Chapter 10: Lunch meetings
Ten days after Shamshel's demise
An invisible presence floats aimlessly through the Tokyo-3 Eva cages, looking for her target. Upon seeing the giant purple monstrosity that is Unit 01, the presence stills.
That's her target alright. Yikes.
Swallowing her fear, the young ghost edges closer. "My, what big teeth you have..." She mumbles, before turning herself intangible and carefully, very carefully sliding into the inert Evangelion's mouth.
A device phases into regular space. Nothing more and nothing less than an ampule of nanites encased in a single-use syringe. The molecularly stilled carbon needle, made from the same material as progressive blades, slides effortlessly into the god-machine's gums, a tiny gnat with a tiny, sharp needle injects her cargo, intangibly edges away from the Eva's teeth, and flies back up and away as fast as it can.
Within Unit 01's core, the disembodied spirit of Yui Ikari can only crease her brow in confusion. "What the hell?"
At that same moment in cyberspace, the monolith of SEELE 01 turns to SEELE 04 "Have you tested these... injectors yet? They are certainly a wonderful idea, and I will talk with my boy on how best to apply them... but..."
Lorenz Keel swallows dryly. At a hundred and twenty years old, he'd seen his share of mad hatters among SEELE. There were always one or two people who were a little.. off, despite or maybe because of their immense wealth and power.
Vlad Masters snickers loudly from his rebuilt Wisconsin castle. "Of course not, dear friend. In case you've forgotten, you and that "son" of yours are the only ones who know where the Angels even are!" The aging vampire-ghost and football team owner replies, lathering his words with fake envy.
"Good point, good point." Keel replies heartily, quite amused with the other man's... well.. pouting. "Don't worry, friend. Just trust me to handle things." Seeking for platitudes, Keel sips his tea.
"And it's not as if I have other things I might test the syringes on. Things like Evangelions..." Vlad sing-songs gleefully, smirking behind his monolith with not just sadistic delight, but a little genuine happiness at a plan long in the making finally dispensing some results.
On the other side of the world, on the other side of the line, Keel spits his tea out onto his monitor. "WAS?!" The ancient man exclaims in german, before recomposing himself and switching back to English. "You are kidding, Vlad." A breath, forced by his implants. A heartbeat held in a vicegrip by a pacemaker that has been upgraded every decade for over half his life. "Tell me you are just joking, being silly with that madness of yours!"
Silence on the other end of the line.
"That was not funny. I swear, 04, if I didn't know better I'd say you were trying to kill me with your bad jokes!" The hissing german accent, almost parodic of old films, betrays an old, old man's roots. From before the Soviet Union. Before all the trouble that had washed over everything German.
A darkly amused chuckle emanates from the other black monolith, followed by an insincere muttering of "Sorry."
"You'd better be sorry." Keel half-shouts back, already returning to his earlier bemused mood. "All these wires and machines inside my system... Even I couldn't kill myself if I wanted too. They're even keeping me from being angry at you! So when we finally meet, I recommend you thank my implants when I discard them. They've made me able to withstand war, and strife, and your sense of humour!"
Drying his forehead with his hankerchief, he aggressively taps the 'end call' key on his touchscreen. "Buffoon..." Already, experienced hands tap a key to call for his butler Dashiell's attention.
In Wisconsin, having walked away from the screen even before Keel hung up on him, Vlad is at his balcony. That ghost kid was easy enough to grab by the collar after the jailbreak. He'd helped her find her way through the ghost zone in exchange for swearing never to tell a soul... As well as delivering some... medicine... to Unit 01.
As for SEELE 01... Vlad scrolls through his cellphone adressbook and stops at D... Before flipping the phone shut. Friends and favours beat money and means every time.
One day later
Misato
The Evangelions have been polished back up, the Children are as healthy as they're going to get, Unit 02 is on the way, along with, apparently, Danny's sister...
And Danny has just called up his best friend through the SEELE high-bandwidth holo system. Apparently, he and Ritsuko were having trouble finding common ground, so they decided to bond through rebellious hacking.
In this case, hacking and diverting Gendo's holoconference landline to hook up with the Fenton campus.
