Revised
-Author's Preliminary-
Senior requirements building, important decisions concerning the rest of my life need to be made. WAHHHHHH, I'm so scared, I'm not ready....!!! I want to join Martial Arts but that means NO anime. Especially seeing how I can't spend any money until my checking account is back up to par. My graduation garb and all is $206!!! That's half of my savings!!! Damn it!!! Anywho, I'll try to write a little bit everyday. I don't know how things will go until May 7, the day of my senior portfolio. I have to get all that done, also along with all of my internship stuff. I'm pressed with obligations majorly.
-End Preliminary-
-Gendo's Office-
"Oh, now why have you not informed me fully about the net part of the scenario?"
"Well now, Ikari, Something you should not know, so I can use you as well.
Gendo raised his brow. "Oh, is that so? Not like there is nothing I'm not prepared for."
"Well see."
-Exit Gendo's Office-
Revision Note: You BEST read the previous chapters, I inserted a new scene that caused a new sub timeline through the chapters that is now coming to the fore. YOU MUST read the scenes that are marked in bold "new scenes." You would also find it to your enjoyment to read it all over, to refresh, and catch the scene changes I made, some are very amusing.
Complicated Feelings
Chapter 13-Maya's Journal
Maya walked calmly through the halls of Nerv with great effort. She wanted to run, to run save her sempai for her prison as soon as possible. But even her sempai would tell her being reckless and failing is worse than having to endure a little more and succeeding. Maya did not like it, but it's better for her to take her time and succeed so that her sempai would not lose her one only chance at escape from Gendo.
She did not know exactly where she was kept, she could not seem to find anyone in Tokyo three that remotely matched Ritsuko's patern except her clone. Maya knew the difference between that bitch clone and her real sempai. Her sempai had a damaged heart, not so suddenly fixed and upbeat in one or two days. She knew something was up right away. That is why she was walking down the corridor to Gendo's office with the other techs: the long haired Shigeru, and the short haired, four-eyed Hyuuga trailing behind her.
*******
(Initializing Jim Bader "A Tale of Two Wallets" Technique, *Character Diary!*)
Maya's Journal:
It has been along time since I have seen Ritsuko sempai. We have had to take up the work she did when she was here. The other techs and I never realized just how much she did. Well, I did. My sempai was impressive with computers and technology. She could probably make a PC from a stuffed animal. I could only hope to be like her one day.
It felt so wrong without sempai there behind me, correcting my mistakes, showing me how to do something more efficiently. I kept glancing over my shoulder expecting her wise advice to help me do my work, but no advice came.
I was the first to get uneasy about not seeing sempai much since two or three days ago. We saw her every now and then, but she was so quiet. I would make a mistake and she wouldn't even say much to me about it. She might point at the error in my computations, or just correct them herself by reaching over. I, as usual, marveled at the speed and accuracy of her input. But there was something missing; her finesse, her love for problem solving, her heart. Something had to be bothering my sempai. I had to know. I decided to lightly probe.
"Ritsuko sempai, I have not seen you much in the last few days, are you alright?" I asked her nonchalantly.
"Uh.... yes...I'm....living."
That wasn't an answer, not an acceptable one. "I'm living?" That does not necessarily mean you are fine. If anything, answering with that phrase means something is wrong or things are less than ideal.
"So...what did you do while you were away. It was kind of hard without you." I looked at sempai directly this time. Ritsuko kept her eyes on what she was doing. She was not working as fast as I remember her normally.
"I... worked on some things that I can't say without high clearance."
Maya did not think that sounded right. They were the main techs that even worked directly with the MAGI and EVAs. There should not be much classified to them.
It was then I witnessed Ritsuko open her desk. She reached in and looked around. I quickly looked back toward my holoscreen. I looked back after a moment, when I figured she was no longer looking my way, and witnessed her put something in her lab coat pocket. I did not know what it was, I only saw her hand in her lab coat. Ritsuko sempai then turned and walked quietly out the door. The whole scene was eerie. I hoped that it was something that she needed for the "high clearance" project she said she worked on.
**********
The next day sempai came into the office. She was cheery and hummed a tone. I was happy for her; perhaps her project was done.
"Morning sempai!"
"Hello, Maya." I blushed. I still do not completely understand why she has that effect on me. Just her speaking to me makes me feel so special. It feel like I'm going to melt into the floor, and all the work I do for her is worth her just noticing me.
