2.34 : [Heir to White Moon IV: Nidhöggr]

ware-ware ga ganpeki no hana o utsukushiku omou no wa

ware-ware ga ganpeki ni ashi o tometeshimau kara da

osore naki sono hana no you ni

sora he to fumidasezu iru kara da

-Kubo Tite

[:]

The flower on the precipice is beautiful to us

because our fear makes us stop ourselves at the edge

instead of stepping forward into the sky

like that flower

...

Miyazawa plucked the collar a little more into shape, but then she was satisfied with her work: elegant brown trousers, an elegant leather belt with golden fasteners, a sweater vest in a rich green-brown pattern, and a petal-white shirt that peeked out from underneath, the sleeves long, the brass-colored cufflinks neatly closed, the first few buttons open just above where the collar met with the wool of the sweater vest.

"After all," she judged, while carefully considering the result of her efforts, "...you don't often get an excuse to dress up so nicely."

"Thank you, Haruhi," said the silver-haired boy, who had simply let the eager scientist have her fun while selecting and putting together his 'camouflage'. "...But where are we actually going?"

"Oh... Bethany Base. We're taking a little trip to the North Pole!"

SIX MONTHS EARLIER

SUMMER 2013

BETHANY BASE

She placed a black safety hard-shell suitcase on the table and entered the correct combination into the two security locks that kept it sealed. It was covered several times over in tape printed with terms like "Biohazard" and "Top Secret", sealed. It opened to reveal relatively plain contents, which betrayed little of its sensational nature - the majority of the suitcase was probably taken up by security and isolation measures, and Mitsurugi Minoru - who had the honor of seeing them, would not have been surprised even if there were an explosive device somewhere even in there, the kind which could be triggered by remote control or by entering a wrong access code too often. It was only the tiny compartment at the center which contained the actual sample, only a minuscule sample of the entire suit case, and, so cold that immediately after opening it, sublimating steam was released and flowed down the table in a waterfal like the elegant and leisurely stride of a ghost.

Mitsurugi's usual combination of white coat, beige NERV uniform, and long dark hair was not completely penetrated by the cold, but the material was not sufficient to keep it out completely, so that the surge of cold reached the scientist's skin as plain goose bumps, like that feeling when the room you were in was just a little bit too cold, not cold enough than that one would not have been overheated with another layer of clothing, but yet just cold enough to be noticeably uncomfortable, and to make one pull on insufficiently long clothes over somewhat more scantily covered areas of skin, in Mitsurugi's case the white coat - not that the uniform would have left any shred of his skin exposed, after all, this room was in the Arctic Sea despite its comfortable heating.

But the cold applied to its storage made the "packaging" of the sample much more spectacular than the so valuable substance itself - the space intended for its actual storage hardly had the dimensions of a standard video cassette, and inside there was nothing more than a few small vials, neatly corked up and labeled with Roman numerals in red ink at the top, filled to different levels with an at least apparently identical substance.

While the tubes in the suitcase stood still, one could not really tell whether the content was solidified or still liquid. The surface at the top seemed distinctly convex; pearly and shimmering like gemstones;

It seemed like a cut jewel that only fit exactly inside the glass walls of the vessels by chance, simply through a perfectly coordinated shape, for its surface did not seem to 'connect' with the walls – if it was liquid, the substance must have had an extremely high surface tension, if it was solid, one could assume a crystalline structure.

Mitsurugi however, would never have been given his position or the responsibility for such sensitive projects if he did not note the most decisive detail at first glance: From it's color to it's texture to the luscious quality of its surface, everything about the substance greatly resembled a core, such as it might be found on an angel or an Evangelion - It was not a question merely similar, it was simply the same, or a nary indistinguishable material, more similar than it could be distinguished by the naked eye, it was no idea, no guess - Mitsurugi had been dealing with such cores professionally for quite some time, and simply knew what they looked like, much how a carpenter or turner would have learned to tell the difference between different kids of wood.

Mitsurugi's gaze went up from the contents of the suitcase to the face of the woman who had brought and opened it for him: this was her way of initiating him into his latest assignment. From what he had heard so far, it would be something far more theoretical than the construction of storage tanks and security systems for trapped angel specimens - something which would nevertheless require one of the leading experts in the field of angel physiology, if only because of its importance.

This demonstration was entirely her style - she preferred to make it clear quickly what she wanted and did not bother with chitchat, and at the time Mitsurugi considered this to be a kind of honesty.

The lady behind the suitcase, dressed in an anthracite blazer and a similarly colored three-quarter skirt, her long, dark hair tied in a strict topknot, with brown eyes that may or may not have owed this coloration to a pair of contact lenses, was none other than Ueda Nadesha, yes, that very Ueda Nadesha, who would later appear at NERV headquarters with the name Asahina Najiko and significant darker contact lenses, and look at this man through them as if she did not know him, as if she had removed and disposed of all connections to him and all other contacts from Bethany Base along with the last batch of contacts.

"What is this?" he asked her, ready to accept any answer without question.

She wasted no time in getting to the point:

"...the philosopher's stone."

"As I'm sure you know..." Miyazawa continued with her explanation, against the backdrop of the sounds and vibrations of her flying machine, her gaze wandering thoughtlessly out of the window as she plucked another stick of pocky from the package between her thighs with one hand, and holding the hand of her favorite test subject with the other one, as compensation, so to speak, for the fact that she had to make the journey strapped into a contraption similar to a kind of operating table on wheels, tied up with buckles, belts and metal parts that had recesses for his body, while the scientist herself had been granted an average aircraft seat by NERV's transport protocols – For all his charms and the adorable clothes she had chosen to have him wear for the occasion, she was still technically talking to a highly dangerous biological sample, and Kuze had not missed the opportunity to thoroughly alert her to the fact that he had a much better chance of causing the plane to crash and live to tell of it than anyone else on board.

But hearing the bald director refer to her as her suicidal was nothing new to Miyazawa, and there was little evidence that she had ever seen it as anything other than amusing banter from her colleague, even in the days when she was still a student and he still had mostly black hair, before the scientists stopped being astonished that Tabris permitted human beings to approach him without ripping them to shreds.

Even if the frosted traceries on the windows would have been inevitable at this altitude regardless of the weather below, the scientist was quite sure that they had to be above the Arctic Sea by now - and thus close to their destination, even if the density of the cloud cover only allowed her to confirm this to a limited extent.

"As you probably know, we have been trying for years to duplicate an S2 engine, and to copy the cores of various type blue life forms. Dr. Katsuragi's original motive was to copy the way the organ works and generate power commercially - back then, we assumed that we would be able to grow an S2 engine through biotechnological means as part of Project E and did not even worry about its mechanical replication. They let the good doctor continue working on it without paying him much heed, and instead they pushed ahead with the preparations for the contact experiment, of which you were also a result."

"I know." the superhuman boy acknlowledged with his clear, elfin voice.

"...but nothing came of that biotechnological manufacturing, did it? A tree only blooms and bears fruit when it grows and flourishes perfectly..."

"...I mean, after all, we barely managed to grow a few Evangelions with halfway stable skulls, most of them were too stunted to be of much use, and even among the specimens we processed, not a single one had a fully developed S2 engine. It was beyond our capabilities..."

"Well, I don't want to sound rude, but you Lillim were never meant to possess the fruit of life..."

