Kaiju Slaying For Death and Profit (WC Evangelion SI) Ch 1

Kaiju Slaying Chapter 1!
I've been working on this one on and off for a few months. Hopefully ya'll will like it.

Leave me a comment if you do!

Also, gratitude to Leecifer for allowing me to have him cameo on this story!

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The charge counter on the back of the lasgun ticked down to ‘00.’ With motions that had become rote over the last few days (or had it been weeks?) of bitter fighting, I ducked down beneath the edge of the trench, removed the charge pack, dropped it in my ‘spent’ pack, took another from my combat webbing, slapped it into the battery well and pulled the locking handle.

The indicator light at the side turned blue and the shot counter near the grip once again showed ‘90.’

I immediately sighted down the red-dot sight, there were a multitude of targets on the latest wave trying to take my current trench. I put the red-dot on the center mass of the nearest humanoid shaped shadow through the smoke and dick knows what else. I squeezed the trigger, the weapon in my hands sent out a laser at a brightness that would be blinding if it were in the visible spectrum. Normally it would fire a ‘tracer’ lasbolt at a much lower intensity but at the visible spectrum, so the shooter knew where his shot went.

Unfortunately, tracers worked both ways as most of my trenchmates had found out the hard way.

It was a good thing I’d spent the last fifteen years working on these things and weapons near enough to them, otherwise I would have been much worse off.

I moved the red dot sight to the next more distinct shadow and put three shots on its center mass, vibrations in the air that shook my marrow informing me that the heavy bolter on the trench behind me hadn’t fallen yet. .998 caliber rockets zoomed past my head, scything down the line of shadows in a series of explosions. I felt something ping off my flak helmet, it made me miss one of my next set of three shots, fortunately, two invisible lasbolts were enough to put down whoever had been charging.

A green lasbolt seared into my left pauldron, the flak and plasteel layers ablated away in a spectacular display, chips of superheated ceramic landing on my neck and feeling like cold pinpricks much like frying bacon when it got particularly uppity.

I made a mental note to look through the bodies in the trenches to see if I found an undamaged left pauldron, shifted six feet to the side and continued putting fire downrange.

A larger shape hurdled through the smoke and miasma. I put the red-dot on its center mass and squeezed the trigger, I put eight shots in its center mass, and it came on undaunted. It crashed through the smoke, propelled in great leaps by cloven hooves in bovine legs, an amalgam of man and bull, frothing at the mouth, its lips open in a howl I couldn't hear.

I put another three shots into its unprotected chest, the flesh there cratered and rent by the detonations of flash heated blood and meat. It turned its head, bloodshot eyes meeting mine, glaring at the world but not truly seeing me.

Unfortunately, the beastman saw enough and came charging at me. I'd like to say that blood hammered through my body, that adrenaline sang through my veins. But after so long spent fighting, day in and day out, I simply felt numb. I'd long accepted that my bid for greatness had failed, that I had been tricked and abandoned to die in this shit stain of a reality. The only thing keeping me on my feet being the fight and the instincts and abilities from the Template I’d sacrificed my Work Contract Bonus to purchase.

I was marooned here, and I aimed to make this everyone’s problem. As such, I put the sights on the Beastman’s center mass and kept squeezing the trigger.

The beastman ate up shot after shot, utterly uncaring of the ruin that its chest had become. It presumably bellowed even if I couldn't hear it.

It was ten or so feet away from the trench before one of the mines I’d buried…sometime ago exploded, flinging me off the wall of the trench and onto my back, knocking the air out of my lungs. The Beastman was flung fifteen feet in the air, its lower half becoming a mixture of meat slurry and vapor, bits and pieces of steaming intestines pitter pattered around and onto me.

The upper half of the Beastman splatted several feet to my left, still frothing at the mouth and swinging a jagged piece of metal fashioned into a crude blade.

I put several more lasrounds into its unprotected innards, the stink of burning offal, medium-rare steak and well-cooked pork breaking through the filters of the mask I’d grabbed off a dead guy.

In fact, all of my gear had been taken from one corpse or another. Bar the rations I was eating, my gear was scavenged. My diaphragm stopped spasming and I was able to draw in a deep breath, it tasted of overcooked steak, rank sweat, and my own halitosis.

I forced myself to peek over the edge of the trench, and I judged the trench lost. What with the wave of Chaos Cultists, Traitor Guard, and Chaos Beastmen swarming toward my position and the heavy bolter I’d been relying on no longer firing into the target rich environment.

I primed and tossed three of the grenades I’d found through my battlefield scavenging, then dove into the tunnels that connected the trench network. I was quite glad I took all those Seminars during boot, otherwise I would have wasted precious time figuring out how to set up the booby-traps to cover my retreat.

Hehe, booby.

