Alone in an empty, white room, there was little to for Mari Illustrious Makinami to do save to stand and hum to herself as she waited for those who had offered her employ. No stranger to the dealings of shadowy organizations and secret societies,she had expected to meet with a cabal of men in suits who
would then relay to her the specifics of whatever semi-legal action they wished for her to take.
"Don't stop thinking about tomorrow. Don't stop, it'll soon be here..."
But that was not what she had found upon arriving at the designated time and place. Despite having wormed her way through several layers of security and high-tech gadgetry fit for a fortress, there was no hint to who had called for her aid or even who owned this building in the first place. Truly, she had been contacted via a garbled phone call and simply told by a mysterious stranger that they "had work" for her. But that was nothing out of the ordinary, really. When you were in this line of work, jobs often came from untraceable phone calls and e-mails. But rather the lack of human life in this place was unnerving, as if she had walked directly into a trap.
Being in such a secretive field also meant you had a list of enemies a few miles long. And it was entirely possible that just as many people wished to kill her as wanted to hire her. Indeed just last week... the thought drifted from Mari's mind as the pure white room around her became engulfed in darkness.
"If this is a trap, you could have been a little bit more subtle about it."
The darkness gave no reply But rather, a few moments later, began to hum. Like a great machine suddenly bursting to life.
It was within this sound that those she had sought finally showed themselves, as long table, populated entirely by older men of varying nationalities sprung into existence mere feet from where Mari stood. All dressed in suits black suits, the group gave the impression of importance and power without even saying a single word.
"I assure you, this is no trap." The old man seated at the head of the grand table spoke in a slight German accent.
His face covered by a visor of unknown purpose, the man at the head of the table was none other then Keel Lorentz, a scientist of some renown in the last half century of whom strange and fantastic things were often whispered. While some remark that he was involved in directly in tragedies of the past decade, others connect him to a secret society that has guided mankind's destiny since time immemorial. But more often then not a single word dances upon the lips of all who seek the truth behind the strange old man.
"Great! Now if you don't mind, I'm a busy girl, so let's get down to business." Mari stood strong even in the face of aura of power radiating from council that had sprung to life in front of her very eyes. She had faced far worse in her day, been shot at, and even run over on a few occasions. Talking to a bunch of old men was, if anything, a bit boring for her.s
"Very well. I will assume you have looked over the information you were sent." Keel spoke in a matter-of-fact tone.
Mari simply stood, whistled, and turned her gaze away from the council.
"You haven't?!" The old man yelled. Used to dealing with serious men in suits, Keel had little precedence for dealing with a teenage girl wearing a secondhand school uniform and flashy red glasses. And even less so for those who refused to follow his order to a T. "What could you possibly be doing that was more important then reading that which you were given?"
The council's eyes all gazed upon the whistling girl with an intensity that could burn through steel. Undaunted, Mari simply continued to whistle. Turning her attention to her employer only after finishing her song.
"About that...I think that stuff got lost in my junk folder. You really should have labeled it better!" Mari laughed to herself.
"You are lucky that you are such a talented individual, Makinami. Should a lesser person have tried such a stunt, they would have been executed on the spot." His eyes hidden behind his vizor, it was impossible to tell just where the Keel was was looking, but his words were more then enough to show that his blood had begun to boil. "Now if you would please pay attention this time, we will go over the details of this operation once more."
On a separate monitor hovering over the room's central table manifested images of Tokyo-3, the fortress of the organization known as NERV and mankind's first and last line of defense against the monstrous Angels that seemed to threaten the extinction of life as everyone knew it on a daily basis. Mari had never been there before, but had heard that it was a fairly nice place, apart from all of the random monster attacks, of course.
"It will be your mission to infiltrate the city posing as a middle school student and keeps tabs on NERV," Keel spoke. "From there you will gather as much information as you can and relay it to us. You will be expected to keep up this charade as long as possible. For your service, and considering the risks of this operation, we have provided you with a small room and a weekly allowance with which to do as you wish."
The monitor displayed several live video feeds of various places in the city. The school she would be attending, the people she would be interacting with, even an apartment building similar to the one that she would be staying with.
Placing her hand upon her chin, Mari thought for a moment. It was rare for anyone to ask her to take a job that sounded so simple, she was a spy, yes. But paying her to go school? That just seemed silly.
