After the defeat of the Fifth Angel, and Asuka and Mari's arrival at NERV HQ, the manpower of NERV's Japanese branch had reached its greatest levels since the war against the Angels began some months ago, leaving more time for those within the organization's hierarchy to pursue day-to-day affairs in the safety of the knowledge that the mysterious mechanical giants known as Evangelion stood at ready to protect them at a moment's notice.
"All right girls, if you'll just line up, I'll take a blood sample from each of you and we can all be on our way."
Ritsuko Akagi, the head of NERV's research and development division, sat with clipboard and pen in hand as she instructed NERV's contingent of female pilots as to just why they were visiting her office.
"But why? Shouldn't you have all this junk on record by now?" Asuka whined from the front of the three-deep line that began mere feet from Ritsuko's seated position.
"Your physiology can change from day to day, Asuka, so it is important to keep our data on all of you current so as to make sure your ability to pilot the Evas is not hindered in any way. In short, it's for your own good." Ritsuko smiled slyly.
"Then why didn't stupid Shinji have to come to? If your going to be wasting our time, then he should be here to."
Ritsuko sighed. Of all the children, she disliked working with Asuka the most. Abrasive and cocky, trying to reason with her was like rubbing your face against sandpaper.
"I was going to keep this secret," Ritsuko replied, "but since you insisted, Shinji isn't present today because the tests I will be running are all related to you girls' mutations."
Her complaints answered, Asuka quickly clammed up, leaving Mari to giggle into her palm at the sight of her best friend's apparent defeat.
"She sure told you, didn't she, Princess?" Mari snickered.
Asuka's liquid body bubbled and boiled like the anger radiating from the core of her being. She had been thoroughly defeated, but further complaints would be met with Ritsuko's usually dry mix of sarcasm and professionalism.
"Shut up, Four-Eyes. I really don't need this from you right now," Asuka huffed as she crossed her arms across her chest. "Let's just get this over with so we can all go home."
"Good to hear, Asuka." Ritsuko readied a small syringe as she rose from her seat and took Asuka's bare arm in her free hand. "This will only sting for a moment."
Of course, in reality, Ritsuko had no idea if it would hurt Asuka's gelatinous body or if she even had blood to begin with. But for the sake of routine, she pierced Asuka's jelly-like arm and pushed the needle's plunger down with her thumb.
"Ow!" Asuka squeaked as the needle probed deep into her arm.
What the apparatus drew from Asuka's body was not blood, but rather the gelatinous substance that made up most of her body. Unlike Mari and Rei, whose bodies still obeyed the general rules that governed human physiology, Asuka's form seemed to be governed by a set of laws still unknown to modern science. Lacking a skeleton, nerve tissue, or even internal organs, it was unclear how any facet of her body even functioned – a fact that annoyed Ritsuko and the rest of NERV's scientific staff to no end.
"That's all I need for now. You're free to go, Asuka."
Asuka left in a hurry, nursing the point that the syringe had penetrated the surface of her arm as she went.
"See you later, Princess~" Mari waved as Asuka left. Though sarcastic and mean at times, she really did care about Asuka. Perhaps more so then anyone else at NERV.
"All right, Mari. You're next." Ritsuko motioned for the snake-like back-up pilot of Evangelion 02 to come forward and received the same treatment her best friend had just experienced.
"How are you adjusting to things here in Japan?" Ritsuko asked as she drew blood from Mari's right arm.
"Everything's fine," Mari responded calmly. "I mean, it took awhile to get used to eating Japanese food everyday, and living with Asuka can be annoying at times, but it's been fun! I just love training everyday, and I really hope I'll have an Eva of my own someday."
Ritsuko gave Mari a strange look. The other pilots all had their own reasons for piloting the Eva, but Mari was an exception. She seemed to simply enjoy the thrill of battle and the feeling of controlling one of the most powerful weapons ever built by human hands. Even among the strange lot that was NERV's stable of pilots, Mari was an odd one to be sure.
"It's good to hear you're doing well. That'll be all for now."
"See you later, Doc! I should go talk to Asuka before she spends the rest of the day sulking because of that verbal butt-kicking you gave her earlier."
It was always strange to see Mari leave a room – the way her tail swayed from side to side in time with her hips was an image that just a decade ago would have been consigned to comic books and cartoons, but to the current generation it was simply a fact of life. Ritsuko had thought many times over just what about it that so bothered her about the way Mari moved, but in the end came to a simple conclusion: human beings shouldn't slither.
"You're up next, Ayanami."
Without incident Ritsuko drew Rei's blood. The ever stoic bird-girl never argued or fought anything related to her role as the First Child. It was almost odd how compliant she was for a fourteen-year-old girl. No one seemed to know anything about her and all of her files had been censored as if they were a matter of national security. Ritsuko sometimes wondered just what Gendou was trying to hide from the rest of NERV, but she had learned a long time ago it was not a good idea to pry into anything that man had taken time to hide.
"So, do you have any plans for this afternoon?" Ritsuko attempted to make small talk with Rei.
"I'll be spending the afternoon with Ikari. He promised to help me find a way to fly," Rei replied stoically.
"Really, the commander promised you that?" Ritsuko asked with a faint smile.
"No...it was Shinji," responded the bird-girl.
"Oh ho," Ritsuko continued, "are you two friends now?"
"I'm not sure." Rei turned her eyes downwards, her emotions clouded.
"Well, just keep at it and I'm sure things will work out." Ritsuko grinned at Rei in an attempt to cheer her up.
Ritsuko could count the number of friends she had on one hand, and half of those were cats, but it was still nice to see someone as reclusive as Rei reaching out to others.
"Do you need anything else from me?" Rei asked on her way out.
