Sorry for being a day late to the conclusion of this chapter, but doing a fair share of the paperwork to buy myself a flat took a lot of the time I had this past weekend. It's been
but, hey, at least I'll stop having to pay an exorbitant amount of rent every month of my life! That's worth a headache or five.
In any case, I'll get started with Chapter 11 ASAP, but considering that I still have more stuff to take care of this weekend chances are the next update will come on Sunday 26th, or somewhere along those lines. Send your positive energy to Shinji in the meantime, because he'll probably ne ed it.
‘Damn, it still hurts. Feels like I put my hand in a trash compactor.’
Misato Katsuragi flexed and relaxed her right hand almost in time with her steps, wincing slightly at the pangs of pain that lanced up her arm with every single motion. Not a life-threatening injury by any means, but certainly one that had been distracting her ever since Misato had greeted the newest Pilot recruit.
‘...The hell’s up with that girl, anyway?’ the Major thought, thinking back to the day’s biggest surprise. ‘She doesn’t look any older than the other Pilots, but-’
A sudden loss of tempo in the steps behind her brought Misato to a sudden stop, and she turned to see one of her Section-2 escorts bringing a hand to his ear. New instructions, no doubt.
“What’s wrong?” the Major demanded once it looked like he’d finished.
“Your attention is required elsewhere, Major,” the man replied, curt and faux-polite as all Section-2 always were. “Please follow us.”
Misato raised an eyebrow in wonder, and was about to protest the invitation and focus back on her thoughts when she remembered the specifics of her current situation.
“Fine,” she agreed with a sigh. “Not like I have much of a choice, anyway.”
With the positions in their formation now reversed, Misato followed the two black-clad agents as they led the way through the labyrinthine corridors of NERV HQ, thinking harder about what Ikari would demand of her than about where her feet were carrying her. At least, until the group arrived at an elevator and Misato quickly noticed a detail that went against her expectations:
They weren’t going up.
“...This is not the way to the Commander’s office,” Misato commented, narrowing her eyes and quietly patting the side of her jacket to ensure that her sidearm was still there. “Where are you taking me?”
But the two men provided no answer to her query, silently waiting until the elevator stopped at the third basement floor before restarting their march, one of them remaining at her back to ensure that Misato would follow. Once again the Major did so, her mind frenziedly coming up with possibilities and contingency plans for a worst case scenario until the same agent that had instructed her before stopped, and indicated a nondescript door with his hand.
“We’ve arrived. This way, please.”
Despite the wording, the man’s words were not an invitation and Misato wasn’t keen on learning the consequences of non-compliance. That being so, she did as commanded, and as the door’s knob turned and a hidden system beeped in agreement of her actions, the only thing that Misato clearly and absolutely understood was that Gendo Ikari likely had nothing to do with this latest development.
Stepping inside, Misato recalled from her memories of the NERV HQ floor plans (which, admittedly, weren’t very clear) that this specific floor was mostly comprised of storage rooms for the base’s automated delivery system, which brought supplies to every corner of the NERV pyramid when required and in record time.
But a storage room is not what greeted her inside.
“Good evening, Major Katsuragi,” a distinctly male voice spoke to her from a large armchair that obscured her vision. “It is a pleasure to finally meet you.”
Now blinking for different reasons than she had initially expected, Misato took a quick look at the walls around her and swiftly identified a bunch of computers and a variety of monitoring equipment that certainly shouldn’t have been there if her memory was accurate. Misato became even more certain that her memory was right when she noticed how brightly lit the room was, everywhere save for the final stretch of it in which the armchair sat and the voice had come from, making the ambience of it all very obviously intentional.
“The monitoring equipment you are wearing is being jammed by the gentlemen who brought you,” the voice continued, Misato taking a quick look behind her and receiving a stoic nod in response. Clearly, they weren’t actually Section-2. “So feel free to speak your mind without any worries.”
“Speak my mind, huh? Well, I’ll say that someone’s trying really hard,” Misato snarked before she could help herself. “Or did I somehow time-travel back to the seventies?”
“I know, right?”
Misato raised an eyebrow at the supporting response, and not only because it was in agreement with her criticism but, because this time, and despite coming from exactly the same place as last time, the voice that had answered her had been female. And one that Misato had heard not too long ago, incidentally.
“Makinami…?” Misato mouthed right as the armchair turned around and the Fifth Child made herself known, the older woman barely stopping herself from doing a double-take. “The fuck?”
“I know what you’re thinking, but this was not my idea,” the twin-tailed girl put her hands up in defence. “I’m just helping with giving it form, so to speak.”
