The blaring siren tore through her ears as she was violently shaken. It wasn't a good way to wake up. "Come on, stupid!" Asuka growled. "They just sounded the scramble!" Mari rubbed her sleep-filled eyes. "Why're you waking me up? I don't have anything to pilot, remember?" "What are you, stupid!?" Asuka yelled. "They got the snowman working yesterday!" "Fuck, that's right," Mari thought, overcoming her drowsiness. She began to fumble for her glasses, only for Asuka to shove them onto her face and grab her arm, pulling her out of bed. "Come on, hurry!" She threw Mari's plugsuit towards her, and ran out the door.

Mari clumsily pulled off her clothes, leaving them scattered on the floor with the rest of her wardrobe. "How long was it since that lobster? Six days? I thought we'd get a longer break than that this time," she thought, rolling her eyes as she pulled the plugsuit up around her. She activated the seal, and it immediately compressed into a tight, form-fitting piece.

Dragging herself outside, she soon woke up properly and began running down the sterile white corridors of Faust HQ towards the briefing room. "Why did this have to happen in the morning, of all times?!" Eventually she got to the briefing room, and entered to see Misato relaying information to Shinji and Asuka. "... structural damage to Arras. Other than that, reports are confused. Some are saying that there's only one monster, while others are reporting multiple creatures. And..." she paused, composing herself. "A majority of the reports state that the creatures are a new evolution of Godzilla."

Mari's stomach twisted, and her mouth went dry. "The last time I saw that thing..." she gritted her teeth as she remembered watching that foot come down towards her, and the split second of pure agony as her bones collapsed and her organs burst out of her skin.

"- ri? Are you okay?" Her eyes widened, and she looked up to see Shinji looking at her with a scared expression. She quickly shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. "Yeah, I'm fine" she lied, trying her best to smile. "I finally get to use MOGUERA out there, so... I feel better than ever." As her mouth closed, the thoughts came back, and she barely noticed as Asuka shot her a glance as she walked past.

She turned around, rolling her eyes. "You can either stand there freaking out, four eyes, or you can hurry up and stop other people from being stepped on." Without waiting for a reply, she turned back around and headed to the cages. "It's not as though I'm not scared as well, but we have a job to do," she thought, rationalising her behaviour to herself. "Ah... fuck," she sighed. "I'll talk to her properly when we get back..."

She quickly walked down to the cage, and headed towards Mechagodzilla 01. It was larger and bulkier than an Evangelion, stood at 100m, and, like 02 and MOGUERA, it was clad in dull metallic armour, matching the plugsuits of the pilots. Asuka hated the colour. All that set it apart from Shinji's 02 was a number on the shoulders. EVA-02 had looked like it was hers. MG-01 just looked like another anonymous fighting machine. "Still... looks aside, it's a damn good weapon," she conceded, laying a palm on the synthetic diamond coating. "Alright, Kiryu. Let's go."

She climbed up a nearby ladder, and clambered into the seat of the entry plug. "01, ready for insertion," she reported, and the entry hatch slid shut. "Commencing insertion," Maya replied over the comms channel. Asuka felt her stomach shift slightly as the plug dropped into the gap between Kiryu's vertebrae. "Spinal connection good, pumping synthetic LCL." Asuka sighed as the foul-tasting green liquid began to fill the tube.

"Commencing neural connection." Her body jolted as control of Kiryu was forced on her mind. For a moment, she felt a presence next to her, but it quickly fled, as usual. She didn't know what it was, but she had her suspicions. "As long as it doesn't interfere, there's no reason to worry about it," she told herself. "But... if it tries something..."

It was overwhelming. Seeing, tasting, smelling, touching, hearing, thinking, feeling. Nothing was familiar to it, not even itself.

It could see a dark sky, the stars hidden by clouds. Turning around, it saw a vast lake of red water, and a giant skull within it.

Turning back around, it saw an Ant staring down at it. The new creature was dwarfed by the insect, who leaned down to feel it with her antennae. Instinctively, the creature shot a lump of itself at the Ant, and it landed on her head. She reared up and struggled as the slimy lump burnt through her exoskeleton and melted away her innards.

The lump quickly squirted forwards, and rejoined its body. The creature could smell something nearby, something appealing. It dragged itself towards it, and found the remains of a cigarette. Ravenous, it leaped onto the side of the rolled paper, and began to eat. And with each toxic ingestion, Hedorah grew larger.

Arras was no stranger to destruction. Over a hundred years ago, thousands had died in the mud outside the city, and death had rained down from the sky onto the houses below.

And now, the city and surrounding countryside burned again. Smoke clouded the sky, reducing Asuka's visibility to a few metres. The infrared laser wasn't much better. She made her way slowly down Rue du 8 Mai 1945, scanning for any sign of Godzilla. "I'm clear here so far. Shinji, what have you got?" she asked, not realising that she was whispering. "Rue Raoul Briquet is clear," he whispered back, Asuka rolling her eyes as she strained to hear him. "Mari?" "Avenue d'Immercourt is clear. Where the fuck is it?" "Quiet," Asuka snapped, annoyed to hear her own thoughts vocalised.

Kiryu's course shifted slightly. "What the fuck is wrong with it now?!", she muttered, bringing up a diagnostic screen. Everything was working fine, apparently. She raised a hand to reset the diagnostic screen, and realised what was wrong. Her hands were shaking. "Fuck", she sighed.

Something began to emerge from the smoke, and Asuka tensed up, then sighed as she realised that it was just a burnt out car. Something caught her eye, however, and she stopped to take a closer look. She regretted it. There were the charred remains of bodies inside. Two black lumps of flesh in front, and two smaller ones in the back. Asuka looked away and kept going. "I've seen enough of that already," she thought, staring a thousand yards ahead.

Suddenly, something darted off to the right ahead of her. "Shit!", she swore, turning to follow it. "I have a contact, something small and quick. I can deal with it by myself, you two keep looking!" "Alright," Shinji said hesitantly. Mari simply grunted.

The thing dashed across Asuka's line of sight again, this time to the left. Gritting her teeth, she turned to go after it, bit soon she had lost it in the smoke. "Fuck!", she muttered, only for it to appear again, sprinting away from her. She followed it towards the hospital, only for it to fade into the smoke again. Then, another sped across in front of her. Two more darted away from her, and she gritted her teeth as they continued to taunt her.

A particularly daring one walked up to her, and she finally got a clear look at it. It looked like a small T. Rex, with small knife-like dorsal plates running down it's spine. Asuka sighed, realising that it wasn't Godzilla, just something that looked slightly like it. "Godzilla without the god... but... they still did all of this." She stepped forward to crush it under Kiryu's feet, and it slowly backed away until Asuka had her back to the hospital. Then, it turned around and sprinted away.

Asuka sighed. "Fuck, these things are annoying." She paused to assess the situation. "They're faster than me, and they can hide in the smoke... if we could somehow -" she heard concrete smash on the ground behind her, and turned around in time to see the adult Zilla pounce on her, slamming Kiryu to the ground.