The Dune Warriors
A Post Third Impact Series
Standard Copyright and Disclaimer at Bottom
Prologue
They were chasing me; the demons in
the dark. I was close to home, only a
hundred yards away, but I could feel them following me. It was cold out, the sun down, the dunes as
they always were after dark. My duster
was closed and my infra-red goggles were on, enabling me sight at the current
pitch black state of the world around me.
The “demons in the dark” were sand dogs, a species which had been
created following the impact. They were
like wolves only smaller, with webbed feet and they could run lightly across
the dunes. My rifle was in my hands at
this point and I was constantly checking over my shoulder. I could smell them from the distance, maybe
fifty yards, closing fast. My feet were
tired from all the walking I had spent that day and I didn’t know if I could
muscle running the one hundred yards before they would close on me. Fuck it, I told myself, and ran like their was no tomorrow.
I could hear their howls now, the
chase was on. Fifty yards later I could
see the watch towers and the gates to the small city I lived in. I could even see the shadow of the giant
mechanical monster which stood erect like a statue in the town center. The adobe brick houses surrounding it all
enclosed inside the giant perimeter walls, which stood approximately 13 yards
high. I could hear the sand dogs closing
in on me, they were only twenty yards away now.
“Open the gates!” I yelled out at
the watch towers.
I continued to run,
I was only ten yards from safety. The
shots rang out from the watch towers and I heard a few yelps; the sand dogs
turning around and running away. As soon
as I was inside, the gates were closed and I dropped my rifle, gasping for
breath from the run. I heard the
footsteps running toward me.
“You okay?” a deep voice asked.
“Yeah Teno,
I’m fine.”
I pulled my goggles off, no longer
needing them, thanks to the bright lights of the city. I picked up my rifle and brushed off my
duster. I wiped took off my bandana and
wrung out the sweat to let it hit the dry, hard, ground before placing the
front part on my forehead and tying it in a knot in the back. Teno ruffled my
hair fondly.
“Kiddo, you have got to stop going
to those ruins alone. Your mother would
be worried sick if she knew.” He said, smiling at me.
“Which is why
you’ll be a sweet heart and not tell her where I went.” I told him.
He laughed a deep and hearty
laugh. He was tall, broad shouldered,
with short cut hair and a clean shaven face.
His eyes were a deep blue, almost looking gray if one didn’t realize
their true color. He wore a pair of
cargo desert-camouflage fatigues for pants with bullet proof pads at the knees,
big black combat boots, and a cream colored t-shirt under his canvas camouflage
jacket. He too was wearing a bandana around
his forehead. He wore a gun belt with a
pistol holstered, a few knives sheathed and had a sniper rifle slung around his
shoulder by the strap.
“Whatever you say
tomboy.”
I gave him a pat on the shoulder and
headed off down the street to my house.
My mother was a bit protective of me, ever since my dad died. She was still an okay mom, as far as mom’s in the aftermath go.
As I walked down the street I felt the history creeping back into
me. I’d learned much from the ruins of
Tokyo-3. I learned about the third
impact which failed, causing our world to be what it was now. The impact which failed and caused
I walked up to the door of the steel
plated house which my mother and I lived in and took a deep breath. I then opened the door and announced, “I’m
Home!” before letting my rifle slide off of my shoulder loosely, hitting the
ground with a dull thud. Mom was a bit
ecstatic that I was back.
“Well, where were you all day?” She
questioned me immediately.
She was taller than I was, only by a
few inches, but they were permanent inches none-the-less. She had longer hair than I did also. She was pretty thin I guess compared to my simple,
lean figure. She was 35 and she still
had guys checking her out. Young ones
too! Fucking twenty
year olds and early thirty year olds.
Could you believe that? Even one
of my best friends confessed to having a sexual fantasy about my mom. Needless to say that kind of grossed me out. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love my mom,
but jeez, I don’t like hearing all this shit about how many people want to fuck
her. I’m kinda
territorial over my mom and I don’t want some guy just coming into our life to
complicate things.
“I was just hiking through the dunes
again. I stopped at the Shino Oasis
before coming home.” I said while keeping a completely honest look on my face.
