Neon Genesis Evangelion: Nobody Dies: Ichi's Birthday Party
Episode 03 – Past the Presents
...
The thing was terrible, a loathsome blasphemy against man and beast like. Its warped form was a veritable abomination against all right-thinking minds; its squamous hide and grotesque rugose underside were swirling in a vile array of colours, like a murder in a paint factory. Any world where it could exist was not a benevolent one, and anything which had created it, or indeed, tolerated its miserable existence without euthanizing it, was guilty of terrible crimes through their actions or inactions.
It was also, notably, in a tank. Not an 'armoured treads and heavy weapons of death, doom and destruction' tank, but an observation tank. At a zoo.
"You know, it's not reee~eeally that interesting, you know?" said Rei, staring at the bulk.
"Yeah," agreed Nana. "It doesn't even have any proper dakka or choppa bits or stuff."
Zyuu only made an annoyed noise. "I did my beee~eest, all right," she said, crossing her arms. "You know how much of my stuff Little Mommy didn't let us put in the zoo, okay?"
"She only approved three hundred and seven species, out of thirty four thousand and..."
"Shut uuu~uup, Kei."
"It's not like your stuff is the only stuff which wasn't let through, either," Iti pointed out. "I had a really swee~eeet bottomical garden ready, and then she voted most of it."
"Yeah!" confirmed Zyuu.
"What's wrong with triffids, anyway?"
"Totally!" Zyuu shook her head. "I dunno what the world's coming to, when Super-Mega-Laser-Zapper-Cyber-Godzilla isn't a proper thing for a party." She sighed. "She made me take off the lasers and the zappers and the cybernetics and make it smaller, too." And, indeed, the sadly downsized Godzilla could just about be seen over the treetops, which were trying to attack it.
"Anyway, I totally had stuff which could kill the triffids if they got out of control. We'd just have to unleash it, and it would make it deader than something... which is really dead," added Iti.
"Me," Nana said with a nod.
"And me," said Hatchi.
"I believe Iti was talking about how she stole my Yggdrasil prototype," Kei said, with a hint of acrimony. "And then 'upgraded' it."
"To be fair, you were totally wastin' it," Nana pointed out. "It wasn't even poisonous. I mean, 'giving you splinters' isn't anywhere near killy enough for a world-tree. Where was the antimatter or x-ray lasers or anything proper? And you had spares, anyway."
Kei sighed. "For the last time, control groups are not spares!"
"Where's Kiko an' Ichi and an' Little Mommy, anyway?" asked Hatchi, changing the topic.
"Petting zoo!" the other girls chorused.
Hatchi facepalmed. "Oh, yeah. Brain not work proper," she said, in a sing-song voice.
...
Ichi crouched by the guinea pig, and ran her hand along its back, stroking it. The small, green-furred creature chirruped, and lay down, producing a small squeak of happiness from the little girl. Yui smiled, watching from the sidelines while she simultaneously tried to monitor her other daughters, and Kiko...
... Kiko was at the centre of an increasingly large mound of very fluffy animals. It was not a Zyuu-pile of animals. Such a pile would have been considerably more spiked and scaled, and generally... well, less cuddly. It was, in fact, large enough that there was a small amount of slowdown in the virtual reality, if Yui looked at her. And some clipping issues; enough that, somehow (Yui really didn't want to know how), one of the baby pandas had kittens protruding from its stomach. None of the virtual animals seemed to object to it, of course, although there were some odd queries from their AIs.
Yui deleted some of the animals in the pile. Just for her own sanity.
"Awwwwww!"
"Kiko, no causing memory buffer overflows."
"Buu~uut..."
"I mean it!"
Ichi picked up the guinea pig, and carefully placed it down in the Kiko pile, before picking up a kitten, which stared at her with confused eyes. Tucking it into a pocket of the dress she was wearing, she stepped over towards her mother, and sat down by her feet, staring with a hint of confusion at the way that the other animals seemed to willingly jump onto the mound.
