In which a game is played
"All love is unrequited, Stephan. All of it." - Susan Ivanova, Babylon 5, by J. Michael Straczynski
Despite the long ride, the three pilots were still the first people to arrive at the party. Daisuke opened the door, smiling.
“Hey, guys,” he said. “Glad you could make it.”
“Of course!” Maya said brightly, kicking off her shoes and entering the apartment.
Anita held out the gift she’d brought along. “Here you go,” she said brightly. “Happy birthday.”
“Thanks!” Daisuke said. He looked over at Gendo, uncertainly. Maya looked back at him, and realized he was wondering why Gendo had come at all. Maya wondered that herself for a few moments, but eventually decided that Asuka or Anita must have forced him to participate. Gendo didn’t seem to want to be here.
“Is your uncle here?” Maya asked.
“He’ll be showing up in a few minutes. There was an emergency call or something. He didn’t explain it at all.” Daisuke didn’t sound happy about that.
Anita walked into the living room, looking around. “It’s exactly like Ritsuko’s and Asuka’s apartments,” she remarked. “Are all the places in Tokyo-3 like this?”
“Yes,” Maya said. “Mine is like this too. The buildings around here all seem to be pretty cookie cutter,” she added.
“My uncle says it’s to make reconstruction and relocations easier,” Daisuke explained. “If one building gets destroyed, you only need to know how the other buildings like it are designed.”
“Oh.” Maya looked at Anita and Gendo to see if they’d react to the obvious. Again, neither seemed perturbed at the fact that their piloting Evangelion inevitably led to destruction that other people were constantly working to fix. Why was she the only one who cared about the collateral damage that resulted every time an Evangelion was aboveground?
“So-” Daisuke began, but he cut himself off. “Oh, it’s Ryoji-san! Hey!”
“Ryoji and Ritsuko,” Ryoji corrected, stepping into the doorway with Ritsuko behind him. “Hey, Daisuke!”
Maya wasn’t paying any attention to either boy. Ritsuko had finally gotten around to dyeing her hair, and had picked a green color. Maya wasn’t normally a fan of impossible hair colors, but something about the black dress Ritsuko was wearing made her look… well, she looked pretty hot. Well, she would have if Maya had been into that sort of thing.
“Didn’t you use that shade before?” Daisuke asked jokingly. He and Kaji (and Maya) were just wearing casual wear; T-shirts and jeans. Anita and Gendo had remained in their school uniforms.
“I ran out of new colors, okay?” Ritsuko responded. “Is that a problem?”
“You could always go back to your natural hair color for a bit,” Daisuke responded. “I’m sure you’ve forgotten it at this point.”
“Har, har.” Ritsuko held out the present she’d brought. “This is from Maya and me. We hope you like it.” Kaji held out his present as well, and Daisuke took them all and went to the kitchen, where he placed the presents beside a box that was presumably from his uncle. Also sitting on the table was a cake in white frosting. It wasn’t large, but there’d be enough to go around.
“So, uh…” Daisuke looked around. “I have some games…” He gestured not to a video game console, but to a stack of board games, several in foreign languages. “Don’t worry, the rules are pretty easy to learn.”
They ultimately settled for something in Japanese, just because everything in the game seemed to have jokes associated with. They spent an hour playing, having more fun reading the cards they received out loud than actually competing. Fifteen minutes in, Kyoko and Makoto joined the party and the game, and while Makoto caught up in score quickly, Kyoko languished with Gendo (who barely bothered and rarely smirked, let alone laughed), and Maya (who had had a run of bad luck).
Despite the setbacks for some players, everyone except Gendo was having a good time.
“Normally I hate board games,” Ritsuko commented. “It feels like it takes everyone forever to take their turns.”
“Yeah,” Makoto agreed. “Real time is usually better, but…” He paused as Daisuke drew a card and read it aloud to the group, and laughed for a moment afterwards. “I guess since we aren’t just waiting, it’s cool.”
Daisuke paused a moment, staring up at the clock in the living room. Maya wondered why before remembering that Agent Yamada still hadn’t returned. This wasn’t “a few minutes” by any stretch of the imagination.
“Uh…” she started to say, before realizing it would probably just be best not to draw attention to it. Sadly, though, everyone had turned to her. “Uh… Yeah! It’s great the way this game entertains you no matter whose turn it is!”
Ryoji raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything. Daisuke finished his turn, and Ritsuko began hers. Ritsuko was much better at reading the cards out loud than anyone else; Maya laughed much harder after she was finished reading than someone like Ryoji.
Another half hour passed before Yamada Kaito finally opened the front door.
“Hey kids,” he said. “Sorry I’m late. There were a few issues at Nerv that had to be taken care of.”
Gendo perked up. “Related to the Evangelion Units?” he asked, hesitantly. “Or something less important?”
“Not the Evas, no. But it’s still pretty important. The stupid news channels are trying to be all over us. It really doesn’t help with the riots…”
Anita sighed. “I don’t understand why they’re rioting. Nerv is trying to protect everyone.” Ritsuko nodded enthusiastically.
Kaito shrugged. “Some people don’t think that Nerv is the only way that we can fight the Angels, and as a general rule they don’t think that Nerv is the cheapest way we can do it. They’re protesting because they want what they think is a better way.”
“So you’re saying there isn’t a better way?” Ryoji asked.
“I don’t think there is, no.” Kaito went into the kitchen and got himself a drink. “I could be wrong, of course, but… Commander Ikari really does tell me quite a bit, and from the sounds of things it seems that Evangelion units are the only weapons that can really fight an Angel. Our enemy has got all kinds of technology that only Nerv has been able to crack.”
“But surely-” Makoto began, and then he cut off. “Eh, it doesn’t matter. It’s a party, right? Let’s have a party!”
Ritsuko and Maya nodded enthusiastically.
“Maybe Daisuke should open his presents, now,” Anita suggested. “We’re all here.”
“Yes,” Kaito agreed. “That sounds good.”
Daisuke blushed a little, and rose. Everyone followed him to the table, where various presents sat. Daisuke started with his uncle’s present, which turned out to be the latest Nintendo console. After thanking him profusely, he moved onto his friends gifts.
Ryoji had supplied some comic books, Kyoko had bought him a light novel about some mysteries, and Makoto had brought in a CD. Daisuke was enthusiastic about all the gifts, but even more so about the old DVDs that Anita had brought. Lastly, he opened Ritsuko and Maya’s gift.
“Thanks,” he said. Maya didn’t think he really sounded all that enthusiastic, but it was nice of him to pretend.
Ritsuko set to work with Kaito, helping him set up the Nintendo unit so that Daisuke would be able to play it as soon as possible. Daisuke turned on a music player and put in the new CD, and Kyoko and Makoto started dancing (by themselves). Gendo sat down and watched, while Anita and Ryoji had a conversation about something.
This left Maya and Daisuke.
He grinned, a little awkwardly. She didn’t blame him. The gift was, in retrospect, very poorly chosen.
“So, uh… how’s it going?” he asked.
“The game was pretty fun,” she said. She looked around at everyone. “And I guess the party is still going…” She smiled.
This made his smile seem more confident.
“So, uh, Maya…” He faltered.
“Yeah?”
“I was wondering what you were going to be doing next weekend.”
“I don’t know. An Angel might attack. I don’t have a lot of advanced plans…”
Daisuke sighed. “Well, uh… If any Angel doesn’t attack, how’d you like to go see a movie?”
Maya, for one brief moment, thought he meant another group outing, which really did sound fun. But it was clear in his tone of voice that being with other people was the last thing on Daisuke’s mind. She hesitated, not because she was tempted, but because she didn’t want to hurt his feelings.
“I… N- no thanks, Daisuke,” she said at last. “I… I don’t really have time for boys right now.” A reasonable excuse, she thought.
“I… oh.”
Maya turned away, blushing. “Sorry,” she said.
Daisuke didn’t say anything in response. No one else seemed to have noticed their conversation. Hesitantly, Daisuke went and gathered up his gifts.
“I’m just going to put these in my room,” he explained. “I’ll be right back.”
His uncle, who had been behind the television fiddling with cords, backed up and into Daisuke, causing him to accidentally drop the book Maya and Ritsuko had given him. It fell onto the floor, and several smaller pieces of paper fell from them.
Maya rushed forward to gather them up, and saw that they weren’t paper at all, but pictures. The original pictures, including one of Jet Alone. She felt Kaito over her shoulder.
“Where did you get these?” he asked coolly.
3488:58:11
[Fic] Maya Ibuki, Evangelion Pilot (New Material!)
Moderators: Derantor, Board Staff
In which being children isn't an escape from accusations of treason
"Deserve? I don't know about deserve. Did I deserve to be sent down here?" - Pravuil, Mister Monday, by Garth Nix
“They’re not mine!” Maya said.
Kaito turned to Ritsuko immediately. “You’re the other one who gave him this present...” he said. He took one of the photographs.
“But sir,” Kyoko protested, “the photos are in the newspapers, aren’t they? She probably just cut some out and attached them to better paper so he could se-”
“This one wasn’t in the tabloids,” Kaito said, holding up a picture of Eva-02 stabbing the Angel. There went that defense. The picture was too good for Kaito to forget it was there.
Maya glared at Ritsuko. How could she have been so stupid as to bring original photographs to a Nerv employee’s house? Even if they were for the worker’s son, Ritsuko should have known better than to flaunt the rules so obviously.
“Uh…”
Kaito looked almost angry. “Did you leave the shelters to take these photographs?” he asked after a moment.
Ritsuko nodded.
“Did anyone go with you?”
Ritsuko almost nodded, but shook her head just in time. Kaito wasn’t fooled, though. His gaze became even colder.
“Are you sure?”
“I went with her,” Ryoji said.
Kaito looked from Ryoji to Ritsuko to Ryoji, as if questioning if more students had joined them in their escapades. All the children, except Daisuke and perhaps Gendo, knew that several more people had participated, but none of them spoke up. It wouldn’t be fair to Shigeru, who didn’t even have the benefit of being there to defend himself.
“You two are going to have to come with me,” he said after a moment. He looked at each pilot in turn. “Did any of you know about this?”
Gendo shook his head, which was unsurprising. Maya reluctantly admitted to it, nodding her head very slowly. Anita did as well.
“You guys are coming in too, then. The rest of you can stay, though, and finish up the party.”
This meant, of course, a party of four. Kyoko, Makoto, Gendo, and Daisuke. Not an especially fun party at all, but none of the three guests showed any inclination to leave. As Maya put her shoes on and took one last look into the apartment, the three actually social individuals were setting up a video game, and forcing Gendo to play along with them.
The kids were gathered into Kaito’s car (with Ryoji getting the passenger seat), and the slow and, due to Tokyo-3’s overcrowding, long car ride began. Kaito said nothing coherent, but muttered under his breath about something a few times. Maya tried to listen in, but the background noise of the city kept her from being able to distinguish his words.
Ritsuko exchanged nervous glances with Maya, Ryoji fidgeted frequently, and Anita sat as still as she could, though she was sweating. Maya, for her part, tried to focus on breathing. Kaito didn’t seem hugely angry, but… What would happen to all of them? How much trouble would they be in? Should she have told one of the adults about this before it had snowballed to these proportions? She didn’t think that a tabloid could get anyone in such trouble.
They took the car-train into the Geofront, a trip which awed everyone except Maya, as no one else in the car had ever seen the view before. They all managed to forget the situation for a few moments, though, which did make Maya rather envious of their luck.
Once Kaito had parked and they began their elevator ride, Kaito called into headquarters. “I managed to find the source of the leak,” he said. “You will not believe who it was. You won’t believe it a bit.”
The elevator ride led them to an unmarked floor, and Kaito took them through two sets of hallways before finding a small, cool room for them to relax in. “This’ll do,” he said. “They’ll be here shortly,” he added. “I’ll be right back. Don’t try running off anywhere, there are cameras.”
If Maya had been a snippier child, she might have pointed out that so far the cameras didn’t seem to have accomplished very much, as the no-doubt highly filmed security shelters had been unable to verify that several children had broken out of the facility twice with no problems. She would not have had to be much snippier either. Nerv seemed to be the failure here.
Eventually, three adults entered the room; the commander, the captain, and Doctor Ayanami. Anita looked embarrassed when she saw that Asuka was one of the adults concerned. Ryoji perked up (possibly because of Asuka’s or Rei’s beauty; even Maya saw that), and Ritsuko fidgeted uncomfortably in her seat.
“Hello,” Commander Ikari said. He did not sound angry.
That was okay though. He towered over all of them, and looked each one in the eye in turn, and that was terrifying enough.
“Uh…” Maya was the only one who managed to make a syllable escape her lips.
“I’m not going to lie to you,” he continued. “This is a very troublesome position each of you are in. It’s arguable that leaking military information like that counts as treason.” Everyone flinched. “I don’t think it quite applies here, though…”
“Because we’re children?” Ritsuko asked hopefully.
“Something like that,” Doctor Ayanami said. The woman was never especially warm, but today she seemed cold (and sharp) as ice.
“Now,” Commander Ikari said, “The good news here is that what you have released is nowhere near as classified as other things might have been. The forms of the Angels were kept secret because of how terrifying they can be, something I’m sure you can appreciate, but they’re not something that needs to be kept hidden.”
“Same with the Evas,” the captain noted. She was glaring at Anita.
“Yes,” the commander agreed. “However, the Jet Alone acquisition was kept secret, mostly because while it is useful for us, using it might be seen in poor taste by others. Understandably.”
“So people don’t have the right to know that their city is being defended not just by regular giant robots, but by a giant robot powered by nuclear energy? A robot that’ll go off should it get too damaged and decimate Tokyo-3 regardless of the Angels do?” Ritsuko asked, sounding angrier
“Jet Alone is not going to be used against Angels with a high probability of detonating it,” Commander Ikari said.
“The Sixth Angel did not demonstrate capabilities remotely similar to the Fifth or even the Fourth,” Doctor Ayanami said. “Note also that Jet Alone was not deployed until the Angel had had a chance to become focused on the Evas, who will not cause devastation if they become destroyed, or even damaged.”
Ritsuko bit her lip.
“So what’ll happen to us now?” Ryoji asked.
“I’m not sure,” admitted the commander. “Locking you up seems extreme, and fining you punishes your fathers, who probably had no control over you when the Angels attacked. They have a way of hitting us on school days.”
“Hmm…” the doctor looked at them. “Perhaps we don’t have to punish them at all. If it was during school time, I do believe the teacher is the one responsible for punishment… If he’s not responsible for them having the opportunity to sneak out in the first place.”
Captain Soryu considered. “The school could give them detentions,” she said. “But… the teacher? Do we have the authority to do anything about him?” She looked the most concerned about this question, far more than either of the others.
“No,” Doctor Ayanami said, almost a little too quick, “I don’t believe we do. But the school, aware that a teacher managed to miss several students straying into danger, will probably take its own actions.”
“Good, then that’s settled.” Commander Ikari stared deeply at Ritsuko and Ryoji. “Keep in mind, both of you; that you’re getting off quite lightly. There are quite a few military organizations that would have no problem with making your lives living hells. Stay in the shelters from now on. You could get killed out there.”
Ryoji looked over at Captain Soryu for the slightest of moments, and then looked the commander in the eyes. He nodded. Ritsuko nodded after he did, but begrudgingly.
“Agent Yamada is waiting outside. He’ll return you to your homes,” the captain said. “You two may now leave.”
Both teens rose hurriedly and left the room. This left Maya and Anita outnumbered, and Maya was dreading whatever would come now.
“Maya, Anita,” Commander Ikari began, “you two knew about all of this?”
Anita nodded. “I’m sorry for not saying anything,” she said.
“Why didn’t you?” the doctor asked.
“I…” Anita gulped and looked away. “I liked the idea of Eva-02 being in the papers,” she explained. “Where everyone could see it. It… it’s what I was born for, wasn’t it? Piloting? So shouldn’t people know?”
The captain sighed sadly.
“Maybe,” the commander admitted. “But not now. The world will know soon enough, I promise you that. It's probably inevitable that our control over the press will slip up.”
“What about you, Maya?” Captain Soryu asked. “What’s your justification?”
Maya gulped. “I… I didn’t really think… I was trying to convince them not to do it. To stay inside the shelters.”
The commander and the doctor exchanged a quick glance, and then Doctor Ayanami asked, “You’re telling us the absolute truth?”
Maya nodded.
“That’s good enough, then,” Commander Ikari said. “But, Maya, if something like this happens again, you’re under orders to report it. I don’t care who is doing it, if people are running out there to take pictures, they’re putting themselves in danger. There were a couple of thrill seekers during the Fourth Angel who learned that the hard way.”
Maya gulped. She’d never realized that people died during those fights.
“That goes for you too, Anita,” Captain Soryu added. “And we’ll be sure to let Gendo know too, just in case.”
“Yes,” the pilots said in unison.
“Good,” said the captain. “Now both of you are to come with me. Extra synch training this weekend.”
“What?!” Maya shouted.
“It’ll keep you out of trouble,” Asuka said jokingly. “Besides, Maya, you need to keep your synch level up; this past week of not using the real deal might hurt you in the long run.”
Maya sighed and followed Asuka and Anita to the Eva Cages. Today would just be another day in the grind.
That night, she considered calling Ritsuko, but decided against it. She was far too tired, and the knowledge that tomorrow she wouldn’t even have the morning free made her all the wearier.
3482:22:09
"Deserve? I don't know about deserve. Did I deserve to be sent down here?" - Pravuil, Mister Monday, by Garth Nix
“They’re not mine!” Maya said.
Kaito turned to Ritsuko immediately. “You’re the other one who gave him this present...” he said. He took one of the photographs.
“But sir,” Kyoko protested, “the photos are in the newspapers, aren’t they? She probably just cut some out and attached them to better paper so he could se-”
“This one wasn’t in the tabloids,” Kaito said, holding up a picture of Eva-02 stabbing the Angel. There went that defense. The picture was too good for Kaito to forget it was there.
Maya glared at Ritsuko. How could she have been so stupid as to bring original photographs to a Nerv employee’s house? Even if they were for the worker’s son, Ritsuko should have known better than to flaunt the rules so obviously.
“Uh…”
Kaito looked almost angry. “Did you leave the shelters to take these photographs?” he asked after a moment.
Ritsuko nodded.
“Did anyone go with you?”
Ritsuko almost nodded, but shook her head just in time. Kaito wasn’t fooled, though. His gaze became even colder.
“Are you sure?”
“I went with her,” Ryoji said.
Kaito looked from Ryoji to Ritsuko to Ryoji, as if questioning if more students had joined them in their escapades. All the children, except Daisuke and perhaps Gendo, knew that several more people had participated, but none of them spoke up. It wouldn’t be fair to Shigeru, who didn’t even have the benefit of being there to defend himself.
“You two are going to have to come with me,” he said after a moment. He looked at each pilot in turn. “Did any of you know about this?”
Gendo shook his head, which was unsurprising. Maya reluctantly admitted to it, nodding her head very slowly. Anita did as well.
“You guys are coming in too, then. The rest of you can stay, though, and finish up the party.”
This meant, of course, a party of four. Kyoko, Makoto, Gendo, and Daisuke. Not an especially fun party at all, but none of the three guests showed any inclination to leave. As Maya put her shoes on and took one last look into the apartment, the three actually social individuals were setting up a video game, and forcing Gendo to play along with them.
The kids were gathered into Kaito’s car (with Ryoji getting the passenger seat), and the slow and, due to Tokyo-3’s overcrowding, long car ride began. Kaito said nothing coherent, but muttered under his breath about something a few times. Maya tried to listen in, but the background noise of the city kept her from being able to distinguish his words.
Ritsuko exchanged nervous glances with Maya, Ryoji fidgeted frequently, and Anita sat as still as she could, though she was sweating. Maya, for her part, tried to focus on breathing. Kaito didn’t seem hugely angry, but… What would happen to all of them? How much trouble would they be in? Should she have told one of the adults about this before it had snowballed to these proportions? She didn’t think that a tabloid could get anyone in such trouble.
They took the car-train into the Geofront, a trip which awed everyone except Maya, as no one else in the car had ever seen the view before. They all managed to forget the situation for a few moments, though, which did make Maya rather envious of their luck.
Once Kaito had parked and they began their elevator ride, Kaito called into headquarters. “I managed to find the source of the leak,” he said. “You will not believe who it was. You won’t believe it a bit.”
The elevator ride led them to an unmarked floor, and Kaito took them through two sets of hallways before finding a small, cool room for them to relax in. “This’ll do,” he said. “They’ll be here shortly,” he added. “I’ll be right back. Don’t try running off anywhere, there are cameras.”
If Maya had been a snippier child, she might have pointed out that so far the cameras didn’t seem to have accomplished very much, as the no-doubt highly filmed security shelters had been unable to verify that several children had broken out of the facility twice with no problems. She would not have had to be much snippier either. Nerv seemed to be the failure here.
Eventually, three adults entered the room; the commander, the captain, and Doctor Ayanami. Anita looked embarrassed when she saw that Asuka was one of the adults concerned. Ryoji perked up (possibly because of Asuka’s or Rei’s beauty; even Maya saw that), and Ritsuko fidgeted uncomfortably in her seat.
“Hello,” Commander Ikari said. He did not sound angry.
That was okay though. He towered over all of them, and looked each one in the eye in turn, and that was terrifying enough.
“Uh…” Maya was the only one who managed to make a syllable escape her lips.
“I’m not going to lie to you,” he continued. “This is a very troublesome position each of you are in. It’s arguable that leaking military information like that counts as treason.” Everyone flinched. “I don’t think it quite applies here, though…”
“Because we’re children?” Ritsuko asked hopefully.
“Something like that,” Doctor Ayanami said. The woman was never especially warm, but today she seemed cold (and sharp) as ice.
“Now,” Commander Ikari said, “The good news here is that what you have released is nowhere near as classified as other things might have been. The forms of the Angels were kept secret because of how terrifying they can be, something I’m sure you can appreciate, but they’re not something that needs to be kept hidden.”
“Same with the Evas,” the captain noted. She was glaring at Anita.
“Yes,” the commander agreed. “However, the Jet Alone acquisition was kept secret, mostly because while it is useful for us, using it might be seen in poor taste by others. Understandably.”
“So people don’t have the right to know that their city is being defended not just by regular giant robots, but by a giant robot powered by nuclear energy? A robot that’ll go off should it get too damaged and decimate Tokyo-3 regardless of the Angels do?” Ritsuko asked, sounding angrier
“Jet Alone is not going to be used against Angels with a high probability of detonating it,” Commander Ikari said.
“The Sixth Angel did not demonstrate capabilities remotely similar to the Fifth or even the Fourth,” Doctor Ayanami said. “Note also that Jet Alone was not deployed until the Angel had had a chance to become focused on the Evas, who will not cause devastation if they become destroyed, or even damaged.”
Ritsuko bit her lip.
“So what’ll happen to us now?” Ryoji asked.
“I’m not sure,” admitted the commander. “Locking you up seems extreme, and fining you punishes your fathers, who probably had no control over you when the Angels attacked. They have a way of hitting us on school days.”
“Hmm…” the doctor looked at them. “Perhaps we don’t have to punish them at all. If it was during school time, I do believe the teacher is the one responsible for punishment… If he’s not responsible for them having the opportunity to sneak out in the first place.”
Captain Soryu considered. “The school could give them detentions,” she said. “But… the teacher? Do we have the authority to do anything about him?” She looked the most concerned about this question, far more than either of the others.
“No,” Doctor Ayanami said, almost a little too quick, “I don’t believe we do. But the school, aware that a teacher managed to miss several students straying into danger, will probably take its own actions.”
“Good, then that’s settled.” Commander Ikari stared deeply at Ritsuko and Ryoji. “Keep in mind, both of you; that you’re getting off quite lightly. There are quite a few military organizations that would have no problem with making your lives living hells. Stay in the shelters from now on. You could get killed out there.”
Ryoji looked over at Captain Soryu for the slightest of moments, and then looked the commander in the eyes. He nodded. Ritsuko nodded after he did, but begrudgingly.
“Agent Yamada is waiting outside. He’ll return you to your homes,” the captain said. “You two may now leave.”
Both teens rose hurriedly and left the room. This left Maya and Anita outnumbered, and Maya was dreading whatever would come now.
“Maya, Anita,” Commander Ikari began, “you two knew about all of this?”
Anita nodded. “I’m sorry for not saying anything,” she said.
“Why didn’t you?” the doctor asked.
“I…” Anita gulped and looked away. “I liked the idea of Eva-02 being in the papers,” she explained. “Where everyone could see it. It… it’s what I was born for, wasn’t it? Piloting? So shouldn’t people know?”
The captain sighed sadly.
“Maybe,” the commander admitted. “But not now. The world will know soon enough, I promise you that. It's probably inevitable that our control over the press will slip up.”
“What about you, Maya?” Captain Soryu asked. “What’s your justification?”
Maya gulped. “I… I didn’t really think… I was trying to convince them not to do it. To stay inside the shelters.”
The commander and the doctor exchanged a quick glance, and then Doctor Ayanami asked, “You’re telling us the absolute truth?”
Maya nodded.
“That’s good enough, then,” Commander Ikari said. “But, Maya, if something like this happens again, you’re under orders to report it. I don’t care who is doing it, if people are running out there to take pictures, they’re putting themselves in danger. There were a couple of thrill seekers during the Fourth Angel who learned that the hard way.”
Maya gulped. She’d never realized that people died during those fights.
“That goes for you too, Anita,” Captain Soryu added. “And we’ll be sure to let Gendo know too, just in case.”
“Yes,” the pilots said in unison.
“Good,” said the captain. “Now both of you are to come with me. Extra synch training this weekend.”
“What?!” Maya shouted.
“It’ll keep you out of trouble,” Asuka said jokingly. “Besides, Maya, you need to keep your synch level up; this past week of not using the real deal might hurt you in the long run.”
Maya sighed and followed Asuka and Anita to the Eva Cages. Today would just be another day in the grind.
That night, she considered calling Ritsuko, but decided against it. She was far too tired, and the knowledge that tomorrow she wouldn’t even have the morning free made her all the wearier.
3482:22:09
In which Asuka prepares breakfast perfectly
"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven...a time to love and a time to hate..." - Ecclesiastes, author disputed
Anita awoke to the clanging of pots and pans in the kitchen. Groggily, she pushed herself out of bed. It was only just barely after six, according to her alarm clock. ‘Why is Asuka up so early? It’s a Sunday…’ Anita wondered.
She struggled into the kitchen. Asuka was angrily preparing a western breakfast. Much to Anita’s surprise, everything looked delicious. The toast was a perfect golden brown; the eggs had been scrambled to perfect consistency; and the bacon smelled so good that it was all Anita could do not to just pick it right out of the pan.
Gendo struggled into the kitchen shortly after Anita, looking disgustedly at the food being prepared. Asuka kept forgetting that he was a vegetarian.
“What are you doing?” he asked disbelievingly. Anita thought he almost sounded like a normal teenage boy.
“Just making a little breakfast, Gendo-chan!”
“Don’t call me that.”
Asuka put some toast and bacon on a plate and handed it to Gendo. He glared at it, and then at her. “Vegetarian,” he said.
“I know! That’s not really meat!” Asuka grinned. “But it smells just like it!”
Gendo sat down at the table and picked at the bacon idly. Anita turned from him and back to Asuka, stepping forward before remembering (too late, for Asuka’s attention was now fully devoted to her) that Asuka only ever went from angry to happy so quickly if she wasn’t talking to the person who’d made her angry in the first place.
“Here *you* go, Anita,” Asuka said, pushing a plate of food into her hands.
“Are you okay?” Anita asked.
“Of course I’m fine.” Asuka served up some food for herself and sat down. Anita hesitated, not quite sure it was safe to be at the same table as Asuka.
“Really? You seem…”
Asuka glared. “Upset?”
