Author's Note: If you read Chapter 1 of this story before 23:00 GMT+1 20091230, you should probably reread it - it has undergone a lot of changes

The Ghost of Evangelion – Layer 02
A Ghost in the Shell/Neon Genesis Evangelion Crossover

YUGAWARA, KANAGAWA PREFACTURE – Thursday August 1st, 2030
"The pilot is showing signs of extreme stress – his blood pressure and adrenaline level are…" Hyuga trailed off.

"Shinji, what's the problem?" Misato asked.

"I… I can't see," came the reply.

"He's suffering from a brown-out?" Misato asked Ritsuko "Now?"

Ritsuko nodded. "If, although I think it's unlikely, we miscalculated the weight-to-power ratio of the launch pads, he might have experienced 5g's or more of acceleration on his way up – it would explain…"

"Thank you. That's enough," Misato interrupted; neither she nor Shinji needed to know the details "Ibuki! Overlap his field-of-view with the visual feed, then find some way to give him a view of the Entry Plug."

Shinji's vision returned, partially – he could see the Entry Plug now, as if seen through 3D glasses , projected from multiple angles at once, together with the sickly green hues of night vision filling the canopy. A map appeared, superimposed over his legs, not intruding his view of the outside world, offered by an array of cameras. A thick white line was drawn from a figure marked 'UNIT-01' to a nearby building, blinking 'COVER'

"I… I can see again!" Shinji blurted.

"OK Shinji," Ritsuko said from an avatar in his peripheral vision "Imagine yourself walking. Envision the feeling of movement in your legs and the Eva will move accordingly,"

Ah, Shinji thought they stuck me in a humongous mecha without motor control. He was certain there was a prize for that sort of thing, just like there was one for having ever climbed into Unit-01 in the first place.

Shinji tried to think about walking and felt a stinging feeling, pins-and-needles, in his legs; phantom sensations from a second pair of legs he had never owned. He felt Unit-01 – him – lunge 15 meters forwards in unsteady motions – he was going to regret this, he knew.

Walking lessons, in a war-zone? thought Maj. Kusanagi baffled. Seriously? She sat perched on top of JGSDF Armored Personnel Carrier, watching the impending battle through a pair of binoculars. The Ground Defence Force had ordered their troops to pull back, citing 'overwhelming firepower' as justification.

"So…" Togusa began "what's happening Major?" He sat in the pod of a newly repainted Tachikoma, hanging his head in his arms.

"Well… The younger Ikari seems to have gotten the hang of drunken shambling…" Maj. Kusanagi replied

"He's going to get himself killed," Batou concluded. He threw a cigarette to the ground.

"And we're just going to watch?" Togusa shouted, angrily. His voice echoed slightly in the empty streets.

The Major looked at her forces: Five platoons of Special Forces Mechanized Infantry and three artillery platoons – two now that one of them were out of commission, against an alien affront to nature that could taken small nuclear weapons to the face. A small smile appeared on her prosthetic face.

"Of course not," she said "Tachikoma; fan out and surround the –" she swallowed her pride "–giant monster, and await my orders." The dark green robot vehicles wiggled off their pilots, and bounce up and down like a ship in a storm, waving their hands up and down in joy – "We're going to fight a monster! We're going to fight a monster!" they squealed as they drove off "It's as big as Godzilla!"

The Major turned to her squadmates "Ishikawa, Batou! I need your help to make a dive,"

Shinji stumbled around in Unit-01, trying to maintain balance despite feeling 8000 times more sluggish than he expected. As he fell towards a building, he reached out to brace for impact, purely on instinct, and Unit-01 followed. His view rushed towards the ground, then stopped. He was certain his last meal was about to follow.

"OK, Shinji," he heard Misato say in an encouraging voice "You seem to have gotten the hand of walking now – let's get onto combat,"

"Your two most important tools are the AT field and the Type 28 Artillery Autocannon; that rifle-thing in Unit-01's right arm," she continued.

Shinji looked down at his own arm, which was skin-coloured, shifted slightly towards a green hue. Wait. Shinji reminded himself That's my arm. Shinji shook his head slightly, and then looked down and out to his right. Unit-01's arm, radiating greyly, held a large black rifle loosely – as Shinji thought he focused his eyes upon it, his meatspace eyes still blind and replaced with rendered views, a hypercard of information appeared, telling him everything he didn't want to know and hadn't really planned on asking (but in hindsight should have) about it – it fired 155x800mm APFSDS shells, Whatever that means, held 30 rounds and had a lot of other attributes. Shinji grasped the rifle in his hand.