I shook my head, wondering when the last time I slept was. I passed numerous corpses, swapping out my left pauldron for an intact semi-clean looking one as I went, as well as picking up a few more unused battery packs. I emerged to men and women fighting for their lives as they were overrun by Chaos Traitors. The good news was the bad guys had their backs to me. I suppressed my Template’s instinct to dive into close quarters and put invisible lasbolts into their backs, dropping them one by one until I had to duck back into the tunnels to avoid the fusillade of red lasbolts that came my way.

“Woah! Woah! Cease fire, dipshits!” I shouted, or at least I thought I did, it was difficult to form words when I couldn't hear myself speak. The shooting stopped, and I really wished I could hear. I waved my lasgun so they could see it was the same issue as theirs. When it didn't get shot, I followed that with my arms, and finally I peeked.

There were five terrified men aiming at me and shouting. I pointed to my ears, shook my head, and shrugged. Then, far past giving a fuck, I rushed to the edge of the trench, hopped up and started putting lasbolts down range.

Eventually the five joined me in putting fire down no-man’s-land, doing by weight of fire what couldn’t be done by accuracy or the power of our weapons. I had to retreat two more times, leaving tripwires every time.

I picked up more charge packs, grabbed a second knife, changed my helmet for a new one that fit better, and found me a longlas, which I proceeded to use even though I wouldn't have the time to remove the tracer laser until the current attack wave abated.

The longlas only gave forty shots to the charge pack when compared to the lasgun’s ninety, but its increased stopping power and greater penetration was a trade I was more than willing to make.

At some point some asshole with a whip hit me while I was fixing a jammed heavy bolter. I shot that little fucker in the face and took his laspistol and chainsword before I finished fixing the heavy bolter and used it to put ordinance down no-man’s-land.

I would have taken his boots, but he had tiny girl feetsies so some other scavenger would have to enjoy those. For some reason the other people fighting gave me a wide berth after that, but who cares, I had assholes to kill and meat shields again.

It happened as I wondered whether or not I could take the heavy bolter without being obvious about it. Something exploded. This by itself wasn’t unusual, explosions were a fact of life. I could hardly remember a time when I couldn't feel the ever-present rumble of ceaseless bombardment.

But this explosion turned out to be special. I felt it through the bottom of my feet to the top of my head, an enormous shudder like the tolling of a bell. The ozone tang in the air diminished as the sky changed color in a rolling wave.

No, no it didn't change color, the shield holding up the sky had fallen. Without further thought I threw myself to the floor and curled up into the fetal position. Opening my mouth wide and covering my ears.

Out of everyone in the trench I found myself in, only three followed my example.

They were the only ones who lived.

The rolling wave of explosions pulverized those who were standing, the conflicting energies and flying shrapnel, the smallest fraction of which actually made it into the trench, pummeling and scything all who stood in their way.

One explosion rolled over all of us only for another blast wave to slam into it and override it.

After seconds, hours, or years, it was impossible to tell which, the barrage finally stopped. I waited a few seconds before getting up and looking around, simultaneously wishing my hearing would return and thankful I’d lost it.

As I looked around, I felt a singularly powerful impact shuddering through the ground and turned just in time to see a colossal figure step out of a crater, smoking and on fire. Its skin was red as blood, its armor bronze. On its right hand it held a chainax longer than I was tall, on its left a massive double edged, cruelly hooked sword covered in runes that hurt to look at. Its head was covered in a mane of thick metal dreadlocks that smoked and bled. It reared back, revealing a mouth full of razor-sharp fangs and roared.

Somehow, I heard that roar. It was something beyond physical. It shook the entirety of my body to the marrow yet slid directly into my brain and caused unthinking rage to well up within me. I forced myself to beat it back with cold, controlled fury.

The Daemon Primarch Angron had just joined the field and we were all about to die.

I'd like to say that what I did next, I did out of a sense of defiance, that I took a Hail Mary shot in the hope of achieving an impossible victory.

But no, I aimed the longlas straight down the monster’s throat and put a lasbolt directly down it mostly by rote. It's what I’d been doing for days, and there he stood like a perfect target.

I am quite proud to say, I made Angron literally choke on his rage.

My happiness was short-lived as the monster rushed forward far faster than anything that size had a right to. I tried to hit him with another lasbolt, but he was too quick, every time I got a bead on him, he’d move before I had the time to pull the trigger.

Where he went, a geyser of blood and body parts fountained into the air. I hadn't known there were that many people left in the forward trenches.

Something pulled on my shoulder, ruining my latest attempt to uselessly shoot the daemon Primarch. A scared, filthy man was shouting something and pointing. Looking in the direction of his finger, I saw an enormous man in golden armor with snow white angel wings and an honest to fuck halo around his long, luscious, golden hair. He was surrounded by squat shapes in bulky golden armor with decorative golden wings attached. There was a crowd of men and women running at the titanic gate that stood open behind the angel and its squat bodyguards.