"This is true. Nevertheless, the scrolls say that we must crack their secrets in in time for the mass production models... In the States, construction is just beginning on a test model in which an artificially manufactured S2 engine will be retroactively implanted... If it works, this could be your unit, Tabbie-chan."

The silver-haired boy answered with a quiet, knowing smile - somehow he seemed to doubt it. "...But it would be nice, otherwise I would have to wait for the completion of the Mark 6 to join the others..."

"In any case, a colleague named Edmond Vincennes, a former student and protégé of Dr. Katsuragi's, has continued the work on artificial cores and S2 engines; He is still working on EVA 04 in Nevada to this day. It was him who brought back some of Dr. Katsuragi's samples - He was originally part of the expedition, but after he had done his preliminary work, the chairman thought it better to entrust Mitsurugi with the samples and the continuation of this work...".

"The same Mitsurugi, who was also responsible for the architecture of the facilities in Complex Five?"

"Exactly," Miyazawa confirmed. "What an attentive fellow you are. They thought he was more capable and didn't want too much knowledge to be accumulated in one place - Vincennes was only told as much as was absolutely necessary to build EVA 04...

Anyway, this Mitsurugi has come up with some promising theories, and needs new data to test and refine them - readings from the S2 organs of living subjects... You understand?"

"I am beginning to understand."

"They have access to all the other relevant samples at Bethany Base since most of Project SCHUTZENGEL - except you - was outsourced there, but as it is in science, you can never have enough data, if only to filter out statistical fluctuations - he had some special measurement setups prepared there, so we can't do these measurements at our site in Complex 5 – Bethany Base is getting to have the better instruments these days, at least as far as S2-graph measurements are concerned... Pretty elaborate for a single measurement, but if it's any consolation, our superiors don't seem to like it either - if only for reasons of secrecy... That's why I'm also here to do myself what is not meant for the eyes of the staff at Bethany Base - It took some of my free time to learn the theory behind the measurement setup, which usually doesn't really fall into my specialty. … " A giggle might not have been considered quite as age-appropriate for her anymore, but Miyazawa still couldn't quite hold it back.

"But it can't be helped - as far as they know, you're a sample in a box, and I'm afraid that the people upstairs attach great importance to keeping it that way... just imagine, our contact person will apparently be the granddaughter of the chairman himself if the dear director didn't pull any crap on me..."

THREE MONTHS BEFORE

BETHANY BASE

The fact that the ladies and gentlemen of NERV wanted to get their employees to do their jobs up here in the middle of nowhere, in a dark patch of metal in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, where you had to get on a plane to reach the next patch of civilization, meant that they had to make the place attractive to prospective personel despite all the special requirements that this base had to meet. It had been erected around the cocoon of the third angel, excavated from the permafrost, and designed to contain it in a dreary tomb, but still they could not afford to be all too stingy with the lodgings of their staff - The rooms that had been assigned to Mitsurugi and his son were thus quite spacious for the conditions of remote outposts, even if they could not quite shake off the cabin-like atmosphere - bed, chair, cupboard, everything quite simple, nothing very large, but at least for a decent desk that was made of a pretty convincing imitation wood instead of metal or plastic, even extra quarters to accommodate family members, although Mitsurugi had left the larger of the two rooms to his son - Still, he had little doubt that once his particular work here was finished, he would request a transfer to warmer climes soon as possible - The only other children out here were a male infant and two schoolgirls of six and nine years old, respectively. None of them were even close to the age of Mitsurugi's son, and the only caregiver available to mind them during work hours was not even really trained as a teacher, so that Nagato usually sat in front of his books himself - This was not the catastrophe that could have been, especially since Mitsurugi could confidently claim to have raised his boy to be a conscientious young man who would actually do his assigned schoolwork, but overall these conditions were certainly suboptimal; This wasn't really a place to raise a child, not when the movements of the monster they kept deep underground at the root of the complex were occasionally all too evident, like the coils of the Midgard snake that was just waiting to break free, to crush the earth with a light jerking of its scales - Even though he himself had designed the dungeon of this creature, Mitsurugi did not have the arrogance to assume that his cage would hold the monster indefinitely, even as he'd had a part in stripping the flesh off it's bones-

The base was, for good reason, constantly surrounded by evacuation ships, one of which was equipped with a peripheral control center, and work on EVA 05 proceeded far too slowly to give anyone even a mediocre illusion of safety - No doubt he had to leave here, no matter how world-changing his work might be - Mitsurugi Minoru was a father first, and everything else second, not that the fate of humanity, which included his son, was something he deemed unimportant – it was precisely because of its importance that he had joined NERV in the first place, and had let himself be talked into this particular project. Part of it was about setting a good example for his son - He firmly believed that if there was something you could help with, and nobody else could, or at least not to the same extent, or not without much more effort, it would be a crime to say no - But he didn't want to stay here any longer than necessary, either.

But here, too, Mitsurugi felt the pricking of his conscience, even if not to the extent that it would go on to torment him later on - He did not yet have this one very, very good reason for it, but if such behavior had not been in his nature from the beginning, it had become entrenched at the latest after the death of his wife - For if he was completely, nakedly honest, there was no getting past the fact that his work was not the only thing that kept him here - not only, not anymore.

The most important of those other reasons unexpectedly wore black lace underwear under her dark blazer, over which she sometimes threw a shimmering negligee, a secret that she had probably revealed to very few, much like the way her long dark hair fell over her shoulders when it was not held back by any barettes, braids or hairpins, not braided, not pinned up, not tied to the ponytail with which she would later up at NERV - her hair, whose brilliance and constant subtle scent he had enjoyed for quite some time more than he should have - This was not a rare situation, this one, he, at his desk, absorbed in building plans and blueprints represented as tables or graphs, and she, sitting on the bed behind him and eyeballing him with a distant, amused, suspicious look, like an empress reviewing the achievements of her court jester - He did not expect a smile on her lips any more than he had suspected the dark nail polish beyond her boots and stockings.

Admittedly, it was morning, not night, but in this underground tomb, one thing was like another, and this was the only time of day when it was not to be expected that Mitsurugi's son could come in at any time.

She let him do what he wanted, and leaned back when he came over her, and since it seemed to him that she found a kind of pleasure in this, he found nothing suspicious about it, nothing more than a consequence of a personality he was already used to - the occasional moments when she seemed to think about something far away while he talked, or failed to put the expression on her face that was expected in certain parts of a couple living together, he did not see them as slippings of the mask, not without having any clues that there was one to begin with - The lady always aimed right for the head of the nail - but as a mystery to be relished, as a sign of melancholy he had to remedy, and one could not completely blame him - At work, in the execution of her tasks, there was never the slightest unintentional crack in her so-called identity - But she had been playing the professional agent for a much, much longer than she'd tried passing herself off as anybody's girlfriend.

In the labs and the command center, no one could get close enough to her to notice the roots of her hair, for example, as long as she regularly dumped enough black dye on them - Her natural hair color was only slightly lighter anyway, no further away than a dark brown. But someone who awoke from sleep with her in their arms could have spent quite some time staring at her parting of her hair - And her own awakening had so far only taken place in her own quarters, so that she could usually put her contact lenses in silently - She had been quick to insist that they were for correcting a visual defect, but she underestimated the closeness and his enthusiasm for her eyes, so that he spotted their original dark green color, took her hand and told her that she was beautiful just as she was.