“Oh, okay! I managed to get a hold of some fish so I
made a few sushi rolls for dinner tonight.”
Inside I was snickering while
outside I was giving her a genuine smile.
My mom made the greatest sushi, but she also couldn’t tell jack shit as
far as my lies went. The Shino Oasis
part was true, but the rest was bullshit.
“Oh, Kari, you should take that
friend of yours with you next time.
She’s been coming by every day asking where you were for the past three
weeks.” My mom’s voice came from the
small kitchen to the right of the main door.
“You mean Jen?” I asked.
“I think so. She’s the cute one with the platinum blonde
hair isn’t she?”
“Yeah.” I
replied, while hanging my duster up on the coat hanger near the door.
I went to the living room to the
left of the door where the table was and took a little computer chip out of a
pouch attached to my belt. I played with
it, turning it upside down, to the side, reading the small writing; you know,
the usual stuff one does with something like this. I found it at the ruins today,
it was in one of the lockers from the woman’s locker room. I heard mom approaching so I stashed the chip
back into my pouch. Sure enough she had
come with two plates and chopsticks for the both of us. She sat down in her chair across from me at
the table and we both bowed our heads once before the meal before starting to
eat. It was a custom of giving our
thanks for even being alive after the horrors and atrocities that took place
back during the Third Impact.
From what I had gathered thus far,
the Commander of the base and organization known as Nerv, had planned to
initiate third impact just to see his wife again. Whereas, his son, who was inside the
mechanical monster which resides in our city’s center, made a wish that
everyone would die. All of the souls of
the human beings of earth were sucked into some crazy looking creature called Lillith. Where they
were stored I have no idea. I was going
to find out what happened after they were sucked into Lillith
soon.
Something must have happened to
release them, otherwise why would we be here today? Something I truly had to know was–
“So, how was your day?” My mom’s
voice broke through my wall of thought.
“Mpph?” I replied with a mouthful of sushi.
“How. Was. Your. Day?” she said again.
I swallowed.
“Fine.”
“Find anything special on your
hike?”
“Not really, but I did spot a few
vultures pecking apart a sand dog carcass.”
My mom recoiled in slight disgust
replying sarcastically.
“Thank you, for your morbid
description. I’m eating, by the way.”
I smiled and shrugged.
“No problem!” I told her, before
turning my attention back to the sushi.
I had to find out what happened to
the red head. I mean, my assumption was
that she was dead, but Unit-02 has not been recovered yet. The girls soul
would, theoretically, have been protected by the entry plug. Something about the LCL solution led me to
that conclusion. I finished my meal,
excused myself and went to my room. I
got out a data pad that I had salvaged on an earlier expedition and opened up
the back casing of it. There was an
empty spot, so I curiously pressed in the computer chip and it snapped into
place. I closed my door immediately as
the pad came to life.
First the Nerv
logo popped up and asked for a user name and password. I set it down and searched through my bag for
the wallet I found with the chip. It was
the red head’s wallet. I searched
through it until I found the user name and password and I typed them into the
data pad. It made a strange noise and
then a list of recent video files popped up.
The most recent had taken place during Third Impact so I opened the
oldest of those three. The screen dimmed
and a picture of Unit-01 crucified in the sky hit first.
Dear god, this was the rebirth of
life. The creature known as Lilith rose up into the sky, which was red as blood and
filled with thunder strikes, absorbing Unit-01 and the souls of every living
creature on Earth. I felt a strange
sensation from the recordings. I felt
like my body was on fire, but it was a pleasant burning that I felt. I saw a red flash past the view window; that
must have been the redhead’s soul flying up into the sky and toward Lilith. Something
wasn’t adding up though; Where was the rebirth?!
That must have been when things went
wrong. It looked like Lilith’s neck was gushing blood
all of the sudden, and that her left eye had exploded. What was this? The burning was intensifying, causing my
entire body to feel like it had caught on fire.
“Make it stop, make it stop, make it
stop, make it stop,” I whispered frantically, hoping the pain would go away.
‘I can’t.’