"No, I don't understand it, either, Ichi," Yui said, the corners of her lips curling up.
"Kiko likes fluffy things," Ichi said, with a slight shrug. "A lot. In the same way that Zyuu likes scary big hairy things, and Iti likes plants." She paused. "I don't really get why she likes them soo~ooo much... I mean, they're really cute, but... but, well, she does, and so it makes her happy. So," she stroked the kitten's head, poking from the pocket, "I don't mind her getting to play with all the ones I don't want to."
Her mother looked down, with a hint of pride. "That's a very nice attitude to have, Ichi," she congratulated the little girl, who blushed, pinkly.
"Mommy? Can we go do something else now?" Ichi paused. "Kiko can stay here... but I'm keeping the kitten with me." She tickled its spiky ears, and it mewed.
"Of course, Ichi? Where do you want to go?"
The little girl crossed her arms, and stared up at the sky above her, thinking hard. "We haven't been to the birds yet..." she suggested. "And then the playground funfair bit after that, maybe?"
"That makes sense," Yui agreed. "Kiko, do you..." The woman shook her head. Ichi was right. It would be too much effort to dislodge the blue-haired girl from under the pile of animals. She reached out to take Ichi's hand, and her image, less 'real' than her daughters in this simulation, passed straight through.
An outside observer might have noticed how similarly distraught the looks on the two brunettes' faces were. Both immediately looked away, Yui up to the sky, Ichi, biting her lip, down to the kitten in her pocket. Of course, the only other individual present was buried under a mound of things which were both fluffy and cute, so the moment went unnoticed.
The bird house was both somewhat more realistic than many of the other parts of the Ree-made zoo, and physically located inside a vast, adamant dome. Through the somewhat insectoid, fractured walls, a hurricane of brightly coloured feathers flew. Stepping inside, into the vast hollow space filled with raucous and melodic cries alike, the two stared up into the maelstrom.
"I like the fenix," Ichi stated, pointing up at the comet-like bird which, burning blue-white, cast all the others into dull mundanity. Yui agreed with her completely; the phoenix was one of Zyuu's masterpieces; a genuinely beautiful bird devoid of the eccentricities of many Ree-designed things.
"It is pretty, isn't it." Yui sighed. "It's really a shame they don't exist in the outside world. Things just aren't meant to be on fire."
"Apart from suns, and things that keep people warm, of course," Ichi said, scrupulously.
"Yes, of course."
Slowly, they began to wander through the space.
"Mommy?"
"Yes, Ichi?"
"When will I get to talk to Shinji again?" The little girl's voice was pleading.
Yui's heart sank. Here it was. Every year, she asked this, and every year, she could only give the same answer.
"I don't know, Ichi," she said. "Some time in the next ten years, probably. But not yet."
It wasn't Ichi's fault. Not at all. Considering the fact that, to a considerable extent, she had defined herself through conversations with him, he was a sort of odd brother/father/best-friend figure to her, which merely demonstrated to Yui that human languages currently lacked words to describe family relationships which involved artificial intelligences, or, come to think of it, sixty metre tall mecha.
But on the other hand, she was not going to give Ichi access to him, no matter how much the little girl pleaded. Shinji was currently safe with Tomoe and Alicia, safe away from the mess of Project Evangelion and Ichi and his half-sisters and... and everything. And, therefore, even if it meant that her daughter would look up at her with those large blue eyes (so similar to her own), she would protect her son from everything that this involved.
"I... I understand," said Ichi softly, with a sniff.
"It's not your fault," Yui hastened to reassure her.
"I... I know. It's... it's just that I miss him. Even after years." The words would have been better if they had been wailed, in some kind of tantrum. Well, obviously not from a fiscal point of view, because Ichi's tantrums were expensive, but from an emotional point of view. At the very least, it would have been easier for Yui's psyche.
