"And the censure?"
"MAGI has erased all records of 'Ainz Ooal Gown' from our sensor-net. As far as the information outwards goes, the story is that Unit-01 employed it's AT field to project a 'EVA'-pattern signal upon the Second Angel, which made First Angel attack it by confusing it to be an Evangelion." Fuytsuki sighed as he looked out of Gendo's office, which was located in one of Geofront's stalactite-like upside-down buildings that were hanging off the cavern's ceiling. "Afterwards the 'Second' withdrew to heal itself, and we baited it into a VTOL aircraft, which then collided with the Third Angel, thus resulting in the two clashing and killing one another."
"And information leakage?" Gendo asked as he stood beside Fuytsuki. The commander's eyes were obscured behind his glasses' reflection as the man looked out of the window with his hands behind his back.
"Contained to NERV's personnel, who have been either coerced or 'reassigned' so that the information about the Second's nature or 'real' name doesn't spread." Fuytsuki told Gendo. "Luckily the only ones who heard Second scream it's name were the command center's staff during the First Angel's appearance, and it seems that the Angel introduced itself to Misato Katsuragi and her strike-team during the extraction. The entire strike team died during the VTOL-crash, some after I had a medical mishap arranged during their recovery and treatment, and I believe that Ritsuko will convince Misato to stay quiet about it."
"Hm." Gendo stayed quiet for a long while. "The name is a direct message to SEELE. I understand why it'd reveal it to me… But to Katsuragi… Hm… It may be a coincidence, or it may be hinting that Captain Katsuragi has had dealings with SEELE… Come to think of it…"
"What if it was just a mistake? Or the Angel was just introducing itself to her out of courtesy?"
The commander of NERV stayed quiet for a long while. "Hm. Unlikely. That thing knows more than it lets on… Or it has 'ear-marked' Katsuragi by using that name, and got rid of the soldiers by ramming the VTOL against the Third Angel while saving only Katsuragi from the falling wreckage."
"Please don't joke about things like that… The Second's weakness is love at first sight?" Fuytsuki's tone was just a bit lighter than usually, and Gendo smiled bitterly.
"If it were so simple… If I had to guess, the Second knows that Katsuragi has been assigned as Third Child's warden, so it seeks to get it's claws on Shinji through her." Gendo said finally.
"Can we afford to deny it?" Fuytsuki sounded a bit resigned.
"No. Besides, Shinji is useless to me without Unit-01."
The two men kept looking out of the window to the Geofront for a long while after that, both lost in their own thoughts of doom and prophecies.
.
.
"That looks pretty… complicated." Misato remarked as she stood behind Ritsuko, who in turn was sitting on a computer chair and staring at a CRT monitor.
The monitor was showing symbols and icons that MAGI used to display the 'wavelength' of an AT field, a field that effectively split reality around an Angel like a barrier and protected it from harm, and at the same time, formed the core of an Angel's 'attacks'.
The AT field emitted a signature that was quite difficult for the Angels to hide, and MAGI showed it as a blue pattern on a radar, thus 'Pattern Blue Alert' meant that an Angel had been detected.
EVA units had a similar AT field, generated by their core-engines, and that field was what allowed them to fight Angels on roughly equal terms- By synching the two's AT-fields, they effectively negated the protection the field gave to either of them, and thus allowed the EVA and Angel to battle properly.
Misato let out a loud slurp as she drank from her cup of coffee.
"I got a scan of the skeletal Angel's AT-field while I had it jump into a LCL-vat, where robotic arms will coat it in the skin-suit I made for it." Ritsuko explained as she was cradling her cup, and the head scientist looked quite shaky after the encounter.
The fact she had a half-empty pot of coffee next to the computer more or less let Misato know that Ritsuko had been outright terrified when she had met the Angel again, even if she had pretended cold professionalism on the outside. The fact she had closed her lab-coat had helped the pretending as it covered her shaking knees from view.
Nonetheless the Second Angel had been escorted to Terminal Dogma by Ritsuko, and that was the extent of what Misato knew of what had happened after that..