That voice immediately connected to
a scream, which connected to the agonized face of Shinji Ikari;
all within my mind.
“Stop!” I
whispered, “it hurts, please stop.”
‘I can’t stop it!’ His pained voice echoed in my head.
Yes you can!
‘I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t,
I CAN’T!!!’
He screamed.
I know you can. I shuddered and clutched at my stomach, as if
my innards were about to rip their way out of my body. Help me Shinji, help me.
‘I’m trying!’ He yelled frantically.
Then, nothing. No pain, no screaming voice, just the static
from the data pad. The recording must
have ended, but what could explain the phenomena which had just taken
place. Nothing in logic could explain
it. It was like my soul was trying to
leave my body and it couldn’t break free of the barriers. I couldn’t think of anything other than how
tired the whole ordeal had made me.
‘Is this how you felt every time you
piloted it Shinji?’ I thought.
I half expected his voice to come
back into my head but nothing happened.
I shrugged my clothes off and crawled underneath the handsewn
blankets of my bed; collapsing drowsily into a cacophony of madness. It was so surreal that it had to be a
dream. I was flying across the desert,
surrounded by a warmness that I couldn’t pinpoint and the smell of blood. Someone was singing in the moonlit expanse; a
dialect I could not recognize.
“This is not my world, what is
this?” a voice asked.
“This is my world.” I replied.
Her voice was quiet and soft like a
feather. It was pretty, but lacked much
feeling and emotion behind it. This must
have been the albino girl, Rei.
“Did Shinji create this world?”
I didn’t respond because I realized
that I wasn’t flying, but the world was changing time, rapidly; going
backwards. Someone or something was
suspending me in the air. I looked to my
left and she appeared before my eyes; mangled blue hair, red inquisitive eyes.
“I don’t know.... I think he did... I still haven’t determined eve-”
“There.” Time stopped as she pointed
at the mountains.
The petrified Evangelions
that had attacked the Geofront created a triangular
perimeter around the Geofront itself. Inside the caverns an eery
green light glowed from something that I could not imagine came from our
world. A heart beat; I could hear my
blood pulsating through my veins, through my arteries. Good god, they’re back, the evil beings that
had first come to our world. They’re
back.
“Back, yes, they’re coming back,” Rei muttered, “as are we...”
I woke up abruptly and almost fell
out of bed. I shuddered and gasped,
trying to recapture my breath which evaded me during my slumber. Something inside me told me exactly what I
had to do at this point. I had to get to
the Caverns as soon as possible or I wouldn’t be able to determine whether what
I had just dreamed was a reality or not.
Knowing what I was doing was
absolutely stupid, I got up and immediately began putting on my warmer clothing
and packing my gear into a traveling pack.
I slug my rifle around my shoulder and snuck my way out of the house and
headed down the street to the observation tower where Teno
was still on lookout. I carefully and
quietly climbed up the latter to the lookout station and peered above the edge,
making sure Teno was unaware of my presence. I smiled to see that he was staring perplexed
out toward the distant mass of sand, toward the rock
mountains where the ruins of Nerv headquarters
were hidden. I crept silently behind him
and located the pressure point commonly used to knock a person out, swiftly
hitting it with my fist. He gasped in
surprise but fell to the floor unconscious.
I dug through his pockets for the keys to his buggy until I heard them
jingle from the right breast pocket of his jacket.
“Sorry about this Teno.” I muttered before descending from the tower and
hopping into his buggy.
I was about to spark the engine when
a familiar voice caught my attention.
“Just where are you going?”
it asked, in it’s soft and curious manner.
“Dammit,
Jen, go back home and sleep, this is none of your business.”
Jen was dressed similarly to me only
she was thinner than I was and had paler skin.
Her short platinum blonde hair was probably the most unkempt hair I’d
ever seen on a girl other than the image of Rei Ayanami. She was
very pretty, but she always looked very odd when she had a gun draped around
her shoulder.
“No, I’m going with you.” she said,
a commanding tone in her normally soft voice.
“What if I say, ‘No you’re not!’
what are you going to do about it?”