I didn't even bother looking at Angron again. I grabbed a belt of heavy bolter ammo (it made for surprisingly good IEDs) and climbed the trench and ran. The golden figures fired bolters seemingly at the rushing crowd, yet hit nobody, meaning they were shooting at things behind us, I felt the telltale sizzle of my armor ablating away, one solid impact to my upper back throwing me to the floor.

I fell in a roll and jumped back to my feet and kept running. Nothing mattered other than the slight promise of relative safety.

I reached the line of Space Marines and, quite unlike the throng of battered and filthy men and women running past me into the safety of the enormous walls, I stopped.

I looked at the nearest Space Marine, the bastard was upper chest, shoulders and head taller than me. I slung my longlas and started climbing. He twitched violently beneath me, but didn’t buck me off as I climbed higher, reached the top, put the barrel of my longlas past his head, and started taking shots at the figures slaughtering their way through the trenches.

One of them was clad in bloodstained blue armor, a great crest on its helmet and swinging a pair of axes. Shot that fucker in the face. It didn't kill him, but I was proud of that off the cuff shot.

I kept putting fire into that one figure until, at the second to last shot in my battery, he fell over, either to the laser finally managing to put the fucker down or to something else that hit him.

I used the last shot of the battery pack to kill a Chaos Cultist as he was about to stab a fleeing Imperial in the back with a cavalry saber.

Rather than fumble in an attempt to reload, I let the longlas hang from its strap and awkwardly brought my lasgun to bear. I put shots downrange until that too ran out. As I debated the merits of using my laspistol at less than optimal range, the Space Marine under me started to walk backwards, retreating toward the enormous gate in good order.

Hundreds of men and women had run through the gates, dozens more were stuck fighting for their lives, or had been too far out to make it, the meters thick gates would close before they arrived.

The enemy would be out of reach.

In a fit of what I can only call insanity mixed with bleed from the Template, I hopped off the Space Marine. Reloading the lasgun as I stepped around him and continued putting shots downrange at those who I’d kill or die trying to bring to hell with me.

Killing Chaos Cultists was the only measurable control I’d managed to gain over my existence in over fifteen years, I wasn’t about to give that up.

A hand descended on me that covered my entire upper arm. I smacked it with my lasgun but it didn't let go, the power behind the hand dragging me with the same ease I would have dragging an empty paper bag, digging my feet in resulted in me managing to lose a boot in the muck.

I let the lasgun hang, pulled out my laspistol, and put more shots downrange. Pulling at the hand every step of the way like an unruly child, stretching my body toward the closing gate. Putting one last lasbolt into the eye of a charging ramheaded beastman before it could bring its ax down on an Imperial that had been too slow to reach safety. The gate shut in front of me with a thump that vibrated my bones, my last sight the man’s pleading face.

I turned back around, snarling and hitting the hand around my arm with the butt of my laspistol. I’m relatively certain I was screaming invectives; I couldn’t exactly hear myself speak but the vibrations I felt coming from my throat and the pain I felt there indicated as much. I turned back around and uselessly emptied the battery pack at the gate as I started to tremble from head to foot, overworked adrenal glands finally resting as the promise of safety did what a seeming eternity of fear, pain, danger, injuries and Chaos Cultists had not managed to do.

I lost the strength to my legs, the enormous hand the only thing holding me up as the shaking got worse, I turned, saw that the Marine I’d climbed on had been the one to drag my unwilling ass to safety. I pawed at this plastron, trying to pull him down. “You can’t let him fight Horus.” I said, or at least attempted to, it was, once again, difficult to moderate my words without hearing myself speak. “He can’t take Horus on, he’ll lose, and you'll all be damned. Whatever you do, do not let him fight Horus! He's the only hope we have! Do not let him fight Horus!”

The Space Marine peeled me off with surprising gentleness. I continued to babble, yelling at him about how Horus dropping the shield of his flagship was a ruse, that they should ignore it, to continue to weather the bombardment, that the only reason he’d drop the shields was because Guilliman had almost arrived.

I begged him to tell Sanguinius not to fall for the ruse. To weather the storm. To hold fast because reinforcements would be mere hours away when Horus dropped the shields.

He deposited me at the medical tents, gently prying away my clutching fingers. One of the medics injected me with something that spread deadening warmth up and down my arm.

I was still shouting warnings when unconsciousness took me. Having forgotten in the heat of the moment, that none of the people around me spoke English.

=][=

I woke up, an unpleasant surprise that. Someone had taken my gasmask off, a second even more unpleasant surprise. I was fairly certain we'd been gassed and plague bombed at least seven times in the last…long time.

Looking around, I spotted my gear, scarred and filthy. Much like me really.

I tried and failed to stand, looking down I didn't see anything immediately wrong with my limbs beyond the fact that it hurt to move my anything. This all culminated on the fact that it took me three tries to get up, crawl to my kit, and slip my gasmask on.

