Interlude 6: Bird's Eye View

Katsuragi's Current Residence, September 10th, 2016

Penpen woke up in his small recliner in Misato's room, once again grumpily noting that they were still in the not-home. As he waddled towards the much smaller, more cramped rain-maker, he noted that Misato, Beer-giver as he'd known her for years before he properly got her name down in his mind, had something complicated-looking set up on the table, eating breakfast across from it.

She noticed him regarding this strange contraption and smiled slightly. "Well, good morning, sleepy-head. Need a beer just yet?" she asked.

Beer he understood, at the very least. But he needed the rain first, and he said as much as he shook his head.

"Alright." Misato replied, her smile widening slightly. "You know where it is, generally." she paused for a moment as she looked down at her breakfast and sighed. "Man… maybe I should ask Shinji to do some shopping sometime. Whip something up that'll keep and reheat easily." she said quietly.

Much of what the words meant went over Penpen's head still, but he got the general idea, and the emotion behind, her forlorn statement. So, he walked over to her, tapping on her knee as had become far too common over the past few days to shake her out of whatever funk she was in. It was his job to be the sad, grumpy shut-in after all, and he said as such.

Misato looked down at him and smiled sadly. "Thanks, Penpen." she sighed again. "I wonder what goes on in that brain of yours sometimes…" she trailed off, looking into the middle distance as she took another spoonful of cereal.

Penpen took that as his cue to go get in the rain-maker.

After a nice, hot rain (one of the best things these humans did besides beer), he clawed a chintzy, somewhat coarse towel down from the counter that Misato had placed it on, Penpen opened the door half expecting one of the others, Woodwind and Firehair, to be there, waiting for him to get out.

But then he remembered that they were in other not-homes as well. The quiet was nice at first, especially after the little girl in his last not-home had nearly suffocated him on more than one occasion, but now he found it… somewhat stifling. And more than a little creepy.

As he walked over to the fridge and opened it, grabbing a familiar can of Yebisu beer, Misato, who had seemed to finish breakfast, called over to him from behind the contraption. "Just get a newspaper today, okay? I'm going to be in a meeting for a while, so I'll need it to be quiet."

He understood and replied as he cracked open the beer and slipped a straw that he had grabbed from the counter into it, sipping as he wandered the not-home in search of a sufficiently interesting newspaper.

Eventually, he found one with a sufficiently interesting picture on the front, a lot of humans in front of what looked like a very big building, waving things around. The symbols on the paper meant little to him, but he'd probably be interested in the pictures that were inside.

He waddled back to Misato's room and hopped onto his recliner again, setting the beer in the well-worn cup holder as he opened the newspaper and began to search for interesting symbols or pictures as he heard Misato's meeting begin.

It was a long meeting, and his beer had disappeared and the newspaper leafed through long before it had been concluded. Misato's voice rose in volume as time went on, and Penpen cringed internally as whatever meeting was going on out there seemed to become a shouting match.

Then, as Penpen waited in his recliner, the meeting became quiet. This, somehow, scared him even more than the shouting did. The quiet talking continued on for a while more, then it was silent.

As the silence stretched on, Penpen slowly got out of his recliner and waddled out into the kitchen. His concern grew as he observed Misato in front of the contraption, now silent and dark, her head in her arms.

Penpen approached slowly and gently tapped Misato's leg a few times. He was worried, and he expressed his concern in no uncertain terms.

As Misato lifted her head to look down at him, Penpen noted her puffy, red eyes. "Oh. Sorry if I kept you from getting a beer." she said quietly with a slightly wet chuckle. She took a deep breath before standing. "Come here."

She scooped Penpen up into her arms. Normally, he would protest such penguin-handling, but he knew she probably needed his support more than his bellyaching. They plopped down onto the couch, and simply sat there silently, the time that passed uncared for.

Then, after however long, Misato put Penpen on her knees at arm's length, and looked at him. Penpen didn't recognize this sort of look, a searching glare that seemed to pierce through him and scanned him up and down, only briefly meeting his eyes. He wondered somewhat what she was thinking, and decided to ask.