"You seem better today Ritsuko sempai," I said as I was recovering from my blush.
"Um…yes I am. Well, time to get to work. Can't talk all day. Lets start on analyzing the performance of the MAGI. We will then perform a operating system upgrade."
Multiple "hai" echoed through the room.
Hyuuga took to checking the hardware via the MAGI self-analyzers, hardware being his specialty. Shigeru took to checking any recent self changes to could. The MAGI were made self adapting. I, myself, went to analyzing the code and what subroutines could be kept, the ones that did basic operations, and did not affect the artificial intelligence. I have yet to completely understand how the artificial intelligence works. Sempai is the only one who ever deals with that part of the MAGI.
Ritsuko took to leaning back like she always did, with a clipboard in one hand, the other hand on the key board. I could feel her gaze when she looked over my shoulder. My finger slipped. She reached over to correct my work, and I reveled in her closeness, until she shoved me over a bit and finished fixing my mistake. I was surprised by her sudden shove, she was never rude about my mistakes.
"Now Ibuki, this is plain idiocy. How did you manage to press one button and screw all this up? I don't know why I ever approved of you getting this position. I should put you with the workstation computer techs."
Ritsuko sempai, called me by my…my family name! She normally always called me by my given name, Maya. I had made mistakes like this before, but never had sempai responded to me like this.
"Sempai….I'm sorry. I didn't mean t….."
"Sorry doesn't cut it for you your incompetence."
My jaw had now dropped, then my head dropped, and my hand slid off the keyboard to knock over my coffee mug on the adjacent table. I felt…so bad. My…sempai.
Hyuuga and Shigeru turned to look on at the scene, shocked. They felt like their stomachs were churning at what just transpired. Hyuuga spoke up.
"She, did not mean to. She won't do that again. Right Maya?"
I did not respond, I just stayed hunched over staring at the floor. Ritsuko was giving a cold stare at my back. Hyuuga and Shigeru looked at each other.
I left early that day, and the upgrades weren't even started, only the preparations for it. I trudged through the hall. My mind tried to rationalize what happened, and of who was that speaking to me. I finally came to a conclusion: That was NOT my sempai! I held my head up after that and marched down the corridor to a remote terminal from which I could check the surveillance history. I thought back to how sempai had been before. That was probably her real sempai a few days ago. She followed her movements through the halls of NERV, until her sempai had come to the Commander's office. She could not see inside of his office because it was a blank zone. Top secret, with no surveillance.
I fast forward the recording and then saw sempai exiting. Only she was wearing a new lab coat and clothes. Maybe the rumors about her and the commander were true. I shuddered at the thought of them together. My sempai couldn't like that cold bastard. She paused the recording and zoomed. She saw her hair was of a slight shorter length. Then there was one more thing she noticed that settled whether it was her real sempai or not. This "sempai" did not have a mole.
It was then I planned to go in that office and find what happened, even if I died trying. I don't know why I would do such a thing, or why I felt so strong about doing this. But I would eventually come to understand.
**********
Gendo was below on the level with the Rei replacements. He gazed over them in thought and reflection. He might not ever need to replace Rei. This one's life span seems to be extraordinarily long. Normally something, or someone would have killed her by now. He wondered what was keeping this Rei going. He had noticed a slight change in her since first contact with the Third. Then there was the way he saw them act around each other. He started to notice a bond, first a friendly one, then a bond beyond normal human boundaries. They seemed to know how each other felt and reflected each other. He had begun to suspect a empathic bond.
It would make sense now that the Third is now part angel. This was something to compensate in his scenario. Shinji would have a VERY significant effect on the state of the First when the time comes. He would have to take steps to use the second in place of the third, and use Rei and Shinji together as one key for his plan.
It was then, that the siren sounded.
***********
Asuka felt warm. The warmth around her felt nice. She was crying on Shinji the last she remember, and she probably fell asleep on him. She snuggled a little closer before to enjoy it for a little longer before she would open her eyes. She felt a stir on her rear. She felt a light squeeze. Asuka's eyes flew open and she flushed. She was so surprised by it, that her first instinct to smash what ever was touching her was forgotten.
She opened her eyes to find she was resting on Shinji's stomach, and looked upward to see he was resting on someone else's legs. She followed the body in a school uniform to a tangle of blew hair resting on her rear. The girl looked like she was sitting upright, and when she feel asleep, fell over on her. Shinji must have had a lot of weight on him. It was a very crowded, yet comfortable way to sleep. She then noticed the hand on her rear. The person in question was using her rear as a pillow. She must have squeezed it trying to fluff it like it was. But then….