It fired.

Into his foot.

A dampened, once ear-shattering explosion rang out through the CIC, followed by the sundering scream of Shinji in pain. A lot of people winced.

"It's not your real foot Shinji!" Misato said, in what she hoped was a reassuring tone "Try to concentrate on the mission objectives…" she paused for a fraction of second "your task!" she appropriated, "try to focus on fighting the Rakbu,"

Something resembling a reply hidden behind a moan of pain came back through the communications channels. Hyuga reported actual tinnitus in the pilot, form the resonating armour plating.

"Shinj, calm down." Misato said. "Take some time to get back into shape. You're safe behind these buildings…"

A purple beam of light burst from Isimud and burned through the building Shinji used for cover, scattering its façade all over the nearby ground while scorching the internal paper walls and lighting the floorboards aflame, before turning everything to ashes. Glass, steel and other assorted building materials were scattered all over Unit-01's frontal armor, only to be blown away by the radiating force of the beam of light penetrating deep into the Eva's chest and scorching flesh. The smell of burnt flesh and smoldered concrete spread throughout the building blocks at the speed of dispersion.

Shinji screamed again as Unit-01 staggered backwards, partly on his reflex.

The CIC erupted into unease – to Misato, it was as if the universe hated her, making her every word into an invitation to screw her (and everyone else) over in painful ways. She turned quickly to the MAGI operators:

"Is Shinji still conscious?"

"Yes, Captain," Hyuga reported "The Third Child is still conscious,"

"Good," Misato said, "Uh, place an emergency recovery team on high alert," she added to Aoba. "Now…"

Misato was interrupted by a loud claxon wailing, complete with red light bathing the CIC in red lights for a few seconds, before fading a little. The main screen flashed [INTRUSION ALERT] Misato groaned – the universe really did hate her.

"Trace that." she ordered Maya loudly. The MAGI operator pulled down her full-immersion headset, regretfully as Ritsuko leant away. Her eyes were assaulted by bright light in three colours, scattering red, green and blue points all over her prosthetic eyes, creating the shared hallucination of a physical world, slowly approaching the hacker's position, complete with a satellite image from Molyina orbit.

"It's…" Maya said, startled. "It's Maj. Motoko Kusanagi of the JGSDF, Captain!"

There were many surprised exclamations, all deafened by the sound of Misato's right hand leaving a large red mark on the side of her face. Bitter, uncaring universe that hates me so…

"Major…" was all she could say over a secure line "what do you think you are doing?"

"I'm taking command of Unit-01," the purple-haired woman's avatar replied, inside the imagined hallucination of cyberspace that filled Misato's head. In meatspace, the Captain hung her head in her arms, completely ruining all illusions of still having control as dozens of pairs of eyes, even android Operators transcribing from the CIC, were focused on her and her alone – the standing, half-fetal Unit-01 was of little interest, despite being the subject of conversation.

"You can't hack Unit-01! It won't obey you!" Misato yelled. She turned to Ritsuko. The doctor shook her head. Never.

"Major!" Misato pleaded.

"I'm not going to hack Unit-01;" Maj. Kusanagi explained, "I'm going to dive Shinji Ikari. He can control it, right?" she asked rethorically.

"Well, yes, but…" Misato stuttered "You don't have any experience with the Eva-units!" Misato tried

Maj. Kusanagi let out a sigh.

"Neither does the boy! I don't think it's going to make much of a difference," Never mind the 25 years of military experience I have on him…

"Major!" Misato yelled in a desperate attempt to return things to a situation she was comfortable with, rather than spiraling out of control. Her demeanor had gone from unfrazzled commander (and hot to boot! She was very proud of that!) to frazzled and desperate in seconds, and her sweaty hands were tightly gripping her hair and leaving with several black strands. She let out a frustrated, mumbled scream.

ECCO's attack barriers were rather weak, and didn't make up for it in quantity, the Major thought as she disabled a dozen of them – she'd seen freelance terrorists with better defences than these, and ECCO was a paramilitary organization. She, Batou and Ishikawa approached Shinji's field of consciousness, currently experiencing heavy traffic, and stopped just before his mind.

