Chapter 11: Plans, plans, plans...

Darwin, Australia

Michael the bartender pours the middle-aged Japanese man his second drink for the afternoon. He's the only customer in the hotel bar at the moment. The few other guests are either out or at the pool at the moment, and the Japanese man seems to be enjoying the quiet.

To each his own. Michael isn't complaining, the man's quiet and tips well... But... Michael's seen enough customers, especially over the last fifteen years, since most of Australia got flash-flooded by Antarctica's devastation... To know this guy is surly about something.

So he hands the man his drink and looks into the man's tinted glasses. "What's up?"
The Japanese gentleman furrows his brow. He looks away for a moment, clearly upset. 'I might've misread this one...' Michael wonders, also silently fearing to get chewed out by his boss over not leaving the well-paying customers alone.

But after a quick stare into the distance, the middle-aged gentleman acquiesces and sighs hard. "Do you have a moment?" Michael just nods. "Sure." It's his job to Listen, like that woman on the Enterprise. Any bartender's job...

But the man suprises him by raising his cellphone up into the air and running some app with Japanese text on it. After a few tense seconds, the machine beeps and the man stands up, seemingly being guided somewhere by his cellphone. He puts his hand under a table and feels around under the rim. He seems to find something and with a frown he pinches it and pulls it out from under the table.

He sweeps his cell phone over it, places it back under the table and turns to Michael with the faint hint of a grin. "There was more than a little chewing gum under that table..." He drawls, sitting back down on his barstool. With a weary glance he looks over his glasses into Michael's eyes. The unspoken question is obvious.

"I didn't know it was there, and as far as I'm concerned, the last minute didn't happen."

The man smiles a little and nods. "I believe you." He reaches out his hand. "Gendo Ikari."
"Michael Taylor" Michael shakes the man's hand with a sympathetic grimace. "I really didn't know."

All he gets from the Japanese man, Ikari, is a dismissive grunt.

Ikari picks up his glass, drinks down half the beer in one big gulp, then exhales loudly. "Now then. You were interested in my problems." He drawls sarcastically.

Stone-faced, Michael nods. "Everyone needs to unload. It helps with..."

"Perspective..." Ikari finishes dryly.

"With peace of mind, is what I was getting at." Michael parries, a little annoyed at the foreigner.

"Hrm." Ikari mumbles. "Well then, that's an excellent place to start."
He takes a sip from his beer to gather his thoughts. "My wife died a few years after Second Impact, she was helping with the reconstruction, and she rushed her project to try and help people. To make a better world for our son."

Michael nods silently. "I'm sorry for your loss. And your son?"

Another misanthropic grumble from Ikari. "My son... I'm... Not good with kids. I'm a businessman, I have a mind for organization and to be quite honest I am not the nicest man." He shrugs. "I sent him to my brother-in-law. He recently lost a kid, so, I figured..."

The man chuckles dryly, more annoyed than amused. "Of course, only later did I realize that sending traumatized parents a 'replacement' child is very, very insensitive..."

Michael raises an eyebrow. "So what happened now to get you... thinking about this... so hard now?" He asks diplomatically.

"My business." Ikari answers, exaspirated. "We do construction and research, mostly Second Impact cleanup. My wife was one of the real heroes. I was just an administrator... But... we noticed eachother and..."

The man smiles wistfully. Lost love... A lightbulb goes on in Michael's head. Japanese + Second Impact aid = "Ah! You must work for NERV!"

Ikari sighs exaspiratedly. "Yes... Though we're merely a subcontractor." He lies smoothly. "But nevertheless, you must have seen news of..."

"The Kaiju attacks..." Michael breathes. "I figured that was why you... Took a vacation here." He says, voice suddenly quiet.

Gendo nods. "In a way. Due to all the upheaval, I arranged to have my son come live near me. Not in my home... But a place I paid for, with an employee I trust."

Again, Michael Listens and fills in the blanks. "Because you were estranged. And you still don't... can't... bond with your son."

"I would have been able to live with that." Ikari states flatly, almost tiredly. "But no. I really did paint myself into a corner here..." He drinks up the last of his beer and gives the bartender a lopsided, almost sad grin.