“…What?” Misato frowned, trying to make sense of what the Fifth Child had just said before she shook her head and focused on what was truly important. “No, scratch that. What are you even doing-?”
“How quick you are to betray your allies, Agent Morgan,” the male voice from before reproachfully cut in before Misato could finish, the Major quickly looking around to try and pinpoint where the out-of-place voice was coming from. It wasn’t until a second later that Misato noticed a choker around her neck that Makinami hadn’t been wearing before.
“Shut up, Arthur. I’m just starting to get tired of your creative ways of testing the extent of the MAGI’s control over the city,” Mari shot back towards the top of the room, suddenly sounding more like Asuka than the girl Misato had met a scant few hours back. “I’ll give you that getting a front seat to your chat with Akagi was funny the first time, but what I really had a hard time not laughing at was your idea of ‘shady’ and ‘mysterious’, and not the Doc’s reactions to it.”
“…94% of the surveillance team shared a similar opinion,” the disembodied voice replied, sounding dejected. “It would appear that everyone’s a critic.”
“When you make a point of ripping off all the worst clichés from every Bond and Noir movie villain ever, they sure as hell are,” Makinami shot back, taking off the choker and carelessly throwing it on top of a nearby table. “Who’d have thought?”
“What the hell is going on here?!” Misato finally exploded, bringing all the eyes in the room to her.
Eyes that numbered at less than eight, for the owner of the male voice, the so-called ‘Arthur’, still hadn’t actually shown himself. Nevertheless, and considering the withering glare that Mari Makinami had taken to throwing her way after her outburst, Misato could have sworn that there were twice that many people staring at her.
“Hey, Arthur, if you don’t need me to be a mannequin for your games anymore, I’ll be going,” Mari gruffly stated after a few moments, breaking eye contact as she stood up from her seat and getting ready to leave. “I had those two drink some herbs that should keep them sleeping until happy hour comes, but you can never be too sure. You had no issues doctoring the tapes, right?”
“None whatsoever, Agent Morgan.”
“Good,” the Fifth Child acknowledged, still ignoring a Misato that was very close to livid. “Then I’m off.”
“Hey! Wait just a damn minute!” Misato protested, reaching towards the retreating girl. “I’m not done asking you-!”
Only for her wrist to be caught in a vice-grip not even halfway to its objective, a grip that made the handshake she had received earlier that day feel like a loving squeeze. The force that clasped around her arm was strong and cold and it took all of Misato’s willpower just to keep herself from wincing, let alone try to escape it.
“Don’t touch me again if you want to keep your hand, Major Katsuragi,” the Fifth Child threatened, all traces of the easygoing person that had spent the day joking with and bullshitting Asuka gone in the span of a second. What remained was as cold and bitter as a pit of ice, one that Misato could swear was just a bad word away from trying to murder her.
“Agent Morgan, please. Focus on your objectives,” the male voice brusquely interrupted, clearly implying that his command wasn’t up for discussion.
And with a grunt and one last hateful glare towards Misato, the Fifth Child let go of the trapped limb and continued on her way, the two goons parting to let her through with a respectful nod of their heads. A moment later, the two-faced girl had disappeared from the room.
“My apologies for that,” the mystery man continued. “But I would advise against extended off-the-clock interaction with Agent Morgan, Miss Katsuragi.”
“No shit,” Misato mumbled, still reeling from the experience. “What’s her problem?”
“Agent Morgan has reasons for not appreciating you, specifically, Major.”
“Really? I hadn’t noticed,” Misato scoffed back, before speaking at the entire room. “Feel like elaborating on those ‘reasons’, Mister Disembodied Voice?”
“I prefer the name ‘Arthur’. And I’m afraid that most of that certainly falls under need-to-know information, Miss Katsuragi,” ‘Arthur’ replied. “I can, however, disclose that Agent Morgan’s animosity likely has something to do with Agent Percival’s untimely demise.”
“Percival?” Misato echoed, narrowing her eyes and quickly tying knots to come up with an identity for the codename...
“Apologies, Major. You would better know Agent Percival as Ryoji Kaji. My condolences.”
...and having her hunch confirmed just a second later.
‘Kaji... So Ritsuko wasn’t lying. You really were playing far too many sides for your own good,’ Misato thought grimly. ‘...And what was your relationship with that girl?’
“...I see. Thank you for the confirmation,” she eventually continued, falling into her Major Katsuragi persona to try and keep her expression blank. “So, you guys have an obsession with Arthurian legend or something?”
