Neospartan background

"Recruit Hong! Did you just try to force your Evangelion unit to go Berserker, or are you just incompetent?"

"No, sir, I just couldn't-"

"You lost control, Recruit Hong?"

"Sir! Yes, sir!"

"Recruit Hong! How many weapons in the United States' armed forces are capable of killing an Evangelion unit?"

"Sir, I-"

"HOW MANY, RECRUIT?"

"Uh... none, sir?"

"NONE! With the exception of the Evangelion itself, we possess exactly ZERO weapons capable of harming an Evangelion unit! Do you know what this means, Recruit Hong?"

"It, uh, means..."

"It means, Recruit Hong, that if that thing goes Berserker there is NOT A GODDAMNED THING WE CAN DO TO STOP IT! The single most powerful weapon ever made will be stomping around our backyard, destroying the most crucial military asset in the United States, and there will be NOTHING we can do about! And that is the best case scenario! What are we supposed to do if an Angel attacks while your Evangelion is killing our men?"

"I, uh, don't know-"

"WE'RE GOING TO GODDAMNED START PRAYING, BECAUSE THERE WILL NOT BE ANOTHER GODDAMNED THING WE CAN DO! While your Berserker Evangelion is slaughtering our nation's finest, the Angel will be STARTING THIRD IMPACT! It will wipe out the goddamned human race! Everybody you have ever known will be killed, and it will be YOUR GODDAMNED FAULT! Do you want to destroy humanity, Recruit Hong?"

"No, sir, I-"

"I SAID DO YOU WANT TO BE THE BASTARD THAT KILLED OUR ENTIRE GODDAMNED SPECIES?"

"No, sir!"

"THEN IN FUTURE YOU WILL MAINTAIN CONTROL OF YOUR EVANGELION, RECRUIT HONG!"

"Sir! Yes, sir!"

"Now we're going to run the simulation again, and this time we will keep running it until you get it right!"

Page 9

Prodigy background

“This is totally the worst day of my life! Have you seen what they’re making us wear in those plugs? Some disgusting tight catsuit thing isn’t bad enough, so why not stick metal plates on it! And chest pads! And make the whole thing hot pink! And they say they’re to increase nerve conduction responsivity even though it’s all psychoneurally induced though direct skin contact with the tank fluid! I’d rather be naked than wear that thing, and I don’t care how much that stupid army kid stares at me! And nobody cared when I told them about it, even when I showed them the ugly thing, and the director said if I didn’t stop he’d make me wear it all day! If they think they’re going to get me in that machine after this, they’ve got another thing coming!”

Page 11

Manufactured background

Incident Report - form AC 573

Subject: Synthetic Prototype reference UTNAPISHTIM (abbrev: Tim)

At approximately 1730 hrs two days previously, subject was permitted direct contact with conventional pilots HONG and ZANE as per protocol 442. Subject appeared to have responded well to social preformatting, engaging in simple conversation without excessive difficulty. When conversation turned to preferred forms of entertainment, preprogrammed responses failed. At this time, a contrived security alert terminated the conversation without causing suspicion. Subject displayed no immediate response to failure of preformatted response, and retired to individual quarters for templated rest period.

At 2015 hrs, subject broke templated schedule, exited individual quarters, and proceeded to pilot 'break room'. Once there, subject turned on provided television, and began to watch unedited programming. Guards on duty were not those privy to nature of subject, and did not subsequently recover situation. Subject continued watching television until I because aware of this turn of events, at which point I immediately notified our agents. When the television was turned off subject reacted hysterically such that sedation was required. This took place today at 1448 hrs.

Surveillance records indicate during this entire timeframe, being 33 hours in duration, subject did not cease watching the television. Subject took in no food or water during this time, and did not alter position significantly. A forced hydration regime has begun to remedy this temporary shortfall.

Clearly, exposure to entertainment media is dangerous to subject. I recommend the immediate removal of all entertainment devices, personal and collective, from the facility. Alternatively, I propose that command acknowledge the validity of my earlier comments that this is a military facility attempting to engineer a weapons control system and not a daycare centre producing yet more worthless civilians to feed.