She stated that she would think about it.

Fortunately, he too was compromised by this whole situation, and much more so than she was - instead of suspecting anything, he blamed it on such insecurities as were common in the cohabitation of a couple - she had not realized from the beginning that he was seeing her, her actions and her words through a completely different lens, and making his assumptions about her motivation through that lens.

She did see it as a mistake in her calculations, but since his view of her made him see less rather than more, it was a rather minor one, too trivial to merit closer scrutiny if absolute control for her tasks were not such a high priority.

It was also because she had spent her life in the service of the project since she was very young, and had never really been interested in such carnal pastimes, and had never been in any hurry to acquire such experiences, despite her age. In this respect, it had been quite nice to try it out, but "Ueda's" final verdict was that even if this opportunity hadn't come up, she hadn't missed anything essential, it wasn't very high on the list of parts of her life that, if she had to give it up, would cost her important experiences or essential parts of her identity.

The distant expression - partly numbed by the extreme sensory stimuli - which she usually wore while he pumped his essence into her, was only partially a mask. She leaned back under him and let herself be "taken" without complaint. Nor did it seem strange to him how she would sit quietly and look at him while he was racking his brains at his desk, instead of demanding his attention - He saw it as a whim of hers, a source of fascination, or a point of argument to convince himself of reasons why she had chosen him, when the truth was much simpler, and not, as he suspected, related to any admiration for his intellect - Nothing could have been further from her mind than praising a scientist, but she and her superiors needed a scientist to perform certain functions, and she needed him for functions that were different from those of a scientist - Or perhaps "needed" was too strong a word here; his existence had just turned out quite practical.

If he had not approached her of his own accord, she would not have come to him, or to anyone else, not in this way, not even for camouflage purposes.

Consequently, she didn't care about that image of another woman on his bedside table - she asked about her once because she thought it would be expected of her, he replied that this was his late wife, and after a brief observation that the noticeable external similarities between this woman and herself, at least as she looked now, were probably Mitsurugi's "type" (light skin, longer, dark hair, a tall, elegant stature, a long, slender face with noticeable zygomatic bones and flat cheeks), her mind moved on to the next thought.

She knew nothing of the feelings of guilt that plagued him, nor did she make any purposeful attempts to explore his inner thoughts – long monologues dripping with feelings about whether or not he was being disloyal to his new wife by taking on a new lover, (if he ever saw her again, like he had often pictured it in his mind again and again, he would no longer be able to tell her that he had never once looked at another up until his death), and about whether or not he was also wronging Ueda by continuing to mourn his wife in melancholy thoughts despite her presence, and how his son was supposed to fit into that whole equation – would it be good for him to have someone to fill the role of his mother, or would he feel uncomfortable and consider himself as good as 'replaced' once a potential stepmother appeared?

That this boy was too considerate to ever give him an honest opinion certainly didn't make it any better... Sure, he had tried to teach him consideration and courtesy, but should he not experience at least some trace of the youthful rebellion which Mitsurugi himself had fully lived out at the time before he met his wife, especially in the form of what one might call indecent relationships that did not quite conform to social conventions...

Like his liason with Ueda, for example.

He didn't see anything unusual about her quietly watching him work, after all, it was conversations about their shared work that had brought them together... He was grateful for every hour he could spend with her, despite his many obligations here and his duties as a father, and enjoyed what he thought was a consensual, warm silence between them, but sometimes her presence made his thoughts wander, often right when the papers on his desk refused to make sense anyway.

But the advantage that his frustration could be noticed by someone from whom he was not trying to hide it completely (Nagato) clearly outweighed his treidation.

"Aren't you making progress, Mitsurugi?" she inquired, especially since this work was essential for the continuation of the plan and her superiors wanted to avoid putting Dr. Akagi on it. (What she knew, Ikari would soon know as well - this had become apparent already).

"I'm just about ready to give up..." he replied, leaving his head resting on the thumb and index finger of a hand propped up by an elbow on the table top while he massaged his temples with the other three fingers.

He was now used to speaking such thoughts into the void, unanswered; it had been a long, long time since anyone had answered him in his bedroom.

He had forgotten how not to make these thoughts sound like something he wasn't sure he wanted other people to hear, especially since he had ended up here in the icy north, far away from the few contacts he had still maintained back home in Japan after his wife's death. He was a grown man, a father as well, he had to put his personal preferences behind the fate of the world and especially behind Nagato – though if he were honest with himself, he probably would have chosen his son over the fate of the world without a moment's hesitation.

It wasn't that the perception of Mitsurugi as sociable and vital had been incorrect - But if that was his nature, he really wanted to live and be able to spend time with other human beings, damn it – Though he had never seen the need to get rid of his long hair, it was clear to him, very clear, that he could no longer let off steam as he had back at university, but when he looked back, considering the plans he had made in his youth, it had always been important to him to preserve at least a little of the fire and the simple, uncomplicated, authentic way of young people so as to become a "cool" adult, and not to look back on the time when he had been a passionate creature as a bygone age, and at his wife and child as burdens; That would have been his worst nightmare - but at that time his wife and child had been nothing but cartoon-like wads of smoke in the imagination of an immature brain, and not real people with whom he'd had extensive, complicated relationships, and a whole wagonload of feelings and memories attached to them -

To be frank, he had come here full of idealistic enthusiasm and fresh drive for the good of humanity, but soon acquired the firm impression that he had to leave here as soon as possible, and, as he was ashamed to admit, the impetus coming from his own loneliness was a much more intense part of the motivation than all his considerations regarding Nagato's safety...

So it was no wonder that it had to happen here of all places - if he was to give in to his weakness, if temptation was to take hold of his loneliness and overcome the better parts of himself, if his fear was once to be greater than his faith, then it would be sure to happen out here, here, in the middle of the Arctic Ocean.

He had not actually intended to start another relationship, but to keep the memory of his wife pure and to devote himself wholly to being a father for the time being, but in the end he remained a human being, and one day he was overcome by the desire to wrap his hands around that woman.

Ah, hell, she wasn't even much younger than him, at least not by much...

And now the same reasons that once led him to desire to escape from this place now kept him here, where lamenting his worries into the atmosphere might actually yield an answer:

"...you do know that this project is of paramount importance, don't you?"

"Yes..." Mitsurugi acknowledged. "...but it would really help me if I knew what this is important for... I hardly understand what these readings are supposed to mean..."

"You can't understand." She replied, thus inciting him to turn towards her, in part because her words came out a bit more severe than she had initially intended them - yet she saw no reason to be apologetic about it. This was a general opinion, not a telltale fact about the plan or her identity. "No one in this world could understand these things, and certainly no scientist."

In view of his perceptible consternation, she went on to explain it to him so that he might perhaps have hope of grasping it: "...These things are not made to be understood, it is simply not in their nature... The angels are beings beyond our imagination, bound by different laws...".

She felt tempted to call him arrogant, but did not consider it necessary in the end - he seemed willing to learn, even if it was only to follow the ways of thinking that this "reason"-dominated world had so far instilled in him... more pitiful than truly hateful, if "Ueda" had been the type of person that would have pitied him.

So she stood up from her seat, sighed, moved over to his side and took her time for him.

