Disclaimer: Neon Genesis Evangelion is the creation of Anno and Gainax. I don't own it, make no claims to it, and am making no profit from the fan fiction. No infringement of copyright is intended. In other words, please don't sue.
Disclaimer: I do not own DC Comics or anything associated with it, and I am making no profit from this fan fiction. No infringement of copyright is intended. In other words, please don't sue.
Chapter One: Strange Encounters
"Oh my god," Ritsuko breathed as she looked at her reflection in the mirror. "What the hell happened?"
Within her mind the scarab chattered back in its incomprehensible language, possibly trying to answer her but unable to communicate anything to its new host.
I have gone insane, Ritsuko thought, suddenly feeling rather numb. I have finally cracked under the stress of my life and have gone completely and totally crazy. And sooner or later, men in white coats will come and take me to a nice, calm padded cell. That is the only logical explanation for this.
This idea actually comforted her, because it would mean that she wasn't actually wearing a suit of mysterious black-and-blue armor, which had grown from a mysterious (and probably living) item she'd just happened to have picked up by the side of the road. In fact, the idea was so comforting that Ritsuko would have felt relieved if the armor had decided to change into a talking pink elephant, because then she would have known she was crazy.
Of course, crazy wasn't exactly good, but at least it was, well, normal. Understandable. Something others had gone through. And, paradoxically, sane.
However, no pink elephant appeared to confirm her insanity, nor any green cats, or even a purple dog. Instead, she was apparently stuck with one big blue scarab that was stuck to her back, and her certainty that she was insane began to erode, filling her with anxiety.
"This can't actually be happening, can it?" she wondered aloud, again focusing on her mirror as she reached up to touch her face.
She didn't achieve this end, of course, since her entire body was covered by the armor she wore. Ritsuko wondered if madness would so completely fool all her senses that she would feel the delusions as well as see them.
Having always held nothing but disdain for the "soft sciences," Ritsuko Akagi had never studied psychology, and so she had very little knowledge of madness to work with. However, the longer she remained in the armor, the less she felt like she was crazy.
Crazy people don't think they're crazy, Ritsuko thought, feeling a bizarre sort of hope. Then she realized she had thought she was crazy just a moment ago.
The scarab chattered at her again.
"Ugh, shut up already!" she groaned, rubbing her forehead. "If I'm not crazy yet, I will be if you don't stop that."
To her surprise, the voice in her mind immediately fell silent.
Can crazy people control their delusions? Ritsuko wondered, and then shook her head.
Regardless of what was really happening to her, there was one thing that was very clear to her at the moment. Her record of never taking a day off from work wasn't going to survive this.
Going to her phone, she picked it and quickly dialed a number. The person on the other end of the line picked up after two rings.
"NERV Central Commander Center," came the sleepy sounding voice of one of the techs who worked the graveyard shift.
"This is Dr. Akagi," she said. "I'm not coming in today. I've got a… a bad bug. A very bad bug." She added a fake cough for effect.
"Got it," the tech yawned. "I'll make sure the Commander knows."
"Thank you," Ritsuko said. "Also, please make sure you tell Maya, uh, Lieutenant Ibuki, to continue on as normal without me."
Maya might have to work without me permanently soon, so she might as well start now! Ritsuko thought.
"Understood, ma'am," the tech said.
"Thanks again," Ritsuko said. "Bye."
She hung up the phone and then cursed. Calling in sick had been a rather rational thing to do; it was one more piece of evidence for the hypothesis that she was sane and that this was really happening to her.
"Okay, focus here, Akagi," she told herself, trying to calm her whirling thoughts.
Ever the logical mind, Ritsuko decided to work on the assumption that she wasn't insane. Not that she wanted to believe that any more than she had a few minutes ago, but assuming that she was insane would be like assuming that the future held only the best case scenario. It might be pleasant enough to tell yourself, but if you were wrong, it would hurt later.
"So, if I am actually wearing armor that grew out a crazy bug thing… then what? What am I supposed to do about it?" she wondered aloud.
You're a scientist, Ritsuko, a voice in her head that sounded suspiciously like her mother answered. So you observe, experiment, analyze, and draw conclusions.
That was at least as good an idea as any other she was likely to come up with, so Ritsuko decided to get right to work.
Or at least, she would have if not for her stomach suddenly releasing a loud growl, the hunger she had completely failed to notice making its presence known.
Well, my mouth's uncovered, so I guess I can still eat, Ritsuko thought, actually comforted by the prospect of something as normal as breakfast. No reason to try and figure this out on an empty stomach, I guess.