Director of Research Dr. Sama Chandrahan.

Page 13

Survivor background

"Second impact, and the melting of very nearly the entire continent of Antarctica, was the single most catastrophic event in human history. Within a week, the disaster had killed one billion people, and flooded most of the world’s arable land. Within a year, another billion had starved to death, praying for an intervention that never came. Another billion lives were lost when the Remnant Governments realised the floodwaters would never recede, and fought long and bitterly over the few patches of barely-arable land left. When the U.N. finally took control, nobody cared it had long abandoned its original mission, or that is was kept in power by oppressive force, for mankind's soul had been purified by the near-apocalypse. No more would we hold ourselves apart in appeasement of tired lines of race, politics, ideology, or religion. For the first time in human history, we were united by the common goal of survival. No matter who they were, or how they survived, everyone alive who remembers the days of Second Impact shares one goal:

Never again."

OpsO Hertz

Berserker thingy - testing - 22

(Fragmented start. Best if redacted sections are actually blacked out, preferably as indicates extensive writing underneath)-ntamination procedures complete. Testing resumed with additional six subjects.

Test 3-4-74: Exposure to high elevated temperature continuing. Mild pain response triggered in subject. Momentary synchronisation spike, followed by minor enduring fall.

Test 3-4-75: Exposure to high elevated temperature continuing. Intense pain response triggered in subject. Significant momentary synchronisation spike, spike duration doubled. Enduring fall delayed and weaker.

Test 3-4-76: Exposure to high elevated temperature continuing. Extreme pain response triggered in subject. Very significant spike duration 4.24 seconds, fall to prior levels delayed, no enduring fall. Results promising. Authority issued by Dr Chandrahan to accelerate testing.

Test 3-5-1: Mild continuous pain response triggered in subject. Ten seconds pass. No unusual results in synchronisation. Error in Test Frame encoding; indications of motor response. Response not possible, power not supplied to bindings. Sensor failure noted.

Test 3-5-2: Intense continuous pain response triggered in subject. Ten seconds pass. Synchronisation suppressed. Immediately prior to trigger of pain response spike occurs in synchronisation. Failure of microphones in test frame chamber. Overhaul of sensor equipment recommended. Testing continued under Dr Chadrahan's authority.

Test 3-5-2: Extreme continuous pain response triggered in target. Synchronisation collapse as predicted. Synchronisation spike to near operational levels after nine seconds. Cranial mount detonated, subject (REDACTED). Synchronisation spike to (REDACTED). Sensors report (REDACTED), triggering (REDACTED). Power feed severed as per protocols. Sensors fail due to lack of power. Observation team (REDACTED - long, paragraph-sized)

ATTENTION ALL SCIENCE PERSONNEL. AS OF ORDER 92 ALL PLANNED TESTING USING TEST FRAMES IS CANCELED. NO FUTURE TESTING USING TEST FRAME IS PERMITTED UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. NO EXEMPTIONS APPLY. - AUTHORITY OF OPERATIONS DIRECTOR COLONEL ADRIAN HERTZ.

Berserker short - 26

"I've seen some things in my life. I lived through Second Impact, and survived the African Famine. I was on the ground when Sachiel came through Boston. But the one thing that scares me more than anything else are those Evangelions. How the hell can we possibly think we control anything that can survive having its head torn off long enough to beat an Angel to death with it?"

Sergeant Walters, 2Div Infantry.

AT tact - obs - 28

“And can you believe they’re blaming me for the systems failure? It’s totally not my fault the biofeedback mechanisms blew out. All I did was the same tests we do every day, except I kind of made things more exciting. How am I supposed to know they’d never planned for the power feed intensity of an oscillating AT field? I mean, like, even you know you’re not going to be able to sustain a distributed quantum-disjunction effect at constant focus without overheating the power feed couplings. These people just make me so mad!