"Batou, Ishikawa," she transmitted "I'm going to make the dive from here, down to his ghostline. Back me up." She didn't wait for a reply as she disabled another pathetic attack barrier (Five years out of date? Seriously?) and decrypted his ghostkey. Wait. Something's wrong…

Shinji crawled up into a fetal position in his seat, constrained by the safety belts, making it not very fetal at all – it didn't matter; he just wanted to get away from it all – away from battle, away from this stupid machine that hurt its pilot, which sort of ruined the idea of it being armour in any way, and away from the bastard of a father who thought this was a good form of reconciliation. Away.

Suddenly, a warm comforting feeling spread through his body. The pain almost subsided and he was filled with an immaterial feeling of comfort and safety, pressing against him and removing all feeling of inadequacy, solitude and loss, returning only warmth.

I love you Shinji. I do love you. I've always loved you, and I always will love you.

Shinji's mind was completely inert, yet the in-and-out-going traffic between it and the outside world had increased, and that was not something that was supposed to happen – especially not with a fetal, near-catatonic pilot. Something was amiss. Maj. Kusanagi's attack barriers began screaming. Oh crap! A neural net unfolded itself and suddenly she was peering into the Eva's mind. A flood of information streamed towards her. Someone else! It hit her. She was forcibly booted from Shinji's ghost and mind as it collided with her own attack barriers. Half of them died instantly. Another two layers froze. In meatspace, a plastic device around her neck exploded, severing her connection. The Major's limp shell fell to the ground like a brain-dead corpse.

In the metaphysical cyberspace of consciousness between Shinji and Unit-01, something snapped.

Unit-01 gained a new posture; it stood up straight and perfectly balanced. Metal screamed as the welded seams of its mouth were torn apart. One scream gave way to another; an unearthly howl filled the skies of Hakone, like a whale singing a murder ballad, a terrifying sound both appealing and appalling to the Primal Fear at once, driving all the rats in Hakone away as if this was inverse-Hamlin, leaving a murder-zone around Unit-01. The Eva jumped out from cover and charged at the Rakbu.

Three beams shot out from Isimud. The first two missed the white giant. The third struck Unit-01 in the eye, deluging the Entry Plug in an incandescent glow. The beam had penetrated they eye and passed through the brain and burst from the rear armor into a skyscraper. Unit-01 didn't flinch. Another three-round burst of light left large mounds of melted metal and charred flesh in Unit-01's frontal armor.

Unit-01 had reached the Rakbu. The implacable wall met the not-quite-unstoppable object as the white and black giants crashed together. Unit-01 clawed at the AT field in a maddened frenzy, taking several more beams of light to the chest without stopping; the beams grew more erratic and scattered, firing faster and faster at the Eva. A few beams missed entirely and demolished nearby buildings, cutting deep into concrete and steel foundations; concrete dust and metal vapor flooded out from collapsing buildings like fully dilute pyroclastic density surges. Flashes of noise and static scattered in the air as Unit-01 scratched futilely. A rush of air emanated from the two battling giants.

Maya Ibuki felt a rush of substance through her brain. She lifted the brace of her dive-station and checked the graphs.

"Sempai," she called "Unit-01 is projecting an AT field!"

Ritsuko got down on one knee and stared at the graphs; a manifold of sinusoid waves approached each other and transformed to random Schumann noise.

"They're neutralizing!" Ritsuko blurted out.

Unit-01 wedged itself in the opening between the AT fields and shoved the 155mm autocannon into the gap, firing a three-round burst directly at the core. The shells ripped straight through Isimud, shredding its spine in two. Shockwaves ran through its torso, tearing capillaries and arteries apart. Blood poured out from both ends of the wounds at high pressure, leaving a black-blue pool of alien circulatory system on the ground.

Isimud collapsed onto Unit-01 and wiped out a veritable sector of the city with a sphere of thermal radiation enveloping Unit-01. The very air itself burnt and rose several kilometers into the air, a pillar searing the eyes of onlookers. ECCO and JASDF UAVs dropped out of the sky like poisoned flies, crashing into buildings as their outer skins were flayed off by the power of a local sun. Every single window in Yugawara shattered, releasing a murderous shower of polished death, raining down upon the streets with the density of acid rain. It sounded like a post-modern orchestra playing on panes of glass, broadcasted over loudspeakers for the benefit of a near-deaf audience. As soon as it had landed, the glass was swept away by a shockwave, a wall of certain death emanating away from ground zero shredding anything that might stand before it; a horde of sharp locusts embedding themselves in concrete as they struck into surfaces that were stupid enough to stand in their way.