Eventually, Maya had noticed what they were doing and she'd... basically ran off to get me, so that the Chief of Science and the 'consultant' could be properly scolded.
I walk into the MAGI monitoring room and what do I see but Danny and Ritz both grinning at me. "Ah, Misato! Good to see you here!" The brash ghost exclaims and I don't know whether to slap him, laugh or groan in frustration. The fact that Ritz is laughing at me really isn't helping.
"Katsuragi! Meet my best friend, Tucker Foley." Danny stabs the 'Y' key on an embedded keyboard and the room is briefly bathed in rainbow light.
The light coils together into a human shape, a man sitting in the Quantum Computer maintainance room at Fenton Labs. A black man around our age, with a ragged beard and a red baseball cap smiles in greeting. "Hello, Tokyo-3!" He exclaims, punching both fists into the air. After a quick nod of greeting at Danny and a quick glance at me, he zooms in on Ritz.
"Akagi!" The chubby nerd shouts cheerfully upon seeing his old colleague again."I did not expect both of us to end up in roughly the same place! Both of us have our pet supercomputers, pet monsters, and absolutely no oversight!"
Walking around the room, the hologram of Tucker Foley swishes his hand through the MAGI's terminal. "Having said that..." He adds darkly, turning back to Akagi. "I used mostly silicate for my supercomputer, while you seem to have gone with... hydrocarbons."
I glance to Danny, who is very purposefully looking away. From what I've heard from Fuyutsuki, seeing the literal guts of a MAGI pylon up close is... unpleasant.
Ritz however, replies with a highborn giggle. "You, Foley, of all people, have a problem with me using meat?"Foley can only grouch something inaudible and Ritz just smirks right back at him.
Wow. This is the Ritsuko I remember from college! How... where have you been, girl? Ice drops in my gut. Where have I been. Impact. War. Boyfriends. We drifted apart, but stayed in the same place. You can't pick your old rapport back up when it's just withered away over time.
Suddenly, a knock on the door. I blink and turn around. A frowning Aoba is peaking his head around the corner. "Um, mister Fenton. You have a guest. He's waiting out at one of the Geofront car gates."
Tokyo-3 High School
Shinji
Touji, Hikari, Kensuke and I are having lunch together at a picknick table outside. Rei is standing some distance away, under a tree. Ostensibly, she's enjoying an apple, but she has her red eyes fixed on the strange young woman who had just enrolled today, apparently having arrived from overseas.
The young woman has just approached our table, and bows at us. "May I sit with you?" she asks in English, holding tight onto her lunchbox.
"Seems you're not the new kid anymore, Ikari!" Touji teases. Also in English, because apparently the new girl hadn't mastered her Japanese yet, and polite ribbing really should be an all-inclusive activity.
I smile and look the new girl over.
Black Pigtails, like Hikari's. She's way, way stockier than Hikari, though, eastern-european looking. She has braces. And denim coveralls rather then a school uniform. That part is a little weird...
Ah well. "Hi. Of course you can sit with us!" I exclaim cheerfully and scooch over.
"Hm." Kensuke mumbles absentmindedly, giving the girl all of one blank look before returning to his bread. Kensuke's obviously got something on his mind. Wonder what.
The new girl sits down, nods hi to everybody. "Thanks for speaking English." She squeaks with a completely unrecognizable accent, though a good portion of it is American.
"Just to make sure..." Hikari says hesitantly, leaning toward the new girl. "You are in fact an actual foreigner, yes? The last time I introduced a new guy to the class I... er..."
Hikari's flustered blush causes Touji to throw her a cheesy but sympathetic grin. "She kinda thought little Ikari here was from America..." Touji says, ruffling my hair like I'm some kind of puppy.
I swat his hand away but grin back at him to show we're still cool. "Cut it out, Touji, or I'm running over to NERV and getting into Unit 01. See who's 'little' then." And then I stick out my tongue.
While this gets everyone laughing, after a second both Touji and Hikari do a double-take and gasp at me. The new girl, in the meantime is inching toward Kensuke.
I roll my eyes at my friends. "It's a non-sequiteur to the new girl anyway for now, and if things keep going the way they are, I'm gonna end up going public soon anyway." I say in Japanese.