Oh, and I know it’s your birthday tomorrow, but these nazis won’t even let me out past ten! I’m totally sneaking out anyway, that creepy guard in the vent duct camera observation room has the hots for me. This party had better be worth it!”

Skirmisher big - 32

“EVA combat simple. Use best weapon available fire from best position available. If target core visible attack target core high-penetration weapons. If target core not visible aim central mass use explosive weaponry ablate mass expose core target core high-penetration weapons. If target core not visible suspect core outside of central mass wait pointman discover external core location ablate mass explosive weaponry core visible attack core high-penetration weapons. Target core not visible outside central mass contained within mass employ maximum possible firepower ablate all mass expose core attack core high-penetrations weapons. Target core not present...

Target core not present…

attack target core high-penetration weapons?”

Pointman big - 38

"The basics of hand-to-hand in an Eva are the same as they are on the ground. All you've got to do is adjust for the fact that you're now twenty stories tall, weight four hundred tons, and the other guy's a laser-shooting octahedron."

Trooper Hong

OpsO

"The operations director of a NERV facility possesses more individual power than any military or political figure on earth. Direct control over three Evangelion units grants any such officer the capacity to effectively wage war against any other Evangelion-armed nation, or the entire mass of the remainder simultaneously. The only meaningful constraint on that power is the fact that it must be exercised through three utterly unreliable children, prone to failure for the least of reasons, or even no reason at all. If NERV ever manages to procure a reliable alternative, the Angel will soon be the least of our worries."

OpsO Hertz

Eva short - 47/8

"Saving mankind or not, there's just something messed up about floating in a tank of psychoactive amniotic fluid rammed into the spine of an undead cyborg."

Trooper Hong

Equipment lines

Positron

"Can you believe those nerds down here? They spent, like, all day getting us to test their new laser cannon things. Can you believe it? Six hours of my life just gone because they couldn't work the output up to theoretical energy density targets. Hello? It's a visible wavelength! Atmospheric diffusion, much? And that army kid was totally staring at me the whole time, too. Ugh!"





Bolt

"The harnessing of antimatter as a potential energy source is the most significant scientific development since electricity. Twenty times more efficient than nuclear fusion, it is not only the most efficient fuel available but the most efficient fuel physically possible. The true potential of this advance will not be uncovered for centuries of dedicated research.

And, naturally, the first thing they ask me to do with it is stick it in a bullet so they can shoot things with it."

Dr. Chandrahan


N2 Strike

"The N2 mine used to be a Phantom Weapon, designed to cause such horrific and indiscriminate casualties that it would never have to be used. No matter the situation, the N2 mine ensured no nation ever stood to gain from declaring war. It is irrelevant how many boots you have on the ground, or missiles in the air, if at any time the flick of a switch can kill you and anyone else within a ten kilometre radius.

Unfortunately, it seems someone neglected to pass on this revelation to the Angels."

OpsO Hertz

Psychological

"Doctor Nina Credo, personal notes from interview with Pilot Tim. Date, 14/5/2015

Tim came to see me today. Or he was sent, he still hasn't established much individual will at this point. I asked about recent events, general small talk. He was very reluctant to talk about anything outside his most recent experience with the Evangelion. I assume he was ordered to keep it short. I don't know why the suits bothered hiring me if they won't let me do my job properly.

Outwardly he didn't seem to have suffered the conventional trauma from Berserking, perhaps a result of regaining consciousness prior to it shutting down. Then again, Tim has never been remotely conventional. After talking to him for some time, I noticed the few mannerisms he had adopted since coming here had vanished. His speech had lost most of its inflection. He seems to have reverted to the state he was in prior to my intervention.

I suspect the loss of control he experienced during the time his Evangelion was Berserk has resulted in significant regression. He's lost most of the crude individuality we'd worked so hard to achieve. The experience must have been unpleasantly like his time at the Facility, so it's not surprising he reverted to his behaviour at that time. I brought him out of that state before, so it shouldn't be too hard to do it again.

Interestingly, he asked me if he could see his Evangelion, even though it was locked down. I'm not sure why, but it's the only individual decision he's made since the incident, so I approve. Unfortunately, doctor Chandrahan has overridden my authority, again. I'll have to speak to mister Hertz."