Because she had made this girl to be this sweet and understanding and innocent. It was true that parents shaped their children; she could see traces of herself in the reports Tomoe sent her about Shinji, and in the Ree (some more than others, it should be noted, although they all had her raw intellect).
But they didn't shape them like she had shaped Ichi.
There was an uncomfortable silence between the two, until Ichi caught a glimpse, though the avian tornado of one of the blue-haired girls feeding the birds, and ran over to the figure, who was getting flocked.
"Hello, Ichi," Kei said, trying to flap the birds away from her face so that she could talk to her sort-of-sister. She looked at the outreached hands. "Do you want the bag of feed?"
"Uh huh."
"Be careful, the birds are being... too hungry." Kei narrowed her eyes. "I think Zyuu might have turned the attentiveness factors up too high," she added, stepping away to no effect, as the majority of the birds followed her.
Ichi giggled, as a pair of tiny, bright-blue, red-eyed birds fluttered down into her hair, their blunt claws tickling her scalp. Holding one palm out, with a small amount of grain on it, she watched in pleasure as one of the birds jumped off, and began to peck at it, sitting without fear in her outreached palm.
Yui smiled indulgently, and then raised her eyebrows at Kei.
"Hatchi found the air rifle stall, and has begun showing off," explained Kei.
"Ah." Yui paused. "Kei..." she began, her voice soft, "... can you hold Ichi's hand for me, please?"
...
The Ree were created by a woman. They were reprogrammed. They grew up. They look human...ish. Some can sort of think like they are human, at least for a short while. They are many copies. And they have a plan.
In fact, according to the board which Iti had set up, before they had 'left' for the party, they had more than a plan. They had a 'PLAIN'. Then, after an issue was raised with that, it was changed to 'PLANE'. Then 'PLN'. Eventually, it was decided that Iti should not be the one who was responsible for doing the writing, and relative peace was restored, with only minor acrimony, and one knife fight.
"Sisters!" proclaimed Kiko, standing up, her hand clutched to her chest, "the not-letting-us-give-Ichi-the-best-presents has gone on way too long. It means that we can't give'er the best presents! And I ask you now, is not an Ichi entitled to the bestest nicest presents ever? 'No!', says Little Mommy, 'that isn't suitable'! I reject this answer, and say that she should too~ootally get the nicest things!"
There was cheering from the rather small crowd, which was clad in the assorted garb of a revolutionary groups. Of more than one, it should be noted, due to the fact that there was disagreement over which one was the most aesthetically pleasing.
"AK-47s for everybodyski!" yelled Hatchi in a thick, and bad Russian accent, clutching onto her fur hat with one hand while the other elevated the ubiquitous assault weapon.
"But, you knoo~oow, Kiko," said Siyon, hanging from her knees from the rafters, dressed entirely in black, "we already did that bit. We just gotta work out who'll do what."
"Oh, I know," her sister replied, shrugging. "Just, right, I spent all meeting thinking of those words, so I wanted to be able to use'em."
The text interface Rei was using to communicate, due to the fact that she was still outside, flashed with up with How about a nice game of chess?
"Nah. Chess is boo~ooring, unless you actually get armies for it," said Nana, in the too-short tank top and beret of a South American guerrilla. "¡Arriba!"
Yep. Guess we don't have time.
Kei shot a glance at Nana, before shrugging. "I will serve as a distraction for Little Mommy," she stated.
"Ah, no fair!" protested Kiko. "I want to spend more time around Ichi!"
"Remember, it will be necessary to allay her suspicions as much as possible," Kei said. "You are all aware, of course, how she tries to monitor us at all times in the after-presents playtime. It will be necessary to deliberately keep her attention on Ichi and whosoever does it, such to give the rest of us freedom for Operation: PRESENT."
"But stiii~iill..."
"You wanted to be responsible for the attacks at the petting zoo, anyway. You explicitly said that."