"I had a job for my son. A future, one he could fill in himself when he was old enough. I can't be his father, but I..." Gendo realizes he is stuck in his cover, in his metaphor, so he tries to be as abstract as possible. Michael takes the hesitation as a moment of emotion. "I want to know how much I can trust my son with my work."

Michael nods quietly. "Difficult, especially considering your circumstances. But... that also isn't the problem, is it?"

Gendo shakes his head, resigned and frustrated at the same time. "No. As you might understand, some of my work is in biological materials, so it is classified, and so I have bosses keeping an eye on me..." He glances at the table on the other side of the bar, and Michael gulps.

"It all came to a head when one of my bosses, the one I dislike the most, sent his own cousin on a so-called 'internship' in the security department." Gendo drawls, effortlessly lying with parallels, hoping to avoid distorting his predicament while hiding its nature.

Michael, of course, is none the wiser, and draws the correct, but contextually wrong conclusion. "He was sending a spy."

"Yes..." Ikari sighs. "And now I am trapped. My son is on my doorstep, and I don't know how to reach out to him. My bosses are breathing down my neck, seeing something is wrong..."

"And seeing as there are Kaiju marching upon Japan, I am going home in a few days to keep my business running and help my country out." He pushes his empty glass to Michael, who obliges by filling it again.

"So here I am, stuck between duty and family, with misunderstanding management complicating things even further." He takes back his glass and takes another sip from his beer. "Oh wise bartender." He invokes, only half-sarcastically, "Bless me with thy sage wisdom."

Michael doesn't really know what to say. "Well, first off, I wouldn't want to be in your shoes, and I applaud you for taking the high road and facing up to your duty, in all its forms."

All he gets from the Ikari man is a stone-faced stare. "Yeah... Beyond that, I don't know. I'm not a businessman, but I would say that family comes first. Ask yourself this, where would you rather be? Alone again, in a boardroom after the meeting's over, not knowing where your son is in this new, dangerous time? Or somewhere, anywhere, knowing your son is fed with a roof over his head?"

Ikari sighs, looking into his beer. "Anywhere can be heaven, as long as you want it to be." He glances up at a puzzled Michael. "My wife said that..." He shrugs, almost innocently. "I guess you're right. My son comes first."

Again, Michael is there to provide the next thought. "So what are you going to do?"

"I still don't think I can just have a chat with him..." Gendo admits. "But I'm going to start working toward it. Maybe start by writing him, explaining myself."

Michael snorts, then catches himself. "Uh, sorry. But my dad did that too. Remit of estranged fathers everywhere." He smiles warmly. "You're on the right track, I think it'll work."

The Japanese man doesn't really seem to know how to respond, settling for a faint smile as he drinks more beer. He sets the glass down and glances out the windows. "As for my business and the politicking, I'm going to do two things at once. I'm going to try the honest approach, disclosing our protected operations, at least to the extent that my vice-president and I are sure the competition won't gain an unfair edge."

Michael nods. "And the other thing you'll be doing?"
Gendo grins. "Some of my own politicking. To make sure my business doesn't fall out from under me."

He drinks down the last of his beer and slides Michael the empty glass. "While you're right, I'd rather be out of a job and with my son happy, I'll be much more capable of getting my son, my country and the world into the future my wife wanted if I have lots of money and power."

Gendo stands up and takes out his wallet. "How much for the beer?"

Michael shrugs. "On the house."

"A hundred dollars Australian it is then." He replies bluntly, laying the money down on the countertop, before giving Michael a sidelong glance. "Speaking of corporate espionage... One question."

Michael grins back at the Japanese man. "Anything, mate."

"Who was that woman who did my roomservice. She was... hispanic, as far as I could tell. And pardon my saying, she was a rare sight." Ikari carefully measures his words, and the bartender cottons on to the fact that he isn't dealing with a racist old man being lecherous.

"Ah... You think head office sent her after you?" Michael asks, somewhat amazed at the situation in front of him.