Hikari and Touji exchange worried glances, but eventually they both nod at me. "Alright, man." Touji mumbles.
With that settled, I turn back to the new girl. "Sorry, but that was... a private thing." I say apologetically. "Um, pardon me, new girl?" Hikari asks with the friendliest tone she can. "Who... er, are you?"
"I'm Natasha!" She all but shouts at us.
"Pleased to meet ya. I'm Touji." He says in his best brooklyn accent. Which is pretty good, actually.
"I'm Ikari Shinji. Shinji's my first name, but either would work I guess... I was just thinking, with Kensuke driven to distraction like this..."
I indicate our friend, who, at the mention of his name, suddenly stands bolt up right and looks around, only to see zoning out once again left him right next to a girl.
"...Maybe you can pick up the slack and be our inappropriately entheusiastic person in his stead?" I ask, completely straight-faced.
Kensuke pushes his glasses up his nose to glare at me, but I can see a little smirk under his hand.
"So, Natasha, what brings you here?" Touji asks the new girl, again with the (actually very appropriate) New York accent.
Natasha's reply is to look away and fidget in her seat. "Um... Can I tell you later?" She sing-songs.
"Sure." Touji replies with a shrug.
Unnoticed by the people at the table, Rei pulls out her cell phone and dials Danny.
Danny
Floating through the walls and foundations of the city, I find car gate 2 and step out of the wall out of sight of the guards. Don't want to startle them, or provoke them into aski-
"Emil!" I am suprised to see my old friend, but here he is on the others side of the world. A burly, middle-aged eastern-european man in what looks like dockworker clothes turns toward me. The look on his face tells me all I need to know. Here's a man relieved to see me, but still far too worried to smile.
"Hrm, hello Danny," he says hoarsely and walks up to me. "Good to see you."
We shake hands, and I can't help but ask: "What the heck are you doing here, Emil? Didn't Sam give you guys the memo? This place is dangerous. No place for-"
Emil shakes his head sadly. "I know, I know..."
I can only wrinkle eyebrows in further confusion.
Emil puts his hands on my shoulders and sighs. "It's my daughter, Danny. She's escaped and now she's here." He says, sounding defeated.
I blink at the man and crease my own brow. "Okay... so your daughter's escaped, and you..." The implications of what happened cascade in my brain. "Oh. Oh. Valerie's involved, isn't she?" I ask, starting to get an idea about why Emil's so upset.
Yes, Valerie would be hunting for rogue ghosts. Emil nods and sighs hollowly. "If Valerie finds her, Natasha will put up a fight. She hates prison."
"It's a struggle for us," he adds, "seeing her in prison, but at least we know she's safe and being helped by your family, Fenton."
He steps back from me and balls his fist, glaring into my eyes. "But we both know that if Valerie finds her, she won't be subtle, won't be kind, and as a matter of fact, neither will my daughter." Another worried sigh. "I need to find her and take her back before Valerie does, Danny. Can you help me?"
What does a guy say to that? Even if she wasn't Emil's daughter, I still wouldn't want Natasha getting brutalized by Valerie misusing my family's authority "Eh.. of course dude, of course I'll help."
"So... Are you sure she's here?" I ask, my tone of voice shifting from confusion to dread in the middle of the question as my thoughts drift to all the terrible places in Tokyo-3 an impressionable kid should not be.
The grizzled dockworker clenches his fists and rolls his eyes. "I'm sure. Stupid girl saw fit to brave the Ghost Zone and come all the way here. I just followed her trail. She's family, after all."
The Ghost Zone? Stupid girl indeed. There was a four in five chance she'd end up completely torn apart by the entropic storms that had been unleashed by Second Impact (thank god that hadn't happened)... On top of that, forcing Valerie to take her hunt abroad to Japan was in nobody's best interests, not Japan's, not Valerie's, and especially not Natasha's own.
As for the Bo- Damn. As for Emil, well... he's a father. Blood is thicker then physics-rending spatial anomalies and all that, so he gets a free pass on the whole 'walking through the valley of the shadow of death' thing. Lecturing him on heroically inspired stupidity would be hypocritical anyway.
