, even as eight of them fall…but here’s the thing: it doesn’t result in a functional difference:
Reaching out with its remaining arm, Unit 02 tried to drag itself forward still, but the Lance impaling its guts had embedded in the ground. Unit 02 was pinned like a butterfly, and no amount of struggling was going to get it any further.
Eight out of nine… that's not bad…
Eight's… a… good… number…
Asuka's eyes closed and Unit 02 went silent…just as Unit 01 exploded out of its launch ramp.
Futaba: All of that up there? Still results in Asuka’s death! Even though she was supposed to be far more mentally healthy here, and able to snap back into fighting potential and with Tzeentchji providing the impetus early to go into a berserk state where the battery didn’t matter! All we get is Khorne’s sacred number out of it! This entire fight was functionally padding!
Leliel: And the worst part is, I can see the point behind this. Asuka was fighting against these guys 9-on-1, and they had their fic-original Angel upgrades plus the Lances of Longinus. But on the other hand…this fic is supposed to show that the power of Chaos improved the lives of the Eva pilots and made everyone badass. Here…at maximum strength and fully channeling Khorne, all that happened was that Asuka got more MP Evas before they got her. Which as we will see, will lead to Third Impact, just…a very stupid version. One that is going to replace all the philosophical psychodrama to somehow save what’s left of Shinji’s will to continue existing before everyone fully dissolves into…well, you’ll see. Quite simply, the very premise of the fic is ultimately secondary to the stations of the canon. I have read fics where Keel Lorenz himself wires himself into an experimental Eva as one last attempt at a backup plan, and as silly as it was, it actually tied into the mood of the hyper-idealistic fic. Hell, that’d even tie well into this supposed Chaos protagonist! Lorenz is a corpse being kept alive by cybernetics, to the point where it’s made clear the most organic part of himself is his head - he’s the freaking Corpse-Emperor! …No offense, Nocht.
Nocht: None taken, the man is clearly a living false idol if he is using Xenos tech to make himself into a god of a very inhuman vision of Mankind. Goge Vandire was someone who considered himself holy during his rampage, I consider Lorenz a little lower. But, as made clear…here’s another good number, nine - the amount of points this count will be raised by, as clearly, this is being engineered by the Architect of Fate to change so much, and yet support the status quo perfectly..
Diego: [Quietly] You will laugh, cry, or both later.
TALON ON THE SCALES: 484
At the deepest point of Terminal Dogma was a room that appeared on no maps that officially did not exist. Only two people in recent memory had access to this room, and one of them was now dead, just like everyone else who knew about it in the long run.
Futaba: And this is already wrong, as Terminal Dogma also contains Rei’s clone tanks. By definition, there’s three…probably more, because this is also where the LCL the Evas use is generated. So SEELE probably has been there, at least. As has Fuyutsuki. This is a nitpick, but it’s yet another reason why the Nurgle corruption spreading to the clones would be noticed, because the clone tanks are on the way there and Gendo has access.
DUMMY PLUGGED: 841
TALON ON THE SCALES: 485
What was contained within was a secret worth keeping, worth killing for.
Nailed to a cross and surrounded by a lake of LCL that still leaked from the wounds inflicted upon her, the Second Angel, Lilith could only wait in silence for the chaos amongst her children to end, the seven eyes of her mask staring out impassively as two familiar faces approached her.
Diego: *Surprisingly Good Lilith Voice* “I have no ability to move my arms, and I must facepalm.” One wonders what would happen in a fic that actually remembered that Rei is Lilith’s avatar, and Chaos corruption would likely travel through Rei into Lilith…instead of…what we are about to see…
Electra: Oh, will this finally be interesting?
Nocht: [Starts to sweat]
One was Ikari Gendo, a cold antisocial man with a drive to achieve his goals only matched by the skills to back up such reach of grasp.
Leliel: Going by the way he’s behaved in this fic, it’s technically accurate - “zero” is a good estimation for both.
As far as he knew, he had broken his son, the boy spending the majority of his time since awaking from his coma praying for his broken girlfriend to wake up.
Futaba: Wait, he noticed, and didn’t set a watch?!
Mortarion: You just said he had the skills to meet his drive! Where are they? I’ve met people with most of their brains eaten by destroyer wasp larva with better follow-through.
Religion as a whole was a concept he had no time for, just another weakness of the human condition, something for the strong to use to exploit the weak.
Futaba: No, seriously, he outright noticed his son is a schemer, so he would at least keep an eye in case of-
Gendo put himself in the former category and his son in the latter.
Nocht: …ah, but you’re forgetting. This fic was made by someone with blind drool over the intelligence servants of the Great Deceiver believe they have regardless of capability. So clearly, everyone that is not the central cultist, is an utter and complete idiot.
Futaba: …[Slow inhale] So. Leaving aside Gendo has been lobotomized…pop quiz. What. Are. The last. Words. Gendo. Spoke?
(https://ladyloveandjustice.tumblr.com/post/18886801950/gendo-im-sorry-shinji-oh-well-that-fixes)
Leliel: Reminder. This is a vision of his wife having lost all faith in him, and just completely and utterly pissed at how he fucked up everything. And his last words are an apology to his son, which Shinji cannot hear. Not her, the one thing he’s been trying to save, but Shinji.
Emma: It’s bizarre, that in a fic that’s otherwise so devoted to emphasizing how much Tzeentchji has been wronged by everyone, the fact that Gendo canonically admits wrongdoing is completely cut. Is it because Gendo is also a strongman fantasy, to a lesser degree? Is it because the fantasy of your enemies always being wrong and stupid is greater than the fantasy of apology? What is going ON?
Futaba: Take this…and compare. “I’m sorry, Shinji”, vs “tHe StRoNg RuLe, Me Am tHe GrEetEsT!” Does…anyone notice a difference?
Diego: But that’s the thing. The last thing Gendo did was apologize and recognize he fucked up beyond repair. This fic worships the idea of “intelligence”, and so, cannot accept that maybe, just maybe, the reason why Gendo is a bad father is that he is a bad father. No, it has to be a plan…which is an interesting wrinkle, because remember way back when we had our first POV? When Gendo outright said “he is my son” with mild pride when he realized Tzeentchji was a planner like him? Where’s that recognition, even a bit of sadness, that Tzeentchji had to fall for the sake of saving his mother? But no - “the strong to use to exploit the weak.” He says about religion, as his very plan revolves partly around the existence of an afterlife and the soul.
Leliel: And…even after all of that…even if we accept that Gendo is even more of the Bastard King than is canon…that doesn’t change the fact that he noticed his son was awake and safeguarding Asuka, and didn’t bother to check what he did next. Gendo, as we keep mentioning, is the master of backup plans and contingencies. Especially after the “bug the room” stunt he did, he’s going to get someone to keep an eye on that, or at least take a monitor with him.
Nocht: To say nothing of how he has likely noticed the bizarre changes happening to the pilots, especially after the psyker stunt Tzeentchji pulled with SEELE. Quite simply, this man isn’t just robotic and dull in this fic - he’s a blisteringly unobservant fool that makes most High Lords of Terra look attuned to the man on the street. So, one hundred points to each, because this isn’t just offensively poorly written, it’s plot-critical.
DUMMY PLUGGED: 941
TALON ON THE SCALES: 585
Ayanami Rei on the other hand, was currently a bubbling cauldron of mirth beneath her expressionless demeanour.
Diego: You know, in case you were worried that there was any tension or that she’d actually develop some in-character maturity after that whole thing with dying due to her overindulgence and lack of ability to take things seriously.
Magdalene: So, Mortarion, have you ever been a bubbling cauldron of mirth?
Electra: Forget that; Morty, have you ever enjoyed anything, ever?
Mortarion: *darkly* No, and I’m sure you both know why.
DUMMY PLUGGED: 942 (You’d expect even Nurgle Rei to be tense and trying to clamp down on her emotions.)
TALON ON THE SCALES: 586
She could feel years of planning coming to fruition, and she knew that she was the lynchpin to Gendo's plans. He assumed that she was his obedient servant, beholden to do whatever he ordered her to.
Futaba: Because, as noted, the philosophical zombie of a clone Gendo left behind after he escaped this fic through its many plot holes lacks functional eyes and doesn’t remember how nervous NERV was about Rei displaying ever more disgusting habits. In this fic.
TALON ON THE SCALES: 587
For so many years, that had been the case, and even in her most rebellious moments she had never actually gone against a direct order.
Nocht: As opposed to interpreting them creatively, which is already cause for concern given your intended purpose and grounds for attention, replicae.
TALON ON THE SCALES: 588
Now though… now…
The world was coming to an end and Rei would become the instrument of its destruction, something any minion of Chaos would be pleased to claim, especially a follower of Nurgle's rot, ruin, and decay like Rei. Of course, she could still spare the people she liked.
Mortarion: It’s not sparing the people you like so much as… preserving them. Integrating them. No-one is spared, some of us are just beloved by the Grandfather as more than warm biomass.
Leliel: Honestly, this is probably the most in-character about Chaos she’s been so far and…well, even here there’s a foul note. Nurgle cultists believe it’s inevitable they’ll be part of the rot when it comes, they just train themselves up to survive it. So, it’d be more “trust that the people I like endure and rule the wreckage.”
PRIMORDIAL BRAINFART: 359
Shinji had told her to foul Gendo's plans. She assumed that what was to come would definitely count.
Futaba: The stations of the canon had to run out someday.
She was naked, Gendo having informed her that she would not need clothes for what was to happen. For a moment she assumed that he would take her physically, in which case she had a lovely set of diseases to inflict upon him,
Nocht: Well that’s…a disturbing image. On multiple levels.
Emma: You know, NGE is not a series that inherently excludes incest from its themes. I don’t think it’s impossible to talk about Gendo as a father figure who does “daughter as wife substitute”. You’d just have to talk about it at a thematic and character level, and those are levels far beyond the one “wow, incest is DARK and SHOCKING i’m so COOL and MATURE for offhandedly mentioning it” level Academia Nut can reach.
THE DARK PRINCE’S AT FIELD: 791
but when he had bade her to follow into Lilith's chamber, she had known that something more special was about to occur.
Diego: Having seen where this leads from my cocoon? “Special” is not the term I’d use. “Spectacular” is more accurate, but not in any complimentary way.
The true Lance of Longinus had been removed from Lilith a short time ago in preparation for what was to come, Gendo not wanting to go about this process by Lilith directly, but to have Rei assume control of Third Impact so that she could lead him to his Yui. Ultimately control would rest with Unit 01, but Shinji was so pathetic and useless that he would not resist the destruction of the world. All was going just as planned.
Futaba: You know what, this is actually something I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt to! Why? …Because I have no idea what this plan is, given how this isn’t Gendo’s plan. He planned to merge with Rei, and from there, unite his AT Field with that of his wife - what happened to the rest of the world simply doesn’t concern him. Which is why he was so willing to let SEELE march to their victory condition, they were approaching his as well, but he didn’t want them interfering at the last moment - so he subtly sabotaged them. This wasn’t hidden.
DUMMY PLUGGED: 943
Removing the glove from his right hand, Gendo exposed the embryonic Adam fused to his palm. For the destroyer of three billion people, it seemed such a small, pathetic thing, although as the insane Major Katsuragi would attest it had not been that small when it caused Second Impact.
Leliel: Related, we have a distinct lack of shit, Sherlock.
Reaching out, Gendo placed his hand on one of Rei's breasts, her flesh giving way like a gooey marshmallow before the slumbering might of the First Angel.
Diego: …you know, when I’m thinking about the divine rebis that will usher in the death and rebirth of humanity…I somehow don’t think that term gets across the gravitas of the moment. At it’s cleanest, I’m now thinking of the great Feast at the End of All having s’mores as its dessert course…actually, question for Electra, do they have s’mores in Slaaneshi feasts?
Electra: Diego. Darling. Honey. We are the greatest and most loyal servants of the god of indulgence and decadence. S’mores are a sacrament.
Diego: …good point.
THE DARK PRINCE’S AT FIELD: 792 (At its dirtiest when the term ‘marshmallow’ is involved…yeah…)
Rei let out a small gasp that was mingled pleasure and pain at the experience as the Flesh of Lilith mingled with the Flesh of Adam, something that should not have been.
Nocht: …contractual obligated joke: It produced this fic, then? Along with the continued obsession with physical pleasure and sex. With a young teenager. I get the sense it will not get better.
THE DARK PRINCE’S AT FIELD: 794
Already Rei could hear the siren call of Lilith behind her, demanding to make war with her old nemesis. It was an instinctive and ultimately suicidal impulse, one that would destroy both of them and leave Rei in command of both their powers, although what would emerge on the other side was uncertain as no mortal could experience such power and remain unchanged.
Futaba: …okay, for once, this isn’t implausible. The Spear of Longinus was preventing Lilith from fully regenerating, and that she’d seek to eliminate the competing Moon for her brood makes sense - and why Gendo might want a Lilith-guided Third Impact early, without SEELE’s interference.
Moving her hand through her body like it was water Gendo let it settle upon Rei's sterile womb before ordering, "Now go and undo all the AT-fields in the world and bring me to my Yui-san."
Leliel: [Queasy] Why did you bring that element up? …right, bitches be mothers. Forget I asked.
Emma: Presumably, this is so Rei’s ascendance as a godly mother figure can be framed as a fixing, or a repair of something horrible Gendo did to her. We can’t have 14 year olds not be capable of pumping out kids as soon as possible, after all.
Futaba: And once again - he doesn’t care, he wants to fuse his with Yui’s. Rest of the world can keep on trucking on or not, as far as Gendo cares, and as far as we can tell, it’s not required - hell, we might say there’s a lore hint it can’t be right, since if that were the case, he’d be a SEELE loyalist.
THE DARK PRINCE’S AT FIELD: 795
HETERONORMATIVE HEDGEHOG: 907
DUMMY PLUGGED: 944
A torrent of power was flowing into Rei, and she could already feel it begin to mix with the power she had dammed for her own good. Rei just looked up into the bespectacled face of Gendo and said quietly, "No," before the transformation over took her.
Diego: [Sound of hissing breath, fungal transmitter bioluminescences as an image appears on the screen.]
(https://media4.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExZzJkZXd3bmNzM2tybmprb240dWJpZGF2bmNudzFiOWE0dmZnbHQwZyZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/hTDQBdMlPDEeewFFhl/giphy.gif)
Leliel: …I think Diego’s beginning to become an actual Daemon Prince as opposed to just like one due to this insanity. Having read it…not that I blame him….
Flesh began to run and rearrange itself, unveiling the form hidden within. Rei began to grow, her human genes giving rise to expressions that would have occurred naturally with the passage of time, her body maturing into something that resembled the adult Ikari Yui more with every passing second.
Futaba: Because Tzeentch forbid she not be hot in some way. Ah hell, I’m falling back into Arcanite Mode too.
Magdalene: Look, sometimes you have to sell your soul to Tzeentch to clearly see beyond all the nonsense.
Emma: I don’t think it takes forbidden knowledge to realize this is real fucking dumb and gross.
Nocht: [Dreading expression, clasping hands] From iron cometh strength, from strength cometh will…
Magdalene: …You know, I’m glad your stupid mirror world remembers the Iron Litany. Nobody ever pays Petra any attention.
THE DARK PRINCE’S AT FIELD: 796
HETERONORMATIVE HEDGEHOG: 908
For the briefest of moments Gendo thought that Rei had found a better path, switching about her soul with the soul in Unit 01, giving him back his Yui in the flesh as well as the spirit.
Leliel: Okay, this is actually a bit understandable. He’s struck with disbelief, and desperately hoping…but then comes the other shoe. And it stinks.
Then Nurgle began to paint on this malleable canvas, dashing Gendo's hopes in a way that only the God of Despair and his followers would find comical.
Nocht: …Oh. Oh no.
Mortarion: I don’t appreciate my sense of humor being insulted in this way.
From a distance Rei would have still been comely and desirable, but up close one would quite clearly see what happened to those that championed the Great Corruptor. To see the change occur was to gaze into the mouth of insanity.
Nocht: …so from a distance…we want to make sure that everyone knows that she is still attractive. Oooh, nooooo. From will cometh faith, from faith cometh honour…”
THE DARK PRINCE’S AT FIELD: 797
HETERONORMATIVE HEDGEHOG: 909
Leliel: …so, uh, someone get the DARK PRINCE AT FIELD out? Because…as a warning, this is going to be Rei Adult Supermodel Nurglite. And yes, it is just as unintentionally horrifying as it sounds, beyond the hopefully intentional discomfort. And showing it’s still not very sexy, not unless you have some…very particular tastes. And even then, I think even the hypothetical you acknowledge it’s a fetish you really shouldn’t think everyone has and would be seen as hot from afar. And generally would also be HR Geiger kind of work, which at least isn’t hitting the Uncanny Valley or looking actively contagious.
Diego: …denied. It’d break the button, and…well, we’re going to have a hundred points at the end of this. At least.
The first, subtle change was for the whites of Rei's eyes to become yellowed and rheumy while her brilliant red irises flared with inner light.
Leliel: So, she looks jaundiced already. What a dish. [Gags]
Next, her hair fell out, replaced by something else entirely. At first it looked like new hair was sprouting from her scalp, but in truth this was not hair but thousands of incredible fine, translucent blue worms embedded in her scalp like bot fly larva. Shoulder length, the worms squirmed and writhed like some fouler version of the Medusa.
[Long pause]
Futaba: [Raises hand] Question. Aren’t bot fly larvae rather…fleshy? And segmented? Look something like an accordion with spines? Not linking here, because flesh burrowing creepy crawlies but…you’d be able to tell at a glance that’s not actually hair?
Diego: Reasonable.
Futaba: Swell. [Gets bucket]
Diego: Hold it in. You’ll need the bile to avoid dry heaving in three…two…
After that, Rei's fat and muscle began to redistribute, retreating in places to leave famine victim skin and bones, while conglomerating in others to form fleshy tumours. There was still a sick aesthetic though; the cancerous growths appearing in places to give curves that most women would kill for. For example, Rei's breasts expanded with unwholesome tumours swollen nearly to bursting, her small, previously nearly unnoticeable nipples growing red and rosy… as boils brimming to the point of weeping with pus rather than mother's milk.
Futaba: ….thanks for the warning. HUEEEEEGH-[Head goes in bucket]
Emma: Oooooh my god she has tumorous swellings in all the right places! Ohhhh my god! Are we sure this isn’t secretly the funniest parody ever?
Leliel: The nausea and apparent seriousness is definitely invoking Poe’s Law, if so…
Mortarion: I feel honour-bound to point out that we rely on either “swollen inflamed obesity” or “emaciated bog body”. If you care about the state of your breasts, sell your soul to someone else *very obviously ignoring Electra posing in the background”
Nocht: FROM HONOUR COMETH IRON FROM IRON COMETH STRENGTH-
Rei's once alabaster white skin was stretched taut by the distortions to her body, before inflamed and swollen veins erupted across her skin, standing out stark blue as some sort of cancerous marble effect. Slowly the blue faded to black as her skin darkened from white to a pale, necrotic green.
Nocht: -wait, emaciated and marble?
Behind her the Lance of Longinus levitated into the air, orienting towards the surface before flashing away, tearing its way to the mind that had called it.
Rei smiled to reveal a mouth full of rotted black teeth and swollen green gums crawling with maggots, her saliva replaced with thick phlegm and pus.
Her voice a smooth, purring death gurgle, Rei says again, "No. Shinji-kun is the only one who can determine the distribution of souls after Third Impact; it is not up to you to decide this."
Nocht: …not telepathically. She is able to say this…through maggots, swollen gums, and phlegm. No, if she was saying this…she’d be saying it through bread pudding. Sort of like Academia Nut’s brain, where it isn’t made of paper-mache of suspiciously stained porno-slate printouts.
(https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/2467571-the-writers-barely-disguised-fetish)
Futaba: [Groans] So…let me make it clear. The premise of this? Is already kinda shaky. We’re not saying weird things can’t be attractive, and we certainly don’t mean to kinkshame. But, we will say, it’s really freaking telling that the lore entries here are sure to establish that Rei’s newfound alien demon nature is totally hot, you guiz, and doing so, repeatedly. Without actually explaining why she’s hot beyond “but it looks curvy!!!!!” Yeah, so does R’yleh, that’s what Non-Euclidean means, and I’ve seen enough bad art to know enough curves can make a thing somewhat nauseating to look at!
Emma: Yeah, I would find this considerably less nauseating if it wasn’t so… normie. Between the “reassuring us that the 14 year old is aged up to adulthood” and “reassuring us that she has a little waist and big tits” it’s too gross to be regularly attractive, and too normative to be kinky.
Leliel: More importantly…the same passage outright says that Rei is losing so much mass she looks like a victim of famine…but her boobs are apparently big and full, infected or not! And she’s got a great butt! …No, fuck off, have you seen someone who’s been malnourished that long? They look like skeletons at best! And if you see a starving kid with a potbelly - that’s not fat, it’s kwashiorkor (not linked, because the Wikipedia link has a picture, and it’s pretty disturbing), they literally don’t have enough protein to maintain their normal body functions and their liver is massively inflamed. If somebody from a distance sees her, they’re going to see a borderline cadaver. Yeah, sexy my ass, if you find a sincerely starving person, they’re going to tell something is very fucking wrong, no matter how far away you are.
Magdalene: Well, the writer is a pampered idiot with no empathy for anyone, hence why he has no idea what real suffering looks like.