“Y-”
“Maybe it’s because I expected more from you, Anita.” Asuka bit into her toast, ripping it in half. She continued eating, chewing in an almost dramatic way.
“I…” Anita sighed. “This is about the photographs, isn’t it, Aka?”
“What else?”
Asuka wasn’t the only one who was eating quickly. Gendo was shoveling food into his mouth with a speed Anita had never seen before. He hated them in the best of times, of course, so now that things were tense, he would desperately want to get away.
“Asuka-san, it was just photographs…” Anita gulped. “And Maya didn’t think it was a big enough deal to report!”
“Maya’s new at Nerv. Just because you say her mother was a competent professional doesn’t mean that the daughter knows everything.”
It was at this point that Gendo finished his food. He very nearly threw his dishes into the sink before fleeing back into his room. Anita flinched at the clattering sounds. Asuka remained glaring. What a wonderful morning.
“That doesn’t mean she shouldn’t know anything!” Anita protested. “Japan is different than Germany, Asuka! They expect different things! They expect me to be like a normal kid here, to go to school and care about TV or the internet or music and something! All that’s weird enough! I’m sorry I did one thing wrong!”
She dumped her plate onto the counter and stormed into her room. She did not want to put up with this right now. Asuka was being completely unfair. Completely.
3473:45:18
* * *
Unfortunately, Asuka was in charge of synch tests. And with the extra training underway, Anita had to leave her room eventually, take a shower, and join Asuka and Gendo in the car. There was an uncomfortable silence. Anita had never yelled at Asuka before. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever yelled at anyone before, except maybe Angels or simulations.
They weren’t human. They didn’t count.
Like always, they parked at an aboveground garage and took an elevator into the Geofront. It was cramped and awkward. Gendo was practically hiding in the corner, attempting to be as far away from either of them as possible. Asuka stood right by the exit, tapping her foot angrily, her arms crossed. Anita stood by the buttons, but looked up at the display counting down the floors until they got to leave this hell.
When the door opened, Asuka darted off first, following one set of winding corridors to the observation deck where their synchronization would be monitored. In Germany, only two people had ever paid attention to her during those periods. Here in Japan, a staff of fifty was on hand at all times. Anita wasn’t sure why they took things so seriously.
She and Gendo walked side by side for a little while. Anita didn’t say anything, because she didn’t want to help Asuka with the stupid pet plan of bringing Gendo out of his shell. Gendo didn’t say anything because he was an antisocial idiot.
They separated at the locker rooms. Maya was already inside the girl’s one, and she smiled at Anita. Anita didn’t have the heart to smile back.
“Are you okay?” Maya asked politely.
“I’m just not looking forward to the test,” Anita said. That was semi-true. She couldn’t concentrate right now, and concentration was the key to piloting. What if her synch ratio didn’t go up as far as it could have? What if it didn’t get up as high as the record she’d broken yesterday?! Neither of these prospects was very appealing, and it would be all Asuka’s fault for messing her up like this.
“Oh…” Maya sighed. “That’s weird for you…” She sat down and began removing her clothes. Anita had noticed that Maya was generally hesitant about this, facing herself away from Anita, or sometimes even finding a way to hold off on changing until Anita was already going to leave.
“So, the pictures,” Anita whispered.
“Yeah,” Maya agreed. “I guess we did screw up a little there, didn’t we?”
“Asuka sure thinks so…” Anita sighed. How was she supposed to have known that it was such a huge deal? They were just photographs, photographs of her, Anita Griffith, piloting Eva-02 and defeating the Angel with skill and confidence. It would show the world that they were being taken care of; that the girl who had been born for this project was succeeding immensely in what was the most important thing in the world. Keeping everything a secret was stupid.
“I hope you’re not in too much trouble,” Maya said.
“Of course not,” Anita lied. “Asuka’s… a bit upset with me, but… I think she’ll live.”
“For your sake, I hope so.” Maya finished changing into her plugsuit and stood up. “Well, I guess we should go now,” she said. “Hopefully tomorrow they’ll have fixed my Eva so they can stop worrying about things like that.”
Anita hoped so too. The last two Angels had attacked six days apart. Things weren’t even “monster of the week” at that sort of rate. Who could say when the next one would arrive?
Who could say when Anita would be called upon to face death for mankind again? Her, and yes, Gendo and Maya too. The world demanded a lot from them, even Anita saw that. She didn’t mind. She’d meet the demand and then some. Two Angels had been defeated handily, and if she just stayed calm and focused, she could defeat any other Angel that would be coming.
Anita stood up, her plugsuit properly on, and followed Maya through the doors at the far end of the locker room. Maya was routed to the simulation room, but Anita walked calmly into Eva-02’s cage and was assisted into an Entry Plug. No one spoke to her, no one used her name. She didn’t mind so much, but in Germany at least the workers always tried to act like they cared. She was piloting for them, after all.
Soon the Entry Plug was inserted, the radio was properly disconnected so she couldn’t hear a word that was being said in the observation deck, and the LCL was humming around her. She took in a deep breath of it. Even after so six years of training, she still felt her gag reflex trying to spit all the water out, to not let it into her lungs.
She shut her eyes and tried to ignore the feeling.
In response, images of Asuka from this morning conjured themselves in her mind’s eye. She tried to think different thoughts; remembering the deaths of the Angels, the happier moments with Asuka, the few times she’d met Maya’s mother.
“Anita?” It was Doctor Ayanami’s voice. She sounded concerned.
“Yes ma’am?”
“Your synch ratio stopped rising suddenly. Are you feeling all right?”
Anita nodded. “Of course, ma’am.”
“Oh, there we go. It’s jumping up again. Must have been a momentary jitter… Never seen-” The radio turned off again.
So her synch ratio wasn’t affected. That was great news and Anita clung to that thought as best she could, trying to envision Eva Unit 02 and herself becoming one entity, one giant robot that would tear any Angel limb from limb. Or whatever they had instead of limbs. It didn’t matter.
This was what she was born for, and this was what she was going to do, and she didn’t care if she got in a few scraps with Asuka along the way.
3472:52:55
"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven...a time to love and a time to hate..." - Ecclesiastes, author disputed
Anita awoke to the clanging of pots and pans in the kitchen. Groggily, she pushed herself out of bed. It was only just barely after six, according to her alarm clock. ‘Why is Asuka up so early? It’s a Sunday…’ Anita wondered.
She struggled into the kitchen. Asuka was angrily preparing a western breakfast. Much to Anita’s surprise, everything looked delicious. The toast was a perfect golden brown; the eggs had been scrambled to perfect consistency; and the bacon smelled so good that it was all Anita could do not to just pick it right out of the pan.
Gendo struggled into the kitchen shortly after Anita, looking disgustedly at the food being prepared. Asuka kept forgetting that he was a vegetarian.
“What are you doing?” he asked disbelievingly. Anita thought he almost sounded like a normal teenage boy.
“Just making a little breakfast, Gendo-chan!”
“Don’t call me that.”
Asuka put some toast and bacon on a plate and handed it to Gendo. He glared at it, and then at her. “Vegetarian,” he said.
“I know! That’s not really meat!” Asuka grinned. “But it smells just like it!”
Gendo sat down at the table and picked at the bacon idly. Anita turned from him and back to Asuka, stepping forward before remembering (too late, for Asuka’s attention was now fully devoted to her) that Asuka only ever went from angry to happy so quickly if she wasn’t talking to the person who’d made her angry in the first place.
“Here *you* go, Anita,” Asuka said, pushing a plate of food into her hands.
“Are you okay?” Anita asked.
“Of course I’m fine.” Asuka served up some food for herself and sat down. Anita hesitated, not quite sure it was safe to be at the same table as Asuka.
“Really? You seem…”
Asuka glared. “Upset?”
“Y-”
“Maybe it’s because I expected more from you, Anita.” Asuka bit into her toast, ripping it in half. She continued eating, chewing in an almost dramatic way.
“I…” Anita sighed. “This is about the photographs, isn’t it, Aka?”
“What else?”
Asuka wasn’t the only one who was eating quickly. Gendo was shoveling food into his mouth with a speed Anita had never seen before. He hated them in the best of times, of course, so now that things were tense, he would desperately want to get away.
“Asuka-san, it was just photographs…” Anita gulped. “And Maya didn’t think it was a big enough deal to report!”
“Maya’s new at Nerv. Just because you say her mother was a competent professional doesn’t mean that the daughter knows everything.”
It was at this point that Gendo finished his food. He very nearly threw his dishes into the sink before fleeing back into his room. Anita flinched at the clattering sounds. Asuka remained glaring. What a wonderful morning.
“That doesn’t mean she shouldn’t know anything!” Anita protested. “Japan is different than Germany, Asuka! They expect different things! They expect me to be like a normal kid here, to go to school and care about TV or the internet or music and something! All that’s weird enough! I’m sorry I did one thing wrong!”
She dumped her plate onto the counter and stormed into her room. She did not want to put up with this right now. Asuka was being completely unfair. Completely.
3473:45:18
* * *
Unfortunately, Asuka was in charge of synch tests. And with the extra training underway, Anita had to leave her room eventually, take a shower, and join Asuka and Gendo in the car. There was an uncomfortable silence. Anita had never yelled at Asuka before. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever yelled at anyone before, except maybe Angels or simulations.
They weren’t human. They didn’t count.
Like always, they parked at an aboveground garage and took an elevator into the Geofront. It was cramped and awkward. Gendo was practically hiding in the corner, attempting to be as far away from either of them as possible. Asuka stood right by the exit, tapping her foot angrily, her arms crossed. Anita stood by the buttons, but looked up at the display counting down the floors until they got to leave this hell.
When the door opened, Asuka darted off first, following one set of winding corridors to the observation deck where their synchronization would be monitored. In Germany, only two people had ever paid attention to her during those periods. Here in Japan, a staff of fifty was on hand at all times. Anita wasn’t sure why they took things so seriously.
She and Gendo walked side by side for a little while. Anita didn’t say anything, because she didn’t want to help Asuka with the stupid pet plan of bringing Gendo out of his shell. Gendo didn’t say anything because he was an antisocial idiot.
They separated at the locker rooms. Maya was already inside the girl’s one, and she smiled at Anita. Anita didn’t have the heart to smile back.
“Are you okay?” Maya asked politely.
“I’m just not looking forward to the test,” Anita said. That was semi-true. She couldn’t concentrate right now, and concentration was the key to piloting. What if her synch ratio didn’t go up as far as it could have? What if it didn’t get up as high as the record she’d broken yesterday?! Neither of these prospects was very appealing, and it would be all Asuka’s fault for messing her up like this.
“Oh…” Maya sighed. “That’s weird for you…” She sat down and began removing her clothes. Anita had noticed that Maya was generally hesitant about this, facing herself away from Anita, or sometimes even finding a way to hold off on changing until Anita was already going to leave.
“So, the pictures,” Anita whispered.
“Yeah,” Maya agreed. “I guess we did screw up a little there, didn’t we?”
“Asuka sure thinks so…” Anita sighed. How was she supposed to have known that it was such a huge deal? They were just photographs, photographs of her, Anita Griffith, piloting Eva-02 and defeating the Angel with skill and confidence. It would show the world that they were being taken care of; that the girl who had been born for this project was succeeding immensely in what was the most important thing in the world. Keeping everything a secret was stupid.
“I hope you’re not in too much trouble,” Maya said.
“Of course not,” Anita lied. “Asuka’s… a bit upset with me, but… I think she’ll live.”
“For your sake, I hope so.” Maya finished changing into her plugsuit and stood up. “Well, I guess we should go now,” she said. “Hopefully tomorrow they’ll have fixed my Eva so they can stop worrying about things like that.”
Anita hoped so too. The last two Angels had attacked six days apart. Things weren’t even “monster of the week” at that sort of rate. Who could say when the next one would arrive?
Who could say when Anita would be called upon to face death for mankind again? Her, and yes, Gendo and Maya too. The world demanded a lot from them, even Anita saw that. She didn’t mind. She’d meet the demand and then some. Two Angels had been defeated handily, and if she just stayed calm and focused, she could defeat any other Angel that would be coming.
Anita stood up, her plugsuit properly on, and followed Maya through the doors at the far end of the locker room. Maya was routed to the simulation room, but Anita walked calmly into Eva-02’s cage and was assisted into an Entry Plug. No one spoke to her, no one used her name. She didn’t mind so much, but in Germany at least the workers always tried to act like they cared. She was piloting for them, after all.
Soon the Entry Plug was inserted, the radio was properly disconnected so she couldn’t hear a word that was being said in the observation deck, and the LCL was humming around her. She took in a deep breath of it. Even after so six years of training, she still felt her gag reflex trying to spit all the water out, to not let it into her lungs.
She shut her eyes and tried to ignore the feeling.
In response, images of Asuka from this morning conjured themselves in her mind’s eye. She tried to think different thoughts; remembering the deaths of the Angels, the happier moments with Asuka, the few times she’d met Maya’s mother.
“Anita?” It was Doctor Ayanami’s voice. She sounded concerned.
“Yes ma’am?”
“Your synch ratio stopped rising suddenly. Are you feeling all right?”
Anita nodded. “Of course, ma’am.”
“Oh, there we go. It’s jumping up again. Must have been a momentary jitter… Never seen-” The radio turned off again.
So her synch ratio wasn’t affected. That was great news and Anita clung to that thought as best she could, trying to envision Eva Unit 02 and herself becoming one entity, one giant robot that would tear any Angel limb from limb. Or whatever they had instead of limbs. It didn’t matter.
This was what she was born for, and this was what she was going to do, and she didn’t care if she got in a few scraps with Asuka along the way.
3472:52:55
In which Rei's day is seen
"The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal." - Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, by Hannah Arendt
When Rei woke up, she’d spend as long as she could in bed, trying to savor the feeling of the blankets and pillows all around her. What with the urgency of her day, and the empty feeling her bed soon left her with, she generally didn’t spend more than fifteen minutes awake in the bed. But those fifteen minutes before her brain caught up with everything were fifteen heavenly minutes.
After she stood up, of course, she went through the usual daily routine. She’d shower, put on make-up, go through her uncooperative hair with a brush (the struggle it put up now had made her decide early in life never to let it get long), and find something for breakfast that only required being removed from a box or wrapper as preparation.
Without even stopping to eat, because she could do that on the ride into work, she’d leave the apartment and begin the walk to the trains that went underground. She liked the view. Today she followed her usual routine of turning right after leaving her apartment building, but a moment later she remembered that she’d recently changed apartments and turned around, heading the other direction. Gendo had messed things up for her in quite a number of ways.
A simple train ride later, and today, like every day, she was in the Geofront, safe, sound, and completely at ease. While most of the workers she’d seen in the Geofront had felt claustrophobic, even if only on their first day, Rei refused to let the fact that an earthquake could have destroyed all the tunnels of the Geofront and killed them all bother her. It was a skill she’d picked up from Second Impact. You had to convince yourself that it was all going to be okay, because the only alternative was curling up and dying.
Even while watching the film footage of the boats going over Yokohama, even while everyone else in her family watching broke down, Rei refused to let things get to her.
Well, that wasn’t quite true. Incompetence got to her quickly, and delays or schedules she couldn’t blame anyone for bothered her too. On this day, she went to the Eva Cage containing Unit 01 with Lieutenant Aida. For some reason, lately the man wouldn’t stop fidgeting.
She glared at him. “Are you all right, Aida?”
“Uh… of course.”
She raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. Better to seem a unified front while dealing with the workers of the Eva Cages.
“How’s the status?” she asked as soon as she walked in.
Lieutenant Asari was, as he always was when she or anyone else entered, ready and unsurprised by the sudden arrival. “We’re almost done. We can maybe set something up tomorrow evening. A couple hours of nerve testing with Maya in the Entry Plug.”
“I want it done tomorrow morning. We’ll start her up at eleven o’clock.”
Asari turned to the other two major workers. They were currently digging around with Eva-01’s left fingers, making sure each was in place and that each nerve was properly connected. He frowned and turned back to Rei. “Of course, ma’am,” he said. “That shouldn’t be a problem.”
Rei nodded and left the cage quickly, Aida trailing behind her, still nervous.
“It’s impressive, isn’t it?” she asked.
“The speed they’ve got going?” Kensuke said nervously. “It’s… yeah… it’s great that they managed to fix so many broken bones so quickly.”
Rei laughed, suddenly understanding. “You know where they got the parts from, don’t you?” she asked. “An unmarked room?” Just the way he was trembling was proof enough. She smirked. “Don’t worry, Lieutenant. That room’s unmarked for various reasons, but nothing in there is secret or classified. If it was, the door would have been locked.”
“Then why didn’t you tell them about it?” Aida asked, gulping.
“Simple,” Rei said. “The doors around here have sensors that report when they’re opened and closed. Since the Magi told us that they… mispressed a button, I guess… and went in there, we knew that once the spare parts were needed, they’d go there themselves.”
“You trust everyone to be that brave? To go to an unmarked room and take supplies?”
“The Commander has strange opinions on things, and on people,” Rei noted. “Always dreaming up something or another. It was his plan, his orders. Sometimes I think he’s testing everyone, you know.” She wondered why she was saying this to Aida, but she didn’t think she really minded sharing so much information. It was strange to be so open.
“Tests? Why would he do that?”
Rei got a hold of herself and shrugged the question off. “He always was a little strange,” she pointed out. “In classes too.”
“I guess…” Kensuke muttered. “Still feels a lot weird, don’t you think?” When Rei didn’t answer, he sighed, and made his own way back to Command.
Rei, for her part, went to Kaworu’s office. He wasn’t there, so she made herself comfortable in the seat across his desk. He’d show up sooner or later. In the meantime, she looked around, considering each decoration in turn. There was a degree from a German college she’d never heard of, a picture of a much younger Kaworu with family, various pictures of scenic vistas (some of which definitely didn’t exist anymore), and a small plaque with something in… Hebrew? Something that looked like it, at any rate.
She didn’t get much time to consider this. Kaworu finally arrived in his office, and sat down at his desk. He looked tired for a moment, but soon his all-too-familiar smile appeared, and he regarded Rei with a friendliness she felt certain was completely fabricated.
“Doctor Ayanami,” he said brightly. “I apologize for being a few minutes behind schedule. I’m afraid that a few things conspired to keep me distracted.”
She nodded once, appreciating his word choice. Conspired. So it seemed that he’d been talking to Seele again. For a representative FOR them, he sure seemed to be spending more time talking to them than to the people at Nerv. Oh well, that was none of her concern.
“I hear that you got the Captain to approve your G-Type armor proposal,” she commented.
“Yes?”
“I just find it interesting,” she remarked. “Watanabe told me that the G-Type proposal was your own idea, and then you go running to the Captain to get it approved. Most people in R&D have restrictions to prevent them from doing that.”
Kaworu shrugged. “If it saves mankind from the Angels, I have no qualms with getting the Captain’s attention. Besides, I’m not in Research and Development.”
“How do you know your armor will help mankind? We don’t even have any guns that fit the armor. A gun of that size would be useless.”
“If it fired bullets,” Kaworu corrected. “If it fired something else…”
“It would take more electric power than Nerv has or ever will have. You’re wasting resources, Nagisa.” He just would be, too. If his job had anything to do with finances, this would be perfect to get Shinji removed! She could just see the report now, something about the ridiculous plans that Nerv implemented under Shinji.
“I-” Kaworu began.
“I’ve cancelled the G-Type armor project for now,” she added coldly. “If you want it re-approved, you can go through the normal circles of actually showing the Captain the proposal and letting her make the decision.”
Kaworu looked horrified. “You did what?!”
“You heard me.” She rose. “If you want to make a complaint, go right ahead. I couldn’t care less at this point; I doubt your supervisors will be impressed by the way you approached things.”
“You… you…” he stuttered. Of course. She’d found him out. She left his room without another word, confident in another good deed for Shinji done.
The thought of illicit projects reminded her of the classified project she’d put Hikari on, so she decided to visit her next. Hikari was struggling with the project, it really wasn’t going the way that either of them hoped, and Rei realized two important things, looking at the obviously stressed and overtired woman hunched over a desk. The first was that Hikari needed a break before she drove herself insane. The second was that other people were desperately needed, and that Hikari wasn’t gathering them.
“You come with me to today’s synch tests, and after they’re finished, we’ll work on picking some people out,” Rei said kindly. “Okay?”
Hikari smiled and nodded. “Yeah…” The reason she was working, to save the children, was a noble one, but Rei wondered if it was beginning to become more than a goal.
The synch tests stretched through most of the day and went rather nicely, although there was one blip in Anita’s synch. Rei asked kindly if there was a problem, but the situation seemed to resolve itself somehow and the day went on. No problems there.
At the end of the day, there was but one left thing left to do. Dinner with Shinji.
She joined him in his private apartments, an area behind his office that could put a house to shame. They had been built before he’d become the Commander, or they would have been much smaller, but there was nothing to be done about it now. In all fairness, Shinji had sold the antique furniture that the old Commander had insisted on, and replaced it with far more economical pieces.
He smiled when she arrived. “Hey, Rei,” he said. “I saw the synch tests. Everyone’s been improving. Good job.”
Rei blushed. “I really don’t do all that much,” she argued. “It’s just supervising. The pilots are the skilled ones.”
Shinji nodded and led Rei into the dining room. He pulled back her chair, which she sat down in gratefully, and then retrieved a dish from the kitchen. “Indian?” she guessed, looking at the reddish liquid inside the bowl he brought.
“Yeah. Rasam. Thought we should try something new.” He spooned out two bowlfuls.
She took a spoonful of it, and flinched at the sourness of the dish. Besides that, it was quite tasty.
“So,” Shinji said. “Our favorite Vice-Commander goofed.”
“Oh?” Rei asked.
“He let slip that the Angel is attacking sometime this week,” Shinji explained. “Not tonight, I’m guessing. None of them seem to arrive at night.”
“Courteous of them,” Rei noted.
“Indeed. But this does give us a little forewarning. Hopefully the S2 Engine will be retrievable this time,” Shinji added. “We need one.”
“We have one,” Rei said. “I don’t see why-”
“It’s a back-up for an emergency situation and you know it. We need one for the Evas.”
Rei frowned. “Still, it would be far less dange-”
Again he cut her off. “No, Rei,” the commander said. “That’s there for a reason I’ve explained. It’ll keep Seele busy, at any rate. We just need the Seventh Angel to cooperate.”
No point arguing, Rei decided. It never worked with Shinji. At any rate, she’d rather enjoy dinner with him. The way he prepared the meal for her every day… She knew he cared about her.
3467:16:22
"The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal." - Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, by Hannah Arendt
When Rei woke up, she’d spend as long as she could in bed, trying to savor the feeling of the blankets and pillows all around her. What with the urgency of her day, and the empty feeling her bed soon left her with, she generally didn’t spend more than fifteen minutes awake in the bed. But those fifteen minutes before her brain caught up with everything were fifteen heavenly minutes.
After she stood up, of course, she went through the usual daily routine. She’d shower, put on make-up, go through her uncooperative hair with a brush (the struggle it put up now had made her decide early in life never to let it get long), and find something for breakfast that only required being removed from a box or wrapper as preparation.
Without even stopping to eat, because she could do that on the ride into work, she’d leave the apartment and begin the walk to the trains that went underground. She liked the view. Today she followed her usual routine of turning right after leaving her apartment building, but a moment later she remembered that she’d recently changed apartments and turned around, heading the other direction. Gendo had messed things up for her in quite a number of ways.
A simple train ride later, and today, like every day, she was in the Geofront, safe, sound, and completely at ease. While most of the workers she’d seen in the Geofront had felt claustrophobic, even if only on their first day, Rei refused to let the fact that an earthquake could have destroyed all the tunnels of the Geofront and killed them all bother her. It was a skill she’d picked up from Second Impact. You had to convince yourself that it was all going to be okay, because the only alternative was curling up and dying.
Even while watching the film footage of the boats going over Yokohama, even while everyone else in her family watching broke down, Rei refused to let things get to her.
Well, that wasn’t quite true. Incompetence got to her quickly, and delays or schedules she couldn’t blame anyone for bothered her too. On this day, she went to the Eva Cage containing Unit 01 with Lieutenant Aida. For some reason, lately the man wouldn’t stop fidgeting.
She glared at him. “Are you all right, Aida?”
“Uh… of course.”
She raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. Better to seem a unified front while dealing with the workers of the Eva Cages.
“How’s the status?” she asked as soon as she walked in.
Lieutenant Asari was, as he always was when she or anyone else entered, ready and unsurprised by the sudden arrival. “We’re almost done. We can maybe set something up tomorrow evening. A couple hours of nerve testing with Maya in the Entry Plug.”
“I want it done tomorrow morning. We’ll start her up at eleven o’clock.”
Asari turned to the other two major workers. They were currently digging around with Eva-01’s left fingers, making sure each was in place and that each nerve was properly connected. He frowned and turned back to Rei. “Of course, ma’am,” he said. “That shouldn’t be a problem.”
Rei nodded and left the cage quickly, Aida trailing behind her, still nervous.
“It’s impressive, isn’t it?” she asked.
“The speed they’ve got going?” Kensuke said nervously. “It’s… yeah… it’s great that they managed to fix so many broken bones so quickly.”
Rei laughed, suddenly understanding. “You know where they got the parts from, don’t you?” she asked. “An unmarked room?” Just the way he was trembling was proof enough. She smirked. “Don’t worry, Lieutenant. That room’s unmarked for various reasons, but nothing in there is secret or classified. If it was, the door would have been locked.”
“Then why didn’t you tell them about it?” Aida asked, gulping.
“Simple,” Rei said. “The doors around here have sensors that report when they’re opened and closed. Since the Magi told us that they… mispressed a button, I guess… and went in there, we knew that once the spare parts were needed, they’d go there themselves.”
“You trust everyone to be that brave? To go to an unmarked room and take supplies?”
“The Commander has strange opinions on things, and on people,” Rei noted. “Always dreaming up something or another. It was his plan, his orders. Sometimes I think he’s testing everyone, you know.” She wondered why she was saying this to Aida, but she didn’t think she really minded sharing so much information. It was strange to be so open.
“Tests? Why would he do that?”
Rei got a hold of herself and shrugged the question off. “He always was a little strange,” she pointed out. “In classes too.”
“I guess…” Kensuke muttered. “Still feels a lot weird, don’t you think?” When Rei didn’t answer, he sighed, and made his own way back to Command.
Rei, for her part, went to Kaworu’s office. He wasn’t there, so she made herself comfortable in the seat across his desk. He’d show up sooner or later. In the meantime, she looked around, considering each decoration in turn. There was a degree from a German college she’d never heard of, a picture of a much younger Kaworu with family, various pictures of scenic vistas (some of which definitely didn’t exist anymore), and a small plaque with something in… Hebrew? Something that looked like it, at any rate.
She didn’t get much time to consider this. Kaworu finally arrived in his office, and sat down at his desk. He looked tired for a moment, but soon his all-too-familiar smile appeared, and he regarded Rei with a friendliness she felt certain was completely fabricated.
“Doctor Ayanami,” he said brightly. “I apologize for being a few minutes behind schedule. I’m afraid that a few things conspired to keep me distracted.”
She nodded once, appreciating his word choice. Conspired. So it seemed that he’d been talking to Seele again. For a representative FOR them, he sure seemed to be spending more time talking to them than to the people at Nerv. Oh well, that was none of her concern.
“I hear that you got the Captain to approve your G-Type armor proposal,” she commented.
“Yes?”
“I just find it interesting,” she remarked. “Watanabe told me that the G-Type proposal was your own idea, and then you go running to the Captain to get it approved. Most people in R&D have restrictions to prevent them from doing that.”
Kaworu shrugged. “If it saves mankind from the Angels, I have no qualms with getting the Captain’s attention. Besides, I’m not in Research and Development.”
“How do you know your armor will help mankind? We don’t even have any guns that fit the armor. A gun of that size would be useless.”