"... oh yeah."
Hatchi nodded, and fired a burst into the ceiling, forcing Siyon to flip out of the way. "Oh, sorryski, Siyon," she said, glancing upwards. "'Kay, then Kei does distractionski, me an' Nana an' Rei do the funfairski."
A chrysanthemum,
blossom falls from highest heaven.
Suu~uure, I'll do it.
"Kiko hitski the pettin' zooski..."
"I'd never ever hit a petting zoo!"
"Iti goeski for the superstructureski," Hatchi continued, ignoring the interruption, "Zyuu for the animalski AIs, an' Siyon runs countermeasureski."
Zyuu grinned a little too widely. "Easy peasy. I made most of the animals, so it's not like it's haaa~aard to convert them into hostile attack interfaces or stuff."
"Yep. That works." A pause. "Guess it's agreed, then."
"Give Ichi our presents, or give us death!" seven voices shouted, and one computer screen displayed.
...
Ichi giggled. "Look, Mommy," she exclaimed. "I'm taller than you now, but shorter than I am when I'm normally taller than you!"
Yui smiled, and let out a small burst of laughter herself, just at the pure, honest enthusiasm of the little girl, currently sitting on Kei's shoulders. Together, the physiologically six-year old on the biologically twelve-year old were indeed taller than her. But in an honest, proper sort of way, not from being a sixty-metre tall cybernetically-enhanced metabiological organism, or cheap in-simulation rescaling. The actual kind of thing which could happen in real life, which was the point of these birthday parties, after all. They were meant to give Ichi the closest thing to normalcy that she could get as it was. Attempts to build an Avatar system for her were low priority, compared to all the other things that NERV had to do, all the other things Yui had to cover, and so were always on the backburner, something she promised herself (but never Ichi; it wouldn't do to get her hopes up like that, unless it was certain) that she'd do some day. But probably never would.
On a less depressing note, the kitten had been removed from Ichi's pocket, and placed on Kei's head, where it sat, a feline imperatrix, the mistress of all it surveyed.
"So, Ichi?" Kei asked. "Have you enjoyed yourself since we saw you last?"
"Uh huh!" the little girl replied, petting the kitten. "Let's think, let's think. Oooh! They finished implementing the Dirac Armoury links with me, so I can sort of see into this place where they keep all sorts of things they gave me presents, and which I'll be able to play with when I get a pilot." She paused. "It's very dark in there," Ichi added.
"Really?"
"Yep! Really dark!"
"And how do you feel about that?"
Ichi frowned. "I'm fine. I mean, it's not like I'm in there, or anything. It's just a place where they keep my stuff."
"I meant..." Kei paused, warned off by her mother's glance. "And have you been doing anything else?" she asked.
"Yep. Mommy's been able to make more time for me! Almost an hour every week or so, on the computer, where we can just talk." Ichi grinned, as she glanced over at Yui. "She's been teaching me maths."
"Really," said Kei softly, her voice flat. "What kind of maths?"
"Oh, just, you know, the basics," Ichi said, blushing. "I'm not as smart as any of you. But she did get me a special programme for dealing with the maths she was telling me to help me understand," Ichi frowned, concentrating hard, "free elect-tron... high ener-gy... plas-mas. Because I need to know about them."
Kei blinked for a moment. It was sometimes a little too easy to underestimate Ichi. The fact was, by her estimations, the little brown-haired, blue-eyed girl sitting on her shoulders had the potential to be just as intelligent as Mother or her and her sisters. And could tear any of them apart, but they weren't meant to reminder her of that. "Well done," she said, lost for words.
"Thank you," Ichi said, reaching down to stroke Kei's nose. The blue-haired girl sneezed. Ichi really was a very tactile person, when she thought about it. "And, so, what has been happening with you?" she asked, in return.