"You should stop trying to see the big picture. It's like those classical "impossible figures", which our hands can draw but our mind can't comprehend, the sort than seem to be a vase or two faces depending on how you look at it - as a whole such images don't seem to make sense, but we can comprehend the individual components... concentrate on the individual mechanisms and work your way from there... Aiming for "complete understanding" is not an approach that will get you very far here, nor is it necessary for you to fulfill your task... It's enough to find out which cause is related to which effects; you needn't concern yourself with the how and why...

Just treat it as... what is it called in your circles again? A black box..."

"If I do, I might as well be poking around in the dark with a stick..."

"Most blind people use that method sucessfully for their entire lives and want for nothing."

Mitsurugi sighed. "...That may be so, but I still can't get any part of this to make sense..."

"Then bid farewell to your rigid image of sense and nonsense. Making sense of your results is a task for those who will evaluate your work. They know everything they need to know to carry out their tasks, and you have been given everything you need to know for yours."

"Have I, really? I mean, I have been asked to make blueprints for things I didn't know the purpose of... Officially, there shouldn't be plans for anything beyond EVA 05, and here they are asking for my help for EVAs 09 and 08... Or even mass production - and my colleagues in China are actually making preparations for it! And the Marduk project...

In order to fight the angels, we have already succeeded in replicating one of them, to turn their own abilities against them - in the form of the Evangelions. So why this whole thing with the third angel? I understand keeping it prisoner and taking it apart for tests, but these attempts to make it controllable by the installation of mechanical structures... and these plans to artificially replicate such arrangements, to bio-engineer the biological components of the angel, when we have the Evangelions which... should be safer than real, living angels who could destroy us so easily... The Nemesis series... a terrible plan... a whole fleet of weapons.

What's it all about?

Even with the fate of the world is at stake, it looks like shooting sparrows with cannons... Shouldn't these angels show up one by one, as far as the committee expects them to? I am horrified that a day might come when we might need all these blueprints..."

"If everything goes perfectly according to plan, blueprints is all they'll ever be... but that requires that these mass production EVAs can do their job... in other words, it depends on your work..."

And at this point she leaned forward so that her front side touched his back, and squeezed the fingers of her hand between his.

"I know you can do it, darling, have faith in yourself..."

The last part she practically breathed into his ear and put his whole being in tension... and he looked down at the papers and decided to try again, if not for the salvation of the world or the transfer completing this project would allow him, then for the moment when he could tell her about his results, her, the woman who had taught him so much, at least as he saw it.

It was true that despite her age she had been a virgin when he had first come over her with his body (And he, he had not been, anything but virgin), but it was not as if she had consciously kept her virginity while waiting for someone special (He did not know that), she had just never really found an opportunity to get rid of it, with all the things that had moved her in her life or otherwise occupied her.

But what was also true was that he had initiated her into some experiences and sensations that she had not known before.

(What was also true, however, was that she "processed" the matter pretty quickly when the time came to pull up her tents here and leave the mask of "Ueda Nadesha" behind - ending the relationship was just one of many things she had to do before she left, and like everything else, she did it with sober efficiency, quick and simple. The last thing he saw of her was a message on his answering machine about how he was supposed to return this one lace panty he had kept with him when she left it at his place one day because it smelled of her, of both of them; and with it came the request that he should please take it to the cleaners before he sent it back to her, preferably by mail.

Then she forgot about it.

Having accomplished this, she turned to her next task, a false identity for the infiltration of headquarters and the reports of the arrival of the fourth angel.

Had it not been for his contributions to the development of the project, and had she not met him again more by chance than for any other reason (unaware that she was the only thing that had kept him at Bethany Base), she might just as well have forgotten Mitsurugi at that point, utterly and forever.

If she recognized him, it was only because she made it a point of pride in her profession that one should never forget a face, especially a relevant one, any beginner could recite that - But one could already say with some justification that, in a certain way, she forgot about him whenever he wasn't right in front of her eyes - He simply became such a peripheral part of her world that her thoughts practically never stumbled over the threads of the memories he was linked to, and even if that should happen, there was no melancholy lingering.

When he met her again in Tokyo-3, she had no problem pretending he was a complete stranger to her - unlike the previous situation, poker faces were a type of acting she was very familiar with.

She probably would have done it differently if she had known that he would be transferred to headquarters as well, simply because even a single man who recognized her was already a flaw, a possible crack in her charade - perhaps she would have suggested coming with him, even encouraged his decision to get transferred. Her last alibis and fake papers were no worse than the present ones, and something like a family would have made the cover look more convincing, even if she knew that Ikari and his men would recognize her immediately; She knew their hands were tied, but that did not make her naive.

As for Mitsurugi, he sent the underwear back.

What he also did was to go to the address where he had sent them and look for this woman, at the time seized by a determination not to give her up without a fight which soon after evaporated at a wall of unreachability.

The apartment in which Ueda was supposed to live when she was not sitting in a cubicle in a research station in the Arctic Ocean was supposed to be on the twelfth floor, but the building he found at this address - a property associated with SEELE over several corners - only reached up to the eleventh floor, and that was only because floor number four had already been labeled number five for reasons of superstition, and, as far as the residents could tell, no one who even remotely fitted Ueda's description had ever lived on the existing floors... Not only was it impossible for him to find out where in the world she had disappeared to, but she seemed to have taken with her all the signs that she had ever existed. )

"Asahina Najiko" did not have a particularly high opinion of scientists, and "Ueda Nadesha" was little different - in fact, the opinion she had of Miyazawa was probably even more lowly than Miyazawa's own opinion of her - the meeting in that department store on the outskirts of Tokyo-3 was her second; the first took place in Bethany Base.

Very few insiders suspected that SEELE still had "another sample" in their possession, and even fewer who at least suspected that the first angel dug up from the Arctic ice was not the only living specimen that could be isolated, and even among the scientists stationed at Bethany Base, few grasped what was really going on in the complex, apart from the incarceration of the Third Angel – this was feasible because a large part of the experiments, at least at first sight, seemed really as simple as they looked, simple attempts to get answers from the structure, nature and resilience of the present specimen, to understand the enemies that were constantly rushing towards them with the progression of the seconds, and how one could find methods to get at them, up to quite innocent questions like those about the design and development of weapons for the Evangelions. - What happened to the data they inevitably received about the anatomy and "functioning" of the angel was not their concern.

Accordingly, Miyazawa and her "Precious Cargo" had been flown in on a transport helicopter that was officially supposed to carry the latest load of components for Unit Five's power supply and every gram of the minimal extra weight that was mainly derived from the "comfortable" contraption in which the angel had had to spend his journey had practically an alibi of its own, which was by no means unnecessary, since the weight of the cargo, and in general everything else that was loaded into or unloaded from this base was precisely monitored - The truths that slept at the roots of these halls did not keep themselves secret by themselves.

Ueda's function in the whole thing had been to organize a free passage through the base for the two guests of Complex Five, without their presence being noticed - like that of some SEELE security personnel, who had been assigned for extra security. To protect the unauthorized parts of the personnel, (which actually included pretty much the entire crew of Bethany Base, even its the gray-haired commander - many of them knew things that hardly anyone in the other bases knew, but not a single one of them knew details about Subject 23, especially no decisive details, nothing more than that SEELE had another Angel-sample lying somewhere, probably, frozen in a vault), her job was to cut off their way before they might see something that might require their termination -which, however, should be impossible if everything went according to plan (And indeed, the men of SEELE would not use "Ueda" as their shadowy right claw if she were not good at her job: At that time there were not only one, but two subversive elements in Bethany Base, counter to SEELE or Ikari's plan, only one-man factions, loosely allied, but acting essentially independently, and it would really be better if neither of them noticed anything of this action.)