And yet, even though Unit-01 had been in the very middle of this, it stood in the licking flames, air so hot even smoke could combust and burn again, covered in ashes and burnt paint, its remaining eye glowing.

ASHIGARASHIMO DISTRICT, KANEGAWA PREFACTURE, Saturday 3rd August, 2030

Ashigarashimo District was one large fortress city. Hakone, Yugawara and Manazuru had grown in size, spreading outwards like resilient bacterial cultures and achieving a form of symbiosis as their fronts joined together, creating a seamless urban sprawl that stretched from Ashinoko to the Pacific Ocean. The monotone steel-and-glass structures were broken, occasionally, by a small parks and spots of grass; anachronism of the past standing steadfast against a future that tried, very slowly, to choke itself to death on alcohol fumes.

They were also nice live-drop points.

Maj. Kusanagi sat down on a park bench, took of her officer cap and hung her arms off the back of the park bench, staring up into the unblinking eye of the sun. She peered over at Chief Aramaki. He read a newspaper. She switched to cybercom, running a WLAN at wavelengths and amplitudes such that it was near impossible to detect mere meters away, much less hear anything but noise – short of an actual, physical connection, it was the safest way to communicate in low-EM-noise locations like parks.

"So. Is your cover holding up?" Aramaki asked.

"Me and everyone in Section 9 so far," Maj. Kusanagi answered while looking up into the for-once-blue sky. A slight smile appeared in the vertices of her mouth. "I thought I was finished being the lapdog of the military years ago. Turns out I was always lapdog to the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the end."

"Maybe you shouldn't have punched the Minister in the face unprovoked, if you wanted his good favour" Aramaki said. The Major smiled as she replayed the memory in her mind.

"Anyway. My report. The Earth Coincidence Control Office presents itself as a military research laboratory subsidiary to the Tachibana Labs decentralized megacorporation – in reality its closer to an independent, paramilitary megacorporation in itself, controlled through a feudalistic hierarchy running down from the Ikari-family…"

"Of which there are only two surviving members – Gendo Ikari and Shinji Ikari," Aramaki amended.

"Correct. The father made his son pilot his…" there was a pause "…giant robot, supposedly because only a very small fraction of the world population have the required neural plasticity…"

"You're saying Gendo Ikari chose his son because he's easy to control?" Aramaki asked

"Not just his son. I talked to their other pilot, one Rei Ayanami, this morning in the hospital – another child; introverted, submissive and taciturn. If we want to shut down ECCO on short notice we can press charges for 'corporate child abuse through emotional manipulation' and bring a team of lawyers onto the case,"

"I'll keep that in mind," Aramaki said, while reading an utterly uninteresting article about the Japanese economy. "When the younger Ikari recovers, I want Togusa to talk to him. Meanwhile, I want you to ask some question to this Ayanami, the Tactical Chief of Staff and the Scientific Chief of Staff. Discretely, of course," Aramaki turned his newspaper over and checked the weather forecast –clouds with the occasional bout of sun and/or rain. The temperatures were going to drop heavily too – it hadn't been like that when he was young...

The Major threw herself up into a standing position, not even acknowledging the old geezer sitting on the park bench beside her.

"Will do, Chief,"

Major Kusanagi left the park where no conversation had taken place, certainly not with Daisuke Aramaki, a public servant in the employ of the Minister of Interal Affairs. They had not discussed confidential information about a paramilitary organization commissioned by the JSDF, and they hadn't discussed something as despicable as using children to unwittingly spy on their parents and friends, because that was something neither a JGSDF officer nor a public servant would ever do, and in any case they had never met and could therefore not have discussed it in the first place, right? The fact that both the JGSDF and the Ministry of Interal Affairs answered to the Prime Minister of Japan was not relevant. At all.

