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1[[quoteright:225:[[Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/aeonnatumengelpossiblefuture1.jpg]]]]
2[[caption-width-right:225: [[BloodKnight Asuka]], [[DeadpanSnarker Shinji]], and [[CreepyChild Rei]].\
3[[ExaggeratedTrope Now with even less sanity!]]]]
4%%
5->''And thus it begins. The saving of the world.''
6-->-- '''Gendo Ikari''', Ashcroft Representative of Europe.
7
8''[[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4716493/1/Aeon_Natum_Engel Aeon Natum Engel]]'' is a ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion[=/=]TabletopGame/CthulhuTech[=/=][[VideoGame/FirstEncounterAssaultRecon F.E.A.R.]]'' crossover [[http://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/aeon-natum-engel-nge-cross-over.140260/ fanfic]]. That combination should tell you something of [[CosmicHorrorStory the general feel and theme of the story]].
9
10There are the local StarfishAliens, the Migou, who control the polar regions and are systematically trying to push humanity back down to the Stone Age. There is the HalfHumanHybrid cult of the [[FishPeople Esoteric Order of Dagon]] who tirelessly search for the lost city of R'lyeh in order to awake Cthulhu. There are the Disciples of the Unnamable who are divided into the {{Diabolical Mastermind}}s of the Death's Shadow who seek to corrupt humanity and the {{Omnicidal Maniac}}s of the Rapine Storm with the goal of wiping them out. Not to mention that the second largest MegaCorp is controlled by ''Nyarlathotep''. And that's just the default ''Cthulhu Tech'' setting. And on top of that, someone let [[ManipulativeBastard Gendo Ikari]] into a senior position in the ''largest'' MegaCorp (which, because it controls the {{Magitek}} on which the society is built, is basically a wing of the government), and strange beings designated as "Heralds" (and named after [[MythologyGag Canaanite deities]]) are attacking.
11
12While many ''Evangelion'' fan-fics undo some of the bleakness of the source material with RuleOfCool or simply starting from a brighter premise, this one is cold, hard and cynical. The protagonists do monstrous things in the name of survival, [[BlackAndGreyMorality heroes and villains are hard to tell apart]], and then some villains are really awful. The [[JigsawPuzzlePlot elaborate plotting]] can also make for difficult reading, it may help to take notes.
13
14Finally, as a result of [[OldShame author dissatisfaction with the fic after its finale]], a rewritten version is underway, entitled ''FanFic/AeonEntelechyEvangelion''.
15
16See ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion'', ''TabletopGame/CthulhuTech'', and ''[[VideoGame/FirstEncounterAssaultRecon F.E.A.R.]]'' for other tropes which might appear.
17
18See ''Fanfic/ChildrenOfAnElderGod'' for the other main Evangelion / ''Franchise/CthulhuMythos'' crossover.
19
20----
21!!This fic provides examples of:
22
23%%* ADeathInTheLimelight: Oh, hell yes. [[spoiler:He makes you feel sorry for cultists. That's an achievement.]]
24* AlienGeometries: A running theme, as might be guessed. The most notable is probably the Fifth Herald, Mot (the reskinned Ramiel), which ends up [[spoiler:after being nuked]] as a fractal. Also noted in the DreamSequence that the cultist experienced, although, in fairness, that sort of thing is more common in dreams.
25* AllThereInTheManual: There are the Items (3 so far), which are annotated in-universe images documents. They've produced a fair bit of speculation in the forum thread [[http://forums.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=140260 where they get posted.]] There is also a cast list posted in the same thread which gave us something interesting to think about. Also due to its strange relationship with ANE, the [[http://forums.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=159237 thread]] for [[FanFic/NobodyDies NGE: Nobody Dies]] has also some interesting information.
26* AlternateUniverse: A very brief glimpse in the AT-Field of the original EVA 01 having its head function as a two-way blood geyser.
27%%* AncientConspiracy: AHNUNG (re-skinned SEELE)
28%%* AndIMustScream: [[spoiler:Hikary of the ''Weny Komdy'']] is subjugated to this in chapter 15b.
29* AmazonBrigade: The Replica Elite are female; apparently, it makes them easier to control with their heightened aggression and cunning.
30* ASimplePlan: Operation CATO. [[spoiler: Punch through the Dagonite lines, complete the ritual the Order had already started, capture the Herald.]] Relatively simple, right? Not, overall, a success
31* AttackOfThe50FootWhatever: The Heralds.
32%%* TheAntiChrist: Foreshadowed.
33* AntiVillain: It can be argued that, from an non-anthrocentric point of view, the Migou are the true heroes of this piece, for all that they're xenocidal self-interested fungoid-insects.
34* AuthorAppeal: The author seems to like:
35** Hard Sci-fi
36** {{Deconstruction}}
37** Time travellers, aliens, and psychics [[spoiler:Yes, the Great Race of Yith, the Migou, and parapsychics all appear.]]
38** Cynicism.
39** He regularly posts to Star Destroyer.net, Spacebattles.com, and RPG.net.
40** RealTimeStrategy, almost certainly at least one ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquer'' game.
41** {{Tabletop RPG}}s
42* AwakeningTheSleepingGiant: Moloch, technically.
43* AwesomeButImpractical: Objectively, the Evas before they got the Daeva engine upgrade. Subjectively, how the most of the military sees them.
44* BeliefMakesYouStupid: Various fanatics from the Order, most notably one Guh'maena.