Of course, Ueda's attention went first and foremost to the boy at Miyazawa's side; after all, he was relevant to the great work, the goal of the whole undertaking, and what more, she wasn't the sort to spare a scientist a second glance without good reason. But the impressions she had of the silver-haired youth at her first encounter were not very different from those she made at their second meeting, only that here, as already indicated, she did not quite succeed in pinning down the diffuse similarity she saw around his flawless features.

"Is this the boy?"

"Um, Yup, that's him. May I introduce? This is our subject 23, code name Tabris. And I'm, uh, Miyazawa. Miyazawa... Haruhi, from Complex Five-"

"I know who you are," Ueda interrupted.

Even if she had not carefully read through the files that came with her job description as the sensitivity of her tasks and the associated secrecy demanded, a single glance was enough for her to form a pre-packaged opinion, which she simply dug up at her next meeting, without taking the time for further observations - quick assessment of people was vital for her, every grain of memory was valuable - and what else should she think of her?

After all, what stood before her was not the young, naive Miyazawa freshly lured out of university, as one might have encountered her ten years earlier, but a woman within a few years of Ueda's own age, and she stood before her, in a jeans skirt with a heart-shaped print, a pink Hello Kitty polo shirt and two strawberry-shaped plastic decorations to keep her hair strands out of her face where her pink scrunchie had failed... and was that seriously chocolate at the corner of her mouth...?

One look at the woman was enough to lose all the respect that Ueda might have had for her file, which in itself was quite a feat, considering that she generally had only a rather microscopic respect for scientists, which was just enough to tolerate their existence if they had nothing to do with her, or were unfortunately needed to do the work of god.

It was now common knowledge that some of her fellow countrywomen were in the habit of behaving and dressing "youthfully" or "cute" until old age, but what Ueda thought of it was probably not necessary to mention separately - she had already learned in early childhood to agree with her relatives whenever they complained about the decay of the good old conservative values, and in a certain measure, if one had a dark humor, which Ueda would certainly have lacken, one could say that SEELE's plan took the common sentiment that "Everything was better in the olden days" to its logical conclusion, longing to turn back the entire four billion years since the beginning of life.

The point, however, was, in the final analysis, that Ueda, even if she could stoically and plaintively accept it, would not prefer to remain in the presence of this frivolous scientist and inhuman child any longer than was absolutely necessary.

So she also refrained from further exchanges of words, since everything important had already been clarified.

"Come. This way."

"Uh, yes, ma'am!" Miyazawa blurted, trudging after her, followed by a much more relaxed Tabris and a detachment of security personnel.

Now the flow of Miyazawa's words had been cut short by the rather sharp instructions (although she was in the mood to say something, and struggled to hold it back), Ueda's attempts to create a tense atmosphere seemed to sail past the silver angel in a wide arc as he walked down the corridors, for he kept smiling in an open, relaxed fashion and spoke in a bright, accommodating tone of voice with not a hint of cloudiness: "It is a great pleasure to finally meet you in person, Miss. ..Ueda, isn't that the name currently assigned to you? Of course I know about your activities, at least in part..."

Certainly more than he should know, but his provocations were skilful and rarely went further than he could plausibly deny.

"I hope for fruitful cooperation... "Ueda"-san."

And yes, you could hear the quotation marks, not clearly underlined, but still noticeable, more implied than accentuated, and this not even with much effort, making the very intentionally transparent illusion all the more piquant in its banality – at least, that was the only conclusion which Ueda could draw from it. Someone had to keep their wits about this while this marigold-measuring scientist went jumping head first into the trap of human pride which her kind found ever so hard to resist.

"I am so excited! Aren't you, Tabbie-chan? I mean, because of the other angel samples. This is the first time I get to see any of them - except for you, of course. I'm really curious about it. You know what I mean?"

He remembered his own anticipation of meeting the chosen ones, and his smile deepened.

"I think so, sort of."

"That reminds me... isn't this the first time you've met your own kind? Come to think of it, it is, isn't it?"

"That is correct."

"But you knew that already, didn't you?"

"Yes. Why do you ask?

"Well, for the fact that today is the first time you'll meet some of the only other beings like yourself, you seem a little... Well, I don't know. I'd think that meeting your long lost family for the first time would be a pretty special occasion, wouldn't it?"

"Of course I'm glad..." replied Tabris, whose words were easily misunderstood as part of an ordinary, light conversation, but would have passed as sober for those who knew him.

But whatever the reason for this, he preferred not to cloud Miyazawa's day with it yet, partly because it would probably become apparent enough later regardless of whether he brought it about by choice or let it come in its time.

"...But it is not in our nature to miss each other simply due to physical distance... We do not engage in this interaction that takes place between you individuals, nor do we have a need for it."

"But they are your family, aren't they?" Miyazawa asked, rambling full of thought, thinking perhaps that it would be sad if he himself could not understand the idea of 'family', if even such a basic concept could not be shared between them, and the warmth associated with the term fundamentally closed to him

"That is true, but I know them already. I know of them. I mean, I know they exist. In fact, this is one of those things that I have always known, to a certain extent. That's the kind of knowledge that our kind possesses: For us it is something static, given to us in the beginning. As you see in me, we can possess and contain it, although my siblings cannot accumulate or gain it from the outside world the way that you do..."

"...Our souls are not so different after all, are they?" Miyazawa mused.

"No, fortunately not..." Tabris confirmed while they continued to walk through the corridors of Bethany Base, led by Ueda. They were no less of a maze than the ones at NERV headquarters. "But to get back to your question... I know the others are there. That's all my kind needs for company... even if I personally find it quite others to spend time directly with other individuals."

"I'm glad to hear it."

Following the scientist's comments, "Ueda" felt somewhat responsible to return this conversation to more meaningful topics more relevant to the project: "This "original knowledge" you are talking about... I suppose it is common to all of you? Or at least to the natural descendants of Adam?"

"Not at all..." replied the boy, again with that secretive smile that made some philosophical homunculi in the back of Ueda's head wildly bang the alarm bells. "...No, it is not comparable to a mechanism that would allow us to communicate. I already said that communication is not in our nature."

Ueada was unwilling to be lectured like a fool, and least of all with a semblance of apparent innocence and purity of the sort that made you question why purity would be considered a virtue and not counted as something more akin to the cruelty of an ignorant child, who, in carefree play, ripped the wings off of an insect for his own amusement, or poked around in a dead hedgehog with wild fascination.

So the next words she threw at the superhuman boy carried a slight, yet noticeable harshness: "That is not what I asked."

"...But that's what you were meaning to get at, wasn't it?" he replied, seemingly completely unconcerned, again with the disregard of a child who was too busy playing to care about anything else. "But yes." He continued, as if he could read her mind effortlessly. "I'm afraid I must confirm this fear of yours, "Ueda"-san. You can assume that my brothers and sisters feel... no, that they will know what happened to their predecessors those who awaken later might modify their strategies based on that. They might continue to use promising strategies, or take advantage of certain weaknesses of their enemies. Learning does not come as easily to their nature as it does to yours, but yes, it is within the realm of possibility."