Ikari shrugs. "I think they paid for her trip here and sponsored her work visa, yes. Darwin is a nice place, and this is a nice hotel to work at."

Michael furrows his brow and nods. "What you're saying kinda makes sense, on second glance. Her name's Paulina. She's from the States and this is her second week here. Only here for the tourist season too, then she's flying back home."

Normally, Gendo Ikari wouldn't allow himself the pleasure of grinning quite so wickedly in public. It carries a very different air when one has a blouse on. But nevertheless, he does let himself enjoy the moment. "A thread to pull..." He begins to walk out, but then turns on his heel. "Thank you, Michael, for helping me with this."

The bartender shrugs. "It's my job. Your face shows your life's not easy. I'm happy to lighten the load a little."

Saying nothing further, Gendo turns around and walks away, stone-faced. The silenced pistol in his back holster stays hidden and unfired.

'Back to Tokyo-3' he begins planning. 'With a new outlook and a bead on SEELE 04.'

Back alley, Tokyo-3 Industrial district

Kensuke pans his camera across the road from the cover of a warehouse wall. He rewinds the film and plays it. Good, his camera's still working. It took some maneuvering, but when the air raid alarms started blaring not five minutes after Shinji's ghost friend left, he managed to 'get separated' from his classmates when they marched in orderly lines toward the bunkers on the edge of the city.

NERV practicality. Strong as the geofront's 'roof' may be, the Angels have no buisness at the fortress city's edge, built even stronger to support said roof. Any sensible Angel would pick the path of least resistance, and even a mindless one would just waltz toward the middle as they tried to pierce the city's top layer.

Silently, Kensuke films the clouds rolling in, seemingly forming out of nowhere. He's glad it's not raining, or he'd have to try and film the coming fight from under a tree or break into a warehouse or something.

He hears footsteps racing toward him from the street. He pokes out his head to look and immedeately regrets it when a running and very angry Touji almost collides into him. Kensuke falls flat on his ass while Touji almost falls over himself trying to slow down.

"Um, hey pal... I was..." Kensuke stammers, flustered, before sighing and closing his eyes. "Touji, I need your help." Kensuke spits out, quickly, hurriedly, already afraid the excitement of the moment will leave him.

His friend, still breathless from running around looking for him, just frowns, incredulous. "Uh... what? No!" Touji all but shouts at his best friend. "Your mecha fetish is not worth risking death by Kaijiu. Not now that you've caught a lady's eye!" Well, technically. Maybe Ayanami digs Aida. And maybe that's a good thing, even if she is a NERV freak like that Danny guy.

Ignoring his buddy's painful, painful words with a misschievous smirk, Kensuke stands back up and straightens out his back. "Heh, you have a point, maybe." He blushes. "But that only makes my quest more important."

Touji just rolls his eyes and grabs a fistful of his friend's school uniform. "Wake up, you idiot. You're risking your life out here!"

Kensuke swallows hard. "I know, man." He wraps his hand around his buddy's wrist. "Let me down and I'll explain. Quick, too, so you can drag me back to the shelter if you think I'm full of it."

Okay, that sounds reasonable... Touji lets go of his buddy's shirt and stood back, eyebrow raised and ears open... But he leans on the balls of his feet so he can catch 'Suke if he makes a run for it again like he did with the military parade in '13.

"Okay, so as we speak Shinji, Rei and that Danny guy are out there getting ready to risk their lives fighting Kaiju, again."

Touji nods hesitantly. "Yeah..."

Kensuke grimaces. "I want to help them, you definitely want to help them, to get back at the Kaiju if nothing else..."

Kensuke's treading on thin ice dragging his sister into this, Touji notes.

"We don't have our own giant robots, but I do have this!" He raises up his camera. "When Shinji and that purple Evangelion thing fought the... Angel..." He hesitated on the word... "It got onto YouTube, remember?"

Again, Touji nods. "Yeah. News went around the world, and now we're hearing nothing about it anymore." Something else occurs to him too. "You told me you showed it to Shinji and Ayanami and they went all quiet..."