“Codenames can come in many varieties, as I’m sure you’re already aware,” Arthur replied, seamlessly following the switch in topic. “In any case, you’re surprisingly composed at the idea of having a foreign agent among your pilots, Major, considering the protective streak that has been attributed to you in recent times.”
“I’m anything but happy about it, trust me. But Akagi told me that the Fifth Child has been around Shinji, Asuka and Rei for some time now, while I was still detained,” Misato reasoned, mouth pressed into a tight line. “If she had wanted to hurt them, she’s probably had plenty of opportunity to do so by now.”
“Indeed she has. But as you already suspect, I assure you that we intend to bring no harm to the Pilots, if at all possible.”
“No wonder you don’t. Someone needs to pilot the EVAs for the next NERV after the original is gone, right?”
“Your accusations are woefully misplaced,” Arthur tersely argued back. “I assure you that we have no interest in the Evangelions as weapons of war, Major, beyond the task for which they were ostensibly built: defeating the Angels.”
“‘Ostensibly’? So there really is another purpose for the EVAs,” Misato confirmed, crossing her arms with a doubtful snort. “And that was a nice sales pitch. You only have to work on making it sound believable, now.”
“Distrust was to be expected, but let me attempt to reassure you of the nobility of our actions. We are of the opinion that neither humanity nor the world that houses it is ready to handle the pressure that would come from a worldwide Evangelion arms race. As a matter of fact, we sought to do the same during the years of nuclear proliferation, back in the Cold War period, but our capability to project power within the appropriate spheres was sorely lacking at that time, and our best efforts amounted to little,” Arthur elaborated, his usually dry voice actually sounding somewhat sad towards the end of his explanation. “We don’t intend to fail twice, and certainly not at a time when humanity is looking down into the abyss of oblivion.”
“How benevolent of you.”
“Our organisation has grown much since its infant years, Major, and we are now much better equipped to meet the objectives that we set for ourselves,” Arthur continued, ignoring Misato’s needling statement, “Our influence was instrumental in avoiding a second WMD arms race by ensuring the non-proliferation of N2 warheads, for example, and in keeping their production tied to quotas set by a... ‘clean’ part of the UN security council.”
“...So the UN is truly under someone’s thumb. SEELE’s?”
“Indeed,” the voice confirmed. “Not all of the New York Headquarters falls under SEELE’s influence, but some of its most important sections certainly do. The General Assembly, Security Council and the Economic and Social Council being some of the most important among them. Worrisome, as I’m sure you agree.
“But returning to the topic of our preparations, I would like to show you something, Major Katsuragi. The main reason we called for you, incidentally.”
“And here I thought I’d been called to a history lesson...” Misato snarked, before her eyes caught sight of something unusual. “...Huh?”
A tiny spider, no bigger than the size of an ordinary coin, lazily made its way over a keyboard. Slowly and carefully, it walked over the last of the keys and descended along the side of the device to the top of the table, where it continued on its merry way until it suddenly stopped, spinning in place and jiggling its legs this way and that in a seemingly erratic manner, all under the Major’s flabbergasted scrutiny.
It wasn’t the spider itself that stumped Misato, though, but rather the fact that it shouldn’t have been there. After all, and due to the sterile nature of certain very important areas within HQ, a cleansing programme had been initiated and rigorously maintained since the time of its construction to ensure that there were no pests within the Geofront. No rats, no cockroaches, not even the tiniest of flies could be found inside Gendo Ikari’s pyramid and, obviously, that also applied to spiders.
Which only made it even more curious when a second spider joined the first. And then the two were joined by another pair, and then half a dozen spiders. In a matter of seconds, half the tabletop had been covered in tiny arachnids.
“What the f-?”
Misato turned away from the desk, quickly noticing that the spiders weren’t coming just out of the crevices around the desk. They were coming out of a ventilation duct, from the sides of the monitoring machinery, coming in from under the door,...
They were everywhere. No matter where Misato looked, her eyes landed on a bunch of spiders, a quick estimate easily putting their numbers in the hundreds, already.
“It is no infestation, I assure you,” Arthur spoke, sounding very proud of himself. “Not a natural invasion, at the very least.”
“You people made these?” Misato asked, failing to keep a note of incredulity from her voice, before a soft whirring noise from her right caught her attention: one of the spiders had perched itself on her shoulder, and began slowly making the trek down her arm under the Major’s watchful gaze.