Which still does't answer my question. "So do you know where exactly she is right now?" I ask again, with pointed urgency. Again: so many places a ghost kid should not be in this city.
"No idea whatsoever." Emil answers in a borrowed Fenton deadpan.
A brief chuckle. "Well, then maybe we should go inside, NERV, the organization that runs this place, has very advanced-"
My phone rings and buzzes in my pocket. I press the button and hear Rei's voice.
"Come to school. Immedeately." Click.
I push my phone back in my pocket, clamp my hand down on Emil's wrist and run forward.
"...going GHOST!" Rei is not one for pranks, and if she wants me there now, then it's probably urgent enough to hurry.
The ring of white light blows over my body like a hurricane wind, changing me into my ghost form. The transformation wave also dispels Emil's disguise and his skin turns a translucent blue.
Both men... Both ghosts... fly intangibly at speeds well above the sound barrier toward Rei and Shinji's location.
At the same moment in time, Rei snaps shut her phone and stares up, expressionless, but internally both confused and somewhat afraid.
Natasha has a large piece of bread stuffed into her mouth, torn from Kensuke's reluctant grasp. She, the rest of the table, and everyone in the schoolyard, hears the distinct sound of an approaching jet turbine.
And the whine of a plasma charge building up.
Natasha turns around, and sure enough, there she is.
A black woman with long, curly black hair, scowling down at her.\
Armor plating covers her body, painted blood red , curves and jagged edges alternating to create a menacing profile.
She's standing atop a flying surfboard that is glowing the signature green of Fenton tech, a board that is descending on the picnick table, with the downwash sending rice and bread flying and plates glasses clattering down and into the grass.
This is the hunter of ghosts.
With gear deliberately based on pre-impact american 'super hero' imagery, down to the flying surboard weapons platform recalling images of the Goblin and Silver Surfer. Despite the armor calling on memories of Iron Man, the red-tinged metal armor has a distinctly dark and overbearing feel to it. ...The woman wearing it scowling down on Shinji and Touji like a demon didn't help the impression.
Valerie doesn't care. Her board and armor contain several Fenton-tech telescoping ecto-weapons. Her body and mind have been sharpened to perfection. All made possible by lots of backing by Danny's family, and lots of devotion and hatred on her part. Though she herself would prefer to word it as a 'thirst for justice'.
Shinji, Touji and Hikari gasp in horror at the red hunter that has come down into their playground. Kensuke whispers a drawn-out "wow..."
"Lunchbox..." Valerie hisses venomously, before unfolding her sniper cannon and pushing it into Natasha's face from above.
Natasha turns a translucent green. Natasha's eyes glow red. Natasha telekinetically pulls all the food and containers in the entire schoolyard to her with a sadistic grin.
Screams of panic erupt from every table on the schoolyard when their lunches are torn out of their hands and pulled away into the air.
Natasha the ghost girl floats up to Valerie's eyeline, who in turn keeps her weapon trained on the spectral child. "My name... Is BOX LUNCH!" The girl shouts furiously, with a twang of mania.
To her credit, Valerie doesn't even flinch. She just holds her sniper cannon steady in her arms. A single directed thought causes the her battle armor's helmet to fold out from her back and envelop her head.
"One warning, little girl..." She drawls, voice filters adding a baritone menace to her words. "Stand down or be destroyed." Her cannon, basically a bazooka-sized coilgun that fires ectoplasma, starts its preheating sequence, glowing a menacing green. Valerie is vaguely aware that she's in a schoolyard. That there's a whole bunch of teenagers running away, people started backing off when she made her entrance, and started running when Box Lunch dropped her disguise.
"I am NEVER going back to prison!" The petulant young ghost shouts at the top of her longs and extends her arms upward, all the while slowly edging away from Valerie and the picknick table.
Valerie cocks her head, then sighs. "Kid, you had three weeks before rehabilitation. Now that's going to be three months." Valerie's visual sensors, located around her suit, pick up a veritable tornado of wrapped lunches, cutlery and fruit is forming around the table she's parked on. Her own eyes cast a glance at the four vaguely terrified local kids still sitting at the table. Heh, well, three terrified and one geeking out like Foley...