The Major walked calmly down the streets of the Hakone-Yugawara-Manazuru-urban sprawl, surrounded on both sides by endless buildings that towered towards the skies, their reflective mirror-windows reflecting off each other, generating an infinitely deep hall of worlds, each with the same pleasantly blue skies and right white clouds, colouring the grey city-white blue. In the distance, downhill from where she was, Maj. Kusanagi could see the experimental ellipsoid pyramids; giant apartment complexes covered on one entire side by a mosaic of flexible mirrors distributing solar power to the entire city – a cheap, alternative backup system to the nuclear power plants that were an eyesore to the still-mostly-untouched inland Japan.

At the bottom of the hill, she found Cpt. Katsuragi and Dr Akagi overlooking the preparation of Ashigarashimo against another attack. A Botanachi tilt-rotor passed overhead, carrying the detached head of Unit-01. Artificial white blood dripped from loose arteries that had fallen from their secured positions, onto the roads and rooftops, and as the tilt-rotor banked to make a turn towards Manazuru, it painted walls white, scattering the thick, coagulated fluid all over the side of a line of apartment complexes – later the body of the Eva would be dragged, ever-so-slowly, from Odawara and to the ECCO GeoFront on an island just outside Manazuru, on a pair of flat-bed trucks, parading the corpse around like one would a slain enemy, as opposed to the martyr-hero it was if one anthropomorphized it in the first place – the reek of rotting vat-grown flesh, mixed with the disgusting smell of melted plastic would linger through the cities, distributed by a wind that afterwards could only be described as foul – Maj. Kusanagi pitied those still left in their biological shells, trapped with noses that couldn't be disabled.

"…a firing pin – if we need to replace them after every battle," she could hear Cpt. Katsuragi say "it could get very expensive. There were minor deformations in the barrel too – it's just not built for such a high rate of… Oh, hi Major Kusanagi!" Misato waved the Major over. Ritsuko turned her head towards the arrival. She was leaning out the window of an enormous ECCO truck, and shifted her weight against the windowsill.

Misato Katsuragi placed her arms akimbo and made a point of looking at ECCO's defensive systems – 155x800mm shells had propellant changed duct-taped to them, before being shoved into oversized ammunitions belts – the Eva-rifle, as it had been dubbed, was belt-fed, pulling artillery shells from a box-magazine; pushing 2.25 tons of ordinance 4.6 meters straight up was simply not feasible using an (oversized) standard box-magazine – the work was handled by an internal engine running off the Eva's own power supply. Filled belts were pulled into long, thin, black rectangular prisms, which then were hoisted by crane into special buildings strategically placed in the urban sprawl. A large ECCO truck rolled by carrying a backup Eva-rifle under a canvas.

"If we all work together," the Captain said "…we might make it through this!"

"You're optimistic," Ritsuko said half-sarcastically. "Are you going to take on the Rakbu all by yourself?"

"If I could pilot I would," Misato said with a mix of enthusiasm and regret.

"Why don't you?" the Major asked as casually as she could.

"Ritsuko says I'm too old. Too old! I'm not even thirty!" Misato laughed.

"Sure, if you want cyberbrain sclerosis…" Ritsuko said

"Yeah, yeah. I know. I can dream, can't I?" Misato said. "Still, if worst comes to worst…"

"Then I won't let you, both as a friend and as a trained medical practitioner," Ritsuko said, adding a harsh undertone of concern. "Besides, your compatibility with the KIDs Outer Receptors is…" the good doctor paused for words –

"Inadequate?" the Captain and Major both volunteered.

"Not the word I was looking for but, ah, adequate nonetheless," Dr Akagi said matter-of-factly.

Shinji awoke in a pool of his own saliva, with a subsiding (but not yet, much to his displeasure, subsided) migraine on the right side of his head. Entirely lost after unknown amounts of troubled sleeping, Shinji fumbled around in the bed sheets, trapping himself in a roll as he regained his Sixth Sense, namely balance.

Once Shinji got loose from the giant chocking snake of chalk-white bedsheets, he found another layer of chalk-white-and-grey in what could only be a hospital, a conclusion that was much easier to reach once he saw the shapely legs of a medical android. It had the trademarked pleasant, soothing voice instantly recognizable from Japanese medical dramas – the voice had been modeled after a now former Meditech office lady with a sharp mind, who had secured herself the royalties when desperate R&D techs needed a voice for an already-delayed product-demonstration, and she was now relatively rich

"Good morning, Shinji Ikari. Do you still have a migraine? Is there anything I can help you with?" the android said.