"What's the catch, old man?" Mari furrowed her brow and spoke in a serious manner. A rarity for her. "This all seems too be to good to be true."
The council erupted into a fervor of discussion. Never before had they dealt with someone with such disregard for their position and power.
"This is ridiculous!" One member coughed.
"What right does this girl have to question our authority?" Another added.
"Calm yourself," Keel ordered in a loud and stern voice, to which the rest of the council quickly quieted themselves. "Now, Makinami, if you would have taken the time to read the information you were sent, you would know that most information concerning NERV is a classified secret and thus spying within their ranks would likely constitute treason or worse. Because of this, if you are to be caught, this council will disavow all knowledge and connections to you. That is why we are providing such a handsome reward for your services."
And so Mari thought again. As long as she didn't do something stupid and get caught, this was a dream job. But if she did...that would likely be the end of her. She had heard secondhand stories about those who had attempted to penetrate the depths of NERV's network of secrets and coverups, only to be "disappeared" as quickly as they were found. As much as she loved money, she also enjoyed not being in jail for the rest of her life. The choice was a difficult one, for sure.
"You know what, you've got yourself a deal!" Mari finally answered.
"Very good." Keel spoke. "Now onto the particulars..."
The road to Tokyo-3 had been a short one, marked primarily by the fact that she had been escorted by men in black suits to a black car and driven to her destination in complete silence. Many a time she had attempted to crack a joke, make a stupid face, or simply attempt stir up conversation. But for all her efforts, Mari was rewarded only with blank stares and sealed lips, making it all too evident that those around seemed to be completely devoid of a sense of humor.
Finding herself unable to amuse her fellow travelers, Mari passed the time sitting and staring out the car's window. The landscape around Tokyo-3 was an odd mix of the ruins of the pre-impact world and the gleaming technology that had sprung up in it's place. Knowing both sunken cityscapes and shining skyscrapers, it served both as a reminder of the worst tragedy in human history and the hope for a future in which mankind could once more grow and prosper as it had in the days before Second Impact.
Not that any of that mattered to Mari; all that she wanted was to be dropped off at her new apartment and to be free from these stuffy, suited men once and for all. To a girl who did her best work when left to her own devices, the suffocating bureaucracy that surrounded her new employer was like a noose upon her neck, one that served to strangle and stifle her carefree nature by mere association.
"Has anyone ever told you guys that you're all about as a fun as a box of nails?" Mari said as she tapped her finger listlessly against the car door.
Mari's missive was greeted once more by silence. These men had been given a simple task, to take this girl to Tokyo-3 and then return. That was it – and as there was nothing in their instructions about keeping said girl happy, as long as Mari stayed in the car, she could go suck on a lemon for all they cared.
"I'll take that as a yes." Mari sighed.
It would not be long before the skyscrapers and highrises of Tokyo-3 came into full view. A city built in a span of a decade and a half, it was truly a marvel of technology and innovation. But beneath the surface, it was far more then a city.
Constructed as a sort of front-line base in the war against the Angel's, every facet of its existence was built with war in mind. From entire buildings made to act as storage for gigantic weapons, to the fact that the entire city could be drawn underground in case an emergency, Tokyo-3 had been designed to serve as a battleground from day one.
"Ohhhh...neat!" Mari uttered, reducing the wonders of the modern age and the work of thousands to a mere tourist attraction.
Entering the city limits, Mari's awe only grew. It was rare in this day and age to see such tall buildings, as most nations simply could no longer afford to fund their construction. It was in one such building that the black car she had boarded sometime ago finally came to a complete stop.
"Your apartment is on the third floor of the complex; your keys and identification have been placed in your bags," one of the men in black beside her said bluntly. "Please, take your things and leave."
"Right, right." Mari sighed. "I'm going..."
Gathering her belongings – what amounted to a duffle bag with a few personal effects in it – Mari stepped out of the car and into the bright sun of another day in the big city. Nearly blind from the light reflecting off of the gleaming metal that seemed to define the architecture of the entire city, Mari surveyed her new home from the ground up with one hand situated over her eyes.
An older building originally meant to house the workers who had built Tokyo-3 a decade and a half before, it had since been refurbished and now served a clientele consisting primarily of NERV personnel and their families.