45* {{BFG}}:
46** In the fight against Mot, (re-skinned Ramiel, the 5th Angel) they take a partially-constructed ''frigate'' and tear off all the unimportant parts so that they can case it in cooling devices and pump the entire arcology power grid into its ventral laser.
47** The pre-CATO refits, which give the Units, in order, a particle beam, a plasma-firing minigun, and a plasma lance, run off a capital-ship grade D-Engine. The capital-grade charge beam which Unit 00 now carries (and which has been dubbed the "Rei Gun"), can be hooked up to the other two Units though umbilical cables and run off their D-Engines as well, for something which produces mushroom clouds when it hits. [[spoiler:It killed Dagon, a rather horrible number of Migou ships (to the extent that the NEG Command were really impressed), and managed to discorporate Moloch before blowing up from overuse.]]
48** Foxtrot 813's and other Replica's standard issue is a ECU-IMFW-3 (Imphaw for short) which is a powered up version of the Repeating Cannon from the first ''F.E.A.R.'' with an underslung Assault Rifle. Moreover, the Replica Elite carry the nasty {{EnergyWeapon}}s from FEAR, which put power armour killing power in the hands of infantry
49* {{BFS}}:
50** The DF-Spear, an Eva-scale spear with a core made from the crystalline structure of Mot, which conducts AT-Fields exceptionally well. Now retired, due to its [[spoiler:tendency to tear a nasty hole in the spacetime continuum when two very strong AT-Fields clash, almost forming a new Zone and destroying Units 01 and 02.]]
51** [[spoiler:Лu-hvean'tahæn]], which is...well, it has its own AT-Field. That's enough alone, even if it wasn't used by a [[spoiler:Star Spawn]], scaled appropriately.
52* BalanceOfPower: The defenses of Order-controlled Iceland are based behind this principle: If either the NEG or Migou wants to conquer it, one needs to deploy a considerable amount of forces that will leave holes in defense elsewhere, and the other will take advantage of it.
53* BilingualBonus: Quite apart from the puns or references often involved in the names of Ashcroft Groups and Projects, there is untranslated German poetry scattered through the story.
54* BlackAndGreyMorality: The NEG and the Ashcroft Foundation do some pretty not-nice things, in the name of survival, even before we get into the ''Evangelion'' and ''F.E.A.R.'' bits. Meanwhile, the Migou are shown to have a fairly good point (that humanity is in fact totally irresponsible with its reality-breaking arcanotechnology), and the Dagonites have been shown, in the VillainEpisode, to not entirely be monsters, at least along themselves. WordOfGod says that he's never going to do the same for the [[OmnicidalManiac Rapine Storm]], though. Intersects with BlueAndOrangeMorality.
55%%* BoobyTrap: The Replica Elite loves these.
56* BoundAndGagged: You don't need ropes and gags when all you have to do is to wedge a knife between C4 and C5 of the neck, inducing quadriplegia.
57* BrokeYourArmPunchingOutCthulhu: After the discussion on ''Fanfic/ChildrenOfAnElderGod'''s revival and proper ending, Tropers/EarthScorpion said that his fic would have the proper Mythos ending.
58* BugWar: Subverted. Although the Migou are insectoid, they're a cyberdemocratic, technologically advanced species who (when the readers get to see inside their heads) sound worryingly reasonable in their genocide against humanity, and who view ''humanity'' as the out-of-control bioweapons.
59* CanonDiscontinuity: Tropers/EarthScorpion [[http://forums.spacebattles.com/showpost.php?p=4415150&postcount=661 considers]] a recent supplement book (''Mortal Remains'') to be pretty subpar. With post-Core and post-Vade Mecum supplements in general, if it's not in the fic itself, then it either doesn't exist or it's very minor, usually as part of...
60%% * CharacterizationMarchesOn: The Migou.
61%% * ChekhovsArmoury
62* ChildSoldiers: Lampshaded and deconstructed, as might be expected. Project Evangelion gets called on it by wings of the "proper" military several times.
63* CombatPragmatist: Almost everybody considering the nature of the fic, but the Replica Elites fill the cake with explosives and leave it for someone to find, then pick off the survivors as they stand, covered in the remains of their friends.
64* CosmicHorrorStory: It's a Mythos story. It has added ''Evangelion''. What else '''would''' it be?
65* CrapsackWorld: It's Creator/HPLovecraft meets ''Evangelion'' (squared, because of how it inspired ''Cthulhu Tech'') meets ''First Encounter Assault Recon''. Bleak doesn't even go anywhere near describing the outlook for humanity.
66* CrazyEnoughToWork: How the Plasma Minigun was created.
67* CreepyChild:
68** Surprisingly ''averted'' with the daughter of the cultist in chapter 12. Yes, she may be a Deep One hybrid, and was implied to be a weak precognitive. She still just squabbles with her siblings and acts like an eight-year old does.
69** Played straight with [[spoiler:Alma]]...who [[spoiler:is Rei's mother and destroys the world in the end]].
70* CreepyDoll: Five of them in the cultist's nightmare.
71* {{Crossover}}: If we ignore for a moment that ANE ''is'' one, it has a rather ''interesting'' meta-relationship with ''FanFic/NobodyDies''
72* CultureClash: As the latter chapters shows, all sides in Aeon War have a radically different views on what's good and what's bad.
73* {{Cyberspace}}: The realm of Magi Operators. That said, [[HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace Cyberspace Is A Scary Place]]
74* DeadpanSnarker: Almost every character (even Rei) shows some elements of this, most notably Shinji.