Shinji tried to rub the sleep out of his eyes – more importantly: WHY am I here? Could it actually answer that? Oh yeah. My father forced me to pilot a giant robot against space aliens. He should have thought of that at once.

His stomach growled and felt like it was trying to eat itself – it felt like he hadn't eater for… days?

"Which day is it today?"

"Today is Saturday the 3rd of August, 2030," it answered – one day; he'd been out cold for an entire day. He walked over to a window and stared out; everything was pale and washed out, like a bleached ink stain. Shinji pulled off the disgustingly white hospital gown he was wearing; his own clothes were neatly folded and placed at the foot end of his bed. He pulled the trousers on and stared at the shirt. It would have to do for now; it wasn't as if he owned anything else.

As Shinji's hand brushed over his chest in the process of tucking the shirt in, it felt like touching old bruises. His entire body felt sore. He'd felt the pain of Unit-01, not that inanimate objects could feel pain – which only served to make the sensation even stranger, but he'd still felt every blow and every ray of light; not only did his thoughts cross the barrier into Unit-01's AI, but it passed back into him: he couldn't shake the feeling that his mind was invaded by thoughts – data – that wasn't his own; warm, comforting, yet unmistakably alien.

ECCO GEOFRONT, 8th August 2030
Misato Katsuragi barged into Shinji's hospital room and yelled "Sorryimlate" into the room before actually checking if he was there. An android nurse started a preprogrammed line on visitation hours, then stopped mid-sentence as it recognized that the Captain outranked such concerns. It switched over to another preprogrammed line on privacy, which was promptly ignored.

"I'm sorry I couldn't get to see you all week," Misato said. Her eyes scanned the hospital room.

"You're all packed up?" she asked Shinji "Good; let's get you out of here," she continued before Shinji had answered or even processed the question. As she slammed the door open once more the android nurse aped clearing its throat and emulated the sound with a standard audio-clip; "Captain, please do not slam the…" The door slammed shut. "…doors."

Up until one week ago, Shinji's life had been uneventful – he rarely left Kyosho or even the four walls of his foster-father's house, much less did he encounter something as fantastic as aliens, time travelers and/or espers – in fact, he was unaccustomed to fast driving.

He wished he wasn't.

Misato's (she kept insisting on that) driving was more intimidating than a fully-armed SpecOps team – and probably as dangerous – she appeared to have no concept of safety distances, speed limits, red lights, lanes…

Misato was giving Shinji a guided tour of Manazuru, showing him (in her opinion) all the best places to eat shop and entertain oneself. Shinji was certain he received the abridged version – occasionally Misato would demonstrate the Law of Conservation of Momentum (i.e. brake) outside, say, a liquor shop, state longingly for a while, before deciding that there were metaphorical spiders on the gas pedal that needed to die a stompy death, all without saying anything.

Misato fumbled for something the glove compartment, halfway leaning over him while glancing up at the road. The car swerved halfway into another lane before Misato corrected it, bumping hard as the front and rear wheels hit the sidewalk – Misato found what she was looking for, and handed Shinji a mindlink cable, while making hand-motions towards the jacks next to the car stereo and GPS, as well as her neck . What does she want me to...? Oh, yeah. He had a neural interface now.

He fumbled around his own neck – he had no tactile input from the plastic plate, leaving him with an unnerving feeling whenever he felt nothing as his hand passed over the plate surgically attached to his skull – his seventh sense (kinesthetic) telling him that he was shoving a blunt metal object into his most valuable nerves without feeling it did not help.

Four white circles, inhabited by avatars appeared in his peripheral view; Misato, Dr Akagi, Maj. Kusanagi, and an old man Shinji vaguely remembered, labeled Dr. Fuyutsuki.

"So, Shinji; where will you be living?" Misato asked.

While Shinji searched for the paper note telling him just that, Maj. Kusanagi took the word:

"I was under the impression that he would be living with his father?" she asked, leaving the implication of misinformation abundantly clear, despite (or perhaps because) the utter lack of facial expressions in her avatar.

"It's only natural for Ikari and his son to live without each other," Fuyutsuki offered .

Shinji dug a paper note from his pocket and read the street name and address. His own avatar, unseen to him but visible to all the other participants of the conversation, was an inert, slightly younger version of Shinji in a black school uniform taken a couple of years ago, chosen simply because there weren't any other good pictures available when they needed him to use Unit-01's internal communications system.

