Evangelion Testing Chamber 3-Y
"You know, it feels like it's been forever since we've actually done some sync tests." Asuka proclaimed over the comms, trying to stave off the boredom that came with these tests.
"It's only been a week? We had one right before the Angel attack." Shinji responded as he watched Leader and Shiki tinkering with the test plug controls.
"I wouldn't call you getting kidnapped by a giant spider an 'attack'. It was… an incursion maybe?"
"Well, this is technically my first sync test." Kotone added, trying to distract herself. "And it's boring! Would it kill them to install solitaire or something on these things?"
"The program architecture of the Evangelion doesn't lend itself to programs not specifically made for it, and even then we're working with a tight data limit." Maya explained, frowning as the stream of data from the test unfolded before her. "But let's put a pin in that for now. Asuka? Shinji? Are you two doing anything different than usual? Anything unusual thought processes?"
"No." Asuka immediately lied, unwilling to admit that her mind has been occasionally wandering to the thought of intimate and unnecessarily detailed dragonic romance.
"Kinda?" Shinji admitted, trying to formulate his next response. "Have you ever contemplated parallel universes?" Everyone suddenly turned their attention to Shinji, who was now suddenly feeling very self-conscious.
"Could you elaborate on that Shinji?" Maya really hoped this got her an answer to the weird fluctuations she was receiving. She wanted to impress her Senpai when she got back.
"Yeah, what the hell are you talking about this time Third?" Leader and Shiki gave each other a look, wondering where this was going.
"Well, I'm just wondering if there are parallel universes, and what they're like. Like, uh, is there a reality where we're all penguins and Pen-Pen is a human?"
"Shinji." Misato spoke up with a touch of concern in her voice. "Did you by chance eat something from the back of the cabinet labeled 'Pen-Pen's special treats'?"
"No? Why would I eat penguin food?"
"No reason. Just checking." Misato was glad Ritsuko wasn't here to give her that look she always gave her whenever she did something irresponsible.
"Right, anyway. I'm just thinking about stuff like that." Maya's lips formed a straight line as she contemplated the results the screen displayed.
"So. Rei. How are you doing?" Maya tried to get a reading on who was technically the most stable pilot.
"I am trying to figure out where to get a banana cream pie and ten gallons of olive oil." Maya's head hit her desk with a reverberating thud and a pained groan. "Possibly also a panda.
Tokyo-3 First Municipal Junior High School, the same time
Touji and Kensuke stared ahead blankly, their eyes devoid of light. They were dead to the world around them, not even noticing when Hikari stomped up to them.
"Aida! Suzuhara! Where have you been?! You haven't been to school for days!" This failed to elicit a response from either of them, only Kensuke's eyes seemed to regain some focus. "Well?"
"….I love you…." Touji responded without much thought, his mind light-years away.
"Eh? EEEEHHHHHHHHHH?! Suzuhara!? Well I don't, I mean I think that, but it's like, this is so….." Hikari was reduced to a stammering, blushing mess, her imagination running wild.
"Class Rep." Kensuke interrupted as he regained some light in his eyes, pulling Hikari back into reality. "It's not like that. He's repeating song lyrics, watch. Hey Touji, how are you?"
"Cinderella…..." Touji muttered, giving off a thousand-yard stare.
"Yeah, he's not all back yet. We had an extended run-in with the Wild Wyvern of Tatsumi and the Inugami of Inaba." Kensuke explained, but Hikari only had more questions.
"What? Who? Aida, what are you-"
"Class Rep, it's best if you don't ask questions. Any answer I have would make little sense without explaining a lot of backstory. And neither of us has time for that." Hikari opened her mouth before snapping it shut with a scowl.
"Fine. But the two of you have so much clean-up duty to do." Kensuke sighed, expecting something like this would happen.
"Hey all!" Mana burst into the conversation like a giant pitcher of fruit punch through a wall. "Where's Kotone and Shinji?" Hikari blinked at Mana's sudden entrance, suddenly deeply annoyed at having to deal with her obsession with Shinji. The Kotone part was new though.