“If it fired bullets,” Kaworu corrected. “If it fired something else…”
“It would take more electric power than Nerv has or ever will have. You’re wasting resources, Nagisa.” He just would be, too. If his job had anything to do with finances, this would be perfect to get Shinji removed! She could just see the report now, something about the ridiculous plans that Nerv implemented under Shinji.
“I-” Kaworu began.
“I’ve cancelled the G-Type armor project for now,” she added coldly. “If you want it re-approved, you can go through the normal circles of actually showing the Captain the proposal and letting her make the decision.”
Kaworu looked horrified. “You did what?!”
“You heard me.” She rose. “If you want to make a complaint, go right ahead. I couldn’t care less at this point; I doubt your supervisors will be impressed by the way you approached things.”
“You… you…” he stuttered. Of course. She’d found him out. She left his room without another word, confident in another good deed for Shinji done.
The thought of illicit projects reminded her of the classified project she’d put Hikari on, so she decided to visit her next. Hikari was struggling with the project, it really wasn’t going the way that either of them hoped, and Rei realized two important things, looking at the obviously stressed and overtired woman hunched over a desk. The first was that Hikari needed a break before she drove herself insane. The second was that other people were desperately needed, and that Hikari wasn’t gathering them.
“You come with me to today’s synch tests, and after they’re finished, we’ll work on picking some people out,” Rei said kindly. “Okay?”
Hikari smiled and nodded. “Yeah…” The reason she was working, to save the children, was a noble one, but Rei wondered if it was beginning to become more than a goal.
The synch tests stretched through most of the day and went rather nicely, although there was one blip in Anita’s synch. Rei asked kindly if there was a problem, but the situation seemed to resolve itself somehow and the day went on. No problems there.
At the end of the day, there was but one left thing left to do. Dinner with Shinji.
She joined him in his private apartments, an area behind his office that could put a house to shame. They had been built before he’d become the Commander, or they would have been much smaller, but there was nothing to be done about it now. In all fairness, Shinji had sold the antique furniture that the old Commander had insisted on, and replaced it with far more economical pieces.
He smiled when she arrived. “Hey, Rei,” he said. “I saw the synch tests. Everyone’s been improving. Good job.”
Rei blushed. “I really don’t do all that much,” she argued. “It’s just supervising. The pilots are the skilled ones.”
Shinji nodded and led Rei into the dining room. He pulled back her chair, which she sat down in gratefully, and then retrieved a dish from the kitchen. “Indian?” she guessed, looking at the reddish liquid inside the bowl he brought.
“Yeah. Rasam. Thought we should try something new.” He spooned out two bowlfuls.
She took a spoonful of it, and flinched at the sourness of the dish. Besides that, it was quite tasty.
“So,” Shinji said. “Our favorite Vice-Commander goofed.”
“Oh?” Rei asked.
“He let slip that the Angel is attacking sometime this week,” Shinji explained. “Not tonight, I’m guessing. None of them seem to arrive at night.”
“Courteous of them,” Rei noted.
“Indeed. But this does give us a little forewarning. Hopefully the S2 Engine will be retrievable this time,” Shinji added. “We need one.”
“We have one,” Rei said. “I don’t see why-”
“It’s a back-up for an emergency situation and you know it. We need one for the Evas.”
Rei frowned. “Still, it would be far less dange-”
Again he cut her off. “No, Rei,” the commander said. “That’s there for a reason I’ve explained. It’ll keep Seele busy, at any rate. We just need the Seventh Angel to cooperate.”
No point arguing, Rei decided. It never worked with Shinji. At any rate, she’d rather enjoy dinner with him. The way he prepared the meal for her every day… She knew he cared about her.
3467:16:22
- MugwumpHasNoLiver
- Erotic Humiliation
- Age: 33
- Posts: 3139
- Joined: Jan 17, 2009
- Location: Chicago, IL
- Gender: Male
Hello again, Lege.
Because I can't give you accurate feedback from memory, I'm keeping a window open, so that I can nit-pick at minor prose things. Since your story didn't seem to have any major dents in it so far, I might as well draw your attention to the plethora of very minor scratches all over the hull.
Don't talk down to your readers. It's obvious from her blushing and apologizing that Ritsuko is embarrassed, you don't have to point it out to us,
Not a complaint, it's just that Maya's derision for Kaji, and admiration with Ritsuko highlights something I've been wondering about. I hope this fic becomes a tale of sexual discovery, and Maya accepts and embraces her lesbian urges in the white summer heat of adolescence.
They have blond people in Japan!? D:
What? THEY WERE ACTUALLY WHAT!? I must know!
I see. So the joke is that Maya looks just like Shinji and has a similar last name, so they must be related. Oh Lege, your cleverness knows no bounds.
Doors can open ands?
That made me smile.
In fact, this whole scene is really cool. It says a lot without saying very much.
This fic just got fabulous.
I like this whole scene, too. The characterization is nothing sophisticated, but it's memorable and a lot of fun. I lol'd at Kaji's line while he's reading his tabloid.
Okay, I'm stopping after reading four chapters. A new angel is just about to show up. I'm digging the story a lot more now, that we're moving into new territory. I'm particularly interested in where the Kaworu and Asuka stuff will go.
If you don't mind, I'd prefer to read the rest of the story in a Word doc. Next time you're on the IRC ask me for my email address, so you can send me one.
Because I can't give you accurate feedback from memory, I'm keeping a window open, so that I can nit-pick at minor prose things. Since your story didn't seem to have any major dents in it so far, I might as well draw your attention to the plethora of very minor scratches all over the hull.
SPOILER: Show
"Oh. Sorry.” The class representative blushed slightly, embarrassed at her own mistake. "It's nice to meet you too." Ritsuko bowed in response. Maya was glad when she looked back up; bowing hid Ritsuko's face and most especially her eyes, which were a lovely shade of green.
Don't talk down to your readers. It's obvious from her blushing and apologizing that Ritsuko is embarrassed, you don't have to point it out to us,
The new boy-- Kaji-- looked at Maya and chuckled. Maya wasn't sure what he was laughing about; her uniform and appearance were perfect while he just looked scruffy with his dorky ponytail and what little facial hair a fourteen-year old boy could grow. Plus his uniform was a little too big on him. "Interesting slip, Rits. So, Ikarsorryibuki, got any relatives in Nerv?" He still had that stupid grin and smile.
Not a complaint, it's just that Maya's derision for Kaji, and admiration with Ritsuko highlights something I've been wondering about. I hope this fic becomes a tale of sexual discovery, and Maya accepts and embraces her lesbian urges in the white summer heat of adolescence.
"Not if she suffered from amnesia!” a blonde called out. Strasberg glared and immediately the class fell silent.
They have blond people in Japan!? D:
Lunchtime finally arrived. Maya found herself swamped by classmates who wanted so much to befriend “Commander Shinji Ikari’s long-lost daughter.” Besides Kaji and the class rep, who at least seemed genuine in their interest; there was a trio of girls, Mogami, Ooi, and Agano; two boys who seemed to be best friends, Hyuga and Aoba; and a boy named Yamada. Of course, there were actually
What? THEY WERE ACTUALLY WHAT!? I must know!
Maya almost corrected him by pointing out that she'd been raised by her grandparents when she saw how stupid that was for arguing about her parents. “Why does everyone care anyways? What’s the big deal if I’m Commander Ikari’s daughter?”
Kaji grinned. “Simple. It would confirm that you are who you think we are.”
“And who would that be?” Maya asked, exasperated.
“The pilot of the Evangelion that saved everyone a couple nights ago,” Kaji answered casually, lacking his smile.
I see. So the joke is that Maya looks just like Shinji and has a similar last name, so they must be related. Oh Lege, your cleverness knows no bounds.
The door opened a and Asuka walked in.
Doors can open ands?
Asuka almost left him to his musings then, but then spoke up. “Hey, ba- Commander?”
That made me smile.
In fact, this whole scene is really cool. It says a lot without saying very much.
“I’m the Vice Commander, Nagisa Kaworu, representing the United Nations Committee in Charge of Nerv. It is wonderful to meet you.”
This fic just got fabulous.
Three days at school, and barely anyone believed her. Maybe not anyone, actually, though Ritsuko was polite and assured Maya that she’d know better than anyone else. Kaji kept joking that she was really sixteen, but a late bloomer to explain why she looked fourteen. She would have punched him, but… violence really wasn’t her forte.
I like this whole scene, too. The characterization is nothing sophisticated, but it's memorable and a lot of fun. I lol'd at Kaji's line while he's reading his tabloid.
Okay, I'm stopping after reading four chapters. A new angel is just about to show up. I'm digging the story a lot more now, that we're moving into new territory. I'm particularly interested in where the Kaworu and Asuka stuff will go.
If you don't mind, I'd prefer to read the rest of the story in a Word doc. Next time you're on the IRC ask me for my email address, so you can send me one.
"Now, from Nature we obtain abundant information about ourselves, and precious little about others. About the woman you clasp in your arms, can you say with certainty that she does not feign pleasure? About the woman you mistreat, are you quite sure that from abuse she does not derive some obscure and lascivious satisfaction? Let us confine ourselves to simple evidence: through thoughtfulness, gentleness, concern for the feelings of others we saddle our own pleasure with restrictions, and make this sacrifice to obtain a doubtful result." -The Divine Marquis
"I agree Hans, but we have talked about those anal fisting analogies." -Werner Herzog
"I agree Hans, but we have talked about those anal fisting analogies." -Werner Herzog
In which each thought leads to new questions
"Out, damned spot!" - Lady Macbeth, Macbeth, by William Shakespeare
“Ma’am, may I speak with you privately?”
Asuka looked up from the synch test and saw Idane Kimie, one of her older and better friends from her college years. “You can call me Asuka, you know,” she said teasingly. “It’s not like we haven’t known each other for a decade.”
Kimie blushed. “Right. May I?”
Asuka stood up and stretched. This synch test had been going on for hours; it was so nice to be on her feet again. “Of course!” she said happily. “Anywhere in particular, or should we just step outside for a few minutes?”
Kimie considered for a few moments, and then said, “I think the corridor will do fine for this discussion, ma-Asuka.”
The two of them left the observation room quickly. No one paid them any attention as they left; apparently something strange had happened to one of the Evas. Asuka guessed it was Eva-00, because Maya and especially Anita never had troubles. Not with the Evangelion, anyway, though apparently Anita was lately having difficulty appreciating why things would be classified. Grr…
Asuka shut the door behind her as they entered the corridor and leaned against it, her arms crossing over her red uniform. She wasn’t a big fan of that color any more, especially not on her hair, but her captain’s uniform had proven to be one of the few exceptions.
“So what is it, Kimie?” she asked.
“The Magi reported that someone hacked into the papers that Nerv has on you. You know, the forms you filled out when joining, various reports superior officers have filed on you, promotions, personal history that’s verifiable, that sort of thing.”
“What?!” Asuka stared at Kimie in shock. She hadn’t reported all of her life’s story to Gehirn when she’d joined, certainly not the Soryu Expedition and what happened to her there, but she knew that between Gehirn and Nerv, all sorts of data on that would be in there. Her presence at the Soryu Expedition was the earliest thing that would be verifiable on her, most of the records of her few years before Second Impact had been lost.
“I’m sorry, Asuka. Whoever did the hacking was pretty good about it. We couldn’t figure out who it was, or even which console they used.”
“Dammit,” Asuka muttered. “It’s no big deal, I mean… It’s not like there are any super-dark secrets in my files, but if someone’s hacking the Magi, that is a problem. Are you sure they did it inside the facility?” she asked after a moment’s thinking.
“Well…” Kimie hesitated. “It could have been done from any of the seven Magi systems. Here, Matsushiro, Berlin, Boston, Hamburg, Beijing, or Groom Lake… Though I’m not sure why the Americans or the Chinese would care.”
“The Germans wouldn’t either. They probably printed out everything about me before my transfer was official, just to be able to keep accessing the records on me without having to worry about permission. I guess that leaves Japan.”
Both women frowned, trying to think of anyone who could get into Nerv without triggering alarms that might be interested in Asuka’s past. Neither could come up with any reasonable suspects; the vast majority of them knew that Asuka’s past was dark and that it wasn’t worth bothering her, and everyone respected that.
So who was it?
3466:45:57
* * *
Raidon looked at the latest orders and swore in frustration. The new G-Type armor was going to be halted until such time as the Captain reapproved it. First it was a priority order that needed to be finished by tomorrow, now it was on hold. He suspected that this was office politics, a subject he personally loathed.
He didn’t understand why people took it upon themselves to prove themselves better than everyone else, to prove that they ran the office and that no one else did, instead of just doing their damn jobs. It wasn’t hard, was it?
Sighing, he decided that it would be best to take an early lunch break to distract himself from his frustrations. Maybe he’d run into someone and would be able to talk. He hadn’t had a chance to talk with Kaito in awhile, and it was possible that he’d know more about the Jet Alone accident that had happened two weeks ago.
Regrettably, he didn’t run into Kaito. He did, however, get a chance to meet with one of the Command Center Lieutenants, Aida Kensuke.
“Hello, sir,” Raidon said politely. Kensuke didn’t technically outrank him, but the three command center lieutenants seemed to get special treatment.
Kensuke looked up. “Oh hello, Watanabe.” He smiled. “How’s it going?”
“Not too bad,” Raidon answered, sitting opposite Kensuke. “They just canceled a priority order, which is kinda stupid, but…”
“But we gotta follow orders, right? No matter how stupid they are?” Kensuke thought back to what Doctor Ayanami had said. Everything was a test. Or had that only applied to people who’d been Shinji’s college classes? Then again, just because Raidon hadn’t been in the particular class Kensuke had been didn’t mean he hadn’t learned something from Shinji.
Tests upon tests, all mixed in with secrets and plots. Kensuke wondered if he should try making some secret plots of his own, just for the fun of it all. Then of course, sanity won over and he became aware of how monumentally stupid that sounded. Still, though, he wondered how many people here at Nerv had deep dark secrets they were keeping from everyone else.
“No matter how stupid they are,” Raidon agreed. “That sounds about right.” He sighed. “I wish this war would hurry up and end sometimes, you know? Get everything over with so we don’t have to worry about dumb things like someone offending someone else with a proposal for an armor type that wasn’t filed correctly.”
“Well, they count the Angels,” Kensuke pointed out. “That seems like a silly thing to do if they’re not expecting some end to this, or if there’s going to be more than we’ll live to see. Imagine fighting the Thirty-five thousand two hundred and eighty-sixth Angel.”
Raidon laughed. “Yeah,” he agreed. “I guess there’s got to be a limit or something… Maybe they use one of the good telescopes and are tracking the Angels as they approach.”
“Hmm…” Kensuke considered this. “Then why don’t they know when each Angel will attack?” he asked.
“Because the Angels hide behind other planets or something before approaching? Wait until the telescope isn’t tracking them anymore, jump to a nearby asteroid, and get off right in Earth orbit. They would have just enough time to arrive before anyone noticed; especially if they do it over the ocean in the day.”
Kensuke thought about that for a minute, and then said simply, “But why keep that technique a secret?” He thought he had an idea of what Raidon would say, though.
He was right. “Why keep any of this a secret?”
Kensuke knew that Raidon had a point, but even though that answer would have been sufficient for many questions relating to Nerv, it couldn’t possibly be the correct answer here. Something dark and mysterious was up for sure, but Kensuke knew he didn’t understand it in the least. Suggesting that there was an innocent explanation was foolish.
But Asuka and Rei wouldn’t participate in something evil, Kensuke knew that, so he decided to trust them, and thusly Nerv. If there were secrets, they were secrets for a reason.
3466:10:08
* * *
Gendo left the Entry Plug twenty-five minutes after the test was over. For those twenty-five minutes, he chose to savor the feeling of the LCL, to immerse himself as completely as possible rather than have to leave again. He did not want to have to be between the captain and the second child again.
He was vaguely aware that incriminating photographs of some sort involving Jet Alone had been leaked, but apparently it hadn’t had anything to do with his destruction of it and- No. He tried not to think about that. Thinking about it made him feel sick, like he’d done something horribly wrong to the world, like he’d betrayed something.
In a way, he knew he had. Killing was wrong, according to everyone he’d ever met and every book he’d ever read. But there was something more than that, something he’d never noticed before. It was something that made him feel an invisible bond, not just with the people he knew, but all the billions of human beings on the planet. He couldn’t explain it.
But he’d failed it already, killing so many people.
He tried to make himself focus. There was anger over pictures. Nerv had lied about something else related to Jet Alone, then.
But Rei was supposed to be a good person.
Why did she lie if she was a good person? He didn’t understand.
He desperately wanted to understand her, but she pushed him away. If she was a good person, why wasn’t she friendly? Why had she told him to kill?
There had to be good reasons, but she was hiding them and that was another lie of a sort, which brought Gendo right back to the beginning.
After twenty-five minutes of thinking, he got out of the Entry Plug. That helped him stop thinking. Life was better that way.
3465:35:00
"Out, damned spot!" - Lady Macbeth, Macbeth, by William Shakespeare
“Ma’am, may I speak with you privately?”
Asuka looked up from the synch test and saw Idane Kimie, one of her older and better friends from her college years. “You can call me Asuka, you know,” she said teasingly. “It’s not like we haven’t known each other for a decade.”
Kimie blushed. “Right. May I?”
Asuka stood up and stretched. This synch test had been going on for hours; it was so nice to be on her feet again. “Of course!” she said happily. “Anywhere in particular, or should we just step outside for a few minutes?”
Kimie considered for a few moments, and then said, “I think the corridor will do fine for this discussion, ma-Asuka.”
The two of them left the observation room quickly. No one paid them any attention as they left; apparently something strange had happened to one of the Evas. Asuka guessed it was Eva-00, because Maya and especially Anita never had troubles. Not with the Evangelion, anyway, though apparently Anita was lately having difficulty appreciating why things would be classified. Grr…
Asuka shut the door behind her as they entered the corridor and leaned against it, her arms crossing over her red uniform. She wasn’t a big fan of that color any more, especially not on her hair, but her captain’s uniform had proven to be one of the few exceptions.
“So what is it, Kimie?” she asked.
“The Magi reported that someone hacked into the papers that Nerv has on you. You know, the forms you filled out when joining, various reports superior officers have filed on you, promotions, personal history that’s verifiable, that sort of thing.”
“What?!” Asuka stared at Kimie in shock. She hadn’t reported all of her life’s story to Gehirn when she’d joined, certainly not the Soryu Expedition and what happened to her there, but she knew that between Gehirn and Nerv, all sorts of data on that would be in there. Her presence at the Soryu Expedition was the earliest thing that would be verifiable on her, most of the records of her few years before Second Impact had been lost.
“I’m sorry, Asuka. Whoever did the hacking was pretty good about it. We couldn’t figure out who it was, or even which console they used.”
“Dammit,” Asuka muttered. “It’s no big deal, I mean… It’s not like there are any super-dark secrets in my files, but if someone’s hacking the Magi, that is a problem. Are you sure they did it inside the facility?” she asked after a moment’s thinking.
“Well…” Kimie hesitated. “It could have been done from any of the seven Magi systems. Here, Matsushiro, Berlin, Boston, Hamburg, Beijing, or Groom Lake… Though I’m not sure why the Americans or the Chinese would care.”
“The Germans wouldn’t either. They probably printed out everything about me before my transfer was official, just to be able to keep accessing the records on me without having to worry about permission. I guess that leaves Japan.”
Both women frowned, trying to think of anyone who could get into Nerv without triggering alarms that might be interested in Asuka’s past. Neither could come up with any reasonable suspects; the vast majority of them knew that Asuka’s past was dark and that it wasn’t worth bothering her, and everyone respected that.
So who was it?
3466:45:57
* * *
Raidon looked at the latest orders and swore in frustration. The new G-Type armor was going to be halted until such time as the Captain reapproved it. First it was a priority order that needed to be finished by tomorrow, now it was on hold. He suspected that this was office politics, a subject he personally loathed.
He didn’t understand why people took it upon themselves to prove themselves better than everyone else, to prove that they ran the office and that no one else did, instead of just doing their damn jobs. It wasn’t hard, was it?
Sighing, he decided that it would be best to take an early lunch break to distract himself from his frustrations. Maybe he’d run into someone and would be able to talk. He hadn’t had a chance to talk with Kaito in awhile, and it was possible that he’d know more about the Jet Alone accident that had happened two weeks ago.
Regrettably, he didn’t run into Kaito. He did, however, get a chance to meet with one of the Command Center Lieutenants, Aida Kensuke.
“Hello, sir,” Raidon said politely. Kensuke didn’t technically outrank him, but the three command center lieutenants seemed to get special treatment.
Kensuke looked up. “Oh hello, Watanabe.” He smiled. “How’s it going?”
“Not too bad,” Raidon answered, sitting opposite Kensuke. “They just canceled a priority order, which is kinda stupid, but…”
“But we gotta follow orders, right? No matter how stupid they are?” Kensuke thought back to what Doctor Ayanami had said. Everything was a test. Or had that only applied to people who’d been Shinji’s college classes? Then again, just because Raidon hadn’t been in the particular class Kensuke had been didn’t mean he hadn’t learned something from Shinji.
Tests upon tests, all mixed in with secrets and plots. Kensuke wondered if he should try making some secret plots of his own, just for the fun of it all. Then of course, sanity won over and he became aware of how monumentally stupid that sounded. Still, though, he wondered how many people here at Nerv had deep dark secrets they were keeping from everyone else.
“No matter how stupid they are,” Raidon agreed. “That sounds about right.” He sighed. “I wish this war would hurry up and end sometimes, you know? Get everything over with so we don’t have to worry about dumb things like someone offending someone else with a proposal for an armor type that wasn’t filed correctly.”
“Well, they count the Angels,” Kensuke pointed out. “That seems like a silly thing to do if they’re not expecting some end to this, or if there’s going to be more than we’ll live to see. Imagine fighting the Thirty-five thousand two hundred and eighty-sixth Angel.”
Raidon laughed. “Yeah,” he agreed. “I guess there’s got to be a limit or something… Maybe they use one of the good telescopes and are tracking the Angels as they approach.”
“Hmm…” Kensuke considered this. “Then why don’t they know when each Angel will attack?” he asked.
“Because the Angels hide behind other planets or something before approaching? Wait until the telescope isn’t tracking them anymore, jump to a nearby asteroid, and get off right in Earth orbit. They would have just enough time to arrive before anyone noticed; especially if they do it over the ocean in the day.”
Kensuke thought about that for a minute, and then said simply, “But why keep that technique a secret?” He thought he had an idea of what Raidon would say, though.
He was right. “Why keep any of this a secret?”
Kensuke knew that Raidon had a point, but even though that answer would have been sufficient for many questions relating to Nerv, it couldn’t possibly be the correct answer here. Something dark and mysterious was up for sure, but Kensuke knew he didn’t understand it in the least. Suggesting that there was an innocent explanation was foolish.
But Asuka and Rei wouldn’t participate in something evil, Kensuke knew that, so he decided to trust them, and thusly Nerv. If there were secrets, they were secrets for a reason.
3466:10:08
* * *
Gendo left the Entry Plug twenty-five minutes after the test was over. For those twenty-five minutes, he chose to savor the feeling of the LCL, to immerse himself as completely as possible rather than have to leave again. He did not want to have to be between the captain and the second child again.
He was vaguely aware that incriminating photographs of some sort involving Jet Alone had been leaked, but apparently it hadn’t had anything to do with his destruction of it and- No. He tried not to think about that. Thinking about it made him feel sick, like he’d done something horribly wrong to the world, like he’d betrayed something.
In a way, he knew he had. Killing was wrong, according to everyone he’d ever met and every book he’d ever read. But there was something more than that, something he’d never noticed before. It was something that made him feel an invisible bond, not just with the people he knew, but all the billions of human beings on the planet. He couldn’t explain it.
But he’d failed it already, killing so many people.
He tried to make himself focus. There was anger over pictures. Nerv had lied about something else related to Jet Alone, then.
But Rei was supposed to be a good person.
Why did she lie if she was a good person? He didn’t understand.
He desperately wanted to understand her, but she pushed him away. If she was a good person, why wasn’t she friendly? Why had she told him to kill?
There had to be good reasons, but she was hiding them and that was another lie of a sort, which brought Gendo right back to the beginning.
After twenty-five minutes of thinking, he got out of the Entry Plug. That helped him stop thinking. Life was better that way.
3465:35:00
In which Anita launches solo
"He unleashed against them his hot anger, his wrath, indignation and hostility--a band of destroying angels." - Book of Psalms, Author Disputed
Anita woke up, took a shower, got dressed, went to the kitchen and realized that this morning wasn’t going to be any better. Asuka wasn’t making breakfast and she didn’t look especially happy with Anita. This was getting to be ridiculous.
Gendo gave Anita a pitying glance as she poured herself some cereal. Asuka seemed quite content to be watching television. Well, content clearly wasn’t the right word since she looked like she was fuming silently. Anita decided that it was not the time to get anywhere near Asuka, so she just ate silently next to Gendo and then when back to her room for the time being.
“You’re not going to school today,” Asuka announced as Anita reached the doorframe. “Doctor Ayanami wants all three of you to be doing more synch tests today.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Anita hesitated. “When are we leaving?”
“Ten-thirty.”
That was… unusual. Nerv didn’t generally make them wait that long for synch tests. Anita didn’t mind though. She retreated to her room and turned her attention to some long overdue homework. It wasn’t fun, but it helped her learn the kanji a bit better.
Finally, after what felt like far too much waiting, Asuka finally called her and Gendo, informing them that it was time to go. They again rode into Nerv in silence, and separated as quickly as possible. Again, Anita found Maya in the locker rooms.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hello,” Anita responded. “Glad we don’t have school today?” she asked, fiddling with her locker combination. She kept forgetting that her German locker didn’t have the same combination as her Japanese one.
“I guess,” Maya said. “And it’ll be nice to properly synch with Eva-01. That is supposed to be important, and we need to fight the Angels, but… I’d rather have spent the day with my friends, I guess. I haven’t seen anyone since we got the chat about the photographs.”
Anita nodded appreciatively. She was beginning to realize she missed some of the workers from Germany, especially in comparison to all the workers here. “Well, tomorrow we’ll have a chance to see them,” she said.
“Right. Tomorrow.”
Something about the way Maya said “Tomorrow,” made Anita think that she didn’t really expect tomorrow to be any different.
Anita didn’t care, though, if Maya didn’t trust Nerv. Right now she just wanted to get into her Eva and relax.
3445:01:33
* * *
“How are you feeling, Maya?” Hikari asked.
Maya opened her eyes. “I feel pretty numb,” she answered. “Is something wrong?”
Nothing looked wrong in the LCL, none of the monitors around her looked any different than normal, and nothing looked obviously broken. So why could she only feel her left arm, torso, neck and head?
“We’re synching you bit by bit,” Hikari explained. “This way if all the repairs had gone wrong, you wouldn’t have felt that you were in hideous pain once we started up. Beginning synchronization in your right arm now.”
Slowly, starting at her shoulder and working its way down to the tips of her fingers, the feeling returned. Nothing was unusual. Then they started on her left leg, then her right. Still nothing wrong.
“I’m fine!” she announced. “I feel great.”
“Excellent,” said Hikari. “Later this afternoon we’ll be moving you into a Pribnow Box and will have you move around, okay?”
Maya grinned. “Okay!” she said. She didn’t know what it was about this particular day, but to Maya, right now, the prospect of spending more time in here became fun. She wanted to have Eva-01 walk, run, and jump up and down, anything. Just to let her stay in the robot.
She shut her eyes and relaxed.
What a wonderful world this was.