Critical damage

"The Evangelion is a marvelously resilient tool, combining the self-repair of biological systems with the multiple redundancy of artificial weapons. It is capable of sustaining damage that would be catastrophic to any other mechanical or biological weapon and continue performing, and even when it is utterly defeated, so long as it can be recovered it can be restored to full function. Their only weakness is the pilot itself. While an Evangelion can have its waist bisected and continue to fight, It may be difficult to demonstrate to a panicking nerve-linked child that their own legs are, in fact, still attached."
OpsO Hertz

Pilot Down

-0-1, 1-3 confirms target moving west! Fast west!
-Dog Platoon, go!-
+0-1, 1-4 moving+
-Contact! Contact front!-
-Shoot… shoot the damned eyes! The eye-
+1-4, this is 0-1. 0-2 moving to intercept.+
-Dogs! EVA on site, Big Red intercepting!-
-Where?-
-can’t see shi-
-JESUS FUCK SH-
-the shit was tha-
-Johnno’s down, fucki-
+0-2, this is 1-4! Dog platoon below! Watch your fucking feet!+
+0-2 confirms friendlies below low priority engaging target.+
-low pri my fucking cock-
-fucking killing us-
-how the shit-
-Dogs! Off the tac radios unless you’ve got something to say!-
-something to fucking say, all right, homicidal fucking robCROSSBOMBING GET THE FUCK-
-boss’s down!-
-fucking-
-medic! Where’s the goddamned-
+0-1, this is 1-4, Sunray Minor down! Starlight! Need Starlight support now!+
-FUCK GET DOWN SHI-
+1-4, this is 0-1, Starlight at capacity.+
-JESUS-
- me they hit the EVA!-
-fucking arms gone it’s-
+0-1, this is 1-4, Big Red is hit! Hit bad!+
-Get out of the fucking way it’s coming down-
-JESUS NO-
-fucking-
+1-4, this is 0-1, confirm EVA damaged?+
-fucking killed the EVA! FUCKING KILLED THE-
-get the pod it’s-
-FUCKING FIRING AGAIN GET DOWN-
--
+1-4, this is 0-1, repeat confirm EVA damaged?+
--
+1-4, this is 0-1, respond.+
--
+0-2, this is 0-1, confirm damaged?+
--
+0-2, this is 0-1, respond.+
--
+0-2, this is 0-1, sending CSAR, wait out.+




Angel kill stuff

“The core is the one thing that matters in Angel combat. Every last one of them, no matter how perverse on the outside, can be killed by cracking the core. It doesn’t take much, either. There were weapons already in our forces that could crack them open. Problem is, just because the outside’s not important don’t mean we don’t have to spend three hundred billion a year to get through it.”

Sergeant Walters, 2Div Infantry.

AT field

“I have spent fifteen years of my life trying to determine the mechanisms of the AT field - and failed. We know nearly everything about it. We know how to control it. We know what can make them and who can manipulate them. We know how strong they can be made, and every way in which they can notionally be applied. We know how they can be inverted to create the most dangerous weapon ever held by man, that the local changes in physical laws it engenders are permanent and irreversible, and that we cannot afford to use such a weapon again. We know everything there is to know about it – except what it is. The greatest scientists of our generation, unlimited funding, and fifteen years have produced not even one rational theory capable of explaining the most basic observable characteristics of the AT field. But we are scientists. We know to adapt and overcome, not to hold on to comfortable views that no longer apply. Even the scientific method, the basis of our craft, is not safe where it no longer applies. Rational thought has failed, and we must turn to the irrational.”

Foreword to “The New Science”, by Dr. Sama Chandrahan.


Static defense

FROM: dale.walters@mil.nervnet.org

TO: gordon.hertz@adm.nervnet.org

Sir, I’m one of the last old-school military on the base. I know sometimes men have to die to get things done, and that I’m going to be responsible for some of my boys dying. It’s part of the job, and God knows I’ve been doing a hell of a lot of that lately. Killing Angels is a dirty business, and there’s nothing to be done about it.