"It's… Well, I can see some things in the wave-field pattern that match what we know of other Angels, that being the First and Third Angel's AT field patterns, but it looks like we have to reassess how reliable our detection methods are." Ritsuko sighed as she looked at the CRT screen.
"Hm?"
"The pattern emitted by the 'First and Third' were not masked at all, but the Second emits next to no such particles." Ritsuko clarified. "If I had to guess, it's less that 'First and Third' couldn't mask their signatures, and more that they simply hadn't bothered to do so. The Second, meanwhile, can suppress it's waveform to the point it's practically invisible, making it feel more like it was just something that had been close to an Angel and 'caught' the signature due to the degrading waveform radiation. It's also possible that the Second could suppress even that, and the decaying waveform was visible only because the Second brought out First Angel's S2 engine to allow us to detect it."
"So we may have radar-invisible Angels creeping all over the place, and we wouldn't know until we established visual contact. Got it. I didn't think I needed to sleep tonight, so thanks for the thought." Misato groaned.
"From what I gathered from the VTOL-craft's sensor array, at least before it exploded, was that the Second could also turn invisible to visual detection and eyes."
"Oh screw you, Ritsuko…" Misato sat down on Ritsuko's office's side-desk. "So, we have Angel that we can't see, detect, and can, what, teleport? That thing teleported me and the VTOL-aircraft, right?"
"It looks like it can open some sort of tunnels in our plane of reality that lead to somewhere else. I got a fairly good picture of it when the VTOL came above Tokoy-3, and I couldn't match the 'other side' to anything, really…" Ritsuko sighed as she hit a few keys on her computer's keyboard, "It's like if the Second Angel creates a portal to another universe, a pocket-dimension, or another plane of existence altogether where relative distances are much shorter, and then just moves through that to appear somewhere else in our reality."
"Uh, huh… What else?"
"The AT-field analysis shows that it can freely reconfigure it's AT field pattern. It seems to default to a state where it has fairly low frequency, which I guess would mean that a slow-moving object with large surface area, perhaps a blunt object or a shockwave, might be able to penetrate it fairly easily compared to trying to pierce it or slash it." Ritsuko told Misato as she pointed at the wavelength of the Second Angel's AT-field scan. "But at the same time, if that was true, then it would have been flattened when Unit-01 punched it in the face or when the N2 mines exploded on top of it. That effectively tells me that it can just manipulate the frequency of it's AT field at will, making any real attempt to pierce it's defenses more of a game of 'rock paper scissors' than anything we can reliably plan on…"
Misato was starting to feel quite overwhelmed.
"…Not to mention that even knowing it's 'current weak spot' doesn't solve the fact that any such attack would require a ridiculous amount of energy either way, as it's AT field is so strong that it could easily bounce off tank shells even at its weakest point. As we saw a week ago." Ritsuko finished.
"So, if I translate that to 'common sense', it's just flat invulnerable, unless we get a group of EVA's together, which we have none operable at the moment, and arm them with bats, swords, spears, etcetera, and hope that one of them manages to hit the 'sweet spot' while also asking the Second Angel to not just teleport away." Misato groaned. "Perfect. We have a near-invulnerable, radar-and-sight invisible, teleporting Angel. Just great. What else?"
"It can extend it's teleportation to work both ways, it seems. It pulled out the cores of Unit-01, the First, and Third Angels to it's hand through some kind of teleportation field. So that means that it can both move and pull items and people through it's portals… And store items in it's pocket-universe, based on the fate of said Solenoid Organs." Ritsuko's eyes looked glazed-over. "Which, when combined with the fact we got a Pattern Blue event from the Second Angel bringing out the core of the First Angel in that forest, clues us that the Second hasn't actually killed either of the Angels and has just pocketed them away."
"In other words, he can just toss them out like pocket monsters if we push it too far." Misato was lying on her face on Ritsuko's side-desk. "Great. Fantastic. Is there anything else?"