"NERV business. The four of them are not going to be here today." Hikari explained, hoping that would deflect the intrusive redhead away from them.
"I see. And that Soryu girl hasn't come down with a sudden case of assassination by an internationally renowned hitman, has she?" Hikari paused as the full weight of that sentence hit her like a wrecking ball through a skyscraper.
"What? No? Why would you ask that?"
"Oh, no reason. Just trying to figure out if I need to refund a purchase." Mana muttered the last part under her breath, cursing the fact that not only did she get admonished for hiring an assassin to kill one of the defenders of humanity, but said assassin had the audacity to not succeed! "I'll get outta your hair, toodles friendos!" Mana skips off, humming a chipper tune.
"There's something off about her right? It's not just me who can see that, yeah?" Kensuke asked, staring at Mana as she left.
"No, I get what you're saying. She's…... weird." Hikari confirmed.
"Glass slipper…." Touji added eloquently.
Evangelion Testing Chamber 3-Y
"Alright, I think we have everything we need for today's sync test." Maya addressed the pilots as she filed away the data.
"Finally! So can we go now?" Kotone was getting antsy staying cooped up in the Entry Plug.
"Not yet, we have some new weapons we want you to test out in the simulator, so we're going to load up some mock fights for you to try them out."
"Hell yeah!" Asuka pumped her fist in jubilation, simulation time was one of her favorite activities.
"Well it's something aside from staring at nothing for hours so I'll take what I can get." Kotone sighed, making a mental note to request music for next time.
"Baka?" Leader seemed interested at the prospect of new weapons.
"Anta Baka." Shiki rolled her eye, hiding her curiosity about the new armaments.
"I just want a better gun than the Pallet Rifle, those haven't exactly been….. useful." Shinji couldn't recall an instance where the Pallet Rifle had ever been effective against an Angel.
"Pilot Ikari is right, the Pallet Rifle's performance has been sub-par during its engagements." Rei added in her own two cents on the effectiveness of the standard-issue Evangelion rifle.
"Well we have some options available for you, choose from the display while we set things up." Maya turned off the comms and let out an exhausted sigh.
"So….." Misato began, patting Maya on the back. "Wanna tell me what's wrong?"
"It's the sync scores. Kotone and Rei's are stable if a bit on the low end. But Asuka and Shinji's are fluctuating far too much to get an accurate reading! And nothing is wrong with our equipment, I double-checked! It's almost as if the Evas themselves are distracted!"
"Initiating Training Scenario Delta, standby for simulation start." Makoto intoned in the background.
"Weird. Well if it's nothing we can deal with on our end we should probably wait until Rits gets back, she'll probably have a clue about what's going on." Maya scowled at the data as if it was mocking her, preventing her attempts to impress her Senpai.
"I guess." Maya ground out. "If nothing else we managed to get a base for Kotone's sync rate."
"There you go! Sometimes you gotta look at the silver lining!" Misato gave Maya a hearty slap on the back, causing Maya to jerk forward.
"Uh, Maya?" Aoba interjected confusion and worry in his voice. "We have a bit of a problem."
"Are you serious?! What now!?" Maya half screamed as she brought up the simulation display on her console, revealing that Unit-01's simulation body had phased through the boundaries of the artificial reality. "What. But…. How? That shouldn't be possible?!"
"I don't know!" Shinji yelled as Leader and Shiki fiddled with the entry plug's system. "I jumped backwards to dodge the Angel and pressed a button and now I'm in a void of nothingness with a weird vibrating four-legged bug whispering promises of unlimited speed please help." Maya's eye twitched as everyone tried to troubleshoot a solution to Shinji falling out of reality.
"Could something go right today?" Maya growled, suddenly understanding why Ritsuko needed a sudden vacation.
Tokyo-3, Third Street Bar
"-So obviously I ran out of there like a bat out of hell." Kaji chuckled as he took another sip of his whiskey. "But enough about my misadventures, how have you been doing Kyoya?" Kyoya Kenzaki, Section 2 agent, shrugged as he took a sip of his beer.