Ritsuko trudged over to her kitchen, closing the blinds on all her windows as she went, just in case. She felt rather silly, puttering around the kitchen in the armor she was wearing, like a cosplayer waiting at a bus stop or some other area where they were incredibly out of place.
Not that it stopped her for cooking for herself, though "cooking" was a rather generous term for what she did, which was to prepare some instant food.
Ritsuko's culinary skills were…not exactly great, but she wasn't the walking disaster in the kitchen that Misato was. However, she very rarely had time to cook these days, thanks to her job, and often found herself living off whatever she could get the vending machines at the base to cough up.
Which might have something to do with the way that certain parts of me that were tight and firm just a few years ago have started sagging, she thought with a grimace, though with a weird little bit of pleasure at thinking about something mundane mixed in.
If she didn't look at herself while she ate her ramen noodles, she could almost forget about the armor and the scarab for a little while. Almost.
Eventually, she finished her rather pathetic breakfast, tossing away the empty plastic cup the noodles had come with. It happened to occur to her then that she didn't have to go to the bathroom, despite not having gone since yesterday.
Weird, she thought, but I guess I shouldn't be questioning small favors.
Reluctant to actually turn her mind back to the scarab and the armor she was now trapped in, Ritsuko reached into a drawer and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a new lighter. Pulling out a single cigarette, she put it to her lips…
…only to have thin bolts of blue energy burst forth from her fingertips and reduce the tar stick to ash before she'd even had a chance to bring the lighter close to it.
This was followed by some furious chattering from the scarab inside her head.
"Fine!" she exclaimed as she spat the ruined cigarette out into her kitchen garbage bin. "I'll go and start. Ugh, nice to know karma's still out to get me."
Trudging back to her bedroom, Ritsuko strategically placed a couple of mirrors so she could get a good look at her own back. So far as she could tell, the scarab looked about the same as it had when she'd first found it, except that it was much larger now, obviously.
That included the damage it had had when she'd discovered it. Part of the thing's exterior was still gone, exposing circuitry that now crackled with strange blue energy. The conclusion was obvious: it was broken.
But what is it? She wondered in frustration. And why would something like it just be laying around in the middle of nowhere?
She took a deep breath. "Focus," she commanded herself in a level voice.
Forcing herself not to lose it now after having remained more or less together for a while, Ritsuko searched through her closet until she managed to find a barely used digital camera. Moving mechanically, and trying to think of this as just another experiment, Ritsuko took a number of pictures of the scarab for later reference.
Unfortunately, after this task was completed, she didn't quite know what to do. Oh, there were any number of tests she had the knowledge to run, but all the necessary equipment was at headquarters, and she couldn't very well go there in her condition.
You've observed, you've analyzed to the best of your ability, and you lack the equipment to run tests, that voice that sounded strangely like her mother spoke up again. That leaves…?
"Experimentation," Ritsuko answered aloud, wracking her brain as she tried to figure out just how to do that.
When I told it to shut up, earlier, it did, she thought. Is it possible that thing obeys my commands?
"I don't want to wear this armor anymore," she said tentatively.
The armor remained stubbornly in place, but the scarab did chatter at her again.
"Damn it!" she yelled, finally starting to really lose it. "I don't want this! I don't want to be some damn freak! I want this god damned armor gone, and I want it gone yesterday!"
Suddenly, pain erupted all over her entire body, and Ritsuko let out a cry and fell to her knees. She was going to die. She had pissed off the damn bug, and it was going to kill her for it. This was it, an undignified and bizarre end to a pathetic life.
Then she noticed that the armor appeared to be dissolving, thin trails of steam rising up from where it was disappearing. The scarab was granting her request after all.
In seconds—the longest seconds she'd ever endured in her entire life—the armor had completely vanished and the scarab had shrunken back to the size it was when she found it.
She tried to grab it, to pull it off of her, but it was situated right between her shoulder blades, out of her reach. Ritsuko could do nothing but watch, with the aid of the mirrors, as the blue scarab crawled back inside via a slit in her back which sealed itself immediately once the thing had disappeared within her body.
The faux blonde was left kneeling there on the floor, naked and with her body covered in sweat.
"Well," she panted out, "the results of this experiment clearly support the hypothesis that I have some level of control."
With that, she threw her head back and laughed like a banshee for several moments, then allowed herself to collapse to the floor, where she lay in an exhausted heap for a long time.
Eventually, Ritsuko found the energy to get up. She showered, and then dressed. She knew she should have experimented further after that, seeing what she could make the scarab do and what commands it would refuse, but she simply didn't have the will for it. Every time the scarab chattered in her mind, she made a note of it, but other than that, the blonde took her scientist's hat off for the rest of the day.