Misato blinked. "Oh. Sorry. You probably haven't seen me do that yet. You're… probably also a little too warm for comfort, huh?" she asked guiltily.

He didn't see what that had to do with the current situation, but he nodded as he agreed.

Misato chuckled as a comfortingly familiar gleam lit up in her eyes. "Well, let's see what we can do about that."

She jostled a little as she dug her little device out from her pocket, and tapped on it before putting it to her ear like she always did.

"Hey, Ritsky." she said as someone on the device spoke. "Do you think you could come over sometime soon for a few minutes?"

There was a pause as the voice on the little device replied.

"Yeah. I wanted your help in trying to do that thing you talked about with Penpen." a pause. "Sure. Tonight works."

Another long pause. After the voice on the other line finished, Misato nodded slowly. "Yeah. That's wonderful news. But… there's something I'll want to talk to you about. Tonight." a short, but heavy pause. "I'm still putting things back together. I'll be ready to talk about it when you get here."

A pause, then a sigh accompanied by a smile. "Thanks, Ritsuko. You're the best. See you then."

She hung up, then looked at Penpen with a smile as she pocketed her device. "Alright, buddy. Get ready to never need a freezer again."

Penpen was confused but intrigued. How could she, and the person she talked to, accomplish such a thing? He didn't really know. But he would find out. Tonight at least.

. . .

The day passed by mostly pleasantly. The beer that he had shared with Misato, and the several that came after, certainly only helped matters.

Head-tail, Misato's mate, came by for a moment, and they shared some alone time together. Penpen was more than happy to oblige them with their privacy. Human romance was… somewhat exhausting to be around sometimes.

Finally, it seemed, the time came, as a knock came at the door sometime in the early evening.

"Come in." Misato replied, and the person at the door entered. Penpen recognized her. It was White Coat, one of Misato's old friends alongside Head-tail.

They shared a brief hug, then White Coat looked down at Penpen. "So," she said in mock professionalism, "is our patient ready for his procedure?"

"Probably as ready as he'll ever be." Misato replied with a chuckle. "We've been waiting here all day, just kind of…" she trailed off as the slight smile that had accompanied her chuckle vanished. "Destressing." she settled on.

"I'm guessing that 'destressing' you've been doing has something to do with what you learned this morning." White Coat said, a concerned look in her eyes.

Misato nodded. "Yeah." she said with a concerning sense of finality. "After tomorrow… NERV will cease to exist."

White Coat's eyes went wide with shock. "How?" she asked numbly.

Misato sighed heavily. "I had a meeting with the U.N. Security Council, the Minister of Defense, and the Prime Minister. The U.N. forced the shutdown of NERV-2 in Germany. Lutenhahl is now looking for other lines of work. They were this close to shutting us down too before I convinced them to let us at least do the retrieval mission."

"It was a miracle I got even that far. And…" she paused. "It somehow gets worse from there."

"I somehow find that hard to believe." White Coat said incredulously.

"And yet it does." Misato replied grimly. "The U.N. wants the Evas back immediately, regardless of their state of repairs. I tried to argue that Daniel needed to look at them, but they didn't care. They want them by the end of the month. All of them. Even the ones we'll be recovering."

White Coat shook her head. "If SEELE tries anything else Eva sized, and they more than likely will, we're screwed if they do it before we can make any more Frame Titans."

"Yeah." Misato agreed. "You guys are doing good work, from what little you told me over the phone, but… how long before we can start producing them again?"

White Coat puffed her cheeks as she considered something silently for a moment. "Two weeks? Maybe three?"

Misato nodded slowly. "Hmmm. Okay." she said, equally slowly. "I've got… the beginnings of an idea."

Most of the conversation went over Penpen's flightless head. But he could still tell that, whatever they were talking about, it scared them, and deeply so. So, he waddled over to Misato's side, nuzzling her leg and voicing his support.