3444:40:00
* * *
On a plane flying over Hakone, the intercom came on. “This is the captain speaking. We have approached cruising altitude and are on our way to the lovely capital of South Korea, Suwon. With perfectly clear skies like the ones in fron-”
The captain was cut off, and promptly died, as did his co-pilot. Most of the people in first class suffered horribly as the space between the back of their chairs and the chairs in front of them became quite smaller. The people in economy class, however, were merely tossed forward, and then back. The plane itself had somehow become crushed against empty space, and then began to fall backwards.
It landed in Ashinoko, and its completely inexplicable fall was recorded by one of the dozens of Tokyo-3’s Sky Watch cameras. It also gathered pictures of a bird flying through the empty sky somehow being refracted into four images. The camera lacked a video feed, but managed to take enough pictures that when the Magi began to analyze them three seconds later. When the analysis was concluded, the Magi voted to give Captain Soryu one simple message: “Potential Angel detected.”
“Dammit,” Asuka said. “An Angel!”
“They just would attack during the test,” Toji muttered. “Plans?”
“We haven’t…” Kensuke began, but then cut himself off. Pressing a button, he switched the video feed he’d been observing on his own console onto the main screen. Everyone watched as a cloud over the south side of town began to change, and a blue shape emerged from it. The main body was an octahedron, but over each of its eight faces floated a triangle, though the only thing the videos ever recorded was the shape of light. Emerged from the clouds, it began to hover in place calmly. It showed no signs of movement.
Picture cameras, recording a new image every two and a half seconds, recorded that the Angel was a uniform blue.
Asuka watched it for a moment, hesitant. “Lieutenant, we shouldn’t deploy Eva-01, should we?” she asked.
“The likelihood that something will go wrong is too high,” Hikari answered. “We haven’t even begun to test Eva-01.”
“Right.” Asuka thought, biting her lip. ‘Anita, or Gendo? Which one do I deploy?’ Finally, she decided to go with the one that she felt (probably with bias, however) was the best pilot of the three. “Deploy Eva-02 right away. Put it close to the southeastern armories, they’ve got some of the better guns.”
She flipped on her radio and began communication with Anita. “We’re going to have to interrupt your training. An Angel has attacked.”
Anita grinned. “Excellent.”
“Don’t get cocky,” Asuka said. “We don’t know what it’s capable of.” She switched off the radio so she wouldn’t have to listen to Anita sigh. “All right, that’s that done. Eva-02 will be deploying as soon as possible.”
“Should we deploy Eva-00 as well?” Toji asked.
“This is right now just a simple mission. She’s going to launch, get some long-range guns, and fire upon the Angel. Once it’s drawn into closer range, and we have a better idea of what it’s capable of, we’ll launch Eva-00 and maybe Jet Alone.”
Toji didn’t look like he thought it was quite the best plan, but he nodded anyways. “Yes, ma’am.”
Hikari put her headset on and began relaying the instructions to Anita while the Eva Cage was being drained.
Asuka used the radio to call Rei next. “Sorry to interrupt the test, Doctor,” she said.
“I understand,” Rei said calmly. “We’ll continue working with Maya of course. Shall I tell her we don’t intend to launch her?”
“That would be for the best,” Asuka agreed. “This Angel doesn’t seem like the other ones, though. Most of them march right into the city and start trying to do damage. Any idea why it might be holding back? If Angels have psychology, I’m sure you’re the one who knows the most about it.”
“I assure you I have no idea,” Rei responded. “Perhaps it’s just trying to get a look at the terrain?”
“Hmm… makes sense…”
“Eva-02 go for launch!” Hikari launched.
“Move out!”
A few moments later, Eva-02 reached the city streets. Asuka grinned. This would be easy. “All right, Anita,” she said. “That’s your target.”
“What is?” Anita asked, confused.
Asuka blinked. “Wait… what? What do you mean ‘What is?’”
“I don’t see anything! There’s just sky!”
“What?” Asuka looked at one of the pictures. The Angel was blue. Sky blue, even… If it was floating against a clear sky from Anita’s angle… Shit.
“Something’s happening in the Angel!” Kensuke announced, too late.
The camera recorded that two of the floating triangles came together, forming a parallelogram, and then that an immense hole opened up in them. Then the Angel fired an immense laser.
All Asuka could hear was Anita screaming.
3444:20:10
"He unleashed against them his hot anger, his wrath, indignation and hostility--a band of destroying angels." - Book of Psalms, Author Disputed
Anita woke up, took a shower, got dressed, went to the kitchen and realized that this morning wasn’t going to be any better. Asuka wasn’t making breakfast and she didn’t look especially happy with Anita. This was getting to be ridiculous.
Gendo gave Anita a pitying glance as she poured herself some cereal. Asuka seemed quite content to be watching television. Well, content clearly wasn’t the right word since she looked like she was fuming silently. Anita decided that it was not the time to get anywhere near Asuka, so she just ate silently next to Gendo and then when back to her room for the time being.
“You’re not going to school today,” Asuka announced as Anita reached the doorframe. “Doctor Ayanami wants all three of you to be doing more synch tests today.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Anita hesitated. “When are we leaving?”
“Ten-thirty.”
That was… unusual. Nerv didn’t generally make them wait that long for synch tests. Anita didn’t mind though. She retreated to her room and turned her attention to some long overdue homework. It wasn’t fun, but it helped her learn the kanji a bit better.
Finally, after what felt like far too much waiting, Asuka finally called her and Gendo, informing them that it was time to go. They again rode into Nerv in silence, and separated as quickly as possible. Again, Anita found Maya in the locker rooms.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hello,” Anita responded. “Glad we don’t have school today?” she asked, fiddling with her locker combination. She kept forgetting that her German locker didn’t have the same combination as her Japanese one.
“I guess,” Maya said. “And it’ll be nice to properly synch with Eva-01. That is supposed to be important, and we need to fight the Angels, but… I’d rather have spent the day with my friends, I guess. I haven’t seen anyone since we got the chat about the photographs.”
Anita nodded appreciatively. She was beginning to realize she missed some of the workers from Germany, especially in comparison to all the workers here. “Well, tomorrow we’ll have a chance to see them,” she said.
“Right. Tomorrow.”
Something about the way Maya said “Tomorrow,” made Anita think that she didn’t really expect tomorrow to be any different.
Anita didn’t care, though, if Maya didn’t trust Nerv. Right now she just wanted to get into her Eva and relax.
3445:01:33
* * *
“How are you feeling, Maya?” Hikari asked.
Maya opened her eyes. “I feel pretty numb,” she answered. “Is something wrong?”
Nothing looked wrong in the LCL, none of the monitors around her looked any different than normal, and nothing looked obviously broken. So why could she only feel her left arm, torso, neck and head?
“We’re synching you bit by bit,” Hikari explained. “This way if all the repairs had gone wrong, you wouldn’t have felt that you were in hideous pain once we started up. Beginning synchronization in your right arm now.”
Slowly, starting at her shoulder and working its way down to the tips of her fingers, the feeling returned. Nothing was unusual. Then they started on her left leg, then her right. Still nothing wrong.
“I’m fine!” she announced. “I feel great.”
“Excellent,” said Hikari. “Later this afternoon we’ll be moving you into a Pribnow Box and will have you move around, okay?”
Maya grinned. “Okay!” she said. She didn’t know what it was about this particular day, but to Maya, right now, the prospect of spending more time in here became fun. She wanted to have Eva-01 walk, run, and jump up and down, anything. Just to let her stay in the robot.
She shut her eyes and relaxed.
What a wonderful world this was.
3444:40:00
* * *
On a plane flying over Hakone, the intercom came on. “This is the captain speaking. We have approached cruising altitude and are on our way to the lovely capital of South Korea, Suwon. With perfectly clear skies like the ones in fron-”
The captain was cut off, and promptly died, as did his co-pilot. Most of the people in first class suffered horribly as the space between the back of their chairs and the chairs in front of them became quite smaller. The people in economy class, however, were merely tossed forward, and then back. The plane itself had somehow become crushed against empty space, and then began to fall backwards.
It landed in Ashinoko, and its completely inexplicable fall was recorded by one of the dozens of Tokyo-3’s Sky Watch cameras. It also gathered pictures of a bird flying through the empty sky somehow being refracted into four images. The camera lacked a video feed, but managed to take enough pictures that when the Magi began to analyze them three seconds later. When the analysis was concluded, the Magi voted to give Captain Soryu one simple message: “Potential Angel detected.”
“Dammit,” Asuka said. “An Angel!”
“They just would attack during the test,” Toji muttered. “Plans?”
“We haven’t…” Kensuke began, but then cut himself off. Pressing a button, he switched the video feed he’d been observing on his own console onto the main screen. Everyone watched as a cloud over the south side of town began to change, and a blue shape emerged from it. The main body was an octahedron, but over each of its eight faces floated a triangle, though the only thing the videos ever recorded was the shape of light. Emerged from the clouds, it began to hover in place calmly. It showed no signs of movement.
Picture cameras, recording a new image every two and a half seconds, recorded that the Angel was a uniform blue.
Asuka watched it for a moment, hesitant. “Lieutenant, we shouldn’t deploy Eva-01, should we?” she asked.
“The likelihood that something will go wrong is too high,” Hikari answered. “We haven’t even begun to test Eva-01.”
“Right.” Asuka thought, biting her lip. ‘Anita, or Gendo? Which one do I deploy?’ Finally, she decided to go with the one that she felt (probably with bias, however) was the best pilot of the three. “Deploy Eva-02 right away. Put it close to the southeastern armories, they’ve got some of the better guns.”
She flipped on her radio and began communication with Anita. “We’re going to have to interrupt your training. An Angel has attacked.”
Anita grinned. “Excellent.”
“Don’t get cocky,” Asuka said. “We don’t know what it’s capable of.” She switched off the radio so she wouldn’t have to listen to Anita sigh. “All right, that’s that done. Eva-02 will be deploying as soon as possible.”
“Should we deploy Eva-00 as well?” Toji asked.
“This is right now just a simple mission. She’s going to launch, get some long-range guns, and fire upon the Angel. Once it’s drawn into closer range, and we have a better idea of what it’s capable of, we’ll launch Eva-00 and maybe Jet Alone.”
Toji didn’t look like he thought it was quite the best plan, but he nodded anyways. “Yes, ma’am.”
Hikari put her headset on and began relaying the instructions to Anita while the Eva Cage was being drained.
Asuka used the radio to call Rei next. “Sorry to interrupt the test, Doctor,” she said.
“I understand,” Rei said calmly. “We’ll continue working with Maya of course. Shall I tell her we don’t intend to launch her?”
“That would be for the best,” Asuka agreed. “This Angel doesn’t seem like the other ones, though. Most of them march right into the city and start trying to do damage. Any idea why it might be holding back? If Angels have psychology, I’m sure you’re the one who knows the most about it.”
“I assure you I have no idea,” Rei responded. “Perhaps it’s just trying to get a look at the terrain?”
“Hmm… makes sense…”
“Eva-02 go for launch!” Hikari launched.
“Move out!”
A few moments later, Eva-02 reached the city streets. Asuka grinned. This would be easy. “All right, Anita,” she said. “That’s your target.”
“What is?” Anita asked, confused.
Asuka blinked. “Wait… what? What do you mean ‘What is?’”
“I don’t see anything! There’s just sky!”
“What?” Asuka looked at one of the pictures. The Angel was blue. Sky blue, even… If it was floating against a clear sky from Anita’s angle… Shit.
“Something’s happening in the Angel!” Kensuke announced, too late.
The camera recorded that two of the floating triangles came together, forming a parallelogram, and then that an immense hole opened up in them. Then the Angel fired an immense laser.
All Asuka could hear was Anita screaming.
3444:20:10
In which desperate plans are made
"This is a story of men fighting against their fates." - Narrator, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, by Kazuki Nakashima
“Recall Eva-02 immediately!” Asuka ordered.
Toji hesitated at the controls for a moment, Anita’s agony overwhelming all thoughts. Then he pressed the button. The screams ceased as Eva-02 was pulled back underground to safety.
“The target is now moving again,” Kensuke announced uncomfortably. “Moving for the center of town.”
“Status of the Second Child?” Asuka demanded.
Toji turned on his radio to the Eva Cage and repeated the question. He frowned. “Asari and Matsuda say that the armor melted over the release and they’re drilling the pilot out. No information on her condition.”
Asuka stared at Toji horrified for a moment, and then turned to Kensuke. “You said it’s moving again? When it’s in the range of any of our automated defenses, start firing immediately!” She sounded bestial, like she wanted to go kill the angel herself.
Kensuke nodded. Everyone turned to the video of the Angel. As it passed one of the automated turrets, one of the eight triangles that floated over it shifted angle slightly. As the turret fired, all shots were deflected, not back into it, but into neighboring defense turrets, which melted into unrecognizable forms, as did the buildings in the surrounding area. Several more turrets began firing simultaneously (at least ten), but despite the overwhelming firepower, coming in from all directions, each shot was deflected.
“Hmm…” Asuka stared at the Angel, trying to keep focused solely on it and not on Anita. “I… I guess we shouldn’t use any airplanes, huh?” She looked down, trying to concentrate on finding a battle plan. “Range… Dammit.”
“What?” Toji looked at her, concerned and confused.
“We’re going to have to get more things destroyed…” Asuka explained.
“Captain!” Kensuke shouted, nervously. “Look!” He pointed at the screen, and Asuka followed the point. The Angel had stopped moving over the city, and had picked one of the largest intersections in town to float over. A few abandoned cars were nearby, left behind by the people fleeing when the alarms had gone off.
The eight floating triangles around the Angel shifted. The four upper ones moved downward, floating over the line where the two halves of the Angel met. The rest moved even further below the Angel, shifting and changing from right triangles to much more elongated ones. They combined, becoming one downward pointing arrow, and then twisted slightly, forming long spirals where the four triangles had met.
With a flash, the shape descended into the earth, spinning counterclockwise and drilling in. Everyone stared in shock.
“Uh…” Asuka gulped. “Can it penetrate the armor layers? Hikari? Toji?”
Hikari typed away at her console quickly, frowning in concentration. Then she looked up, horrified. “It can! In twelve hours, it will reach the Geofront!”
“Then we have to act quickly. Aida, find the turrets farthest away from the Angel that have a clear shot and have them fire! Suzuhara, I want one of those inflatable Evas hooked up to a train immediately! Have it run the farthest line away before making the balloon visible! Horaki, find out how much energy it’s going to take to pierce that AT Field!”
Each lieutenant set to work.
3444:05:12
* * *
Shinji and Kaworu listened patiently as Asuka outlined everything.
“We’ve determined, with no small amount of casualties, that the safest place to mount the mission is on top of Mount Futago. Unfortunately, we require a weapon that is well beyond Nerv’s power to make in the remaining time, so that’s one flaw already. However, should one exist, and we route all of Japan’s electrical power to Futago, we have a chance.
“We’ll then be required to mount Eva-00 and Eva-01 on top of the mountain. Eva-00 will be mounted with a heat shield made out of one of the old space shuttles; I’ve already got the orders to fly them over, I just need you to sign them. Eva-01 will be mounted with this mystery weapon and G-Type armor and will be used as a sniper. One shot should be enough to down the Angel, if we have enough power.”
“Good news, and bad news,” Kaworu said. “The good news is, I’ve heard of just such a weapon that you’ll be requiring. The JSSDF recently completed a Positron Rifle, which has the range and the power requirements that you outlined.”
Asuka brightened. “That’s great!” she said. “But… the bad news?”
“The G-Type armor was cancelled yesterday by Doctor Ayanami for bureaucratic reasons.”
“Then we’ll just have to get them constructing it again,” Asuka said. “I don’t care how many people we have to pull off of vacations, sick leave, or any of that, and I don’t care how much overtime it’s going to be, we need that armor finished tonight.”
Kaworu nodded. “I’ll inform the workers,” he said brightly. He turned to Shinji. “If that’s all right, sir?”
“Of course, but…” Shinji gulped. “Try not to pull anyone from the Eva-02 evacuation unless it’s absolutely necessary, please.”
Asuka flinched as if she’d been slapped. Kaworu stared at Shinji for a moment, looking as if he’d never smile again. Then he took a deep breath and kept walking.
When he left the room, Shinji turned to Asuka and sighed. “Sorry,” he said. “I just meant…”
“No, I know…” Asuka gulped. “Is she okay? Does anyone know yet?”
Shinji shook his head. “The Entry Plug is more or less impenetrable from scans, and the radio equipment isn’t working. LCL cools quickly though, we think she’s probably unconscious.”
“I hope so.” Asuka looked down at her feet. “It’s stupid, you know. I was so angry over the pictures, and now… I hope she’s okay.”
Shinji couldn’t think of any way to reassure Asuka without sounding trite and false. He wanted to smile reassuringly, but the possibility of Anita’s death weighed too heavily on him. She had brothers on standby, of course, but… Asuka would be horrified.
3441:43:52
* * *
When Kaworu told Raidon to restart construction, with a deadline of eleven hours, he didn’t take it well.
“That’s impossible! It can’t be done!”
“I don’t want to hear that kind of talk. It has to be done, Watanabe. Unless you want to send another pilot to get barbequed?”
“Of course not!” Raidon protested. “But Evas are huge, and we don’t stand a chance of constructing this! We didn’t stand a chance of getting it done today before it was cancelled. Now we’ve lost way too much time.”
“You have authority to pull in anyone. Even if you need to pull in people from other departments to work with screwdrivers, do it. The only people who won’t help you are the emergency workers who are saving…” Kaworu paused, uncomfortable and scared. “…Saving Anita.”
“There’s gotta be a better way to do this, though! Wait for it to penetrate the Geofront and fire up at it or something!”
“There is no other way. The Captain made a plan, we’ve given our approval, and now we’re giving you orders. Do it, or find someone who can.”
Raidon sighed. “Fine…” he muttered. “Bring in everyone, then. I mean everyone. Section 2, Section 3… We’re going to need all of them.”
3441:26:12
* * *
“We apologize for interrupting our regularly scheduled programming with this emergency bulletin.”
Across Japan, the wires were laid. Across Honshu, emergency construction of thousands of power lines began. Every city was already connected, but the current infrastructure couldn’t possibly take the links that were required.
“From 11:30 PM tonight until tomorrow morning…”
Almost nothing was exempt. Hospitals had emergency generators, as did a few other buildings, but besides them, nothing would be lit with electricity.
“…there will be a large-scale power blackout…”
All of Japan had emergency shelters, and even though several hours remained before the blackout, people were already crowding to get inside. This Angel was the first to cause fear across the entire nation. Normally the people didn’t know about an attack until it was over.
The riots stopped, at least temporarily. It was amazing how fear did that.
“…throughout Japan. We appreciate your cooperation.”
Trains were ripped out of the Seikan Tunnel to make room for the tens of thousands of wires and cooling systems that would run from Hokkaido to Honshu. Every bridge connecting Kyushu and Shikoku to Honshu appeared an abomination to rival the Angels, a monster of wires and fans. People in radiation suits went into Old Tokyo, turning on every generator they found.
“Repeat, a power outage begins tonight at 11:30 PM.”
Anything that could be used to make more electricity was gathered up and used. Trees were cut down just to get more room on the path to Tokyo-3. An emergency meeting of the Diet was held, ultimately appropriating money to use their power too, to use the Japan-Korea Tunnel to funnel even more power into Japan.
“We appreciate your cooperation.”
And while the people scurried like ants around it, the Angel continued to drill.
3440:00:00
* * *
Maya sat in Anita’s hospital room, staring at the girl. She was sedated and heavily burnt, but the doctors said that Nerv’s high-tech medicine would be able to cure any damage that wouldn’t heal quickly on its own.
Maya didn’t know why she was sitting here. Every moment here was a minute remembering how Anita had finally been pulled out of the Entry Plug, screaming in pain to start with and screaming all the more as people had gently moved her into a gurney. It sounded like being touched anywhere hurt her, that she was in too much pain to pass out.
“I can’t do this,” she whispered.
“Maya?”
She swung around to see the commander and the vice-commander. “Oh!” she cried. “I didn’t hear you come in!”
“That’s quite all right,” Kaworu whispered. He wasn’t looking her in the eyes, or even at her. He stared at the injured girl, transfixed in terror.
This didn’t improve Maya’s morale in the least.
Commander Ikari gulped. “Maya,” he said again. “I’m not going to lie. This is the most dangerous mission we’re going to be sending you out on.”
He must have heard her. She gulped. “I… Are you sure you can’t send Gendo out as the sniper? Why does it have to be me?”
“Just because Mount Futago is out of the range it will fire on while unprovoked doesn’t mean it can’t actually hit there,” Kaworu said. “We need someone to hold up the shield.”
“It’s the more dangerous job,” Shinji offered. “You’re actually safer than him.”
“I die either way!” Maya protested. “If something goes wrong…”
“We believe in you,” Kaworu said. “That’s not enough, but… You have to do it, because no one else can.”
Maya sighed. “I was normal before this…” she muttered. “Now I’ve had three near-death experiences in the last month.”
“Please,” Shinji said. “Don’t make Gendo do this by himself.”
That wasn’t fair, but what could she do now? “For him, I guess. It’s not fair he should have to pilot alone.”
“Thank you.”
3438:12:09
* * *
Midnight approached rapidly. Eva-00 and Asuka went to obtain the Positron Rifle, hundreds of Nerv employees were uprooted from their posts to work on the armors and weapons, and Maya and Gendo were walked through the scenario again and again.
With fifteen minutes to go, the two children sat outside their Evangelion, looking down on the world from the mountain. The city seemed desolate and cold, and the sky blue Angel, who glowed as if the sun had never set and it was still noon, seemed more malevolent than any of the Angels that had at least been kind enough to possess faces.
Worse still was Eva-01’s appearance under all the G-Type armor. It looked like a hideous wild animal that had been put in a cage that wasn’t remotely capable of holding it, like at any moment the bars would break and Eva-01 would rush into the darkness.
“Why do you pilot?” Maya asked uncertainly. She didn’t believe that the commander would have them all pilot for the same reason as her.
Gendo hesitated for a moment. “I have a bond,” he said finally. “I didn’t know about it until it was too late, but I have to keep honoring it.”
“A bond with whom?” she asked.
“Everything alive.”
Oh. Religious reasons. Maya couldn’t believe that Gendo was Shinto or anything like that, but it was the only sensible way of interpreting his comments.
“I’m not looking forward to this,” she admitted.
“You’re protected,” Gendo responded. Maya couldn’t believe anyone could be so calm about the fact that they were ultimately cannon fodder. Gendo stood up. “It is time to go,” he said.
“Good luck.”
“Goodbye.”
3432:05:21
"This is a story of men fighting against their fates." - Narrator, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, by Kazuki Nakashima
“Recall Eva-02 immediately!” Asuka ordered.
Toji hesitated at the controls for a moment, Anita’s agony overwhelming all thoughts. Then he pressed the button. The screams ceased as Eva-02 was pulled back underground to safety.
“The target is now moving again,” Kensuke announced uncomfortably. “Moving for the center of town.”
“Status of the Second Child?” Asuka demanded.
Toji turned on his radio to the Eva Cage and repeated the question. He frowned. “Asari and Matsuda say that the armor melted over the release and they’re drilling the pilot out. No information on her condition.”
Asuka stared at Toji horrified for a moment, and then turned to Kensuke. “You said it’s moving again? When it’s in the range of any of our automated defenses, start firing immediately!” She sounded bestial, like she wanted to go kill the angel herself.
Kensuke nodded. Everyone turned to the video of the Angel. As it passed one of the automated turrets, one of the eight triangles that floated over it shifted angle slightly. As the turret fired, all shots were deflected, not back into it, but into neighboring defense turrets, which melted into unrecognizable forms, as did the buildings in the surrounding area. Several more turrets began firing simultaneously (at least ten), but despite the overwhelming firepower, coming in from all directions, each shot was deflected.
“Hmm…” Asuka stared at the Angel, trying to keep focused solely on it and not on Anita. “I… I guess we shouldn’t use any airplanes, huh?” She looked down, trying to concentrate on finding a battle plan. “Range… Dammit.”
“What?” Toji looked at her, concerned and confused.
“We’re going to have to get more things destroyed…” Asuka explained.
“Captain!” Kensuke shouted, nervously. “Look!” He pointed at the screen, and Asuka followed the point. The Angel had stopped moving over the city, and had picked one of the largest intersections in town to float over. A few abandoned cars were nearby, left behind by the people fleeing when the alarms had gone off.
The eight floating triangles around the Angel shifted. The four upper ones moved downward, floating over the line where the two halves of the Angel met. The rest moved even further below the Angel, shifting and changing from right triangles to much more elongated ones. They combined, becoming one downward pointing arrow, and then twisted slightly, forming long spirals where the four triangles had met.
With a flash, the shape descended into the earth, spinning counterclockwise and drilling in. Everyone stared in shock.
“Uh…” Asuka gulped. “Can it penetrate the armor layers? Hikari? Toji?”
Hikari typed away at her console quickly, frowning in concentration. Then she looked up, horrified. “It can! In twelve hours, it will reach the Geofront!”
“Then we have to act quickly. Aida, find the turrets farthest away from the Angel that have a clear shot and have them fire! Suzuhara, I want one of those inflatable Evas hooked up to a train immediately! Have it run the farthest line away before making the balloon visible! Horaki, find out how much energy it’s going to take to pierce that AT Field!”
Each lieutenant set to work.
3444:05:12
* * *
Shinji and Kaworu listened patiently as Asuka outlined everything.
“We’ve determined, with no small amount of casualties, that the safest place to mount the mission is on top of Mount Futago. Unfortunately, we require a weapon that is well beyond Nerv’s power to make in the remaining time, so that’s one flaw already. However, should one exist, and we route all of Japan’s electrical power to Futago, we have a chance.
“We’ll then be required to mount Eva-00 and Eva-01 on top of the mountain. Eva-00 will be mounted with a heat shield made out of one of the old space shuttles; I’ve already got the orders to fly them over, I just need you to sign them. Eva-01 will be mounted with this mystery weapon and G-Type armor and will be used as a sniper. One shot should be enough to down the Angel, if we have enough power.”
“Good news, and bad news,” Kaworu said. “The good news is, I’ve heard of just such a weapon that you’ll be requiring. The JSSDF recently completed a Positron Rifle, which has the range and the power requirements that you outlined.”
Asuka brightened. “That’s great!” she said. “But… the bad news?”
“The G-Type armor was cancelled yesterday by Doctor Ayanami for bureaucratic reasons.”
“Then we’ll just have to get them constructing it again,” Asuka said. “I don’t care how many people we have to pull off of vacations, sick leave, or any of that, and I don’t care how much overtime it’s going to be, we need that armor finished tonight.”
Kaworu nodded. “I’ll inform the workers,” he said brightly. He turned to Shinji. “If that’s all right, sir?”
“Of course, but…” Shinji gulped. “Try not to pull anyone from the Eva-02 evacuation unless it’s absolutely necessary, please.”
Asuka flinched as if she’d been slapped. Kaworu stared at Shinji for a moment, looking as if he’d never smile again. Then he took a deep breath and kept walking.
When he left the room, Shinji turned to Asuka and sighed. “Sorry,” he said. “I just meant…”
“No, I know…” Asuka gulped. “Is she okay? Does anyone know yet?”
Shinji shook his head. “The Entry Plug is more or less impenetrable from scans, and the radio equipment isn’t working. LCL cools quickly though, we think she’s probably unconscious.”
“I hope so.” Asuka looked down at her feet. “It’s stupid, you know. I was so angry over the pictures, and now… I hope she’s okay.”
Shinji couldn’t think of any way to reassure Asuka without sounding trite and false. He wanted to smile reassuringly, but the possibility of Anita’s death weighed too heavily on him. She had brothers on standby, of course, but… Asuka would be horrified.
3441:43:52
* * *
When Kaworu told Raidon to restart construction, with a deadline of eleven hours, he didn’t take it well.
“That’s impossible! It can’t be done!”
“I don’t want to hear that kind of talk. It has to be done, Watanabe. Unless you want to send another pilot to get barbequed?”
