Doctor Who: The Evangelion Error (Book One)

E3 Part 2: On Your Mark

NERV Headquarters - Central Dogma

A.T. FIELD
The Evangelion is capable of generating the effect currently classified as an "a.t. field," a kinetic physical barrier capable of blocking all known forms of attack. It can also breach or cancel out a.t. fields generated by the enemy. The Evangelion is currently the only weapon in humanity's arsenal capable of generating an a.t. field.
Despite extensive testing, the full capabilities of this feature are as of yet not completely understood. Nonetheless, rough estimates of the field's strength in various configurations can be made as follows...

Shinji flipped through the NERV manual as Misato and the others on the lift chatted about budgets. It was kind of amazing, honestly, how so many pages and words could reveal so little. Nothing on where the Eva came from, or what the Angels were, or how they managed to generate this AT field thing where nothing else could. For that matter, how had NERV even known what the Angels were capable of before the first one had shown up in Tokyo-3?

***

"We knew about it from Second Impact, of course," Ritsuko said brusquely. Shinji stood just behind her and Misato as the elevator carried them upwards.

Shinji tried his best to keep up. "So you're saying that what actually vaporized Antarctica was..."

"Fifteen years ago, humanity discovered the first of the creatures we call Angels buried in Antartica. In the middle of the investigation, for some unknown reason, it self-destructed, taking the entire continent with it. The Evangelions were constructed as mankind's response to that incident, based on what data we were able to recover."

Was it just him, or did Misato have a strange look on her face? Like she was thinking about something, or maybe trying very hard not to think about something. Shinji looked back to Ritsuko. "Then, the things that we're doing here..."

"Are intended to avoid a probable Third Impact and the extinction of the human race." Ritsuko's voice had a clinical, practiced tone, like she'd said those exact words many times before. "Now, does that answer your question?"

"Err, sort of," said Shinji. "So why do all the history textbooks say it was caused by a meteorite?"

Ritsuko shrugged. "As is often the case, the true facts were concealed."

"But why? I mean, wouldn't it have been easier just to tell everyone the truth?" Shinji hesitated for a second. "And if the Angels are capable of doing something like that, why haven't they just done it to us already? Why are they even giving us the chance to fight them?"

Ritsuko turned to Misato. "By the way, that event will be going forward tomorrow."

Misato nodded, her mind clearly still somewhere else.

***

Above Old Tokyo. The next day.

"It's called Jet Alone."

Shinji sat in the back cabin of the aircraft, bewildered. One moment, he'd been in school; the next, he'd been rushed out of class by five NERV agents, driven to an airfield, loaded onto a huge jet with his Eva - which he hadn't even known they could do, he'd never realized they even made planes that large. And now Misato was showing him a photo of a blocky-looking robot that wouldn't have looked out of place in a cheap forty-year-old science fiction movie.

"It's an experimental weapons platform developed by Japan Heavy Chemical Industries." Misato tugged on the thumb of her glove. She was wearing an odd getup that resembled some kind of spacesuit. "Thirty minutes ago, it went out of control during testing and is no longer responding to radio control. To make matters worse, its onboard nuclear reactor is overheating."