For once, she allowed herself to relax, spending most of that day parked in front of her TV or reading a book. It was the first time she'd let herself take a full day off from work in years, and even despite the knowledge that she had something very alien inside of her, she could feel herself unwinding somewhat.
Obviously, she needed a vacation. What was equally obvious was that she wouldn't be getting one in the foreseeable future.
The scarab only felt the need to talk to her a few times that day, and the armor didn't made a reappearance. It gave Ritsuko the hope that perhaps she had the situation under control, and that she wouldn't find herself strapped to her own examination table in the near future.
Part of her felt, part of her knew, that she couldn't really hope to predict the scarab's behavior just because it was quiet for one day in which she never left her home. Deep down, she realized that she was really just burying her head in the sand, but that was what she'd been doing about the problems in her life before the scarab had invaded it, so why should anything be different now?
Enough being depressed, she told herself eventually. This might be the last day off you ever enjoy as a free woman. Enjoy it while it lasts.
While this thought was rather depressing in itself, Ritsuko nevertheless did try to shake off the gloom that came from thinking about her life and herself too much. Realizing that it was time for dinner, she happily tried to shift her thoughts entirely toward food.
"Might as well be lazy for all of today and order out," she decided, going over to her phone book. "Chinese sounds good…"
Twenty minutes later, the delivery guy was knocking on her door. Ritsuko grabbed the money she'd already taken out to pay him and opened up the door.
"You Ritsuko Akagi?" the delivery man asked without preamble the moment he saw her.
"Yes," she replied. "How much?"
"Fifteen hundred yen," he replied.
Ritsuko handed him the money, and he gave her the brown bag of food, then began to count out the bills. She was about to put the food aside, but she abruptly stopped and stared at the man.
He must have felt her intent gaze upon him, because he looked up after a few seconds and said, "Something I can help you with, lady?"
"You have cancer," Ritsuko said, not having any idea how she knew this, but being completely sure that she was right all the same.
"What?" he asked, frowning.
"Pancreatic," she elaborated, her mouth seeming to work almost of its own accord. "It's still in the very early stages, though. If you get treatment soon, you should be just fine. Go to your doctor and tell him. Make them do a biopsy, perform exploratory surgery, whatever it takes to confirm that it's there. Because you will die if you ignore this."
The delivery man looked at her for a few seconds, then, without saying a word, he slowly backed away from her, walking backwards for the first few steps so as not to present his back to her. After he finally did turn, he practically ran back to his car.
Ritsuko ran a hand through her hair as she watched him drive away at speed. "How did I know he had cancer?" she asked herself.
Clearly, there was even more to the scarab than hearing insect sounds and weird armor appearing on her body.
The next day, Ritsuko went into work. If she'd had any choice in the matter, she would have taken at least a week off to try and figure out the scarab and become more confident of her ability to keep it under control, but she simply couldn't be absent from NERV that long.
The scarab chattered at her as her train descended into the Geofront, but otherwise it didn't do anything, much to her relief.
"Good morning, sempai," Maya greeted her as she arrived.
"Morning, Maya," Ritsuko said. "Do you happen to know where the Commander is?"
"Out of the city talking to some bureaucrat or another," Maya said with a wave of the hand, having little care for politicking, as usual. "And the Vice Commander's downtown meeting with the city council again."
"I see," Ritsuko said, holding back a smile at this news.
"How are you by the way?" Maya asked. "I know you usually hate to call in sick."
"I'm feeling much better," Ritsuko said. "Thanks for worrying, Maya. I hope my absence didn't cause too much work to be dumped on you."
"Oh, no, it's fine," Maya said. "Nothing out of the ordinary happened yesterday, so I had everything under control."
Ritsuko gave her assistant a smile. "I'm glad to hear that, because I need you to hang onto the reins for a little longer," she said. "I have a… side experiment I need to run."
"Oh, all right," Maya said, obviously rather surprised but as willing to oblige as ever. "Would you like some help with that experiment, sempai? I'm sure that Lieutenant Yoshimora can hold down the fort for a few hours."
Knowing Maya as she did, Ritsuko had expected this offer and had a lie ready. "Unfortunately, this is classified beyond your security clearance, Maya," she said. "That's why I have to do this personally."
Maya's features twisted in a way that wasn't quite a grimace. She knew enough about the secrets of NERV to know that they generally weren't exactly pretty. "I see," she said. "In that case, good luck with whatever it is."
"Thank you, Maya," Ritsuko said, walking off.