"Judging from the recordings I received of you and your squad meeting the Second in that forest in Kyoto, and what Commander witnessed, the Angel can make lesser copies of itself that are sentient themselves…"
"Stoop…"
"Not to mention that it can manipulate it's AT-field to make lightning, fire, and explosions with approximate yields varying from a cruise missile to a N2 mine…"
"Stoooop…"
"And, it looks like that Commander has pacified it somehow. In other words, we don't really have any other option but to trust that Gendo knows what he's doing." Ritsuko sighed. "I don't know what the commander told the skeleton, as all logs were deleted and apparently the Angel lashed out and killed the crew that accompanied Gendo to meet with the Angel, but we just have to hope that Gendo managed to fool the Angel into believing that we have some sort of thing that we can use to fight it. Or something."
"So, sit back and hope for the best?"
"Pretty much so." Ritsuko put her glasses down and turned to look at Misato. "Apparently we're supposed to call it 'Suzuki Satoru', with the code-name of 'Second'. MAGI also deleted the recordings of the battle between First, Second and Third, as well as what we could scrounge up before the N2 mines dropped, alongside the recordings from your VTOL-transport's sensors after it made a copy for me to dissect."
"Ah, didn't it introduce itself as…" Misato remembered something. 'Ainz Ooal Gown? But if Ritsuko's saying that MAGI was deleting files, it means that Gendo is trying to keep something secret… In other words…' "Ah, nevermind."
Ritsuko narrowed her eyes a bit and Misato drank some coffee while looking at a nearby wall. "I'd advise you to forget what you might have heard. For your sake. Gendo himself said that the Angel was named 'Second' and 'Suzuki Satoru'. And nothing else."
"Got it, got it… Sheesh, you're being such a hardass… You won't impress the commander if you push that stick up your ass so deep that it comes out of your mouth." Misato waved her hand at Ritsuko while the chief of operations had started to lay on her face on Ritsuko's side-table. Mostly because her legs were shaking quite a bit and she didn't want to show it to her old friend. "So, we have to just pray every night before we go to sleep that Second won't decide to just go 'screw this' and go on a rampage. I'm not impressed with the level of power we can project if that's the extent of our impact on the Second."
"Amusing, Misato… But you'll have to get used to that." Ritsuko sighed at Misato's antics, and for once the chief science officer's fiery temper didn't show up upon Misato's tease over her obvious crush on the commander.
"What do you mean?" Misato perked her head a bit up.
"Apparently Gendo has enrolled Second into the same highschool as First and Third Child. He'll also be living in the same high-rise as you. Coincidentally, your entire apartment complex has been emptied of other residents, so you'll have the entire building for yourself… Try not to turn it into a dumpster, will you? Although, the commander sub-contracted a team of janitors to keep an eye on the building so that probably won't happen…" Ritsuko was uncharacteristically shaky as she spoke to Misato, and even tried to make a lame joke.
"You're joking, right? Tell me that you're joking." Misato mouthed while her face had turned pale. "That has to be a giant joke. And it's not funny. Your jokes suck, Ritsuko."
"I'm not joking. I'm really not. Misato, I… I hope you'll survive." Ritsuko walked to Misato and hugged her, making Misato realize that the chief science officer hadn't been joking.
"I get that I'm supposed to be a warden for Shjini, but… A warden for an Angel? Haaaaa… I knew this day would suck hard when I woke up…" Misato groaned into Ritsuko's hug.
Ritsuko kept patting Misato's back.
.
.
"Hm…" Momonga clenched his fist into a ball and opened it, checking the durability of the fleshy 'overcoat' that had been fitted on him. 'Being fully submerged in that vat of red liquid was a bit creepy… It sort of looked like thinned-down blood or something, but it's not like I can drown anyway…'
'I see that they're mass manufacturing teenage girls here… So this is some sort of cloning plant, right? They tried that in Neo-Japan as well, but clones tended to degrade or go absolutely insane in a couple of years, unless they were raised from an embryo, in which case it was just cost-ineffective to clone people when 'conventional' means of producing children existed… At least after the wars, which had driven the sales of combat-ready clones that didn't really even need to live past a few years...' Momonga thought about the fact that the room where he had been 'fleshed' had been full of giant vats filled with similar blue-haired teenage girls he had encountered during his first visit into 'Central Dogma'.