75* DecadeDissonance: The technology level of Order-controlled Iceland mainly consists of outdated Second Cold War-Era equipment and occasional First Arcanotech War gear.
76* DefensiveFeintTrap: [[spoiler:The Esoteric Order of Dagon built half a city with the intent of blowing it up once the invaders got close enough. That is to speak nothing of the nuclear torpedoes they held back 'till the least opportune moment.]]
77* DespairEventHorizon: The arrival of the ''actual'' Migou warships has this effect on many people, enough to consider (and implement) some very desperate measures.
78* DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu: [[spoiler:Rei, did you just blow up Dagon? Fettel, did you just MindRape '''Dagon'''!?]]
79* DisContinuityNod: The Migou really considered moving a second [Exclusion Volume] [Containment and Defence] Planetoid (read: Hive Ship) to Earth, but recent Tsab activity forced them to drop the option.
80* DividedWeFall: Uniting humanity against the common threat is one thing; getting them to agree on ''how'' to fight said common threat can be problematic.
81* DreamLand: In Vanilla CT it was eaten. In ANE it stays that way, except that it still exists. How? Well, it's still getting digested.
82* DrivenToSuicide: Fights between Evas and Heralds seems to cause continent-wide Aeon War Syndrome with more sensitive people, with messy suicides being one of the more common results.
83* EasyLogistics: Averted. Weapons run out of coolant, even with nanofactories the NEG armed forces have to fight over who gets to use the ones large enough to make capital grade equipment, and let's not even get started on the lengths that the Esoteric Order of Dagon has to go to keep old-fashioned industry (as NEG and Migou nanophages make operating nanofactories without the proper counter agents almost impossible) running.
84* EldritchAbomination: Where to start? With the Heralds, which are the Angels but ''even more'' Lovecraftian? With the fungoid insects of the Migou? With the Deep Ones? With [[spoiler:Rei, and the rest of Project Herkunft]]? [[spoiler:Earth Scorpion himself?]]
85* {{EMP}}: Emfog and other similar stuff.
86* EmpathicWeapon: Both the Evangelions, and their "spin-off" lesser siblings, the Engels. Interestingly, in Chapter 13, the Engels are shown to be ''smarter'' than the Evangelions, and actually able to sort of communicate back.
87* TheEmpire: Subverted: ANE!Migou is not so much an empire as much as it's a loose network based on the philosophy of making sure that hidden, sealed, and dangerous things '''stay''' hidden and sealed. It's also stated that "Migou" is a collective term for member races of the Network instead of the name of one race.
88* EnemyMine: Mild version - The Migou withdrew some of their forces so that NEG could use the now-freed-up forces on the Herald. [[spoiler:The NEG isn't returning the favour for Moloch, the reskinned Sandalphon]].
89* EpiphanicPrison: Shinji is trying to keep himself sane during the nightmares by applying this belief.
90* {{Expospeak}} and {{Infodump}}: Well done actually.
91* EyeScream: An Engel pilot's wife clawed her eyes out as a result of Herald-generated Aeon War Syndrome.
92* {{Foreshadowing}}: All the time. At some points, it seems that dropping plot hints is something the author is actually addicted to.
93* FormulaicMagic: The Salaamian school of sorcery is related, conceptually, to the mathematics used in ''Dreams in the Witch House''.
94* AFormYouAreComfortableWith: By rendering mind shattering abominations to look like something from the century-old anime. (They are ''still'' mind shattering...)
95* FictionalVideogame: Doctrine of Eternal Aeons III.
96* FromBadToWorse:
97** Operation CATO not going exactly as planned? Fishmen using nukes? Migou responding to all that? The summoning of the Herald gone wrong? Pray that the author won't make the Rapine Storm appear out of nowhere, despite being at least a whole continent away from Iceland.
98** Chapter 15b ends with this line:
99---> And then it got worse.
100** Considering the ending, there's not many ways it could've possibly gotten worse.
101* FunctionalMagic: Takes the ''Cthulhu Tech'' sorcery and splits it into major schools: Cassandran, [[spoiler:Horakian]], [[spoiler:Lorenzian]] and Salaamian, although the last one barely qualifies as major [[spoiler:not that it stopped Special Services from using it in summoning the Herald]].
102* FunWithAcronyms: Misato typed out a report on Eva's new gear and other stuff for Ritsuko, who didn't bother to read it, and she named it ROE.
103* FusionFic: Both ''Evangelion'' and ''F.E.A.R.'' have been blended almost seamlessly into the greater ''Cthulhu Tech'' universe. Not that this was necessarily that hard for ''Evangelion'', of course, but still...
104** [[Anime/MagicalGirlLyricalNanoha Nanoha]] has also been included, properly [[CosmicHorrorStory Lovecraftianized]]. And there are enough ShoutOut references to [[Creator/AlastairReynolds Revelation Space]] that it can probably be called a component. Of course, that didn't need to be altered much to fit in.
105* GambitRoulette: Gendo and Fuyutsuki admit that this is what their plans amount to, since certain eldritch abominations can screw over them without trying. Or in author's words:
106--> '''Tropers/EarthScorpion''': I'm not gonna spoil anything by saying that one of the possible reasons why something didn't go as planned is simply the result of Nyarlathotep being a dick.
107* GatlingGood: The Plasma Minigun.
108* GodzillaThreshold: "The NEG had decided at a very high level, back in 2084, that the earth's biosphere was fundamentally replaceable."