Nocht: But even beyond all of that…ultimately, this is the moment of total corruption, fully embracing the rot and grotesque nature that is the Grandfather of Plagues. And the focus? Is on her appearance. Not the biological processes of mutation, not the mental changes, not even something directly from her perspective. A loving, thorough description of her as an object. Even as an Assassin of the Throne…I respect the Archenemy too much to see a cultist as nothing but sex appeal, especially if it is supposedly something special due to Nurgle’s influence. Because, let us reiterate - Nurgle does not care. Nurgle is the god of rough survival and forms twisting to adapt to horrific situations, to survive at all costs, and no matter how damaging it is. For someone to still be pretty, even in “disgusting” ways? Then that is not Nurgle. In the end, Rei is, and remains, a trophy.
Diego: And as we’ll see…this is only the start. But, I did say a hundred points…and not just to one count!
THE DARK PRINCE’S AT FIELD: 897
HETERONORMATIVE HEDGEHOG: 1009 (And yes, we have a loser of the First Four Digits!)
PRIMORDIAL BRAINFART: 459
Glancing towards the surface high above, Rei adds on mirthfully, "I don't think he's going to be very appreciative of your agenda."
Leliel: Yeah, after all, he doesn’t get to fuck his mom-cloned sister in Gendo’s world, and maybe has to accept she’s with someone else. Yes, I’m very cynical and harsh after that.
Gendo had only watched in mute silence brought on by a large chunk of his psyche shattering upon beholding such a grotesque transformation, before the animalistic part of his brain tried to escape, to withdraw his hand from Rei's guts, to get away from the inescapable feeling that her intestines were squirming about his hand, worm maws nibbling upon his flesh.
Diego: Oh look. Finally a proper Nurglite description of psychic power by a cultist of the Fly Lord. It only took…what, the entire fic?
Rei cocked her head to the side and released him. In true Nurgle fashion.
Nocht: Please just be disgusting, please just be disgusting, please just be-
Gendo's forearm began to rapidly swell with infectious inflammation. Enormous pustules began to grow, one on top of each other, the pressure growing agonizingly. Eventually the skin closest to Rei began to turn a putrescent green as necrosis set in. This did not last long as the rapidly weakening tissue could no longer contain the growing pressure.
Nocht: Oh thank the Emperor.
Mortarion: Finally, something sensible.
With a sound like a cluster of water balloons being hit by a cluster of flechettes, Gendo's right arm exploded, hurling him back in a shower of pus and gore. Falling to the ground, Gendo could only stare in dumb horror at the corroded yellow remains of his radius and ulna, slick with green and yellow pus.
Nocht: …though still quite lurid.
THE DARK PRINCE’S AT FIELD: 898
Levitating into the air, Rei told Gendo, "Do not despair, you shall not die yet, your fate is for another to decide."
Futaba: …it took me a second to remember that Rei rebelling and giving the choice of Third Impact or not to Shinji was canon, because here, it comes off as yet more lack of agency for the sake of Duh Mahn. In fact, it probably is that, here - because I imagine that even if they like you, Chaos cultists are largely assured they know what’s best for you and will just do so.
*General muttering to the tone of “but we do?” from the assembled*
Emma: The difference in canon was that it was Rei giving power to someone who had treated her as a person rather than be a tool. Here? She’s just passing it to another master.
HETERONORMATIVE HEDGEHOG: 1010
Rei then slid back into Lilith.
Leliel: …I’m really hyperacute to this shit now, I thought that was an intentional double entendre for a bit.
There was a momentary ripple before the Second Angel began to move, her hands sliding off the spikes that impaled them while her legs finished regeneration. Crashing into a kneeling position in the LCL lake below, the mask on Lilith's face slowly fell off with a sucking noise to reveal Rei's face.
Diego: Which is also, conveniently, a Station Of The Canon. Even when going full power revel, fic isn’t original.
Standing up, Lilith/Rei began to expand at a phenomenal rate, the same grotesque metamorphosis that had occurred before repeating itself on a scale a thousand times grander. Those that saw this happen invariably ran screaming when they did not collapse into quivering, vomiting piles of mental trauma. Those that had the misfortune for Rei's ghostly flesh to pass through them were left gibbering wrecks, their sanity violently and permanently ripped from them by the horrific experience.
Nocht: …which, conveniently, also skips having to write the reshaping of something metaphysical.
Futaba: And oh yeah, Lilith has bodies growing out of her legs.
(https://wiki.evageeks.org/Lilith)
How does that not end up becoming a part of this…Rotted Angel?
Mortarion: Wasting a perfectly good teratoma. Ungrateful.
PRIMORDIAL BRAINFART: 450
DUMMY PLUGGED: 945
Rei smiled. She had an appointment with a friend to keep.
Diego: First, to the extent he can have friends or any other positive relationship…second, prepare yourself. This is where Academia Nut reveals the WTF factor. Because…he thinks he can do Third Impact better by adding Warhammer 40K to it, and Chaos better by adding Third Impact to it.
Futaba: [Eyes shrunk] Nocht?
Nocht: [Stonefaced] Yes?
Futaba: Hold me.
[Both embrace in absolute terror of what they are about to see.]
Shinji sat in his Entry Plug, mute and staring at the tiny broken form resting too quietly in the palm of his Eva's hands.
Leliel: [Starts playing Sad Romance on the World’s Smallest Violin]
His Eva was floating several kilometres above the eye of the storm he had conjured, six enormous wings projecting out of its back, covered in ever shifting, iridescent feathers. Floating faithfully at his side was the Lance of Longinus, its prongs stained with the blood of the last MP Eva, while Chaos symbols a kilometre tall surrounded him, burning brightly in the sky and driving mad all who looked upon them.
Diego: …did we seriously just skip the final MP Eva? I mean, this is Tzeentchji, Winner of The Everything, so it’d be boring and spoken for, but…wow. Suddenly, the Final Battle is skipped. Because Asuka died, and that’s all that matters for the plot. I think this might be telling on the actual goals of the narrative. And how unwilling it is to experiment beyond Teh Awseome. Not even one of this fic’s mildly redeeming qualities in its fight scenes.
Emma: In a less awful fic, I would see this as a really good beat. In a less awful fic, cutting the fight that technically ends in a victory would communicate its meaninglessness in the face of the greater failure. Here… well it’s a little like that, but it feels less like “I’m not going to show the battle where he failed to save someone” and more “what’s the point of showing a battle i don’t totally win?”.
"Wake up Asuka, wake up," Shinji said quietly while staring at the limp body he held.
I should have been faster…
Nocht: But then you wouldn’t have gotten a chance to show off your powers and be a complete tosspot.
I shouldn't have let Misato's death affect me so when there were still others I had to look out for…
Futaba: Ah, yes, that was the issue, instead of using your weather-warping psyker powers to sabotage the MP Evas when you could see them perfectly well. I don’t care if the author forgot about them or you, it’s still very much a Sonic Unleashed Fail Orchestra Moment:
GENDO’S FATED BASTARD: 981
I should have…
I should have…
Diego: Yeah, suddenly you care now that you lost a possession. Fuck off.
Shinji was a hollow shell, every last trace of human emotion drained from him by the trauma of all he had seen today. The horrors within Asuka's soul, Misato's revelation and death, and now this. No human could withstand such pain and remain intact.
Leliel: [Stops playing, annoyed expression] I dunno, the daemon that possessed and mind raped Misato was pretty up there - oh wait, that thing’s your ally. My bad, I should get new material for how very, very tragic this all is:
Magdalene: I don’t know what he’s talking about! We;’ve been through worse and we’re all fine!
Futaba: …riiiight…
Shinji had been broken to begin with.
Nocht: Agreed, but not for the reasons, or ways the author wants us to think now that we are being asked to pity the poor, put-upon Arcanite. I’ve learned more about the one-eyed giant next to me and her counterparts than you will ever know, and I must say - you don’t measure up in anything resembling as understandable a backstory, and you would be a shame to a corrupt sector governor’s household for this self-pity.
In the end, all I really wanted was someone warm at my side at night. Is that such a terrible thing to wish for? To not be lonely like this, to know that when you go to sleep there will be someone who loves you waiting to smile at you in the morning?
Nocht: Case in point!
Emma: Oh, bullshit. If that was genuinely all you ever wanted, you wouldn’t have done half this shit and we wouldn’t have had to sit through All This Horseshit. You want power, and I don’t care if a villain protagonist wants power, I don’t care if they’re self-deceptive about wanting power. I care that the AUTHOR knows they want power, and this has failed this test.
Diego: “All I wanted”...”at my side…”not be lonely like this”...blah blah blah, me me blah, blah blah blah blah me me me. If you had shown anything reciprocal apart from lust, I’d be more charitable, but as it is? Fuck off, Tzeentchji.
Futaba: Screw self-pity - at this point, you’re sounding like Architect-damned Consul N from Xenoblade 3! I’m going to avoid spoiling more of that story, but if there was true justice as a physical force in the world, you’d suffer the same exact fate in your ever so precious relationships! One point for all three lines of this!
GENDO’S FATED BASTARD: 984
Is that too much to ask?
I would trade it all just to have that again.
Nocht: You wear Egyptian cotton as casual wear. Color me skeptical that you would even seriously consider it
"Shinji…" a soft voice whispered to him.
Blinking twice, Shinji looked up and found a ten kilometre tall Rei in full Nurgle bloom staring back at him, smiling in that faint way that was only describable as being 'Rei'.
Leliel: Which is something that clearly isn’t recognizable as Rei in canon, she actually can smile lightly. Instead of this one’s Gross Joker Grin.
Shinji smiled weakly back as a small, pained, psychotic giggle escaped from his throat. Recovering after a moment, he says with all the sincerity he could muster in his burned out state, "You look beautiful Rei-chan."
Futaba: Translation: He lied to her face to avoid getting face-rotted…not that a real Nurglite would care…
Smiling more broadly, Rei says, "Thank you Shinji-kun."
Diego: …does this…screw it, out of mercy. It counts “as females be vanity, amright guys?”.
HETERONORMATIVE HEDGEHOG: 1011
Chuckling sadly, Shinji says, "But you're going to leave me too, aren't you?"
Nocht: …the Warp did that come from? What’s the logic behind “make Rei pity me?”
GENDO’S FATED BASTARD: 985 (Whatever it was, it’s very manipulative.)
Tilting her head to the side in a motherly way, Rei then shakes it and tells him, "Far from it, I am here to grant you your most deeply held, fondest wish."
Leliel: If that is not “eternal stasis” or “rot” in some way, then this is a fail.
Exploding into full on dirge laughter, Shinji screamed out, "THEN BRING THEM BACK!"
Her smile never leaving her face, Rei says, "This I can do."
Leliel: Fail it is! Nurgle gives, at most, undeath. Resurrection isn’t really any Chaos God’s theme, but outright reverse of the cycle of decay? Screw that noise. At most, Nurgle grants preservation. Not undoing the nature of entropy.
PRIMORDIAL BRAINFART: 451
Shinji blinked, a sudden spark flaring in his breast. For the first time since Misato died he felt something that was normally integral to his character: hope. He would not go down without a fight, ever. If he had to rip the gates of Hades off their hinges and put down Cerberus to get to Misato and Asuka, then he would damn well do it.
Magdalene: You aren’t hopeful. Hope has to be stupid and absurd and desperate. It has to be fake and then you do it anyways. It’s not the domain of people who never do anything wrong.
Emma: Hell, even “self-confidence” as integral would work better. It’s too nice a way to say “arrogant dickhead”, but we’ve definitely seen Tzeentchji do way more of that than being hopeful.
Diego: Both would be Tzeentch’s idea of virtues - but yeah, this is entitlement more than hope, and more born of complete inability to process even potential defeat. Which is more Slaaneshi anyway.
PRIMORDIAL BRAINFART: 452
"Do it," Shinji told her.
"Once passed beyond the veil, it is not easy to recover a soul," Rei warned him.
Futaba: How will this not matter because it’d upset the Stu and the power fantasy?
Nocht: Place your bets now.
"Do it," Shinji repeated.
"There will be a great sacrifice to make," Rei warned him.
"Do it, I will pay any cost to have them back," Shinji told her.
Leliel: See Egyptian cotton remark.
"They will be changed by the forces required. You will be changed by the forces as they are yours to command," Rei advises him.
"Change is good," Shinji said with a feral grin.
Emma: Right, that’s the only thing that matters. Not the fact that this is a horror. You are doing a terrible thing to people you love to save them, and you are completely ignoring all the moral complexity that gives you to play in, in favour of more Tzeentch wankery. It’s like, and I apologize in advance for this simile, being taken to the beach and choosing to play in a dirty litterbox instead.
Diego: Not to mention, just blase acceptance of “the power” without even considering what it is. Which would be touchingly letting go, if this pendejo ever fucking showed doubt in the future ever, rather than just assuming things worked out. So two points.
GENDO’S FATED BASTARD: 987
"I thought you would say that," Rei says, reaching up to cup Unit 01 in her hands, shrinking down below the clouds.
Nocht: …should I start up the Iron Litany again…?
Futaba: Not quite yet, but a lot of the next scene can be cutscene skipped through, it’s just the JSSDF and various countries reeling from the sudden storm and disaster, with them being unable to get past a big ol’ black dome while this other nonsense resolved itself. But then we have a special guest…
The arrival of a very curious person did nothing to lift the dread quiet, but it did stir up a hundred different emotions in the eyes of those watching.
He was clad in heavy blue armour with impossibly intricate gold designs worked into the surface, so reminiscent of the pharaohs of ancient Egypt, and yet also so much older and grander than that dusty civilization of yesteryear. In one hand he carried a huge axe set with spinning teeth like a chainsaw, while in the other he carried a pistol that most would have considered a small grenade launcher.
Leliel: Khnemu’s back!
Magdalene: Oh, thank the Great Deceiver, someone’s finally here to save the legion’s reputation.
Diego: [Dark chuckle] Oh, you wish. His name is soon going to sound like a dark prophecy. But first…
The man was infinitely similar to the armour and weapons upgrades of the Evas, but one look at him let everyone know that he had seniority on the Evas by several thousand years, as impossible as that was.
All stood aside as the giant passed them, watching as he walked out, unconcerned, onto the field of molten glass that lead up to the great black dome over the Geofront.
They watched as he walked right up to the edge.
And they watched as he fell to his knees and bowed down in supplication and worship.
Sophia: So, about that…
Magdalene: *incomprehensible swearing*
Futaba: Yeah, nice of him to drop in just to cheerlead, huh? Much consequential, very point, wow.
Nocht: [Frowning] Why is he bowing down? He should recognize that this is something Nurglite in nature…
Diego: First, he really shouldn’t, so points.
PRIMORDIAL BRAINFART: 453
TALON ON THE SCALES: 589
Second…well, you may want to start on the Litany now….
Far away in Germany Keel Lorenz also watched in silent rage, a live satellite feed showing this strange event taking place.
Leliel: Given the quality of this fic, it’s very likely this particular satellite has a bunch of robots and a specialized janitor in a red jumpsuit on it. MST-ception.
Rage as the work of decades was destroyed by Ikari.
Futaba: Uh, what?! Looks like a combination of Rei and Asuka to me, nobody named Ikari is involved-oh right, they’re female. My bad, women don’t have agency.
HETERONORMATIVE HEDGEHOG: 1013 (One for both ladies ignored.)
Silence, because with the Mass Production Evangelions destroyed, there was nothing he or anyone could do to stop these events
Diego: Hence why we are saying that Asuka was one of the people that ruined this plan, what with eight out of nine and providing enough time for Tzeentchji to steal credit - er finish it off.
None of them had any idea what Ikari had unleashed, as this was all quite outside of the prophecies they had been using to guide their way through the war with the Angels to the culmination of Third Impact. But now everything had gone inexplicably wrong.
Nocht: Ah, I would say the author who understands very little about anything involving you or my cousin universe is a good place to start. It’s very frustratingly explicable, you just don’t know.
"It is because you messed with things you do not understand old man," a silk smooth voice commented from the darkness about the weathered cyborg.
Leliel: …get on the Litany, Nocht. Because this…this is where I think every Warhammer character here is going to start wanting to choke someone.
Sophia: You mean worse than before… oh dear.
Turning his head as fast as his implants will allow him to, he immediately found a strange looking man sitting in the shadows across from him. He was clothed in a blue and gold style ancient Egyptian headdress and a purple and blue pleated kilt, with a fine gossamer shroud wrapping about the rest of his body, but no matter the angle his face was a depthless black void.
Nocht: Is…is that a daemon? I don’t recognize it…
Diego: [Angry static over comms as the fungus twitches] I wish I didn’t.
Behind him, the SEELE monoliths died, consumed by shadows that seemed to radiate off this figure like some unholy un-light.
Futaba: Ooh, edgy.
Diego: And not very in-character for…this type of Chaos. It will make sense soon…but…
PRIMORDIAL BRAINFART: 454
"Who are you? How did you get in here?" Lorenz demanded angrily while quietly pressing a button to summon his guards.
"Oh, they are quite indisposed right now," the man… thing… whatever tells him amicably.
From the shadows that seemed to be thickening with each passing moment there echoed small, distant screams of absolute terror and agony.
Leliel: So, uh…I’m going to drop a bit of a reveal here..
GENDO’S FATED BASTARD: 988
Nocht: …excuse me, what? I’ve heard of beliefs and urban legends forming daemons from desire and belief, I had a tangle with an abnormally long-ranged Bloodletter born of rumors of a fierce and beautiful highwaywoman…and from your records, the Iron Hands of your more familiar universe actively gave rise to the Sapphire King, an outright Keeper of Secrets or similar being born from their own desire to become perfect warriors combined with the remnants of both Ferrus Manus’ shame at defeat and Fulgrim’s own love for Ferrus…
Electra: *Goes on the face journey of someone desperately trying not to feel sincere emotions*
Leliel: Yes, but…this isn’t quite that, and so, it does not violate the “needs more the feelings of more people to congeal into a daemon” but…basically, this thing was created completely independently of rumor. It’s a direct creation of Tzeentchji.
Nocht: …Tzeentchji.
Diego: Yep.
Nocht: He spun a Neverborn out of nothing.
Futaba: That’s the lore entry, yeah.
Nocht: …he is a Chaos Lord. Not a Ruinous Power.
Leliel: Yeah…about that…
"As to who I am… well, who is not quite the correct word, but rather what. You may, however, call me a Black Pharaoh. He did so enjoy those stories you know," the creature explains.
Diego: As an old friend of one of Nyarlathotep’s children and fellow Bandmate and lesser Elder God - fuck off. You are not cool for liking Lovecraft. And I’m suffering secondhand embarrassment.
"Who?" Keel asks nervously.
"My master of course. If you truly want to know what I am, well, that is a little hard to explain. I am… a projection if you will, a manifestation of His will," the Black Pharaoh tells him.
[Long silence]
Nocht: …that is how a Dark God manifests their daemons.
Leliel: It is.
Nocht: [Pause, then jaw drops] Are you…is this fic implying…
Diego: It is. The ending of this fic…what it has been building towards…is THE REPLACEMENT OF THE CHAOS GODS WITH TZEENTCHJI AND HIS HAREM.
(https://giphy.com/gifs/VIPSiaPF6cw7AjbeIV)
Sophia: I’m sorry? I drowned the galaxy in blood to escape the rule of a petty, small-minded megalomaniac god, and I’m expected to believe pettier, smallerminded, more megalomaniac gods would be good for Chaos?
Magdalene: Look, I’m pretty sure if it was possible to become Tzeentch I would have managed it by now?
Electra: It took the sex games of an entire civilization to make a new Chaos God! Why would a single mortal be able to step into that?
Mortarion: This… may be the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever seen written.
Futaba: We wish we were kidding. Because, that reason we didn’t link the TV Tropes page is a bit of fanart from when this poop was still popular, of the New Chaos Gods.
(https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Fanfic/ThousandShinji)
Diego: And it’s not even good art! It’s generic as hell, as Emma will explain (and it is she that put the finger on it, all credit for this analysis to her).
Emma: The problem here is, for better or worse, 40k has a very distinctive visual style. It might be kind of ridiculous and over-designed, and Games Workshop might apparently pay designers by the greeble, but nothing in the world looks quite like a Warhammer 40k design.
https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/File:Kairos7th.jpg
This is a recent design of Kairos Fateweaver, Greater Daemon of Tzeentch.
https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/File:SkarbrandMini.jpg
This is Skarbrand, Greater Daemon of Khorne. Getting into our guests, this is Mortarion’s newest model.
https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/File:MortarionMiniNew.jpg
Mortarion: I had to take the lantern-bearers off my sacred armor. They kept getting tangled in things.
Emma: Basically, every Warhammer 40k character looks like they just got thrown up on by a Medieval Catholic Church and a Black Metal Festival to varying degrees. These? These are the “sexy knockoff Halloween costumes” of the Chaos Gods. Like we all made fun of Rei’s design, but at least there was an intent to give her body horror. What does Fanart Rei have? A slightly tattered veil? This is pathetic. It’s so devoted to avoiding the corniness that is part and parcel of 40k it drops into ridiculousness that isn’t even fun.
Futaba: They don’t even really look like the characters they’re based on, most of them. It may be dress, but…fucking Gymbro Shinji.
Nocht: I…wha..the..but the origin…youngest born…entire goddamned species after millennia…others…they…F-from iron cometh strength…from strength cometh will…
Diego: [Gravely] He’s already breaking…
Leliel: Yeah…so, um, suffice to say, this is bullshit. He’s mumbling about how Slaanesh needed the decadence and utter extinction of a truly ancient galactic empire to be born, they’re the young Ruinous Power. The potential Big Fifth Chaos God, Vashtorr, personifying the dark side of curiosity and innovation, along with the desire to control natural forces through technology, is millennia away from producing daemons of his own, only able to stabilize a domain in the Warp where he can convert daemons of the actually full gods into Soul Grinder cyborgs.