'Ah, I get it now… That first blue-haired girl I ran into was a defective product, in which case she'd be moved for recycling…' Momonga hit the palm of his hand with his fist in realization. 'In that case I shouldn't feel bad if I poked her chest, since she was probably comatose by that point already… Er, actually… That doesn't make me feel any better about it, and just makes me feel like scum…'
He covered his face with his hand and stroked his hand down, causing water to flow down his 'skin' as he was taking a shower after Ritsuko had returned to Terminal Dogma to escort Momonga back up into Central Dogma, while giving directions around the pyramid-like building, and finally guided him to the showers. 'I don't exactly have the same touch sensation on this flesh that I had when I was 'Suzuki Satoru', but I can feel what my bones feel, thus I can sort-of feel things as if I was wearing thick mittens or a hazmat suit…'
Momonga shrugged and walked out of the shower to dry up his new, fleshy overcoating. 'Apparently this body not very durable, just a bit more sturdy than a regular human's. Not to mention it needs regular check-ups since it has a combination of flesh, bio circuitry and mechanical parts to make it seem like a human. Ritsuko even had to 'buff up' a lot of the parts in order to make the flesh appear 'normal' since my Overlord-class 'skeleton' is not exactly… traditionally human-shaped, even if it's mostly anatomically accurate... Or at least somewhat accurate.'
He looked at a mirror in the shower and saw that his fleshy body was a bit over seven feet tall, reflecting the 'real' height of his avatar (once boots and the ominous hood came off which added almost half a foot), quite wide for a human, and Ritsuko had to increase the muscle mass quite a bit from his requested 'average human' in order to make the fleshy coat not seem out of place. 'The sharp jawline feels a bit awkward though… Ah well.'
Momonga noted that his eyes had a faint red glint in low light, as his 'eyes' were fully biomechanical and worked more as lenses through which he saw using his 'red dots' that made his 'real eyes'.
'Hm. It feels a bit like that one time the boss of my boss got all those bio-implants that made him look like someone had sliced him up and stapled him back together…' Momonga checked the seam-likes where his flesh had been sown together. 'I'm glad Ritsuko made the seam-lines in the flesh really inconspicuous, although the 'Property of NERV' stamp in my left buttoc is kinda on the nose…'
Momonga sighed and started to put on clothes that he had been given after drying up the body. 'At least it's much easier to clean… Trying to clean that skeletal body daily when hanging around in the forest was kind of a pain…'
"Hm. Right." Momonga checked himself in the mirror again. 'The high-school uniform seems quite sharp, although apparently you're just supposed to wear straight pants and white collar shirt of the whole uniform during summer because of the heat…'
Momonga sighed and grabbed a luggage bag that had been provided for him. 'Alright, time to go. The Death Cavaliers, Corpse Carrions, and Carrion Babies, Wraiths and Void Rippers I made during the week should be hard at work searching for Nazarick… I don't have my class-gear on right now, but I stored it in my inventory and I checked during the week that I can just equip them in a split-second if I have to, so it shouldn't be a big problem…'
He walked out of the showers to Central Dogma's bulkhead-like hallway, and almost ran into a woman.
Momonga looked at her and recognized her as the woman that had accompanied him into Central Dogma… Or rather, Tokyo-3.
"Ah, Captain Katsuragi. Greetings." Momonga offered courteously. "Thank you for your help yesterday."
The woman shook a bit before she coughed to her hand, put her hands on her hips, and opened her mouth.
'Right, umu…' Momonga knew what was to follow, and wanted to get on top of it before the situation worsened. "Listen, I understand that what I did earlier was workplace sexual harrassment, and I am prepared to make amends for it. What would sate your anger?"
"A-eh?" The woman closed her mouth, opened it, closed it, turned around and whacked her head at a nearby bulkhead-like wall, and seemed to get her bearings back straight.
"Right… Calm down, Misato, you won't die horribly…" The woman muttered to herself while still having her forehead against the steel wall, causing Momonga to sweat (at least metaphorically, as Ritsuko had explained that the body had basic organic functions, but it'd take her quite a while and many adjustments to make it fully capable of reflecting Momonga's mental state).
"Right. I have been assigned as your obser- caretak- no, that's not good either…" The woman turned back to face him, and seemed to run out of determination as Momonga looked calmly at her, and she turned to rest her head against the bulkhead again.