Ueda imagined that many a fool's simple comforting idea of the world would have been shattered to pieces by the silver boy's tendency to know what other people were going to say before they'd even had the time to think up their replies.

- Ueda herself had come to view herself from a very early age as a quiet background instrument like a bass, whose purpose was to allow for the brighter, more attention-grabbing parts of the melodysuch as guitar, piano and vocals to be played without questioning orders or events, and she felt that this had definitely spared her human mind some grief; Seeing as she knew it to be every bit as frail and limited as everybody else's.

This inhuman twerp, this mischievous little goblin in the garb of an angel took the words out of her mouth like a schoolchild stealing the sweets from his younger siblings… and that did not make Ueda shudder, it only... annoyed her.

But this could also be said of Miyazawa's cheerful gibberish:

"...But man, if you were a little more like humans, you would probably go crazy with so many brothers and sisters! I could hardly stand growing up with my four siblings... Though I love them of course. But at least you are lucky that they are all older brothers and sisters... You are the baby in the family, so to speak. Miyazawa giggled a little. "I, unfortunately, was always the sandwich kid... The older ones never let me play with them, and the younger ones always broke my toys..."

Tabris would only have known depictions of human families living together from books and databases - his reaction was not a familiar giggle, but rather thoroughly interested listening like one would expect to follow stories about foreign cultures or strange deep-sea creatures. (And weren't all cultures on this earth equally foreign to him, and compared to him, if one were to accept something like him as the norm, weren't pretty much all living beings peculiar?)

It was not the enthusiasm or the appreciation that was missing, least of all the interest, but there was no understanding of the fact that the discourse in such matters should be processed in a special compartment, seemed to have a special status, and belonged in another category of knowledge than 'The average life expectancy of a Homo Sapiens in the Japanese islands is...'.

Miyazawa might as well read him statistics on human families - But regardless of his understanding of bonding or communication, they had done a lot in the lab to teach him these concepts - one of those many moments that made Miyazawa doubt whether they didn't deserve to be wiped out.

But perhaps it was easy for her to say that, as an unmarried woman, currently living without any major ties, who had devoted herself primarily to her scientific work.

"We have arrived." Ueda reported, now finally having an excuse to interrupt this ridiculous spectacle.

She pulled out a key card, drew it through a slit and fed the locking mechanism next to it with a combination of numbers and the fingerprint of her left ring finger, before not one, but three heavy steel doors were pushed to the side, revealing at the same time how thick these walls must be.

The fourth, completely black steel door did not open immediately, but only after Ueda had entered another combination - later she would have to enter another code into the other side of this door for every additional half hour she and the scientist in the room behind it, which was wired so that failure to comply with this precaution would permanently lock the doors, seal off air shafts and observation windows, and hermetically seal all entrances to the room, not to mention shutting down all consoles and life-support systems in the room behind it - To prevent the use of the communication systems, SEELE's architects had gone even further and built a veritable self-destruction mechanism into them - To communicate out of this room at all required fingerprints of two randomly selected fingers and the iris scan of an authorized person.

The principle was clear: the knowledge of what lay behind this last armored door was not to leave this room under any circumstances, rather it would be buried down there along with all the data storage devices that might contain it, including human brains.

Miyazawa knew this, and so she showed some signs of trepidation when she crossed the threshold that was both unusually long and wide - she honestly had a bad feeling about putting her life in Ueda's hands - as mentioned earlier, she didn't like her, but neither did she trust her ability to distinguish signs of betrayal from those of mere nervousness. She swallowed hard.

But as soon as she crossed the threshold, fascination took over, and her eyes shone with the knowledge of what lay ahead of her, and the curiosity for the inexplicable that had drawn her to this organization in the first place - the one thing scientists could never have enough of were representative data sets, and here she would have the opportunity to research samples that were not available anywhere else in the world.

The most obvious and impressive was probably the serpent-like beast that could be seen through the large window made of meter-thick armored clear steel supported by several steel struts.

Even at this time of day, numerous processing robots and sometimes even the occasional worker who was tired of life or short of money could be seen tampering with it - you had to look closely to even recognize the creature as it was almost completely reduced to its skeleton and forced into all sorts of mechanical restraints and enclosures, some of which had been gradually built around it during the days of its captivity - what was once a divine was now firmly in the claws of plastic and metal; Slowly but steadily, they even began to eat into the flesh of the creature itself.

It was not prettily garnished with faded feathers, but it was nonetheless a "Broken Angel" – in the exact same sense of all those deeply wistful depiction from fiction and mythology.

Though the events in the main complex of the base could be witnessed from the lab, but the class parting them was merely a one way mirror, indistinguishable from any other concrete tile when seen from below, and about the size of a large van. Rows of similar-looking panels continued endlessly to the left, the right, in frint and below - The camouflaged window was not even particularly central, but not at the edge either; There was a number on its upper left corner to match the surrounding regular panels.

And it was set up in such a way that its outer appearance would not change much even when the window was sealed (from the inside).

But the creature that could be seen through that window, as much as it had been robbed of its natural aura of power and ...unreality, was certainly still as large and powerful as a clumsy elephant or a thick-skinned rhinoceros, and was thus at least still imposing in the cheap manner of a circus animal or an unpolished trumpet sound. By comparison, the other two containers Miyazawa saw set up in front of her in the room did not look like much - it was her knowledge of what was inside them and its implications that allowed her similar admiration for them as for the gigantic serpent creature outside.

One sample was placed on a kind of pedestal, similar to the original kilogram, beneath a multitude of cheese-dome-like pressure vessels, some of which were incorporated into the pedestal, which was about the height of a normal person's body, and beneath them was a black, cylindrical container with a shiny, smooth surface and sharp edges, where the mantle met the base, with thin, circuit-like lines running across the entire vessel, pulsating with blue light at regular intervals.

But while its "special" character was still apparent even through the domes, the somewhat more mobile container next to it, with the dimensions of a telephone booth, did not really suggest that there was anything concealed within it that would be so significant as to have a role in deciding the future of heaven and earth - it was a simple, gray steel box, like a miniature container, with a few hidden flaps in it - one in the front, behind which input terminals were hidden, among other things with locks that already had two keys in them, as well as a hole similar to a door peephole for making fingerprint and iris scans. The second one would probably not open unless the first was already unlocked. When it opened, its hatch exposed numerous large sockets intended for cables, most of which were also filled and thus connected to the consoles and measuring instruments in this room.

Miyazawa knew them to be prison cells.

These two facilities, though they did not look like it, were, in fact, imprressive testimonies to modern (nano)technology, no less magnificent than the container system down below, and what they contained was, in fact, exactly the same: A living messenger of God.

So why did the angel below require for this entire base to be build around it while these other two angels were sufficiently contained within vessels of such handy size?

First, that might be because the Third Angel had been allowed to progress to its adult form while the two secondary samples had been left in their pupated state. Their lesser size would have made a complete dissection much more difficult anyways, but it was probably their size itself that was the main reason: The sample in the "phone box"-like container hardly reached the dimensions of a golf ball, while the one in the "cheese dome" was microscopically small. They had all been found amid the debris from second impact, in the first search immediately following the catastrophe, in the same expedition that served to recover the original remains of Adam and the cocoon that was found to contain one of the most essential results of the contact experiment - the same superhuman boy who had now entered the room just behind Miyazawa herself, as cold as it must sound to classify the extermination of three billion human lives as one of the "unimportant" results of the Second Impact. An explosion of God knows how many kilotons, nothing but blunt reaction heat, the barest middle school thermodynamics.