"Can't complain. Actually, I could complain now that I know you're skulking about." Kaji feigned shock as he exaggeratingly gripped his heart.
"You wound me, old friend! Did our time in college not teach you of my better qualities?"
"No. In fact, I would say it taught me more of your worst qualities." Kaji mockingly collapsed to the bar counter as if mortally wounded. "But still, it is good to see you again, despite the trouble you'll bring."
"What can I say? Trouble and I are old bedfellows."
"Still, at least you're not as bad as the mini-redheaded menace that has Section 2 trying to put out enough fires to make the sun jealous."
"That bad, huh?" Kyoya shrugs.
"Well, not for me at least. My division is tasked with protecting employees and weeding out any unsavory elements. We don't deal with them all that much. I hear the cybersecurity and requisitions oversight divisions are having a hell of a time though."
"I can imagine. Especially if they're anything like the full-sized Asuka." Kaji resists the urge to rub his ankles.
"Yeah. Well, I should head off. It was nice catching up with you Kaji." Kyoya drops a few bills on the bar for his drink. He gets up to leave before turning to look at Kaji. "Oh, and keep your nose clean won't you?"
"Of course! You know me, the cleanest nose in the business."
"You're right, I do know you. Which is why I'm warning you." He walks off without another word.
"Geez, he acts as if I'm going to do something stupid."
"Anta Baka." A smooth voice interrupts Kaji.
"Gyah!?" Kaji swivels around to see a black and white Minisuka bedecked in a trench coat and fedora sitting on the bar, a thimble full of seltzer water in her hand. "When did you get there?"
"Baka." Noir intones as if narrating the scene like an old-time detective show. "Anta Baka."
"I don't understand? Do you need my help?" Noir downs her drink before jumping to the floor, wandering off as smooth jazz starts playing. Kaji turns to the jukebox and the man who requested the music.
"What?" The man asks as Kaji stares at him. "I like to listen to jazz as I drink." Kaji gives the man a flat look as he turns his attention to the barkeep.
"So owner, she comes around often?" Kaji gives the man an inquisitive look.
"The small Noir dame? Yeah. Comes around every so often to order a seltzer and monologue." The barkeep begins cleaning a glass with practiced efficiency.
"Really? How does she pay for it?" The barkeep snorts humorously.
"It's like a drop of seltzer, I ain't enough of a miser to charge for that. 'Sides, she livens up the place when she comes in like she's from a crime movie and acts all serious. The drunkards trying to hit on the eight-inch dame also are a hilarious sight to see." Kaji pauses as he redoubles his attention on the barkeep.
"Hits on."
"Yup."
"As in they flirt with her."
"That's what that tends to mean, yeah."
"With the intent to romance her."
"Uh….. yeah?"
"Do you have their names by chance?" The barkeep pauses at the sudden question.
"What? Why?" Kaji leans in close to the barkeep, his face the picture of stone-cold fury and his voice low and deep.
"Because despite how small that girl is she is only thirteen years old not to mention she's a mini version of a girl who I consider like a daughter. So I would very much like to meet these drunkards who think they can flirt with teenagers without any consequences." The barkeep audibly gulps as his eyes shift around, gauging if anyone was paying attention to the two of them. Upon deeming they were free from scrutiny, the barkeep grabs a slip of paper and writes down a list of names.
"Here." He slips Kaji the list. "That's all I know. You didn't hear anything from me." Kaji's face returns to its default roguish grin.
"Much obliged." Kaji downs the rest of his drink and slips the barkeep a larger-than-usual bill. "Keep the change, just keep an eye out for any other….. disturbances, okay?" The barkeep nods vigorously as Kaji walks off. "Now…." Kaji eyes the list of names with disdain. "Who here has won an all-expenses-paid express trip to a Siberian gulag?" At the end of the day, NERV and other local businesses would find many employees getting inexplicably transferred to very out-of-the-way branches.