“Of course not!” Raidon protested. “But Evas are huge, and we don’t stand a chance of constructing this! We didn’t stand a chance of getting it done today before it was cancelled. Now we’ve lost way too much time.”
“You have authority to pull in anyone. Even if you need to pull in people from other departments to work with screwdrivers, do it. The only people who won’t help you are the emergency workers who are saving…” Kaworu paused, uncomfortable and scared. “…Saving Anita.”
“There’s gotta be a better way to do this, though! Wait for it to penetrate the Geofront and fire up at it or something!”
“There is no other way. The Captain made a plan, we’ve given our approval, and now we’re giving you orders. Do it, or find someone who can.”
Raidon sighed. “Fine…” he muttered. “Bring in everyone, then. I mean everyone. Section 2, Section 3… We’re going to need all of them.”
3441:26:12
* * *
“We apologize for interrupting our regularly scheduled programming with this emergency bulletin.”
Across Japan, the wires were laid. Across Honshu, emergency construction of thousands of power lines began. Every city was already connected, but the current infrastructure couldn’t possibly take the links that were required.
“From 11:30 PM tonight until tomorrow morning…”
Almost nothing was exempt. Hospitals had emergency generators, as did a few other buildings, but besides them, nothing would be lit with electricity.
“…there will be a large-scale power blackout…”
All of Japan had emergency shelters, and even though several hours remained before the blackout, people were already crowding to get inside. This Angel was the first to cause fear across the entire nation. Normally the people didn’t know about an attack until it was over.
The riots stopped, at least temporarily. It was amazing how fear did that.
“…throughout Japan. We appreciate your cooperation.”
Trains were ripped out of the Seikan Tunnel to make room for the tens of thousands of wires and cooling systems that would run from Hokkaido to Honshu. Every bridge connecting Kyushu and Shikoku to Honshu appeared an abomination to rival the Angels, a monster of wires and fans. People in radiation suits went into Old Tokyo, turning on every generator they found.
“Repeat, a power outage begins tonight at 11:30 PM.”
Anything that could be used to make more electricity was gathered up and used. Trees were cut down just to get more room on the path to Tokyo-3. An emergency meeting of the Diet was held, ultimately appropriating money to use their power too, to use the Japan-Korea Tunnel to funnel even more power into Japan.
“We appreciate your cooperation.”
And while the people scurried like ants around it, the Angel continued to drill.
3440:00:00
* * *
Maya sat in Anita’s hospital room, staring at the girl. She was sedated and heavily burnt, but the doctors said that Nerv’s high-tech medicine would be able to cure any damage that wouldn’t heal quickly on its own.
Maya didn’t know why she was sitting here. Every moment here was a minute remembering how Anita had finally been pulled out of the Entry Plug, screaming in pain to start with and screaming all the more as people had gently moved her into a gurney. It sounded like being touched anywhere hurt her, that she was in too much pain to pass out.
“I can’t do this,” she whispered.
“Maya?”
She swung around to see the commander and the vice-commander. “Oh!” she cried. “I didn’t hear you come in!”
“That’s quite all right,” Kaworu whispered. He wasn’t looking her in the eyes, or even at her. He stared at the injured girl, transfixed in terror.
This didn’t improve Maya’s morale in the least.
Commander Ikari gulped. “Maya,” he said again. “I’m not going to lie. This is the most dangerous mission we’re going to be sending you out on.”
He must have heard her. She gulped. “I… Are you sure you can’t send Gendo out as the sniper? Why does it have to be me?”
“Just because Mount Futago is out of the range it will fire on while unprovoked doesn’t mean it can’t actually hit there,” Kaworu said. “We need someone to hold up the shield.”
“It’s the more dangerous job,” Shinji offered. “You’re actually safer than him.”
“I die either way!” Maya protested. “If something goes wrong…”
“We believe in you,” Kaworu said. “That’s not enough, but… You have to do it, because no one else can.”
Maya sighed. “I was normal before this…” she muttered. “Now I’ve had three near-death experiences in the last month.”
“Please,” Shinji said. “Don’t make Gendo do this by himself.”
That wasn’t fair, but what could she do now? “For him, I guess. It’s not fair he should have to pilot alone.”
“Thank you.”
3438:12:09
* * *
Midnight approached rapidly. Eva-00 and Asuka went to obtain the Positron Rifle, hundreds of Nerv employees were uprooted from their posts to work on the armors and weapons, and Maya and Gendo were walked through the scenario again and again.
With fifteen minutes to go, the two children sat outside their Evangelion, looking down on the world from the mountain. The city seemed desolate and cold, and the sky blue Angel, who glowed as if the sun had never set and it was still noon, seemed more malevolent than any of the Angels that had at least been kind enough to possess faces.
Worse still was Eva-01’s appearance under all the G-Type armor. It looked like a hideous wild animal that had been put in a cage that wasn’t remotely capable of holding it, like at any moment the bars would break and Eva-01 would rush into the darkness.
“Why do you pilot?” Maya asked uncertainly. She didn’t believe that the commander would have them all pilot for the same reason as her.
Gendo hesitated for a moment. “I have a bond,” he said finally. “I didn’t know about it until it was too late, but I have to keep honoring it.”
“A bond with whom?” she asked.
“Everything alive.”
Oh. Religious reasons. Maya couldn’t believe that Gendo was Shinto or anything like that, but it was the only sensible way of interpreting his comments.
“I’m not looking forward to this,” she admitted.
“You’re protected,” Gendo responded. Maya couldn’t believe anyone could be so calm about the fact that they were ultimately cannon fodder. Gendo stood up. “It is time to go,” he said.
“Good luck.”
“Goodbye.”
3432:05:21
In which the Evas talk
"What can go wrong?" - Far too many people
Gendo and Maya both got into the Evas and guided them to the designated areas. Gendo stood in front of the Rifle, currently low on the ground to avoid the shot, but ready to spring up with the heat shield and protect Maya. Eva-01 was slotted into an immense machine that held it and the Positron Rifle in place. Some of the restraints were a little too tight and Maya cried out a little in pain.
She tried not to think about the fact that if something went wrong, the pain she’d feel would end up being much greater.
“All you have to do,” Doctor Ayanami had explained, “is wait for the G-Type armor to inform you that it’s lined up a shot, and take it. That’s all that should be required.”
One minute before midnight, the shot was lined up. Maya fired.
And began screaming in pain. Something had gone wrong with the G-Type armor. The gun had jumped as it had been fired, or something, pulling her hand upward with it, and her elbow. They’d been ripped against the restraints holding Eva-01 back from the recoil.
At least it wasn’t-
No, the flash of light made it clear that the Angel had fired back. She shut her eyes tight, but the light still burned through the lids. The heat was nowhere near enough to be damaging beyond the moment, which meant that Gendo had saved her. Was he okay? She wouldn’t be able to see him.
3432:00:00
* * *
Gendo waited patiently. It was obvious that he should have been picked for this job, that he should be the one firing the stupid gun and killing the Angel. Maya tried, sometimes, but she was also highly incompetent. She couldn’t even say why she piloted.
He looked around his Entry Plug. There was nothing of interest in here. The Plug felt like home, of course, but it was still just a metal cage meant to take the brunt of the kinetic energy that an Evangelion might be dealt. He wished he was inside Nerv, beside Doctor Ayanami.
But his bond required something different. He would rather honor his bond than be in anyone’s presence, even Doctor Ayanami’s. And, of course, the Angels all needed to be killed as soon as possible. The remaining nineteen were all threats.
Gendo wished there was a clock so he’d know what time it was. Doctor Ayanami had disabled the visual indicator to keep him on edge. She knew he frequently lost track of how many minutes had passed, but this wait was too much, even for him.
After an eternity of waiting, he was sent a simple radio message from Captain Soryu. “Five minutes and counting.” He sighed in relief and leaned back. In five minutes, the situation would hopefully be over. He desperately wanted to believe that not even Maya could screw this one up.
At what he assumed was 11:59, Eva-01 fired at the Angel. The heat from the anti-matter reactions was astounding. Eva-00 didn’t like the sensation at all. Gendo enjoyed it, however, perhaps because the LCL was slowly cooling as the life support system continued to run. Even at full power, LCL recycling had diminishing returns.
Gendo’s display revealed that the Angel had not been destroyed and was at that very moment charging up to return fire. He quickly pulled Eva-00 into a standing position and threw up the shield. A few seconds later, the heat of the Angel’s laser was upon him. Gendo cried out, the heat was simply too much.
Several displays around him shorted out. Gendo was now completely cut off from the outside world. He realized he wouldn’t even be able to tell when the Angel’s attack was over, because the heat would linger for far longer than the attack. He and Eva-00 would simply be standing there, in the way of the gun with nothing but a melted shield, until the second attack came.
Then they’d die.
‘No,’ a voice answered. ‘We won’t die.’
The Entry Plug rocked suddenly, as if Eva-00 had made a sharp turn. Gendo, unbracing, was thrown against the metal seat and passed out.
At least there wasn’t any more pain.
3431:59:00
* * *
Finally, Maya opened her eyes. The telescopic vision of Eva-01 showed the Angel, revealing that much of it had been melted away, and a red core was visible in what had been the center. All eight triangles (the four lower ones had apparently finished drilling) were moving into a new position, ready to deflect the next shot.
“Come on…” Maya whispered. “Hurry up and line up the shot… Please!”
There were four triangles on either side of the core. They’d merged together and were slowly closing in to protect the core.
“Come on!”
Maya was vaguely aware of the fact that those words hadn’t come from her, or from the people over the radio.
Another fifteen seconds and it would be too late to fire and get through the small hole remaining.
“Hurry!”
Finally, the gun lined itself up, ready to fire. Maya pulled the trigger, ignoring the pain as her hand and elbow were again bent into a position they weren’t supposed to be in. No, not her hand. Eva-01’s hand. Eva-01’s! Not her!
‘No,’ a voice responded in her head. ‘Our hand.’
Maya shook her head, no longer even paying attention to the progression of the second strike. Just as well. She would have seen it nearly standing still.
“…Who said that?” she finally managed. Had she just misheard something over the radio?
“I did,” the voice answered coolly. It was female and familiar, but Maya could not place more to it than that. “You’re scared?”
Maya nodded. “Of the Angels,” she admitted. “And failing to stop them.”
“And me.”
Maya gulped. “This… this is just… stress and lack of sleep. That’s all.”
“Incorrect, not that it matters. You probably have other things to worry about. Either way though, I promise you darling, I’m quite real.”
“Darling?! Who are you?”
“Eva-01. I’m protecting you.”
Maya shook her head again. “No, I’m definitely losing it,” she muttered. “If you could talk, why haven’t you done so before?”
“I have. You were just too awake to hear me.”
“See?! Sleep deprivation!”
“Which causes a minimal but noticeable increase in synch ratio. I know my own workings, dear.”
“Shut up!” Maya responded, turning her attention back to the displays. “This is important!”
Time sped up.
The Angel’s four triangles clamped firmly into position. The laser beam reflected off of them harmlessly and shot into space.
It was then that Maya realized that Eva-00 was nowhere to be found. The Angel began charging another shot.
3431:58:00
* * *
“No.”
Operation Yashima had failed. Eva-00 had gone berserk and had fled behind the mountains, showing no signs of stopping. Eva-01 had failed twice to penetrate the target. The cannon was out of ammo, the shield was destroyed anyways.
“Pull Eva-01 under the surface,” Asuka instructed. “Us too.”
The emergency retreat signals turned on all over the base. She and the rest of the Nerv staff were pulled down to the Geofront, as was Eva-01. A minute after everything was safely underground the Angel’s strike destroyed all equipment, and half the mountain.
Asuka looked down at her feet. “What now?” she asked.
“The Angel has penetrated the Geofront completely and will soon be able to descend into the lower regions. We are uncertain of its plans after that. It may attempt to simply destroy the Geofront, or it will continue drilling.”
“Drilling? Why?”
Rei glared. “Because most of the Geofront is under the “surface” we dug out for it. Including a lot of the sensitive material. Isn’t that obvious?”
Asuka sighed. “Right. So… what now?”
Rei looked firmly ahead, refusing to make eye contact with her friend. “Now we implement Plan Omega… and if that fails, the Geofront is already set to blow up if the angel penetrates its lower levels. That should be enough.”
“So we’ll die, but humanity will survive.”
“Perhaps.”
3431:45:00
"What can go wrong?" - Far too many people
Gendo and Maya both got into the Evas and guided them to the designated areas. Gendo stood in front of the Rifle, currently low on the ground to avoid the shot, but ready to spring up with the heat shield and protect Maya. Eva-01 was slotted into an immense machine that held it and the Positron Rifle in place. Some of the restraints were a little too tight and Maya cried out a little in pain.
She tried not to think about the fact that if something went wrong, the pain she’d feel would end up being much greater.
“All you have to do,” Doctor Ayanami had explained, “is wait for the G-Type armor to inform you that it’s lined up a shot, and take it. That’s all that should be required.”
One minute before midnight, the shot was lined up. Maya fired.
And began screaming in pain. Something had gone wrong with the G-Type armor. The gun had jumped as it had been fired, or something, pulling her hand upward with it, and her elbow. They’d been ripped against the restraints holding Eva-01 back from the recoil.
At least it wasn’t-
No, the flash of light made it clear that the Angel had fired back. She shut her eyes tight, but the light still burned through the lids. The heat was nowhere near enough to be damaging beyond the moment, which meant that Gendo had saved her. Was he okay? She wouldn’t be able to see him.
3432:00:00
* * *
Gendo waited patiently. It was obvious that he should have been picked for this job, that he should be the one firing the stupid gun and killing the Angel. Maya tried, sometimes, but she was also highly incompetent. She couldn’t even say why she piloted.
He looked around his Entry Plug. There was nothing of interest in here. The Plug felt like home, of course, but it was still just a metal cage meant to take the brunt of the kinetic energy that an Evangelion might be dealt. He wished he was inside Nerv, beside Doctor Ayanami.
But his bond required something different. He would rather honor his bond than be in anyone’s presence, even Doctor Ayanami’s. And, of course, the Angels all needed to be killed as soon as possible. The remaining nineteen were all threats.
Gendo wished there was a clock so he’d know what time it was. Doctor Ayanami had disabled the visual indicator to keep him on edge. She knew he frequently lost track of how many minutes had passed, but this wait was too much, even for him.
After an eternity of waiting, he was sent a simple radio message from Captain Soryu. “Five minutes and counting.” He sighed in relief and leaned back. In five minutes, the situation would hopefully be over. He desperately wanted to believe that not even Maya could screw this one up.
At what he assumed was 11:59, Eva-01 fired at the Angel. The heat from the anti-matter reactions was astounding. Eva-00 didn’t like the sensation at all. Gendo enjoyed it, however, perhaps because the LCL was slowly cooling as the life support system continued to run. Even at full power, LCL recycling had diminishing returns.
Gendo’s display revealed that the Angel had not been destroyed and was at that very moment charging up to return fire. He quickly pulled Eva-00 into a standing position and threw up the shield. A few seconds later, the heat of the Angel’s laser was upon him. Gendo cried out, the heat was simply too much.
Several displays around him shorted out. Gendo was now completely cut off from the outside world. He realized he wouldn’t even be able to tell when the Angel’s attack was over, because the heat would linger for far longer than the attack. He and Eva-00 would simply be standing there, in the way of the gun with nothing but a melted shield, until the second attack came.
Then they’d die.
‘No,’ a voice answered. ‘We won’t die.’
The Entry Plug rocked suddenly, as if Eva-00 had made a sharp turn. Gendo, unbracing, was thrown against the metal seat and passed out.
At least there wasn’t any more pain.
3431:59:00
* * *
Finally, Maya opened her eyes. The telescopic vision of Eva-01 showed the Angel, revealing that much of it had been melted away, and a red core was visible in what had been the center. All eight triangles (the four lower ones had apparently finished drilling) were moving into a new position, ready to deflect the next shot.
“Come on…” Maya whispered. “Hurry up and line up the shot… Please!”
There were four triangles on either side of the core. They’d merged together and were slowly closing in to protect the core.
“Come on!”
Maya was vaguely aware of the fact that those words hadn’t come from her, or from the people over the radio.
Another fifteen seconds and it would be too late to fire and get through the small hole remaining.
“Hurry!”
Finally, the gun lined itself up, ready to fire. Maya pulled the trigger, ignoring the pain as her hand and elbow were again bent into a position they weren’t supposed to be in. No, not her hand. Eva-01’s hand. Eva-01’s! Not her!
‘No,’ a voice responded in her head. ‘Our hand.’
Maya shook her head, no longer even paying attention to the progression of the second strike. Just as well. She would have seen it nearly standing still.
“…Who said that?” she finally managed. Had she just misheard something over the radio?
“I did,” the voice answered coolly. It was female and familiar, but Maya could not place more to it than that. “You’re scared?”
Maya nodded. “Of the Angels,” she admitted. “And failing to stop them.”
“And me.”
Maya gulped. “This… this is just… stress and lack of sleep. That’s all.”
“Incorrect, not that it matters. You probably have other things to worry about. Either way though, I promise you darling, I’m quite real.”
“Darling?! Who are you?”
“Eva-01. I’m protecting you.”
Maya shook her head again. “No, I’m definitely losing it,” she muttered. “If you could talk, why haven’t you done so before?”
“I have. You were just too awake to hear me.”
“See?! Sleep deprivation!”
“Which causes a minimal but noticeable increase in synch ratio. I know my own workings, dear.”
“Shut up!” Maya responded, turning her attention back to the displays. “This is important!”
Time sped up.
The Angel’s four triangles clamped firmly into position. The laser beam reflected off of them harmlessly and shot into space.
It was then that Maya realized that Eva-00 was nowhere to be found. The Angel began charging another shot.
3431:58:00
* * *
“No.”
Operation Yashima had failed. Eva-00 had gone berserk and had fled behind the mountains, showing no signs of stopping. Eva-01 had failed twice to penetrate the target. The cannon was out of ammo, the shield was destroyed anyways.
“Pull Eva-01 under the surface,” Asuka instructed. “Us too.”
The emergency retreat signals turned on all over the base. She and the rest of the Nerv staff were pulled down to the Geofront, as was Eva-01. A minute after everything was safely underground the Angel’s strike destroyed all equipment, and half the mountain.
Asuka looked down at her feet. “What now?” she asked.
“The Angel has penetrated the Geofront completely and will soon be able to descend into the lower regions. We are uncertain of its plans after that. It may attempt to simply destroy the Geofront, or it will continue drilling.”
“Drilling? Why?”
Rei glared. “Because most of the Geofront is under the “surface” we dug out for it. Including a lot of the sensitive material. Isn’t that obvious?”
Asuka sighed. “Right. So… what now?”
Rei looked firmly ahead, refusing to make eye contact with her friend. “Now we implement Plan Omega… and if that fails, the Geofront is already set to blow up if the angel penetrates its lower levels. That should be enough.”
“So we’ll die, but humanity will survive.”
“Perhaps.”
3431:45:00
In which a crucifix is unveiled
"The room and the surrounding area are to be sealed, with ventilation shafts, plumbing, and wiring checked daily. Measures are to be put into place for the continuous extermination of all vermin in the facility. Animals not part of the study found... are to be removed and terminated as soon as possible due to risk of biological contamination. Because of this, in the morning, workers must wear Hazmat suits while entering the cell..." - SCP Foundation
The Evangelions were not, as advertised, the only line of defense against the Angels. The Geofront contained an estimated sixty-two last ditch lines of defense, each calibrated for a particular type of attack. The attack method of the seventh Angel, Ramiel, was not one of them. The Magi, however, had no problem adapting.
Shinji and Kaworu, the only ranking senior officers still on site, were managing the project. They had only one particular advantage at that particular moment: the likelihood that the Angel’s defense perimeter would be heavily altered as it was forced into the smaller area.
“So, we won’t be able to keep it out of the pyramid for very long,” Kaworu noted. “So we’ll have to expect that it’ll be running through the corridors as soon as it transfers in.”
Shinji nodded. “The AT Field destabilizers are prepared?”
“Of course. But they won’t make a huge difference. The Angel’s defenses are so powerful that they won’t be affected by most of the turrets.”
“Right…” Shinji briefly opened a new window that displayed the Angel. It was currently shifting form, turning into a long cylinder that could penetrate the hole it had dug out. “And the status of the Evangelion units?”
“Eva-01 is ready, though its pilot is cautious and has unusual readings. Eva-02 and its pilot remain completely unusable. Eva-00 remains berserk, despite all efforts to shut it down. It is currently operating without power.”
“Wonderful. So can we depend on any of them?”
“Eva-00 has taken one of the elevators. They turned back on after the power converters were destroyed. Its actions in the Geofront might cause it to attack the Angel if they cross paths. Maya might be successful, but she’s pretty stressed,” Kaworu noted.
“Wait… actions?”
3431:30:00
* * *
Eva-00 was ultimately a killing machine. It had been designed to kill Angels. Now, it was defying the laws of physics and rampaging through the corridors of Nerv.
“This is insane,” Gendo whispered. He’d awoken, only to find himself completely imprisoned inside the Entry Plug. No controls were responding.
Neither was the Eva. It said nothing. This annoyed Gendo to no end.
“You can’t just take control and not say anything,” he said, slightly louder. When this too failed, he shouted (or, at least, spoke much louder than his usual soft volume), “At least show me where we are!”
This, Eva-00 did.
Gendo swore when he saw the corridor before him. The metallic walkway had been severely damaged, and all damage seemed to have been caused by two overly large hands.
“Not good…”
3431:29:28
* * *
At twelve thirty-five, the first protrusions of the Seventh Angel reached into the Geofront. The being had not, as the Magi predicted, permanently transformed into a cylinder, but had instead become a strange blue, floating liquid, probing gently with tentacles to ensure its own safety.
“Its AT Field has been significantly weakened by the lack of a well-defined form,” Toji announced. “We should fire as soon as the main body has entered the Geofront!”
Asuka nodded. “Do we have any planes left?” she asked Kensuke. “We could have anything remaining circle over the tunnel and drop missiles.”
Kensuke nodded and began issuing orders to the rest of Tokyo-3’s air defense.
The Seventh Angel fully entered the Geofront and floated down to the pyramid slowly. Once it had covered half the distance, turrets and other forms of automated defense rose out of dozens of surfaces and began firing.
Almost immediately the Angel began to recoil, but above it, dozens more turrets were revealed to be hidden in the top of the dome of the Geofront, and fired as well. Left with few options, and its advanced senses leading the Angel to realize that airplanes were assembling above the dome, the Seventh Angel fled downward into the pit beside the Geofront pyramid.
Shinji swore under his breath. “Dammit!”
“What?” Asuka asked. “We have it contained in the Geofront now. Eva-00 and Eva-01 will be able to handle it. Eva-01 is already waiting along the Angel’s new projected path.”
Shinji opened his mouth. He closed it again. “Come with me,” he said after a moment. “I can’t believe… Come on.”
He walked to an elevator quickly, and when he arrived, gestured for Asuka, who had followed hesitantly, to hurry up. When they both stood on the pad, it descended out of sight.
3431:22:18
* * *
“Are you ready, darling?”
“I don’t need this right now,” Maya muttered. She (no! not her! Eva-01!) was holding two large guns and several more were scattered around her. “The Angel is coming!”
“I know.”
“Right… you’re probably just some messed-up part of my subconscious…” Maya sighed. She would probably have to visit a shrink after this.
“It’s coming.”
“I know!” Of course she knew! She was looking right at the screen that told her. She wasn’t going crazy. She was just too tired. And scared.
And lonely.
The Seventh Angel appeared. Maya began firing the gun as soon as she saw it. She wasn’t going to die here, not like this. She refused!
3431:20:00
* * *
“Return to the Evangelion Cage and let me go.”
“Return to the Evangelion Cage and let me go,” Eva-00 replied, almost perfectly matching pitch except for a strange emphasis on “me.”
“I can’t! I don’t control this thing.”
“Do you control anything, really? Besides… I gave you an order. You follow orders. Find a way to follow mine.”
Gendo’s eyes narrowed. “This is impossible,” he whispered. “Evangelion Unit-00 should not have any power at this point. How are you still operational?”
“Something has changed in the Geofront, Gendo. Something is waking up to defend itself. The power it generates from minute to minute could fuel an entire battalion of Evangelion units. Surely you know that?”
“I… I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I think you do.”
3431:20:00
* * *
The elevator reached the bottom floor. Shinji grinned slightly. “You really were uninformed. I apologize… It’s time you knew what Nerv HQ was built to defend.”
The elevator doors opened. Asuka could read a sign that read “LCL Production Plant”. Beyond it was an immense pair of doors, obviously sealed completely. Shinji ran a card through a scanner. The doors opened, as did the doors behind them, and the doors behind them, and the doors behind them.
Asuka gasped at what she saw in front of her.
“An Angel?!”
“No, not quite. Something very much like one, however.”
“What is it?” she asked.
“It is the progenitor of mankind, a being of unimaginable power, beyond that of the Angels. The Angels seek it out. If one makes contact…” Shinji gulped. “If one makes contact, we all die.”
“But… can’t it… resist?” Even as she asked, Asuka knew that the beast would not be able to resist. It was roughly humanoid, but instead of two proportionate legs it had thousands of tiny ones, extending from its body in a grotesque mockery of feet. It was held against an immense crucifix by nothing more complex than two nails.
Something had happened to it, and now it was defenseless.
“If it gets down here,” Shinji repeated. “We die. So we have to stop the Angel. And we must never risk allowing another one in here. If another one gets in…”
“We’ll probably die,” Asuka finished. “We’re probably going to die tonight, aren’t we?”
“Yes.”
Asuka bowed her head. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. It was the best plan the Magi evaluated. You couldn’t have known that Yashima would fail us.”
“Now what?”
“I don’t know.”
3431:20:00
* * *
“Shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up!” Maya yelled as she fired. “I’m done listening to you! Leave me alone!”
“And leave you defenseless against this beast?”
The Angel was striking at Eva-01 with tentacles, but between Maya’s terror and the shapeshifting of the Angel, it was now Maya’s AT Field that held strong.
“I’m not defenseless! I don’t need you here! Stop talking to me!”
Perhaps the voice was about to answer. Perhaps it wasn’t. But it didn’t answer when Eva-00 came charging down the corridor.
3431:18:00
* * *
Gendo watched the fight scene as Eva-00 ran past. As he departed, he saw that Eva-01’s arms were now hanging limply at their sides. “Her synch ratio is dropping.”
“Fascinating.” Eva-00 made no effort to turn around and join the fight.
This irritated Gendo. “You’re an Evangelion! Aren’t you going to help her?!”
“You don’t care enough to help her,” Eva-00 responded. “Why should I?”
“But she’s fighting an Angel. We have to kill it.”
“There’s still time. Let it kill her first. Then it will be tired, and we will have the advantage.”
Gendo shook his head. “That’s wrong. Doctor Ayanami wouldn’t approve.”
“But you would.”
Eva-00 ran on.
3431:17:00
* * *
Anita’s body was carefully placed in Eva-02.
A chemical was dispensed, slowly rousing her from sleep.
Evangelion Unit 02, melted beyond recognition, was coldly turned on.
And there were screams.
3431:15:00
"The room and the surrounding area are to be sealed, with ventilation shafts, plumbing, and wiring checked daily. Measures are to be put into place for the continuous extermination of all vermin in the facility. Animals not part of the study found... are to be removed and terminated as soon as possible due to risk of biological contamination. Because of this, in the morning, workers must wear Hazmat suits while entering the cell..." - SCP Foundation
The Evangelions were not, as advertised, the only line of defense against the Angels. The Geofront contained an estimated sixty-two last ditch lines of defense, each calibrated for a particular type of attack. The attack method of the seventh Angel, Ramiel, was not one of them. The Magi, however, had no problem adapting.