It was probably no coincidence that the smaller cocoons in particular had been found near the former continental mass of Antarctica - the larger ones had been blown into all directions due to their higher mass, all the way to the other side of the world, where the Third Angel had been found due to the crater it had melted when it first hit the ice shield, but most of them had probably sunk into the oceans, or in otherwise remote areas where they could not be followed due to the destruction of large parts of the radar and camera-equipped infrastructure including the orbital satellite network - it is quite possible that the largest few chunks had even been blown into orbit, up to the moon, which the catastrophe had sullied with a broad speck of blood.

But the compact size of the specimens acquired by SEELE was to their advantage, especially since it allowed for the creatures to be strategically placed and employed...

And that gave them another decisive advantage in their use as test subjects, in addition to being easy to transport: Even if their respective containers had windows, not much would have been visible - Unlike the pitiful creature that stretched out beneath, little more than a skeleton with exposed nerve ducts - But that wasn't so bad as long as it just lay there silently, like a dinosaur skeleton in a museum, just bones, like pretty much any biologist would have already seen them in sufficient quantity, just biology - Blessed are those who have a voice: The cry of a bird makes us listen and listen again, while the silent suffering of a fish leaves us untouched -

It was true that Miyazawa first felt pity for the captured beast when her original excitement began to evaporate, but it wasn't quite as strong at first, because her mind simply did not process this thing the way it would have done something with a human form - but then she became aware of this fact by the power of her mind, and part of herself tried to compensate for this "injustice" by pumping out additional neurotransmitters.

But it was a very different matter when the being constrained below chose this exact moment to stir visibly, as if it had somehow seen her right through the material concealing her location, or even sensed her mere presence.

And what a movement it was, not comparable to an animal rattling in its cage, more akin to the mighty force of how mountains, islands, or tectonic plates moved, assailing the tiny, ephemeral spectators with primal fears older than humanity itself - The bolts and struts of its fetters groaned, and this mere stretching which to the beast seemed to be nothing greater than the morning yawn of a sleepy man, with no purpose other than movement itself, made the world tremble and thunder, shaking the whole base from the root, as if the whole world had begun to sway because the dragon Niddhöggr had gleefully chewed out another piece from the root of the world tree, only to chase the ice through the spines of mortals and announce to them that the end of their days was now a little closer - in this respect, people would probably have done better to act like the simpler Lllithian life forms, which they usually referred to as animals, and like well-programmed machines, to follow their own instincts and avoid what caused them fear, instead of looking for a reason for this fear or wanting to overcome it.

They may have denied it most of the time, but the moment they heard that mighty roar, it was clear to everyone involved in it how exceedingly transient and temporary the creature's fetters were, and their hearts were filled with certainty that this mighty prisoner could not be held forever - The days in which it was still possible for them to carry out their impudent research were borrowed like life itself, and one day they would have to pay for it; the creature and its ever-increasing thirst for revenge would exact their pound of flesh.

But while this ominous promise and attempts to rationalize it away would have filled most people's minds at that sight, Miyazawa's was different - She had spent long enough with one of these beings to see the other side, and what there was to see there was not pretty - That she could converse with the specimen she knew was more or less a result of luck, as Tabris just happened to have a suitable shape to produce human language - But if the shape was the only real difference between him and the other ambassadors, then... As different as they might be, in this moment, even looking at the disparate shape of this thing, she only saw the similarities, and pictured how she would feel if they had driven sharp metal into her flesh and pulled the muscles from her bones, and what it would be to know to endure that she would have to endure this until death, alone, trapped in the darkness, without hope for a future...

"Oh... oh, my God... it's... it's still alive!"

"Of course it's still alive." Commented Asahina soberly. "It must be alive - the speed at which these creatures dissolve after they die is unbelievable..."

She knew that, of course, but there was life and there was life - A person in a deep coma could be classified as alive, but the same might be said of a severely mutilated person in constant agony to which dead would be preferrable - Miyazawa knew that they had no choice but to destroy the angels in order to survive, but to simply kill this creature down there would have been a mercy - if Kuze were here he would probably have been more concerned with the realization that this creature who was their enemy could survive even like this, and how it was constantly trying to break away even in this state. Miyazawa was not so young anymore herself and was well aware of all this; she knew that this thing was trying to destroy them all with every motion, but had they not given him every reason to do so? And she couldn't help but wonder if what they had done to the boy at her side was not very much comparable. It was not the same, right?

And what on earth might he be feeling at this sight...? Let's just say that this was one of those rare moments when Miyazawa saw the smile on his face disappear and be replaced by a worn seriousness, and this for more than just an instant – it was not more than this and the distant beginnings of a weary head shake, but that was all it took.

In the meantime, Ueda, who had not bothered to enjoy the "view", had finished entering the last security codes necessary to safely activate the instruments in this room - some of them quite unique in their design - and saw a favorable opportunity that she would like to take advantage of.

Leaving the consoles behind, she took a few specific steps in the direction of the silver boy and spoke, not as if she thought that anything about this situation required special tact, but completely businesslike, without significant pauses or special feeling. "...What do you think of this?"

He knew, of course, what exactly she was hoping for from this question, and obliged her straight away: "...This is Raziel, angel of the deep." He commented, looking through the window, but lowering his gaze from the actual subject of his words.

Then he turned to the two specimens kept in the interior of the room, appraised them briefly, and then delivered his verdict: "...She here..." he began to look at the vessel contained in the 'cheese domes', so that Ueda could also see which of the two captured messengers he was talking about. "...Is Ireul, angel of fear... and here..." he now turned to the phone booth-like grey box "...is Malik, angel of hellfire..."

And after he had finished, he certainly turned towards the two women, though mainly towards Ueda - His features were grave, but also openly marked by a distinct consternation, which he did not seem to suppress consciously, but also did not present outward on purpose.

"Ueda-san..." he began, taking his time to carefully choose and weight each of his words. "I am aware of how this sounds, but what I say now, I say for your own good. You may have made your copies, but you should never have imprisoned a real angel..."

"What arrogance." Replied SEELE's agent, and sounded a lot like her grandfather. "Don't get arrogant just because you're immortal, Tabris! Your situation is only slightly different from that creature down there..."

"I do not consider myself imprisoned, Ueda-san." Tabris returned, superficially like a compliment, but the warning was well received by the intended recipient.

"...You have me, and I am happy to offer myself to you for anything you like, but you must let the others go... I cannot bear to see them locked up...

"They are creatures of infinity, Ueda-san. They were never meant to be confined or locked up in any form, or to be hurt – It is different for your kind. You would at least have the release of death as consolation, or thoughts of a future, but time has no meaning for my brothers and sisters..."

"But we held it." replied the dark-haired agent. "In spite of everything, we held them, and there is our immortality - even if they all free themselves and lay waste to everything in this base, even if they destroy us, they will never forget that we held them..."

"But you do realize, I hope, that you can't hold them forever, right? You are mortal and all that you create is transitory - What you have chained down here below is a creature that time cannot harm - He will soon be freed..."

"Let that be our concern for now." Ueda retorted, then turning to Miyazawa:

"Get to work."

"O-Okay, ma'am!"