109* GratuitousGerman: Used throughout (and fairly accurately), both in the [[GeniusBonus names of the Ashcroft Projects and Groups]] and in the occasional section of untranslated German poetry, as well as Asuka getting angry.
110* GoingForTheBigScoop: Your standard battlefield reporters, except with more common sense and less desire to dig up conspiracies, since humanity already has enough enemies in this War.
111* GoodIsDumb: How everybody else views humanity, particularly the Migou. Apart from the fact that they don't think of humanity as good.
112* GoodNewsBadNews: The whole Moloch disaster aside, at least they got [[spoiler:Dagon]].
113* GoMadFromTheRevelation: This is Mythos-based, after all. There's also a bit of a running gag in the comments about the ''readers'' going mad every time Tropers/EarthScorpion throws us another [[JigsawPuzzlePlot piece of the puzzle]].
114* HailfirePeaks: Iceland. TruthInTelevision here; it really does have glaciers in close proximity to active volcanoes. Although somewhat less FishPeople, StarfishAliens, and {{Eldritch Abomination}}s. Probably.
115* HermeticMagic: Your standard Arcane Magic from ''TabletopGame/CthulhuTech''. ANE got one notable example with the special ship equipped with lots of very accurate lasers carving out the summoning runes on the side of the mountain.
116* HeWhoFightsMonsters: This basically happened to most of the high-ranking members of the NEG a long time ago. [[spoiler:Perhaps the best example of this is Colonel Rury of the Special Weapons Division, who, as a Nazzadi (a cloned, genetically altered human subspecies designed by the Migou to wipe out humanity, who rebelled) has overseen the creation of the Replicas, cloned, genetically-altered (in some way, we're not exactly sure what went into them), human-based constructs designed to wipe out anything which opposes the NEG, and who ''can't even conceive of the possibility of rebellion''.]] Yes, in some ways, we're already better monsters than the monsters (also see: the NEG assault on Iceland, and the Replica Elite against Loyalist Nazzadi).
117* HighAltitudeBattle: See the ItsRainingMen entry below.
118* HiveMind: Played with for the Migou. Despite their insectoid appearance, they're not a hive minded species naturally. However, quite apart from their cyberdemocratic social structure, with individuals linked into data networks all the time, they also [[AllThereInTheManual have]] a way of splitting their souls between multiple bodies, creating a sort of limited hive-mind, where every [body-form/individual] in the network is them.
119* HoldTheLine: The Evangelions and what other forces that could be spared trying to keep the Migou away from Moloch until they could capture the Herald.
120* HopeSpot: After the initial bombings, Iceland's defenders spot [[spoiler:three titanic figures rising from the deep, mistaking them for Dagon's eldest children, then mistaking them for Cthulhu's with the rise of religious zeal. And then one of the titans starts to burn everything in its way.]]
121* HumansAreCthulhu: [[spoiler:Alma Wade is implied to be humanity's own Old One. Dagon's ignorance of this trope is why he initially thinks Paxton Fettel has to be a son of Yog-Sothoth, even when the invocation dosen't work.]]
122* HyperSpaceIsAScaryPlace: It's been hinted that the area within an AT-Field is a separate universe, where the universal constants...aren't.
123* HumanoidAbomination: There are lots of human-looking things, which are just vaguely off. [[spoiler:Of course, if they look like a human, they're probably an artificial being...or Nyarlathotep]]. And [[spoiler:then there's Alma]], as well as Replica sub-commander Orpheus, a... thing that sucks the memories (or soul?) from the Nazzadi loyalist squad leader.
124* [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters Human Sub-Species Are The Real Monsters]]: Well...yes. The state vivisects people suspected of involvement in cults and puts them through intrusive neural response mapping (it does repair them if they're found innocent, but come on). The Ashcroft Foundation has the Projects and the Groups, which involve things like the Evangelion Group (sticking teenagers in arcanocyberxenobiological monstrosities and using them as soldiers) and the [[VideoGame/FirstEncounterAssaultRecon Herkunft]] Group.
125-->'''Earth Scorpion''':Nazzadi are just human, which is to say, they're bastard-covered bastards with a bastard topping and a squishy bastard core.
126* HumansAreSpecial: Subverted. We're an species descended from out-of-control Elder Thing hypertech on a world which is important because it's claimed by much more powerful species than us, and we're the idiots mucking around with technology we don't understand. That said, e live on Cthulhu's planet and even created our own [[spoiler:Old One]]...although that's not really a good thing.
127* IHaveManyNames: Comes with the Mythos. Nyarlathotep gets a new one in this fic: More Of A Dick Than Gendo. Also true for Rei (Rei Ayanami, the First Child, the Third Infant, Invidia).
128* {{Invisibility}}: Besides the standard mecha-exlusive cloaking devices from canon ''Cthulhu Tech'', the Replica Assassins have personal cloaking devices, which in this setting is considered revolutionary.
129* InMediasRes: The beginning of Operation CATO from the cultist's point of view. The next chapter takes us back three days to the NEG staging phase of CATO.
130* InsignificantLittleBluePlanet: But of course. Somewhat played straight by humanity themselves, who consider the total ecological annihilation of everything besides humanity as acceptable sacrifice, as long as they get to survive.
131* InstantArmor: The Star Spawn High Priest's [[Anime/MagicalGirlLyricalNanoha "Barrier Jacket".]]