Tokyo-3 Monorail, later that day
"I can still feel my QPUs misaligned….." Shinji mutters as he stares at his hands, clenching and unclenching them.
"You say something Shinji?" Asuka looks up from her Segatendo Dual Gear with a raised eyebrow. Shinji snaps out of his absentminded state and turns to look out the train window.
"No…. just contemplating what to make for dinner." Shinji stares at the horizon, the setting Sun giving him a strange sense of deja vu and dread.
"Shinji," Asuka begins, giving her fellow pilot an odd look. "It's Misato's turn to 'cook' tonight." It didn't need to be said that cooking in this instance meant ordering something out. "You must be really out of it if you forgot that." Asuka paused her game about digging up fossils to give Shinji her mostly undivided attention. "Are you still out of whack from that whole 'clipping out of virtual reality' business?" Asuka was still a bit peeved that she did get to test out the new weapons, but it's not his fault some idiot programmer didn't put a speed cap on jumping backwards.
"A bit." Shinji admitted, turning to look at her. "It was weird." Leader patted Shinji on the shoulder comfortingly while Shiki just snuggled deeper into Shinji's pocket as she napped. "Also I've been having some weird dreams lately." Asuka raised an eyebrow at this.
"Oh? Like nightmares?" Nightmares she was familiar with. Though lately, she was having more unusual nightmares she couldn't remember but left her feeling an odd sense of loss instead of her usual nightmares filled with that day that she could remember and left her with…. No! Repress those thoughts! You're dealing with the idiot now!
"Maybe? I can barely remember them when I wake up. I can remember….. red earth, white vultures, screaming, fighting, and an explosion. Nothing…. concrete, just fragments. Shiki's eye shot wide open as she turned to look at Leader, whose eyes were similarly wide.
"Hmmm. Wish I could help you, but I'm no dream specialist. But you probably shouldn't worry, they're just random dreams. If they were important, you would probably remember them." Asuka discreetly filed away the fact that she has had similarly unrememorable dreams to be investigated later. "If you worry about things you can't control you'll run yourself ragged. So don't worry about it and focus on something important."
"Something important…" Honestly, he often worried about things he couldn't control, but if Asuka was advising him not to then he probably should. After all, she was much smarter than he was, so she probably knew what she was talking about. It didn't occur to Shinji that Asuka herself often worried about things she couldn't control.
"Yeah! Like a hobby or something."
"I don't really have a hobby…." Asuka blinked as she stared at him.
"Really? What do you do for fun then?" Asuka refused to believe that a teenager like Shinji didn't have some sort of hobby.
"Cook and clean mostly. I guess I also listen to music, but I haven't really done that in a while now that I think about it." His S-DAT has been left untouched for some time, considering he was busy with pilot stuff and whatever shenanigans he had to deal with on a day-to-day basis. "And I used to play some music."
"Oh?" Asuka's interest was caught. "You play? What instrument!"
"Cello. But I'm not very good."
"Well, practice then! Do you think I got this amazing skill at Eva piloting just overnight? No, I practiced long and hard to get this good!" Asuka brushed her hair aside as she crossed her arms over her chest. "But a cello huh? Pretty classy choice. I practiced with a violin myself a while back. Maybe we can get Ayanami and Kotone to get a viola and another violin and we can be the Eva Pilot string quartet?"
"Might be interesting, but I can't imagine Kotone playing a viola or violin."
"Fair, she seems more like a guitar or bass type. But anyway, are you a fan of classical?" Asuka inquired with thinly veiled interest. "Got any favorite composers?" Shinji's eyes brightened as he got the chance to talk about something he was interested in, not noticing Leader and Shiki's hushed whispers.
"Well, have you heard about Antionio Salieri?"
Minisuka Secret Base, one week later
"Alright." Leader addressed the Minisukas present. "What have we got? Professor?" Professor adjusted her glasses.
"Translating Mama's note into something usable and coherent is going as well as expected. We're not any closer to reversing the Contact Experiment, but we understand more about how it works."