Turning her attention to other matters, Mari found within her bag a set of keys, an ID card, and a brief document concerning her new identity.
"Mari Kobayashi, huh?" Mari couldn't help herself but to laugh. "You guys really couldn't have thought of something better then that?"
Being that her current employer was a group of decrepit old men, she imagined it was very likely that they couldn't have.
As Mari walked cheerfully to her new home, she went over the details of her new identity. From now on, she would be "Mari Kobayashi," a transfer student from England whose mother and father were currently working overseas. If anyone would bother to check her credentials, those had been forged as well. Birth certificates, school records, even the place she had supposedly lived before coming to Tokyo-3, it all had been carefully crafted and accounted for.
She had to give the council credit for this – they really had accounted for every possible thing anyone could ever wish to know. It was that thought that finally brought Mari to her front door. Fiddling with her keycard for a moment, the door soon slid open before her with a loud beeping noise. Inside, she was greeted by a room covered in from wall-to-wall in blue carpet.
In the corner sat a single wooden framed bed situated in front of a television balanced upon a metal council, while opposite the bed lay the apartment's closet – a small affair that currently lay empty – and nearby sat the kitchen complete with refrigerator and microwave.
Though far from the nicest place in which she had ever lived – that honor was firmly reserved for the house she had shared with her parents back in the old country – it was enough for the time being. She was here to do a job, not to get comfortable.
Finally having a moment to herself, Mari flopped herself upon her new bed and let lose a mighty sigh. It had been a very long day, and indeed she would have many a long day before her as she attempted to adjust to a new city, a new school, and a whole host of new issues pertaining to her new job. It was quite the load for a single girl to hold on her shoulders, but not one that she couldn't handle. After all, she had been through worse, much worse in fact, and that job hadn't even come with a free apartment.
With much on her mind, Mari rolled onto her back and stared into the unmoving blades of the apartment's ceiling fan. She wished very much that they be moving so that she could focus on something other then her job and the prospect of having to deal with a bunch of kids every day from then on, but, being that she felt to tired and/or lazy to get up and turn it on, her mind remained plagued by the prospect.
Would they like her? Would any of them be smart enough to see through the elaborate ruse that was her fake background? Hell, what would she do with her free time?
All were important questions, but ones that Mari could not yet answer. All she could really do was be herself and hope for the best. People tended to like easygoing and eccentric girls after all, or at least they had when she was a younger. But that was a ages ago, and things could have changed for all she knew.
"I'm sure I'll be fine." Mari laughed to herself. "I'll be just fine..."
As the ceiling fan remained unmoved by Mari's plea for its activation, she finally sprang to her feet with intent to find something else to prevent her mind from wandering to deep dark places where it could be beaten and mugged by the less savory elements of her unconscious.
The first stop in her short tour brought Mari to the room's closet, which currently lay empty save for a single middle school uniform hung with care in the middle of the space. Consisting of a white shirt and blue, suspender-adorned skirt that brought a nostalgic feeling to the moment.
"How long has it been since I've worn one of these?" Mari took the garment from its hanger and explored it's surface with her fingers. Its cotton construction brought back memories of ages past when she had worn similar outfits. It made her feel old, or at least a bit older then the people she would be interacting with from now on.
"Guess I should try it on!" She giggled to herself.
Stripping off her shirt and skirt, Mari soon replaced her fallen garb with that of her new school uniform. As she slid the pure, white shirt over her chest, the fact that she had not be consulted in the matter soon became evident, as the garment proved far to small to contain her impressive bust. The skirt, however, fit just fine.
Mari merely rolled her eyes and shook her head in a dejected manner.
"I'll just assume that they got the wrong size, and hope that my boss isn't a dirty old man."
Even if it was too tight, it would have to do until she could order a proper uniform. Till then, Mari reasoned, the rest of the class would be in for quite the show. The thought of getting up in front of the class, introducing herself, and drawing the attention of every boy in the room was an amusing thought and almost made up for the unfortunate state of her uniform.
"That'll certainly make a hell of a first impression!" Mari said as she looked herself at herself in the mirror, taking careful notice of just how her top clung ever so tightly to her chest, accentuating every curve in just such a way that left a bit to the imagination, frustrating all those who gazed upon it with a just a small taste of the glorious truth that lay just outside their reach.