Shinji and Kaworu, the only ranking senior officers still on site, were managing the project. They had only one particular advantage at that particular moment: the likelihood that the Angel’s defense perimeter would be heavily altered as it was forced into the smaller area.
“So, we won’t be able to keep it out of the pyramid for very long,” Kaworu noted. “So we’ll have to expect that it’ll be running through the corridors as soon as it transfers in.”
Shinji nodded. “The AT Field destabilizers are prepared?”
“Of course. But they won’t make a huge difference. The Angel’s defenses are so powerful that they won’t be affected by most of the turrets.”
“Right…” Shinji briefly opened a new window that displayed the Angel. It was currently shifting form, turning into a long cylinder that could penetrate the hole it had dug out. “And the status of the Evangelion units?”
“Eva-01 is ready, though its pilot is cautious and has unusual readings. Eva-02 and its pilot remain completely unusable. Eva-00 remains berserk, despite all efforts to shut it down. It is currently operating without power.”
“Wonderful. So can we depend on any of them?”
“Eva-00 has taken one of the elevators. They turned back on after the power converters were destroyed. Its actions in the Geofront might cause it to attack the Angel if they cross paths. Maya might be successful, but she’s pretty stressed,” Kaworu noted.
“Wait… actions?”
3431:30:00
* * *
Eva-00 was ultimately a killing machine. It had been designed to kill Angels. Now, it was defying the laws of physics and rampaging through the corridors of Nerv.
“This is insane,” Gendo whispered. He’d awoken, only to find himself completely imprisoned inside the Entry Plug. No controls were responding.
Neither was the Eva. It said nothing. This annoyed Gendo to no end.
“You can’t just take control and not say anything,” he said, slightly louder. When this too failed, he shouted (or, at least, spoke much louder than his usual soft volume), “At least show me where we are!”
This, Eva-00 did.
Gendo swore when he saw the corridor before him. The metallic walkway had been severely damaged, and all damage seemed to have been caused by two overly large hands.
“Not good…”
3431:29:28
* * *
At twelve thirty-five, the first protrusions of the Seventh Angel reached into the Geofront. The being had not, as the Magi predicted, permanently transformed into a cylinder, but had instead become a strange blue, floating liquid, probing gently with tentacles to ensure its own safety.
“Its AT Field has been significantly weakened by the lack of a well-defined form,” Toji announced. “We should fire as soon as the main body has entered the Geofront!”
Asuka nodded. “Do we have any planes left?” she asked Kensuke. “We could have anything remaining circle over the tunnel and drop missiles.”
Kensuke nodded and began issuing orders to the rest of Tokyo-3’s air defense.
The Seventh Angel fully entered the Geofront and floated down to the pyramid slowly. Once it had covered half the distance, turrets and other forms of automated defense rose out of dozens of surfaces and began firing.
Almost immediately the Angel began to recoil, but above it, dozens more turrets were revealed to be hidden in the top of the dome of the Geofront, and fired as well. Left with few options, and its advanced senses leading the Angel to realize that airplanes were assembling above the dome, the Seventh Angel fled downward into the pit beside the Geofront pyramid.
Shinji swore under his breath. “Dammit!”
“What?” Asuka asked. “We have it contained in the Geofront now. Eva-00 and Eva-01 will be able to handle it. Eva-01 is already waiting along the Angel’s new projected path.”
Shinji opened his mouth. He closed it again. “Come with me,” he said after a moment. “I can’t believe… Come on.”
He walked to an elevator quickly, and when he arrived, gestured for Asuka, who had followed hesitantly, to hurry up. When they both stood on the pad, it descended out of sight.
3431:22:18
* * *
“Are you ready, darling?”
“I don’t need this right now,” Maya muttered. She (no! not her! Eva-01!) was holding two large guns and several more were scattered around her. “The Angel is coming!”
“I know.”
“Right… you’re probably just some messed-up part of my subconscious…” Maya sighed. She would probably have to visit a shrink after this.
“It’s coming.”
“I know!” Of course she knew! She was looking right at the screen that told her. She wasn’t going crazy. She was just too tired. And scared.
And lonely.
The Seventh Angel appeared. Maya began firing the gun as soon as she saw it. She wasn’t going to die here, not like this. She refused!
3431:20:00
* * *
“Return to the Evangelion Cage and let me go.”
“Return to the Evangelion Cage and let me go,” Eva-00 replied, almost perfectly matching pitch except for a strange emphasis on “me.”
“I can’t! I don’t control this thing.”
“Do you control anything, really? Besides… I gave you an order. You follow orders. Find a way to follow mine.”
Gendo’s eyes narrowed. “This is impossible,” he whispered. “Evangelion Unit-00 should not have any power at this point. How are you still operational?”
“Something has changed in the Geofront, Gendo. Something is waking up to defend itself. The power it generates from minute to minute could fuel an entire battalion of Evangelion units. Surely you know that?”
“I… I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I think you do.”
3431:20:00
* * *
The elevator reached the bottom floor. Shinji grinned slightly. “You really were uninformed. I apologize… It’s time you knew what Nerv HQ was built to defend.”
The elevator doors opened. Asuka could read a sign that read “LCL Production Plant”. Beyond it was an immense pair of doors, obviously sealed completely. Shinji ran a card through a scanner. The doors opened, as did the doors behind them, and the doors behind them, and the doors behind them.
Asuka gasped at what she saw in front of her.
“An Angel?!”
“No, not quite. Something very much like one, however.”
“What is it?” she asked.
“It is the progenitor of mankind, a being of unimaginable power, beyond that of the Angels. The Angels seek it out. If one makes contact…” Shinji gulped. “If one makes contact, we all die.”
“But… can’t it… resist?” Even as she asked, Asuka knew that the beast would not be able to resist. It was roughly humanoid, but instead of two proportionate legs it had thousands of tiny ones, extending from its body in a grotesque mockery of feet. It was held against an immense crucifix by nothing more complex than two nails.
Something had happened to it, and now it was defenseless.
“If it gets down here,” Shinji repeated. “We die. So we have to stop the Angel. And we must never risk allowing another one in here. If another one gets in…”
“We’ll probably die,” Asuka finished. “We’re probably going to die tonight, aren’t we?”
“Yes.”
Asuka bowed her head. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. It was the best plan the Magi evaluated. You couldn’t have known that Yashima would fail us.”
“Now what?”
“I don’t know.”
3431:20:00
* * *
“Shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up!” Maya yelled as she fired. “I’m done listening to you! Leave me alone!”
“And leave you defenseless against this beast?”
The Angel was striking at Eva-01 with tentacles, but between Maya’s terror and the shapeshifting of the Angel, it was now Maya’s AT Field that held strong.
“I’m not defenseless! I don’t need you here! Stop talking to me!”
Perhaps the voice was about to answer. Perhaps it wasn’t. But it didn’t answer when Eva-00 came charging down the corridor.
3431:18:00
* * *
Gendo watched the fight scene as Eva-00 ran past. As he departed, he saw that Eva-01’s arms were now hanging limply at their sides. “Her synch ratio is dropping.”
“Fascinating.” Eva-00 made no effort to turn around and join the fight.
This irritated Gendo. “You’re an Evangelion! Aren’t you going to help her?!”
“You don’t care enough to help her,” Eva-00 responded. “Why should I?”
“But she’s fighting an Angel. We have to kill it.”
“There’s still time. Let it kill her first. Then it will be tired, and we will have the advantage.”
Gendo shook his head. “That’s wrong. Doctor Ayanami wouldn’t approve.”
“But you would.”
Eva-00 ran on.
3431:17:00
* * *
Anita’s body was carefully placed in Eva-02.
A chemical was dispensed, slowly rousing her from sleep.
Evangelion Unit 02, melted beyond recognition, was coldly turned on.
And there were screams.
3431:15:00
In which Eva-00 falls
“We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.” - Kenji Miyazawa
Screams echoed throughout the halls of Nerv as Eva-02 began its mad race. Maybe Anita was aware of what she was doing and pushing it forward. Maybe, like the other two Evangelions, it was operating under its own power. It didn't really matter; nor did the walls and floor that kept getting in the Evangelion's way. All that mattered was catching up to the Angel.
Except of course, that was a difficult task. The Angel's depth was uncertain, and regardless of who was in control of the movements of the titanic red robot, there was no easy way to pinpoint its location, even if they were on the correct floor. All Anita (or her robot) could do was dig. The beast simply descended almost to the bottom level of Nerv. There, it would wait.
And, since Maya was forced to flee from battle, and Gendo was completely unable to change the relative speed of his Evangelion, it did not have to wait very long. The blue Angel tore through the ceiling and lunged downward. Its form was still insubstantial, more of a gel or a liquid than anything else, but that didn't stop Eva-02 from grabbing at it, and strangely, successfully pulling it towards the robot.
The Angel screamed, but Eva-02 did not react, simply taking one part of the Angel in both hands and tearing it apart, as if it were flesh. This produced no tangible results, as the material of the Angel simply stretched instead of ripping. The Evangelion paused in a moment, perhaps confusion, perhaps simply considering the next mode of attack. But of course, a moment was far too much time to give away.
In that moment, the edges of the Angel seemed to bubble, and then they pushed out, over Eva-02's head and back down, pulling the Eva into the body of the Angel. Eva-02 struggled heavily, but made no headway. Slowly, it disappeared under the blue sheen of the seventh Angel.
3431:02:18
* * *
"Do we really need weapons, dear?" the voice asked as Maya jumped through another hole the seventh Angel had left behind. "Surely our physical strength will suffice?"
Maya rolled her eyes after they hit the floor below them. Hanging uncertainly from Eva-01's back were several guns she had detoured to obtain from an armory, at the instructions of Toji. He seemed to be the only worker still using the radio. Maya hoped everyone else was all right, but she had no time to worry about that at the moment.
"Right," she muttered, "because just fighting an Angel head on is going to work so well..." She then wished she just hadn't acknowledged the voice. She made a mental note to talk to Kotonoha about this after the fight. It had to be contamination of some sort from the Angel.
"Wrong again, dear."
She didn't say anything that time. She just pushed Eva-01 through the next hole. "I have to be getting down to the bottom of this facility sooner or later," she muttered. "There's only so many floors." Another jump. "And Gendo's next to usel-" She paused as the sound of screaming became audible. "Anita?"
Instead of carefully proceeding down the floors, one by one, she simply leapt down and descended five in a matter of seconds, and then another five. The next hole left by the Angel was the last. Maya looked down and saw the struggling shape of the seventh Angel. Of course. She lifted two guns, and prepared to fire, stopped only by the fact that as soon as she did so, the Angel immediately reshaped itself.
Now, instead of holding Eva-02 within, it was supported by the Angel, constrained by tentacles the alien had formed, but now an effective shield, one which no amount of AT Field use could penetrate. Maya swore softly. This wasn't working at all. She leapt down, using Eva-02 as a stepping stone to bounce further away from the Angel, then swung around.
She was too slow, and the Angel had quickly moved Eva-02 to protect itself from her new position. On the other hand, she realized, it had not moved at all besides this. As long as she could keep it occupied, it was possible something could happen to change their fortunes. It just couldn't reach the bottom level.
Uncertainly, she charged again.
3430:50:52
* * *
Gendo was no longer even trying to redirect the Evangelion. It seemed an exercise in futility. He simply sat and watched as Eva-00 charged haphazardly through the corridors, frequently tearing them up. It didn't even seem to care about where it was going; it frequently just fell through holes, jolting Gendo every time. The holes in the facility after a certain point just went straight down, and Eva-00 fell at least three each before managing to grab hold of something and pull itself up.
He briefly wondered how Maya and Anita were doing. He'd briefly heard Anita screaming, but that could just as easily have been the start-up sequence as it was her actually getting hurt. It was impossible to tell.
"Is there a point to all of this?" he asked. "Or are you just running around like an idiot?" Gendo wondered for a moment if there was any point in even talking to this thing. He could be better off just ignoring it like he ignored everyone else. But that was more difficult than usual. The behavior of the beast was drawing him out, somehow.
The beast didn't answer right away, falling down another couple of floors first. Then it said, still hanging from the ledge,"I am doing what you want to do. Isn't that obvious?"
Gendo stared at the wreckage around him in shock. "This isn't what I want at all," he said coolly. "I want to defeat the Angel and to sleep. In that order," he added, just in case. "Stop berserking. We don't have time for it."
The robot stopped. Gendo reached out for the controls tenatively, pulling them backwards to raise the Eva's hand experimentally. It responded, but Gendo realized suddenly, as he became fully synched with the Evangelion once again, that this hand had been the only thing holding onto the ledge.
Eva-00 plummeted.
3430:48:22
* * *
But Eva-00's fall did not resolve the fight, nor did it provide any note of interest at all. The seventh Angel, aware of the suddenly incoming body, pushed Eva-02 above itself and sent Eva-00 flying in a different direction. It then quickly lowered the robot, blocking Maya's shots before they could get close enough to do any damage. Anita screamed in pain both times.
Gendo slowly pushed himself upward, staring at the Angel, but not doing anything. After a few moments, he radioed Maya. "I would suggest you throw me a gun, but I suspect the Angel would simply tear Eva-02 in half and use both pieces as shields from us."
Maya gulped in horror. "Okay, I won't... do that..." she muttered. "But..." She didn't have a chance to finish that sentence, as Eva-00 broke into a mad dash and charged the Angel. It collided with Eva-02 and only barely managed to pull back away from the tentacles of the seventh Angel.
"Sorry," he whispered. "The Eva is a little... weird, right now."
Maya frowned. "Do you hear... voices?" Gendo didn't answer, but he didn't need to. "We'll figure that out later," she said simply. "Right now, I have a plan... Can you charge again, please?"
Another non-answer. Eva-00 charged at the Angel, and the tentacles slowly became wrapped up within the Eva. Maya fired quickly, aiming at the exposed side of the Angel. The shots blasted away pieces of the gelatinous Angel easily, and they melted on the ground. To Maya's horror, however, the Angel did not release Eva-00 in pain but tightened.
Gendo said softly, "It's in the Plug, Maya."
Maya started firing and kept firing, even as Anita and Gendo called out in pain, even as the Angel finally advanced towards her and began pulling on her arms and legs, trying to rip them to pieces. The core was all that mattered. If she could just find it, the battle would all be over.
Eva-01's leg snapped briefly, and the entry plug was turning an unusual shade of blue, but Maya barely even noticed. She saw a single glint of red, and fired one last time.
The blue form of the Angel melted away, and all three Evas were released. Inside the entry plugs, blue gel melted slowly into the LCL, and one by one, the children passed out.
3430:22:15
* * *
Kaworu entered Shinji’s office hesitantly.
Shinji looked up at him, tired. “Why did you want to have a meeting, Vice-Commander?” he asks. “Couldn’t it have waited until the morning? We're all pretty tired at this point.”
“I think it’s better to do this now,” Kaworu whispered. “No one pays attention to activities at this hour.” He took a deep breath. “What happened to Anita… It was horrible. No one should have to go through that.”
“I’m aware,” Shinji said. “I don’t want to sound cold, but I’m exhausted.”
“The point is,” Kaworu said. “Nerv needs forewarning… It needs to know what it’s up against, because I don’t want this to happen again. No one does. We don’t want anyone to have to suffer just to save mankind.”
Shinji didn’t say anything in response. Kaworu fiddled with something in his pocket for a moment, before pulling out a jump drive.
“I brought this,” he said. “It’s not the real deal, but the photographs and annotations will suffice… These will say what the Angels are. All eighteen that are left.” He tossed it onto Shinji’s desk.
The commander stared in shock. “You’re actually giving these up? I thought…”
“Seele is about helping people, about saving them from pain. It would be wrong not to do this, when you consider what we’re up against. Read it, Commander. You won’t like what you see; you won’t like the inevitability, but… At least it will help us protect ourselves.” Kaworu shuddered.
Shinji nodded in appreciation. "Thank you," he said calmly. He frowned. "Eighteen left, you say?"
"Exactly eighteen, if you include the First Angel." Kaworu smiled kindly. "Despite tonight's... chaos... I think we still have a chance. The Seventh Angel was meant to be a dangerous one. I understand that some of the others are less so, for what it's worth."
The commander chuckled. "You do realize that even the weakest of the set so far has managed to cause damage?" He stopped abruptly, realizing the implications. "Well, I mean..."
"Yes," Kaworu said. "I understand what you mean." The suffering of all three children kept running through his mind. Contamination was a terrible thing, and difficult to remove.
3429:55:18
“We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.” - Kenji Miyazawa
Screams echoed throughout the halls of Nerv as Eva-02 began its mad race. Maybe Anita was aware of what she was doing and pushing it forward. Maybe, like the other two Evangelions, it was operating under its own power. It didn't really matter; nor did the walls and floor that kept getting in the Evangelion's way. All that mattered was catching up to the Angel.
Except of course, that was a difficult task. The Angel's depth was uncertain, and regardless of who was in control of the movements of the titanic red robot, there was no easy way to pinpoint its location, even if they were on the correct floor. All Anita (or her robot) could do was dig. The beast simply descended almost to the bottom level of Nerv. There, it would wait.
And, since Maya was forced to flee from battle, and Gendo was completely unable to change the relative speed of his Evangelion, it did not have to wait very long. The blue Angel tore through the ceiling and lunged downward. Its form was still insubstantial, more of a gel or a liquid than anything else, but that didn't stop Eva-02 from grabbing at it, and strangely, successfully pulling it towards the robot.
The Angel screamed, but Eva-02 did not react, simply taking one part of the Angel in both hands and tearing it apart, as if it were flesh. This produced no tangible results, as the material of the Angel simply stretched instead of ripping. The Evangelion paused in a moment, perhaps confusion, perhaps simply considering the next mode of attack. But of course, a moment was far too much time to give away.
In that moment, the edges of the Angel seemed to bubble, and then they pushed out, over Eva-02's head and back down, pulling the Eva into the body of the Angel. Eva-02 struggled heavily, but made no headway. Slowly, it disappeared under the blue sheen of the seventh Angel.
3431:02:18
* * *
"Do we really need weapons, dear?" the voice asked as Maya jumped through another hole the seventh Angel had left behind. "Surely our physical strength will suffice?"
Maya rolled her eyes after they hit the floor below them. Hanging uncertainly from Eva-01's back were several guns she had detoured to obtain from an armory, at the instructions of Toji. He seemed to be the only worker still using the radio. Maya hoped everyone else was all right, but she had no time to worry about that at the moment.
"Right," she muttered, "because just fighting an Angel head on is going to work so well..." She then wished she just hadn't acknowledged the voice. She made a mental note to talk to Kotonoha about this after the fight. It had to be contamination of some sort from the Angel.
"Wrong again, dear."
She didn't say anything that time. She just pushed Eva-01 through the next hole. "I have to be getting down to the bottom of this facility sooner or later," she muttered. "There's only so many floors." Another jump. "And Gendo's next to usel-" She paused as the sound of screaming became audible. "Anita?"
Instead of carefully proceeding down the floors, one by one, she simply leapt down and descended five in a matter of seconds, and then another five. The next hole left by the Angel was the last. Maya looked down and saw the struggling shape of the seventh Angel. Of course. She lifted two guns, and prepared to fire, stopped only by the fact that as soon as she did so, the Angel immediately reshaped itself.
Now, instead of holding Eva-02 within, it was supported by the Angel, constrained by tentacles the alien had formed, but now an effective shield, one which no amount of AT Field use could penetrate. Maya swore softly. This wasn't working at all. She leapt down, using Eva-02 as a stepping stone to bounce further away from the Angel, then swung around.
She was too slow, and the Angel had quickly moved Eva-02 to protect itself from her new position. On the other hand, she realized, it had not moved at all besides this. As long as she could keep it occupied, it was possible something could happen to change their fortunes. It just couldn't reach the bottom level.
Uncertainly, she charged again.
3430:50:52
* * *
Gendo was no longer even trying to redirect the Evangelion. It seemed an exercise in futility. He simply sat and watched as Eva-00 charged haphazardly through the corridors, frequently tearing them up. It didn't even seem to care about where it was going; it frequently just fell through holes, jolting Gendo every time. The holes in the facility after a certain point just went straight down, and Eva-00 fell at least three each before managing to grab hold of something and pull itself up.
He briefly wondered how Maya and Anita were doing. He'd briefly heard Anita screaming, but that could just as easily have been the start-up sequence as it was her actually getting hurt. It was impossible to tell.
"Is there a point to all of this?" he asked. "Or are you just running around like an idiot?" Gendo wondered for a moment if there was any point in even talking to this thing. He could be better off just ignoring it like he ignored everyone else. But that was more difficult than usual. The behavior of the beast was drawing him out, somehow.
The beast didn't answer right away, falling down another couple of floors first. Then it said, still hanging from the ledge,"I am doing what you want to do. Isn't that obvious?"
Gendo stared at the wreckage around him in shock. "This isn't what I want at all," he said coolly. "I want to defeat the Angel and to sleep. In that order," he added, just in case. "Stop berserking. We don't have time for it."
The robot stopped. Gendo reached out for the controls tenatively, pulling them backwards to raise the Eva's hand experimentally. It responded, but Gendo realized suddenly, as he became fully synched with the Evangelion once again, that this hand had been the only thing holding onto the ledge.
Eva-00 plummeted.
3430:48:22
* * *
But Eva-00's fall did not resolve the fight, nor did it provide any note of interest at all. The seventh Angel, aware of the suddenly incoming body, pushed Eva-02 above itself and sent Eva-00 flying in a different direction. It then quickly lowered the robot, blocking Maya's shots before they could get close enough to do any damage. Anita screamed in pain both times.
Gendo slowly pushed himself upward, staring at the Angel, but not doing anything. After a few moments, he radioed Maya. "I would suggest you throw me a gun, but I suspect the Angel would simply tear Eva-02 in half and use both pieces as shields from us."
Maya gulped in horror. "Okay, I won't... do that..." she muttered. "But..." She didn't have a chance to finish that sentence, as Eva-00 broke into a mad dash and charged the Angel. It collided with Eva-02 and only barely managed to pull back away from the tentacles of the seventh Angel.
"Sorry," he whispered. "The Eva is a little... weird, right now."
Maya frowned. "Do you hear... voices?" Gendo didn't answer, but he didn't need to. "We'll figure that out later," she said simply. "Right now, I have a plan... Can you charge again, please?"
Another non-answer. Eva-00 charged at the Angel, and the tentacles slowly became wrapped up within the Eva. Maya fired quickly, aiming at the exposed side of the Angel. The shots blasted away pieces of the gelatinous Angel easily, and they melted on the ground. To Maya's horror, however, the Angel did not release Eva-00 in pain but tightened.
Gendo said softly, "It's in the Plug, Maya."
Maya started firing and kept firing, even as Anita and Gendo called out in pain, even as the Angel finally advanced towards her and began pulling on her arms and legs, trying to rip them to pieces. The core was all that mattered. If she could just find it, the battle would all be over.
Eva-01's leg snapped briefly, and the entry plug was turning an unusual shade of blue, but Maya barely even noticed. She saw a single glint of red, and fired one last time.
The blue form of the Angel melted away, and all three Evas were released. Inside the entry plugs, blue gel melted slowly into the LCL, and one by one, the children passed out.
3430:22:15
* * *
Kaworu entered Shinji’s office hesitantly.
Shinji looked up at him, tired. “Why did you want to have a meeting, Vice-Commander?” he asks. “Couldn’t it have waited until the morning? We're all pretty tired at this point.”
“I think it’s better to do this now,” Kaworu whispered. “No one pays attention to activities at this hour.” He took a deep breath. “What happened to Anita… It was horrible. No one should have to go through that.”
“I’m aware,” Shinji said. “I don’t want to sound cold, but I’m exhausted.”
“The point is,” Kaworu said. “Nerv needs forewarning… It needs to know what it’s up against, because I don’t want this to happen again. No one does. We don’t want anyone to have to suffer just to save mankind.”
Shinji didn’t say anything in response. Kaworu fiddled with something in his pocket for a moment, before pulling out a jump drive.
“I brought this,” he said. “It’s not the real deal, but the photographs and annotations will suffice… These will say what the Angels are. All eighteen that are left.” He tossed it onto Shinji’s desk.
The commander stared in shock. “You’re actually giving these up? I thought…”
“Seele is about helping people, about saving them from pain. It would be wrong not to do this, when you consider what we’re up against. Read it, Commander. You won’t like what you see; you won’t like the inevitability, but… At least it will help us protect ourselves.” Kaworu shuddered.
Shinji nodded in appreciation. "Thank you," he said calmly. He frowned. "Eighteen left, you say?"
"Exactly eighteen, if you include the First Angel." Kaworu smiled kindly. "Despite tonight's... chaos... I think we still have a chance. The Seventh Angel was meant to be a dangerous one. I understand that some of the others are less so, for what it's worth."
The commander chuckled. "You do realize that even the weakest of the set so far has managed to cause damage?" He stopped abruptly, realizing the implications. "Well, I mean..."
"Yes," Kaworu said. "I understand what you mean." The suffering of all three children kept running through his mind. Contamination was a terrible thing, and difficult to remove.
3429:55:18
- Seele00TextOnly
- Phospholipid Bilayer
- Posts: 1806
- Joined: Sep 23, 2007
- Gender: Female
In which Maya dreams in red
"There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to Man. It is a dimension as vast as space, and as timeless as infinity. It is the middleground between light and shadow, between science and superstition; and it lies between the pit of Man's fears, and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call... the Twilight Zone."
Red.
Red everywhere.
No earth, no sky, no horizon. No air, no sound, no shapes, no shadows. Just red.
Red and the consciousness observing the red.
Then the world burst to life. A railway ran through an infinite plane of red, and the consciousness was on the only train.
She remembered she was Maya, and that she had a form, a human form. She blinked, which was a good sign.
“I must be dreaming,” she whispered to herself. She was surprised. Normally when she was this tired, she didn’t dream. She also wasn’t too sure if she remembered falling asleep, nor when exactly she had fallen asleep. She'd... forgotten something.
She looked around the train uncertainly. Shadows moved in the corner of her vision, but no one was there; the train was empty.
"The battle!" she whispered to herself in sudden realization. "It was about to start."
Maya pinched herself. She didn’t wake up. Gulping, she added, "Maybe it's still a bit off," she decided, "and I'm taking a nap before it gets going again." That seemed reasonable.
She sighed and laid back in the seat. It was a weird and empty dream, but at least she was asleep, and there wasn’t anything scary going on. Not even any Angels.
“Hello.”
She looked up. In the seat across from her, Gendo had appeared. She stared at him uncertainly for a few moments before finally finding words. “Hello,” she managed.
Why was she dreaming about Gendo? He wasn’t very nice, and she generally didn’t pay him much notice when it could be avoided. She couldn’t deny he was a good pilot, of course, but a professional relationship wasn’t something to dream about.
“You're forgetting things,” he said, surprising her. This had to be a dream, Gendo would never talk first. She didn't think, anyway. Had he before?
“Yes,” she agreed. “I'm not sure when I fell asleep. I think we're about to fight though. I want to wake up and get back into the Eva.” Actually, she preferred to sleep. But duty was duty, and dream of not she didn't want Gendo to start chewing her out for not taking things seriously enough.
"Why do you pilot?”
“What?” Maya asked.
“You asked me,” Gendo said. “So now I want to know why you’re a pilot. Why do you stay here?”
“I…” Had she asked him? It... felt familiar, but more like a dream than a memory. Whisps of images crossed her mind, the two of them sitting in the moonlight together and talking. But it faded, like all dreams faded after waking. And what little bits she could remember didn't seem to have any time for them to happen.
“Is it because you don’t want us to pilot alone? Because as soon as Eva-00 and Eva-02 are repaired, you won’t be needed anymore.”
Eva-00 didn't need repairs. Did it? No! It was about to be deployed with her. There couldn't be any damage for it to need repaired. No matter.“But I’m needed now. Even after this Angel. What if another one attacks Tokyo-3 tomorrow?” Maya asked.