"That's as well as can be expected, for now, Honey Observation Team?"
"Well, Mana's focusing more on Kotone now for some reason. She's still making token efforts to talk to Shinji, but Kotone is her main target now. We're not sure what kind of plan she has but we'll make sure to stop any more assassination attempts."
"Right, good. Chrysalis Observation Team?"
"Yeah, Mayumi's a nervous wreck who's constantly talking to herself and stalking us, Shinji, and big us. We can't really get close to her without setting her off."
"Huh, perhaps scanning her body for the Angel core with no explanation wasn't the best idea? Well, can't do anything about it now. Keep an eye on her so she doesn't go off the deep end. How are our more problematic elements?"
"We're upping Blue's security so she doesn't escape and try to kill Ayanami again. Still no sign of Prankster, but her weird reality skipping power might be the cause of that. And no, we still have no idea how she's doing that."
"Wunderbar. I guess that's the best we can manage right now. Well, we're still at most a month out from Sahaquiel making an appearance so-" Leader paused as a scowl developed on her face.
"What's wrong, Leader?" One of the Minisukas asked in concern.
"It's just that with how things have gone so far, I suspect something is about to go wrong in a way we never expect-" Suddenly the Angel alarm began to blare as Leader's scowl deepened. "Somebody pick up the phone because I fucking called it! Lemme guess, Sahaquiel decided to attack us early?"
"N-no. Two Angels approaching, and neither is Sahaquiel. I don't recognize either." Leader's eye began twitching rapidly before she screamed in fury.
"Are you fucking kidding me?!"
Tokyo-3 Oceanic Border, T-Minus 0 to Angel Landfall
Two Angels emerged from the ocean depths, one shaped like a malformed club with many crater-like growths marking it's 'head' above a red core engulfed by a rib cage and it's lower tail possessing masks shaped like the face of the Third Angel Sachiel floated upwards as if unbound by the laws of gravity. The other possessed a vaguely humanoid shape with a thin thorax and massive head and fists, it's core dead center between it's hips. They stood proudly on the shore, challenging all who would oppose them. The Angels Azrael and Zefron had arrived.
Lilim, such transient and finite beings, clinging to this world even bereft of a Fruit of Life.
They are unaware of the specter of finality looming over them.
Soon they shall return to the dust that birthed them, for the end has come.
I am Azrael, the Angel of Death, and the evening bell tolls for you Lilim.
I AM ZEFRON, ANGEL OF STEEL.
…. Really? You couldn't do more than that? You couldn't add a bit more flair?
I AM ZEFRON, ANGEL OF STEEL. IT IS WHAT AND WHO I AM. I SEE NO NEED TO ADD MORE.
What I wouldn't give for someone who understands the value of presentation.
I UNDERSTAND PRESENTATION. I WILL PRESENTATION MYSELF BEFORE FATHER AFTER I SMASH THE LILIM.
That's not….. you know what? Nevermind. Hopefully, the Lilim can appreciate a bit of flair.
HOW WOULD YOU BURN THEM ENOUGH FOR THEM TO APPRECIATE FLARE? YOU DO NOT CONTROL FIRE.
Not flare, flair!
WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?
….. I hate you so much right now.
It's been ten thousand years. Sorry for the delay on this one, but the holidays are ramping up which means more work. The bevy of new game releases didn't help. But enough of that, let's get to explaining. Kyoya Kenzaki is the main character of the Secret of Evangelion game. He is a member of Section 2 and a college friend of Kaji's. Also, he has heterochromia, for some reason. The two Angels are from Neon Genesis Evangelion RPG Decisive Battle in Tokyo-3, which is an official TTRPG system completely separate from the NERV White Paper Rpg system Baraqijal is from. Azrael is obviously the Angel of Death, as some might know various popular media. Zefron however doesn't seem to possess an origin to his name, at least I can find mention of an angel called Zefron anywhere. Lacking a meaning to his name, I have dubbed Zefron the Angel of Steel. Anyway, hope you enjoy, leave a review if you can, and have a pleasant day.