Kensuke grins at his buddy. "Now you're getting it. What if I could show the world what we know: That Shinji and Rei, or at least the 'mysterious pilots of the Evangelions' are real heroes!? SAVIOURS!?" He shouts at his friend and the empty alley.

Touji looks out of the alley and listens closely. No stomping of Angel feet. No exploding buildings. No army either. They probably learned their lesson after that green monster emerged out of the sea and just walked right past them. Letting NERV handle it would be sensible enough, no point in throwing away lives. To Touji, the quiet means he's still got a few minutes to think Kensuke's idea over. But still... "The world doesn't work like that, Kensuke..."

"Touji, it does! That YouTube video? It's been taken down, but there's tens, dozens, hundreds of copies cropping up all over the internet. Almost half are being disseminated by oneguy. Calls himself 'NickTech3.0'. I had a chat with him, you know, online. He told me..."

Silently, Touji nods, not noticing the hair on the back of his neck standing on end from the static buildup.

"...He told me he was spreading the video to help out the Evangelion pilots. Just in his spare time. That nobody, not even the world government, had the right to deny people the chance to see the Evangelions saving all their lives. I wasn't so sure, but he pounded into my head that the Evas and their pilots aren't just sticking their necks out for us citizens of Tokyo-3, but for the entire world!"

Touji frowns. "What the hell do you mean? So far, the Kaiju have only ever attacked attacked... Oh." The penny drops. "I see. If Tokyo-3 falls, the Kaiju... fuck, I mean Angels... can just waltz around and flatten Tokyo-2, Hongkong, High Sydney or..."

Kensuke nods sagely, his glasses catching the light of the late-afternoon sun. "Yup. And that's why we need to show the world the heroes we have here. So Shinji and Rei can have the world cheering at their backs." He sighs. "It really did something for Ayanami. I don't know what, but... It's something we can do man. It's only right."

Touji gulps loudly. "Yeah..." It all comes into focus in his head, and he breaks into a cold sweat. "Whatever these Kaiju want, our scrawny little buddy is one of the two most important people on the planet." And Ayanami is the other one... Though anyone could see that girl was something strange a mile away. He chuckles dryly, before glancing over to his friend. "Okay then, I'm with you." He proclaims. "The world has the right to know, and our friends can use the good P.R."

'Suke looks like he's about to explode with glee, like a toddler. Okay then, Touji thinks to himself, time to bring the little Otaku back to earth.

"Before I help you, two rules!" Touji shouts at his buddy in the empty alley, holding up two fingers. "One, we're not filming Shinji, Rei or ourselves, and you hand the tapes over to that internet buddy of yours so he can distribute them. I don't want to get caught and dragged off into NERV's tunnels by Section 2 if it can be avoided." He snaps at Kensuke, who, after a short pause, nods his agreement. "That would be bad, yeah. So Rule two?"

A loud, thunderous roar, like a crashing airplane or a meteor strike is heard emanating from somewhere far too close for comfort. Seemingly everywhere. The volume is enough to cause both youths to stagger back. Not enough to cause permanent ear damage, not in this instance...

"Rule two is we keep a safe distance from the brawl that's inevitably gonna happen." Touji whisper-hisses, before looking around frantically for some kind of cover.

He spots what he wants. An emptied-out warehouse across the street, doors and windows boarded up. A quick dash and a short leap is all it takes for his foot to land sideways on a piece of plywood wedged into the giant glass window that had been shattered in the Shamshel battle. The nails come loose and the plywood board slams down on the floor, allowing Touji and Kensuke entry into the building.

'Suke clambers through the windowstill, careful not to cut himself, Touji points at the stairs. "We go to the roof, or as high as we can go, so you can get a good angle and, more importantly, so I can get a good look at where the Angel is so we know when to run and in what direction." With a final entheusiastic grin, the nerd runs up the stairs and the jock follows.

15 miles off the coast of Japan, Danny

Flying is incredibly fun. I'm soaring over the sea at just over the speed of sound. I know this because I can't breach mach 1 without phasing out.
So right now I'm an intangible, invisible spirit with a fluttering cape dashing over the afternoon sea, toward... well, that giant stormcloud over there...