"Unacceptable," the Major said "It's too exposed,"

"It's also a dump," meatspace!Misato mumbled under her breath.

Misato, Ritsuko, the Major and Fuyutsuki discussed the issue back and forth, completely uninteresting to Shinji, who rather than following looked the windows of the car – it was sunset, and as Misato drove along the raised highway that connected Odawara, Manazuru and Hakone – she was driving surprisingly and pleasantly calm now; Shinji looked at the dashboard, which blinked [AUTOPILOT] That explains it… - he could see the red run reflected off the metal-and-glass buildings, reflecting the sky in pastels of orange, yellow and red, like a shattered mirror stretching as far as he could see, broken only by the calm, strongly blue sea at the edge of Japan. Black lines of newly lain road were sketched across the autumn-like landscape, complemented by their bright-white outlines – soon the sun would be down and all that would be left would be the thousands of neon-lights burning through the blackness in an infinite number of colours, like neurons firing.

It was beautiful.

"He could live with me," Misato blurted out.

"What did you say?" Ritsuko's avatar said flatly. The lack of expression in both Fuyutsuki's and Maj. Kusanagi's avatars were uncannily adequate reflections of their actual expressions. Shinji, meanwhile, tried to force a lot of air through his nose as his lungs contracted in shock.

"I have the space," Misato explained "and I already live next to a private rail to ECCO headquarters and within walking distance from his school," she said. A deem humming of displeasure originated from Ritsuko's avatar.

"Relax, I'm not going to put the moves on him," Misaot shot Ritsuko over a private line.

There was a silence, then an outburst.

"OF COURSE YOU WON'T!" Ritsuko yelled back "How can you even think like that? You have no shame at all!

Can't take a joke, can she? Misato thought. She turned attention back to the open (in the sense that there were more than two people involved) conversation, and away from everything else, including Shinji's pretty face, where it had never been in the first place. Honestly.

""Why don't we ask Shinji?" she said "He's the one going to live someplace; he should be allowed to choose," More silence. Maj. Kusanagi, among others, was not so sure if that actually applied to people whom the fate of the world partly depended on – it was not very strategically sound.

"What do you say Shinji? Where do you want to live?" Misato asked him.

"It doesn't matter," Shinji replied.

"Then it's decided. He's living with me," Misato declared, much to the displeasure of logic.

There was a collective, subdued groan as Misato closed the conversation, and the four avatars disappeared. However, the happiness Shinji received from the return of his peripheral vision was quickly displaced by the gut-wrenching dread of realizing that Misato had no more use for the autopilot!

"If you're going to be my new roommate, we're going to have to have a welcoming party!" Misato declared as she demonstrated how to make a parking-break-U-turn with great skill and little concern.

Shinji considered Misato's concept of a "welcoming party" – he couldn't be too impolite in his thoughts, (well actually he could – he just didn't consider it fair) considering that there was a lot of free food with raw materials that if not of stellar quality… Oh hell, who am I lying too! This is what broke students eat! …it was at least prepared with all the care an overgrown student and a microwave could manage… Which means nothing considering how this delinquent of a woman makes food!

Other Misato's cooking might be horrible because of a complete lack of taste, possibly even in both senses of the term, but not this Misato – no this Misato knew how to cook even if she had strange tastes – no, this Misato had another problem. She was a cyborg.

Shinji was not quite aware of how much of her was a cyborg, except that he knew she had a cyberbrain like over 99% of adult Japan, and he considered it impolite to ask directly (which meant he was probably going to do so within the next few weeks…) but she didn't appear to be a full-conversion cyborg, as evident by her beautiful, distinctive face and the natural skin on her arms and, not that he had looked, legs – she was a common type of cyborg, and needed a diet of both normal and special food (the term 'special food' was frowned upon, and Shinji knew it was only a matter of time before 'cyborg food' would end up in that same treadmill and come out as a mutilated euphemism) like most people who had more than a cyberbrain needed. (This justified to Shinji how he could feel he had the right to be revolted at this sacrilege against gastronomy, even though he was, unfamiliarly, a cyborg himself)

Rather than, say, leave her sugar-rich food supplements and patches of brown animal fat without large fat molecules of the type that artificial digestive systems had problems with outside the main course, or, for that matter, making two dishes – one for Shinji without the supplements and one for herself with the supplements – or even, as Shinji knew because he had cooked for mixed cyborg/baseline groups before, hidden or combined the unfamiliar tastes behind something else. No, Misato Katsuragi had chosen to just dump everything in the same pile, mixing ramen, pork soup and ham with fat-sugar mass nonchalantly while Shinji cleared the dining table of empty (or half empty – there was still a wet spot on the floor) beer cans and car magazines.