Once I had that done, I looked around and saw that I was in a field hospital of some kind. I strapped my armor and weapons onto myself and forced myself to leave before somebody decided to tell me what to do.

As I did, I saw a glowing rectangle open directly in front of me.

I froze. Unwilling to believe yet incapable of stopping myself from hoping.

In this place, at this time, it could be a trap. But would I get another chance if I didn’t take this one?

Lasgun in hand, I pulled my lips back into a snarl and rushed through the opening.

I came out the portal to see one other group of people. I could see Lee from B Squad, the only other guy crazy enough to take every goddamn seminar like I had, and one other, the guy he’d dragged to ‘loopholes 101,’ both of them wearing workers coveralls and carrying crude weapons. Of squads A, C, & E I saw no sign. Kenshin Himura, our drill sergeant came around, his lips were moving but I couldn’t hear anything.

I pointed to my ear and shook my head. He scowled and his hands glowed a candy blue for a moment before blessed sound returned. “Can you hear me now?”

I slumped in relief. “Yes, thank fuck.”

“Where's the rest of your squad?”

“Stacy got most of them killed shouting at a draft officer. Alan died in the fighting, don't know when but I ran into his corpse.”

Kenshin nodded and turned to Lee and the other guy. Their report was similar, except his squad died to a daemonic manifestation inside the walls.

Kenshin’s eyes dropped to my gear, my hands tightening on the weapons. His lips became a thin displeased line, but something in my expression must have told him he'd have to pry these guns off my cold, dead fingers, because he let sleeping dogs lie and took us to have dinner in the mess hall.

First time I'd been there since night one, Stacy having gotten us banned consistently for what for everyone else had been three months but for me had been closer to two subjective years.

The steak was perfect. After that I went to the barracks, to the room that was now entirely mine whose beds I also hadn’t seen since night one of boot. And slept for two straight days, not counting waking up intermittently to use the restroom (all hail working plumbing) or slamming awake because it was too goddamn quiet which meant there was about to be a wave of attacks.

After that, I checked my Company Email for my final score, and saw that I had just barely failed to get full Agent status, had one other member of my squad survived, I would have gotten access to full Agent status and the good Catalog.

Fuckin’ Stacy.

Normally I’d be shuffled off to some part or another of the Company, but it seemed that my performance had nonetheless impressed someone, because I was being offered a ‘makeup exam’ as it were. I’d get access to the full Catalog, and I’d get to keep my mods and benefits from my Work Contract and my Doom Slayer Template. However, I’d only get twenty points to start with and would need to complete one mission before attaining full Agent status. Furthermore, I’d be using the secondary Contract I filled out, with the new ‘Intensity’ tiers that the Company had rolled out recently.

There was a barn’s width of wriggle room on this. But it was either this, or most likely got back to one or another of the Factories and go back to having no control of where I’d go, when, and how.

And I’d had enough of the goddamn Factories.

I read through the agreement, it really was surprisingly short and straightforward. One mission, after that it’d be my choice whether to remain in the employ of whoever was sponsoring me.

I clicked the link to see who was sponsoring me and felt a drop of cold sweat go down my neck.

Looks like I’d impressed Death. I hadn’t known He/She/It worked with the Company.

Death had apparently arranged for the local to where I would step into to have an artificial soul, one that had been running with a copied personality matrix of Prime me, which was a 96.2% match with me.

Apparently, this was some time in the making, or Death just foresaw the shit show my final exam wound turn into.

I finally got to the details of what I’d be doing, and I swore.

I was going to Evangelion, I’d have a shot at unfucking things there, but that was not actually required for mission completion. My job was to kill as many Angels as I could and Capture their souls. They'd be copied and printed out to fight in the Blood War fronts.

And I had to do it with twenty fucking points, the rest would be held from me until I made my third Capture. Bright side, so long as I didn't die I should be getting quite a few points, enough even to get my own pocket reality with a way to Portal elsewhere to safety.

Well, fuck it. I made my purchases, what few I could make. My many near death moments during my graduation mission and my vaguely remembered knowledge of where I was going informed my decisions, I'd need to learn to use the local magic quickly, grabbing defenses would have to come later. Hopefully after I got my first Capture.

Still, the first thing I got was Pocket Dimension, otherwise I'd lose my current gear, and I'd have nowhere to stow the Doom Slayer’s extensive arsenal without getting it confiscated. Though I was man enough to admit, if only to myself, that the main reason I took that ability was because it would feel like a betrayal to leave behind my lasgun. That thing had done good work.

I took care of my other purchases and accepted the transfer.

After that, I vaguely wondered what would happen to my current body, before shrugging and letting the process that would put me in the new one happen.

The adventure I’d very rightly earned awaited.

Here’s hoping for at least an okay ending.

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