Diego: Not to mention…completely betraying the themes of NGE, too, given how the whole point there was to accept the nature of being human, and that “evolution” into a bodiless, egoless intellect is ultimately trying to escape from pain with a vague dream. Well, okay, there’s definitely ego here, but all four of these canon people would take one look at what the Dark Gods embody and are expected to engender and run away screaming from the job - yes, even Asuka at her most berserk, because she’d very quickly realize she’d renounce the ability to have a positive relationship not based in bloodthirst and hate. So, yeah, one hundred points. This will not be the last time we jack up the score by this much.
PRIMORDIAL BRAINFART: 554
DUMMY PLUGGED: 1045 (Why are we not surprised this hit the four-digit mark over the thing Academia Nut constantly wanks.)
"And what does 'he' want?" Lorenz inquires; sweat starting to bead on his brow.
"Lots of things, but mostly power and love, of which He will have plenty by the end of His gestation period.
Diego: One gestating God to another - fuck off, and make like Jason after being introduced to the Argo’s rotted stem, Tzeentchji.
Leliel: I’ll get Medea on the line, see if she doesn’t mind a twofer in curses.
GENDO’S FATED BASTARD: 989
From you however, he wants revenge. Revenge for all the pain and suffering you have put him through. To that end, your soul is going to be claimed with extra care so that you can be subjected to special torture afterwards," the Black Pharaoh explains, leaning in, its body language cruel and predatory.
Nocht: From will cometh - what pain and suffering!? Oh, they killed Asuka in honorable combat, just like any self-respecting Khornate wants, oooh nooo. Everything else was pretty much Gendo, and you’ve been humiliating him all fic!
Electra: You know, it fucks with them a lot more if your body language isn’t cruel and predatory. It’s a lot more fun.
Futaba: Behold, Reason 3819 for competent villains - too much loserdom tends to make the villain look like a non-threat, and then you start seeing them as Team Rocket more than actually evil people, because they can’t stop failing and so they never do anything evil enough to be deserving of death.
Emma: Has Lorenz done anything?
GENDO’S FATED BASTARD: 990 (Even beyond that: “special pain and torture.” Hell to the no.)
It then whispered conspiratorially. "You and the other members of SEELE wanted to shed your bodies and become one with a new god… well, no one ever said that God would be nice or particularly like you and your cronies for your involvement in its birth. I hope you prepared for the eventuality of an eternity being horrifically tortured by your worst nightmares."
Nocht: …they do not deserve what is in store for them, even as blasphemous would-be pretenders to Him on Terra. Few do. I speak as someone trained at least in part by the Inquisition when I say that. Our torment of heretics ends.
Sophia: *Golf claps*
GENDO’S FATED BASTARD: 991
Lorenz had nothing to say to that.
"Ah, I see the Reiglings are finished with your guards," the Black Pharaoh notes gesturing behind the leader and now last member of SEELE.
Futaba: …Reiglings. That’s your name for them. Reiglings. Tzeentchji gets the oh-so-cool Nyarlathotep inspiration, but she gets “the same plague gremlins, only with a syllable changed.” Lame.
Mortarion: …Are the Reiglings… sexy? I think if I have to imagine sexy adolescent girl Nurglings, that might finally break me where nothing else could.
Diego: …I’ll prepare the amnesiacs, just in case…
HETERONORMATIVE HEDGEHOG: 1014 (And the girl gets the lamer daemons, of course…)
When the diseased claws plunged into the old man's body, they made sure that he had a long time to scream about it. And at the end of it all, not even death held the release from suffering Keel Lorenz had long sought.
Diego: And so, Tzeentchji…because, realistically, he’s the only entity involved here with agency, even in-universe…proceeds to prove himself far, far worse than Keel ever could be. Say what you will about Keel, he at least wanted to share power, even if it was just with the rest of SEELE.
Leliel: There’s also one more ironic factor to all this gore- and edge-fest torture-rama in some attempt to be Chaos but the Imperium so Good…at least some part of Games Workshop is actively moving away from them being the best-available guys. Especially when Chaos is not involved.
(https://www.blacklibrary.com/all-products/ebook-elemental-council-eng-2024.html)
Nocht: …I’d object, but I’ve been called in a sniper duel with T’au when seeking an Ethereal target. I’m curious as to how they carried themselves that made my people look worse.
Leliel: To make a long story short - Chaos does not figure into this book at all. It is a book from the perspective of the T’au, about the T’au, fighting a rebellion on a human world they’ve recently taken control of…led by a loyalist Space Marine, specifically a Sergeant of the Raptors Chapter, one of the Raven Guard’s successors.
Emma: *Does an almost perfect imitation of the “sickos yes” meme*
Diego: To skip to the end…basically, Sergeant Artamax technically wins, in that the T’au Empire decides to compromise with the resistance and let the planet secede back to independence…and the book makes it clear he absolutely did not want to win this way. And why? Because, quite simply, his tactics were posited on the idea that when faced with frustration and human stubbornness, the T’au would default to war crimes to force compliance, or at least an act of spite against people who dare rebel against the Greater Good - like the Imperium would, and disillusioning other worlds in that philosophy given how it would be clearly driven by spite. This did not happen, because ultimately the Ethereals intervened on the side of the moderates and pretty much vetoed the use of the Curse-Wind nukes no matter how loudly a bunch of racist thugs on their side screamed - and as the Ethereals note, the planet now has distinct memories of one civilization that, realizing they didn’t want to be part of this, let them go freely with a note there would always be a place for them if they changed their minds. Not the Imperium.
Futaba: Quite simply, the Ethereals aren’t so lost up their asses that they can’t see that spite is a completely useless emotion unless there’s a point, like, “this asshole is completely unrepentant and continuing to do the thing that hurt me to others.” Compare with this, where Keel is completely helpless, utterly defeated, despairing, unable to be a threat as the world moves him by…and then he and SEELE get turned into stomach lining for We-Have-The-Great-Conspirator-At-Home. Yeah, great job comforting us the very birthplace of humanity is now a Daemon World, Tzeentchji - the biggest problem Caste in the T’au, the often arrogant and entitled monarchs that literally steered their language to be grammatically incorrect to insult a member of their august body, are literally more humble, patient, forgiving, and efficient than you are in spite of someone actively pushing them to be worse! Because we’ll see that Academia Nut thinks this Chaos is higher on the karma meter, fifty points. Because worse is coming up and I want to save the hundred for that.
GENDO’S FATED BASTARD: 1041
In Tokyo-3, the top of the great black dome split open, pouring unnatural light out into the surroundings. The sky went black, the warm light of the sun driven off in terror by the colours of out of space pouring forth. Khnemu held up his hands in worship, chanting an ancient prayer to Chaos Undivided as the things that streamed out passed him by, their insane giggling and grotesque figures driving most others mad simply by being near them. When they struck, they dissolved flesh into clear orange goo, bodies bursting like over inflated water balloons, their souls taken for the Great Harvest.
Leliel: For the record, being touched by a phantom Rei who looks like the person you care for most - or just a phantom Rei if you aren’t that close to anyone - is how the AT Field dissolution in canon Third Impact works. Good to know that this version is actually lacking even that comfort, in spite of it being spurred by a “better” Tzeentchji than that. Asshole.
GENDO’S FATED BASTARD: 1042
All across the planet, people started dying, their bodies turned to goo and their souls released to join into the collection occurring above Tokyo-3 at the behest of the Mother. Screams of fear and panic filled the world, but not all died. The creatures, the Reiglings, struck seemingly at random, harvesting one person but sparing the next. The only thing that seemed to help the odds was to fall down in worship of these dread creatures, an act that often, but not always, turned away their fell attention.
Futaba: Ah, so this “benign” all-mother rot Rei is actively sparing those who feed her ego. How very congruent for anything recognizable her character - and this is her, not Tzeentchji deciding this, as will be shown.
DUMMY PLUGGED: 1046
The Great Harvest ended ten minutes after it began, two thirds of the world's population offered up as sacrifice to the Mother.
Emma: Why one-third? Third Impact in the actual End of Evangelion turned everyone into Tang. Why is Chaos willing to spare people?
Diego: Because something something better than SEELE something Tzeentchji is much cooler than lame-o wimp Shinji something.
PRIMORDIAL BRAINFART: 555
TALON ON THE SCALES: 590 (Given how it’s explicit people can come back from LCL-dom, absolutely nothing stops the Wish.com Chaos Gods from putting unneeded souls back later as devoted worshipers, this is just “kindness” to camouflage how awful these people are.)
To Mama Reigle.
Nocht: Mama…
(https://tenor.com/view/spit-take-drink-laugh-funny-thats-gif-11859512)
I’m sorry, that’s the name for the New And Improved goddess of plague and decay?! Rei-gle? That’s the kind of cheeky nickname the Imperial Guard comes up with to annoy our targets!
Electra: You know, it suddenly strikes me that Ferra might not have the most obvious, embarrassing name possible.
Leliel: [Shit-eating grin] Oh, just you wait until you see the others…
Deep within the Black Moon, the Egg of Lilith, the Warp bled out into reality, creating the perfect gestation grounds for the beings within. In this seething cauldron of unreality, things had many layers, and viewing things from different angles could have a profound effect on what was seen.
Futaba: For example, the enormous multidimensional ass that this plotline is being pulled from, as the First Ancestral Race weren’t Warp-users, it’s entirely Dirac seas. Which in this fic, are something apparently different given the big baby Leliel not being able to shape one like the Warp.
DUMMY PLUGGED: 1047
PRIMORDIAL BRAINFART: 556
For example, looking at a particular room one way, one would see a high vaulted, cathedral like chamber coated in a mockery of organic tissue, pulsing and quivering with foul energies. Hanging like grotesque chandeliers from the ceiling were three enormous embryonic sacs, bright red veins pumping life and energy into the shrouded occupants. One of these sacs then began to descend.
Electra: Yeah, the grotesque cathedral of flesh, we’ve all seen it.
Diego: It’s next to the Time Knife.
Viewed from another angle, the room was a great void at the centre of which dwelt an unspeakable monstrosity bent and twisted into strange, non-Euclidean geometries. To say that it had tentacles was a misunderstanding of the nature of its limbs, for not all of their space could be seen at once by those with only three dimension sight. Great quakes began to shudder through this enormous beast as the process of budding off another like it began.
Emma: You know, I think at some point we have to consider that “non-Euclidean geometries” are not especially scary and Lovecraft was just kinda a wimp.
Leliel: Yeah, as noted, “non-Euclidian” means “curvy” - a non-Euclidian organism includes literally every organic life form, including people, on the face of the planet. This is basically describing a squid. You want eldritch, you start invoking higher-dimensional Euclidean shapes, like this hypercube.
And from another angle, one best not viewed long for the sake of sanity, one could see an enormously pregnant Rei going into labour.
[Long silence.]
Emma: Is she… giving birth to Tzeentchji? Dammit, fic, stop trying to prove Freud right?
Diego: [Moan of Eldritch Suffering] For the record: Yes, she is, and I, and everyone else unfortunate enough to be there observing my gestation happened to see it directly. Last I heard, Pyra, Rex, and Nia, with support from Mythra, were being rushed in for cuddle therapy for Shinobu and Taion, as soon as they come out from under their bunks, and Orikan has decided to work pro bono for creating a memory deletion program. If we had to suffer this, so do you have to at least endure its description.
(https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/2975120-the-writers-barely-disguised-fetish)
Futaba: Why. Just why. She’s already a clone of Tzeentchji’s mom and more or less fucking him. Was there a quota of gross incest I wasn’t aware of? Is there a rare achievement for a consanguinity factor above 50%? Why are we focusing on fucking childbirth in a supposed non-fetish fic?
Mortarion: I resent that this ideal of motherhood is so tied to the ability to push out a child personally. I am sterile multiple times over, and somehow that never mattered to The Grandfather.
Emma: Yeah, the continued emphasis on Rei’s “sterile womb” combined with her ascension to godhood making her able to have babies conventionally… it’s a really bad look, and also the sort of thing I kind of wanted to address in Higher than the Stars.
Leliel: Yeah. This is outright fractal grossness - you start at just the plain disgust reaction at the idea of a birth fetish from an “attractive” zombie goddess with worms for hair, and then you look at the internal logic, and you realize that it’s gross in so many other ways. So…yeah. Big hundreds, all around.
HETERONORMATIVE HEDGEHOG: 1114
THE DARK PRINCE’S AT FIELD: 998
Across the planet, the survivors of the Great Harvest heard the psychic shrieks of mother and child as a new god was born.
Nocht: Along with the shrieks of all but the most blessedly asexual as their genitals spontaneously withered to dust. I’m shocked mine didn’t.
He wore a thousand forms, but one of the few that could be understood by human eyes was that of a well muscled adult male human missing a finger on his left hand, clad only in a simple kilt, his eyes pinpricks of eternity, galaxies birthed and dying in a single moment within his fathomless mind.
Futaba: Wow. That is…really fucking boring for an eldritch god.
Diego: Quite. For the record, the actual Tzeentch has many, many forms, but many are comprehensible enough to be found in official art. A relatively recent one isn’t even physical!
(https://ageofsigmar.lexicanum.com/wiki/Tzeentch)
In fact, let’s outright quote the description on that wiki page a bit:
“In his true shape, he takes the most outlandish appearance of the Dark Gods. He is ever shifting and nothing about him feels definitive. Any who gazes upon him sees his skin crawling with constantly changing faces. Each of these faces leers and mocks those who observe them and when Tzeentch speaks, they appear and disappear repeating his words with subtle different or proving mocking commentary that casts doubt upon his original words.”
Leliel: You may have noticed that this description of Tzeentch has a lot of, oh what’s the term, kind of important, related to “protean”, “fluid”, “multifarious”, “the very concept he embodies as a god” - oh right, fucking change. Which Gymbro Tzeentchji…is not fucking doing.
Nocht: How…Horrors are living flames that change shape constantly, because they’re made of fire! Literally the foot soldiers of the Great Architect embody change! How don’t you have that?!
PRIMORDIAL BRAINFART: 606
He gazed at the other. Mother. Sister. Lover. Queen. Goddess. These were but a few of the titles She would wear.
Angharad: Is the other one Deicide, perhaps? Or Usurper? Or is literally nothing worthwhile going to happen?
Leliel: Oh, we’re in what our illustrious author considers a victory lap. The time for anything worthwhile or interesting has long passed.
"Hello Mama Reigle of the Seven Lives," He said coolly and slowly.
"Hello Lord Tzintchi, the Nine Fingered King," She replied in kind.
Nocht: [Stares, then bursts into laughter as he falls out of his seat in mirth.]
Magdalene: Oh, how clever of you to remember sacred numbers in the course of this… blasphemous desecration.
Futaba: Fun fact: When Wanderer came up with the Tzeentchji nickname, he did not know about this. The joke nickname is literally pronounced nearly the same as the ‘serious’ rebirth! That’s the intellectual caliber of writing we’re dealing with!
Glancing at Reigle, He asks, "How much longer until the other Queens are born?"
"Death was hard on Them; They will need more time to be cared for. Asukhon the Eightfold Victor will take perhaps another week to be made ready. On the other hand, because She was not a psyker, Mislaato of the Six Wounds will take anywhere from a month to a year to fully gestate," Reigle explains.
Nocht: [Laughter increases]
Angharad: Not how it works. My ascension was… abrupt and I had a planet to fuel it.
Magdalene: You are technically a psyker…
Angharad: Don’t remind me. Electra’s took a while but that’s ‘cause she decided to gaslight Petra and nibble chunks out of her soul for months.
Electra: Oh, don’t bring that up. Petra’s over it.
Mortarion: Petra’s never been over anything in her life and you know it.
Angharad: ANYWAYS, I don’t know why this is taking so long. Makes them look like idiots.
Diego: …they didn’t already? But yes, we are in the zone of “things that have literally never crossed the mind of Games Workshop on the basis of understanding basic consistency.” There is no precedence, only wank slop. And a hundred more points in multiple categories for the sheer amount of fucking reality-breaking ego.
PRIMORDIAL BRAINFART: 706
TALON ON THE SCALES: 690
Nodding, Tzintchi says, "We have all the time in the world. Do not strain Yourself or Them."
"There is a message for You," Reigle informs him.
Nocht: [Slowly recovering] Are they…are they referring to themselves with capital letters?
Futaba: Yep. Because They are Very Important, and They will Not Let You Forget It, lest They be Forced to Speak To Your Manager At A Wendy’s.
"I know. I shall get to it in time, but for now I wish to gloat," Tzintchi says before turning and leaving the chamber.
In the compressed and tangled space that was the inside of the Black Moon, He was where he wanted to be in an instant, in a thought.
He was at the Hall of Torment.
Leliel: Right, just for the very existence of this before the inevitable-
GENDO’S FATED BASTARD: 1043
The senior members of SEELE and his father were imbedded in the walls, ceiling, and floor of this place, screaming in agony, their souls trying to claw their way out of membranes of unreality that would trap them for all eternity. Tzintchi walked along, admiring the handiwork, until he came to his father and leaned in close.
Sophia: I get that we’re lucky enough that Mother did this to herself so we didn’t have to, but really, this is just embarrassing. Childish, really.
Mortarion: *Trying to look as uninvolved as possible*
Magdalene: Yeah, there’s nothing wrong with keeping souls around as a trophy but this is just… excessive. It’s… what’s the word I’m looking for?
Electra: Tacky?
Emma: Wait, is your concern that this is the conspicuous consumption of eternal damnation?
Diego: It’s not invalid, mind. I think “pointless” and “energy-wasting” are also good descriptors.
The soul of Ikari Yui emerged from the sea of souls that was Tzintchi. When the division had been made, her ability to scheme and plot and hope had assigned her to her son who had become a God. Within Him, and in fact all of Them, all souls were one, and yet separate, a bizarre paradox only Chaos was capable of. The only thing certain was that the souls that had once been Shinji, Rei, Asuka, and Misato were all firmly and absolutely in charge, as Tzintchi had commanded it be.
Futaba: …you may have noticed this is the same exact kind of thing it’s implied SEELE wanted, with themselves as first among bodiless equals. But here, it’s better, because…[Checks notes] a focus character did it and mostly out of ego than messianic fervor. Oh wait, that’s worse.
DUMMY PLUGGED: 1048
Still, They could deign to let the others out from time to time.
Yui looked sadly at the tortured face of her husband, reaching out to soothe him, saying, "Oh Gendo… this is entirely your fault. I willingly stepped in to Unit 01 wanting to make the world safer for our son, and you abandoned him. If you had just opened up your heart and been a good father like I had hoped you would have been, none of this would have happened."
*Long, uncomfortable silence from the Primarchs*
Magdalene: Ah, yes, the good intentions of a mother! Justification for everything!
Sophia: She killed herself in front of him for her “greater good”! The only reason she didn’t abandon him is because he was made into one of her soldiers! What moral high ground is she speaking from?
Nocht: The one the author insists is high despite being in a valley swamp. Assuming this is not some cruel Discount Tzeentch trick, with this “Yui” having none of herself in it, but a phantom of spite. I’m betting on that.
DUMMY PLUGGED: 1049
Her face going firm, she then says, "I'm afraid that it is quite too late to try and make amends at this point dear."
Leliel: You know, this was actually rather tragic and stark when it happened in canon and wasn’t clearly beating the snot out of Gendo to satisfy a delusional son’s need for validation.
Subsumed back within, Tzintchi took control again and looked at Gendo before saying, "That was a concession to my mortal birth mother; I on the other hand am not so forgiving. But perhaps I will change my mind in a few millennia and absorb you, so that you can be with Yui. Perhaps."
Nocht: Ha! Yui only existed as an incarnate intellect as a puppet of Tzeentchji, and this says nothing about her apart from his own egotism and rationalization! Not intended by the author of course, but given everything he’s done even beyond the Hall? Fuck off, Tzeentchji, and no, you will never get the dignity of you being called by your even more ridiculous real name. One hundred points for this entire exchange!
GENDO’S FATED BASTARD: 1044
Cackling with mad laughter, Tzintchi went to review the message waiting for him. It was not pressing, for it was a message in a bottle.
Or rather bottles.
The four canopic jars that contained the spirits of his Rubric Marines had been an incredible drain on Sensei Khenmu, more than they should have even in this Warp hostile environment.
Leliel: Translation, Academia Nut suddenly realized how uncanon it was and hurriedly retconned it.
There was something else in each of them, fragments sent along to tell Him something.
Diego: Nocht. Hold on to something. And sit down somewhere soft. Because this entire “ascendancy” business…well. Let’s just say there’s more than one religion this “reveal” blasphemies.
Nocht: [Too dreading to even do the Iron Litany properly]
The jars opened and out poured the gods.
Sophia: *Erupting into flame and unholy light* I’m sorry, WHAT??? The glorious Ruinous Powers deigned to be bottled and carried around by a single priest? Who didn’t even worship most of them? What is happening!?
Magdalene: How did it even fit??? The Rubric contains the soul of a non-psyker human! Even a fragment of a god would be, well, I suppose the closest comprehensible word would be too big to fit in a Rubric container.
"All Hail Tzintchi!" They declared, accepting Him as of their rank.
"All Hail," Tzintchi replies, settling down to hear what they had to say.
His acolyte to begin with, Tzeentch begins, "Very good my young apprentice, very good. You did remarkably well, and things went just as I had planned."
[Pause]
Futaba: Wait. So the TALON ON THE SCALE score…
Nocht: Was a real thing in-universe.
Diego: Mm.
[Both stare at each other, then the button]
Leliel: [Confiscates it] Nope, no, you’re going to break it after this next revelation. Hold your horses.
"You endured much," Nurgle gurgled.
"You suffered much," Slaanesh hissed.
"But You fought hard," Khorne growled.