And in that moment of distraction, Box Lunch clenches her fists and directs all the foodstuffs storming around them to fly at Valerie. She knows Valerie's power armor isn't so much as going to dent from getting hit by blunt cutlery and plates, but there's enough soft stuff, sandwiches, veggies and rice, to envelop Valerie and disorient her.
Or so Box Lunch thinks. In fact, Valerie already switched to high-detail multispectrum the moment she put her helmet on. Now, being pelted and coated in in lunches of varying quality, she finally has enough due cause to do what her heart has been screaming at her to do.
She pulls the trigger and her cannon channels the ectoplasma it's been generating in a magnetically contained bright and shiny green beam, which hits Box Lunch in the forehead and slams her headfirst into one of the school's load-bearing walls.
Valerie compliments herself on her aim and taps the throttle on her board, shedding the now inert foodstuffs piled on top of her with a shudder of her trusty robotic sidekick.
But Box Lunch isn't down and out yet. She jumps up and shoots a fork-shaped ectoblast at the hunter. Valerie's fingers twitch. The portable ghost shield on her arm switches on and Box Lunch's pitiful resistance splats against the coruscating green bubble of light.
At the same time, she unhooks the classic Fenton ghost storage thermos from her belt and aims it at the ghost girl.
Against any other ghost, that would've been a good idea. Sadly, Box Lunch's portfolio includes drink canisters. The young ghost extends her hand and the glow on the Thermos fizzles.
She follows it up with a healthy knuckle sandwich, but punching solid metal, even for a ghost, is a bad idea. Her punch makes Valerie flinch for a moment, but it causes Box Lunch to scream out in pain. "MY HAND!" If she had finger bones, they'dve snapped like matchsticks on Valerie's iron jaw.
Angered and hurt, Box Lunch bites her lip and gathers whatever power she has left into a table knife. Which grows to the size of a longsword as she prepares to swing. At the same time, Valerie recalibrates her sniper cannon and lines it up for another shot. No mercy anymore. Maximum power.
"STOP!" A girl's voice commands. It wasn't Box Lunch. ...No, it was one of the scrawny Japanese kids sitting at the lunch table. The girl, with black pigtails and freckles, stares at both Valerie and Box Lunch in turn.
Hikari Horaki was brave. Courageous even. Her lifestyle was more low-key than that of Shinji or her other friends, but she was not afraid to say what needed to be said, do what had to be done.
So she'd jumped onto the picknick table, arms outstretched, to put a stop to this nonsense.
"You are NOT monsters!" She shouts. "You're people! So you know this is a schoolyard!"
Nothing more needs to be said. Her incandescent stare bores through Valerie's visor. The experienced hunter gulps.
For a few seconds, the only sound in the schoolyard is the electric buzz of Valerie's hoverboard.
But, with a deep sigh, Valerie admits the teenager's point and powers down her gun. "Box Lunch!" She snarls at her adversary. "Five second head start! Find someplace empty!"
Said adversary stares dumbfounded at her for a moment, before managing a halting nod. "Um... yes! Good idea!"
And then the ghost girl airdashes for the school's main gate...
Only to be clotheslined by her father's blue-tinted ghostly arm.
"Natasha!" The Box Ghost shouts at his daughter's face. Terrified, the young ghost attempts to fly off, but her father grabs her by the leg and yanks her back down.
He sighs wordlessly, and she scowls back at him.
Valerie approaches the front gate on her hoverboard, gun lowered but still charged. "Box Ghost, fancy meeting you here." She drawls sarcastically. Her acid attitude is returned tenfold by the grim frown on the normally jovial ghost's face.
"Hunter." He spits the word at Valerie, glaring into her visor." I assume you can muster the self-control to drag my daughter off to jail again, instead of shooting her dead?"
Hikari, Touji, Shinji and Kensuke slowly walk up to the supersoldier on the hoverboard and the pair of ghosts. As Box Lunch is helped up by her father, she spots them and smiles at her schoolmates-for-a-day. "Hey guys... Sorry my disguise fell through..." She blushes. "Thanks for the fun morning, though." She not-so-subtly yanks on her father's arm and he reluctantly releases his grip on her wrist.
Touji throws a confuzzled glance at Shinji, who shrugs theatrically. "No idea either."