It didn't appear that even Misato herself enjoyed the food, pouring entire cans of beer into her ramen to douse the sickening taste. Did she intend for him to do the same? There were certainly enough cans – what with an entire third of her fridge consisting entirely of various forms of beer.

"So, aren't you going to eat anything?" Misato interrupted his train of thoughts, "It's good, even if it's all instant!"

Like that's the main problem.

"Oh, uh, sorry" Shinji apologized "I'm just not used to eating this kind of food…"

Misato frowned, the almost jumped across the table , leaning over and making him regress into his chair.

"Are you finicky!?" she asked in a voice that pulled his attention towards her face in an instant.

"I meant cyborg food," Shinji lied in retort. Misato fortunately, perhaps, sat back down with another beer can.

"Yeah, well... Growing up in Japan today means you're just going to have to get used to stuff like that," she said matter-of-factly.

Misato had, after telling him to take advantage of everything in the apartment, suggested that the take advantage of the bath and wash away his troubles and worries by cleaning body and soul, which was why he was now standing entirely naked under what amounted to a chandelier of Misato's underwear.

It was… surreal.

The penguin moreso.

"Mi-mi-mi-mi-Misato!" he yelled once he had ran out of the bathroom "A Pe-pe-pe-pen-pen-pen-g…" he stammered as the penguin wobbled past him over to a fridge.

"Oh, him," Misato said as if it was obvious that a penguin used her bath – then again, he was getting used to the fantastic being obvious by now – next thing his school would fall into a dimensional hole and half the student body would act like they had expected it, or the nearest computer would manifest sentience and nobody would care – "He's an uplifted penguin. His name is Pen-Pen; he's your other roommate"

"Eh, Misato" Shinji said, marking his point with a raised index finger "Man-penguins are, like all uplifted animals, highly illegal and…"

"You're a bit too naked to be lecturing me," Misato retorted.

Misato knocked thrice on the bathroom door in quick succession. Shinji tried to duck further beneath the tiny waves in the bathtub, but alas, it was not sufficiently deep. At least, she didn't enter.

"Shinji, are you there?" she asked "Just so you don't think I'm some sort of complete monster who deserves cyberbrainwashing – I participated in a military raid a few years ago against a corporation that produced illegally uplifted animals for who-knows-what purposes. Pen-Pen was one of those animals. Killing anything with a human brain is illegal in Japan, so I volunteered to become his guardian,"

Shinji lifted his head out of the water.

"Just so you know," she said and left; Shinji could hear her bare feet against the floor.

Ishikawa stretched his arms and rubbed his eyes – he's just spent five hours straight having a computer screen projected directly at his eyes, and now he needed a drink – a hard one. Luckily for him, he kept a small bar cabinet in his office, something that had become legal shortly after the popularization of prosthetic metabolism that could break down alcohol in an instant, making it no less dangerous than water for consumption.

He sat down with a glass of whiskey on a tabled and waited until he'd drained the entire glass and gotten himself a new one before he called Chief Aramaki over the internal WLAN.

"I've checked ECCO's employee and correspondence lists twice sir," he said

"Did you find anything?" Aramaki asked rapidly.

"The Control Office runs an entire school," Ishikawa continued

"We knew that. Get to the point," Aramaki said.

"The class that both of ECCO's pilots go to has an unnaturally high rate of cyberization,"

"Over 10%?" Aramaki asked.

Ishikawa laughed a short, quiet laugh

"One. Hundred. Percent," he transmitted while taking a sip of his whiskey.

"What!?" was Aramaki's only reply.

"There's not a single student who's not a cyborg in that class, and over fifty percent in all the other classes,"

"Hmmm… That's suspicious, even for a private school," Aramaki said, "I'll have you and Borma look into the matter tomorrow morning"

"I hear you Chief," Ishikawa said, logged off, and yawned.