132* InvisibleAnatomy: Sub-Commander Orpheus looks like a halfway decomposed corpse that shouldn't be standing at all. Justified that it's a psy-projection, and he probably is like that in his life-support coffin.
133* ISenseADisturbanceInTheForce: Heralds seems to give this, particularly in form of Aeon War Syndrome.
134* ItsRainingMen: Several companies of special forces PowerArmor along with Unit 02, being dropped from high in the atmosphere, to conduct a mid-air boarding of Migou Swarm Ships. [[spoiler:It works. Less fun when the Migou pull the same on Operation CATO.]]
135* JigsawPuzzlePlot: ...with just about the right ratio of answers to new questions.
136** Note that unlike the fic's source material, the picture the pieces make when put together actually makes sense...in a very horrifying, Lovecraftian sort of way, appropriately enough.
137** Note also that even knowing what the hell was going on in ''Evangelion'' won't help you much here.
138* KansasCityShuffle: The whole Operation CATO is nothing but the cover for the Herald capturing.
139* KillerGameMaster: WordOfGod states that he partially writes this fic as a imaginary RPG session, and considering what happens in the fic itself, it fits ([[spoiler:Especially the RocksFallEverybodyDies style ending]]).
140* KillSat: Implied with GODSPEAR.
141* KnightTemplar: A Cultist during the Operation CATO is left in charge (after killing the competition) of one of the the survivor groups, and to ensure that they will live to fight another day, she places the weakest of the group, the children, as a rear guard and the vanguard. For some reason, she reminds people of [[Anime/TengenToppaGurrenLagann Rossiu]], although WordOfGod says that it was unintentional.
142* LampshadeHanging: Really quite common, in the form of:
143* LemonyNarrator
144* LittleHeroBigWar: The Aeon War is large enough that even the Evangelions are dwarfed beside it. And then you occasionally meet the little guys, like the lone FSB agents who had the OIS barge into their investigation, who really have no clue what is going on, plot-wise.
145* MacrossMissileMassacre: As a part of Cthulhu Tech's ''Macross'' legacy, everybody got the multi-missile launchers. Chapter 15b crowned the Migou as kings of this trope with their ridiculously advanced hive mind-like storms upon storms of missiles.
146* MadScientist: There are a lot of sanity-challenged scientists in this fic. The Evangelion ones, the Engel ones, the Herkunft ones, and when the author gets around to explaining exactly what Projects Achtzig and Amunet actually are, I'm sure they'll be somewhat insane, too.
147** Megalomania ''is'' a form of insanity, yes...
148* [[MagicVersusScience Magical Thinking Versus Scientific Thinking]]: Although, as a Mythos story, there's no real difference between the two (except in the way that humans can't understand the arcane properly), there's pretty resounding triumph for the scientific method, all in all. That's one of the big reasons the [[FishPeople Deep Ones]] are in the trouble they are in; both the Migou and the NEG are just a lot better at making use of things. Not to mention the fact that sorcery has become a science, and a lot of the scientists in the story, at the very least, also dabble in sorcery. That's not even to mention the OSS sorcerers (complete with cyberbrains), who work with a form which involves performing the hyper-dimensional complex equations involved in sorcery from first principles, rather than just relying upon the classically-used rules of thumb, allowing much more precision in their effects.
149* {{Magitek}}: As noted in the ''Cthulhu Tech'' article, magic is merely a kind of science not understood by people yet. The D-Engine is a classic kind of Magitek, though, with its flagrant disregard for thermodynamics. And then there's the use of [[Franchise/GhostInTheShell cyberbrains]] to link sorcerers together ''inside someone's soul'' and make sorcerous rituals faster to cast. That is, rituals where the arcane symbols are carved into a mountain using a giant laser mounted on a flying battlecruiser, because getting a sculptor is too slow.
150* MeaningfulName: Very fond of this. There's Project Daeva, this story's version of Jet Alone. The Heralds are named for Canaanite deities. There are both the Infants and the Children, who appear to have some degree of overlap. There are all the Ashcroft Foundation Projects, and the codenames for the Project Paragon subjects.
151* MechaExpansionPack: Most of the new toys of the MidSeasonUpgrade are this.
152* MediumAwareness: According to a [[{{Omake}} code-OMAKE event]], Rei is aware of everything in the story that the author has planned. This might actually not be a joke.
153* MegaCrossover: It hits the required minimum number for the "Mega" label when the ''F.E.A.R.'' elements start working their way in. There may be yet more connections; many (though not all) of the {{Shout Out}}s turn out to be plot-relevant in some way. Most notably, the ''F.E.A.R.'' elements started as simple {{Shout Out}}s, but slowly started making their way into the main story. [[spoiler:The Lovecraftianized ''[[Anime/MagicalGirlLyricalNanoha Nanoha]]'' elements look to be heading in the same direction.]]
154* MeleeATrois: Chapter 14 has set this up. Oh, yes. Then Chapter 15b sets up a different one.
155* MercyKill: The 8 year old cultist girl mentioned in the CreepyChild entry above tries to do this for her dying little sister, fails and breaks down in tears.
156* MidSeasonUpgrade: ...or a late SoLastSeason considering that they are still on early Heralds, but the Evas had their conventional D-Engines replaced with the engines that powered Project Daeva, which gives them a ''lot'' more power output without tearing reality to pieces (as much), and that's not counting the new hardware. Even Rei was somewhat impressed.
157* MinovskyPhysics: Arcanotech in general and some of the magic and para-psychics fit this trope.