Meanwhile, Kensuke has inched a little closer, all but drooling at Valerie's hoverboard and her battlesuit. Inside said suit, Valerie scowls down at the little nerd, but her expression is obscured by the visor. So the kid keeps gawking, unaware of the woman's frustration.
"Um, how does it float?" He asks gingerly. Valerie furrows her brow and sighs internally. Endulging the kid a little wouldn't hurt, right? And being admired is a welcome change.
"Well..." She clears her throat and brings dusty old memories back to the fore. "From what I recall, the mass and weight are nullified by a deviced powered by the internal reactor, and it just uses small jet engines and expendable chemical rockets for propulsion. Simple is better, and the levitation is seperate from-"
Alarms ring in Valerie's head, but too late.
White light and the crack of glass are coupled with a tremendous impact to her face.
An ephemeral rice ball hits Valerie in the head, thrown by Box Lunch. The blast has thrown everyone, including the Box Ghost, across the schoolyard.
Valerie's visor has been cracked by the blast and her eyes are still blurry, but unlike Shinji a few weeks ago, the Hunter has been through desorientation before. Find the ground. Charge your weapon. Line up the horizon...
And target that little ghost bitch...
Danny
While Emil corners his daughter, I pick the Fenton thermos up off the floor. My parents made the original over twenty years ago, one of their first forays into ectomechanics.
In a fit of nostalgia, when I first had to replace it, I also built the ghost containment unit into a thermos. Been a tradition ever since. Tends to be a problem around Box Lun- er, Natasha, because her ghostly domain lines up just perfectly to mess with the thermos, but generally, it's just point and click. Or beat 'em up, then point and click. The ghost technician's take on the Pokéball.
Okay then... I open the casing and pull out the battery, then plug it back in. The hum of flowing ectoplasma lets me know the Thermos is back in business. Now then, let's see how Emil's doing.
I turn the corner just in time to see Natasha throwing a rice ball ecto-bomb at Valerie's face. It goes off, knocking back the kids, especially Kensuke, who was standing way too close, apparently drooling over Valerie's armor.
She reels back on her surfboard, but stabilizes. I can see the telltale green glow of her gun charging and rush in. I can sense the power building in the gun and gasp out a wintery breath in horror.
Jesus Christ, that's enough oomph to flatten half the school!
But before Valerie can pull the trigger and cause an international incident, her father, formerly known as the Box Ghost, has already intervened.
Valerie's gun is shoved upward along with her arm by a sheet of flat plastic. Her other arm is pushed tightly to her body and her legs are cocooned as well. Wrapped together like a parcel, the serpentine plastic's embrace becomes tighter, very quickly pushing at her armor with unnatural force.
But an instant later, Emil the Box Ghost lets his arms go slack and the bubble wrap's grasp stops tightening further.
Box Lunch runs around the corner, jinking around me on automatic. Just as her eyes go wide at realizing she just ran past Danny Phantom, cape and all, she feels the Thermos sucking against the back of her head and it all goes black.
I pull out of my lunge. Okay, she's contained, that was easy...
I stash the Thermos and run toward Kensuke, who's looking a little worse for wear. His glasses have been blown off his face, he's been knocked down and has some abrasion wounds on his arms. When I touch his neck to measure his pulse, his eyes snap open and he jumps up like a coiled spring. A quick one-two tap and glance and I see he doesn't have a concussion. He should still see a doctor, but for now, everything seems good.
I look around and see the others are mostly fine. Hikari steps over to Kensuke while I walk off. From the corner of my eye, I see Ayanami walk off the grass towards us. She kneels and picks up something glinting, presumably Aida's glasses.
Okay, the kids are gonna be fine for now.
I jump into the air and float toward Valerie, locking eyes... or visor, with her. "Always with the overkill... Don't you ever learn?" I mumble, more sad than anything else.
Valerie's helmet snaps open, revealing her face. Internally, she's frustrated and sad that her bloodlust has again eroded her relationship with Danny. Externally? "You are in no position to criticize, Phantom! I was protecting these kids from that ghost!"