Thus a plan was born; from the moment she stepped into class, she would make herself the center of attention, winning their hearts and minds from the get go and making it all the easier to bond with those with connections to NERV and privy to the information that she had been tasked with relaying to her shadowy masters.
"Things will be great," Mari reassured herself. "I just have to keep an open mind in my head and a tight shirt on my back!"
As she struck a victory pose, Mari felt as if the weight of the world had been lifted from her shoulders. From the next day on, she would just be another middle school girl and would act the part to the best of her ability. She would make friends, gossip about boys, and go to karaoke after class just like everyone else. In effect, she was being paid just to be a kid, and, as far as her mind could reason, that was a good thing. was
"Hands down, this has to be the best job I've ever had."
Mari spun across the room for a moment before settling on her bed once more. No longer wishing for her ceiling fan to spin away her problems like so much rising smoke, her head was filled only with giddy anticipation for tomorrow and the chance to finally get to work and give the old men at SEELE their money's worth in middle school shenanigans and childish antics.
There was a certain pleasure in looking forward to the future for once; far too often she had lived from day to day with the with the threat of screwing up a job and being punished horribly for it looming over her. While it was something that most had taken for granted as they lived their lives, to Mari it was a rare treasure that had allowed her peace of mind for the first time in years.
Mari let loose a mighty yawn as her eyes grew heavy with the weight of a day spent in tense situations amidst humorless men in ugly suits. Still wearing her ill-fitting uniform, her eyes began to sink slowly, blocking her vision and bringing with them yawn after yawn until she could see the outside world no more. Though it was still early in the afternoon, her rest was well earned.
"Good night..." Mari muttered to herself in a cutesy voice. It wasn't night, but it was certainly close enough as far as she was concerned.
Another morning dawned upon the city as the sun slowly filtered through the apartment's window, then danced upon Mari's cheek, slowly rousing the still uniformed girl from her deep slumber and once more reminding her that the time had come to get to work, and school.
"Good morning!" Mari greeted the new day as she stretched her arms to the ceiling, causing her far to small uniform to rise awkwardly over her stomach. Still an amusing sight, even after a night's rest, Mari reaffirmed her plan was this previous day within the confines of her own mind.
"I just have to make a good first impression. The rest will follow naturally."
She didn't really know if that was true or not, but, at the moment, it was the only plan she could rely on. Working with people this young was always chaotic. Their existence a battleground of hormones and petty drama, it always seemed as if the classroom was a powder keg just waiting to go off at the slightest spark. To complete her current job, it would mean fanning those flames just long enough to get close to NERV's youngest soldiers and forming an enduring bond that she could then exploit for all it was worth. She wouldn't feel good about, not that ever felt all that well about the things she had done in the name of money, but no hard feelings were meant, it was simply her job and nothing more.
Her resolve like steel, Mari retreated to the apartment's bathroom and cleaned herself for the day ahead. With her makeup still lost somewhere in the nebulous realm that existed only within the depths of unopened boxes, she would have to make do with a natural look. Content to merely wash her face, tie her hair back into a single, long pony tail, then briefly fluffing the wrinkles from her uniform, Mari looked at her own face in the mirror, cracked a goofy smile. The time to go to class had finally arrived.
Returning to the apartment's main room, Mari grabbed the bag that had hung beside her uniform in the nearly empty closet across from her bed and dashed out the door at a breakneck speed. Though there was no real need for such fervor as she appeared out the front door and burst into the morning sun with all the strength and subtly of a charging rhino, Mari often lived by the axiom that life was a waste if you didn't live it with as much energy and vigor as humanly possible – an outlook that applied just as much to her work as it did to getting ready in the morning.
At 7 AM, Tokyo-3 bustled with life as its children scurried off to school and their parents marched to work with a sullen look in their eyes. Despite the bright youths and equally brilliant lighting bounding from the city's architectures, traces of the fact that the city had, just a short while ago, been a battlefield in which a mechanical giant squared off against an alien entity for the fate of all humankind still lingered upon the minds of all those who lived within the fortress city's confines. That was simply the kind of city Tokyo-3 was, one day you'd go to work and then drinking all night, and the next you were fleeing in a panic from a monster big enough to blot out the sun. On the upside, the threat of an eminent death often kept rent low.
