Evangelion Unit-02 Type II Allegorica

The ANIMA novel grants this machine the full title Unlimited Flight Type Reconnaissance-in-Force Spec Evangelion Unit-02 UX-1 Allegorica. The conversion grafts two rear legs onto the frame, producing a centaur-like body whose added bulk steadies the Eva through long-distance flight, and spreads a pair of great wings from its back, granting a Unit-02 the sky for the first time.

Lift comes from gravity itself rather than thrust. Slits along the wings hold arrays of artificial tidal fields that unbalance the gravitational pull across the wing surface, generated by an N² reactor producing gravitons, among the most advanced technologies available, and amplified through artificial-diamond slits; the UX-1 pack bends gravity with a quantum mirror to keep the machine aloft. Thrusters at the wingtips merely assist, and a skilled pilot can fly on essentially zero propellant, while two-phase contrast generators protruding from the tips harvest energy from the differential between space inside and outside a deployed A.T. Field.

For armament it carries the Powered 8 Long Barrel Type and stores the Magorox Counter Sword Stage 2 in the left wing's pylon. NERV Japan loads the rifle's ammunition with a reliquary, a container for an item of deep personal meaning that helps the pilot manifest an A.T. Field on the weapon's edge; the boost is attributed largely to placebo, and Asuka's chosen relic is a lock of hair she insisted Shinji cut and hand over.

The unit exists for one operation: a forced reconnaissance of the Moon to hunt for signs of Armaros, pushed by the European members of the UN Security Council, hardest hit since the Longinus Curtain attack. Asuka earns the assignment on merit, holding the top synchronization rate and the sharpest command of A.T. Field generation, with Rei Cinq escorting in Rei Six's Unit-0.0. Launching from Lake Ashi, the pair widen their orbit gradually instead of flying straight out, and the Curtain crossing turns lethal: the barrier drags both Evas along its frictionless inner surface, and when the head of a Mass Production Evangelion erupts from Unit-0.0's spine and snaps the unit's neck, Cinq thanks Asuka, detonates a massive A.T. Field, and hurls Unit-02 through the breach at the price of her life.

On the lunar surface the machine duels the Arael Carrier and cracks one of its Q.R. Signum, then watches Armaros lift a burning mass over two hundred kilometers across from a black dome and set it into the Moon, shifting mass from Earth to swell its satellite. Asuka flees without attacking, follows a distress signal to abandoned German military trucks holding only uniforms and salt, and later finds a dark glass structure sheltering a larval Sandalphon, guarded by winged Angel Carriers her railgun rounds pass through harmlessly. Cutting inside, she is unmade into data within a mechanism archiving every living creature of the previous Earth back to roughly 2400 B.C., machinery meant to shorten the next reset to 4,400 years and prepare Instrumentality in a new world; screaming Shinji's name anchors her, and Armaros itself wrenches the melding Eva loose with such force that the Allegorica's rear legs rip away at the hip, spilling half-formed animals onto the airless surface.

What survives is transformed. Unit-02 reshapes into a fanged, four-legged beast, ape-like and fearless, that sinks its teeth into Armaros' shoulders and is pulled down with the sinking giant to the Valley of Human Bodies. There it degrades into a formless mud giant, and every rock it touches erupts into a gigantic resurrected creature, protozoans, trilobites, jellyfish, dinosaurs, sowing panic among the soldiers. Hikari Horaki refuses to give up on it, embracing the shapeless mass and calling Asuka's name, then tearing out one of her own Eva's Q.R. Signum to revive Shinji inside the Super Evangelion. The chase that follows ends when a red figure, Asuka merged with her Evangelion, reaches out a hand and the Super Evangelion grasps it.

Asuka Langley Sohryu pilots the machine with Kyoko Zeppelin Sohryu's soul in its core. Rei Cinq flies the lunar sortie alongside her in Unit-0.0 and dies breaching the Longinus Curtain, while Hikari Horaki, aboard Evangelion EURO-II Heurtebise, becomes the unit's lifeline in the Valley of Human Bodies. The Allegorica name was chosen because the silhouette looked like something out of a fantastical allegory.