BLUE HAIR!!!! Asuka's mind screamed. She reached down to move it to the side and saw it was Rei. Rei sighed contentedly for a moment, and reached up to hold Asuka's hand when she felt contact. Asuka's anger dissipated at the gingerly touch. Asuka wanted to stay angry, but for once, she saw the doll as a person. She decided to wake Shinji up first.
"psst, Shinji. Shinji, wake up!"
"Hmm, what?" Shinji stirred on Rei's thigh.
"Wake up you baka!"
"What, Asuka…huh?" Shinji realized he was covered with two females. It was a good thing no one would probably never hear about this. At least, they better not. It was then it clicked that Rei and Asuka did not normally get along. He gulped.
To Shinji's confusion, Asuka turned and ran her hair through Rei's hear slightly, before catching herself and said, "Hey, wake up Ayanami."
Rei opened her eyes to find Asuka looking right in them. Her heart lurched into motion and sudden adrenaline started pumping, she let her content smile fall, back to her expressionless mask.
Asuka sat up in Shinji's lap, "So you aren't a complete doll after all. It's all an act."
Rei was confused for a moment. What was happening?
"I saw you smile. I never thought you smiled."
Rei blinked and blushed. Asuka wasn't supposed to see that.
"Aha! Yep…thought so. You should be like a normal person more often."
"But, Pilot Souryu, aren't you going to…attack me for being here, and with Shinji in my lap, " Rei questioned as she realized she was on Asuka's rear, and flushed. She sat up vertically.
"Well, I'm not going to attack you, but I do want to address the Shinji thing, just not now."
Rei was confused. Asuka was acting different. Rei couldn't find herself to dislike her as much as she normally did. She found the way she was acting now as a relief and refreshing.
It was then, the siren sounded.
**********
"Misato, take care of the problem," Gendo's voice echoed in her head from her NERV issued cell.
Misato had just got the order to take care of the spy. She knew who the spy was. She did not know whether she should pretend she did not, or do her sworn duty. She was in so much inner turmoil, that her feelings did not feel like her own; she was to overwhelmed to understand them all. She got in her car and slowly began driving to the place she knew Kaji would be.
"Kaji, you jerk."
It was then, the siren sounded.
*******
Maya's Journal Continues:
I opened the doors to Ikari's office, and it shocked me that they weren't locked. It made me think there must have been some sort of traps in there. I walked around the room, checking for indents or slight lines in the floor indicating traps like Indiana Jones. I did not find any. I called clear to the others.
Maya searched around the room and found no sign of her sempai at first. She came to the edge of a wall and found a blonde hair. She blinked. She called out to Hyuuga and Shigeru.
"Hey, I found one of her hairs. I think that must mean there is a hidden door."
"Um, maybe nothing is wrong, and that woman really is Ritsuko," Shigeru said. "We haven't found any proof yet really."
I gave them a hard stare that brooked no exceptions, "THAT is NOT my SEMPAI!"
I turned indignantly back toward the fall, and hit the wall with my arm on the turn, pressing a part of the tree of life, which is continued on the wall from the ceiling. The wall pulled back, and I figured out that the lines from the door in the wall were concealed by the drawing of the tree of life. It was not easy to notice by the way the engraved white lines flowed on the walls and ceiling. I was the first one in. I gasped. Sempai was naked in a sort of hanging cage. She had some dirty water and packaged food rations. It looked like she hasn't touched the rations.
I started to cry, my sobbing heard throughout the room, causing Shigeru and Hyuuga to rush in, and the hunched Ritsuko to wake slowly in and look my way.
"Maya…." She said affectionately, but weakly.
"Sempai! " I rushed towards her prison, with the intent of removing her, and protecting her forever.
It was then, the siren sounded.
-End Chapter-
-End Book 1 of Scenario-
******
-Author's notes-
I think I over did the "Gendo is a bastard" thing, perhaps surpassed it, and made him into something much more. I might edit the past chapters to fix him being so over demented. I think this had nice emotional content, and that is what I intended to have when I first started this series.
I also finally finished the first part of the series. The next book I might have pre-readers, but I tend not to need or want them much if I just took the time to go over them.
-End Notes-
*OMAKE*
(Omitted due to the emotional factor.)
*END OMAKE*