Momonga noted that the bulkhead looked like it had a small dent, cluing him that the woman's head was likely made of stronger material out of the two.
"Right, take three. I'm Misato Katsuragi, chief of Operations, and I hold the rank of a captain in NERV. I have been assigned as your assistant and liaison to NERV during your stay in our care. Please direct any complaints or suggestions to me. Got it? I mean, if you'd please?" The woman had assumed her earlier hands-on-hips pose and spoke in a headstrong voice with just one brief hiccup.
Momonga clapped his hands to encourage her after the speech, and Misato looked a bit proud for a brief second before she gained an embarrassed blush and paled a bit.
"Please don't kill me…"
"Don't sweat it." Momonga was fairly sure that he knew why the woman was so nervous, as he had killed a lot of people in his time in the 'new reality'- Most of whom might have been the woman's comrades-in-arms if her rank was anything to go by. 'Hm, I might as well apologize for that… Apologies are free, after all…' "For what it's worth, I regret the deaths of your comrades. But I hope you understand that your faction dropped a lot of bombs on me, so I was not entirely in control of my actions back then."
'Random bullshit is a-go.' Momonga gauged the woman's reaction to the words.
She froze still looked away while her neck turned red from anger, and it looked like she was struggling hard not to lash out.
"I get it… Please don't bring them up agan…" Misato finally growled out while looking towards the floor.
'Operation: failure.' Momonga sighed internally. 'Well, it's not like I can't understand what she's feeling, I was quite mad when one of our guild members was PK'd to the point he quit YGGDRASIL… I imagine it would feel roughly the same, I guess, except perhaps worse since this is reality?'
He walked past the woman and pat her on the shoulder in the passing. "I understand. I have lost friends too. I apologize, my words were poorly timed."
The woman turned around and opened her mouth, closed it… And Momonga heard a loud 'thump' of someone hitting the bulkhead behind him in rage. '...Well, I tried. Anyway, she's apparently my personal complaint-managed, and I was supposed to meet someone who was going to be my warden during my time in high-school… At least according to Ritsuko. It feels a bit silly to have a warden at my age, but I suppose I did kill a bunch of people so it makes sense for them to keep an eye on me. Which is fine, as it means my summons will have an easier time searching for Nazarick when I draw all the attention.'
He paused as he realized he could ask the captain about the missing warden. "Hey, Captain Katsuragi? I was supposed to meet my warden when I came out of the shower but they're not here?"
The woman paused as she had been punching the bulkhead.
She turned her head towards Momonga with slow, twitchy movements while she had a thoroughly fake smile on her face.
"...Bastard." The woman had a vein pulsing in her forehead and it looked like she had spoken before her brain caught up to her. "I'm your warden."
'Oh.' Momonga felt like he had stepped on a tiger's tail. 'Well, if she gets too rowdy, I can just swap her out, I hope…'
It looked like the woman reached the same conclusion, and Momonga sighed internally as a lightbulb seemed to go off above the woman.
"Pleased to meet you again, then, Captain Katsuragi." Momonga offered his hand again to the woman and the two shook hands.
"Second. Sorry, Suzuki-san." Katsuragi had a fake smile on her face as she shook back. "Now then. If you'd follow me, I'll show you to my apartment."
'Her apartment? She doesn't mean…' Momonga paused as the woman took off with sharp, clearly annoyed footsteps. "Ahem, I was supposed to have my own apartment…"
"You have the rest of the building. It's a high-rise." Misato didn't even turn her head as she spoke.
'Oh.' Momonga blinked, and instantly felt a bit overwhelmed. 'A single apartment would have been enough, but thanks I guess, Gendo-kun… Huh, it looks like he went all-out on fulfilling his part of the bargain…'
Momonga sighed and walked after the captain after adjusting the bag he had on his shoulder. 'Well, between my summons searching for Nazarick and me managing to get a good grip on how my stuff works here during the week, I should focus my attention on the school for now so I can start studying how this world's 'magic' works… It's going to be really complicated, if those S2 engine-organs are anything to go by…'
'I hope it won't be too awkward…'