"No, that will be all for today, Ayanami. You know, you're lucky – while you go get to play, I'll be stuck here all night analyzing you kids' blood samples." Ritsuko winced; she had pulled far to many all-nighters as of late.
"Do you not enjoy your job?"
"It's not that, I just miss the days when I could spend my afternoons doing whatever I wanted. Make sure you don't waste your youth, Ayanami."
"I will keep that in mind. But I have to get going, Ikari is waiting for me."
"Ok, OK. I'll see you later, Ayanami."
"Goodbye, Doctor."
Tucking several vials of blood tightly against her chest, Ritsuko went about storing the day's samples with a frown on her face. Just where had the time gone? It seemed just like yesterday that she was in college and messing around with Misato on a daily basis, at least before the latter met Kaji and devoted most of her time to their "extracurricular activities," anyway.
"Oh well...things are fine as they are. And if I have time for self-indulgent reflection, I have the time to analyze all these blood samples. Time to get to work!"
As night fell upon Tokyo-3, most of NERV's staff flooded into the city's streets and made their way home via car and train. Those who remained at the base were among the unlucky whose projects were of the utmost importance as classified by the commander himself.
These projects were usually those related to the Evangelion themselves and the children who had been called upon to pilot them. Keeping both the gigantic mecha and their masters in tip-top condition was among NERV's top priorities, as either of them falling into disrepair could mean not only the end of Tokyo-3 but of all mankind as well if the long-feared coming of the Third Impact finally came about. And just as often as such projects called for NERV personnel to work late, it was equally as often that Ritsuko Akagi was attached to said projects.
The workhorse of NERV's scientific division, she had overseen more operations in the last half a decade then she could even remember. It was a tireless – and often thankless – job, one that had more or less ruined her social life and reduced her friend count to Misato, Kaji, and a handful of cats. But in the end, she was working towards saving the world, and at the end of the day, that was enough to keep her coming back day after day to work within the bowels of NERV HQ.
This night's project was a simple one, analyze the girls' blood, and Asuka's slime sample, and update their profiles to match. Asuka and Mari hadn't been tested since they arrived from Germany, and Rei's records may as well have been a blank sheet of paper with her name on it – all the more reason to fill in those blanks with the information gleaned from the day's tests.
Working within one of NERV's state-of-the-art laboratories, Ritsuko shuffled between machines for several hours, pouring the blood into various vials, pressing various buttons, and making sure none of the precious material became contaminated with foreign matter. A slow and tedious process to be sure, but she spent much of her time reading a trashy romance novel as the various machines around her whirred and buzzed, analyzing as they analyzed the information stored within the genetic material floating within each child's vial of blood.
Her mind split between the relationship of her novel's heroine to a older man in a position of power and the machines that surrounded the novel's reader, Ritsuko wondered what exactly the results of all these tests would return.
"The poor kids," she thought aloud as she turned another page of her novel. "They're never going to live a normal life."
It was true, after all – aside from Shinji, every child working within NERV's hierarchy had spent most of their life training to pilot the Evas. While their classmates' biggest concerns were school and their budding social lives, these poor children had been tasked with fighting gigantic alien monsters day in and day out. It was a sad state of affairs no matter how one looked at the situation.
Though she didn't care about the children as much as her friend Misato, who had gone as far as to take Shinji into her home and offer Asuka the same before she agreed to share an apartment with Mari, did, even Ritsuko couldn't help but feel bad for Shinji and the others.
A few moments later, the process Ritsuko had put into motion several hours ago finally came to an end, spitting the children's genetic data out on both screen and paper. Dog-earring her place in her novel, Ritsuko put aside the paperback and took a deep breath as she rose from her seat with an intent to dive into the many mysteries locked within the Eva pilots' genetic codes.
"Nothing odd so far," Ritsuko said as took a sip of coffee from her favorite mug. "This is pretty much all par for course for kids born after the Second Impact."
All children born with mutations thought to be caused by the Second Impact possessed a strand of DNA, encompassing around one percent of their total genetic structure, unique to them and found nowhere else within the human genome. In essence, children with extreme mutations, such as these scouted to become Eva pilots, could be classified as a unique subspecies of humanity with a population of one each.
Rei and Asuka's test results all resembled the expected model, 99 % in common with a normal human and one percent that had made them into the unique beings they were today. Mari's, on the other hand, was...different, and the causes of some alarm for even a seasoned scientist such as Ritsuko..
"This can't be right! No human should have a genetic code like that. It's just not possible!" Ritsuko yelled in disbelief as she dropped her coffee mug from her trembling hand. Much of Mari's genetic code was completely unreadable, marked on her chart as smudged blocks that appeared as if black paint had been carelessly dropped upon them by an oblivious child.
As the mug crashed to the cold floor below, splintering into several dozen pieces in the process, Ritsuko hurriedly tapped away at the lab's computer, cross referencing Mari's test results with every similar record NERV had on file from years of examining the so-called "Children of Adam."
Yet her search was for naught, as not one of these thousand files was perfect. Several, taken from children with similarly reptilian body structures, yielded some promise, but all proved, in the end, to be nothing but a dead end in the face of Mari's odd genetics.
"Damn it! What the heck is going on here? This shouldn't even be possible..." Ritsuko beat both her hands upon the keyboard as one final idea came to mind. One that filled her with dread at the possibility that they may provide a perfect match.
"Calm yourself, Ritsuko. This isn't a big deal, we'll just compare the two and get this all over with."
Ritsuko took a deep breath as she called up the record in question, one of an alien creature that had only recently acquired by NERV.
Comparing the two side by side, Ritsuko could chuckle to herself at the oddity of it all.
"Well isn't this interesting..." She mused to herself.
