Intermission:
The Adventures of the Embryonic Adam
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Sprouting four small, two toed legs, the yellow, spiny, wide eyed little yellow creature crawls out of the utility duct that it had entered from the Commander's office.
Looking about, curious in its embryonic state, Adam crawls down the wall into the women's locker room. It perks its ears up at the sounds of metal clanging and motion, leaping off the wall and onto the tops of a row of lockers.
Clicking, the small reptilian form scurries along at the sound of an inhabitant humming. The singer it finds is a woman with short brown hair, her uniform on the bench, as she changes, in her underclothes, to her civilian garb.
To this sight, Adam gives off a series of loud clicks.
The woman turns, looking up…and sees the reptilian form sporting a deformed humanoid face with large eyes staring at her. Her, more importantly, her chest, while clicking its mouth.
Understandably, she screams, grabbing her clothes and running out.
Adam watches her go, and then convulses, emitting a series of wet gurgles. It stands on its hind legs, testing the legs out as it realizes millions of years of evolution in a matter of seconds.
Dancing cheerfully, the little creature hops down to the bench, and then the floor, running out in a lopsided gait.
Ritsuko walks into her office to find the previously mentioned young woman examining herself in the mirror, mostly her eyes, pulling them open so she can check her pupils for dialation.
"Maya, what are you doing?" she asks.
Maya Ibuki, Lieutenant, bridge bunny, and Akagi's assistant, turns.
"I…was checking for any symptoms of hallucination, Sempai," she says, "I'm sorry, but I thought I saw something in the locker room."
"Such as?"
"Small, yellow, scaled, four legs and a tail."
"An iguana?"
"No…it had a human face. Like a fetal pig from a biology dissection."
There is never a good moment to ask someone close to you if they have recently had an MRI or CAT scan, Ritsuko realizes. Even less so to make a declaration of insanity on one's own assistant. But if anything, she has learned tact. She knows what to ask, and most importantly, how to diagnose.
"You haven't had much sleep lately, have you?" she asks.
"No, Sempai."
"I thought so," Ritsuko says, patting Maya on the arm, "Especially with how much work the recovery efforts on Unit 01 took. Take the rest of the day off. Get some sleep, and I'll talk with you tomorrow. Understood?"
Maya nods, smiling faintly at her mentor's attention.
"Yes, Sempai," she says, and walks out of the office, leaving Ritsuko to a brief pondering.
"Yellow?" she asks herself, "Where would she get that image?"
See Adam.
See Adam run.
See Adam run in front of a vending machine.
See Adam realize he has not eaten since Second Impact.
See Adam climb into the vending machine and proceed to eat all of the contents, quickly learning how to open wrapped sandwiches after realizing it doesn't like how plastic tastes.
See Adam collapse to the bottom of the vending machine with a contented moan and a bulging belly, before falling out of the slot and stumbling through the empty hallways to find a quiet, soft place to lie down.
See Adam realize he doesn't like instant noodles.
See Adam yack up a small portion of it on the floor, before running down the hall.
See Adam perk his head out from behind the corner as someone slips and falls on it, letting out a yelp.
Maya hands in the air for a moment, slipping on the hacked up noodles and collapsing to the floor in a spectacular heap.
She looks up from her sprawled position, catching a glimpse of a blur of yellow…and begins laughing hysterically.
She continues laughing that way for a small time, until the other two bridge bunnies find her and, shrugging and chalking it up to work, heft her up and carry her back to Dr. Akagi's office.
Adam finds his way back into the ductwork, skittering through the interior of the NERV base. Evolution once more takes hold, giving Adam a remarkable sense of smell and night vision, allowing him to seek out what smells to him like a good place to sleep.
His vision lets him navigate the dark air ducts, climbing higher and higher through the facility and finally through the narrow gratings of the dark office it came from.
There lies the warm and comfortable place it smelled, the briefcase with many papers in it.
Papers are wood, and wood is warm, and many papers together are very warm, Adam thinks to himself. And so, Adam hops up onto the desk her escaped from earlier that day, climbing into the briefcase, and with the back of it open to the door and blocking his view, contentedly falls asleep.
That would be one reason he does not make a sound when the briefcase closes on him.