Nocht: *Vashtorr* “And were completely without any degree of intelligent thought, so I will require several lobotomies to understand why you function despite not being able to walk and chew gum at once.” But seriously, of course the Dark Gods are riding on his member, he’s clearly their special boy according to-
"Ya fought well," Gork, or possibly Mork told Him.
"Ya woz a sneaky git too," Mork, or maybe Gork, continued.
Nocht: -say what now? The Greenskin deities?
"But in the end you won out," Khaine congratulated Him.
"But there is still much to do, many questions to ask," the Laughing God informed Him.
Futaba: [Boggling] The ELDAR pantheon?!?
Electra: The Eldar are famed for two things. One is their hatred of Chaos and the other is a complete lack of caring about anything that is not an Eldar. I think they would have a hard time deigning to give a Chaotic human the time of day.
Mortarion: Which has nothing to do with you pouting like a stood-up adolescent, I’m sure.
"So it is time You got some answers," the Emperor finished.
Live Nocht and Futaba Cam:
(https://media1.tenor.com/m/ofxjUEwBjrAAAAAd/mandem-enel.gif)
[Mass screaming, objections, etc]
Emma: Wait, Wait, I think you’re overlooking something. Think about your Mother, and think about how ANGRY this would make her.
Magdalene: …Huh. Well, when you put it that way…
Leliel: Oh thank God we didn’t accidentally create a Daemon World from sheer rage. But, I’ll put it bluntly - basically, this entire fic? The very premise, and how Khnemu even ended up here to begin with? Was a cooperation of…every Warhammer 40K deity.
Diego: Including the God-Emperor of Mankind. You know. The ANATHEMA OF CHAOS.
Leliel: And as a final rotten cherry on this shit sundae…the author’s note.
For those of you prepared to rant at me, there is one more chapter to this story, so unlike Gainax, you will actually get an explaination as part of the denouement. Save your accusations of hackery for then when the whole story has been told.
Diego: Ah yes, proudly proclaiming your superiority by having an explanation. And that makes things better. Because there’s a simple explanation for someone who is literally toxic to Chaos and might have well degenerated into a god of Xenophobia would work with them and other xenos gods to pull off.
Futaba: [Blinks slowly, nods, and reaches for her computer] Hey everyone. That was rough. Let’s watch a video…and appreciate this advice and this concept as it should be given what just happened…
Nocht: Just. I. How. But…500 points. I need to go kill something. Who’s with me.
Diego: Yo. But…one more thing…
Emma: The “infamous” “stupid” ending was either caused by budget cuts or an intentional artistic decision. Sorry that Anno didn’t come to your house and fucking regurgitate the meaning of his magnum opus into your mouth like you’re a baby bird, but that is not something that needs fixing!
Leliel: Yeah…that was…that was something else. It’s also why the spoiler was Nicolas Cage as a priest boggling out because…that’s the only way I can describe it. Good news…the next chapter isn’t as disgusting, but bad news, it’s not for lack of trying. First…
PRIMORDIAL BRAINFART: 1206
TALON ON THE SCALES: 1190
Second…next up is the finale, where we discover deep truths about life, the universe, and everything…especially the deepest truth of all…
Meanwhile, Somewhere Across the Seas of Tindalos…
Timeline NDS-9182736 (Xothian Classification),
Earth, Ruins of Tokyo-3, Black Egg Anomaly
Beneath the mask of the boy he had hollowed out and was now wearing the identity of a suit, the Black Dragon cringed.
A pregnant Chaos God giving birth to me, her brother? Really now?
He wasn’t going to object openly, of course. But that would be on the list of transgressions when he inevitably stabbed Ichiro in the back and took control of his pet civilization. All pretense, of course. Only greed mattered. Only power, life, and the effects that life had on the world mattered - victory went to the one who died the latest, with the most toys. And “toys” included servants.
Such as the…entity he had quietly groomed this Rei Ayanami into being. It took a lot - more than once he had to quietly peel away bits of her sanity to prevent something of the Dark Prince getting inside her. That would have ruined the perfect blasphemy he was preparing - Rei’s own nature was anathema to Nurgle’s, with her constant desire for improvement and acceptance of change, while Misato’s own lack of care for herself or desire to experience anything she was not already familiar with in some way was toxic to Slaanesh. Asuka was harder - her fierce nature was the sort of thing Khorne appreciated, so he had to reduce her to a victim to be saved by others, and enjoy it, with even her most violent self being driven by the need to revive another over punishing a romantic rival. And of course, his “Shinji”, who succeeded through blind luck, being manipulated by the stronger, and sheer rigidity of ideals and character. Not that there was much of a mind left, thanks to the ring had generously given through that Tsan-Chan cloned knockoff of a proper Space Marine. Whatever the case, each was a perfect failure of the God they supposedly represented. Perfect cages for the essence of all four to rise up, conquerors of this version of Holy Terra…and to be devoured by Vulkan, the Great Tyrant, Dark God of Domination and Greed, who fully lived his concept and so exposed the flaws in the rest. More than enough of a catalyst to finish his ascent into the Fifth God of Chaos, begun so long ago when he shed his humanity for Daemonic form.
After that…well, the Tsan-Chan had the ability to cross universes. What couldn’t he do? Certainly solved the issue of there potentially being no more worlds to conquer, at least for the foreseeable future. So many treasures to plunder, so much time to pursue them.
So, having thankfully detached his intellect from…that, the Black Drago contented himself with ascending, and taking stock of the world soon to be his throne.
Mm, yes, the Black Egg would need to be reformatted into a mountain. Some probability would need to be altered, to favor the appearance of great treasures and the curses that enforced his vengeance upon thieves in its great internal kaleidoscope, but apart from that, it was an ideal palace. The Geofront would need to be repurposed as the heart of an industrial hive, but the ability to raise or lower its main thoroughfare was priceless, he could show off his new capital while being able to easily stash it away for safekeeping. The nearly dry LCL crater lake-
While his true form in the Warp could not be adequately described in human languages, based as it was on a completely different and mutable set of physical laws, including distance, one could say that a great head of shadow and fire jerked to the side as Vulkan made sure of what he saw.
The LCL-infused waters of the lake had receded. Moreover, the sea itself seemed somehow…disturbed. This was not abnormal, it was the simple effects of sea life going about their meaningless business…but the seas of this world did not have true multicellular fauna anymore.
His great maw in a dark frown, the Black Dragon reached out-
“UNIT 04, LAUNCH!”
The superhuman intellect of a Daemon Prince-turned-nascent-God was able to process the thought his psychic senses had picked up, work through confusion, realize it was that Master of Ordnance - Ibuki, he thought her name was - speaking, further confusion she was apparently alive, then realization she was either quite mad, or this final trick of that limited idiot currently moldering in the sea apparently did not realize the Eva could not reach him in the span of a few Materium milliseconds.
It could not overcome his ego or overconfidence, as the prog knife sliced through the Dirac sea and into the Warp, leaving a long cut glowing with dark power that willed him to manifest - to his shock, it was not unlike the Word Bearers’ from the strange universe where they saw the truth of existence, a Chaotically holy will challenging a daemon to manifest rather than a normal summoner’s entreaty. We are the mountain upon which all blades shatter, it said. Hone your edge against us, or be ever known as broken.
The sky itself seemed to roar in surprise and offense as reality cracked open and spewed forth a darkness that shone, like great fountains of black glowing lava during an eruption, as Vulkan tore through, not willing to fight the challenge and eager to punish the impertinent.
As soon as he entered real time, he saw the formerly vanished silver Evangelion, flickering between worlds as the Dirac Sea it had been lost in clung to it. He could also see its soul, the dark-haired programmer that glared at him with hate through her servitor-body’s eight eyes, an expression matched only by the red-headed girl his more occult forms of sight told him was in the plug of the fleshy Titan.
Along with…oh. Oh, this was interesting.
“I see you, brat. And I can see your other self,” he said with a note of bemusement overcoming his rage at the sneak attack. “So much like a daemon, and yet, it is an extension of yourself. Are you, perhaps, aware of the true nature of the Gods? That they are extensions of us - and soon, I too will be part of all of you? I sense the touch of Tzeentch upon you, and you seem to serve a version of Lorgar who has seen past his practiced denial - you already serve a lesser image of me.”
“Yeah, yeah, villain speech, heard it before, literally,” a completely unperturbed pilot said. “I’m literally from a few hours in the future, a bit of a trick Diego and his pals cooked up. Had to convince Magdalene to help, so you may be seeing that.”
The Black Dragon paused. “Diego? The fool?”
The girl grinned. “Look with your real eyes.”
He did - and for the first time in several hundred years, sputtered in shock, his terrible breath of hellfire spitting out in small sputters of disbelief and heat.
Completely invisible to the Warp-sight, but unavoidable to the pseudo-organic eyes on his body (along with the glowing green monoliths of Necron technology surrounding it in an emerald field), Vulkan saw what appeared to be a great fungal tree, somewhere between mushroom, oak, flower, and sea anemone rising several stories into the air. Great eyes in its mass blinked as they observed the world placidly, the various vine-like tentacles and the hands gently swaying in a nonexistent breeze. Orange LCL traveled, filtered from the sea, up its eldritch phloem and mycelium, many billions of white, green, and purple networks forming a grand trunk leading to a spherical bud that pulsed and released rose-colored puffs of spores that gently settled like snow in the ocean, and as they did, they sprouted and formed into translucent fruiting bodies filled with fish eggs. Around it, what initially appeared to be smaller fungal trees at first glance reached out with smaller ambulatory tentacles in ecstatic prostration, swaying to the beat of the hymn that each one’s dozen mouths dripping with sap-like slime sang in harmony - Vulkan did not recognize the language but recognized the intent of the strange xenos. Faith, certainly, but also…fraternity. Familial love. The crooning of older siblings welcoming the youngest and most vital in the brood.
Mixed in with the xenos, staying a bit away with an air of genial mistrust, was a group of figures in power armor, mostly silver and crimson with the distinct spikes of Chaos-worship, and the disgustingly familiar green of the Death Guard, but…diseased, somehow. And above the tower floated five figures - one who appeared to be a priest made of shattered stone and reassembled into a shifting gargoyle with glowing blue veins attaching part to part, a beautiful froglike three-eyed woman in a sensual robe that somehow remained decent, a yellow-cloaked figure with a warscythe capped with a shifting 4-dimensional shape and a mask that conveyed a soul-deep weariness, an enormous one-eyed woman with scarlet skin (Magnus?), and finally, a skeletal but unmistakably feminine metal figure with blonde wire for hair…the last of whom looked quite a bit familiar, but…the Necrons wouldn’t a human into one of them if they could, let alone work with Chaos, would they…?
Before he could stop them, all five reached out and grabbed a “petal” of the bud, and yanked.
The ripe bud gave way in a burst of pink and red spores, as the trees-that-weren’t cried out in joy and the Black Dragon felt the presence of something very ancient, very old, and very primal smile in both the maternal nature of a proud parent and the smug accomplishment of a craftsman. Sap, chitin, and slime fell away to reveal a humanoid figure in the foetal position which slowly began to uncurl, gazing with new eyes upon its form and domain.
It appeared to be a strange combination of man, goat, and Angel. Most importantly, the wings were crystalline and lightning, a mix of Ramiel’s geometry and Arael’s strange energy. Between a pair of caprine horns, Sahaquiel’s eye sat in its blank stare, as the shifting three-dimensional shadow of Leliel shifted over the figure’s two hooves for feet, the coloring of its sleek fur not unlike Sachiel’s black hide or Tabris’ white mane where it turned those colors in patches that seemed to form alien lettering. Veins throbbing with LCL ran from its back to the tree, making it clear that the tower of fungal matter was simply a part of its body, as it was the tree’s head, a great selfsame throne made from and of itself.
But the man in this new entity was also familiar, as Diego’s searching gaze met that of the Dragon with the still-human eyes in his caprine face (beneath the multicolored ones that resembled Matarael’s more), crossing his arms in smug contempt.
“I didn’t fully respond to that medical plant comment, now did I?”, he said in a voice that echoed in what was left of Vulkan’s very genes, making him perfectly understood despite his fanged mouth shaping words that resembled nothing in any form of Gothic. “...to be honest, it is accurate. Take. Eat of me, and use my flesh as balm for your maladies and curses. Know my communion with the All-Mother, the Black Goat, the Source, as the Thousand And First Young. But you and mothers don’t quite get along, do you? Do you need a demonstration of how a parent of the human species is supposed to be, given how you’ve clearly projected the wrong phylogenetic class onto them?”
“YOU ARROGANT-”
“We didn’t finish!”, the pilot said, opening a letter in her hands. “Your counterpart asked me to write this: To my heretical, traitorous, and outright existentially unpleasant alternate-universe counterpart, Vulkan the Black Dragon, the tyrant of and enslaved to fear, I have asked the Phantom Thieves to inform you that I know your heart as my own, and how it has become twisted, making me your enemy and redeemer…”
(A/N: Yep, Good Vulkan is still trying to make friends in a minor way - that’s why he’s Vulkan. He doesn’t actually think his evil self can truly be saved, but he does want hints there could have been something more. But…yeah, I headcanon that the Phantom Thieves were unfortunate enough to see The Fetish God Incubation Chamber while they were strategizing with Shinobu, and I’m kind of curious to ask how you think they all reacted - y’know, besides trying to pour bleach in their eyes. Because I feel something funny should come of it.)
Futaba: [Shivers] That kind of hidden reduction of female agency won’t get better…just skeevier.
HETERONORMATIVE HEDGEHOG: 892
The halls of Central Dogma were a vicious battle zone that swept up and tore apart anything caught in their wake. While the commanders of NERV were inexperienced in this sort of fighting, they merely had to hold at the chokepoints to inflict horrific losses on the JSSDF troopers. The damage done to their back-up had meant that heavy weapons had been expended early only to break up defensive lines only for no resupply to be available once NERV hardened up their defences. Of course, the advantage of defensive terrain was pretty much NERV's only advantage, so it was a massacre on both sides.
Futaba: [Bored] Though clearly only actually an issue for the JSSDF.
Oh, and the slaughter by the Rubric Marines had certainly not helped the JSSDF forces at all.
Nocht: What she spoke…
TALON ON THE SCALES: 472
Diego: Ugh, skipping to the end - Tzeentchji rampages through the base while carrying Misato’s body to the command bridge, helped by the Rubric Marines, and…
It thus took him almost no time to go from the detention block to the bridge, a trail of burning and exploded bodies in his wake, not all of them JSSDF soldiers, some of them being NERV guards stupid enough to shoot at him when he really didn't feel like taking time to explain that he was on their side.
Nocht: Instead of just raising telekinetic barriers and ignoring them, which would cost less than exploding them and allows for focus on the push. But that wouldn’t gratify his ego.
Sophia: Now that’s just wasteful idiocy. I don’t care about petty moral concerns, but I do care about getting the job done and not doing too much friendly fire.
GENDO’S FATED BASTARD: 980
There was of course a rather large amount of confusion and fear when Shinji swept into the cavernous chamber surrounded by four giants in armour that looked suspiciously like the armour on his Eva carrying weapons that looked like they should be crew manned. The command staff was fortunately not stupid enough to open fire.
Leliel: Quite amazing trigger discipline when Tzeentchji would otherwise murder them, and be more obviously in the wrong, on-screen…
Of course, the fact that he was floating through the air, witch fire radiating from his eyes didn't exactly reassure those who were uncomfortable with his guardians.
Nocht: Interesting side note - that’s generally a sign of psychic overexertion and bordering on the Perils of the Warp breaking through. Tzeentchji is liable to be stabbed from the inside by a Bloodletter. No points, as this was draining for him, and it’s a warning sign rather than actual danger to the wielder as yet, but it is a nice thought.
"Where is Rei-san?" Shinji asks, his voice echoing with power.
There was stunned silence for a moment before Shinji nodded. "You don't know. Very well. Where is Asuka-san?"
Leliel: Fun fact - in the original, these lines are bolded. I consider my obliteration of them an act of spite.
Again, an uncomfortable silence as everyone assembled tried to figure out if he had simply taken those thoughts from their minds. However, someone had enough presence of mind to bring up an exterior camera on the main monitor, showing the white with purple trimmed mass production Evas landing in a long line with Unit 02 squaring off against them.
"Come, we must make haste to the Eva bays," Shinji tells his retinue while gently setting the disc carrying Misato's body on the ground.
Nocht: …that’s it? Not even enlisting them or telling them why the literal Major died?
Angharad: Why would you tell anything to or enlist these… objects? They aren’t him, so they aren’t people.
After he departed, his Rubric Marines carried aloft with him, Shigeru asked what everyone else was thinking in the stunned silence of the Command Centre
"What the fuck just happened?"
Magdalene: We’ve been trying to figure that out!
Leliel: Seriously. Absolutely nothing stopped anyone from skipping to the MP Evas, nothing of importance happened apart from Tzeentchji going to the Eva bays, nobody even got hurt, was that whole exercise just to show off how cool-oh, wait, mystery solved.
TALON ON THE SCALES: 473
The Mass Production Models of the Evangelion series were truly a marvel of modern engineering and research into the Angels. While being built in secret by SEELE as their counter to NERV, they had been refined and upgraded countless times in response to the latest data gathered from the battlefield.
Futaba: Oh look, the MP-Evas have been upgraded to convince us this won’t be an utter curb-stomp or adhere to the stations of the canon. Ooooh. [Yawns]
And they needed as much of an advantage as they could get, seeing as they didn't have the much heavier L-type equipment available to them.
Diego: It’s interesting how even this seems to be portraying SEELE as the underdogs…and also, the MPs have Replica Spears of Loginius. They’re very something you don’t want to armor overmuch, that would ruin their speed and actual ability to slip their armor- and AT-piercing weapons through the defenses of their targets. Any research should be aimed at overcoming the armor of other Evas, not bulking them up.
Magdalene: I think it’s safe to say that even that tiny bit of subtlety is beyond the understanding of this story.
Emma: They’re giant bone-white mecha with Joker smiles!
Magdalene: I said “tiny bit”!
TALON ON THE SCALES: 474
DUMMY PLUGGED: 832 (They’re anti-Eva Evangelions. Why would they want to fight the same way as other Evas do vs. Angels?)
What had been produced though was terrifying enough. Every MP Eva had within it an S2 engine for unlimited operation that also granted regenerative abilities.
Futaba: Which is another reason why bigger armor is pointless, these things literally recover HP if they’re allowed to disengage for a bit! Again, wolves, not bears.
Mortarion: Fought against an Imperial Governor like that, once. I sowed all the intake vents to his citadel with the most noxious mixture I could find. We went in and hosed it out a week later.
Leliel: In all fairness, we don’t see them doing so in EoE…but on the other hand, one is shown still being alive even after being cut in half, so maybe they didn’t feel they needed to.
DUMMY PLUGGED: 833
This was rather critical as several of the abilities reverse engineered from studying the Angels actively used up the flesh of the MP Evas.
Futaba: Aaaand none of this is canon. They didn’t need it then, and while narratively, it makes sense given Asuka’s buff, I can’t help but feel this is ass-covering for how utterly incompetent SEELE has been all fic, and this is the first moment of them engineering anything like this. So no, hand me that button, it’s time to empty the Berserk Bar as we hit each individual bit.
For example, from Sahaquiel they had figured out how to take a bit of flesh and accelerate it using an AT-field, turning it into a deadly spike. For extra kick they gave each round so accelerated a tiny chewing maw to dig through armour and flesh, backwards engineered from Ramiels formidable drill
Nocht: …you know, Tzeentchji manipulates his AT-Field too. I suspect the only reason he wasn’t cited for inspiration was fear by the author that he wouldn’t be able to counter his own overpowered nature and SEELE maybe showing some small degree of awareness.
DUMMY PLUGGED: 834
From Matariel they had figured out how to charge the blood of the Evas to make them highly corrosive. One of the units even had a support weapon hooked up directly to its circulatory system, giving it the ability to shoot streams of acid long distances, a sort flamethrower analog only far more unpleasant.
Diego: Fun fact: There’s actually a canon instance of a chemical flamethrower in Warhammer, a chemical notorious for burning so stubbornly that the preferred way of putting it out permanently is exposure to hard void to remove all oxygen fueling it. It’s just that Phosphex weapons are more associated with Chaos, especially the Death Guard, than Imperium. Wow, it’s almost as if SEELE should have been learning from Tzeentchji to pose a fair fight, the Dark Gods would approve of the battle between champions to see whose vision was best.
Mortarion: Also, we don’t make it out of the wielder’s blood. That’s good for intimidation for, oh, about five minutes, when they run out and collapse.
Angharad: Ehhh, you might get a few minutes of ambush while your foes fall over laughing.
DUMMY PLUGGED: 835
The teams had also stolen the idea of using an AT-field to generate a particle beam, giving one member of the squad an enormous plasma cannon tied straight into its central nervous system and made primarily of Eva flesh to be better enveloped by the field to protect the mechanisms from the ravenous beam.
DUMMY PLUGGED: 836
And as the MP Evas settled on to the ground, their huge wings morphed from huge flat flight surfaces into severallong segmented limbs tipped with wickedly sharp scything blades, giving them a considerable advantage in close combat.
Leliel: …that sounds weirdly Aeldari, especially Harlequins…
(https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Harlequin)
Nocht: Agreed. There’s no canonical “wings of death” I know of, but it sounds like something you’d be able to make a dance out of when slicing people. Harlequins literally prefer close combat compared to other Craftworld-aligned eldar because it enables them to properly demonstrate the dance of death.
Emma: See, this can’t intentionally be a Harlequin thing, because if it was we’d be sitting through whole paragraphs about how much SEELE had fallen, to ally with them.