The red-eyed girl winced. "Stuff." That wasn't a very good explanation was it? "Just normal domestic stuff with the rest of them. You know, normal stuff. A few... biological issues, but nothing important," she hastened to reassure the little girl.
"Biological issues?" Ichi asked. "Like colds?"
"Oh, did you have another respiratory infection?" Kei asked, trying to change the subject.
Ichi nodded sadly. "Five. They aren't fun," she said, pouting. "I get all gunky and icky. And I feel horrible until I get better."
"We do put you on the right antibiotics or antivirals as soon as we can identify what it is," Yui reassured her daughter.
Ichi nodded. "I know," she said, softly.
"It's just that there's the problem that your biology doesn't act normally to medicine, and we need very, very large doses," she continued.
"Couldn't you have made me smaller, or something?" Ichi asked. "You know, even forty metres would have been easier for everyone. I don't like being a problem for people."
Yui shook her head. "I'm afraid it doesn't work like that. And you're not a problem. You're my daughter, just like Kei and the others are."
"But couldn't you then just keep me in LCL, like them, or something?" the brown-haired girl asked. "They don't get infections."
"I'm afraid not," Yui said, her tone controlled, trying to keep the sympathy outweighing the sadness. "They don't need maintenance or upgrades."
"Don't want a stupid 'self-upgrading' body," Kei muttered. "Don't want stupid babies anyway."
"Huh?"
"Nothing, Ichi," Yui said, hastily. "That was nothing, wasn't it, Kei?"
The girl nodded, making the kitten slide around. "Yes. Certainly nothing. Where do you want to go, now, Ichi," she added quickly.
"Let's go to the playground and funfair stuff!" the little girl exclaimed, pointing ahead.
"Lead the way, Ichi!" Yui said, with a smile. It was just as well they'd managed to dodge that thing. She didn't know if, at some point, Ichi would go through puberty. She hoped not. She sincerely hoped that she would never, ever have to find out what a pubescent Evangelion was like.
And, maybe a little selfishly, she wanted Ichi to stay sweet and adorable and little forever, even if it made her feel guilty. She was much nicer like this.
"Just wait a moment, then." Kei paused, and, frowning, opened a communications window. "This is Kei," she said.
"Hee~eey!"
"Heee~ey!"
"Yes, indeed." She paused. "Nana, Rei, we're coming through with Ichi, so you might want to consider getting Hatchi away from the air rifles."
"Yep!"
"Good." She moved to close the window, but before she could, Ichi leaned down from her shoulders, poking her head into the vision range of the screen.
"Hello!"
"Hee~eey Ichi!"
"Hello, Nana." A pause. "What are you doing?"
"Wee~eeell, we're getting y..." Nana began, before Rei shoved her out of the way.
"Heee~eyIchiwe'!" Rei exhaled in one breath. Despite the fact that breathing was not strictly (or, indeed at all) necessary in the simulation, the force of habit, combined with the fact that the body protested when the mind didn't think it was breathing, even if your LCL-immersed physique was, in fact, doing so, meant that everyone did.
"Can I have ice cream, too?" Ichi asked Yui. "I mean, since it is my birthday, and everything."
"You can have anything you want while in here," Yui said, picking her words carefully. "In whatever flavour you want."
"Oh, by the way, Mommy," Rei added, leaning towards the invisible camera on the screen, "you might maa~aybe want to kinda warn us if you want to go to the reptile house."
"Oh, we've already been there," Ichi said, as Yui narrowed her eyes.
"Why, Rei?" she asked, her tone suspicious.
"Wee~eell, Zyuu kinda let the Godzilla out so she could polish and shine and clean it properly. Remember, it is totally kinda her own pet that she leant for the party," Rei added, hopefully.
"And is it eating things?" Yui continued, wearily.
Rei looked shocked. "'Course not. You can go check on her and all. It's just that... um, it made a mess. On the floor."
In between Ichi's helpless giggles, Yui could only about manage an "Ah."