“What’s the likelihood of that?” Gendo responded. “The Angels attack over the course of days, not hours. Mankind wouldn’t have a chance otherwise.”
“It’s still possible.”
“But it’s not a very good reason.”
“No,” Maya admitted, looking away. “But I don’t need a good one. I’m here to stay whether I like it or not and every time I try to come up with a good reason to leave, something ends up stopping me, so it’s not like there’s any point.”
Gendo frowned. “Living like that doesn’t do you any favors.”
“You’re one to talk,” she muttered. “I’ve never seen you try to do anything with anyone. You were only at the party because you got dragged there…” She trailed off. There weren't a lot of examples to pick from when it came to criticizing his behavior. That was exactly the point.
He gave her no response.
Maya turned back to Gendo’s seat.
He wasn’t there. The train wasn’t there. The horizon wasn’t there. Red. Red everywhere. Then brown.
00:56:18
* * *
Maya opened her eyes. The familiar ceiling of the hospital room loomed above her. As her vision blurred in and out, she almost felt like she would fall into it.
“I have got to stop waking up here,” she muttered. And then it occured to her she couldn't remember the fight. She pushed that out of her mind.
She sat up and looked around the room. Anita was lying on Maya’s right, her burn wounds already much improved. Gendo was on the left, all of his injuries already removed. Both children seemed to be sleeping, not sedated. That was a good sign, at least.
“Maya!”
She turned to the door and saw Captain Soryu standing there, the door having just been pushed open. There were bags under her eyes. Maya wondered if Asuka had spent the whole night awake, either to be ready to come when a child woke up, or just because of an inability to fall asleep.
“Hi…”
“Good job on the last fight,” Asuka said. “Though... I guess you won't really remember.” She frowned. "The death of the Angel contaminated all of you. Not physically, it just left weird memories. The sort of things that drive you crazy." Realizing that Maya was looking increasingly concerned with each word, Asuka hurriedly added, "The reason you don't remember is because Rei used her medical technobabble and removed them. But we weren't sure what all was contaminated so you probably don't remember much from last night." She laughed.
Maya took a moment to think about that. Had the dream Gendo known about the fight? Was he some leftover memory of that, or the Angel itself making contact with her mind before Doctor Ayanami's procedure was finished? Maya decided on the whole that it was better not to ask. The doctor would have been thorough. “Thanks,” she said. "Um, how is everyone's Eva?" she asked.
Asuka nodded, and took a moment to look at each of the other pilots. “Their Evas were both heavily damaged. Nerv-01 and Nerv-03 are sending us some armor, but neither Evangelion is going to be quite the same.” She saw the look on Maya’s face and quickly corrected herself. “The piloting quality won’t be affected, but each Eva is going to have a new paint job now. I don’t know how much Anita will like that. Or Gendo, for that matter.”
“Well, at least they’ll be okay and nothing was permanently damaged…” Maya wasn't sure where to go from there.
“Yeah.” Asuka hesitated for a minute, and then asked, “Is there anything you need?”
“I’m kind of thirsty,” Maya said.
“Hang on, I’ll go get us something.” Asuka left the room, and returned a few minutes later with four canned drinks. She put two to the side, handed one to Maya, and popped the other one open herself.
Maya took a long drink from the lemonade. It tasted stale, but she was too thirsty to care. The air in the Geofront, especially its hospital, was always dry.
“So what are the new paint jobs going to be like?” Maya asked. She took another quick look at both pilots. Both were still asleep. Maybe it was still night. It was impossible to tell when she was down here; the Geofront had artificial lighting on occasionally.
“Eva-00 will be getting some blue armor that was originally intended for Eva-05. Eva-02 is getting green armor from Eva-03. Apparently they’re going to be forced to redesign it to match Eva-04 now, just so they don’t have to spend more money on parts.”
Maya nodded, and then a thought hit her. “So Eva-03 was originally designed to be identical to Eva-02?”
Asuka nodded as well. “The idea was that a back-up might come in handy. All we’d have to do is switch the cores around from the damaged unit to the working one, and the pilot wouldn’t be disoriented by the switch. It could have come in handy now if it weren’t for the fact that Eva-03 is still missing a couple of limbs.”
“Of course.” Maya chuckled a little. “This place seems to have a lot of issues related to work not being finished as soon as would be convenient.”
“Pretty much.”
Anita began to stir, and after a minute opened her eyes. “I’m alive,” Maya heard her whisper. She tried to sit up, but her arms were still somewhat burnt and she ended up screaming in pain.
Asuka stood up. “Are you okay? Do you need me to get the nurse?”
“I… I’m fine,” Anita whispered. “Just… ow.”
“I’m sure she can get some painkillers; I’ll be right back.” Asuka dashed off.
“You haven’t fully recovered?” Maya swung around to see Gendo, sitting up in bed. “I woke up because of the screaming,” he said.
“Sorry…” Anita whispered.
“Don’t apologize,” Maya said. “You couldn’t help it!” She glared at Gendo.
He just stared back.
For a moment, she was about to call him out again on his statement about ways to live, before she remembered it had only been a dream. She opted instead to say nothing and focused intently on the nurse who arrived and gave Anita painkillers.
Hopefully she wouldn’t be stuck with Gendo long.
3423:11:24
"There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to Man. It is a dimension as vast as space, and as timeless as infinity. It is the middleground between light and shadow, between science and superstition; and it lies between the pit of Man's fears, and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call... the Twilight Zone."
Red.
Red everywhere.
No earth, no sky, no horizon. No air, no sound, no shapes, no shadows. Just red.
Red and the consciousness observing the red.
Then the world burst to life. A railway ran through an infinite plane of red, and the consciousness was on the only train.
She remembered she was Maya, and that she had a form, a human form. She blinked, which was a good sign.
“I must be dreaming,” she whispered to herself. She was surprised. Normally when she was this tired, she didn’t dream. She also wasn’t too sure if she remembered falling asleep, nor when exactly she had fallen asleep. She'd... forgotten something.
She looked around the train uncertainly. Shadows moved in the corner of her vision, but no one was there; the train was empty.
"The battle!" she whispered to herself in sudden realization. "It was about to start."
Maya pinched herself. She didn’t wake up. Gulping, she added, "Maybe it's still a bit off," she decided, "and I'm taking a nap before it gets going again." That seemed reasonable.
She sighed and laid back in the seat. It was a weird and empty dream, but at least she was asleep, and there wasn’t anything scary going on. Not even any Angels.
“Hello.”
She looked up. In the seat across from her, Gendo had appeared. She stared at him uncertainly for a few moments before finally finding words. “Hello,” she managed.
Why was she dreaming about Gendo? He wasn’t very nice, and she generally didn’t pay him much notice when it could be avoided. She couldn’t deny he was a good pilot, of course, but a professional relationship wasn’t something to dream about.
“You're forgetting things,” he said, surprising her. This had to be a dream, Gendo would never talk first. She didn't think, anyway. Had he before?
“Yes,” she agreed. “I'm not sure when I fell asleep. I think we're about to fight though. I want to wake up and get back into the Eva.” Actually, she preferred to sleep. But duty was duty, and dream of not she didn't want Gendo to start chewing her out for not taking things seriously enough.
"Why do you pilot?”
“What?” Maya asked.
“You asked me,” Gendo said. “So now I want to know why you’re a pilot. Why do you stay here?”
“I…” Had she asked him? It... felt familiar, but more like a dream than a memory. Whisps of images crossed her mind, the two of them sitting in the moonlight together and talking. But it faded, like all dreams faded after waking. And what little bits she could remember didn't seem to have any time for them to happen.
“Is it because you don’t want us to pilot alone? Because as soon as Eva-00 and Eva-02 are repaired, you won’t be needed anymore.”
Eva-00 didn't need repairs. Did it? No! It was about to be deployed with her. There couldn't be any damage for it to need repaired. No matter.“But I’m needed now. Even after this Angel. What if another one attacks Tokyo-3 tomorrow?” Maya asked.
“What’s the likelihood of that?” Gendo responded. “The Angels attack over the course of days, not hours. Mankind wouldn’t have a chance otherwise.”
“It’s still possible.”
“But it’s not a very good reason.”
“No,” Maya admitted, looking away. “But I don’t need a good one. I’m here to stay whether I like it or not and every time I try to come up with a good reason to leave, something ends up stopping me, so it’s not like there’s any point.”
Gendo frowned. “Living like that doesn’t do you any favors.”
“You’re one to talk,” she muttered. “I’ve never seen you try to do anything with anyone. You were only at the party because you got dragged there…” She trailed off. There weren't a lot of examples to pick from when it came to criticizing his behavior. That was exactly the point.
He gave her no response.
Maya turned back to Gendo’s seat.
He wasn’t there. The train wasn’t there. The horizon wasn’t there. Red. Red everywhere. Then brown.
00:56:18
* * *
Maya opened her eyes. The familiar ceiling of the hospital room loomed above her. As her vision blurred in and out, she almost felt like she would fall into it.
“I have got to stop waking up here,” she muttered. And then it occured to her she couldn't remember the fight. She pushed that out of her mind.
She sat up and looked around the room. Anita was lying on Maya’s right, her burn wounds already much improved. Gendo was on the left, all of his injuries already removed. Both children seemed to be sleeping, not sedated. That was a good sign, at least.
“Maya!”
She turned to the door and saw Captain Soryu standing there, the door having just been pushed open. There were bags under her eyes. Maya wondered if Asuka had spent the whole night awake, either to be ready to come when a child woke up, or just because of an inability to fall asleep.
“Hi…”
“Good job on the last fight,” Asuka said. “Though... I guess you won't really remember.” She frowned. "The death of the Angel contaminated all of you. Not physically, it just left weird memories. The sort of things that drive you crazy." Realizing that Maya was looking increasingly concerned with each word, Asuka hurriedly added, "The reason you don't remember is because Rei used her medical technobabble and removed them. But we weren't sure what all was contaminated so you probably don't remember much from last night." She laughed.
Maya took a moment to think about that. Had the dream Gendo known about the fight? Was he some leftover memory of that, or the Angel itself making contact with her mind before Doctor Ayanami's procedure was finished? Maya decided on the whole that it was better not to ask. The doctor would have been thorough. “Thanks,” she said. "Um, how is everyone's Eva?" she asked.
Asuka nodded, and took a moment to look at each of the other pilots. “Their Evas were both heavily damaged. Nerv-01 and Nerv-03 are sending us some armor, but neither Evangelion is going to be quite the same.” She saw the look on Maya’s face and quickly corrected herself. “The piloting quality won’t be affected, but each Eva is going to have a new paint job now. I don’t know how much Anita will like that. Or Gendo, for that matter.”
“Well, at least they’ll be okay and nothing was permanently damaged…” Maya wasn't sure where to go from there.
“Yeah.” Asuka hesitated for a minute, and then asked, “Is there anything you need?”
“I’m kind of thirsty,” Maya said.
“Hang on, I’ll go get us something.” Asuka left the room, and returned a few minutes later with four canned drinks. She put two to the side, handed one to Maya, and popped the other one open herself.
Maya took a long drink from the lemonade. It tasted stale, but she was too thirsty to care. The air in the Geofront, especially its hospital, was always dry.
“So what are the new paint jobs going to be like?” Maya asked. She took another quick look at both pilots. Both were still asleep. Maybe it was still night. It was impossible to tell when she was down here; the Geofront had artificial lighting on occasionally.
“Eva-00 will be getting some blue armor that was originally intended for Eva-05. Eva-02 is getting green armor from Eva-03. Apparently they’re going to be forced to redesign it to match Eva-04 now, just so they don’t have to spend more money on parts.”
Maya nodded, and then a thought hit her. “So Eva-03 was originally designed to be identical to Eva-02?”
Asuka nodded as well. “The idea was that a back-up might come in handy. All we’d have to do is switch the cores around from the damaged unit to the working one, and the pilot wouldn’t be disoriented by the switch. It could have come in handy now if it weren’t for the fact that Eva-03 is still missing a couple of limbs.”
“Of course.” Maya chuckled a little. “This place seems to have a lot of issues related to work not being finished as soon as would be convenient.”
“Pretty much.”
Anita began to stir, and after a minute opened her eyes. “I’m alive,” Maya heard her whisper. She tried to sit up, but her arms were still somewhat burnt and she ended up screaming in pain.
Asuka stood up. “Are you okay? Do you need me to get the nurse?”
“I… I’m fine,” Anita whispered. “Just… ow.”
“I’m sure she can get some painkillers; I’ll be right back.” Asuka dashed off.
“You haven’t fully recovered?” Maya swung around to see Gendo, sitting up in bed. “I woke up because of the screaming,” he said.
“Sorry…” Anita whispered.
“Don’t apologize,” Maya said. “You couldn’t help it!” She glared at Gendo.
He just stared back.
For a moment, she was about to call him out again on his statement about ways to live, before she remembered it had only been a dream. She opted instead to say nothing and focused intently on the nurse who arrived and gave Anita painkillers.
Hopefully she wouldn’t be stuck with Gendo long.
3423:11:24
In which prophecies are useless
“The art of prophecy is very difficult, especially with respect to the future” - Not Mark Twain, but certainly somebody
Toji sighed. The day after an Angel battle was always the worst. So many things to worry about… so few things that could actually be done…
“After action report,” he began, reading aloud to curb the boredom. “Eva-00 and Eva-02 remain in critical conditions and will be unusable. Even if all efforts are focused on one Evangelion Unit first, there will not be a back-up for Eva-01 for at least eight days, and the complete trio will not be deployable until the twenty-seventh.”
That was "great" news. To date, none of the pilots had been deployed solo successfully, the end results had always been berserk mode activating or, in Anita’s case, simply being deep-fried. Worse, each Angel had been more powerful than the one before it.
And, Toji reflected, looking around the command center, that wasn't the only problem Nerv had. Much of the base had been damaged by the Angel's push into it (and the subsequent behavior of the pilots). About half the consoles in the area were completely non-functional; the wiring to them had been damaged somewhere along the line. That wasn't a huge problem, the center had multiple redundant systems and several power generators and so only a few functions had actually been lost, and all of them would be repaired first.
That left the shields of the base. They had only been penetrated in one particular spot, thankfully relatively close to the center of town, but it was inevitable that the Angels would head right to it. He personally very much doubted that Maya would be able to hold the line for the next two weeks, especially against anything more powerful than the Seventh Angel.
Toji sighed. "We're probably screwed," he said aloud.
Hikari gasped and began chiding him. "Nonsense!" she said. "We can definitely do it! We have Maya and Jet Alone, and maybe the next Angel won't be so bad! You can't be so hopeless!"
"Whatever..." Toji said, turning on one of the nearer consoles and watching it boot up. "If you care that much just ask the Magi what they think. They probably know better than either of us." The console began displaying a map of the city, woefully out of date thanks to the battle. It updated a second later, reflecting some of the damage. Someone was already redrawing the map. That seemed like a better job; at least then you wouldn't necessarily know how bad things could get.
Hikari leaned over Toji, watching the map slowly adjust. "Maybe I will," she said confidently. "They're smart girls; they'll probably agree with me!"
"If you say so." The lieutenant personally doubted that the Magi could say much of anything about the odds at this point. They were better for projects that only involved humans and Evas, like whatever Hikari was up to with them currently. She had a big project, but she never quite got around to explaining it to him. He considered asking, but decided against it. It probably would just come back to bite him in the ass if he knew about it.
3421:55:19
* * *
"This information is practically useless," he told her, looking over the files. "The most interesting thing in here is that the Angel's names, but who really cares that the second through seventh Angels are named Kushiel, Matarael, Raziel, Shalgiel, Shamshel, and Ramiel?"
Rei smirked. "An interesting theme naming," she muttered. "I noticed that myself from what little information Seele was willing to give us. Still, you're sure there's nothing else?"
"Pretty sure. The Dead Sea Scrolls are all rendered as..." Shinji hesitated. "Ideas, I guess. Possibilities. What I've got doesn't even mention the fact that their so-called First Angel wasn't even the one to attack first. It just says it's supposed to be first to hatch and strongest of them all, and that if any race gets stuck dealing with them, beating it is a good sign that they have a chance. But even that's not a guarantee."
Rei pulled a chair around from one end of the desk and set it up slightly behind Shinji. "That is strange," she remarked. "I thought these Scrolls were supposed to be genuine prophecies." She pointed to one of the files on the list, labeled "Ramiel", and asked him to open it up.
He did so, and began calmly reading the words aloud. "'Ramiel is a simple soul, attracted to mathematical forms. It avoids being seen and will take the shade of the sky around it, but will reflect the things seen through it. To find its goal, it will use the strongest forces it can muster, and it will react hostilely to anything which draws too near.'
"It's a good help for strategy," Shinji offered, "but only barely. All the other Angel descriptions are more or less like that, but since we don't know what 'strongest forces' each Angel has, or what form those will take, so that is pretty much useless. The next Angel is described somewhat similarly," he added, "but we haven't fought it yet, so what good does the information do us?"
"We won't know until it happens either way, then?" Rei asked.
Shinji bit his lip, and then said, "Yes, that is exactly what it is. The only good news in all of this is that Seele doesn't know quite so much as they'd like us to believe, especially if the Dead Sea Scrolls are all like this."
Rei raised an eyebrow. "Or," she offered, "they know much more than we think they do now because Kaworu was always supposed to give you these files and they're all fakes, just bits and pieces that will tell us enough to think we're onto Seele when really, it's just an elaborate trap."
"Thanks," Shinji said. "Just when I was starting to trust Kaworu you're giving me a good reason to hate him again."
Rei shrugged her shoulders and said nothing in response to this. She didn't say anything about hating Kaworu; that didn't seem entirely necessary. He was just a goon, no one threatening.
"Seriously," Shinji continued, "I... I dunno. I thought he actually wanted to be friends or something, last night. It was almost... okay." He paused, and as Rei had nothing else to contribute, he stumbled on. "Well, he comes on a little strong," he explained, "like he's really really desperate to be friendly. It's creepy. So... last night I guess I was thinking maybe that's all it was. Maybe he's not the worst Seele has to offer."
Rei snorted.
"You don't think so?"
Rei gave him a glare. "He's the one here," she said coolly. "That makes him the worst we'll ever have to deal with."
2320:38:33
* * *
When it had become clear to Maya that the doctors would not be releasing her until the following morning, she had complained vehemently, but there had been nothing doing. The memories of the Angels that had been removed that day had been the first set of memories the mental ward had ever had to wipe. The technology was sound and logical and there were no risks of bizarre side effects like a chain reaction that would result in Maya losing all of her memories, but there was no guarantee it had worked properly either.
Asuka had stayed for quite some time, but had left around two in the afternoon, and once that had happened and Gendo had dozed off again, Maya had started talking to Anita.
"I'm not sure it all worked," she admitted softly. "There's still this one memory I have, like a dream though, not like something that actually happened."
Anita raised an eyebrow. "A dream?" she asked. "That doesn't seem like that big a deal, Maya... You probably just remember a couple parts of the fight that they didn't quite get out; things about the Angel. You don't remember it..." she thought for a moment, trying to remember Asuka's explanations, "...it entering the Entry Plugs, right?"
"No!" Maya said. "It really was just a dream, but... a weird one." She slowly related all of the details to Anita, about Gendo and the things he had said to her about piloting, and how apparently she'd asked him the same questions. That must have happened in the forgotten interval.
"Weird..." Anita said again. "I don't really know a lot about dreams," she said. "I don't have a lot and I don't talk to many people who do." She hesitated for a little bit, but picked up, "Still," she explained, "I don't think your dream is really all that worrying. You just remember a little bit of something you shouldn't."
Maya looked at her fellow pilot closely, and saw that perhaps she wasn't being very honest at all. "Are you sure?" she asked. "Do you think, maybe... Maybe I should tell someone?"
Anita giggled. "If you want to tell people you're dreaming about Gendo..." she said teasingly.
"Oh shut up." That alone though, made Maya all the more convinced that it wasn't a big deal. If she started remembering other things, she told herself, then she would worry about the dream. Until then, it was just a minor little glitch in an organization that seemed to produce new glitches every day.
She sat back, and forgot about the entire thing.
3417:42:25
“The art of prophecy is very difficult, especially with respect to the future” - Not Mark Twain, but certainly somebody
Toji sighed. The day after an Angel battle was always the worst. So many things to worry about… so few things that could actually be done…
“After action report,” he began, reading aloud to curb the boredom. “Eva-00 and Eva-02 remain in critical conditions and will be unusable. Even if all efforts are focused on one Evangelion Unit first, there will not be a back-up for Eva-01 for at least eight days, and the complete trio will not be deployable until the twenty-seventh.”
That was "great" news. To date, none of the pilots had been deployed solo successfully, the end results had always been berserk mode activating or, in Anita’s case, simply being deep-fried. Worse, each Angel had been more powerful than the one before it.
And, Toji reflected, looking around the command center, that wasn't the only problem Nerv had. Much of the base had been damaged by the Angel's push into it (and the subsequent behavior of the pilots). About half the consoles in the area were completely non-functional; the wiring to them had been damaged somewhere along the line. That wasn't a huge problem, the center had multiple redundant systems and several power generators and so only a few functions had actually been lost, and all of them would be repaired first.
That left the shields of the base. They had only been penetrated in one particular spot, thankfully relatively close to the center of town, but it was inevitable that the Angels would head right to it. He personally very much doubted that Maya would be able to hold the line for the next two weeks, especially against anything more powerful than the Seventh Angel.
Toji sighed. "We're probably screwed," he said aloud.
Hikari gasped and began chiding him. "Nonsense!" she said. "We can definitely do it! We have Maya and Jet Alone, and maybe the next Angel won't be so bad! You can't be so hopeless!"
"Whatever..." Toji said, turning on one of the nearer consoles and watching it boot up. "If you care that much just ask the Magi what they think. They probably know better than either of us." The console began displaying a map of the city, woefully out of date thanks to the battle. It updated a second later, reflecting some of the damage. Someone was already redrawing the map. That seemed like a better job; at least then you wouldn't necessarily know how bad things could get.
Hikari leaned over Toji, watching the map slowly adjust. "Maybe I will," she said confidently. "They're smart girls; they'll probably agree with me!"
"If you say so." The lieutenant personally doubted that the Magi could say much of anything about the odds at this point. They were better for projects that only involved humans and Evas, like whatever Hikari was up to with them currently. She had a big project, but she never quite got around to explaining it to him. He considered asking, but decided against it. It probably would just come back to bite him in the ass if he knew about it.
3421:55:19
* * *
"This information is practically useless," he told her, looking over the files. "The most interesting thing in here is that the Angel's names, but who really cares that the second through seventh Angels are named Kushiel, Matarael, Raziel, Shalgiel, Shamshel, and Ramiel?"
Rei smirked. "An interesting theme naming," she muttered. "I noticed that myself from what little information Seele was willing to give us. Still, you're sure there's nothing else?"
"Pretty sure. The Dead Sea Scrolls are all rendered as..." Shinji hesitated. "Ideas, I guess. Possibilities. What I've got doesn't even mention the fact that their so-called First Angel wasn't even the one to attack first. It just says it's supposed to be first to hatch and strongest of them all, and that if any race gets stuck dealing with them, beating it is a good sign that they have a chance. But even that's not a guarantee."
Rei pulled a chair around from one end of the desk and set it up slightly behind Shinji. "That is strange," she remarked. "I thought these Scrolls were supposed to be genuine prophecies." She pointed to one of the files on the list, labeled "Ramiel", and asked him to open it up.
He did so, and began calmly reading the words aloud. "'Ramiel is a simple soul, attracted to mathematical forms. It avoids being seen and will take the shade of the sky around it, but will reflect the things seen through it. To find its goal, it will use the strongest forces it can muster, and it will react hostilely to anything which draws too near.'
"It's a good help for strategy," Shinji offered, "but only barely. All the other Angel descriptions are more or less like that, but since we don't know what 'strongest forces' each Angel has, or what form those will take, so that is pretty much useless. The next Angel is described somewhat similarly," he added, "but we haven't fought it yet, so what good does the information do us?"
"We won't know until it happens either way, then?" Rei asked.
Shinji bit his lip, and then said, "Yes, that is exactly what it is. The only good news in all of this is that Seele doesn't know quite so much as they'd like us to believe, especially if the Dead Sea Scrolls are all like this."
Rei raised an eyebrow. "Or," she offered, "they know much more than we think they do now because Kaworu was always supposed to give you these files and they're all fakes, just bits and pieces that will tell us enough to think we're onto Seele when really, it's just an elaborate trap."
"Thanks," Shinji said. "Just when I was starting to trust Kaworu you're giving me a good reason to hate him again."
Rei shrugged her shoulders and said nothing in response to this. She didn't say anything about hating Kaworu; that didn't seem entirely necessary. He was just a goon, no one threatening.
"Seriously," Shinji continued, "I... I dunno. I thought he actually wanted to be friends or something, last night. It was almost... okay." He paused, and as Rei had nothing else to contribute, he stumbled on. "Well, he comes on a little strong," he explained, "like he's really really desperate to be friendly. It's creepy. So... last night I guess I was thinking maybe that's all it was. Maybe he's not the worst Seele has to offer."
Rei snorted.
"You don't think so?"
Rei gave him a glare. "He's the one here," she said coolly. "That makes him the worst we'll ever have to deal with."
2320:38:33
* * *
When it had become clear to Maya that the doctors would not be releasing her until the following morning, she had complained vehemently, but there had been nothing doing. The memories of the Angels that had been removed that day had been the first set of memories the mental ward had ever had to wipe. The technology was sound and logical and there were no risks of bizarre side effects like a chain reaction that would result in Maya losing all of her memories, but there was no guarantee it had worked properly either.
Asuka had stayed for quite some time, but had left around two in the afternoon, and once that had happened and Gendo had dozed off again, Maya had started talking to Anita.
"I'm not sure it all worked," she admitted softly. "There's still this one memory I have, like a dream though, not like something that actually happened."
Anita raised an eyebrow. "A dream?" she asked. "That doesn't seem like that big a deal, Maya... You probably just remember a couple parts of the fight that they didn't quite get out; things about the Angel. You don't remember it..." she thought for a moment, trying to remember Asuka's explanations, "...it entering the Entry Plugs, right?"
"No!" Maya said. "It really was just a dream, but... a weird one." She slowly related all of the details to Anita, about Gendo and the things he had said to her about piloting, and how apparently she'd asked him the same questions. That must have happened in the forgotten interval.
"Weird..." Anita said again. "I don't really know a lot about dreams," she said. "I don't have a lot and I don't talk to many people who do." She hesitated for a little bit, but picked up, "Still," she explained, "I don't think your dream is really all that worrying. You just remember a little bit of something you shouldn't."
Maya looked at her fellow pilot closely, and saw that perhaps she wasn't being very honest at all. "Are you sure?" she asked. "Do you think, maybe... Maybe I should tell someone?"
Anita giggled. "If you want to tell people you're dreaming about Gendo..." she said teasingly.
"Oh shut up." That alone though, made Maya all the more convinced that it wasn't a big deal. If she started remembering other things, she told herself, then she would worry about the dream. Until then, it was just a minor little glitch in an organization that seemed to produce new glitches every day.
She sat back, and forgot about the entire thing.
3417:42:25
In which Asuka meets with two
“The assumption that seeing is believing makes us susceptible to visual deceptions” - Kathleen Hall Jamieson
Asuka had not especially wanted to leave the children, but the nurses had shooed her away, saying that all three of them were going to need a bit of rest. Outside the room, Asuka asked the nurse how exactly the memory removal procedure worked. "I just don't quite understand it," she explained.
The nurse brushed her off. "It's pretty complicated," she said, but not looking Asuka in the eyes. "It involves a lot of cutting edge science and even so... I don't quite understand all the theory behind it, I just followed the head doctor's orders."