Nocht: Point taken. I’ve met less xenophobic Ordo Xenos Inquisitors than this fic.
DUMMY PLUGGED: 836
Perhaps one of the most terrifying abilities though was the way they were networked together. On a purely technological level, each MP Eva could share all of its sensor data with its fellows via a variety of uplink methods, but the designers had also been tooling about with incorporating the super-soul of Israfel, linking the Evas further together.
DUMMY PLUGGED: 837
When Tabris had died screaming at the hands of Shinji, the insane fragments of his soul had filtered into the various clones used in the Dummy Plugs.
Diego: [Voice suddenly changes up an octave, in Japanese] Do you think you could let me rest in peace? I think you have made your point, Not-Ikari-kun. [Audibly clears throat] My apologies, his whole AT Field seems to have slipped into my cocoon. I’ll let him go when I hatch, and he has a point. Why does he have to be killed again in several Plugs?
*An anime-style ojou-sama laugh, starting low and rising in pitch and volume echoes through the chamber as the lights flicker purple and pink*
Emma: Well, shit.
Futaba: Oh Dark Gods, who now-
An explosion covers everything in the chamber in about an inch of purple glitter. Standing at the epicenter is a towering albino woman, who would be beautiful if she didn’t look like a poorly fitting suit for something else.
Electra: Well, you see, his blinkered little worldview can’t handle any challenges, so he has to destroy it over and over until it’s gone and he can finally sleep comfortably at night knowing there’s no way he could ever be tainted by those desires. *elbowing her way onto the couch* Push over. Oh, could somebody get me a drink?
Angharad: Everytime you do this, it takes me TWO HUNDRED FUCKING YEARS to get all the glitter out of my armor crevices.
Nocht: A-CHOO! And…I’m apparently allergic. Welcome to the chamber, probably an alternate counterpart of Fulgrim. I am no longer surprised.
Leliel: But yeah. What she said, this is just being really fucking cruel to the Angel boy, because how dare he represent a non-Chaos, and worse, non-heteronormative viewpoint?
HETERONORMATIVE HEDGEHOG: 893 (WE GET IT. KAWORU BAD. STOP DESECRATING HIS CORPSE.)
Futaba: And uh, Dummy Plugs are computers. The Rei clones might be needed to program them in the NERV version, but the core is all silicon, no clone involved. So this is two points.
DUMMY PLUGGED: 839
The MP Evas were insane, fearless, felt little to no pain, and none cared for their own survival so long as the group survived. They were capable of acting as a single entity with one purpose: to kill.
Leliel: In other words…exactly like canon. Great experimental writing there…
TALON ON THE SCALES: 475
There were also a wide variety of other nasty surprises as well, put in by SEELE and the design teams to increase lethality even more.
Asuka knew nothing of this.
Nocht: Conveniently, neither did the author, as he ran out of ideas and clearly was running on fumes for these fight scenes at this point. Speaking of, she knocks down the plasma cannon-wielding MP Eva with a barrage from the shoulder pods, and…
Time slowed and thickened like molasses, Asuka's perceptions accelerated beyond all human capacities, even glimpsing into the future at times.
Diego: …well then. We can officially say that even Asuka’s faith has been completely dominated by a controlling Tzeentch boyfriend, as that isn’t a Khorne trait, author.
Angharad: *Whirls and punches Mortarion in the face*
Mortarion: What was that for?!
Angharad: You were closest.
Sophia: Yes, far be it from this girl to use any of the varying combat strategies Khorne affords. Why should she have accelerated reflexes, or creator endurance, when she can simply ride on her lover’s coattails?
PRIMORDIAL BRAINFART: 358
She was one with her mother and the spirit of the Eva. Her mother would always be with her, and the beast within the machine practically worshipped her ability to propagate slaughter. It was a hive mind of nine killing machines versus the perfect single warrior.
Futaba: First of all…a one, and a two, and a-
Sporkers: SAME! FUCKING! SPIRIT!
DUMMY PLUGGED: 840
Futaba: Second…you literally know that Eva has a mind. It’s a nitpick, but you’re not really one warrior, you’re two minds in coordination. No points, but the metaphor is shaky as shit.
Leliel: Anyway, we have the fight…but to be honest, it means little. Asuka keeps tearing the MPs apart, but their S2 organs heal them fast. We see a lot of descriptions that, if it hadn’t long outlived welcome and unsold the idea of stakes, might be intriguing. As it is…we just got a sudden dunk on Kaworu again.
No normal human could have known that attack was coming. A tiny part of Tabris, the one in the explosively bisected Eva that had time to be afraid, wailed in terror. It remembered what the Third Child had done, and feared what the Second was capable of.
The rest of the hive mind ignored that part and told it to keep fighting.
Nocht: …so, even when the xenos is smart, he is scorned. You are making me feel bad for an infiltrator sworn to the purpose of being an enemy of mankind. Stop it.
Electra: Poor thing’s probably wailing because they won’t let him out of this fucking story.
HETERONORMATIVE HEDGEHOG: 894
Diego: For once, though, the opposing mecha-scale enemies pose an actual threat, likely because Tzeentchji isn’t here. So, inevitably, we come to Asuka running out of battery…
She stumbled back a second step, her whole Eva starting to list over with the weight of the spear in its head.
She took one more step back before her power clock ran down to 00:00:00.
In the warp, a daemon clapped with glee. It had had its encore performance.
Leliel: Yeah, fuck you too, you perverted edgelord.
Angharad: That would have almost been a beautiful fight if it wasn’t for everything else intruding. Better to die in battle, with a smile on your lips and your enemy’s blood in your mouth, then to live on in this parody of life. I’ve accepted what Sophia did to me. I do not think Asuka will reach such acceptance.
Shinji was flying through the halls of NERV
Literally. And hauling his servants along with him.
Diego: This makes it sound like he was literally carrying the Rubrics by the ear or like equipment. This is our cynicism talking, but it’s an image as humorous as it is fitting.
Entering the Eva cages, he saw the empty stall where Unit 02 had once dwelt between missions. Asuka was out there fighting, he had to help her.
Futaba: …ah, hell. She’s going to keep fighting thanks to her MAAAAAN. Because how dare she ever succeed on her own when he’s the self-insert?
Magdalene: Help? What help? How about if you just stayed out of range and let the Khornate do the indiscriminate ultraviolence?
HETERONORMATIVE HEDGEHOG: 895
Nocht: And…I am going to show this entire subsection. Because something is bugging me about it…
As he opened up the Entry Plug for Unit 01, dissolving his Rubric Marines into the dust in their canopic jars, Shinji also took note of the other cages for the first time in many months. The remains of Unit 00 were propped up in one of the cages, the prototype Eva badly damaged by its fight with the Sixteenth Angel, its core still barely intact but most of its armour cracked and the area around the core burned out.
The broken limbed doll of Unit 04 sat next to Unit 02's cage, the Eva not quite destroyed but so badly mauled that only a half-hearted attempt had been made to repair it in the past two months. It was doubtful it would ever be operated again, especially with current events the way they were.
Going through the start up sequence as quickly as he could, Shinji had only one thought on his mind: to get out there and assist Asuka in her fight. He desperately hoped he wasn't too late.
He couldn't take any more loss today.
Nocht: This entire section is a little more than four paragraphs long. It interrupted the entire fight, which makes up a good portion, perhaps half, of the chapter. Tzeentchji literally just showed up enough to “support” Asuka. And so make it seem like she could only have done things with his support, before vanishing from relevance.
Leliel: And as we’ll see…minimum effect on End of Evangelion’s stations of the canon. Tzeentchji was only there long enough to steal credit. Which is…really rather a perfect descriptor of this, isn’t it? Ten points, for making a devaluation of a female character as sudden filler.
HETERONORMATIVE HEDGEHOG: 905
Fight. Fight for me. Fight for you. Fight for us. Your soul blazes with such fury and passion, is it any wonder I was attracted to you in the first place, like a moth to a candle? So long as you fight, I can guide my way by the light of your soul. Fight, it was what you were born for.
Diego: How pleasant that you are still putting your welfare on her, even when she needs your help.
Mortarion: He… does know what candles do to moths, right?
Electra: “I was attracted to you like a moth to a flame, something which always ends in the moth being the dominant one in the relationship!”
GENDO’S FATED BASTARD: 980
HETERONORMATIVE HEDGEHOG: 906
Futaba: Ugh…and here’s the sad part, the fight’s still good. In fact, it’s probably the best in the fic, as it finally embraces the fact the Evas are mutating now, while the MP Evas still manage to put up a fight, even as eight of them fall…but here’s the thing: it doesn’t result in a functional difference:
Reaching out with its remaining arm, Unit 02 tried to drag itself forward still, but the Lance impaling its guts had embedded in the ground. Unit 02 was pinned like a butterfly, and no amount of struggling was going to get it any further.
Eight out of nine… that's not bad…
Eight's… a… good… number…
Asuka's eyes closed and Unit 02 went silent…just as Unit 01 exploded out of its launch ramp.
Futaba: All of that up there? Still results in Asuka’s death! Even though she was supposed to be far more mentally healthy here, and able to snap back into fighting potential and with Tzeentchji providing the impetus early to go into a berserk state where the battery didn’t matter! All we get is Khorne’s sacred number out of it! This entire fight was functionally padding!
Leliel: And the worst part is, I can see the point behind this. Asuka was fighting against these guys 9-on-1, and they had their fic-original Angel upgrades plus the Lances of Longinus. But on the other hand…this fic is supposed to show that the power of Chaos improved the lives of the Eva pilots and made everyone badass. Here…at maximum strength and fully channeling Khorne, all that happened was that Asuka got more MP Evas before they got her. Which as we will see, will lead to Third Impact, just…a very stupid version. One that is going to replace all the philosophical psychodrama to somehow save what’s left of Shinji’s will to continue existing before everyone fully dissolves into…well, you’ll see. Quite simply, the very premise of the fic is ultimately secondary to the stations of the canon. I have read fics where Keel Lorenz himself wires himself into an experimental Eva as one last attempt at a backup plan, and as silly as it was, it actually tied into the mood of the hyper-idealistic fic. Hell, that’d even tie well into this supposed Chaos protagonist! Lorenz is a corpse being kept alive by cybernetics, to the point where it’s made clear the most organic part of himself is his head - he’s the freaking Corpse-Emperor! …No offense, Nocht.
Nocht: None taken, the man is clearly a living false idol if he is using Xenos tech to make himself into a god of a very inhuman vision of Mankind. Goge Vandire was someone who considered himself holy during his rampage, I consider Lorenz a little lower. But, as made clear…here’s another good number, nine - the amount of points this count will be raised by, as clearly, this is being engineered by the Architect of Fate to change so much, and yet support the status quo perfectly..
Diego: [Quietly] You will laugh, cry, or both later.
TALON ON THE SCALES: 484
At the deepest point of Terminal Dogma was a room that appeared on no maps that officially did not exist. Only two people in recent memory had access to this room, and one of them was now dead, just like everyone else who knew about it in the long run.
Futaba: And this is already wrong, as Terminal Dogma also contains Rei’s clone tanks. By definition, there’s three…probably more, because this is also where the LCL the Evas use is generated. So SEELE probably has been there, at least. As has Fuyutsuki. This is a nitpick, but it’s yet another reason why the Nurgle corruption spreading to the clones would be noticed, because the clone tanks are on the way there and Gendo has access.
DUMMY PLUGGED: 841
TALON ON THE SCALES: 485
What was contained within was a secret worth keeping, worth killing for.
Nailed to a cross and surrounded by a lake of LCL that still leaked from the wounds inflicted upon her, the Second Angel, Lilith could only wait in silence for the chaos amongst her children to end, the seven eyes of her mask staring out impassively as two familiar faces approached her.
Diego: *Surprisingly Good Lilith Voice* “I have no ability to move my arms, and I must facepalm.” One wonders what would happen in a fic that actually remembered that Rei is Lilith’s avatar, and Chaos corruption would likely travel through Rei into Lilith…instead of…what we are about to see…
Electra: Oh, will this finally be interesting?
Nocht: [Starts to sweat]
One was Ikari Gendo, a cold antisocial man with a drive to achieve his goals only matched by the skills to back up such reach of grasp.
Leliel: Going by the way he’s behaved in this fic, it’s technically accurate - “zero” is a good estimation for both.
As far as he knew, he had broken his son, the boy spending the majority of his time since awaking from his coma praying for his broken girlfriend to wake up.
Futaba: Wait, he noticed, and didn’t set a watch?!
Mortarion: You just said he had the skills to meet his drive! Where are they? I’ve met people with most of their brains eaten by destroyer wasp larva with better follow-through.
Religion as a whole was a concept he had no time for, just another weakness of the human condition, something for the strong to use to exploit the weak.
Futaba: No, seriously, he outright noticed his son is a schemer, so he would at least keep an eye in case of-
Gendo put himself in the former category and his son in the latter.
Nocht: …ah, but you’re forgetting. This fic was made by someone with blind drool over the intelligence servants of the Great Deceiver believe they have regardless of capability. So clearly, everyone that is not the central cultist, is an utter and complete idiot.
Futaba: …[Slow inhale] So. Leaving aside Gendo has been lobotomized…pop quiz. What. Are. The last. Words. Gendo. Spoke?
(https://ladyloveandjustice.tumblr.com/post/18886801950/gendo-im-sorry-shinji-oh-well-that-fixes)
Leliel: Reminder. This is a vision of his wife having lost all faith in him, and just completely and utterly pissed at how he fucked up everything. And his last words are an apology to his son, which Shinji cannot hear. Not her, the one thing he’s been trying to save, but Shinji.
Emma: It’s bizarre, that in a fic that’s otherwise so devoted to emphasizing how much Tzeentchji has been wronged by everyone, the fact that Gendo canonically admits wrongdoing is completely cut. Is it because Gendo is also a strongman fantasy, to a lesser degree? Is it because the fantasy of your enemies always being wrong and stupid is greater than the fantasy of apology? What is going ON?
Futaba: Take this…and compare. “I’m sorry, Shinji”, vs “tHe StRoNg RuLe, Me Am tHe GrEetEsT!” Does…anyone notice a difference?
Diego: But that’s the thing. The last thing Gendo did was apologize and recognize he fucked up beyond repair. This fic worships the idea of “intelligence”, and so, cannot accept that maybe, just maybe, the reason why Gendo is a bad father is that he is a bad father. No, it has to be a plan…which is an interesting wrinkle, because remember way back when we had our first POV? When Gendo outright said “he is my son” with mild pride when he realized Tzeentchji was a planner like him? Where’s that recognition, even a bit of sadness, that Tzeentchji had to fall for the sake of saving his mother? But no - “the strong to use to exploit the weak.” He says about religion, as his very plan revolves partly around the existence of an afterlife and the soul.
Leliel: And…even after all of that…even if we accept that Gendo is even more of the Bastard King than is canon…that doesn’t change the fact that he noticed his son was awake and safeguarding Asuka, and didn’t bother to check what he did next. Gendo, as we keep mentioning, is the master of backup plans and contingencies. Especially after the “bug the room” stunt he did, he’s going to get someone to keep an eye on that, or at least take a monitor with him.
Nocht: To say nothing of how he has likely noticed the bizarre changes happening to the pilots, especially after the psyker stunt Tzeentchji pulled with SEELE. Quite simply, this man isn’t just robotic and dull in this fic - he’s a blisteringly unobservant fool that makes most High Lords of Terra look attuned to the man on the street. So, one hundred points to each, because this isn’t just offensively poorly written, it’s plot-critical.
DUMMY PLUGGED: 941
TALON ON THE SCALES: 585
Ayanami Rei on the other hand, was currently a bubbling cauldron of mirth beneath her expressionless demeanour.
Diego: You know, in case you were worried that there was any tension or that she’d actually develop some in-character maturity after that whole thing with dying due to her overindulgence and lack of ability to take things seriously.
Magdalene: So, Mortarion, have you ever been a bubbling cauldron of mirth?
Electra: Forget that; Morty, have you ever enjoyed anything, ever?
Mortarion: *darkly* No, and I’m sure you both know why.
DUMMY PLUGGED: 942 (You’d expect even Nurgle Rei to be tense and trying to clamp down on her emotions.)
TALON ON THE SCALES: 586
She could feel years of planning coming to fruition, and she knew that she was the lynchpin to Gendo's plans. He assumed that she was his obedient servant, beholden to do whatever he ordered her to.
Futaba: Because, as noted, the philosophical zombie of a clone Gendo left behind after he escaped this fic through its many plot holes lacks functional eyes and doesn’t remember how nervous NERV was about Rei displaying ever more disgusting habits. In this fic.
TALON ON THE SCALES: 587
For so many years, that had been the case, and even in her most rebellious moments she had never actually gone against a direct order.
Nocht: As opposed to interpreting them creatively, which is already cause for concern given your intended purpose and grounds for attention, replicae.
TALON ON THE SCALES: 588
Now though… now…
The world was coming to an end and Rei would become the instrument of its destruction, something any minion of Chaos would be pleased to claim, especially a follower of Nurgle's rot, ruin, and decay like Rei. Of course, she could still spare the people she liked.
Mortarion: It’s not sparing the people you like so much as… preserving them. Integrating them. No-one is spared, some of us are just beloved by the Grandfather as more than warm biomass.
Leliel: Honestly, this is probably the most in-character about Chaos she’s been so far and…well, even here there’s a foul note. Nurgle cultists believe it’s inevitable they’ll be part of the rot when it comes, they just train themselves up to survive it. So, it’d be more “trust that the people I like endure and rule the wreckage.”
PRIMORDIAL BRAINFART: 359
Shinji had told her to foul Gendo's plans. She assumed that what was to come would definitely count.
Futaba: The stations of the canon had to run out someday.
She was naked, Gendo having informed her that she would not need clothes for what was to happen. For a moment she assumed that he would take her physically, in which case she had a lovely set of diseases to inflict upon him,
Nocht: Well that’s…a disturbing image. On multiple levels.
Emma: You know, NGE is not a series that inherently excludes incest from its themes. I don’t think it’s impossible to talk about Gendo as a father figure who does “daughter as wife substitute”. You’d just have to talk about it at a thematic and character level, and those are levels far beyond the one “wow, incest is DARK and SHOCKING i’m so COOL and MATURE for offhandedly mentioning it” level Academia Nut can reach.
THE DARK PRINCE’S AT FIELD: 791
but when he had bade her to follow into Lilith's chamber, she had known that something more special was about to occur.
Diego: Having seen where this leads from my cocoon? “Special” is not the term I’d use. “Spectacular” is more accurate, but not in any complimentary way.
The true Lance of Longinus had been removed from Lilith a short time ago in preparation for what was to come, Gendo not wanting to go about this process by Lilith directly, but to have Rei assume control of Third Impact so that she could lead him to his Yui. Ultimately control would rest with Unit 01, but Shinji was so pathetic and useless that he would not resist the destruction of the world. All was going just as planned.
Futaba: You know what, this is actually something I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt to! Why? …Because I have no idea what this plan is, given how this isn’t Gendo’s plan. He planned to merge with Rei, and from there, unite his AT Field with that of his wife - what happened to the rest of the world simply doesn’t concern him. Which is why he was so willing to let SEELE march to their victory condition, they were approaching his as well, but he didn’t want them interfering at the last moment - so he subtly sabotaged them. This wasn’t hidden.
DUMMY PLUGGED: 943
Removing the glove from his right hand, Gendo exposed the embryonic Adam fused to his palm. For the destroyer of three billion people, it seemed such a small, pathetic thing, although as the insane Major Katsuragi would attest it had not been that small when it caused Second Impact.
Leliel: Related, we have a distinct lack of shit, Sherlock.
Reaching out, Gendo placed his hand on one of Rei's breasts, her flesh giving way like a gooey marshmallow before the slumbering might of the First Angel.
Diego: …you know, when I’m thinking about the divine rebis that will usher in the death and rebirth of humanity…I somehow don’t think that term gets across the gravitas of the moment. At it’s cleanest, I’m now thinking of the great Feast at the End of All having s’mores as its dessert course…actually, question for Electra, do they have s’mores in Slaaneshi feasts?
Electra: Diego. Darling. Honey. We are the greatest and most loyal servants of the god of indulgence and decadence. S’mores are a sacrament.
Diego: …good point.
THE DARK PRINCE’S AT FIELD: 792 (At its dirtiest when the term ‘marshmallow’ is involved…yeah…)
Rei let out a small gasp that was mingled pleasure and pain at the experience as the Flesh of Lilith mingled with the Flesh of Adam, something that should not have been.
Nocht: …contractual obligated joke: It produced this fic, then? Along with the continued obsession with physical pleasure and sex. With a young teenager. I get the sense it will not get better.
THE DARK PRINCE’S AT FIELD: 794
Already Rei could hear the siren call of Lilith behind her, demanding to make war with her old nemesis. It was an instinctive and ultimately suicidal impulse, one that would destroy both of them and leave Rei in command of both their powers, although what would emerge on the other side was uncertain as no mortal could experience such power and remain unchanged.
Futaba: …okay, for once, this isn’t implausible. The Spear of Longinus was preventing Lilith from fully regenerating, and that she’d seek to eliminate the competing Moon for her brood makes sense - and why Gendo might want a Lilith-guided Third Impact early, without SEELE’s interference.
Moving her hand through her body like it was water Gendo let it settle upon Rei's sterile womb before ordering, "Now go and undo all the AT-fields in the world and bring me to my Yui-san."
Leliel: [Queasy] Why did you bring that element up? …right, bitches be mothers. Forget I asked.
Emma: Presumably, this is so Rei’s ascendance as a godly mother figure can be framed as a fixing, or a repair of something horrible Gendo did to her. We can’t have 14 year olds not be capable of pumping out kids as soon as possible, after all.