Leaving the laboratories and facilities commonly used by Technical Division One, Ritsuko headed down to an elevator that only a handful of people could utilize.
Not a lot of people could run experiments in NERV without the Commanders finding out about it, and even fewer could do so in Terminal Dogma. Even Ritsuko would have been hard pressed to pull that off, if either of them were on the base. However, with them both gone, Terminal Dogma was the safest place for her to continue investigating the scarab.
She soon reached a combination lab and medical facility, which had seen extensive use years ago, during the creation and early childhood of the First Child. However, since then, the place had been largely neglected, except when Rei was in need of a checkup or something. It was perfect for Ritsuko's rather unique needs that day.
"Guess I should start with something simple and work my way up," Ritsuko mused aloud, moving over to the X-ray machine.
Taking X-rays of herself with no one to work the machine for her was a chore, even with the modern equipment she had at her disposal. However, she eventually managed to do it, and soon after that, she had an X-ray image of her back up to one of the room's light boxes.
"Okay," she said as examined it, "this is bizarre."
She had expected to see a large, bug shape on the X-ray, but there was no sign of the scarab on it. There wasn't even the faintest shadow; for all anyone would be able to tell, it was the X-ray of completely normal person who didn't have some kind of weird insect-thing hiding inside of her.
"How did you do that?" she wondered aloud.
As though it had realized it was being asked a question, the scarab chattered something. Ritsuko sighed.
"On to the other tests then," she said.
She moved onto the MRI machine, then drew a vial of blood from herself and ran tests on that. However, the results were the same: neither test revealed even a trace of anything being unusual about her physiology, let alone revealing the scarab she knew was in her back.
"Great," she grumbled as she meticulously began to do away with all the evidence that she had used the lab that day.
There were more tests that she could run, but she doubted that they would turn anything up. Besides, she had already been down in Terminal Dogma for hours, and it was wiser not to push it.
I guess it's good in a way, Ritsuko thought as she rode the elevator back up to Terminal Dogma. If I can't find anything even though I know it's there, then it's unlikely anyone else will discover the scarab unless the armor reappears at a bad time. Still, I would have liked to have gotten more data on this thing.
The obvious course of action was to run tests while she had the armor on. However, Ritsuko was in absolutely no hurry to call the armor back. It scared her, and she wasn't certain that she could dismiss it again.
The elevator pinged as it arrived at Central Dogma. Ritsuko stepped out and began to head back to the Tech Division One labs, however, it wasn't long before she encountered someone she'd rather not meet.
"Dr. Akagi," Gendo said, turning a corner and spotting her, apparently having returned from his trip to wherever.
Ritsuko swallowed as she realized how close she'd come to disaster. This wasn't a good place for him to find her, since it was obvious she'd just left Terminal Dogma, but if he'd caught her in the hidden laboratory used solely to deal with Rei, he would no doubt have thrown a number of very hard questions her way.
"Good afternoon, Commander," she replied.
"What were you doing down in Terminal Dogma?" Gendo asked, walking over to her.
Ritsuko barely heard him, because an explosion of chattering erupted in her brain as the bearded man drew near to her. She wasn't sure, but to her, the scarab actually sounded… angry.
Bad! It exclaimed in the midst of its insect-like noises.
My god, is this thing learning Japanese from hearing me and others speak it? She wondered.
"Dr. Akagi, I asked you a question," Gendo said. "What were you doing down in Terminal Dogma?"
"I was just doing some work on the Dummy System," Ritsuko said, unable to keep herself from lowering her gaze like a contrite child.
It was fortunate she did so, because it allowed her to see that the armor had covered her hands and was working its way up her wrists. Her eyes widening, she jammed both hands into the large pockets of her lab coat.
Not now, damn you! You'll doom us both! She thought vehemently.
Bad! Bad! Bad! Bad! Bad! BAD!!! The scarab replied.
NOT NOW! She mentally screamed back at it.
It hesitated, then Ritsuko felt pain blooming all over her hands. Her jaw clenched as she forced herself not to scream, then the bits of the armor were gone.
"Where were you yesterday?" Gendo asked.
"I was sick, sir," she replied carefully.
"You once came in when you had the flu," Gendo replied, narrowing his eyes. "You made half of Technical Division One ill."
"I was really sick, sir," Ritsuko said lamely.
"And yet you're fine today?" Gendo asked, eye boring into her.
"It was just a twenty-four hour bug," Ritsuko replied. "Now, if you'll excuse me, Commander, I really do need to get to work. Things are backed up, you know."
She walked past him and down the hall, but he stopped her with but a word.
"Doctor."
