Top Girls!
Seven
Maria Vincennes, second in command of the NERV USA branches based out of Nevada, was chuckling softly as she watched an episode of the new Top Gear. "Billy-jo-bob Ibuki," she snickered aloud as she ate her lunch at her desk.
There had been a proposal to run the Top Gear cast on a US tour, but politicians were pushing against it. There were, not unreasonably, concerns that the damage the USA had suffered in Second Impact might be shown unfavourably to the world.
Maria, personally, disagreed. Even if damage WAS shown, it might lead to the UN releasing more aid money to the US. Plus, it might help revive the tourist trade somewhat, as the world gradually recovered from various troubles.
Energized she quickly called up the earlier request from Ikari, and added to it a briefing on her own perspective. Completed she zipped it over to her boss, Henry, and then began plotting how she'd get local governments on side...
Of course, NONE of it was due to how adorable she found Maya Ibuki. And if anyone asked about it, she'd deny it.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
Satsuki Ooi was sitting across from Gendo, the older man looking visibly exhausted. The Angel attack had been an unusual one, with the strange, stick figure like angel generating explosions in and around Tokyo-3. Thankfully it had been destroyed relatively easily by Unit-02, with some assistance from Unit-01.
In the aftermath filming of Top Gear was put on hold, of course, and Satsuki had found herself assisting recovery efforts along with working with news crews. She had been busy, tho probably no where near as busy as the command staff.
In the meeting room were Ritsuko, Misato, Maya and some of the production crew. All looked pretty much as tired as the others, with Misato looking especially exhausted. Gendo got up, smiling tiredly as he said, "You've all done tremendous work of the past few days. I want to thank you all."
"And the reward of great work is another job," Misato joked.
"Pretty much," Gendo conceded.
Satsuki smiled wryly, "We're going back to filming?"
Ritsuko sighed wryly. "At least we have the Evangelion repairs well in hand..." she murmured to herself.
"Mostly," Maya agreed.
Gendo ignored the back and forth as he continued, "We'll start work on an episode in a few days. I am well aware we all have jobs that need to be done, too."
Misato snorted, knowing 'a few days' would be nowhere near enough time to catch up. "Do we have a theme planned for the next episode?" she asked.
"We're in talks with the United States to do an episode or series of episodes there," Gendo pointed out, "but we're not counting on it. Negotiations have fallen through before."
Ritsuko hid a smile. She knew the NERV rep on the US side, so she was a bit more confident that the plan may finally go through. Still, no reason to get their hopes up too much.
"Tesla contacted us, they want to do a re-test," Ritsuko noted.
There was a chorus of groans around the table, though Gendo just looked amused.
Ritsuko shrugged, "It's not that bad a car. Plus, we haven't really done a segment on how most cars are now battery operated, and the pluses and minuses of that."
"That's taking the fun out of things," Maya offered wryly.
"Well, we could do a segment on it," Misato conceded. She snickered, "Maybe do one on that poor car I junked getting Shinji..."
Ritsuko snorted, having seen THAT wreck.
"The original Top Gear did do episodes on that sort of thing," Gendo noted, "see what you can come up with and forward it to me."
"Got it," Ritsuko nodded.
Satsuki made some notes, having been kind of drafted as secretary. Plus this sort of info would help her make 'behind the scenes' features later. "You haven't done a cross country race in a while," she noted thoughtfully.
"True," Gendo conceded, "but we need vehicles that make it a challenge."
"Take the bullet train. We can retrace Hammond and May's trip when they visited Japan," Misato suggested.
Maya nodded eagerly, "That's an idea."
"But a car against the train's been done. We need a twist," Ritsuko noted.
"Put the Stig in the car, with... I dunno, Shinji as a narrator," Satsuki suggested.
"Oooh!" Maya yelped as an idea occurred to her, "Toss a BOAT in!"
"Boat?" Gendo blinked.
"Go around the island via boat and meet the racers at the end point that way," Maya elaborated on her idea.
"I like that," Misato said thoughtfully. "I assune Rits and Maya do the trains, and I boat?" she asked.
"Sounds like it," Gendo agreed. "Any issues?"
"We'll need a pro to run the boat, both due to sunken ships and structures around Japan and my not being qualified to sail it," Misato noted.
"Eh, we'll just take you down to the marina and get an hour or two of lessons," Ritsuko waved any concerns off airilly.
"How hard can it be?" Maya noted and EVERYONE laughed.
"Yeah, yeah," Misato shook her head.
"Lessons and a pilot," Gendo said firmly.
"So the Stig will be driving across country," Ritsuko noted after a moment. "We mostly handle the issues by having supervising adults on site..."
"A adult will have to accompany them," Maya realized.
"We can't have the hosts do it, and the crews will be busy...," Satsuki started, then realized the others were looking at HER. "Oh no," she started.
"As you said, someone has to," Gendo noted.
"And it's you or ask Kaji to do it," Misato pointed out reasonably.
There was a beat of silence as everyone processed that idea. The idea of Kaji and the Stig, alone, in a car for hours driving across Japan was frankly worrying. Both for the potential trouble they could get into AND if Kaji would hit on the Stig.
Stranger things had happened at NERV.
Satsuki sat back with a pout, crossing her arms in annoyance. "All right, all right," she conceded sulkilly. "But I want hazard pay. I never signed up to be a Top Gear host."
"Certainly, certainly," Gendo reassured her, "besides, you've ridden with the Stig before."
"That's not exactly comforting," Satsuki pointed out, remembering both the wild ride around the track AND puking up after.
"So there's the Tesla battery thing, the race... which will probably be broken into segments," Ritsuko noted.
"We'll need a third segment, probably, other than the usual news thing," Misato noted as they backed and forthed ideas...
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
"I'm hooome!" Misato called as she headed into her apartment late in the evening.
"Welcome home," Shinji called.
"Sorry I'm late," Misato added as she slipped her shoes off at the door, "the production meeting ran long."
"S'okay," Shinji answered cheerfully as Misato walked into the small kitchen, "Dinner just needs to be reheated, anyway."
"Did Asuka and Rei get fed?" Misato asked as she sat at the table tiredly.
"Yup," the young man said, "then headed back to their apartment." He checked the plate in the stove, then Shinji removed it and set it on the table.
"Thanks for the food!" Misato said as she dug in. Shinji had also considerately gotten he a can of beer, which she drank from as she ate. Bad habit, but she was limiting herself to one or two a night, these days...
"How did the meeting go?" Shinji asked curiously, sitting down with her and drinking a soda.
"Road trip across Japan, we think," Misato said as she ate. "Still hammering out details."
Shinji perked up at that. "Can I...?" he asked.
"You're along if you want to," Misato nodded. "You'll need to get classwork from your teacher, though," she reminded him.
"Yeah, yeah. I'll go let Asuka and Rei know, okay?" Shinji offered excitedly.
"Please," Misato nodded as she finished the food, "we'll probably need to get everyone together later this week to hash out the plans, too."
"Will do," Shinji agreed as he trotted away.
To be continued.
Notes: Yeah, that was "Clockiel" from Rebuild. This isn't exactly canon Evangelion anyway, with Gendo being (somewhat) nicer etc etc.
Now that this has gone from being total crack to sorta crack, I'm trying to address issues around teens running around helping film Top Gear. And actually having a Angel attack them, every now and then. There is a sad lack of canon character names for other NERV division characters, so I'm reusing Maria Vincennes from the games.