Kei finally managed to close the communications window. "See? Everything is fine. It's all going just as planned."
Yui glanced at the girl, one eyebrow raised.
"...for the party," Kei hastily corrected herself. "As planned for the party."
Yui continued to stare.
"Apart from the obvious bits like me getting in a fight with Iti," the girl conceded. "Well, it has not gone all horribly wrong yet. Which is better than some years."
Yui sighed. "True."
"Come on," called out Ichi, from the top of Kei's shoulders. "I wanna go on the slides and the roundabouts and the everythings!"
...
"Fly, my pretties!" yelled Zyuu, as she rampaged through the zoo on the back of the giant scaled lizard; the monster clamped between her thighs, riding it hard. The breath of the creature, which should, had Little Mommy not neutered its real function, have been highly radioactive sun-fire, merely reprogrammed anything it touched, 'borrowing' the higher authority access codes that Rei had obtained a few days ago from one of the Bridge Bunnies. The victim was going to be in quite a bit of trouble when they checked the access permissions, but... well, this was all in the name of getting Ichi better presents, so that made it okay, yep?
Nearby, a cage of winged monkeys chattered as the flame washed over them, then froze, as their limited AIs suddenly devoted themselves to probing the structure of the greater programme, their requests to the central CPU increasing arithmetically with time.
...
Dr Ritsuko Akagi was, by the standards of today, relaxing. Which meant that she was hunched over a computer screen, trying to monitor the activity of the seven Ree not within visual range of Yui, and keeping herself focussed with clinically unhealthy amounts of caffeine.
It did help that while her roommate at university may have spent her time training her liver to be able to resist immersion in pure ethanol, Ritsuko had been more productive, and so could control the shakes that enough coffee to make a sloth start vibrating should be causing.
She leant backwards, thought wistfully of a cigarette, and flicked over to the next monitored section.
"... so, yep, if you put micromorphs of metamaterial stuff in the bullets, you can have them dynamically shift their stuff so that they guide their own way in! How totally awesome is that!" exclaimed Hatchi, air rifle in hand.
"Nuh uh! It makes way more sense to pack more 'plosives in! Who cares if you actually, you know, hit anything, long as stuff blows up, and your gun is ree~eeally loud!" Nana replied.
"That's a stupid way to do things!"
"Your face is stupid!"
Hatchi narrowed her eyes at her sister. "Uh... ? Heeeey~? We're clones! You just hit yourself with that, stupid!"
"Weee~eeell... your mom is stupid!"
"Still clones! Also, you know, totally objectively wrong, you know."
"Yep," said Rei, spitting out another toy won on the claw machine, if you define 'won on' as 'obtained by punching through the glass of'. "You know, most of the stuff in the standard escalation of insults just doesn't work with us, does it?"
Ah, Ritsuko thought, just a discussion of armaments and weaponry, and then bickering. Nothing important. She made a mental note to recover this section for later use. These discussions could be useful, especially once they had worked out what all the metasyntactic variables in the dialogue were. The HMP-01 was just starting to make its way out of prototyping, and, as soon as they worked out those niggling little issues (like the fact that it had an integral targeting computer which defaulted to displaying trick shots rather than actually shooting the foe), it would make a good small-calibre weapon for NERV's internal security forces.
She changed again. Yes, Kiko was still buried under a mound of animals at the petting zoo. She could just about see the occasional glimpse of pale skin and blue hair, as lahars of cute and fluffy things disturbed the mound. Just to be sure, she flicked to wireframe mode... yes, Kiko was there. There were, Ritsuko frowned... some odd visual artefacts around her hands, but, yes, looking at the structure, there was nothing there. Just the fact that Kiko was causing a memory buffer overflow. Fur was horribly processor intensive to render, after all.
