Jump 079: Neon Genesis Evangelion

Jump 79: Neon Genesis Evangelion
>Page of Cups (An unexpected new relationship that is playful and spontaneous.)
...Not sure I want to even know the details, though it's inevitable.
>Age: 25
>Location: Kyoto-2, 2006
>Identity: Pattern Orange
>Drawbacks: You I, II, and III (+200), Apostate (+300), A Dark Pantheon (+300)
This definitely won't end badly at ALL. Nope.
>Superscale Skills (1200)
I'll be working on many large projects in the future. I may as well get a leg up on that now.
>Waveform Anatomy (1100)
Huh, well. This stacks ridiculously well with being a Ditto. I've definitely got strong self-image covered, though. Perhaps I don't have to drink the tang if someone offers.
>Hybrid (900)
Non-euclidean form you say? Yeah, I think as a jumper it's very safe to say that I have one of those.
>AT Field Mastery (500)
This is about as close as I'm ever going to get to getting anything from Elfen Lied, so I'll just have to be be satisfied with this. No Pattern Ultraviolet, however, so any use of the AT field is going to be picked up by NERV.
This also works in my favor - any use my clone(s) make of that will be picked up as well.
>Genre Savior (200, Pattern Orange)
This is what I came to the jump for. This is the only perk I'm even getting from the Pattern Orange list, but I'll be damned if I'll compromise to leave this behind. Beside, any other build leaves me with an extra hundred points. I'll deal with it as I am now.
>Secondary Field (0)
Extra flexibility with my AT field is definitely a helpful thing.

So, my first mistake was running afoul of SEELE. I'm lucky that what they got from me was only enough to clone me with the abilities from this jump, and not the others. Fortunately... whatever the cause from that, they weren't usable as Evangelion pilots - they didn't cause the same berserker effect that I get if I get within a hundred meters of them, but they're no use as pilots or dummy plugs - they're inert. So instead, the end result is that SEELE has someone who can use an AT field as a last resort, and use it flexibly.

Fortunately for me, they can't use it openly because they can't hide its use. Activating the AT field sets off alarms, so such clones can only use them in a heavily shielded location. Basically... until the endgame, these clones are of use only as operatives. Unfortunately, SEELE having Rei-alikes that can learn from their mistakes means that by the time endgame comes, these clones are going to be highly competent.

In any event, dicking with SEELE is fun. Derailing things entirely is undesirable, but I made sure that there were a few breadcrumbs I could put in various places to make things a bit better.

The right few words to a kid in school, for example, can cause them to sit back and reconsider how they approach life. The right few words to a woman in college can do the same. I basically lived my life as best I could, giving nudges here and there to try and make others' lives easier. Though one mercy I did make sure to grant was to ensure that Asuka was not the one to find her mother's body.

In mid-October, 2015, the Mass Production Evangelion were sent down - ostensibly to help deal with Leliel, who had consumed Unit 01. It made for a good excuse, and was a better plan than dropping 992 N2 bombs on Tokyo-3. Instead, however, Unit 01 emerged, slaughtered the angel... and the MP Evangelions charged him instead. Rei and Asuka charged in to try and help, but three against nine is extremely grim odds.

On a related note: Bypassing AT fields is possible, but it requires one of three things. Either an AT field of your own of sufficient strength, a weapon of sufficient strength (on the order of a focused energy weapon or a very high-yield detonation), or an out-of-context weapon. You see, Evangelions are alive. It turns out that a killing curse, when one has amped it up sufficiently because they've all gone berserk and are targeting you on foot, can most certainly make them cease being alive. No shield can stop that, after all, and I have artifacts and the raw power to cast a killing curse that is indeed strong enough to kill an Evangelion. Of course, I then had to flee from the remaining three berserk Evangelion with human pilots, but otherwise it worked well.

NERV had been betrayed by SEELE before the endgame had even come. I was a relative unknown - just a guy with an apartment downtown, after all, who worked at a convenience store that had been stomped flat months before and never found another job since. I spoke with Gendo (unsurprisingly with myself at gunpoint) and told him that the dead sea scrolls are not the end-all-be-all of prophecy, fate is a thing best ignored by beings with free will, and promptly left - after all, no one wards against apparition.

Aside from letting things progress as expected - NERV still had a job to do even if SEELE was acting up - I kept my head down. Zeruel came and went. Shinji got in the fucking robot and got stuck. They pulled him out, eventually, but before that happened, the MP Evas came again on Ritsuko's 31st birthday in November.

As it turns out, they react very poorly to being befriended, too. Who knew?

After that happened I basically went 'fuck it' and started meddling further. Part of it was out of necessity, since at the end of the series things get stupidly dark, but I intended to use Genre Savior to ensure that we got the Noblebright 'Humanity, Fuck Yeah' ending that everyone deserved. This included dealing with one of my clones, who was not bothering to hide himself as he attempted to enter NERV. The only problem with that is that my clones do not have precognition and I do, so that particular conflict was very short.

Kaworu was sent in as a backup pilot as Asuka didn't have a breakdown (she was made of sterner stuff and things went better with Arael) so he sat on the sidelines, it was pointed out to Gendo that if Shinji can get out of the robot then everyone else who went into the robot can get out of the robot, and they started looking forward to the end of the conflict. The remaining angels went as scheduled - Kaworu was put down by Shinji as expected, with Shinji considering him a coward for the angel of free will being too frightened by the prospect of having to exercise it.

In the wake of that, SEELE attempted to drop all of those remaining N2 mines on Tokyo-3 in an attempt to level it. With three Evangelions working together, they were able to manifest AT fields that directed the detonation upward and away from the city, at the cost of incapacitating them afterward. The army was sent in, with one of my clones leading a contingent, and the MP Evas charged in for the third and final time as well.

Having known the attack was coming, NERV headquarters' corridors were filled with bakelite. I don't know how much most people know about it, but it's a plastic. The only way you're going to get in is with effort, ripping plastic out constantly, and it was still hot enough to burn them if and when they tried - my clone was the only one who made headway.

While I was topside dealing with the MP Evas, the soldiers were all following my clone, who was making his way down the path of least resistance. This put them in the cage. Which had three Evangelions online. The soldiers were all crushed like bugs. NERV had no casualties.

My clone managed to escape and run back topside, mission failed, and found me waiting for him atop a pile of Evangelion corpses.

"You know, it's a shame. You have so much potential, and I don't want to fight you. But do you know what?"
>"What?"
"Accio spear."
>"What the hell is an accio spear? Is that half-assed Latin or something? Wait, why are you looking at me like-"

And then the clone was erased by the Lance of Longinus, which I quietly disappeared before I went inside to celebrate with the rest of them.