But, and I say this with all due respect, old-school works both ways. If you send a man off to die, by God you owe it to him to make damned sure his death was worth it. If you’re going to kill a man, you’ve got to know when you follow him you’ll be able to look him in the eyes and tell him that it had to be done. My company’s casualty rate is 108%. Of the eighty men I’m responsible for, three of them were here when we started this mess. And now I find out that while we’re out there getting slaughtered by a machine we can’t even hope to hurt, buying time for these goddamned robots, these kids are having their little bitchfits about getting up early and having the wrong goddamned clothes! Every second of these engagements I’m losing men who are worth twelve of those little shits so they can have a goddamned cry about their oh-so-hard lives!

Well I’ll tell you what, sir. The next time you send us out to die, those kids had goddamned better be ready to go. And if they ain’t, you can bet your goddamned life I’ll rectify the hell out of that problem.

Holdfast out.

Collateral

Mission report section VII - damage report

3,015 military casualties - 1989 KIA, 304 DOW, 410 MIA, 402 WIA (199 reserve duty, 203 medical discharge)
Projected expense medical cover, widower payments: $17,340,000

274 Mk III Crusader armoured vehicle losses - 215 K-kill (unrecoverable), 23 K-kill (recoverable), 1 M-kill (unrecoverable), 16 M-kill (recoverable), 19 missing (susp. deserted).
Projected expense repair, replacement: $2,030,908,000

44 A-14 Warlock VTOL losses - 32 K-kill (unrecoverable), 8 M-kill (recoverable), 3 missing (susp. deserted), 1 unknown ( susp. consumed)
Projected expense repair, replacement: $620,305,000

General damage military/NERV facilities - 8 MRLS sites damaged, 2 umbilical cables severed, 1 launch facility inoperable.
Projected expense repair, replacement: $15,936,000

12,442 cilivian casualties - 12,309 civilian, 131 former NERV staff (12 KIA, 15 DOW, 84 WIA, 20 MIA (susp. hospitalised unreported))
Projected expense compensation, medical cover, widower payments: civilian $NIL (UN veto on compensation payments) former NERV $903,000

General damage civilian facilities - minimal, combat confined to residential areas.
Projected expense repair, replacement: vital $847,000 secondary $2,133,000 private $NIL (UN veto on compensation payments)

Total projected expense $2,688,372,000

Observations: Controlling area of conflict very effective in reducing collateral damage to vital infrastructure. 400% increase in civilian casualties within acceptable limits. 80% increase in military casualties suspected coincidental. Overall: strong improvement.


Feedback mid

FROM: sama.chadrahan@sci.nervnet.org

TO: ALL

I would appreciate it if the more conspiratorial members of our staff could stop spreading these ridiculous rumours about so-called “feedback damage”. The notion that, at extreme levels of synchronisation, damage inflicted on an Evangelion unit is suffered by its pilot is utterly imbecilic and demonstrates the complete failure to understand even the most basic of biological and neurological sciences that I have come to expect from the staff here. While the nature of the psychoneural bonding is such that tactile sensations are transmitted, it is not possible for physiological to project itself along the pathways. It is not actually possible for the body’s cells to spontaneously elect to hurl themselves apart violently, irrelevant of whether or not empathic sensation would make them want to, which anybody possessed of the sort of education beyond books labeled ‘bath safe and chewable’ would know they do not anyway.

The incident involving pilot Tim is in no way evidence of this in action. While I concede that to the incapacitated mind the damage to his arm would appear similar to that of the Evangelion unit, the scale and biology involved are so different that it would be equally valid under this nonsensical theory for his head to shrivel to the size of a walnut. It may not have occurred to you that having your unit destroyed so violently that your plug was exposed to weapons fire intended to destroy forty-story pseudobiological monstrosities may have just maybe possibly caused some damage by itself.  If I receive even one more of these offensively poorly-written paranoiac raving emails, I will personally demonstrate the difference between not being hurt and being hurt to every single person who that email has been through. I assure you that the demonstration will be adequate to communicate the point.