“All I have to do is fire off one
round for everyone in this section of the city to come running out of their
homes to see what’s going on, I’m going with you.”
She had a point. I was pretty much trapped in the situation,
being that I was going for as much secrecy as possible. I thought about the options: I could try to
take her weapon, I could attempt to knock her out, or I could bring her with
me. Both of the first two were rather
foolish thoughts seeing as how her finger was twitching on the trigger of her
rifle which she had pointing straight up in the air. I growled; she wasn’t ready for what I was
about to be forced to show her.
“Fine, but you get one thing
straight. You tell absolutely no one
what I’m going to show you, got it?” I growled through clenched teeth.
“Deal.” she said with a smirk before
hopping into the passenger side of the buggy.
“Let’s go.”
I sparked the engine, gave it a
little gas, and we were out of view in the city about two or three minutes
later before I felt safe to slow down to a dune cruising speed. I didn’t want Jen involved in this because I
didn’t know if she’d be able to handle it.
I loved her as my friend, my confidant.
She was always there for me when I was in a troublesome mood and I
needed someone to talk to. I could
always count on her in those situations, but this was far too complex. Everyone knew the history of Nerv and knew that they were responsible for the current
state in the world, yet there was no clear animosity towards the agency of the
past. So many
questions; so many unanswered questions.
“We’re going to it, aren’t
we?” Jen asked.
I glanced at her, unable to read her
face since we had put on our goggles as soon as we took off.
“What do you know?” I asked her.
“Nothing.” she stated matter-o-factly.
Glanced once more and someone else’s face connected
with Jen’s face. I bit the scream that
was urging it’s way out of my mouth and forced it back inside before taking a
deep breath. We had also put on masks in
order to maintain the ability to breath without choking on sand.
“What does the word Nerv mean to you?”
She went rigid for a second and
looked at me.
“That’s where you’ve been-” she
started, but I cut her off.
“Yes.”
“And that’s where we are-”
“Yes.”
The face that had connected with
Jen’s was the pale face of Rei Ayanami,
who’s blood red eyes still drilled vivid holes through my skull. She said they were coming back, but who were
they? The “Angels”? The Evangelions?
“As are we.”
The thought echoed through my mind,
repeating itself over and over. Dammit, who the hell did she mean? The pilots? So many unanswered
questions. The mountains were
getting closer and I felt more and more nervous. I had never been to the mountains this late
at night before; there were many strange freakish evolutionary disasters that
hid themselves in the caverns during the day, only coming out at night. Rumor had it that they were evolved forms of
test subjects that the Nerv Scientific Research teams
had been developing before the Third Impact.
The possibility of it’s truth was derived in
their territory. They stayed outside a 5
mile radius of where the gigantic hole that held the Nerv base. My
thoughts were jarred by the impact of the buggy’s wheels on the hard rocky
surface where the sand ended and the mountains were soon to begin.
“Hurry!” an urgent
voice pierced my ears.
I stepped on the gas.
“AAAAH!”
Jen yelled, “slow down!”
“Shut up,” I barked back, “they need
me!”
“What?!”
I tuned her out. I had recognized the voice the instant that I
had heard it. Shinji. I had to hurry, something was wrong.
“Please...Hurry!”
He was urging me forward ever still;
calling to me, clinging to my soul. I
had stopped in front of the entrance, which I had discovered months ago, and
was making my way to the cage. Anything
that flinched in my direction met death.
That’s when the white light stopped me in my tracks. I fell to the ground and screamed at the
temporary blindness that had come over me.
“Don’t go! KARI DON’T GO!” someone was screaming at me.
Was it Jen? I sounded like her but suddenly I couldn’t
hear anything, the slight bit of vision that I had regained made me realize
that I was floating up in the air slowly and that Jen was holding me down by
clutching my boot. Euphoria seemed to
flow through my veins and I smiled up toward the light that was calling me.
“Come with me Kari...”
“KARI! DON’T GO!”
Pain shot through my hands and
ankles and blood flowed freely from my palms, my feet.
“KA- ”
I lost my hearing again. What was this? It hurt but felt so right at the same
time. Shinji what’s going on?
“LET GO!”