158* MindOverManners: Imported from ''Cthulhu Tech''. Played with during the NERO briefing, where Rei describes Misato's unstable emotional state, after which Misato calms down and then gets angry and tells Rei to stop probing her head, after which Rei explains that she has no mind-reading powers (as far as we know) and being a sensory type, she is just good at analyzing.
159* MindRape: [[spoiler:Paxton Fettel]] does that to [[spoiler:Dagon.]] Oh, yes. Everyone loves EldritchAbomination MindRape.
160* MindScrew:
161** The effect at just looking at some [[CosmicHorrorStory extra-normal]] things, the dreams, [[spoiler:Alma, oh gods, Alma]]...uh, basically, the story is sort of made of this trope.
162** It's widely agreed to be the effect of reading too much ''Aeon Natum Engel'' in one sitting, and may cause manic laughter, over-analysis of patterns, and starting to think like [[EldritchAbomination EarthScorpion]].
163* MissingMom: Oh boy, yes. Hikary notes that there are fairly high fatality/incapacity rates among Ashcroft researchers, and a lot of people have lost parents. [[spoiler:And we know what that means.]] Meanwhile, Yui is not only missing from life, but there isn't even a single picture anywhere on the metanet, which is ''really'' suspicious, according to Asuka.
164* MostWritersAreHuman: Averted. There's a slightly disturbing tendency to get behind the mindset of inhuman beings, to the extent that the third person narration style changes in those sections, to match the propoganda and way that those things think.
165* MuggingTheMonster: Some punks (described in the cast list as "the three morons") tried to mug a Dhohanoid pair in interlude 2. The results are predictable.
166* MyLifeFlashedBeforeMyEyes: Or more accurately, sucked out.
167* MythologyGag:
168** Many, with the Operation CATO being a very ironic re-telling of the JSSDF assault on the Geofront during ''End of Evangelion''.
169** EVA-01 & EVA-02's [=LITANs=] are named Nerv and Gehirn, respectively.
170* NegativeSpaceWedgie: Destroying two reality-breaking energy sources close to each other is a bad idea, as the newly created Zone after the Twin-Herald fight will show you.
171* NeverTheSelvesShallMeet: The recent omake's footnotes (yes, [[ItMakesSenseInContext footnotes]]) shows why.
172* NightmareSequence: Both Shinji and the Dagonite cultist from the VillainEpisode have had these. They're probably some kind of Foreshadowing, especially the cultist's dream.
173* NukeEm: Suggested by both NEG High Command and Migou [meeting/assembly] as a response to the deteriorating situation in Iceland, but fortunately postponed. The Order, on the other hand...
174* NumberedHomeworld: The Migou classification for the Sol system is ǶǡѬѮӜ-[(zero-46,656) and (thirtyone-1296) and (eleven-36) and (thirtyfive)]-[(zero-60,466,176) and (one-1,679,616) and (twentynine-46,656) and (seven-1296) and (seventeen-36) and (three)].
175** For those without sufficient spare time to convert that into human-readable form, that works out to ǶǡѬѮӜ-VBZ-T7H3 in base 36, or ǶǡѬѮӜ-40607-1362711 in decimal. Your call on whether it means anything.
176* {{Omake}}: Now comes complete with a separate selection of non-canon [[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5614523/1/Aeon_Natum_Engel_Code_OMAKE Code OMAKE]] situations, including two (at current date) examinations of what would happen if the ''Aeon Natum Engel'' characters met their ''FanFic/NobodyDies'' counterparts. There is Rei-based [[MoodWhiplash Temperment Whiplash]].
177* OneSteveLimit: Averted. There's Hikary Horaki, the amlati ClassRepresentative, and Hikary, the ''Weny Komdy'' of the Loyalist power armor squad. There's also the [[spoiler:Horakian]] school of sorcery, which Tropers/EarthScorpion has said ''not'' named after [[spoiler:Hikary Horaki's maternal]] family...and then there's "Orpheus," the codename for one of the Eva-candidates [[spoiler:Hikary Horaki again! (probably)]] and Sub-Commander Orpheus...at least we all ''hope'' they are not the same character.
178%%* OurGodsAreDifferent: The Heralds.
179* OutOfFocus: In the LittleHeroBigWar kind of way, the Eva pilots get a little focus during Operation CATO compared to everything else. They seem to get a little more focus back in chapter15b.
180* OverusedRunningGag: In-universe Misato certainly thinks so about the Special Services' non-existence.
181* PaintingTheMedium: Certain things are always represented in italics, like foreign (or made up) languages. The Heralds' thoughts were each represented differently, and occasionally the alignment of the text shifts.
182* PostCyberPunk: The arcologies, and the New Earth Government in general. Notably getting more so in more recent chapters, especially as the Achtzig Group comes more into play.
183* PoweredByAForsakenChild: The Patrone system is implied to be an example of this; what is about a head taller than a man's torso, and a little wider?
184* PsychicPowers: ANE takes it up a notch and basically makes it a twisted reflection of arcane magic.
185* PunctuationShaker: All the time when the Order is involved. Justified in that it is noted that humans really can't speak it properly, and then lampshaded when a Star Spawn notes to itself that the [[FishPeople Deep Ones]] can't, either.
186* PurpleProse: Avoids the usual shortcomings associated with this style. Most of the time.
187* RaceLift: Several characters (Toji, Hikari, Makoto, Rei, [[spoiler:Asuka?]]) are changed to Nazzadi or xenomixes (human-Nazzadi crosses, as they're sub-species and so can cross-breed). Rei is a ''sidoci''.