Futaba: And once again - he doesn’t care, he wants to fuse his with Yui’s. Rest of the world can keep on trucking on or not, as far as Gendo cares, and as far as we can tell, it’s not required - hell, we might say there’s a lore hint it can’t be right, since if that were the case, he’d be a SEELE loyalist.
THE DARK PRINCE’S AT FIELD: 795
HETERONORMATIVE HEDGEHOG: 907
DUMMY PLUGGED: 944
A torrent of power was flowing into Rei, and she could already feel it begin to mix with the power she had dammed for her own good. Rei just looked up into the bespectacled face of Gendo and said quietly, "No," before the transformation over took her.
Diego: [Sound of hissing breath, fungal transmitter bioluminescences as an image appears on the screen.]
(https://media4.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExZzJkZXd3bmNzM2tybmprb240dWJpZGF2bmNudzFiOWE0dmZnbHQwZyZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/hTDQBdMlPDEeewFFhl/giphy.gif)
Leliel: …I think Diego’s beginning to become an actual Daemon Prince as opposed to just like one due to this insanity. Having read it…not that I blame him….
Flesh began to run and rearrange itself, unveiling the form hidden within. Rei began to grow, her human genes giving rise to expressions that would have occurred naturally with the passage of time, her body maturing into something that resembled the adult Ikari Yui more with every passing second.
Futaba: Because Tzeentch forbid she not be hot in some way. Ah hell, I’m falling back into Arcanite Mode too.
Magdalene: Look, sometimes you have to sell your soul to Tzeentch to clearly see beyond all the nonsense.
Emma: I don’t think it takes forbidden knowledge to realize this is real fucking dumb and gross.
Nocht: [Dreading expression, clasping hands] From iron cometh strength, from strength cometh will…
Magdalene: …You know, I’m glad your stupid mirror world remembers the Iron Litany. Nobody ever pays Petra any attention.
THE DARK PRINCE’S AT FIELD: 796
HETERONORMATIVE HEDGEHOG: 908
For the briefest of moments Gendo thought that Rei had found a better path, switching about her soul with the soul in Unit 01, giving him back his Yui in the flesh as well as the spirit.
Leliel: Okay, this is actually a bit understandable. He’s struck with disbelief, and desperately hoping…but then comes the other shoe. And it stinks.
Then Nurgle began to paint on this malleable canvas, dashing Gendo's hopes in a way that only the God of Despair and his followers would find comical.
Nocht: …Oh. Oh no.
Mortarion: I don’t appreciate my sense of humor being insulted in this way.
From a distance Rei would have still been comely and desirable, but up close one would quite clearly see what happened to those that championed the Great Corruptor. To see the change occur was to gaze into the mouth of insanity.
Nocht: …so from a distance…we want to make sure that everyone knows that she is still attractive. Oooh, nooooo. From will cometh faith, from faith cometh honour…”
THE DARK PRINCE’S AT FIELD: 797
HETERONORMATIVE HEDGEHOG: 909
Leliel: …so, uh, someone get the DARK PRINCE AT FIELD out? Because…as a warning, this is going to be Rei Adult Supermodel Nurglite. And yes, it is just as unintentionally horrifying as it sounds, beyond the hopefully intentional discomfort. And showing it’s still not very sexy, not unless you have some…very particular tastes. And even then, I think even the hypothetical you acknowledge it’s a fetish you really shouldn’t think everyone has and would be seen as hot from afar. And generally would also be HR Geiger kind of work, which at least isn’t hitting the Uncanny Valley or looking actively contagious.
Diego: …denied. It’d break the button, and…well, we’re going to have a hundred points at the end of this. At least.
The first, subtle change was for the whites of Rei's eyes to become yellowed and rheumy while her brilliant red irises flared with inner light.
Leliel: So, she looks jaundiced already. What a dish. [Gags]
Next, her hair fell out, replaced by something else entirely. At first it looked like new hair was sprouting from her scalp, but in truth this was not hair but thousands of incredible fine, translucent blue worms embedded in her scalp like bot fly larva. Shoulder length, the worms squirmed and writhed like some fouler version of the Medusa.
[Long pause]
Futaba: [Raises hand] Question. Aren’t bot fly larvae rather…fleshy? And segmented? Look something like an accordion with spines? Not linking here, because flesh burrowing creepy crawlies but…you’d be able to tell at a glance that’s not actually hair?
Diego: Reasonable.
Futaba: Swell. [Gets bucket]
Diego: Hold it in. You’ll need the bile to avoid dry heaving in three…two…
After that, Rei's fat and muscle began to redistribute, retreating in places to leave famine victim skin and bones, while conglomerating in others to form fleshy tumours. There was still a sick aesthetic though; the cancerous growths appearing in places to give curves that most women would kill for. For example, Rei's breasts expanded with unwholesome tumours swollen nearly to bursting, her small, previously nearly unnoticeable nipples growing red and rosy… as boils brimming to the point of weeping with pus rather than mother's milk.
Futaba: ….thanks for the warning. HUEEEEEGH-[Head goes in bucket]
Emma: Oooooh my god she has tumorous swellings in all the right places! Ohhhh my god! Are we sure this isn’t secretly the funniest parody ever?
Leliel: The nausea and apparent seriousness is definitely invoking Poe’s Law, if so…
Mortarion: I feel honour-bound to point out that we rely on either “swollen inflamed obesity” or “emaciated bog body”. If you care about the state of your breasts, sell your soul to someone else *very obviously ignoring Electra posing in the background”
Nocht: FROM HONOUR COMETH IRON FROM IRON COMETH STRENGTH-
Rei's once alabaster white skin was stretched taut by the distortions to her body, before inflamed and swollen veins erupted across her skin, standing out stark blue as some sort of cancerous marble effect. Slowly the blue faded to black as her skin darkened from white to a pale, necrotic green.
Nocht: -wait, emaciated and marble?
Behind her the Lance of Longinus levitated into the air, orienting towards the surface before flashing away, tearing its way to the mind that had called it.
Rei smiled to reveal a mouth full of rotted black teeth and swollen green gums crawling with maggots, her saliva replaced with thick phlegm and pus.
Her voice a smooth, purring death gurgle, Rei says again, "No. Shinji-kun is the only one who can determine the distribution of souls after Third Impact; it is not up to you to decide this."
Nocht: …not telepathically. She is able to say this…through maggots, swollen gums, and phlegm. No, if she was saying this…she’d be saying it through bread pudding. Sort of like Academia Nut’s brain, where it isn’t made of paper-mache of suspiciously stained porno-slate printouts.
(https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/2467571-the-writers-barely-disguised-fetish)
Futaba: [Groans] So…let me make it clear. The premise of this? Is already kinda shaky. We’re not saying weird things can’t be attractive, and we certainly don’t mean to kinkshame. But, we will say, it’s really freaking telling that the lore entries here are sure to establish that Rei’s newfound alien demon nature is totally hot, you guiz, and doing so, repeatedly. Without actually explaining why she’s hot beyond “but it looks curvy!!!!!” Yeah, so does R’yleh, that’s what Non-Euclidean means, and I’ve seen enough bad art to know enough curves can make a thing somewhat nauseating to look at!
Emma: Yeah, I would find this considerably less nauseating if it wasn’t so… normie. Between the “reassuring us that the 14 year old is aged up to adulthood” and “reassuring us that she has a little waist and big tits” it’s too gross to be regularly attractive, and too normative to be kinky.
Leliel: More importantly…the same passage outright says that Rei is losing so much mass she looks like a victim of famine…but her boobs are apparently big and full, infected or not! And she’s got a great butt! …No, fuck off, have you seen someone who’s been malnourished that long? They look like skeletons at best! And if you see a starving kid with a potbelly - that’s not fat, it’s kwashiorkor (not linked, because the Wikipedia link has a picture, and it’s pretty disturbing), they literally don’t have enough protein to maintain their normal body functions and their liver is massively inflamed. If somebody from a distance sees her, they’re going to see a borderline cadaver. Yeah, sexy my ass, if you find a sincerely starving person, they’re going to tell something is very fucking wrong, no matter how far away you are.
Magdalene: Well, the writer is a pampered idiot with no empathy for anyone, hence why he has no idea what real suffering looks like.
Nocht: But even beyond all of that…ultimately, this is the moment of total corruption, fully embracing the rot and grotesque nature that is the Grandfather of Plagues. And the focus? Is on her appearance. Not the biological processes of mutation, not the mental changes, not even something directly from her perspective. A loving, thorough description of her as an object. Even as an Assassin of the Throne…I respect the Archenemy too much to see a cultist as nothing but sex appeal, especially if it is supposedly something special due to Nurgle’s influence. Because, let us reiterate - Nurgle does not care. Nurgle is the god of rough survival and forms twisting to adapt to horrific situations, to survive at all costs, and no matter how damaging it is. For someone to still be pretty, even in “disgusting” ways? Then that is not Nurgle. In the end, Rei is, and remains, a trophy.
Diego: And as we’ll see…this is only the start. But, I did say a hundred points…and not just to one count!
THE DARK PRINCE’S AT FIELD: 897
HETERONORMATIVE HEDGEHOG: 1009 (And yes, we have a loser of the First Four Digits!)
PRIMORDIAL BRAINFART: 459
Glancing towards the surface high above, Rei adds on mirthfully, "I don't think he's going to be very appreciative of your agenda."
Leliel: Yeah, after all, he doesn’t get to fuck his mom-cloned sister in Gendo’s world, and maybe has to accept she’s with someone else. Yes, I’m very cynical and harsh after that.
Gendo had only watched in mute silence brought on by a large chunk of his psyche shattering upon beholding such a grotesque transformation, before the animalistic part of his brain tried to escape, to withdraw his hand from Rei's guts, to get away from the inescapable feeling that her intestines were squirming about his hand, worm maws nibbling upon his flesh.
Diego: Oh look. Finally a proper Nurglite description of psychic power by a cultist of the Fly Lord. It only took…what, the entire fic?
Rei cocked her head to the side and released him. In true Nurgle fashion.
Nocht: Please just be disgusting, please just be disgusting, please just be-
Gendo's forearm began to rapidly swell with infectious inflammation. Enormous pustules began to grow, one on top of each other, the pressure growing agonizingly. Eventually the skin closest to Rei began to turn a putrescent green as necrosis set in. This did not last long as the rapidly weakening tissue could no longer contain the growing pressure.
Nocht: Oh thank the Emperor.
Mortarion: Finally, something sensible.
With a sound like a cluster of water balloons being hit by a cluster of flechettes, Gendo's right arm exploded, hurling him back in a shower of pus and gore. Falling to the ground, Gendo could only stare in dumb horror at the corroded yellow remains of his radius and ulna, slick with green and yellow pus.
Nocht: …though still quite lurid.
THE DARK PRINCE’S AT FIELD: 898
Levitating into the air, Rei told Gendo, "Do not despair, you shall not die yet, your fate is for another to decide."
Futaba: …it took me a second to remember that Rei rebelling and giving the choice of Third Impact or not to Shinji was canon, because here, it comes off as yet more lack of agency for the sake of Duh Mahn. In fact, it probably is that, here - because I imagine that even if they like you, Chaos cultists are largely assured they know what’s best for you and will just do so.
*General muttering to the tone of “but we do?” from the assembled*
Emma: The difference in canon was that it was Rei giving power to someone who had treated her as a person rather than be a tool. Here? She’s just passing it to another master.
HETERONORMATIVE HEDGEHOG: 1010
Rei then slid back into Lilith.
Leliel: …I’m really hyperacute to this shit now, I thought that was an intentional double entendre for a bit.
There was a momentary ripple before the Second Angel began to move, her hands sliding off the spikes that impaled them while her legs finished regeneration. Crashing into a kneeling position in the LCL lake below, the mask on Lilith's face slowly fell off with a sucking noise to reveal Rei's face.
Diego: Which is also, conveniently, a Station Of The Canon. Even when going full power revel, fic isn’t original.
Standing up, Lilith/Rei began to expand at a phenomenal rate, the same grotesque metamorphosis that had occurred before repeating itself on a scale a thousand times grander. Those that saw this happen invariably ran screaming when they did not collapse into quivering, vomiting piles of mental trauma. Those that had the misfortune for Rei's ghostly flesh to pass through them were left gibbering wrecks, their sanity violently and permanently ripped from them by the horrific experience.
Nocht: …which, conveniently, also skips having to write the reshaping of something metaphysical.
Futaba: And oh yeah, Lilith has bodies growing out of her legs.
(https://wiki.evageeks.org/Lilith)
How does that not end up becoming a part of this…Rotted Angel?
Mortarion: Wasting a perfectly good teratoma. Ungrateful.
PRIMORDIAL BRAINFART: 450
DUMMY PLUGGED: 945
Rei smiled. She had an appointment with a friend to keep.
Diego: First, to the extent he can have friends or any other positive relationship…second, prepare yourself. This is where Academia Nut reveals the WTF factor. Because…he thinks he can do Third Impact better by adding Warhammer 40K to it, and Chaos better by adding Third Impact to it.
Futaba: [Eyes shrunk] Nocht?
Nocht: [Stonefaced] Yes?
Futaba: Hold me.
[Both embrace in absolute terror of what they are about to see.]
Shinji sat in his Entry Plug, mute and staring at the tiny broken form resting too quietly in the palm of his Eva's hands.
Leliel: [Starts playing Sad Romance on the World’s Smallest Violin]
His Eva was floating several kilometres above the eye of the storm he had conjured, six enormous wings projecting out of its back, covered in ever shifting, iridescent feathers. Floating faithfully at his side was the Lance of Longinus, its prongs stained with the blood of the last MP Eva, while Chaos symbols a kilometre tall surrounded him, burning brightly in the sky and driving mad all who looked upon them.
Diego: …did we seriously just skip the final MP Eva? I mean, this is Tzeentchji, Winner of The Everything, so it’d be boring and spoken for, but…wow. Suddenly, the Final Battle is skipped. Because Asuka died, and that’s all that matters for the plot. I think this might be telling on the actual goals of the narrative. And how unwilling it is to experiment beyond Teh Awseome. Not even one of this fic’s mildly redeeming qualities in its fight scenes.
Emma: In a less awful fic, I would see this as a really good beat. In a less awful fic, cutting the fight that technically ends in a victory would communicate its meaninglessness in the face of the greater failure. Here… well it’s a little like that, but it feels less like “I’m not going to show the battle where he failed to save someone” and more “what’s the point of showing a battle i don’t totally win?”.
"Wake up Asuka, wake up," Shinji said quietly while staring at the limp body he held.
I should have been faster…
Nocht: But then you wouldn’t have gotten a chance to show off your powers and be a complete tosspot.
I shouldn't have let Misato's death affect me so when there were still others I had to look out for…
Futaba: Ah, yes, that was the issue, instead of using your weather-warping psyker powers to sabotage the MP Evas when you could see them perfectly well. I don’t care if the author forgot about them or you, it’s still very much a Sonic Unleashed Fail Orchestra Moment:
GENDO’S FATED BASTARD: 981
I should have…
I should have…
Diego: Yeah, suddenly you care now that you lost a possession. Fuck off.
Shinji was a hollow shell, every last trace of human emotion drained from him by the trauma of all he had seen today. The horrors within Asuka's soul, Misato's revelation and death, and now this. No human could withstand such pain and remain intact.
Leliel: [Stops playing, annoyed expression] I dunno, the daemon that possessed and mind raped Misato was pretty up there - oh wait, that thing’s your ally. My bad, I should get new material for how very, very tragic this all is:
Magdalene: I don’t know what he’s talking about! We;’ve been through worse and we’re all fine!
Futaba: …riiiight…
Shinji had been broken to begin with.
Nocht: Agreed, but not for the reasons, or ways the author wants us to think now that we are being asked to pity the poor, put-upon Arcanite. I’ve learned more about the one-eyed giant next to me and her counterparts than you will ever know, and I must say - you don’t measure up in anything resembling as understandable a backstory, and you would be a shame to a corrupt sector governor’s household for this self-pity.
In the end, all I really wanted was someone warm at my side at night. Is that such a terrible thing to wish for? To not be lonely like this, to know that when you go to sleep there will be someone who loves you waiting to smile at you in the morning?
Nocht: Case in point!
Emma: Oh, bullshit. If that was genuinely all you ever wanted, you wouldn’t have done half this shit and we wouldn’t have had to sit through All This Horseshit. You want power, and I don’t care if a villain protagonist wants power, I don’t care if they’re self-deceptive about wanting power. I care that the AUTHOR knows they want power, and this has failed this test.
Diego: “All I wanted”...”at my side…”not be lonely like this”...blah blah blah, me me blah, blah blah blah blah me me me. If you had shown anything reciprocal apart from lust, I’d be more charitable, but as it is? Fuck off, Tzeentchji.
Futaba: Screw self-pity - at this point, you’re sounding like Architect-damned Consul N from Xenoblade 3! I’m going to avoid spoiling more of that story, but if there was true justice as a physical force in the world, you’d suffer the same exact fate in your ever so precious relationships! One point for all three lines of this!
GENDO’S FATED BASTARD: 984
Is that too much to ask?
I would trade it all just to have that again.
Nocht: You wear Egyptian cotton as casual wear. Color me skeptical that you would even seriously consider it
"Shinji…" a soft voice whispered to him.
Blinking twice, Shinji looked up and found a ten kilometre tall Rei in full Nurgle bloom staring back at him, smiling in that faint way that was only describable as being 'Rei'.
Leliel: Which is something that clearly isn’t recognizable as Rei in canon, she actually can smile lightly. Instead of this one’s Gross Joker Grin.
Shinji smiled weakly back as a small, pained, psychotic giggle escaped from his throat. Recovering after a moment, he says with all the sincerity he could muster in his burned out state, "You look beautiful Rei-chan."
Futaba: Translation: He lied to her face to avoid getting face-rotted…not that a real Nurglite would care…
Smiling more broadly, Rei says, "Thank you Shinji-kun."
Diego: …does this…screw it, out of mercy. It counts “as females be vanity, amright guys?”.
HETERONORMATIVE HEDGEHOG: 1011
Chuckling sadly, Shinji says, "But you're going to leave me too, aren't you?"
Nocht: …the Warp did that come from? What’s the logic behind “make Rei pity me?”
GENDO’S FATED BASTARD: 985 (Whatever it was, it’s very manipulative.)
Tilting her head to the side in a motherly way, Rei then shakes it and tells him, "Far from it, I am here to grant you your most deeply held, fondest wish."
Leliel: If that is not “eternal stasis” or “rot” in some way, then this is a fail.
Exploding into full on dirge laughter, Shinji screamed out, "THEN BRING THEM BACK!"
Her smile never leaving her face, Rei says, "This I can do."
Leliel: Fail it is! Nurgle gives, at most, undeath. Resurrection isn’t really any Chaos God’s theme, but outright reverse of the cycle of decay? Screw that noise. At most, Nurgle grants preservation. Not undoing the nature of entropy.
PRIMORDIAL BRAINFART: 451
Shinji blinked, a sudden spark flaring in his breast. For the first time since Misato died he felt something that was normally integral to his character: hope. He would not go down without a fight, ever. If he had to rip the gates of Hades off their hinges and put down Cerberus to get to Misato and Asuka, then he would damn well do it.
Magdalene: You aren’t hopeful. Hope has to be stupid and absurd and desperate. It has to be fake and then you do it anyways. It’s not the domain of people who never do anything wrong.
Emma: Hell, even “self-confidence” as integral would work better. It’s too nice a way to say “arrogant dickhead”, but we’ve definitely seen Tzeentchji do way more of that than being hopeful.
Diego: Both would be Tzeentch’s idea of virtues - but yeah, this is entitlement more than hope, and more born of complete inability to process even potential defeat. Which is more Slaaneshi anyway.
PRIMORDIAL BRAINFART: 452
"Do it," Shinji told her.
"Once passed beyond the veil, it is not easy to recover a soul," Rei warned him.
Futaba: How will this not matter because it’d upset the Stu and the power fantasy?
Nocht: Place your bets now.
"Do it," Shinji repeated.
"There will be a great sacrifice to make," Rei warned him.
"Do it, I will pay any cost to have them back," Shinji told her.
Leliel: See Egyptian cotton remark.
"They will be changed by the forces required. You will be changed by the forces as they are yours to command," Rei advises him.
"Change is good," Shinji said with a feral grin.
Emma: Right, that’s the only thing that matters. Not the fact that this is a horror. You are doing a terrible thing to people you love to save them, and you are completely ignoring all the moral complexity that gives you to play in, in favour of more Tzeentch wankery. It’s like, and I apologize in advance for this simile, being taken to the beach and choosing to play in a dirty litterbox instead.
Diego: Not to mention, just blase acceptance of “the power” without even considering what it is. Which would be touchingly letting go, if this pendejo ever fucking showed doubt in the future ever, rather than just assuming things worked out. So two points.
GENDO’S FATED BASTARD: 987
"I thought you would say that," Rei says, reaching up to cup Unit 01 in her hands, shrinking down below the clouds.
Nocht: …should I start up the Iron Litany again…?
Futaba: Not quite yet, but a lot of the next scene can be cutscene skipped through, it’s just the JSSDF and various countries reeling from the sudden storm and disaster, with them being unable to get past a big ol’ black dome while this other nonsense resolved itself. But then we have a special guest…
The arrival of a very curious person did nothing to lift the dread quiet, but it did stir up a hundred different emotions in the eyes of those watching.
He was clad in heavy blue armour with impossibly intricate gold designs worked into the surface, so reminiscent of the pharaohs of ancient Egypt, and yet also so much older and grander than that dusty civilization of yesteryear. In one hand he carried a huge axe set with spinning teeth like a chainsaw, while in the other he carried a pistol that most would have considered a small grenade launcher.