Five minutes ago, just after my standoff with Valerie (and my collapse), my phone rang. It was Misato. Apparently the MAGI had picked up an Angel out at sea. Asked if I could take a look.
I gave an affirmative, told Emil to escort Shinji and Rei down to NERV, and, with my best grown-up voice, told Touji to warn the school principal and get everyone to the shelters.
Then, well... I transformed back to ghost form and blasted off.

So many kids in front of the windows, peeking around the corner... Shinji and Rei's secret may be safe for a little while longer, but they'll be the talk of the whole school now. ...Then again, it might help them accept the whole truth when it inevitably comes out later... Sure worked that way for my hometown. And my parents...

Hrm... Well, here we come, giant cloud of doom...
"Got a visual... Sorta... It's hiding in a stormfront, but I can see something indestinct spinning inside..."
On the other end of the line, I hear Ritsuko and Maya talk in the background, but no reply from Misato yet.

I keep watching. A gargantuan sheet of gemstone, pyramidal, like the corner of a giant cube, rotates into view. The clouds run off it like liquid nitrogen off a tabletop.
"Uh, Katsuragi?" I shout more urgently.

"Sorry, she's off getting the child soldiers ready." Lieutenant Shigeru Aoba replies dryly. "Can I take a message?"

Hrm. Exercising your right to complain is nice, Aoba, but there's a time and a place... "The Angel. I can see it..." And it looks to be the one that's haunting the back of my head.
"It seems to be... causing a thunderstorm, like I can. Seeing as what happened last time..." Gasp, you got some Angel in your Ghost! And you got some Ghost in your Angel. The new mind-breaking taste sensation...
"I'm not gonna try and overpower it with my own weather powers." The Angel, now clearly visibly in the clouds as a mile-high, mile-wide octahedron, suddenly stops rotating.
It is completely silent, but a wave of... something... rushes over me. I breathe out a cold breath, and the sea under the Angel suddenly goes flat.

The seam between its top and bottom opens up the tiniest bit. I can see its core, and blinding light floods my vision. "Oh cra-" Seen from above or any other angle, the Angel's positron beam explodes the air around it, pierces through me, and slams into the sea like the fist of god, detonating the water it passes through and leaving a momentary liquid canyon, like Moses and the Red Sea. And at the end of that canyon, a small pool of molten rock.

I, however, am intangible, so the attack did nothing to me. Nevertheless, I've never seen anything like this before. Time to cut and run. "Aoba!" I boost away and keep accelerating. Can slow down when I'm over land. "This thing... Get a sattelite image! This thing just carved a hole in the sea. It has an energy beam that could level Tokyo-3. We need to fight it before it hits the city."

Fat chance, Aoba muses. "Anything else?" He asks me. "It's shaped like a dice, like a cube... Like a borg cube, but with a gemstone-like mirror sheen. It seems to have a particle accelerator couched around its core, all wrapped neatly in a..."
Something twigs. "In a box..." Oh Emil, I'm gonna have to ask you for one hell of a favour, and despite myself I hope you accept, 'cuz if this works, this might not be as hard as I thought it would.

Half an hour later, Eva cage 00

As Ramiel ponderously floats over the water to Tokyo-3, the western and eastern hemisphere's best engineer start comparing the size of their brains while they co-ordinate work on the giant orange biomechanoid and the positron rifle it had gotten from the nearby military base. By running over to it. At near the speed of sound. And then back, within three minutes.

"No, the plasma channel can't be more than five feet long, there's not enough platinum to machine more containment rings. We can extend it later..." Tucker Foley harrumphs in frustration, but sketches out something on his pad. "I'm thinking an articulating joint between the gun and the fuel pack. It's nothing 'ghostbusters' but it'll get the job done for today."
Ritsuko nods her affirmation, and her manicured fingers slide over the touchpad. "If we fasten it with explosive bolts here, here and here, it can slide onto the back and deploy forward."

Tucker smiles slyly. "Like an artillery gundam."