As she moved at top speed, Mari took what little time she had to study some of the people with whom she would soon be sharing a class. From her brief examination, it seemed as if none of them were terribly interesting. All clad in the same uniform, and having features that were often hard to tell apart, they were a sad lot that completely failed to spark her interest in the least. Not that it mattered, according to the information given to her by the Chairman, NERV had three pilots situated within the class she would be attending, two girls and a boy. As long as she could make nice with them, everything would move smoothly going into the future.
Her speed having carried her to the school gates far ahead of schedule, Mari slung her bag across her left shoulder and assumed a normal walking pace as she entered the building where she would be spending half of every day from now on.
Unlike the rest of the city, which stood as a testament to modern engineering and science, Tokyo-3's primary middle school was a bit retro in its design, sporting wooden everything and a computer network that look as if it had been hastily tacked on at the last minute. Perhaps they were running out of money near the end of Tokyo-3's construction, Mari thought to herself, or maybe they were just lazy. Both were equally likely scenarios.
Mari's classroom lay on the second story of the campus' main building, just off the main staircase. As class would not start for another ten minutes, Mari stood by the room's sliding door and did her best impression of a delinquent who had been made to go stand in the hallway. As she did, those running past to their own classes often took a brief moment to side-eye the new transfer student. Though they had partly foreign students in the past, Mari still stood out like a sore thumb with her obnoxiously colored glasses and cat-like smile.
"Just as planned." Mari thought to herself with a snicker.
It was not much later that students began filing into the classroom, with nearly all of them taking time to stare and gossip about the strange girl with the ill-fitting uniform that stood outside their classroom. Mari didn't mind; rather, she quite enjoyed the attention, acting as if she didn't notice her fellow students' gazes as she began to hum to herself a tune that she had heard sometime ago.
"Class!" The class' teacher, a wrinkled old man with a bit of a hunched over stance, called. "We will be having a new student today joining us today. She has come all the way from England, so I hope you all will work together and help her to feel at home."
The class exploded with whispers and gossip upon the announcement. While some remained dumbfounded by the prospect of yet another foreign transfer student joining their class, the rest correctly identified the their new classmate as the girl who had been standing beside the door.
"Miss Mari Kobayashi, you may enter now," The old man continued.
On cue, Mari appeared from outside the class with a the same cat-like smile and her bag slung over her shoulder. As per her plan, her uniform's top was adjusted just so as to bring focus to her chest.
"Good to meet ya all! Like the old man said, I'm Mari." Turning for a moment Mari took a piece of chalk and wrote her name both in Japanese and English upon the blackboard behind her. "I hope we can all get along from now on!"
Through her happy expression, Mari carefully eyed the rest of the class. Taking in all of her fellow students and taking special note to find the pilots that had been pointed out to her in the Chairman's memo.
It wasn't hard to spot the girl known as Rei Ayanami. With bright blue hair, and a bored expression that seemed firmly indifferent to the arrival of a new student, she seemed at odds with the entirety of the world around her. In other words, mopey and boring. Not a good starting point in the least.
The second was a boy with black hair who sat just a few desks away from Ayanami. Shinji Ikari, the son of NERV director Gendou Ikari, known to be the newest of the three pilots and something of a whiny child who had left the organization multiple times, only to come crawling back when he had found that he had nowhere else to go. Initial assessment: a bit of a weenie.
The last was a girl with blazing red hair, and a look upon her face that suggested that she felt as if she was being threatened. Asuka Langely Soryu, part German, American, and Japanese, was the pride of NERV's German branch and supposedly the most talented of the bunch. As comes naturally to people of such natural talent, her bio had placed her a girl of great pride and of even greater ego. But what was truly interesting was that look of hers; while the rest of the class seemed surprised, or even welcoming, to have a pretty girl join their class, Asuka looked as if she was angry, her gaze smoldering with a sense of contempt.
This was interesting.
"Mind if I take my seat, teach?" Mari cheerfully asked.
"Of course."
Mari moved towards her the red-haired girl ever so carefully and took a seat one desk behind her.
"I guess we're desk buddies from now on," Mari spoke as reached across the desk and offered Asuka her hand. "Let's be good friends from now on."
Asuka merely scoffed and turned away from Mari without so much as a single word, returning her gaze to the front of the class and the lecture at hand.
This was going to be difficult. But that made it all the more fun for Mari.