188* RedHerring: WordOfGod says that something that everyone expects to happen will turn out to be like this.
189* RealRobot: The non-Evangelion mecha are like this, and even the Evas, when AT-Fields aren't involved, are closer to this than normal.
190* RealityWarper: The AT-Fields, and anything with the ability to produce one.
191* ReligiousAndMythologicalThemeNaming: The Heralds are named after Canaanite deities and also the usual fluff from other series.
192* RougeAnglesOfSatin: Averted, actually. It's rather well edited, with only a slight tendency to [[SesquipedalianLoquaciousness excess verbosity]], especially when he's expositioning.
193* RunningGag: Meta-examples with the already mentioned readers going mad from connecting parts of the puzzle and assuming that everyone whose name starts with Nya is a aspect of Nyarlathotep...
194** Special Services doesn't exist.
195* SadlyMythtaken: Gendo comments on the widespread belief that Necronomicom will drive you insane by simply reading it. Thought he does states that re-reading certain accurate parts after similar events happened in reality will do this.
196%% * SchrodingersGun
197* SealedEvilInACan: Duh. [[spoiler:It's also the whole reason why everybody wants to take over Iceland. Hell, the reason Iceland itself exists is because of the said can]].
198* SeparateButIdentical: The similarities between human and Nazzadi is even more evident in here than in ''Cthulhu Tech''. Besides better agility and nightvision, their different appearance and preference for racial mecha, Nazzadi can be practically identical to humans, especially the younger generation. Compare that to Canon better-than-you Nazzadi from ''Mortal Remains''.
199* ScaleOfScientificSins: 1 is banned; 2 is what started this whole mess; 3 and 5 resulted in Nazzadi and Project Herkunft and "officially" banned for same reasons as 1; 4, 6 and 7 will have to wait until the rewrite...and even then there's no guarantee that they'll show up.
200* ScrewYourself: Genderbending magic allows homosexual couples to have children. Unfortunately, people being people, of course someone decided to impregnate themselves using sperm produced when they were male, then transitioning to/back to female. In-universe this is known as Egocest, and often leaves the child with a bunch of nasty recessive conditions. The YY combination doesn't work, as it's noted that a quarter of originally-male pregnancies are non-viable.
201* SelfDuplication: The Migou Soldiers of Necessary Actions as seen in Iceland are the soul splitting variant. See also HiveMind.
202%% * ShownTheirWork
203%% * ShowWithinAShow
204* ShroudedInMyth: OSS expected Moloch to be slightly larger than the Evas instead of a kilometers-long monstrosity.
205* SinisterSilhouettes: Pulled of by the EVAs at the start of Operation CATO.
206* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: So cynical it gets a bit caustic at times. There's even a thinly veiled author digression in Chapter 9 against the idea that ''[[Anime/TengenToppaGurrenLagann TTGL]]''-style tactics could ever work, as Tropers/EarthScorpion is one of those strange people in the "Rossiu was Right" camp. To hammer it home, during Operation CATO some cultists with some very familiar names and personalities are gunned down by Foxtrot 813.
207* SlidingScaleOfSillinessVersusSeriousness: Very serious.
208* SlidingScaleOfVillainEffectiveness: The Order and the Rapine Storm, while dangerous, are contained. The Migou however can curbstomp both NEG and the Cults, but are too afraid to wake up the [{HAZARDS}/{THREATS}] if they use their full military potential.
209* SlidingScaleOfVillainThreat: As far as humans concerned, every other side is a global-level threat. Subverted with Migou, who are actually an alliance against Universal and higher-level threats.
210* SophisticatedAsHell
211* StateSec: Earth Scorpion's interpretation of ''TabletopGame/CthulhuTech'' StateSec in the Core and Vade Mecum basically makes them a something that not even Solid Snake will sneak by, also making it impossible for the Damnation View's [[FanonDiscontinuity "Everything is Falling Apart" scenario]] to happen.
212* StrongFamilyResemblance:
213** According to Dr. Miyakame, Asuka looks and sounds enough like her mother that, from behind, he mistook them, which was a bit of a shock for him.
214** There's still the Shinji-Gendo similarity, which gets lampshaded whenever Shinji raises an eyebrow or interlocks his fingers (normally with comments along the lines of "Don't do that. It looks odd.").
215* SuperPrototype: Evas to Engels, although less supery than most examples.
216* SuperweaponSurprise: Fishmen got nukes.
217* SuspiciouslySpecificDenial: This trope certainly does not apply to anything to do with Special Services.
218-->Special Services did not exist. It was not the penultimate branch of NEG authority, a black-books agency which was assigned to threats of a cosmic and/or metaphysical level. Their field agents were not almost, to a man, sorcerers and parapsychics, and they were not expressly given permission to ignore the NEG laws on summoning and binding extra-normal entities, consorting with Outsiders, use of parapsychic abilities on innocents, and registering their powers. They were not granted latitude to break the laws that even the OIS had to follow. The agency did not largely recruit from individuals arrested by the OIS, from among those who dabbled in the otherworldly and managed to remain both human and sane, and certainly did not subject them to extensive neuromodification, genetherapy and other illegal techniques developed in collaboration with top-secret Ashcroft Groups to ensure that they were both loyal and the best that they could be.\
219\
220After all, Special Services did not exist.\
221\
222They were, however, TheMenInBlack who conspiracy theorists whispered about and cultists dreaded.