"And the head doctor is Rei, right? Uh, Doctor Ayanami?"
The nurse nodded. "She could probably explain it all a lot better than I can, but I can say it involves messing with the way the brain moves short term memories into the long term." She frowned. "But the exact things we do..." The nurse trailed off.
Asuka rolled her eyes to herself. This woman clearly didn't want to tell her something, and was hiding it in the least competent way possible. "Thank you," she said insincerely, and left, heading straight to Rei's office, intending to find out from her friend exactly what was going on with all of these things.
Except, Rei wasn't at her office. Kaworu was, knocking on the door, looking somewhat frustrated. He turned as Asuka approached. "Oh, hello!" he said. "Have you seen the doctor?"
Asuka shook her head. "Sorry," she said. "I actually came by here to talk with her myself. The nurses in the hospital are being a little bit weird about the procedure they used on the kids. Well, I mean they're not saying anything about what they did, even when I asked exactly how it worked."
"Huh." Kaworu said. "Well, I think maybe I have an explanation, though I don't see why anyone would be nervous about talking about it. Since the doctor doesn't seem to be here, shall we head up to my office? I'll explain on the way."
"Sure," Asuka said, and began walking alongside him.
He smiled broadly and launched into an explanation. "From what I understand, all we did was produce the effects of anterograde amnesia." At Asuka's confused look, he clarified, "That is, the inability to make new memories. There's a few chemicals that can do the work, so we just used them on the children, in doses that were designed to remove as much of the corrupting influence as possible."
"Yes, but you made them forget a couple of hours. Can chemicals really make all that happen?" Asuka frowned.
Kaworu just kept grinning. "Science," he explained, "is capable of some pretty weird things, wouldn't you say?" He stopped at the door to his office. "Would you like to come in for a quick drink, Captain? Not alcoholic, or anything. Just, I understand you've been with the children all day. It might be a good idea to unwind."
The captain hesitated. "I also haven't done any work all day," she said uncertainly. "Surely I should get a little bit of something done, don't you think?"
"There'll be time for that later," Kaworu replied. "You still have a couple hours of a shift today and there's not a whole lot for you to do. The Angel is beaten, if another one shows up we're doomed, and there's nothing left to do but for people to try to figure out how to pick up all the pieces we've got to work with and hope we can pull something together for when the next Angel hits the city."
Asuka smiled. "Well, okay," she said, and followed Kaworu into his office. He poured something with a fruity flavor Asuka didn't quite recognize, nor was she entirely fond of it. "Mmmm," she 'said'. It was a nice, non-commital sound.
"So," Kaworu said. "Five Angels have been defeated under your watch, Captain." He grinned. "How does that feel?"
She chuckled. "It's just nice," she responded. "And I'm glad we can trust the kids as much as we do. But honestly I don't really have a big sense of pride in it since we don't know how many there are. It's no good getting worked up about defeating a set of Angels when for all we know they're only one percent of the total force that we're going to be fighting."
His turn to laugh. "Fair enough," he said, with a tone in his voice which suggested that he knew a little bit better about the number of Angels. Asuka decided to simply ignore that hint. She didn't want to know. And it didn't matter anyway, if they couldn't count on the children right now to pilot.
They talked a little more, but Kaworu never brought up anything that they could really work with, and Asuka just kept wondering how much he really knew.
3416:21:56
* * *
The rain pounding the city streets frustrated Asuka when she first set out. The morning hadn't had a cloud in the sky, so she had not bothered bringing an umbrella to Nerv with her, or a rain coat. Though she'd picked the nearest Nerv exit to her apartment, she still had quite a walk to contend with. When she reached her apartment, she was completely soaked.
"Ugh," she muttered under her breath. It was a pretty mundane problem, and Asuka knew that a little rain was hardly a problem, not compared to everything that had happened in the early morning, but she'd never been very good at not blowing things out of proportion. "Stupid rain." She unlocked the door to her apartment and started walking inside when someone called out.
"Captain!" It was Kaito, and Asuka turned almost instantly. "Captain, hey!" He rushed towards her, even though she wasn't moving into her apartment any longer. "I was wondering..." He slowed as he drew beside her. "Maybe we could talk for a bit?" He sounded a little odd as he said that.
Asuka looked at him curiously, but then nodded and stepped inside, holding the door open for him. "Is this an official visit?" she asked uncertainly. "Or a social one?"
Kaito hesitated, and then answered, "Maybe a little of both." He followed her inside, and was led to the couch in the living room, where he sat. Asuka sat in a chair beside the sofa, and rotated the chair a little bit to face him better. "I guess we can cover the official things first."
Asuka nodded. "And they are?"
"Well, the first thing is the hack into your personal files." He hesitated again. "You were informed, right? I asked one of the lieutenants to take care of that but she never sent me back a report on that."
"Kimie did tell me, yes," Asuka said. She rose suddenly. "Um, do you want something to drink?" Asuka moved to the kitchen and began producing a cup for herself.
"Uh... sure... Water is fine, though. I don't need anything fancy." Kaito took the drink when Asuka returned with it, and continued. "Anyway. I just wanted to let you know that we're still not having any luck on that front, but that no other files have been hacked since then, including yours. Whoever was breaking the law this way was specifically going after you."
Asuka shivered. "Of course," she muttered. "They just would be, wouldn't they?" She took a sip from her own drink, a can of beer. "But there hasn't been another hack since?"
"And," Kaito added, "there wasn't ever a hack before. The Magi are ridiculously secure computers, because of how advanced they are. The fact that they were hacked at all is actually a pretty big cause for concern. We have no leads, no clues, no suspects. It's a pretty weird case."
"Maybe they just misreported?" Asuka offered. "It was a bug of some sort? It would be pretty hard to trace a bug when you've got coding as complex as the Magi, and I know that no computers are perfect."
Kaito considered this for a moment, and then shook his head. "The Magi are perfect, Asuka. That's why we use them. The only way they can start glitching out is if some of the natural infinite loops we've built in overrun the whole thing, and if that happens we can just wipe the memory banks and start all the way over again. That's how we built all the other Magi; it's not hard."
Asuka shrugged. "Well, thanks for telling me," she said. "It's good to keep me informed." Then she smiled, and said, "So why else are you here? A social visit?" She took another drink. "It's been a long time since we hung out..." She sighed. It was like that with a lot of her friends, really. Even Rei. She really needed to get around to planning something with them, she decided. Maybe soon.
"Yeah," he said. "I just... I dunno, wanted to catch up, I guess. It's been a long time since you went off to Germany. What have you been up to?"
Hesitantly, Asuka began relating her stories. There wasn't any reason to be hesitant, except of course that really not much of interest had happened in Germany. She'd worked there, made a few friends but no one close, and had come back to Japan without much fanfare. The people back in Germany had probably forgotten about her by this point because of the fact that even with her friends she kept mostly to herself. Only back in this country had she opened up again.
Still, Kaito seemed to cling to every word.
3414:47:12
“The assumption that seeing is believing makes us susceptible to visual deceptions” - Kathleen Hall Jamieson
Asuka had not especially wanted to leave the children, but the nurses had shooed her away, saying that all three of them were going to need a bit of rest. Outside the room, Asuka asked the nurse how exactly the memory removal procedure worked. "I just don't quite understand it," she explained.
The nurse brushed her off. "It's pretty complicated," she said, but not looking Asuka in the eyes. "It involves a lot of cutting edge science and even so... I don't quite understand all the theory behind it, I just followed the head doctor's orders."
"And the head doctor is Rei, right? Uh, Doctor Ayanami?"
The nurse nodded. "She could probably explain it all a lot better than I can, but I can say it involves messing with the way the brain moves short term memories into the long term." She frowned. "But the exact things we do..." The nurse trailed off.
Asuka rolled her eyes to herself. This woman clearly didn't want to tell her something, and was hiding it in the least competent way possible. "Thank you," she said insincerely, and left, heading straight to Rei's office, intending to find out from her friend exactly what was going on with all of these things.
Except, Rei wasn't at her office. Kaworu was, knocking on the door, looking somewhat frustrated. He turned as Asuka approached. "Oh, hello!" he said. "Have you seen the doctor?"
Asuka shook her head. "Sorry," she said. "I actually came by here to talk with her myself. The nurses in the hospital are being a little bit weird about the procedure they used on the kids. Well, I mean they're not saying anything about what they did, even when I asked exactly how it worked."
"Huh." Kaworu said. "Well, I think maybe I have an explanation, though I don't see why anyone would be nervous about talking about it. Since the doctor doesn't seem to be here, shall we head up to my office? I'll explain on the way."
"Sure," Asuka said, and began walking alongside him.
He smiled broadly and launched into an explanation. "From what I understand, all we did was produce the effects of anterograde amnesia." At Asuka's confused look, he clarified, "That is, the inability to make new memories. There's a few chemicals that can do the work, so we just used them on the children, in doses that were designed to remove as much of the corrupting influence as possible."
"Yes, but you made them forget a couple of hours. Can chemicals really make all that happen?" Asuka frowned.
Kaworu just kept grinning. "Science," he explained, "is capable of some pretty weird things, wouldn't you say?" He stopped at the door to his office. "Would you like to come in for a quick drink, Captain? Not alcoholic, or anything. Just, I understand you've been with the children all day. It might be a good idea to unwind."
The captain hesitated. "I also haven't done any work all day," she said uncertainly. "Surely I should get a little bit of something done, don't you think?"
"There'll be time for that later," Kaworu replied. "You still have a couple hours of a shift today and there's not a whole lot for you to do. The Angel is beaten, if another one shows up we're doomed, and there's nothing left to do but for people to try to figure out how to pick up all the pieces we've got to work with and hope we can pull something together for when the next Angel hits the city."
Asuka smiled. "Well, okay," she said, and followed Kaworu into his office. He poured something with a fruity flavor Asuka didn't quite recognize, nor was she entirely fond of it. "Mmmm," she 'said'. It was a nice, non-commital sound.
"So," Kaworu said. "Five Angels have been defeated under your watch, Captain." He grinned. "How does that feel?"
She chuckled. "It's just nice," she responded. "And I'm glad we can trust the kids as much as we do. But honestly I don't really have a big sense of pride in it since we don't know how many there are. It's no good getting worked up about defeating a set of Angels when for all we know they're only one percent of the total force that we're going to be fighting."
His turn to laugh. "Fair enough," he said, with a tone in his voice which suggested that he knew a little bit better about the number of Angels. Asuka decided to simply ignore that hint. She didn't want to know. And it didn't matter anyway, if they couldn't count on the children right now to pilot.
They talked a little more, but Kaworu never brought up anything that they could really work with, and Asuka just kept wondering how much he really knew.
3416:21:56
* * *
The rain pounding the city streets frustrated Asuka when she first set out. The morning hadn't had a cloud in the sky, so she had not bothered bringing an umbrella to Nerv with her, or a rain coat. Though she'd picked the nearest Nerv exit to her apartment, she still had quite a walk to contend with. When she reached her apartment, she was completely soaked.
"Ugh," she muttered under her breath. It was a pretty mundane problem, and Asuka knew that a little rain was hardly a problem, not compared to everything that had happened in the early morning, but she'd never been very good at not blowing things out of proportion. "Stupid rain." She unlocked the door to her apartment and started walking inside when someone called out.
"Captain!" It was Kaito, and Asuka turned almost instantly. "Captain, hey!" He rushed towards her, even though she wasn't moving into her apartment any longer. "I was wondering..." He slowed as he drew beside her. "Maybe we could talk for a bit?" He sounded a little odd as he said that.
Asuka looked at him curiously, but then nodded and stepped inside, holding the door open for him. "Is this an official visit?" she asked uncertainly. "Or a social one?"
Kaito hesitated, and then answered, "Maybe a little of both." He followed her inside, and was led to the couch in the living room, where he sat. Asuka sat in a chair beside the sofa, and rotated the chair a little bit to face him better. "I guess we can cover the official things first."
Asuka nodded. "And they are?"
"Well, the first thing is the hack into your personal files." He hesitated again. "You were informed, right? I asked one of the lieutenants to take care of that but she never sent me back a report on that."
"Kimie did tell me, yes," Asuka said. She rose suddenly. "Um, do you want something to drink?" Asuka moved to the kitchen and began producing a cup for herself.
"Uh... sure... Water is fine, though. I don't need anything fancy." Kaito took the drink when Asuka returned with it, and continued. "Anyway. I just wanted to let you know that we're still not having any luck on that front, but that no other files have been hacked since then, including yours. Whoever was breaking the law this way was specifically going after you."
Asuka shivered. "Of course," she muttered. "They just would be, wouldn't they?" She took a sip from her own drink, a can of beer. "But there hasn't been another hack since?"
"And," Kaito added, "there wasn't ever a hack before. The Magi are ridiculously secure computers, because of how advanced they are. The fact that they were hacked at all is actually a pretty big cause for concern. We have no leads, no clues, no suspects. It's a pretty weird case."
"Maybe they just misreported?" Asuka offered. "It was a bug of some sort? It would be pretty hard to trace a bug when you've got coding as complex as the Magi, and I know that no computers are perfect."
Kaito considered this for a moment, and then shook his head. "The Magi are perfect, Asuka. That's why we use them. The only way they can start glitching out is if some of the natural infinite loops we've built in overrun the whole thing, and if that happens we can just wipe the memory banks and start all the way over again. That's how we built all the other Magi; it's not hard."
Asuka shrugged. "Well, thanks for telling me," she said. "It's good to keep me informed." Then she smiled, and said, "So why else are you here? A social visit?" She took another drink. "It's been a long time since we hung out..." She sighed. It was like that with a lot of her friends, really. Even Rei. She really needed to get around to planning something with them, she decided. Maybe soon.
"Yeah," he said. "I just... I dunno, wanted to catch up, I guess. It's been a long time since you went off to Germany. What have you been up to?"
Hesitantly, Asuka began relating her stories. There wasn't any reason to be hesitant, except of course that really not much of interest had happened in Germany. She'd worked there, made a few friends but no one close, and had come back to Japan without much fanfare. The people back in Germany had probably forgotten about her by this point because of the fact that even with her friends she kept mostly to herself. Only back in this country had she opened up again.
Still, Kaito seemed to cling to every word.
3414:47:12
In which kids are kids
"A characteristic of the normal child is he doesn't act that way very often." - Author unknown
The phone rang, and Ritsuko answered it hesitantly. It was Ryoji, which made her pretty nervous. But then, she always talked to him, so it wasn't like there was anything to be especially nervous about. He didn't really suspect a whole lot in that area. "Um, hey," she said. "What's up?"
"I uh, have some weird news," Ryoji said. "Do you remember the tabloid editor? I called him to say we couldn't send him any more photos, but he said he already had some."
Ritsuko's eyes widened. "What?" she asked. "But who could have taken them?" she asked.
"Well, in this case pretty much anyone," Ryoji pointed out. "The thing was floating over the city for a whole day. I'm sure lots of people have pictures and that's gonna make it pretty hard for them to be covering that sort of thing up. The real problem is that Nerv might not agree with us, I think. I mean, we could have just broken our word and taken more photographs, and sold them off for even more money."
"We should have," Ritsuko muttered. "How on earth would they prove that it was us in particular?" she argued.
Ryoji paused for a moment, and then responded, "Well, they probably will get on the tabloid's case at the rate things are going. Nerv probably figured that if we weren't taking photos then no one would be. Not very bright of them, really. Still... this Angel's going public."
Ritsuko looked over to her own camera, with which she'd taken a few pictures herself the previous night. Not to sell or anything foolish, just to keep the memory of each of the attacks, though really even that was unlikely. The strange octahedron had shone a perfect blue against the setting sun. "Yeah..." she agreed. "Though really I don't think that's what Nerv cared about." She remembered the media outrage about the presence of Jet Alone in the fight. That was the problem, the secrets like that.
The girl briefly considered sneaking out again every fight, just to try to document their crazy secrets. She quickly proposed the idea to Ryoji, hoping he would share her enthusiasm at the idea.
"What's the point in that?" he asked. "So Nerv had a secret robot. That's hardly the sort of secret that anyone needs to be concerned about. If they were, I dunno, enslaving people and forcing them to pilot, that would be pretty different. But there wasn't really anything wrong about what they did." He sounded, Ritsuko thought, pretty upset at the whole suggestion. "Besides, we'll just get in trouble again."
"Wouldn't it be worth it?" Ritsuko asked. "If they are keeping bigger secrets, I mean?"
Another pause on his end, and then finally, he said, "No. Not at all, I think."
Ritsuko sighed. "Come on, Ryoji! We barely got in any trouble at all! Did they even get our teacher written up for anything?" When he didn't answer after a moment, she pressed on. "Of course not! Nerv can't legally do anything anyways. There isn't even a law about civilians being required to stay in the shelters. Not yet anyway."
"But there are laws about truancy," Ryoji argued. "And they'd make those charges stick."
"Not if no one caught us!" Ritsuko insisted. "We're not going to do anything except sneak out there, take pictures, make sure nothing suspicious happens, and come back inside. We didn't get noticed before and we almost certainly won't get noticed again. I don't think any of the people who are in charge of us pay that much attention anyway. They're scared out of their minds because the big scary Angels are coming to get us." She snickered in derision at the attitudes of the security guards.
Ryoji didn't give a verbal answer, but if Ritsuko had to guess what his answer might be, the fact that he simply hung up the phone translated into a pretty strong "No." She sighed and leaned back in her chair. He had no sense of adventure, she thought. That wouldn't stop her, though. She now had plans, and they would be big ones. All of Nerv's secrets would be her own, she thought.
And hopefully, some of them would be the kind worth knowing.
3414:32:56
* * *
"Thanks for having me over," Kyoko said to Makoto after dinner. "My folks are out on business today and it gets pretty lonely being stuck at home by myself."
Makoto laughed. "No problem," he said. "My dad's pretty used to me having Shigeru over a lot, so it's not really much of a stretch for him to whip up another meal." He pointed towards the living room. "Wanna watch some TV?" he asked. "I dunno really what shows you like but hey, it could be fun."
Kyoko headed into the living room, smiling. "Yeah," she agreed. "Though honestly I think I would just like to watch the news at this point. There's been quite a lot of damage done to the city by that last Angel, and it would be good to hear that everything is going okay, you know?"
"Yeah," Makoto agreed. He grabbed the remote and switched the TV on, flipping through the channels to a news station and listening for a little while. Tokyo-3's local news, however, wasn't covering the Angel at the moment, but instead focusing on the results of Nerv's excessive power drain on the world; currently that was examining the hospitals which had not been properly equipped with generators and had lost patients as a result.
Makoto squirmed uncomfortably. "Can we watch something else, please?" he asked. When Kyoko didn't answer, he turned to her. She was staring in shock at the television, and didn't seem to have heard him. "Can we change the channel?" he asked again.
Kyoko turned to him, broken from her reverie. "Oh, yeah." She gulped. "Yeah this probably isn't the best channel to be watching right now," she agreed, stuttering over a few of her words.
Makoto quietly changed over to a channel currently featuring a game show, and sighed. "Sorry," he said. "It's just I still feel bad for Shigeru's little brother."
"Oh right!" Kyoko said, remembering. "Yeah... that's why he didn't come to the party, right? To visit the poor guy? How is he doing?"
"Well, he'll be let out of the hospital soon, I hear," Makoto said. "The injuries were pretty bad but they've mostly finished treating him up and I think they only kept him this long because it was the first Angel attack on the city. They were probably worried about relapses and things like that," he explained. "Uh, since for all we know Angel's could be radioactive or poisonous or something weird like that."
Kyoko shifted in her seat. "That's um..." Her eyes widened a little. "That's pretty unpleasant sounding, to be honest. I hope that nothing like that is real," she added. "I much prefer the Angels when the biggest problem with them is that they're huge."
She got a nod in repsonse. "Yeah. I mean, it would suck if they relaly could drive you crazy just by looking at you or something. How could we fight stuff like that?"
"We could put the Evas in blindfolds," Kyoko suggested jokingly, and giggled a bit at her own joke. Makoto had to admit, inwardly, that the idea of the giant robots being forced to wear giant blindfolds to stay safe was... Well, it was a healthy distraction from the misery that usually surrounded them.
"Yeah..." he agreed again, and tried to think of something funny to suggest as an alternative. He couldn't come up with anything, though. He decided to abandon that thought all together, and turned his attention to the game, where people were making idiots out of themselves, wearing ridiculous puffed up costumes and being led through a maze of an obstacle course by an announcer, who laughed the loudest whenever one of the contestants got abused by something in the course.
Still, it was pretty tame for a game show.
"Do you think our band is ever actually going to happen?" Kyoko asked suddenly. "Because we spend a lot of time practicing for it and almost no time doing anything."
"To be honest?" Makoto said. "We're probably not going to get anything done ever. That's just... kind of the way Ritsuko is, sometimes. We need another player besides." Remembering Kyoko's earlier protests, he asked, "Are you going to stop hanging out with us if the band falls through?"
Kyoko laughed. "Probably not," she admitted. "You guys are too weird not to hang out with."
3413:49:36
"A characteristic of the normal child is he doesn't act that way very often." - Author unknown
The phone rang, and Ritsuko answered it hesitantly. It was Ryoji, which made her pretty nervous. But then, she always talked to him, so it wasn't like there was anything to be especially nervous about. He didn't really suspect a whole lot in that area. "Um, hey," she said. "What's up?"
"I uh, have some weird news," Ryoji said. "Do you remember the tabloid editor? I called him to say we couldn't send him any more photos, but he said he already had some."
Ritsuko's eyes widened. "What?" she asked. "But who could have taken them?" she asked.
"Well, in this case pretty much anyone," Ryoji pointed out. "The thing was floating over the city for a whole day. I'm sure lots of people have pictures and that's gonna make it pretty hard for them to be covering that sort of thing up. The real problem is that Nerv might not agree with us, I think. I mean, we could have just broken our word and taken more photographs, and sold them off for even more money."
"We should have," Ritsuko muttered. "How on earth would they prove that it was us in particular?" she argued.
Ryoji paused for a moment, and then responded, "Well, they probably will get on the tabloid's case at the rate things are going. Nerv probably figured that if we weren't taking photos then no one would be. Not very bright of them, really. Still... this Angel's going public."
Ritsuko looked over to her own camera, with which she'd taken a few pictures herself the previous night. Not to sell or anything foolish, just to keep the memory of each of the attacks, though really even that was unlikely. The strange octahedron had shone a perfect blue against the setting sun. "Yeah..." she agreed. "Though really I don't think that's what Nerv cared about." She remembered the media outrage about the presence of Jet Alone in the fight. That was the problem, the secrets like that.
The girl briefly considered sneaking out again every fight, just to try to document their crazy secrets. She quickly proposed the idea to Ryoji, hoping he would share her enthusiasm at the idea.
"What's the point in that?" he asked. "So Nerv had a secret robot. That's hardly the sort of secret that anyone needs to be concerned about. If they were, I dunno, enslaving people and forcing them to pilot, that would be pretty different. But there wasn't really anything wrong about what they did." He sounded, Ritsuko thought, pretty upset at the whole suggestion. "Besides, we'll just get in trouble again."
"Wouldn't it be worth it?" Ritsuko asked. "If they are keeping bigger secrets, I mean?"
Another pause on his end, and then finally, he said, "No. Not at all, I think."
Ritsuko sighed. "Come on, Ryoji! We barely got in any trouble at all! Did they even get our teacher written up for anything?" When he didn't answer after a moment, she pressed on. "Of course not! Nerv can't legally do anything anyways. There isn't even a law about civilians being required to stay in the shelters. Not yet anyway."
"But there are laws about truancy," Ryoji argued. "And they'd make those charges stick."
"Not if no one caught us!" Ritsuko insisted. "We're not going to do anything except sneak out there, take pictures, make sure nothing suspicious happens, and come back inside. We didn't get noticed before and we almost certainly won't get noticed again. I don't think any of the people who are in charge of us pay that much attention anyway. They're scared out of their minds because the big scary Angels are coming to get us." She snickered in derision at the attitudes of the security guards.
Ryoji didn't give a verbal answer, but if Ritsuko had to guess what his answer might be, the fact that he simply hung up the phone translated into a pretty strong "No." She sighed and leaned back in her chair. He had no sense of adventure, she thought. That wouldn't stop her, though. She now had plans, and they would be big ones. All of Nerv's secrets would be her own, she thought.
And hopefully, some of them would be the kind worth knowing.
3414:32:56
* * *
"Thanks for having me over," Kyoko said to Makoto after dinner. "My folks are out on business today and it gets pretty lonely being stuck at home by myself."
Makoto laughed. "No problem," he said. "My dad's pretty used to me having Shigeru over a lot, so it's not really much of a stretch for him to whip up another meal." He pointed towards the living room. "Wanna watch some TV?" he asked. "I dunno really what shows you like but hey, it could be fun."
Kyoko headed into the living room, smiling. "Yeah," she agreed. "Though honestly I think I would just like to watch the news at this point. There's been quite a lot of damage done to the city by that last Angel, and it would be good to hear that everything is going okay, you know?"
"Yeah," Makoto agreed. He grabbed the remote and switched the TV on, flipping through the channels to a news station and listening for a little while. Tokyo-3's local news, however, wasn't covering the Angel at the moment, but instead focusing on the results of Nerv's excessive power drain on the world; currently that was examining the hospitals which had not been properly equipped with generators and had lost patients as a result.
Makoto squirmed uncomfortably. "Can we watch something else, please?" he asked. When Kyoko didn't answer, he turned to her. She was staring in shock at the television, and didn't seem to have heard him. "Can we change the channel?" he asked again.
Kyoko turned to him, broken from her reverie. "Oh, yeah." She gulped. "Yeah this probably isn't the best channel to be watching right now," she agreed, stuttering over a few of her words.
Makoto quietly changed over to a channel currently featuring a game show, and sighed. "Sorry," he said. "It's just I still feel bad for Shigeru's little brother."
"Oh right!" Kyoko said, remembering. "Yeah... that's why he didn't come to the party, right? To visit the poor guy? How is he doing?"
"Well, he'll be let out of the hospital soon, I hear," Makoto said. "The injuries were pretty bad but they've mostly finished treating him up and I think they only kept him this long because it was the first Angel attack on the city. They were probably worried about relapses and things like that," he explained. "Uh, since for all we know Angel's could be radioactive or poisonous or something weird like that."
Kyoko shifted in her seat. "That's um..." Her eyes widened a little. "That's pretty unpleasant sounding, to be honest. I hope that nothing like that is real," she added. "I much prefer the Angels when the biggest problem with them is that they're huge."
She got a nod in repsonse. "Yeah. I mean, it would suck if they relaly could drive you crazy just by looking at you or something. How could we fight stuff like that?"
"We could put the Evas in blindfolds," Kyoko suggested jokingly, and giggled a bit at her own joke. Makoto had to admit, inwardly, that the idea of the giant robots being forced to wear giant blindfolds to stay safe was... Well, it was a healthy distraction from the misery that usually surrounded them.
"Yeah..." he agreed again, and tried to think of something funny to suggest as an alternative. He couldn't come up with anything, though. He decided to abandon that thought all together, and turned his attention to the game, where people were making idiots out of themselves, wearing ridiculous puffed up costumes and being led through a maze of an obstacle course by an announcer, who laughed the loudest whenever one of the contestants got abused by something in the course.
Still, it was pretty tame for a game show.
"Do you think our band is ever actually going to happen?" Kyoko asked suddenly. "Because we spend a lot of time practicing for it and almost no time doing anything."
"To be honest?" Makoto said. "We're probably not going to get anything done ever. That's just... kind of the way Ritsuko is, sometimes. We need another player besides." Remembering Kyoko's earlier protests, he asked, "Are you going to stop hanging out with us if the band falls through?"
Kyoko laughed. "Probably not," she admitted. "You guys are too weird not to hang out with."
3413:49:36
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