Siyon... Siyon was standing perfectly motionless, arms held out rigid, eyes closed, in the middle of a small grove of trees. It was more effective camouflage than one might have at first suspected, considering the ash-pale bark, blue leaves and red fruit of the trees. It still didn't make much sense. Ritsuko 'got' Siyon less than the others, perhaps because the fact that she disturbed the scientist more than most. There was something about her that just seemed to scream of her original function.
Still, at least she was quiet, and wasn't killing things.
She couldn't find Iti anywhere. Teeth locked in a rictus grin, the brown haired woman began to search again, while her other hand prepared an emergency contact for Yui.
Wait. No, there she was. Hanging peacefully upside down from a tree, eating an icecream. It was noticeable that the icecream was held the right way up, which produced a rather unusual pattern of bite marks.
Ritsuko began to relax again. Just a minor glitch. There was no problems tracking Zyuu, luckily; she was where she was always going to be, polishing the scales on the giant saurid she had prepared for this party. The brown-haired woman guessed that it must be some equivalent to the phase some girls went through, when they obsessed about ponies. Ritsuko hadn't done that. She'd been given a cell culture growth kit for her eighth birthday.
Ritsuko sighed, and began the cycle again.
"... so, yep, if you put micromorphs of metamaterial stuff in the bullets, you can have them dynamically shift their stuff so that they guide their own way in! How totally awesome is that!" exclaimed Hatchi, air rifle in hand.
Huh?
"Nuh uh! It makes way more sense to pack more 'plosives in! Who cares if you actually, you know, hit anything, long as stuff blows up, and your gun is ree~eeally loud!" Nana replied.
Oh. Oh. Oooo~ooooh.
They were looping her. And that meant that they had other access to what she was seeing.
It was then than Ritsuko noticed the slight hum of her speakers. She had been ignoring them; it had been just a background noise, nothing compared to the whine of the fan. But now, now that she knew something sinister was going on, she could hear the very, very quiet organ music playing through her own damn speakers.
It was very dramatically appropriate.
"Siyon!" she growled, cracking her knuckles, and getting ready to fight whatever was going on.
...
"Whee~eee!"
With a loud splash of something which resembled water, but lacked the ability to actually get you wet (one of the advantages of not actually being in reality), Ichi emerged from the flume, and clambered out of the pool. The AI of the kitten, not designed to leave the petting zoo, mewed confused error messages at the unfamiliar environment, but since it had been returned to the girl's front pocket, it couldn't do much.
Which probably was for the best. When it was immersed, the AI had not been able to tell whether it was dead or alive.
Petting the confused beast, Ichi trotted over to her mother and sister, who seemed to be having some kind of conversation.
"... but why should my body be doing this? I don't want it to, so it shouldn't!" Kei sniffed. "I don't like my body wanting things like this without me wanting them! And they're all fine with it; happier, even! Why can't I stop it happening if I don't want it?"
"It doesn't work like that, I'm afraid. It's just something that we girls have to..." Yui noticed the little brown-haired girl. "Yes, Ichi?"
"What are you two talking about?" she asked, cocking her head slightly.
Both of them blushed slightly, which only made Ichi more curious. "You know how you sometimes get respiratory infections, and need maintenance checks, Ichi?" her mother said, slowly.
"Uh huh. But they don't."
"Yes, we don't," Kei explained. "But... um..."
"But they've been starting to develop some... issues, and we're discussing how to resolve them," continued Yui.
"Ah." Ichi nodded. "Antibiotics."
"It's not that kind of problem, darling."
Ichi's lips formed a silent O. "I see. It's a virus, isn't it? Because you can't use antibiotics against viruses. You explained that to me first time I had one."
"Again, not quite that sort of problem. But..."
"Is Rei suffering too? Maybe there's a problem with their maintenance teams." She frowned. "Maybe you should send them on a team training exercise or something."
Ichi thought she could see her mother shudder slightly. "Yes, it's all of them, including Rei. It's based off their cell tissue origin, not anything infectious. And... um, remember, Ichi, they don't have maintenance teams. Only you're special enough to have them."