Leliel: Khnemu’s back!
Magdalene: Oh, thank the Great Deceiver, someone’s finally here to save the legion’s reputation.
Diego: [Dark chuckle] Oh, you wish. His name is soon going to sound like a dark prophecy. But first…
The man was infinitely similar to the armour and weapons upgrades of the Evas, but one look at him let everyone know that he had seniority on the Evas by several thousand years, as impossible as that was.
All stood aside as the giant passed them, watching as he walked out, unconcerned, onto the field of molten glass that lead up to the great black dome over the Geofront.
They watched as he walked right up to the edge.
And they watched as he fell to his knees and bowed down in supplication and worship.
Sophia: So, about that…
Magdalene: *incomprehensible swearing*
Futaba: Yeah, nice of him to drop in just to cheerlead, huh? Much consequential, very point, wow.
Nocht: [Frowning] Why is he bowing down? He should recognize that this is something Nurglite in nature…
Diego: First, he really shouldn’t, so points.
PRIMORDIAL BRAINFART: 453
TALON ON THE SCALES: 589
Second…well, you may want to start on the Litany now….
Far away in Germany Keel Lorenz also watched in silent rage, a live satellite feed showing this strange event taking place.
Leliel: Given the quality of this fic, it’s very likely this particular satellite has a bunch of robots and a specialized janitor in a red jumpsuit on it. MST-ception.
Rage as the work of decades was destroyed by Ikari.
Futaba: Uh, what?! Looks like a combination of Rei and Asuka to me, nobody named Ikari is involved-oh right, they’re female. My bad, women don’t have agency.
HETERONORMATIVE HEDGEHOG: 1013 (One for both ladies ignored.)
Silence, because with the Mass Production Evangelions destroyed, there was nothing he or anyone could do to stop these events
Diego: Hence why we are saying that Asuka was one of the people that ruined this plan, what with eight out of nine and providing enough time for Tzeentchji to steal credit - er finish it off.
None of them had any idea what Ikari had unleashed, as this was all quite outside of the prophecies they had been using to guide their way through the war with the Angels to the culmination of Third Impact. But now everything had gone inexplicably wrong.
Nocht: Ah, I would say the author who understands very little about anything involving you or my cousin universe is a good place to start. It’s very frustratingly explicable, you just don’t know.
"It is because you messed with things you do not understand old man," a silk smooth voice commented from the darkness about the weathered cyborg.
Leliel: …get on the Litany, Nocht. Because this…this is where I think every Warhammer character here is going to start wanting to choke someone.
Sophia: You mean worse than before… oh dear.
Turning his head as fast as his implants will allow him to, he immediately found a strange looking man sitting in the shadows across from him. He was clothed in a blue and gold style ancient Egyptian headdress and a purple and blue pleated kilt, with a fine gossamer shroud wrapping about the rest of his body, but no matter the angle his face was a depthless black void.
Nocht: Is…is that a daemon? I don’t recognize it…
Diego: [Angry static over comms as the fungus twitches] I wish I didn’t.
Behind him, the SEELE monoliths died, consumed by shadows that seemed to radiate off this figure like some unholy un-light.
Futaba: Ooh, edgy.
Diego: And not very in-character for…this type of Chaos. It will make sense soon…but…
PRIMORDIAL BRAINFART: 454
"Who are you? How did you get in here?" Lorenz demanded angrily while quietly pressing a button to summon his guards.
"Oh, they are quite indisposed right now," the man… thing… whatever tells him amicably.
From the shadows that seemed to be thickening with each passing moment there echoed small, distant screams of absolute terror and agony.
Leliel: So, uh…I’m going to drop a bit of a reveal here..
GENDO’S FATED BASTARD: 988
Nocht: …excuse me, what? I’ve heard of beliefs and urban legends forming daemons from desire and belief, I had a tangle with an abnormally long-ranged Bloodletter born of rumors of a fierce and beautiful highwaywoman…and from your records, the Iron Hands of your more familiar universe actively gave rise to the Sapphire King, an outright Keeper of Secrets or similar being born from their own desire to become perfect warriors combined with the remnants of both Ferrus Manus’ shame at defeat and Fulgrim’s own love for Ferrus…
Electra: *Goes on the face journey of someone desperately trying not to feel sincere emotions*
Leliel: Yes, but…this isn’t quite that, and so, it does not violate the “needs more the feelings of more people to congeal into a daemon” but…basically, this thing was created completely independently of rumor. It’s a direct creation of Tzeentchji.
Nocht: …Tzeentchji.
Diego: Yep.
Nocht: He spun a Neverborn out of nothing.
Futaba: That’s the lore entry, yeah.
Nocht: …he is a Chaos Lord. Not a Ruinous Power.
Leliel: Yeah…about that…
"As to who I am… well, who is not quite the correct word, but rather what. You may, however, call me a Black Pharaoh. He did so enjoy those stories you know," the creature explains.
Diego: As an old friend of one of Nyarlathotep’s children and fellow Bandmate and lesser Elder God - fuck off. You are not cool for liking Lovecraft. And I’m suffering secondhand embarrassment.
"Who?" Keel asks nervously.
"My master of course. If you truly want to know what I am, well, that is a little hard to explain. I am… a projection if you will, a manifestation of His will," the Black Pharaoh tells him.
[Long silence]
Nocht: …that is how a Dark God manifests their daemons.
Leliel: It is.
Nocht: [Pause, then jaw drops] Are you…is this fic implying…
Diego: It is. The ending of this fic…what it has been building towards…is THE REPLACEMENT OF THE CHAOS GODS WITH TZEENTCHJI AND HIS HAREM.
(https://giphy.com/gifs/VIPSiaPF6cw7AjbeIV)
Sophia: I’m sorry? I drowned the galaxy in blood to escape the rule of a petty, small-minded megalomaniac god, and I’m expected to believe pettier, smallerminded, more megalomaniac gods would be good for Chaos?
Magdalene: Look, I’m pretty sure if it was possible to become Tzeentch I would have managed it by now?
Electra: It took the sex games of an entire civilization to make a new Chaos God! Why would a single mortal be able to step into that?
Mortarion: This… may be the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever seen written.
Futaba: We wish we were kidding. Because, that reason we didn’t link the TV Tropes page is a bit of fanart from when this poop was still popular, of the New Chaos Gods.
(https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Fanfic/ThousandShinji)
Diego: And it’s not even good art! It’s generic as hell, as Emma will explain (and it is she that put the finger on it, all credit for this analysis to her).
Emma: The problem here is, for better or worse, 40k has a very distinctive visual style. It might be kind of ridiculous and over-designed, and Games Workshop might apparently pay designers by the greeble, but nothing in the world looks quite like a Warhammer 40k design.
https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/File:Kairos7th.jpg
This is a recent design of Kairos Fateweaver, Greater Daemon of Tzeentch.
https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/File:SkarbrandMini.jpg
This is Skarbrand, Greater Daemon of Khorne. Getting into our guests, this is Mortarion’s newest model.
https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/File:MortarionMiniNew.jpg
Mortarion: I had to take the lantern-bearers off my sacred armor. They kept getting tangled in things.
Emma: Basically, every Warhammer 40k character looks like they just got thrown up on by a Medieval Catholic Church and a Black Metal Festival to varying degrees. These? These are the “sexy knockoff Halloween costumes” of the Chaos Gods. Like we all made fun of Rei’s design, but at least there was an intent to give her body horror. What does Fanart Rei have? A slightly tattered veil? This is pathetic. It’s so devoted to avoiding the corniness that is part and parcel of 40k it drops into ridiculousness that isn’t even fun.
Futaba: They don’t even really look like the characters they’re based on, most of them. It may be dress, but…fucking Gymbro Shinji.
Nocht: I…wha..the..but the origin…youngest born…entire goddamned species after millennia…others…they…F-from iron cometh strength…from strength cometh will…
Diego: [Gravely] He’s already breaking…
Leliel: Yeah…so, um, suffice to say, this is bullshit. He’s mumbling about how Slaanesh needed the decadence and utter extinction of a truly ancient galactic empire to be born, they’re the young Ruinous Power. The potential Big Fifth Chaos God, Vashtorr, personifying the dark side of curiosity and innovation, along with the desire to control natural forces through technology, is millennia away from producing daemons of his own, only able to stabilize a domain in the Warp where he can convert daemons of the actually full gods into Soul Grinder cyborgs.
Diego: Not to mention…completely betraying the themes of NGE, too, given how the whole point there was to accept the nature of being human, and that “evolution” into a bodiless, egoless intellect is ultimately trying to escape from pain with a vague dream. Well, okay, there’s definitely ego here, but all four of these canon people would take one look at what the Dark Gods embody and are expected to engender and run away screaming from the job - yes, even Asuka at her most berserk, because she’d very quickly realize she’d renounce the ability to have a positive relationship not based in bloodthirst and hate. So, yeah, one hundred points. This will not be the last time we jack up the score by this much.
PRIMORDIAL BRAINFART: 554
DUMMY PLUGGED: 1045 (Why are we not surprised this hit the four-digit mark over the thing Academia Nut constantly wanks.)
"And what does 'he' want?" Lorenz inquires; sweat starting to bead on his brow.
"Lots of things, but mostly power and love, of which He will have plenty by the end of His gestation period.
Diego: One gestating God to another - fuck off, and make like Jason after being introduced to the Argo’s rotted stem, Tzeentchji.
Leliel: I’ll get Medea on the line, see if she doesn’t mind a twofer in curses.
GENDO’S FATED BASTARD: 989
From you however, he wants revenge. Revenge for all the pain and suffering you have put him through. To that end, your soul is going to be claimed with extra care so that you can be subjected to special torture afterwards," the Black Pharaoh explains, leaning in, its body language cruel and predatory.
Nocht: From will cometh - what pain and suffering!? Oh, they killed Asuka in honorable combat, just like any self-respecting Khornate wants, oooh nooo. Everything else was pretty much Gendo, and you’ve been humiliating him all fic!
Electra: You know, it fucks with them a lot more if your body language isn’t cruel and predatory. It’s a lot more fun.
Futaba: Behold, Reason 3819 for competent villains - too much loserdom tends to make the villain look like a non-threat, and then you start seeing them as Team Rocket more than actually evil people, because they can’t stop failing and so they never do anything evil enough to be deserving of death.
Emma: Has Lorenz done anything?
GENDO’S FATED BASTARD: 990 (Even beyond that: “special pain and torture.” Hell to the no.)
It then whispered conspiratorially. "You and the other members of SEELE wanted to shed your bodies and become one with a new god… well, no one ever said that God would be nice or particularly like you and your cronies for your involvement in its birth. I hope you prepared for the eventuality of an eternity being horrifically tortured by your worst nightmares."
Nocht: …they do not deserve what is in store for them, even as blasphemous would-be pretenders to Him on Terra. Few do. I speak as someone trained at least in part by the Inquisition when I say that. Our torment of heretics ends.
Sophia: *Golf claps*
GENDO’S FATED BASTARD: 991
Lorenz had nothing to say to that.
"Ah, I see the Reiglings are finished with your guards," the Black Pharaoh notes gesturing behind the leader and now last member of SEELE.
Futaba: …Reiglings. That’s your name for them. Reiglings. Tzeentchji gets the oh-so-cool Nyarlathotep inspiration, but she gets “the same plague gremlins, only with a syllable changed.” Lame.
Mortarion: …Are the Reiglings… sexy? I think if I have to imagine sexy adolescent girl Nurglings, that might finally break me where nothing else could.
Diego: …I’ll prepare the amnesiacs, just in case…
HETERONORMATIVE HEDGEHOG: 1014 (And the girl gets the lamer daemons, of course…)
When the diseased claws plunged into the old man's body, they made sure that he had a long time to scream about it. And at the end of it all, not even death held the release from suffering Keel Lorenz had long sought.
Diego: And so, Tzeentchji…because, realistically, he’s the only entity involved here with agency, even in-universe…proceeds to prove himself far, far worse than Keel ever could be. Say what you will about Keel, he at least wanted to share power, even if it was just with the rest of SEELE.
Leliel: There’s also one more ironic factor to all this gore- and edge-fest torture-rama in some attempt to be Chaos but the Imperium so Good…at least some part of Games Workshop is actively moving away from them being the best-available guys. Especially when Chaos is not involved.
(https://www.blacklibrary.com/all-products/ebook-elemental-council-eng-2024.html)
Nocht: …I’d object, but I’ve been called in a sniper duel with T’au when seeking an Ethereal target. I’m curious as to how they carried themselves that made my people look worse.
Leliel: To make a long story short - Chaos does not figure into this book at all. It is a book from the perspective of the T’au, about the T’au, fighting a rebellion on a human world they’ve recently taken control of…led by a loyalist Space Marine, specifically a Sergeant of the Raptors Chapter, one of the Raven Guard’s successors.
Emma: *Does an almost perfect imitation of the “sickos yes” meme*
Diego: To skip to the end…basically, Sergeant Artamax technically wins, in that the T’au Empire decides to compromise with the resistance and let the planet secede back to independence…and the book makes it clear he absolutely did not want to win this way. And why? Because, quite simply, his tactics were posited on the idea that when faced with frustration and human stubbornness, the T’au would default to war crimes to force compliance, or at least an act of spite against people who dare rebel against the Greater Good - like the Imperium would, and disillusioning other worlds in that philosophy given how it would be clearly driven by spite. This did not happen, because ultimately the Ethereals intervened on the side of the moderates and pretty much vetoed the use of the Curse-Wind nukes no matter how loudly a bunch of racist thugs on their side screamed - and as the Ethereals note, the planet now has distinct memories of one civilization that, realizing they didn’t want to be part of this, let them go freely with a note there would always be a place for them if they changed their minds. Not the Imperium.
Futaba: Quite simply, the Ethereals aren’t so lost up their asses that they can’t see that spite is a completely useless emotion unless there’s a point, like, “this asshole is completely unrepentant and continuing to do the thing that hurt me to others.” Compare with this, where Keel is completely helpless, utterly defeated, despairing, unable to be a threat as the world moves him by…and then he and SEELE get turned into stomach lining for We-Have-The-Great-Conspirator-At-Home. Yeah, great job comforting us the very birthplace of humanity is now a Daemon World, Tzeentchji - the biggest problem Caste in the T’au, the often arrogant and entitled monarchs that literally steered their language to be grammatically incorrect to insult a member of their august body, are literally more humble, patient, forgiving, and efficient than you are in spite of someone actively pushing them to be worse! Because we’ll see that Academia Nut thinks this Chaos is higher on the karma meter, fifty points. Because worse is coming up and I want to save the hundred for that.
GENDO’S FATED BASTARD: 1041
In Tokyo-3, the top of the great black dome split open, pouring unnatural light out into the surroundings. The sky went black, the warm light of the sun driven off in terror by the colours of out of space pouring forth. Khnemu held up his hands in worship, chanting an ancient prayer to Chaos Undivided as the things that streamed out passed him by, their insane giggling and grotesque figures driving most others mad simply by being near them. When they struck, they dissolved flesh into clear orange goo, bodies bursting like over inflated water balloons, their souls taken for the Great Harvest.
Leliel: For the record, being touched by a phantom Rei who looks like the person you care for most - or just a phantom Rei if you aren’t that close to anyone - is how the AT Field dissolution in canon Third Impact works. Good to know that this version is actually lacking even that comfort, in spite of it being spurred by a “better” Tzeentchji than that. Asshole.
GENDO’S FATED BASTARD: 1042
All across the planet, people started dying, their bodies turned to goo and their souls released to join into the collection occurring above Tokyo-3 at the behest of the Mother. Screams of fear and panic filled the world, but not all died. The creatures, the Reiglings, struck seemingly at random, harvesting one person but sparing the next. The only thing that seemed to help the odds was to fall down in worship of these dread creatures, an act that often, but not always, turned away their fell attention.
Futaba: Ah, so this “benign” all-mother rot Rei is actively sparing those who feed her ego. How very congruent for anything recognizable her character - and this is her, not Tzeentchji deciding this, as will be shown.
DUMMY PLUGGED: 1046
The Great Harvest ended ten minutes after it began, two thirds of the world's population offered up as sacrifice to the Mother.
Emma: Why one-third? Third Impact in the actual End of Evangelion turned everyone into Tang. Why is Chaos willing to spare people?
Diego: Because something something better than SEELE something Tzeentchji is much cooler than lame-o wimp Shinji something.
PRIMORDIAL BRAINFART: 555
TALON ON THE SCALES: 590 (Given how it’s explicit people can come back from LCL-dom, absolutely nothing stops the Wish.com Chaos Gods from putting unneeded souls back later as devoted worshipers, this is just “kindness” to camouflage how awful these people are.)
To Mama Reigle.
Nocht: Mama…
(https://tenor.com/view/spit-take-drink-laugh-funny-thats-gif-11859512)
I’m sorry, that’s the name for the New And Improved goddess of plague and decay?! Rei-gle? That’s the kind of cheeky nickname the Imperial Guard comes up with to annoy our targets!
Electra: You know, it suddenly strikes me that Ferra might not have the most obvious, embarrassing name possible.
Leliel: [Shit-eating grin] Oh, just you wait until you see the others…
Deep within the Black Moon, the Egg of Lilith, the Warp bled out into reality, creating the perfect gestation grounds for the beings within. In this seething cauldron of unreality, things had many layers, and viewing things from different angles could have a profound effect on what was seen.
Futaba: For example, the enormous multidimensional ass that this plotline is being pulled from, as the First Ancestral Race weren’t Warp-users, it’s entirely Dirac seas. Which in this fic, are something apparently different given the big baby Leliel not being able to shape one like the Warp.
DUMMY PLUGGED: 1047
PRIMORDIAL BRAINFART: 556
For example, looking at a particular room one way, one would see a high vaulted, cathedral like chamber coated in a mockery of organic tissue, pulsing and quivering with foul energies. Hanging like grotesque chandeliers from the ceiling were three enormous embryonic sacs, bright red veins pumping life and energy into the shrouded occupants. One of these sacs then began to descend.
Electra: Yeah, the grotesque cathedral of flesh, we’ve all seen it.
Diego: It’s next to the Time Knife.
Viewed from another angle, the room was a great void at the centre of which dwelt an unspeakable monstrosity bent and twisted into strange, non-Euclidean geometries. To say that it had tentacles was a misunderstanding of the nature of its limbs, for not all of their space could be seen at once by those with only three dimension sight. Great quakes began to shudder through this enormous beast as the process of budding off another like it began.
Emma: You know, I think at some point we have to consider that “non-Euclidean geometries” are not especially scary and Lovecraft was just kinda a wimp.
Leliel: Yeah, as noted, “non-Euclidian” means “curvy” - a non-Euclidian organism includes literally every organic life form, including people, on the face of the planet. This is basically describing a squid. You want eldritch, you start invoking higher-dimensional Euclidean shapes, like this hypercube.
And from another angle, one best not viewed long for the sake of sanity, one could see an enormously pregnant Rei going into labour.
[Long silence.]
Emma: Is she… giving birth to Tzeentchji? Dammit, fic, stop trying to prove Freud right?
Diego: [Moan of Eldritch Suffering] For the record: Yes, she is, and I, and everyone else unfortunate enough to be there observing my gestation happened to see it directly. Last I heard, Pyra, Rex, and Nia, with support from Mythra, were being rushed in for cuddle therapy for Shinobu and Taion, as soon as they come out from under their bunks, and Orikan has decided to work pro bono for creating a memory deletion program. If we had to suffer this, so do you have to at least endure its description.
(https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/2975120-the-writers-barely-disguised-fetish)
Futaba: Why. Just why. She’s already a clone of Tzeentchji’s mom and more or less fucking him. Was there a quota of gross incest I wasn’t aware of? Is there a rare achievement for a consanguinity factor above 50%? Why are we focusing on fucking childbirth in a supposed non-fetish fic?
Mortarion: I resent that this ideal of motherhood is so tied to the ability to push out a child personally. I am sterile multiple times over, and somehow that never mattered to The Grandfather.
Emma: Yeah, the continued emphasis on Rei’s “sterile womb” combined with her ascension to godhood making her able to have babies conventionally… it’s a really bad look, and also the sort of thing I kind of wanted to address in Higher than the Stars.
Leliel: Yeah. This is outright fractal grossness - you start at just the plain disgust reaction at the idea of a birth fetish from an “attractive” zombie goddess with worms for hair, and then you look at the internal logic, and you realize that it’s gross in so many other ways. So…yeah. Big hundreds, all around.
HETERONORMATIVE HEDGEHOG: 1114
THE DARK PRINCE’S AT FIELD: 998
Across the planet, the survivors of the Great Harvest heard the psychic shrieks of mother and child as a new god was born.
Nocht: Along with the shrieks of all but the most blessedly asexual as their genitals spontaneously withered to dust. I’m shocked mine didn’t.
He wore a thousand forms, but one of the few that could be understood by human eyes was that of a well muscled adult male human missing a finger on his left hand, clad only in a simple kilt, his eyes pinpricks of eternity, galaxies birthed and dying in a single moment within his fathomless mind.
Futaba: Wow. That is…really fucking boring for an eldritch god.
Diego: Quite. For the record, the actual Tzeentch has many, many forms, but many are comprehensible enough to be found in official art. A relatively recent one isn’t even physical!
(https://ageofsigmar.lexicanum.com/wiki/Tzeentch)
In fact, let’s outright quote the description on that wiki page a bit:
“In his true shape, he takes the most outlandish appearance of the Dark Gods. He is ever shifting and nothing about him feels definitive. Any who gazes upon him sees his skin crawling with constantly changing faces. Each of these faces leers and mocks those who observe them and when Tzeentch speaks, they appear and disappear repeating his words with subtle different or proving mocking commentary that casts doubt upon his original words.”