"Yes, sir?" she asked, turning back to him and trying to hide her anxiety.
"Don't get sick again," Gendo said.
"Yes, sir."
The rest of that day and the next passed without incident, save for the scarab making a few noises that Ritsuko and Ritsuko alone could hear. She almost forgot about it as the regular systems check of the MAGI supercomputer approached.
"You've gotten pretty fast at this, Maya," Ritsuko commented as she watched data scroll by on her screen.
The third tier of the command center was in a state of organized chaos, with notes scattered everywhere and even certain bits of hardware lying around in various states of assembly or disassembly. Just looking at it all made Ritsuko feel rather tired; there had once been a time when she had actually enjoyed conducting such a frenetic level of activity, but those days were behind her.
Nevertheless, she was still Ritsuko Akagi, which meant she'd get the job on time no matter how insane it was.
"I had to get fast at this, otherwise I would just slow you down most of the time," Maya replied in good humor.
"Hmm," Ritsuko said, studying the stream of data. "It would be faster if you reset the addition value. Here, let me do it."
Momentarily abandoning what she'd been doing, Ritsuko reached over to her terminal and began to type. The data immediately began to rush across the screen, too quickly to be read.
"Wow," Maya said, eyes widening. "I still have a long way to go before I catch up to you."
"Hello!" a loud voice suddenly called from the doorway.
Ritsuko didn't bother to spare Misato a glance. Honestly, the purple haired woman was great to go club hopping with, but as a co-worker…well, Ritsuko could do without Misato seeking her out whenever the woman grew too bored with her paperwork to continue doing it.
"Hi, Misato," Ritsuko replied.
"So, will the MAGI be ready for today's experiment?" Misato asked.
"Yes," Ritsuko replied. "We're almost done here."
She heard Misato pick something up. Knowing what it had to be, the scientist said, "That coffee's cold."
Apparently her warning came too late, because the sound of Misato coughing and gagging in disgust followed soon after. However, the Operations Director quickly rebounded.
"You're amazing, Ritsuko," she said. "Three different jobs to do and you still finish them all ahead of schedule."
Misato approached Ritsuko as she said this, and the scarab released a burst of chattering. It was free of Japanese words, which the scarab was so far picking up at a slow pace, so Ritsuko couldn't even hazard a guess at what it was trying to say. She ignored it, having grown almost accustomed to the thing and the weird noises she heard with her brain rather than with her ears.
"It's really nothing, Misato," Ritsuko said, as she typed in the command to restore the MAGI to normal mode. "There, everything checks out just fine. Take five, people, but report to the Pribnow box control room on time for the experiment." She told her underlings.
The scientist finally turned her chair around to look at Misato. "I'm going to freshen up before the experiment begins," Ritsuko told her. "I'll meet you by the Pribnow box."
"Sure," Misato said.
Getting up, Ritsuko left the command center and made her way to the women's lavatory, where she quickly did her business, then splashed some cold water on her face, feeling exhausted.
"Well, mother's fine," she said to her reflection.
It was funny, she mused as she stood there. She had never cared that much about the MAGI when her mother was alive; indeed, Ritsuko hadn't even liked them much. They were the great achievement of Naoko Akagi, the things that would keep Ritsuko in her mother's shadow forever unless she managed to create something really impressive.
Yet these days she felt compelled to make sure the shadows of her mother that they represented remain intact and in good working order, even if Ritsuko had often had a love/hate relationship with the woman.
"Maybe I'm just getting old," she muttered.
With a sigh, Ritsuko wiped the water from her face, then left the restroom to face the rest of her day.
It took some doing to get the Children to climb into the simulation plugs, mostly because it required them to walk across a long hallway while completely naked. Asuka had protested especially vigorously.
Despite how obnoxious Ritsuko often found the Second Child to be, she envied the redhead on a certain level. Unlike Ritsuko, Asuka didn't realize that she was no more than a component in the Commander's great and terrible machine, and that she would be forced to perform her purpose until she broke, regardless of what she had to say about it. Ritsuko wouldn't have minded such blissful ignorance.
"All the pilots are ready for entry," Sakura reported from the Pribnow box's control room, bringing up an image from heat monitors in the plug, showing the forms of the three Children sitting in their command chairs.
"Thank goodness," Ritsuko sighed. "Insert the simulation plugs and commence data recording."
"Yes, ma'am," Maya said, typing in the appropriate commands.
Inside the Pribnow box, the three plugs smoothly entered the headless Evangelion torsos.
"Connect system to the dummy bodies," Ritsuko ordered.
"Hai," Maya said, "Simulation program has handed over control to the MAGI."