Her feelings for Fenton have never protected him from her unfiltered opinion. "If you want to blame anyone, blame the Box Ghost!" She points at Emil... "He tried to make me feel sorry for the girl. And when I hesitated, the bitch bombed us." She points over to Kensuke, who is hesitantly but gratefully taking his (suprisingly intact) glasses out of Ayanami's hands.
Valerie steps forward, to the tip of her hoverboard, looks me straight in the eyes, and lowers her voice to a whisper. "You can't change ghosts, Danny. There's only two reasons why I'm not your enemy. One is that I can't beat you. And the other..." She looks away, and sighs. "Don't make me hate you too, please. Do your job right."
I nod somberly. "I'm doing what I can..." Still half-wrapped in bubblewrap, still half-mad with frustration, Valerie looks like a mess. I unceremoniously shove the thermos into the the bubblewrap mesh that surrounds her. "Here's your dangerous fugitive. We can discuss who failed who over a line with Sam."
I close my eyes and expel a breath. "But here's one thing to think about on the way home." I wrap my hand around Valerie's chestplate collar, and pull her in close. "If you ever point myguns at a school again, then we are through." I growl, glaring at her shocked face, yanking her close. "I'll have you thrown into a real prison, something for war criminals, I'm sure Vlad can think of something..." I trail off and turn away, transform back with a whish of ringed light and let myself fall the two feet down to the ground.
I hear Valerie's helmet snap back shut behind me and hear her surfboard roar. Emil raises an eyebrow, I nod in confirmation. With a dismissive handgesture on Emil's part, the bubblewrap dissipates into the aether and Valerie jets off into the upper atmosphere, higher and higher, a fiery dot in the sky in a matter of seconds.
Cruising altitude, if I'm not mistaken. All the way back to America...
"I'm sorry about this, Emil." I say sadly to my friend, who himself transforms, much more subtly, back into his slavic-looking mortal guise. I'll need to report this to Misato. We'll probably need to have another talk with the Children's principal. Maybe have a sitdown with Shinji and Rei themselves too, to see if they've been rattled by this. And if Kensuke's hurt, or if his glasses need to be replaced, it's coming out of our company ghost disaster fund.
Emil Clenches his fist and frowns at me. "That woman...Is your representative." He hisses.
He looks off to the horizon. "My daughter is safe in the thermos, so if something happens to her on the way back, I am going to choke your not-girlfriend in her sleep." He glares at me and unclenches his fist, revealing a one-centimeter energy cube coruscating with power. "And should that happen, you are going to let me."
I nod silently, seething with anger born of guilt. "I'm not done with Valerie yet. She's going to get some re-education of her own. If nothing else, I'll make sure she won't be dealing with your family anymore. I know Dani and I are both busy, but if something goes wrong in the next few weeks, I will deal with it. Personally, I promise."
The former Box Ghost nods and allows the energy cube to disperse in his hand. He chuckles awkwardly. "That's good to hear." He sighs, relief clear on his face. "I know it's not completely in your control, all this... drama. For what it's worth, I'm grateful to have you with us."
I move to reply, but instead an icy chill rolls down my throat and I exhale frost.
Emil sees my pupils turn into pinpricks. I almost fall backward.
My memory of Emil's little purple energy cube.
...Its color shifts to a coruscating blue-green.
An absolutely monumental green cube.
A reflective octahedron over a kilometer in height.
"Ramiel..." The name echoes through Shamshel's memories. Its only sibling to have... awakened... near Shamshel. Next in line to attack Tokyo-3...
The aura sense blended with stolen memory pass and I find my feet again. My eyes snap open and I see Emil's worried face. Once I stop wobbling on my feet, he lets go of me and I reach for my phone.
I don't have much from Shamshel's memory, but I do know one thing.
Ramiel, the image of the gigantic diamond, is awake, and he's on his way.
Danielle, Berlin.
I sit in my chair, sipping a nice glass of cranberry lemonade. Asuka's lying on the ground in front of my bed, reading a comic book. "Pacific Year Zero" or something. Something about giant robots.
I suppose it's only natural. I'm obsessed with Superman and Green Lantern, and she has her Unit 02.
Although this comic looks really nice, and I don't have much experience with Kaiju. I might want to buy the comic off her when she's done with it... My thoughts trail off as I sip my nice, icy lemonade.