“Indeed, this is just a small show of our capabilities. While NERV and SEELE were focused on going bigger and more powerful, our organisation decided to contact and employ the talents of the world that didn’t fit into such a vision and go in the opposite direction, as well as towards some other interesting and rewarding tangents,” the voice continued to elaborate. “The X-ATM092 is the result of some of our most recent breakthroughs in miniaturisation, artificial intelligence and nanotechnology. They are equipped with state of the art monitoring equipment, self-repair capabilities, as well as enough awareness to autonomously track targets and coordinate with the collective in order to share and coordinate audiovisual inputs. In short, they are the ultimate spy drone.”
“And far too fancy and expensive to be used just for monitoring purposes, I bet.” Misato offhandedly commented, taking a closer look at the spider that had climbed onto her palm. The mechanical arachnid stared back curiously.
“Perhaps.”
And while Misato had not expected Arthur to come clean at the veiled accusation, the way in which he had sidestepped the issue already told her far more than she needed to know. With a few quick movements, Misato shook the spider off her hand and resolved to crush the little critters whenever she got the chance, even if it would probably be as useful as trying to punch the sea.
“How many of these things are in HQ?” she asked, just for confirmation’s sake.
“One million five-hundred thousand four-hundred and seventy two, with a peak amount of two million being desirable for optimum efficiency.”
‘...Yeah, forget punching the sea,’ Misato thought with a barely concealed grimace. ‘Drinking the Pacific dry with a straw sounds more accurate.’
“They allow us to have constant eyes and ears on roughly sixty percent of NERV HQ at this moment, with the rest about to be covered in two days’ time,” Arthur continued over Misato’s silence. “For all of its benefits, this kind of monitoring equipment isn’t capable of covering large distances too quickly, but it has already allowed us to positively identify twenty-seven SEELE informers as of this moment... Actually, make that twenty-eight. Obviously, we are also in the process of dealing with them.”
“You realise that eliminating those informers will tip off SEELE about something being very wrong?” Misato protested, doing her best to ignore the swarming spiders and focusing back on one of the spots from which the voice was coming from.
“I never mentioned the word ‘eliminate’, Major.”
“You think asking nicely is going to do the job?”
“Oh, no. We are not quite so naïve,” Arthur replied with an amused undertone. “I believe our intentions could be summarised with the famous ‘Turn your enemy’s strengths against them.’”
“So you want to try and subvert what’s probably a bunch of zealots. Even better,” Misato shot back with a half-glare. “And don’t quote Sun Tzu at me.”
“I will refrain from doing so if that is your wish but, I assure you, we have the means to ensure that the loyalty of the subverted spies won’t be an issue moving forward.” The voice’s cryptic answer was followed by a darkening of its tone. “Since you’ve proven so critical of our actions and designs, however, I’d like to hear what it is that you’ve been doing all this time, Major Katsuragi? Or, more importantly, what are your own plans for facing the crisis that SEELE’s actions represent?”
Misato was struck silent by the sudden question, but not because she hadn’t pondered it at length before. After all, every moment that she hadn’t been beating herself about the consequences her decisions had had on Shinji, Misato had committed to thinking about the mission Kaji had entrusted to her. What she could do to stop the puppeteers that were controlling everything behind the curtains, what she could do to stop Commander Ikari and his own plans, whatever they were, and what her next move should be to bring her still nascent plans into motion.
But unfortunately, the answers to Misato’s difficult questions hadn’t been forthcoming in all the time she had spent imprisoned, just as they weren’t now.
“I thought as much.” Arthur ultimately replied for her, his words bringing Misato to the edge of bristling.
“Please don’t take my criticism as an insult, Major,” the voice chortled again. “I realise that dismantling a worldwide conspiracy by your lonesome and with a backdoor access to the MAGI as your only weapon would be a difficult achievement for anyone. Especially anyone under your current... circumstances.
“Truly, toppling the odds in such a fortuitous manner is something that certainly belongs in fiction rather than in the harsh reality we live in, which is why I believe that cooperation, or at least non-interference, is in the best of all our interests. Don’t you agree?”
“And what if I don’t?”
As soon as the words left her lips, Misato heard the unmistakable sound of a gun’s hammer being cocked behind her.
“Agent Morgan might very well get her wish,” Arthur replied, noncommittally. “Nothing personal, Major, but as we said, we will stop at nothing to achieve our objectives.”
“Of course,” Misato grunted back. “You drive a hard bargain. Makes you wonder who the bad guys really are.”
“We’re aware of that fact, but that’s a label we will gladly carry if we have to. Do we have a non-interference agreement, then?”