The two women looked down, and Misato chuckled. "I guess our shut-in is getting impatient." she said wryly.

"Well then," White Coat said, her relief at the change in subject evident even to Penpen, "let's not waste any more time and get to work, shall we?"

Misato picked him up and set him on the couch, and he sat down with an inquisitive look in his eyes as the two women kneeled and studied him intently.

"Okay," White Coat said as something appeared in her hand, a slender, short rod that was glowing with shifting colors at its tip, "the first thing you should know about Inscriptions on a living being, at least from what Izalith taught me, is that they are a little more complicated than they are inanimate objects. You have to tie them to a person's soul in order to power them, which cuts out the middleman of making a Metos Siphon from scratch, but it takes a little more skill to-"

"I appreciate the explanation, Doctor." Misato interrupted. "But how about I just watch with the Sight?"

White Coat closed her mouth as she touched the rod to Penpen's metal chestplate. "Alright, then. We'll start applying the Inscription here, in this engraving. I'll need you to take the scriber tool a few times in order to apply the effect you want to be done to it."

"Alright. Let me know when you need my touch." Misato replied.

With that, the two women fell silent and began… whatever they were doing. He felt the rod press gently on his chest, their hands tracing the symbols that had given Misato the inspiration for his name.

It was not an uncomfortable process, but every so often, whenever Misato took the rod and pressed just so, he felt an almost, but not quite unpleasant chill run through his body, causing him to shiver from time to time.

The process began to drag on, and Penpen grumbled at the prospect of not having at least some kind of beverage to drink while he waited for whatever this was to finish. All he got in reply was two grunts of concentration.

Finally, Misato took the rod and made one last swipe, and a comfortable chill washed over him, not seeming to leave after a few moments. To say that he enjoyed the sensation was a fair understatement, and he gave his thanks to his two practitioners.

"You're welcome, Penpen." Misato said as she stood, smiling at the penguin's evident pleasure.

White Coat continued to observe him silently, and Misato coughed pointedly after a moment. "Uh, Ritsky? Something wrong?" Misato asked.

White Coat shook her head. "No, no. The Inscription is working just fine, and power's flowing to it from his soul. There's just something… off." she said.

"Off?" Misato replied slightly incredulously. "About what? His Frame?"

White Coat simply nodded, and Penpen soon felt… something. 'Felt' wasn't the right description, though, for what Penpen experienced as he saw White Coat's eyes narrow in concentration.

"Well, what is it?" Misato asked after a moment's silence. "Surely, you haven't studied that many animal Frames just yet to just say that Penpen's Frame is 'off'." she said, bracketing the last word with fingered quotations.

"No." White Coat replied quietly. "But there's an outcropping of Frames that are disconnected from his core, somehow. Give me a moment, and…"

And as he experienced as White Coat seemed to move something into place, things… expanded for Penpen. He looked at the world around him, the people around him, with new eyes.

"Woah." he said. "This is… weird."

White Coat, no no no, Ritsuko's, eyes went wide as she stood slowly.

"What's going on?" Misato and Penpen asked, only one of them aloud. Ritsuko replied by connecting to Misato as she continued to stare down at the penguin on the couch.

"So," she asked casually, "can you explain how you can down 3 beers in quick succession and stay basically sober? I've been wondering about that for a while."

Misato looked at Ritsuko with a questioning glare as Penpen replied. "I don't know." he said, giving the mental image of a human shrug. "It's supposed to do something to you besides taste good?"

Misato looked at her longtime roommate with eyes wide in shock. "Uh…" she said aloud. "You know, I'm jealous. What with all the work I do." she said across the link Ritsuko had since stepped out of.

"Really? That bad, huh?" Penpen replied. He paused for a moment. "Hold on, I need a second to get used to all… this."

"You and me both, buddy." Misato replied. This was going to be interesting to introduce the others to. Both person and penguin found themselves comfortably amused by such a thought.