Standing off to the side a bit, Misato looked at the main screen, where data was streaming by far too quickly for a mere human to hope to be able to read.
"Amazing," the Ops Director commented.
Ritsuko gave Misato a small nod before she continued overseeing the experiment. "How does it feel?" she asked the pilots.
"Different," was Rei's succinct response.
"Yeah, it's hard to describe," Shinji agreed. "It's definitely not the same as piloting a real EVA."
"The right arm feel clear, but everything else is fuzzy," Asuka added.
Ritsuko had the pilots do or attempt to do various things with their simulation bodies before she declared herself satisfied, and everyone sat back for another long and boring test. Despite the change in venue, it looked very much like there would be little difference between this experiment and the average harmonics test.
Appearances, of course, could be deceiving.
"It looks like corrosion on the 87th protein wall," Aoba said as Vice Commander Fuyutski looked over his shoulder, gazing at his screen. "See, if I zoom in here, you can see a color change has taken place."
Fuyutski nodded as he observed the brownish stain on the wall. "That area was updated only recently," he commented.
"Yes, sir," Aoba agreed, "but construction was done very hastily, and as a result some air bubbles got in."
"It was right after the Third Angel arrived that that was built," Makoto added. "Everyone was so exhausted with the avalanche of work that came after that, I'm not surprised things were done sloppily around here."
"Well, have it fixed by Tuesday or Ikari will chew my ass off," Fuyutski said.
"Yes, sir."
Back in the Pribnow box control room, the ominous sound of slowly buckling metal filled the ears of the personnel there. The scarab chattered, and Ritsuko looked around worriedly.
"Is there another water leak?" she asked, exasperation tinting her voice.
"No," Maya answered after making a brief call to the command center. "There's corrosion in the 87th protein wall."
"Will it interrupt this test?" Ritsuko asked.
"Not at present, no," Maya answered.
"Good," Ritsuko said. "Let's proceed, then. Ikari will chew my ass off if I don't get this data on schedule."
Satisfied that everything was fine, at least for the moment, Ritsuko turned back to the main screen.
Just before klaxons and warning messages began blaring everywhere.
"What's happening?!" the blond scientist demanded.
"A contamination alert has gone off for Sigma Unit!" Maya announced, her voice betraying more than a hint of fear.
The Pribnow box was inside Sigma Unit, after all.
"The 87th protein wall has degraded," another technician announced. "Temperature is increasing rapidly."
"There's a problem in the number six pipeline," Maya added. "The corroded area's expanding rapidly!"
"Abort the experiment!" Ritsuko barked. "Disconnect the number six pipeline!"
"Hai!" Maya replied at once, practically punching the appropriate buttons.
They could hear the heavy machinery around them working to isolate the contaminated area. Everyone looked anxiously at Maya, wanting to know whether it had worked.
"Contamination is still spreading!" Maya exclaimed. "It's moving from wall to wall!"
"Ready the polysomes," Ritsuko commanded. "Set the lasers at maximum. Fire as soon as the contaminant reaches here."
"Hai."
Several small doors inside the Pribnow opened, allowed robots that looked almost like miniature VTOLs to enter. The swarm of machines swam over to where the corrosion was likely to first appear and waited, looking as predatory as a faceless robot possibly could.
Then there was nothing to do but wait.
"It's coming," Maya said as she anxiously stared at her screen.
A scream suddenly split the tense silence in the control room.
"Rei," Ritsuko breathed.
"The First Child's simulation body is moving by itself!" Maya exclaimed.
"Impossible!" Ritsuko said.
But, impossible or not, it was happening. Rei's dummy body, which was bolted to the wall like all the others, looked like it was trying to pull itself free. Fortunately, the thick bolts holding it had been drilled into several of the very vertebrae of the body, and it failed to liberate itself from its restraints. Giving up, it lifted one arm and reached out toward the control room.
Maya smashed the thin layer of glass in front of a large switch marked "forced shutdown" and pulled it. Small but powerful explosive charges located in the dummy body's elbow went off, blowing the headless beast's forearm off and stopping its assault before it could begin.
"What about Rei?" Misato asked.
"She's alive," Maya replied.
"Eject all the plugs!" Ritsuko commanded. "Fire the lasers! Now!"
"Hai!"
A series of small rockets in each plug flared, sending the metal containers soaring out of the dummy bodies and upwards toward the ceiling. A large door opened up to allow them to escape and the plugs had soon journeyed out of the base, heading to the safety of the Geofront floor.
Beams of deadly red light shot out from the weapon barrels of the polysomes, striking the rogue simulation body. For a few seconds, no one had any idea what was happening as the water bubbled furiously and hid any effect the lasers might be having.