"This system is designed for a maximum of three simultaneous measurements - the software has already been adapted, but the hardware is less flexible, especially since this room was custom-built. You will find a Y-shaped bridging piece in the lower drawer back there. It is equipped with a red button which is supposed to activate a self-destruction mechanism. When you are finished using the component, you are required to activate this mechanism. It activates five seconds after you press the button, so make sure the component is back in the drawer at that time if you don't want to get an unpleasant surprise...".

"Whew." Was Miyazawa's immediate response. "I'm glad you're telling me this... I was afraid I'd be terminated along with all evendence after seeing all this..."

Ueda simply held back at this point, and confined herself to setting up the folding chair leaning against the wall near the door in the middle of the room, while Miyazawa dealt with the wiring of the systems - the connection to the samples down there in the crypt and under the "cheese dome" were firmly integrated into the measuring interface, Miyazawa thus pulled out the instruments connected to the "grey box" in order to insert the y-shaped component described by Ueda and to plug the openings left free by the reinsertion of the previously removed cables with more cables, which would contribute to the analysis of a certain silver-haired boy who was currently looking out through the observation window, for once not unfazed by what he had just seen.

"Um, Tabris-kun?" Miyazawa asked, no longer confident enough to use her usual affectional address in the presence of Asahina, partly because she were preoccupied with her work, but also because she felt weighed down by thoughts of the third angel's situation. "If you would please, um, undress?"

She clumsily pointed to the chair that Ueda had set up.

When she saw that the boy, still not fully recovered from the sight out there, was reaching for his belt, she gestured for him to stop: "Just your shirt is enough."

A little later he had neatly folded his sweater vest and shirt on one of the consoles and sat down on the plastic chair, while Miyazawa attached electrodes to the boy's alabaster-colored skin under Ueda's watchful eyes, and not even she thought how wrong it would have been under pretty much any circumstances for two adult women to make a teenaged boy undress before them.

She was already used to it.

After she had attached the last electrode to his chest and back, she looked up once more to the angel's face, appearing radiant just from its relative brightness, and, still deprived of her usual ease by the whole situation with the desecrated creature beneath them, continued to speak: "The, uh, recording will take quite a while and I am, uh, assigned to help Mitsurugi-san with evaluating the data...".

"I understand. You won't be able to keep me company, will you, Haruhi?"

"Um, yes, I'm afraid not..."

And without expecting it in advance, she was suddenly ashamed to take advantage of this certainty that he would say yes without major complaints.

What was she thinking? She was the scientist, he was the test subject, she had never done anything to change that, and if she was honest, she could not in good conscience claim that she intended to change that significantly or to shake the present status quo to a noticeable degree despite the consternation of the present moment.

Having done her job, she stood up and took a few last, scrutinizing glances at the consoles, always with Ueda's waiting looks sharp on her back and the certain feeling that she must be running out of patience. No doubt that she must have been growing fed up with what would appear to her as her "frivolous nonsense"

And besides, she had probably received only so many security codes to serve only a limited amount of time – thus, Miyazawa felt compelled to finish this as quickly as possible and left after sparing her young ward just one more glance, knowing well that it would need to be the last.

Shortly before she reached the broad, multiple threshold she had entered through, Miyazawa turned back once more, with uncertainty in her eyes and doubts as to whether she had the right to speak out. She could no linger now, for Ueada would not have dared to leave the door behind until she had seen the scientist cross the threshold before her own eyes.

Ueda had intended to complain until the very moment she heard her colleague's exact words and realized their implications.

"...you'll try to free yourself and the others as soon as that door is closed, won't you? I don't suppose you'd be particularly scared of EVA 05..."

The scientist was still shaping and kneading the words as they left her mouth, but more doors and conclusions opened in her mind as the words had just left her lips, and seconds later she would have signed with full conviction that she did not know what she was saying when she started this sentence, a question that could be casually denied like the most obvious thing in the world, , a piece of small talk that she would have and thus become null and void, forgotten by this time tomorrow, or a big, heavy implication that would make her stumble into this hallway as if stunned, hovering in airy uncertainty what would spread inside her like the tingly feeling of an infinite fall - But then her scenarios, painted in her thoughts, stopped, too, so that the vision did not have time to solidify, because the underlying tension was dissolved before there was time:

The white child smiled, but his regrets were easy to read.

"I couldn't possibly do that, Haruhi." He shook his head.

"Don't get me wrong, it hurts me to see my brothers and sisters like this, and I would love to free them from these dungeons, especially when I am right here, capable of setting them free without so much as a snap of my fingers, but... if I did, then almost certainly... every single person in this institution would die – and my siblings might well be included in that. Besides, there are so many Lillim here... thus I am not free to do as I would like."

Miyazawa Haruhi gawked like a fish or a frightened monkey, downright inelegant and unpleasant, the shock of the moment, the realization hit her like a slap in the face, and unceremoniously wiped away a whole assortment of learned, "better" behaviors.

Such... selflessness. And also, did he just imply that he would let them do to him whatever they pleased as long as they would the others go?

"I could try to explain it to them, ask them to avoid doing harm as they flee, but I doubt that they would understand, or that they could distinguish the extinguishing of entire individuals from the demise of single cells such as it happens in your bodies every single day... They see humanity as a whole, much like themselves - and also, if it is conceivable, yes, quite probable that they would understand all this anyways, as soon as they themselves deal with you, I do not think it would be possible right now - and even if they were to understand, it is quite possible that they would wish to destroy you either way - they do not know you as I know you, so who am I to blame them?"

"I wouldn't blame them either." Miyazawa replied as soon as she had regained her composure and was able to summarize the confusion of her thoughts in one concise sentence; That was just before she left the room, closely followed by Ueda, without looking back.

As trustful, almost natural as she sometimes liked to act toward the boy, despite their contrasting natures, she believed that selflessness was one of those things, that when taken too far could appear unnatural, if not uncanny.

And she felt keenly that she belonded to the subset of humanity that would be thoroughly incapable of sacrificing oneself for another, and always would be.

("Haruhi, don't you like the other Lillim?"

What do you think she replied to that?

As carefully as she put it, Miyazawa was not proud of her own species, and the angel of free will did not find in her the grain of rice that would tip the scales of his very own question).

(1) You can see the recent surge of characters as an attempt to get this up to speed with the german version before the new movie hits so any new chapters can be released near simultaneously; And especially to do this before the new movie/ big finale hits, because I'm probably going to have a whole load of feelings about it that I'm going to need an outlet for. Unfortunately we're now getting to the part where it kinda fizzles out for a bit & maybe there are cool experimental bits but for the most part I mucked up the pacing, it corresponds to a sucky unproductive part in my life; I do like the two last ones tho, which are maybe what I should've done all along & from where I hope to continue in a brisker fashion with more consistent quality levels. But it's hard to estimate this from my PoV anyways; Maybe your opinion/perception turns out different.

(2) The next one, 2. 25: [The World] actually has a bunch of scenes that held up pretty good if I remember correctly; Much of that one came about when I heard Kaji's rebuild VA talk about how his impression of this character was as this grizzled survivor, perhaps 'cause the whole Cool Spy casanova aspect as less pronounced; That made me consider how he's the one of the older characters who really would have had to grow up & live through the apocalyptic devastation of second impact, while many others would have been somewhat protected since everyone's parents were already involved in the conspiracy in some way.