His old acquaintance rolls her eyes. "More like a man-portable rocket launcher, but I concede the point." She crinkles her nose. "This... gun is a precison weapon. With your modifications, it may be able to pierce an AT-field, but it will not be able to fire very often. Why sling it loosely on arms when you can have the stability of an Eva chassis."

Foley shakes his head. "There's a reason you don't bolt a sniper's gun to his ribcage, Akagi. Recoil."

Internally, the blond scientist sighs. He just can't let it go, can he? Well, he's not wrong about the ethical implications... But! He is wrong about the recoil problem! "The Eva is tough, and we could use the same sliding rail used for storage on the back to have most of the blowback disperse through the mounting."

Tucker nods thoughtfully. "That could work, also..." He snaps his fingers. "We could have some servoes here and here..." He taps on the diagram of the Eva's shoulder. "To help with aiming."
Akagi nods. "I could have the aim be directly controlled by the chair's sticks rather than the A-10 interface..."

And so it had went for a while. The duo had already concocted a plan to generate what Foley called 'ectoplasma' and modify the positron cannon's cyclotron and magnetic barrel to launch it, much like the cannon Vlad had built for Valerie, only far, far bigger.

Ectoplasma wasn't just fancy conductive napalm. After comparing notes, a lot of the science behind AT-fields and Ghosts clicked together like legoes. It would be relatively easy to have Unit 00's core generate the strange conductive matter, and it would also be relatively easy for ectoplasma charged with an Eva's core to cut through an AT-field. It all had something to do with souls. AT-field energy was like a magnetic field, but... magic. In the sense that it was essentially the soul's 'skin', and what apparently kept humans from falling apart into proteins. If somehow transposed outside the body, it could do the same to the surrounding area. Angels were apparently naturally adept at this, but humans...

We had to put a kid inside a tomb, have the two harmonize, and while the kid holds the zombie robot together, the loved one's soul goes to town on the Angel. ...Tucker hadn't heard that part from Akagi, but he'd heard what Danny had seen two weeks ago, so he put two and two together.

Thankfully, ectoplasm, ectoplasma was the other side of the equation. What are AT-fields holding together? Conventional matter, mostly water, heh. But not in ghosts. Ghosts were floating, thinking Absolute Territories, either dead people or echoes that formed into entities themselves. But they were visible, and not just an array of glowy octagons. Ectoplasm is the lifeblood of ghosts, and the proverbial iron to the AT-field's magnetism. He wouldn't be suprised if the Super Solenoid engines inside Angel's hearts and the Evas were coursing with ectoplasm.

What he'd seen in Danny's DNA confirmed the theory. He was just a normal guy, once. But then he stepped into the portal to the Ghost Zone and got... zapped. Danny dies, becomes/echoes something in the same place in the Ghost Zone, his location in the Ghost Zone is the same as the one in real life, he transposes onto himself, keeps himself from dissolving... And walks out seemingly normal, but with the ability to convert his normal, solid body into an ectomplasm state (and free his AT-field for telekinetics) at will.

The picture is not yet complete. In theory, a normal human with their AT-field taken away would... what? Dissolve? What if their AT-field was neutralized but still present? Would they become halfies like Danny or would they be unable to pull themselves back together? The worst-case scenario here would be... ...Conductivity... Oh, that's... disgusting and terrifying. In a 'perfect storm' situation, a human could be made to dissolve into cellular fluid, and then their soul, their AT-field could be trapped inside, turning them basically into haunted superconductive telekinetic fluid.

It would be a messy death, the ectoplasma would be a good fuel source, but the mind and energy within would dissipate in under a minute without another soul field to keep the liquid and the mind within intact.

Warily, Tucker glances over the rim of his glasses to Akagi. 'Does she realize any of this? Definitely not something to discuss... And it's a worst-case scenario anyway. Still, if people on base start disappearing just as Unit 01 gets a new power pack, I'll know who to throw over this railing...' He looks down... It's a long drop, and hard metal below. He might confide in Technus, in case something like this does happen, but for now, Tucker files this whole 'human liquefaction' thing in the 'nerdy things not to bother his friends with' folder.