Get back to work and do something useful with your time. A strange and foreign concept, I know, but recent academic studies have shown that it is in fact what you simpletons are being paid for.

FROM: sama.chadrahan@sci.nervnet.org

TO: gordon.hertz@adm.nervnet.org

If you aren’t going to approve reopening the synchronisation trials, at least replicate this event in-field. I can’t work with such sparse data and the sooner I know why it happened the sooner I can stop it. Unless you particularly enjoy your pilots’ arms tearing themselves apart?

Upgrades

“The latest technological breakthrough? Are you kidding me? This core knife is just four prog knives strapped to one handle! They actually pay people money to come up with this crap?”

Trooper Hong

Deficit

"Don't think of it as a buy-in, Mister Hertz. BioGen has no intention of interfering with your command. We merely want to ensure that an organisation as critical to the development of humanity as yours is funded as befits the gravity of its mission."

"I don't buy it. You're a business, you're not in this for charity. You've got an angle and I want to know it."

"Please. We aren't so greedy as to guarantee mankind's extinction just to make the numbers on our budget look pretty, unlike the U.N. We've got just as much to lose from Third Impact as you."

"And..?"

"Well, since you asked, we do have a certain interest in our common foe. The Angels. We don't want to put pressure on you, but it would certainly ensure BioGen's continued, ah, gratitude if you were to allow us to examine an Angel's remains. First; that is, before your U.N. taskmasters ruin any scientific value it had. You're a man of intelligence, you understand how important it is to gain an... uncorrupted insight?"

"No. The Evangelion project is the one thing standing between us and annihilation. I'm not going to compromise it for your profit."

"Of course not, Mister Hertz. BioGen would never dream of asking you to engineer such a situation. All we ask is that if such a situation ever arises...

Well, we're sure you'll make the right choice."

Downtime

FROM: gordon.hertz@adm.nervnet.org

TO: ALL

In reference to recent suggestions regarding the content of the scheduled inter-NERV contest between our branch and NERV Berlin, the answer is no. While I am aware of the need to enhance our training regime, as well as test the performance capacity of our Evangelion units and their pilots in nonstandard scenarios, I am also aware that this is a military facility possessed of three of the single most powerful war machines ever made by man and charged with defending the human race against certain extinction. As a result, we must conduct ourselves with a demeanour befitting the gravity of our task. There will be no Evangelion Ballroom Dance-Off, now or ever.

Operations Director Hertz.

Terrorists

MAGI

“The MAGI system? I don’t like it. Sure, it’s great for strategic evaluation. The thing can grind through a thousand different scenarios in the time it takes me to enter one. The science teams think it’s the best thing since shorts. We’d probably all be dead without it. Still… I just can’t bring myself to trust any computer that responds to an impossible equation with “NICE TRY SMARTASS”.

NEW

Angelspawn

Jet Alone models

Men stop war to make gods
sometimes. Peace gods, who would make
Earth a haven. A place for men to
think and love and play. No war
to cloud their minds and hearts. Stop,
somehow, men from being men.

Gods make war to stop men
From becoming gods.
Without the beat of drums to stop
Our ears, what heaven we could make
of Earth! The anchor that is war
left behind? Somehow free to

stop war? Gods make men to
be somewhat like them. So men
express their godliness in war.
To take life: this is what gods
do. Not the womanly urge to make
life, nor the simple step to stop.

War-men make gods. To stop
those gods from raging, we have to
find the heart and head to make
new gods, who don’t take men
in human sacrifice. New gods,
who find disgust in war

Gods stop, to make men war
For their amusement. We can stop
their fun. We can make new gods
in human guise. No need to
call to heaven. Just take plain men
and show to them the heaven they could make!
To stop God’s wars! Men make
their own destiny. We don’t need war
to prove to anyone that we are men.
But even that is not enough. To stop
War, we have to become more. To
stop war, we have to become gods.

To stop war, make men gods.