Then the bubbles cleared up just enough for Misato to spot a cluster of hexagonal shields of light protecting the dummy body from the lasers.
"Impossible! It's an AT field!" she exclaimed, just as some red, luminescent substance began to grow all over the dummy bodies like an out of control fungus.
"The pattern's blue! It's an Angel!" Maya said grimly.
"We have to isolate the box!" Misato announced. "All personnel, evacuate!"
The various technicians in the room didn't need to be told twice and quickly got up from their chairs and fled toward the exit. Ritsuko was another matter, however. The blonde just stared darkly at the Angel, even as the glass that separated the control room from the Pribnow box began to crack, tiny jets of water starting to spurt in.
"Ritsuko!" Misato said, grabbing her arm. "Let's go!"
Ritsuko didn't say anything, but she did begin running, and the two just managed to escape and shut the door behind them just before the window shattered and allowed a tidal wave of water to pour into the control room.
Over an hour and a failed attempt to kill the Eleventh Angel with ozone later, the senior staff of NERV stood around a table in the command center, observing images and readouts on the Angel on the monitor that was part of the tabletop.
Any way one looked at it, their situation was grim. Not only had the Angel evolved to be able to thrive off of what they'd tried to kill it with, but it had transformed itself into what was essentially a living computer that could hack and code faster than any human could ever hope to. The Angel had immediately used its incredible new abilities to invade the MAGI. Melchior had already been completely taken over. The Angel had then moved onto Balthasar, but some quick thinking on Ritsuko's part had managed to buy NERV some time.
And as if all of that wasn't bad enough, the Angel had already tried to initiate the base's self-destruct sequence, right after it reprogrammed the first MAGI unit. Casper and Balthasar had overridden Melchior, but if the Angel gained complete control of the triumvirate of supercomputers, it was certain that they were all doomed.
Misato had wanted to kill the parasitic Angel by destroying its host, namely the MAGI, but Ritsuko had objected, claiming she could reprogram the Angel itself to make it evolve toward self-destruction.
It was a risky move, Ritsuko knew, but she couldn't let the MAGI be destroyed, for a wide variety of reasons that encompassed everything from pride to stubbornness to her lingering affection for the woman.
So now they were lifting Casper, the only uncorrupted member of the MAGI, out of the floor so they could do some quick and dirty reprogramming.
Ritsuko opened up a panel on the side of the computer, revealing a tunnel just large enough for an adult to crawl through. Misato, who was right behind her, frowned as she saw sticky notes without number affixed to the guts of the machine.
"What're those?" she asked.
"Notes made by the developer," Ritsuko replied, a small smile appearing on her face.
"Incredible!" Maya exclaimed. "These are the secret codes and backdoors to the MAGI! Ma'am, am I even authorized to see these?"
"Right now, you are," Ritsuko replied, plucking off one of the pieces of paper and examining it. "Thanks, Mom. With these, we should have a much better shot at beating this Angel."
Ritsuko and Misato crawled inside, leaving Maya waiting outside with her laptop in hand.
Nearly the moment the scientist was inside the computer, the scarab freaked.
Bad! Bad! Danger! It shrieked.
You learned a new word, Ritsuko thought back at it. Congratulations. Now shut up. I know there's an Angel, and I'm going to need all my concentration to deal with it.
No! Danger! Danger!
Wonderful, Ritsuko thought, this time to herself. I do not need this.
Doing her best to ignore the scarab's incessant warnings, Ritsuko worked in concert with Misato to partially dismantle the MAGI, removing unnecessary and backup hardware in order to get at the more crucial components beneath. Mechanical entrails were soon scattered all over the floor outside the supercomputer's casing.
It was hard work, and the time limit they were dealing with didn't make it any easier. However, it was also relatively simple work, which was good, because Ritsuko had little trouble mustering the concentration for it, even with the scarab's wailing.
What she'd do once they got to the actual reprogramming, Ritsuko wasn't quite sure, but she simply didn't have the time to dwell on that problem until she came to it.
"Kind of reminds you of our college days, huh?" Misato asked.
Not really, Ritsuko thought.
"Power saw, please," she said.
Misato handed it to her. Ritsuko turned it on and began cutting into the metal casing that covered the cloned brain which was the core of Casper. The noise effectively stifled any further conversation.
Having cut a diamond shaped hole in the brain case, Ritsuko carefully inserted long, thin needles that were part of an I/O system created just for the MAGI into the gray matter of the computer's brain. With this task done, she grabbed her laptop and began to type.