At that same time, NERV employee lounge

Shinji

I meekly poke my dessert, a gelatin cube... And exhale sharply. I look up from my dinner, at the mysterious Rei Ayanami sitting across from me.
With quick precision, her plastic knife and fork disassemble the last carrot on her plate. Red eyes stare out into the Geofront window.
Where am I staring? Ah, yes. Ayanami. There's something about her... I'm drawn to her. But is it a crush? I almost want to say yes, but deep in the pit of my-

"No jello for you, Ayanami?" Danny's voice cuts in from behind me, startling me out of my contemplation.

Rei's glance shifts ever so slightly, over my shoulder. "No, I am a vegetarian."

"Ah..." Is Danny's dry answer as he walks into the lounge, into view. He grabs a chair and sits down with us.
"So, in half an hour or so, my nerd and your nerd are gonna be done upgrading the lovely Unit 00. Are you guys ready to go?"

A quick nod to the affirmative from Rei.

I sigh once again. "Another Angel." I close my eyes. "It's not gonna stop anytime soon, is it?"
My fork turns on its side and cuts the gelatin cube in half.

Danny shrugs. "No idea. But..." He says energetically, the corner of his mouth quirked into a smirk. "Just talked to Fuyutsuki... Your dad will be giving my team and I full access to NERV. And..."
The thirty-ish man snickers under his breath. "He asked Fuyutsuki to ask me to tell you that he, quote, 'is sorry for involving you'."

...Wait, what? I almost choke on my jello, but swallow hard. "He... what?" Does... does he mean he's sorry because I'm a disappointment or that he's sorry that he's been a disappointment? "Does he mean tha-"

My half-ghost friend throws up the palms of his hands to placate me. "Whoa, first off, calm down or you'll choke."
"Secondly, I checked with the old man and we both think this is just your dad's awkward way of saying he's sorry he made your life so complicated..."

Rei nods silently. "It is necessary."

"Necessary to send kids into battle..." Danny grouches, but I can hear from the tone of his voice, his low growl, that he is resigned to it, for now anyway.

I swallow the last of my gelatin, chase it with some lemonade, and exhale contentedly. NERV has good catering... "As Ayanami has said... We're heroes. We may be too young, but we're in a position to selflessly shield others from pain. I can make a difference. I know that if Touji was in my shoes, he'd give himself in a heartbeat..."

Red eyes blink. "Ikari, the Geofront roof. What do you see?" Rei's voice out of the blue. I (and Danny, and Maya and technician Ooi sitting at the next table) turn to look out the window. The blast doors supplying the giant cavern with light through a web of tilting mirros close, and the sunlight fades, replaced by a huge array of spotlights, like a starfield. And the buildings... The tower blocks are sinking down. From down here, it is just as magnificent to see as from above. Countless hidden pieces of machinery slowly deposit the buildings at the heart of Tokyo-3 down into their cradles below the steel barrier.

"NERV is humanity's shield. As is the Geofront. As are the Evas and their pilots. Shields are battered..." Hesitation, from Ayanami... "Shields break. But if you choose to die in the service of others, you live on in them."

What do you say to that... "Ayanami..." I reach across the table and hold her hand. "I... want to stand beside you in this."
Now it's Ayanami's turn to be dumbstruck... She shakes her head, mouths 'no'... Danny is just grinning in the background.

"In light of the Commander's new policy, it would be prudent to share certain information, no?" Fuyutsuki remarks dryly to Akagi, who is taking a brief break. The old theologist notices she is still washing her hands after having to manually intervene when attaching the last LCL funnel went... awry...

"No, not yet." The younger scientist snaps curtly. "This definitely falls under distractions our Pilots can't have haunting their heads before a battle..." Though it would surely up the synch ratio by another ten points.
Any emotional turmoil would. In theory, the Evas can be awoken to act by any type of passion, rather than just agony. Well, theory and reports of Unit 04's performance... But of course that Eva core and that pilot are... unique. Insane.

"Not quite yet then, as you say Doctor..." Fuyutsuki echoes hollowly in the Commander's empty office, eyes once again scrolling over the security feeds.