Commander Ikari locks the briefcase, picking it up and turning to Fuyutsuki.
"I'm going for the day," he says, "If Rei calls, tell her to call me. I asked her to observe the Third Child and to tell me if any problems have arisen."
"Understood," Fuyutsuki responds, "Remember, keep off your feet. I'm not a medical doctor but I am old enough to tell you how to recover."
Ikari grins, nodding.
"As you say, Professor."
Ikari straightens his face, pushing his glasses back up his nose, and walks out of the office. The briefcase sways back and forth in his hands, as the Commander walks in a brisk pace the distance between his office and the maglevs leading to his apartment.
Ignoring all the people he passes, the Commander's thoughts, as always, center on his developing plans. How to work things in, possible changes, even the ultimate goal.
What he does not figure is the telepathic lizard/human sleeping in his briefcase, dreams startled by the thoughts of the one carrying him.
Sitting in his chair on the maglev, Ikari grimaces at the small shooting, burning pain in his seat. Pushing thoughts of pain to the back of his mind, he opens the briefcase…and for a moment, stares at the sleeping form of the being that just made a bed out of his papers.
If not for the fact that he evolved stronger legs, was bigger, and had its eyes closed, Ikari would have recognized Adam right off the bat.
As it is, Ikari wonders just how hard he hit his head.
He looks up, looking around to see that he is, in fact, alone in the maglev car and that there is no gas coming out of the air vents, and then looks back down at the briefcase.
He does not know that evolution has taken hold once more and granted Adam an enhanced version of a chameleon's ability to blend in to its surroundings. He only sees that there IS, in fact, no longer a yellow lizard thingy with a person's face in his briefcase.
"Hm," he says to himself, "I was always told that narcotics make you see gremlins. To each their own."
He takes the book from the inside pocket of the briefcase, closing it, and begins reading as the train speeds along.
Camouflaged via the shifting pigments of its cells, Adam climbs out of the briefcase. He looks around the Spartan apartment, clicking his tongue before hopping off the simple table. Looking for something, anything, of interest, he walks between Ikari's legs as the Commander walks to the other side of the living room/bedroom and to the answering machine lying by the simple bed.
"It's me," the female voice on the machine says, "I'm busy tonight. My assistant's having some sort of breakdown, and the Major seems to be going insane, to. I'll talk with you tomorrow."
Ikari grimaces, shaking his head, and turns to the briefcase as the phone within it rings.
Adam deftly dodges Ikari, jumping on the bed before finding a hint of color in the room.
"Rei?" Ikari says, "Yes. A new student? Very well, observe her. If she becomes a threat, then yes. Very well. Excellent. And Shinji, as well? Good. I will talk with you later. Good bye."
As Ikari closes the phone, Adam hops onto the long table propped against the wall, where rests, among other things, a single framed photo.
Of Ikari, a woman with brown hair, and a small baby in her arms. Adam tilts his head, examining the picture with interest, trying to place the smiling Ikari and the somber Ikari.
He places, with astounding ability, the name Shinji to the baby. After all, even if it were not detectable by the layman, Ikari referred to the name 'Shinji' as one of his blood, much like Lilith would refer to any Lilim as such.
Connections are made, thoughts put themselves into place, and Adam decides he will act on behalf of the greater good to connect the smiling and somber Ikaris once more, even if it is not normally his place.
It is then that another stage of evolution takes place, and Adam gains the next extent of camouflage ability: Shape shifting.
There is a small tensing of muscle and tearing of skin, but Adam feels little pain as his reptilian form turns into a 6" version of Yui Ikari.
Adam makes a cracking sound from his throat, a telepathic probe picking up mannerisms and long-suppressed memories, and then causing a brief burst of pain to force Ikari to turn.
Ikari's glasses fall to the floor. His jaw falls open.
Adam decides that Ikari needs to sit.
One AT field-borne push later and Ikari is sitting in the apartment's sole recliner.
Adam hops off the table, walking with a female gait to the human, hopping onto his knee and then onto his shoulder, turning his head to face him.
Another telepathic probe brings to Adam the voice patterns and mannerisms of the departed woman, and gives Adam what he needs to begin their talk.
"You've been very, very bad…"