"Oh." Ichi paused. "Am I going to have the same problems?"
"You should hope you don't," Kei muttered. "Really hope that you don't."
"Probably not," Yui hastened to reassure the little girl. "It comes from the part of them that comes from me, because I had the same thing at the same age, and it's not dangerous. It's not just enjoyable while it happens."
"I see," nodded Ichi, who didn't understand, but trusted Mommy enough that everything was okay, and her sisters weren't in trouble. Because that would be bad. "Kei, you look sad."
"I am not," the girl responded, as she wiped her eyes with her sleeve.
"Yes, you are," Ichi insisted, before grabbing her hand, pulling with remarkable strength. "Come on. We're getting candy floss." She paused. "I would get you some, Mommy, but you can't have any," she added, with a hint of disappointment.
"No, it's fine, Ichi," Yui said. "I need to talk to Ritsuko, to check that everything's going okay on the rea... outside world side of things, anyway."
Kei swallowed. "There was one more thing I wanted to mention, Mother, before we got distracted." She managed to free herself from Ichi's tight grip enough to lean over, and whisper to her mother. Ichi leaned in, too, but failed to catch any of Kei's words
"I see," said Yui, through narrowed eyes. "Are they?"
Kei nodded mutely.
"I see we're all going to have a chat after this. Depending on how it turns out, there may be something worse." Yui sighed. "But I'm not going to make a fuss now. Go have your candy floss"
Hand in hand, the two girls headed down the street of the funfair. In the distance, a diminished, but still rather large lizard rampaged, reprogramming anything that got in the way of its breath, cheered on by Nana. The trees were moving; unnaturally, suddenly iridescent leaves writing words against the sky. Words, and source code. Even the light flickered, as the subtleties of what Iti was doing to the superstructure of the programme drew processing power from the shadow rendering. Somewhere over the horizon, a giant explosion of fluff and cute blossomed up like a giant rose, as Kiko overloaded the fuzzy logic sector.
Oddly, everything avoided the area Ichi was in. There was a vast bubble of enforced normalcy surrounding her. All part of the plan to reduce the punishment they would face later.
Ichi turned to Kei, and, in a expression which could have fitted perfectly onto Yui's face, raised her eyebrows.
"Ah." Kei sucked in a breath. "We were trying to arrange a little surprise for you. It may have gone slightly wrong." Bending down, she wrapped an arm around Ichi, all the way around to her pockets at the back, and hugged her tightly. "We may be about to get in a bit of trouble for this. But it was worth it, for you."
Ichi smiled. She liked her birthdays.
...
But the day, like all days, came to an end. And goodbyes were said, and hugs were given, and Ichi was a good girl and just about managed not to cry.
The technical crews kicked into activity for the second time today. There was a certain laxity, a certain ease of manoeuvre which hadn't been there this morning, for, as far as most of them were concerned, a stressful (and unnecessary) form of yearly maintenance had been performed, and now it was over.
The cries of synchronised motion, and the creak of machinery could be heard, as the vast, reinforced party hat was hoisted off from Unit 01, slowly and ponderously swung around, until it could be transferred to the mechanism which would return it to storage. Thankfully, they could leave the nutrient feeds in place; the Evangelion would ingest the remainder of the calorific and chocolaty mess over the next week or so, and so that was a problem to be left for another day. Along with the... other problem that such a thing caused. Well, that and the fact that no-one was looking for a repeat of the 5th birthday.
There was a sigh when it was finally done.
"Well, that's over," Ritsuko said, wiping her brow, to broad cheers from the others in the room. "Good job, everyone."
And with that said, people began the slow process of filing out, shutting down their machinery and taking off their protective gear. Most were headed to the afterParty, where there was usually mass drunkenness, to go with the party food provided on NERV's budget.
The last one to leave turned out the lights, leaving Unit 01 in the dark.
...