The door to my hotel room opens and Kaji walks in. "Hey Asuka, Dani." Asuka replies with a hollowly entheusiastic "Hey Kaji!", keeping her eyes glued on the comic. I give Asuka's surrogate big brother and secretary a big smile. "So, how's Unit 02?"
"They're hauling it onto the transport barge as we speak. We're leaving tomorrow at ten in the morning. You've packed?" He asks us.
I nod. "Yup."
"Of course I've packed!" Asuka replies, a little testily. Which reminds me of the plan I made to properly guide the cranky redhead's... ahem... entheusiasm. Step 1, GIFTS!
"Um, Kaji, did the reception have a package for me?" I faux-seductively nag the other attractive secret agent in the room.
Caught red-handed, he smirks and pulls a rectangular envelope out of his briefcase. "As a matter of fact, they did." He theatrically displays the brown envelope and reads the contact information. "From someone named Ember." He reads out, and then his eyebrows curl up. "...Hey wait a second, Ember the American rock band manager?"
This causes even Asuka to break communion with the comic book. She stands up and turns on her heels toward me. "You're friends with American rock stars?"
I grin at Asuka as I stand up and yank the envelope from perpetually perplexed Kaij's hands. Poor sap, he doesn't even know about my family's Ghost tricks yet...
"Friends with rock stars? Er, well... yes and no." Like a toddler, I shear the envelope in half with my bare hands, all the while babbling to Kaji and Background Asuka. " The American rock scene isn't as big as it used to be. Impact and all." A brief grumble of assent from my male counterpart.
"And Ember is retired. Making music became an obsession for her, and she wanted to be free of that." White lies, half-truths... Ember is a ghost. A supernatural siren whose half-decent music could hypnotize and destroy. She's sworn off the guitar for public preformances. All part of losing your obsession and finding yourself a balanced personality, or so Sam says.
"She's a manager for half the little bands in the country, though, and she's sent me something." The redheaded half-japanese girl and the hunk secret agent both throw me quizzical looks.
"It's a rock album." I grin at the redhead. "A present, for you, Asuka!"
I pull out the CD and hold it out to her. 'The first song will reel her in, the rest... is therapy.' I recall Ember giggling to me over the phone.
Asuka rips off the CD's black wrapping (with cyan ribbon!) like a feral kitten, then frowns at the result. "It's... a CD." She blinks at me. "But I don't have a CD player."
"Aha! But I do!" Kaji suddenly exclaims, before throwing his briefcase open onto my bed.
I suppress a grumble. So that probably means anything he wants to hide from me isn't in that briefcase... May as well check later, to be sure...
Kaji triumphantly pulls out the old CD-player "I've kept this thing because it's a pre-impact model, memories and stuff, but I did buy an USB connector for it, so you can upload it to your cell... Eh, provided I can keep the physical copy?" He offhandedly asks his charge, who's already nodding entheusiastically.
"Who is it, anyway?" He asks Asuka, but seeing she's... distracted, he turns his questioning eyes on me.
Asuka pulls the CD out of its casing and reads out the title. "Riot! By Paramore!" Already, she grins. She likes the girl in the signed picture already. Mostly because she's got red-and-blond fire hair.
That night, Asuka listens to the first song, Misery Buisness on the balcony.
Kaji glances sidelong at me. "For a middle-american bunch of unknowns, they sound pretty good." He says quietly.
I nod at him. "They would've made it big if not for Impact, that's for sure. Ember did only sign the lead singer. I don't like that, but it's her money that got this band on that CD."
And if Ember knows her stuff, this album will make a difference for Asuka in the long run.
Sure enough, after the first song, Asuka swings open the balcony door and grins at me. "Thank you!" She shouts. "This is... well first off it'll help keep me from losing my mind on the boring sea trip! Especially with Tales from Year Zero to read!" While she says this, she snatches up the comic book and retreats back to the balcony.
'First song will reel her in... The rest is therapy.' I smile and walk over to the liquor cabinet. I won't be having much... but you don't need to drink much to enjoy a lot and spend a lot.
You want my help, Vlad? Your wallet's gonna bleed for it.