With a Heart of Iron

“I fear nothing.” 

“Where am I....?” 

     The moment Sigmund tried to stand, he felt ringing in his head. His eyes were still adjusting as though it’d been in the dark for far too long. He could barely see without having to squint, and it hurt to look one one object for too long as his brain tried to process all the new information of his surroundings. It was clear that his surroundings looked liked an absolute hell scape -- almost as though the hell itself had come to the world and manifested itself with impunity. Where there once were great sky scrapers and forest of concrete buildings now stood black spines that erected themselves high across towards the heavens like a dark rosebush. 

     Putting strength into his legs, the lone man carried himself forward with an aimless goal. His head felt empty, he couldn’t think straight and this... painful feeling.... What was it? It welled within his throat, his chest, his stomach - it felt as though it were burning and no amount of water in this world could possibly quench this dryness - this painful burning that savaged at his consciousness to give into his baleful primal urge to drink - to feed. It was unnatural, foreign - yet he felt there was nothing wrong with it. 

     He continued forward. 

     The sun of the wastelands basked him in its warmth sunlight as though to welcome him, but only the distant stench of death and iron filled the air. Iron? Sigmund trudged forward, his body guiding him to the source where the smell was coming from like a hungering dog. It did not matter if he was on his fours, or crawling - he had to feed. Where the smell led him was a white tree, barely alive - yet it bore... a strange-looking fruit that it bore, shining like a forbidden fruit of Eden, yet drenched in crimson shaped like a teardrop.

     If he were his normal self, Sigmund would have questioned it, but his instincts told him otherwise. It turned him into nothing more than a beast, ravenous and hungering - thirsting. His hands tore away at the branch and he sank his teeth into the flesh of what was to be his food and drank deep into its crimson liquor. Little by little, he felt his strength coming back. What first came back was his eyesight, his arms, his legs, his hearing... and finally, the feeling, a sense of touch. Warmth that dripped down from his lips, and on the ground. 

File: Operator_Bullet_011 Date: ▇▇▇, ▇▇▇  Location: Rhodes Island 

     Sigmund hated hospitals and its facilities. Setting hit foot inside them filled his nostrils with the scent of disinfectant alcohol and odors of medicine. Not that it was a bad thing, but back during his days in the military, death was almost akin to that of a close friend he never wanted or wished for, but always stood next to him. Death was inevitability for all, but he lived close it than most. However, never in his life had he imagined that he would work for a pharmaceutical company that held something akin to that of a private military of their own. Then again, given what the Rhodes Island had to do, enemies they had made and countries they dealt with -- it was by no means a far stretch of them to have such capable operators under their sleeves. 

     Life had a strange way of working at times. 

     Just like how the vending machine in front of him dispensed two coffees at once when he put coin for one. Lucky me, Sigmund thought and headed towards the upper deck of the Rhodes Island land ship where he had a good view of the terrain that they’d be travelling on. Snowy wastelands, barren of life. War had long since touched this place and left its inerasable scars on the earth. He could fill the cold chill kissing his lips and the only thing that kept it warm was the sickly sweet canned coffee he always remembered drinking. 

So, here’s something while I’m working, since I’m trying to get back into swing of things. 

     Sigmund was never a sneaky type, and he was always bad at it too. 

     But he had to do something to take some heat off of his back from his ever fearsome wife with a sharp tongue and eyes to match her equally beautiful features lest she caught him again leaving the house without a single note. The nature of his work unfortunately forced him to move quickly, sometimes without notice, but long months away from her only built his ever growing longing to see her even if it did end with him getting chewed on by her words. As such, he always made an effort to write letters home, send gifts, and photos of the places that he’d been to. 

     Of course, they didn’t always get there.

     But he was too exhausted to even think about what letters she might have gotten, so he tried to drag his pair of heavy legs to the main room where she always was, cooped up in front of her computer, perhaps hacking away and typing at the keyboard like a piano. If the bits of lights shining through the door was any indication, the soldier knew that his wife was in there - or so he thought. Perhaps just waiting to give him the scolding he so deserved. 

“Well... I’ve kept my wife waiting long enough.” 

@verfugen​ - starter

“   ….What do you….look for in a person? To determine if they’re worth…’keeping’ around?   ”

     Well, that was a strange question. 

     The older-looking operator scratched the back of his head before his hand meticulously went back to cleaning the powdery residue of his weapon’s darkened cylinder clogged by carbon after an extensive operation. He wasn’t ignoring her, he simply needed time to think about the answer to such a... queer question she’d raised him with. Determining a person if they were worth ‘keeping around’ wasn’t sort of things he’d asked very often, or felt he had the time to.   

“Hm, if I had to say to a person....” The man held the cylinder up to the light, “I wanna say transparency is important. I’m not asking for the person to be... completely open, but just simple day to day honesty, I guess? I just feel like a lot of the misunderstandings can just be solved with just simple, brief communications is all.” 

     He blew his breath into his weapon. 

@verfugen​ said: "But isn’t stupid bad though?“ ._.

           “That’s a matter of perspective. I myself find it rather charming.”

“Wait, you’re saying it’s been THAT long already?” Sigmund paused, “... At this rate, I’ll forget the anniversary too.” 

“... You know, it kind of hurts when your wife calls you stupid.” 

1. DAGR (Direct Attack Guided-Rocket): An armament part of Eva Unit 09′s forearm armor. This is activated by Sigmund’s voice command of ‘Rocket Punch Right/Left’, and upon activation, one of the rear elbow armor designated for the Rocket Punch opens up and ignites the thrusters located inside. This allows for an extreme instantaneous acceleration of the Eva unit’s punch at a close range for an absolutely devastating melee strike, and on several field tests it has shown to be able to pierce through the Angel’s hard flesh. Unfortunately, each DAGR located inside Unit 09 has only enough fuel for 2 uses per arm. 

2. Progressive Knife:  A combat knife contained inside the left shoulder pylon of an Evangelion who uses it, and is one of the Evas' basic weapons. The blade of the knife vibrates at an extremely high frequency, increasing its cutting sharpness to the point that it can cut through the target at a molecular level. It is strong enough to pierce an Angel's core with little trouble. Like 02, the Unit 09 possesses two combat knives, but they are in a shape of trench knives from WWI with added spiked knuckle dusters.  

3. Destroyer: A newly-developed assault rifle from Berlin NERV branch that has striking similarities with SCAR-H. However, unlike its pallet rifle counterparts, it carries only 20 rounds in a relatively large box ammunition before needing a reload due to its larger, specialized Eva-sized .75 calibre rounds. These rounds contain an explosive charge that detonates upon impact, more than enough to level an entire medium-sized building with a single round. 

Mfw people like the world lore i write