Leliel: You may have noticed that this description of Tzeentch has a lot of, oh what’s the term, kind of important, related to “protean”, “fluid”, “multifarious”, “the very concept he embodies as a god” - oh right, fucking change. Which Gymbro Tzeentchji…is not fucking doing.
Nocht: How…Horrors are living flames that change shape constantly, because they’re made of fire! Literally the foot soldiers of the Great Architect embody change! How don’t you have that?!
PRIMORDIAL BRAINFART: 606
He gazed at the other. Mother. Sister. Lover. Queen. Goddess. These were but a few of the titles She would wear.
Angharad: Is the other one Deicide, perhaps? Or Usurper? Or is literally nothing worthwhile going to happen?
Leliel: Oh, we’re in what our illustrious author considers a victory lap. The time for anything worthwhile or interesting has long passed.
"Hello Mama Reigle of the Seven Lives," He said coolly and slowly.
"Hello Lord Tzintchi, the Nine Fingered King," She replied in kind.
Nocht: [Stares, then bursts into laughter as he falls out of his seat in mirth.]
Magdalene: Oh, how clever of you to remember sacred numbers in the course of this… blasphemous desecration.
Futaba: Fun fact: When Wanderer came up with the Tzeentchji nickname, he did not know about this. The joke nickname is literally pronounced nearly the same as the ‘serious’ rebirth! That’s the intellectual caliber of writing we’re dealing with!
Glancing at Reigle, He asks, "How much longer until the other Queens are born?"
"Death was hard on Them; They will need more time to be cared for. Asukhon the Eightfold Victor will take perhaps another week to be made ready. On the other hand, because She was not a psyker, Mislaato of the Six Wounds will take anywhere from a month to a year to fully gestate," Reigle explains.
Nocht: [Laughter increases]
Angharad: Not how it works. My ascension was… abrupt and I had a planet to fuel it.
Magdalene: You are technically a psyker…
Angharad: Don’t remind me. Electra’s took a while but that’s ‘cause she decided to gaslight Petra and nibble chunks out of her soul for months.
Electra: Oh, don’t bring that up. Petra’s over it.
Mortarion: Petra’s never been over anything in her life and you know it.
Angharad: ANYWAYS, I don’t know why this is taking so long. Makes them look like idiots.
Diego: …they didn’t already? But yes, we are in the zone of “things that have literally never crossed the mind of Games Workshop on the basis of understanding basic consistency.” There is no precedence, only wank slop. And a hundred more points in multiple categories for the sheer amount of fucking reality-breaking ego.
PRIMORDIAL BRAINFART: 706
TALON ON THE SCALES: 690
Nodding, Tzintchi says, "We have all the time in the world. Do not strain Yourself or Them."
"There is a message for You," Reigle informs him.
Nocht: [Slowly recovering] Are they…are they referring to themselves with capital letters?
Futaba: Yep. Because They are Very Important, and They will Not Let You Forget It, lest They be Forced to Speak To Your Manager At A Wendy’s.
"I know. I shall get to it in time, but for now I wish to gloat," Tzintchi says before turning and leaving the chamber.
In the compressed and tangled space that was the inside of the Black Moon, He was where he wanted to be in an instant, in a thought.
He was at the Hall of Torment.
Leliel: Right, just for the very existence of this before the inevitable-
GENDO’S FATED BASTARD: 1043
The senior members of SEELE and his father were imbedded in the walls, ceiling, and floor of this place, screaming in agony, their souls trying to claw their way out of membranes of unreality that would trap them for all eternity. Tzintchi walked along, admiring the handiwork, until he came to his father and leaned in close.
Sophia: I get that we’re lucky enough that Mother did this to herself so we didn’t have to, but really, this is just embarrassing. Childish, really.
Mortarion: *Trying to look as uninvolved as possible*
Magdalene: Yeah, there’s nothing wrong with keeping souls around as a trophy but this is just… excessive. It’s… what’s the word I’m looking for?
Electra: Tacky?
Emma: Wait, is your concern that this is the conspicuous consumption of eternal damnation?
Diego: It’s not invalid, mind. I think “pointless” and “energy-wasting” are also good descriptors.
The soul of Ikari Yui emerged from the sea of souls that was Tzintchi. When the division had been made, her ability to scheme and plot and hope had assigned her to her son who had become a God. Within Him, and in fact all of Them, all souls were one, and yet separate, a bizarre paradox only Chaos was capable of. The only thing certain was that the souls that had once been Shinji, Rei, Asuka, and Misato were all firmly and absolutely in charge, as Tzintchi had commanded it be.
Futaba: …you may have noticed this is the same exact kind of thing it’s implied SEELE wanted, with themselves as first among bodiless equals. But here, it’s better, because…[Checks notes] a focus character did it and mostly out of ego than messianic fervor. Oh wait, that’s worse.
DUMMY PLUGGED: 1048
Still, They could deign to let the others out from time to time.
Yui looked sadly at the tortured face of her husband, reaching out to soothe him, saying, "Oh Gendo… this is entirely your fault. I willingly stepped in to Unit 01 wanting to make the world safer for our son, and you abandoned him. If you had just opened up your heart and been a good father like I had hoped you would have been, none of this would have happened."
*Long, uncomfortable silence from the Primarchs*
Magdalene: Ah, yes, the good intentions of a mother! Justification for everything!
Sophia: She killed herself in front of him for her “greater good”! The only reason she didn’t abandon him is because he was made into one of her soldiers! What moral high ground is she speaking from?
Nocht: The one the author insists is high despite being in a valley swamp. Assuming this is not some cruel Discount Tzeentch trick, with this “Yui” having none of herself in it, but a phantom of spite. I’m betting on that.
DUMMY PLUGGED: 1049
Her face going firm, she then says, "I'm afraid that it is quite too late to try and make amends at this point dear."
Leliel: You know, this was actually rather tragic and stark when it happened in canon and wasn’t clearly beating the snot out of Gendo to satisfy a delusional son’s need for validation.
Subsumed back within, Tzintchi took control again and looked at Gendo before saying, "That was a concession to my mortal birth mother; I on the other hand am not so forgiving. But perhaps I will change my mind in a few millennia and absorb you, so that you can be with Yui. Perhaps."
Nocht: Ha! Yui only existed as an incarnate intellect as a puppet of Tzeentchji, and this says nothing about her apart from his own egotism and rationalization! Not intended by the author of course, but given everything he’s done even beyond the Hall? Fuck off, Tzeentchji, and no, you will never get the dignity of you being called by your even more ridiculous real name. One hundred points for this entire exchange!
GENDO’S FATED BASTARD: 1044
Cackling with mad laughter, Tzintchi went to review the message waiting for him. It was not pressing, for it was a message in a bottle.
Or rather bottles.
The four canopic jars that contained the spirits of his Rubric Marines had been an incredible drain on Sensei Khenmu, more than they should have even in this Warp hostile environment.
Leliel: Translation, Academia Nut suddenly realized how uncanon it was and hurriedly retconned it.
There was something else in each of them, fragments sent along to tell Him something.
Diego: Nocht. Hold on to something. And sit down somewhere soft. Because this entire “ascendancy” business…well. Let’s just say there’s more than one religion this “reveal” blasphemies.
Nocht: [Too dreading to even do the Iron Litany properly]
The jars opened and out poured the gods.
Sophia: *Erupting into flame and unholy light* I’m sorry, WHAT??? The glorious Ruinous Powers deigned to be bottled and carried around by a single priest? Who didn’t even worship most of them? What is happening!?
Magdalene: How did it even fit??? The Rubric contains the soul of a non-psyker human! Even a fragment of a god would be, well, I suppose the closest comprehensible word would be too big to fit in a Rubric container.
"All Hail Tzintchi!" They declared, accepting Him as of their rank.
"All Hail," Tzintchi replies, settling down to hear what they had to say.
His acolyte to begin with, Tzeentch begins, "Very good my young apprentice, very good. You did remarkably well, and things went just as I had planned."
[Pause]
Futaba: Wait. So the TALON ON THE SCALE score…
Nocht: Was a real thing in-universe.
Diego: Mm.
[Both stare at each other, then the button]
Leliel: [Confiscates it] Nope, no, you’re going to break it after this next revelation. Hold your horses.
"You endured much," Nurgle gurgled.
"You suffered much," Slaanesh hissed.
"But You fought hard," Khorne growled.
Nocht: *Vashtorr* “And were completely without any degree of intelligent thought, so I will require several lobotomies to understand why you function despite not being able to walk and chew gum at once.” But seriously, of course the Dark Gods are riding on his member, he’s clearly their special boy according to-
"Ya fought well," Gork, or possibly Mork told Him.
"Ya woz a sneaky git too," Mork, or maybe Gork, continued.
Nocht: -say what now? The Greenskin deities?
"But in the end you won out," Khaine congratulated Him.
"But there is still much to do, many questions to ask," the Laughing God informed Him.
Futaba: [Boggling] The ELDAR pantheon?!?
Electra: The Eldar are famed for two things. One is their hatred of Chaos and the other is a complete lack of caring about anything that is not an Eldar. I think they would have a hard time deigning to give a Chaotic human the time of day.
Mortarion: Which has nothing to do with you pouting like a stood-up adolescent, I’m sure.
"So it is time You got some answers," the Emperor finished.
Live Nocht and Futaba Cam:
(https://media1.tenor.com/m/ofxjUEwBjrAAAAAd/mandem-enel.gif)
[Mass screaming, objections, etc]
Emma: Wait, Wait, I think you’re overlooking something. Think about your Mother, and think about how ANGRY this would make her.
Magdalene: …Huh. Well, when you put it that way…
Leliel: Oh thank God we didn’t accidentally create a Daemon World from sheer rage. But, I’ll put it bluntly - basically, this entire fic? The very premise, and how Khnemu even ended up here to begin with? Was a cooperation of…every Warhammer 40K deity.
Diego: Including the God-Emperor of Mankind. You know. The ANATHEMA OF CHAOS.
Leliel: And as a final rotten cherry on this shit sundae…the author’s note.
For those of you prepared to rant at me, there is one more chapter to this story, so unlike Gainax, you will actually get an explaination as part of the denouement. Save your accusations of hackery for then when the whole story has been told.
Diego: Ah yes, proudly proclaiming your superiority by having an explanation. And that makes things better. Because there’s a simple explanation for someone who is literally toxic to Chaos and might have well degenerated into a god of Xenophobia would work with them and other xenos gods to pull off.
Futaba: [Blinks slowly, nods, and reaches for her computer] Hey everyone. That was rough. Let’s watch a video…and appreciate this advice and this concept as it should be given what just happened…
Nocht: Just. I. How. But…500 points. I need to go kill something. Who’s with me.
Diego: Yo. But…one more thing…
Emma: The “infamous” “stupid” ending was either caused by budget cuts or an intentional artistic decision. Sorry that Anno didn’t come to your house and fucking regurgitate the meaning of his magnum opus into your mouth like you’re a baby bird, but that is not something that needs fixing!
Leliel: Yeah…that was…that was something else. It’s also why the spoiler was Nicolas Cage as a priest boggling out because…that’s the only way I can describe it. Good news…the next chapter isn’t as disgusting, but bad news, it’s not for lack of trying. First…
PRIMORDIAL BRAINFART: 1206
TALON ON THE SCALES: 1190
Second…next up is the finale, where we discover deep truths about life, the universe, and everything…especially the deepest truth of all…
Meanwhile, Somewhere Across the Seas of Tindalos…
Timeline NDS-9182736 (Xothian Classification),
Earth, Ruins of Tokyo-3, Black Egg Anomaly
Beneath the mask of the boy he had hollowed out and was now wearing the identity of a suit, the Black Dragon cringed.
A pregnant Chaos God giving birth to me, her brother? Really now?
He wasn’t going to object openly, of course. But that would be on the list of transgressions when he inevitably stabbed Ichiro in the back and took control of his pet civilization. All pretense, of course. Only greed mattered. Only power, life, and the effects that life had on the world mattered - victory went to the one who died the latest, with the most toys. And “toys” included servants.
Such as the…entity he had quietly groomed this Rei Ayanami into being. It took a lot - more than once he had to quietly peel away bits of her sanity to prevent something of the Dark Prince getting inside her. That would have ruined the perfect blasphemy he was preparing - Rei’s own nature was anathema to Nurgle’s, with her constant desire for improvement and acceptance of change, while Misato’s own lack of care for herself or desire to experience anything she was not already familiar with in some way was toxic to Slaanesh. Asuka was harder - her fierce nature was the sort of thing Khorne appreciated, so he had to reduce her to a victim to be saved by others, and enjoy it, with even her most violent self being driven by the need to revive another over punishing a romantic rival. And of course, his “Shinji”, who succeeded through blind luck, being manipulated by the stronger, and sheer rigidity of ideals and character. Not that there was much of a mind left, thanks to the ring had generously given through that Tsan-Chan cloned knockoff of a proper Space Marine. Whatever the case, each was a perfect failure of the God they supposedly represented. Perfect cages for the essence of all four to rise up, conquerors of this version of Holy Terra…and to be devoured by Vulkan, the Great Tyrant, Dark God of Domination and Greed, who fully lived his concept and so exposed the flaws in the rest. More than enough of a catalyst to finish his ascent into the Fifth God of Chaos, begun so long ago when he shed his humanity for Daemonic form.
After that…well, the Tsan-Chan had the ability to cross universes. What couldn’t he do? Certainly solved the issue of there potentially being no more worlds to conquer, at least for the foreseeable future. So many treasures to plunder, so much time to pursue them.
So, having thankfully detached his intellect from…that, the Black Drago contented himself with ascending, and taking stock of the world soon to be his throne.
Mm, yes, the Black Egg would need to be reformatted into a mountain. Some probability would need to be altered, to favor the appearance of great treasures and the curses that enforced his vengeance upon thieves in its great internal kaleidoscope, but apart from that, it was an ideal palace. The Geofront would need to be repurposed as the heart of an industrial hive, but the ability to raise or lower its main thoroughfare was priceless, he could show off his new capital while being able to easily stash it away for safekeeping. The nearly dry LCL crater lake-
While his true form in the Warp could not be adequately described in human languages, based as it was on a completely different and mutable set of physical laws, including distance, one could say that a great head of shadow and fire jerked to the side as Vulkan made sure of what he saw.
The LCL-infused waters of the lake had receded. Moreover, the sea itself seemed somehow…disturbed. This was not abnormal, it was the simple effects of sea life going about their meaningless business…but the seas of this world did not have true multicellular fauna anymore.
His great maw in a dark frown, the Black Dragon reached out-
“UNIT 04, LAUNCH!”
The superhuman intellect of a Daemon Prince-turned-nascent-God was able to process the thought his psychic senses had picked up, work through confusion, realize it was that Master of Ordnance - Ibuki, he thought her name was - speaking, further confusion she was apparently alive, then realization she was either quite mad, or this final trick of that limited idiot currently moldering in the sea apparently did not realize the Eva could not reach him in the span of a few Materium milliseconds.
It could not overcome his ego or overconfidence, as the prog knife sliced through the Dirac sea and into the Warp, leaving a long cut glowing with dark power that willed him to manifest - to his shock, it was not unlike the Word Bearers’ from the strange universe where they saw the truth of existence, a Chaotically holy will challenging a daemon to manifest rather than a normal summoner’s entreaty. We are the mountain upon which all blades shatter, it said. Hone your edge against us, or be ever known as broken.
The sky itself seemed to roar in surprise and offense as reality cracked open and spewed forth a darkness that shone, like great fountains of black glowing lava during an eruption, as Vulkan tore through, not willing to fight the challenge and eager to punish the impertinent.
As soon as he entered real time, he saw the formerly vanished silver Evangelion, flickering between worlds as the Dirac Sea it had been lost in clung to it. He could also see its soul, the dark-haired programmer that glared at him with hate through her servitor-body’s eight eyes, an expression matched only by the red-headed girl his more occult forms of sight told him was in the plug of the fleshy Titan.
Along with…oh. Oh, this was interesting.
“I see you, brat. And I can see your other self,” he said with a note of bemusement overcoming his rage at the sneak attack. “So much like a daemon, and yet, it is an extension of yourself. Are you, perhaps, aware of the true nature of the Gods? That they are extensions of us - and soon, I too will be part of all of you? I sense the touch of Tzeentch upon you, and you seem to serve a version of Lorgar who has seen past his practiced denial - you already serve a lesser image of me.”
“Yeah, yeah, villain speech, heard it before, literally,” a completely unperturbed pilot said. “I’m literally from a few hours in the future, a bit of a trick Diego and his pals cooked up. Had to convince Magdalene to help, so you may be seeing that.”
The Black Dragon paused. “Diego? The fool?”
The girl grinned. “Look with your real eyes.”
He did - and for the first time in several hundred years, sputtered in shock, his terrible breath of hellfire spitting out in small sputters of disbelief and heat.
Completely invisible to the Warp-sight, but unavoidable to the pseudo-organic eyes on his body (along with the glowing green monoliths of Necron technology surrounding it in an emerald field), Vulkan saw what appeared to be a great fungal tree, somewhere between mushroom, oak, flower, and sea anemone rising several stories into the air. Great eyes in its mass blinked as they observed the world placidly, the various vine-like tentacles and the hands gently swaying in a nonexistent breeze. Orange LCL traveled, filtered from the sea, up its eldritch phloem and mycelium, many billions of white, green, and purple networks forming a grand trunk leading to a spherical bud that pulsed and released rose-colored puffs of spores that gently settled like snow in the ocean, and as they did, they sprouted and formed into translucent fruiting bodies filled with fish eggs. Around it, what initially appeared to be smaller fungal trees at first glance reached out with smaller ambulatory tentacles in ecstatic prostration, swaying to the beat of the hymn that each one’s dozen mouths dripping with sap-like slime sang in harmony - Vulkan did not recognize the language but recognized the intent of the strange xenos. Faith, certainly, but also…fraternity. Familial love. The crooning of older siblings welcoming the youngest and most vital in the brood.
Mixed in with the xenos, staying a bit away with an air of genial mistrust, was a group of figures in power armor, mostly silver and crimson with the distinct spikes of Chaos-worship, and the disgustingly familiar green of the Death Guard, but…diseased, somehow. And above the tower floated five figures - one who appeared to be a priest made of shattered stone and reassembled into a shifting gargoyle with glowing blue veins attaching part to part, a beautiful froglike three-eyed woman in a sensual robe that somehow remained decent, a yellow-cloaked figure with a warscythe capped with a shifting 4-dimensional shape and a mask that conveyed a soul-deep weariness, an enormous one-eyed woman with scarlet skin (Magnus?), and finally, a skeletal but unmistakably feminine metal figure with blonde wire for hair…the last of whom looked quite a bit familiar, but…the Necrons wouldn’t a human into one of them if they could, let alone work with Chaos, would they…?
Before he could stop them, all five reached out and grabbed a “petal” of the bud, and yanked.
The ripe bud gave way in a burst of pink and red spores, as the trees-that-weren’t cried out in joy and the Black Dragon felt the presence of something very ancient, very old, and very primal smile in both the maternal nature of a proud parent and the smug accomplishment of a craftsman. Sap, chitin, and slime fell away to reveal a humanoid figure in the foetal position which slowly began to uncurl, gazing with new eyes upon its form and domain.
It appeared to be a strange combination of man, goat, and Angel. Most importantly, the wings were crystalline and lightning, a mix of Ramiel’s geometry and Arael’s strange energy. Between a pair of caprine horns, Sahaquiel’s eye sat in its blank stare, as the shifting three-dimensional shadow of Leliel shifted over the figure’s two hooves for feet, the coloring of its sleek fur not unlike Sachiel’s black hide or Tabris’ white mane where it turned those colors in patches that seemed to form alien lettering. Veins throbbing with LCL ran from its back to the tree, making it clear that the tower of fungal matter was simply a part of its body, as it was the tree’s head, a great selfsame throne made from and of itself.
But the man in this new entity was also familiar, as Diego’s searching gaze met that of the Dragon with the still-human eyes in his caprine face (beneath the multicolored ones that resembled Matarael’s more), crossing his arms in smug contempt.
“I didn’t fully respond to that medical plant comment, now did I?”, he said in a voice that echoed in what was left of Vulkan’s very genes, making him perfectly understood despite his fanged mouth shaping words that resembled nothing in any form of Gothic. “...to be honest, it is accurate. Take. Eat of me, and use my flesh as balm for your maladies and curses. Know my communion with the All-Mother, the Black Goat, the Source, as the Thousand And First Young. But you and mothers don’t quite get along, do you? Do you need a demonstration of how a parent of the human species is supposed to be, given how you’ve clearly projected the wrong phylogenetic class onto them?”
“YOU ARROGANT-”
“We didn’t finish!”, the pilot said, opening a letter in her hands. “Your counterpart asked me to write this: To my heretical, traitorous, and outright existentially unpleasant alternate-universe counterpart, Vulkan the Black Dragon, the tyrant of and enslaved to fear, I have asked the Phantom Thieves to inform you that I know your heart as my own, and how it has become twisted, making me your enemy and redeemer…”
(A/N: Yep, Good Vulkan is still trying to make friends in a minor way - that’s why he’s Vulkan. He doesn’t actually think his evil self can truly be saved, but he does want hints there could have been something more. But…yeah, I headcanon that the Phantom Thieves were unfortunate enough to see The Fetish God Incubation Chamber while they were strategizing with Shinobu, and I’m kind of curious to ask how you think they all reacted - y’know, besides trying to pour bleach in their eyes. Because I feel something funny should come of it.)