223* TakeThat:
224** Interlude 2 consists largely of mockery of the...sillier parts of the extended Franchise/CthulhuMythos, especially Creator/BrianLumley, although the author has also made his disdain for Creator/AugustDerleth clear.
225** When Shinji watches TV, it's clear that the author does not like sensationalist talk shows.
226%%* {{Techno|Babble}}-{{Magibabble}}
227%%* TechnologyPorn
228* [[TellMeAboutMyFather Tell Me About My Mother]]: They didn't specifically ask, but Dr. Mikayame (the guy who created the Engels) starts to rant about Yui and Kyoko after mistaking both Shinji and Asuka for them.
229* TemptingFate - "''The possibility of a [[VideoGame/HalfLife resonance cascade scenario]] is extremely unlikely!''"
230* ThereAreNoTherapists: Averted, thanks to the story's ''Cthulhu Tech'' heritage. The Children are actually subjected to mandatory counseling, to prevent them from going crazy. It's working as well as can be expected given the setting (i.e., not very).
231%% * ThisIsNotADrill
232* TranslationConvention:
233** This happens when somebody reads something (like Rei's "notes") since the Author established that his settings uses reformed English as the main language, which in simple terms is a fully phonetic version of our modern English. The main reason for reformation is to reduce the numbers of screwups in increasingly common arcane rituals (and to avoid cleaning the mess because of some very minor misspelling during the ritual).
234** The Migou [meeting/assembly]. Still hard to understand, though.
235** Averted in several other scenes, most notably the Nazzadi Loyalists, who appear to use an entirely fictional, [[ViewersAreGeniuses internally consistent]] language.
236* {{Understatement}}: Quite common considering the writing style. Here's an example from one chapter:
237-->Things were a little less confident in Nero Command.
238* {{Unperson}}: Yui-sama, as usual. Asuka is having trouble believing that Shinji couldn't find anything about her on the net.
239* UnusualUserInterface:
240** Maya and other Magi operators take a page from ''Anime/GhostInTheShell'' with very thinly disguised cyberbrains.
241** There are the Special Services cybersorcerers, who take a leaf from the [[Creator/AlastairReynolds Conjoiner's]] book.
242** There's also both the Evangelions and the Engels; the latter are controlled with implants that link your nervous system up to the ''thing'' underneath the armor.
243* UrbanWarfare: As shown in battles in former-Reykjavik.
244* ViewersAreGeniuses: In-universe Shinji comments that one of the TV shows is one giant pile of this. You almost have to be to get some of the references, and then there's all the untranslated German...
245* VillainEpisode: The normal life of the Dagonite society in the Order-controled Iceland, [[spoiler:until they get bombed with chemical, biological, micrological and nanological weapons, assaulted by Replica soldiers, and finally, have the Evas emerge from the deep to turn this day in the limelight into the day in the man-made Novas]].
246* TheWarSequence: Operation CATO.
247* WarIsHell: This sequence during operation CATO spells just how.
248-->"It's a five-four-fifty-five. That means that some of the captives have had slow-release drugs that induce symptoms akin to paranoid schizophrenia injected before we got to them, and had non-metallic knives hidden on them. They're normally fully symptomatic before they find the knives, if they do at all. Sometimes they just attack the others with their bare hands and teeth."\
249\
250He glared at them.\
251\
252"Do you know what it's like working in an environment where it's so common that we have a standardised code for it?"
253* WeaksauceWeakness: [[spoiler:The sixth Herald is an aquatic being that hasn't been on earth since before the oxygen catastrophe. The modern atmosphere is poisonous to it and it swims in water rich in flammable hydrocarbons. Of course, its AT field protects it from these things at first...]]
254* WeaponOfMassDestruction: The Anti-Order Kraken device, which will result in very messy ecological disaster if used. Thankfully, its use was denied...or postponed.
255* WeHaveReserves: Subverted for Migou. Those "reserves" are extra bodies that one individual Migou soldier can occupy with the soul splitting process.
256* WeirdnessMagnet: The intelligence community think that Evas are this to the Heralds, or that someone is arranging for them to be at the right place at the right time.
257* WellIntentionedExtremist: Every side view themselves like this.
258* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman: So, exactly, how are the vat-grown, weaponised, genetically-altered first generation Nazzadi different from the vat-grown, weaponised, genetically-altered Replica troops? [[spoiler:Well, apart from the fact that the Replicas are soulless.]]
259* WhatTheHellHero: Our heroes got some criticism for contaminating Lake Michigan with Shoggoth-like substances. Considering the InsignificantLittleBluePlanet example above, it's more likely has to do with the lake being right next to the capital of the NEG than about ecological reasons.
260%% * {{Xenofiction}}
261* YouAreNotReady: ANE!Migou's true purpose of invasion (Stop playing with toys that will wake up the Old Ones you hairless apes!) compared to Canon!Migou (who see humanity as a threat to their interests).
262* YouCanNotGraspTheTrueForm: Comes with the settings. Subverted with Rei, who deals with this, as seen in the twin Herald aftermath, by simply not even trying (down to the instinctual level) to understand it.
263
264----
265->''How Boring.''
266-->-- '''Nyarlathotep''', The former CEO of the Chrysalis Corporation, the Soul of the Outer Gods, the Crawling Chaos, the Great Beast, Lord Entropy, the End of All Things, Master of Cessation, King of Oblivion, More Of A Dick Than Gendo, the Watcher in the Dark (Whatever the fuck he feels like).
267

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