“...So long as you don’t touch the kids,” Misato warned. “I don’t care what happens to me, but if anything happens to them, I swear that there won’t be a speaker in the world you and yours can hide behind.”
“Duly noted, Major,” Arthur calmly replied back, unimpressed, and Misato heard the man behind her put his gun back in its holster. “Thank you for your time. We will be in touch.”
And without any further flourish, the disembodied voice went silent and seemed to disappear as quickly as it had arrived, now that it had the answer it had wanted, just as, at the same time, the tiny spiderlings began to leave the room in the same way that they had entered, their point now proven. Arthur was likely still listening to the events inside the room, but chances were that his interest in conversation had reached an end.
Which is why Misato Katsuragi continued to try her best at showing no emotion, even when her heart and mind where anything but calm.
‘And now you’ve gone and gotten yourself involved with another shady party, Misato, just like Kaji and Ritsuko did,’ the Major wistfully contemplated, eyes fixating on an unimportant spot of the chair before her despite her best efforts. ‘Everything stays in the group, huh? Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse, life finds a way.’
‘...No. Don’t bring yourself down, Misato. Shinji, Asuka and Rei are counting on you to untie your hands and find a way out of this whole mess for them. God knows we can’t trust these people as far as we can-’
“If it eases your mind, Major, the current escort assigned to the Second Child is part of our infiltration team, too,” the man who had held her at gunpoint not two minutes ago suddenly broke into Misato’s thoughts, bringing her attention to him. “They are under orders to ensure that no harm comes to her, no matter what.”
“Nice effort, but that really doesn’t ease my mind.” Misato grunted back bitterly.
“...You’re a hard woman to please. Your friend didn’t give us nearly as much trouble,” the man sighed, earning himself a piercing glare for his trouble. “Fine, then. How about this?”
The man then took out a device from one of his inner pockets, the shape of it eerily similar to the one Commander Ikari had held in his hand when he had ordered the bomb-choker put around her neck. As a matter of fact, and if she had known no better, Misato would have sworn they were one and the same.
But what really caught her attention was the sound that came out of the choker when the man pushed one of the buttons in the device: a short and high-pitched beep, and definitely the same one that had reached Misato’s ears when the choker had been activated in the Commander’s office.
“...What did you just do?” Misato almost growled, her glare intensifying tenfold.
“Easy there, Major. I just deactivated the triggering mechanism for the bomb, even if the monitoring systems are still in place to avoid suspicion. The explosive charge won’t activate if it receives the command to do so, and our tampering shouldn’t be noticed unless someone takes a close look at the choker itself,” the man shrugged, pocketing the device once again. “Something that judging by Gendo Ikari and Kozo Fuyutsuki’s psych profiles they are not likely to do until we approach the last stages of our operation. But we will find a more definitive solution to your problem before that.”
“And why would you do this?”
“Because we don’t want you to blow yourself up?” the man explained, barely concealing his exasperation as he took off his sunglasses, probably to appear more earnest. “Look, our superiors’ love for secrecy and Agent Morgan’s independent actions might not make it look like it, but we really are not your enemies here, Major Katsuragi.”
But while everything about his body language made the man appear sincere, the mere act of taking off his sunglasses ended up making Misato even more wary of him. And that was because, while she couldn’t quite place what, there was definitely something off about the man’s eyes, something that the Major would have been willing to bet was also true for his partner.
“Whatever you say. The last time I checked, though, friends didn’t point guns at each other’s backs,” Misato quickly replied before she was caught staring. “But not having to worry about my neck should make things easier on my end, so I guess there’s that.”
“...And that’s it?” the man almost spat, shocked at the Major’s indifference. “Not even a-”
At least, until a hand on his arm made him stop mid-sentence.
“Let it go,” the man’s partner admonished, sounding far closer to the Section-2 goons that Misato was used to dealing with. “That’s everything we’re getting out of her tonight.”
“...Right,” the offended agent eventually agreed (even if it looked for a second like he wouldn’t), putting his glasses back where they belonged and trying to recover a scrap of professionalism. “We should get going, Major. This room may be secure, but if we stay here much longer people might start asking questions.”
“Agreed,” Misato replied, pushing past the both of them and towards the door. “Don’t fall behind.”
And as she crossed the threshold into the hallway, Major Katsuragi couldn’t help a smirk at the strangled groan that she heard behind her. Childish, she realised, and very much so. But even as she adapted her planning on the go to allow room for a third party, Misato would gladly take her small victories wherever she could.
For those could very well prove sparse in the future.