Danger! Danger!
Will you kindly shut the hell up?! Ritsuko thought at the scarab. The mysterious object hidden in her back ignored this just like it had before.
She did her best to tune it out, truly she did, but even Ritsuko Akagi had trouble concentrating with something shouting at her nonstop. She was working too slowly, and she knew it, but there was nothing she could do in order to pick up the pace.
Alarm klaxons suddenly started to blare all over again, and Ritsuko had to refrain from cursing out loud. She was nowhere near ready yet, thanks to that stupid scarab.
"It's taken over Balthasar!" she heard Makoto shout.
"Artificial intelligence has proposed self-destruction," announced the calm, digitized voice of the MAGI themselves. "Self destruction will commence in thirty seconds if all three MAGI units unanimously approve."
"The Angel's invading Casper!" Aoba called.
"Twenty seconds until self-destruct," the MAGI announced.
"Casper will be taken over in eighteen seconds!" Aoba added.
Damn it! Ritsuko thought, her fingers blurring over her keyboard, even though she knew it was a futile effort. She just didn't have the time to finish before everyone in the base was blown sky high. What do I do?!
Suddenly, a thought that was not hers entered her mind, completely free of the barrier created by dissimilar languages. It was a shock, and it nearly bowled the faux blonde over, causing her to pause from her work and sit there, stock still, with her fingers hovering over her keyboard. For once, however the scarab managed to communicate exactly what it wanted to, though Ritsuko had a sneaking suspicion that the effort had left the thing winded.
"Ritsuko?" Misato asked, noticing how her friend had abruptly halted what she was doing.
"I need board number thirty-one!" Ritsuko barked. "Go! Hurry!"
"Right!" Misato said, quickly turning and scurrying out of the supercomputer.
Misato wasn't likely to be back any time within the next twenty seconds, seeing as how there were only thirty computer boards. This suited Ritsuko just fine; she'd given Misato that task just to be rid of her for a while.
You'd better know what you're doing, Ritsuko thought to the scarab, as the armor began to form over her right hand.
When she'd first woken up to find that the scarab had attached itself to her, the armor's fingers had each ended in a small, simple emitter that glowed with blue light. It was really just a hole in each fingertip.
Now, however, a long, thin needle formed at the end of each of the fingers.
She pulled out the special I/O system from the cloned brain that was the core of Casper and positioned the needles of her fingertips over the appropriate holes in the gray matter.
God, I hope this doesn't leave me a vegetable, Ritsuko thought.
She plunged the needles into the brain, and suddenly—
—She wasn't in NERV any longer. Instead, she was flying through outer space, or at least, she thought it was outer space at first. The endless blackness was right, but the points of light she'd taken to be stars weren't stars at all.
They were glowing ones and zeroes, and there were billions upon billions of them.
Suddenly, she spotted a great green and red triangle ahead of her, and it was rapidly growing larger as she approached it. Ritsuko soon realized that it was a great "island" in the ocean of blackness, a flat planetoid that was covered in grass and red liquid.
Gravity abruptly seemed to shift as she got closer to the triangle; where before she had been flying forward, now she was falling down.
"Ahhh!" she cried, flailing about wildly.
She crashed onto the grassy ground moments later, finding that the impact had been painful but not lethal, as she'd expected. She gingerly got to her feet, realizing that she was wearing the armor again as she did so.
"My god," she whispered, looking at the sky and the swirling bits of glowing binary code. "Am I inside the MAGI?"
Almost as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she realized how absurd this was. She wasn't really inside the MAGI; somehow the scarab was allowing her to interface with it directly. The place she was in now was probably just how her brain was interpreting the data.
"Or something," she muttered, looking around.
"Well, hello, Ritsuko."
Ritsuko let out a small cry and jumped, then whirled around to find—
"Mother?!"
A woman who looked exactly like Naoko Akagi stood before her, wearing a slinky black cocktail dress. She was have looked quite sexy if not for the glowing lesions that covered most of her skin that Ritsuko could see.
"No. I'm Casper. Honestly, I thought you were supposed to be smarter than that, Ritsuko."
Ritsuko scowled. "Oh, sorry, I guess I'm just sort of reeling from being the first human ever to directly interface my brain with a computer. Silly me," she said, sarcasm dripping from every word.
She had never liked this aspect of her mother much, and Ritsuko had always suspected that this part of Naoko had had some level of contempt for her, because of how "boy shy" she had been. The look of disdain that Casper was giving her didn't exactly make her reconsider this hypothesis.
"Yes, well, since you're here, I assume you came to help fight off that thing," Casper said, gesturing into the distance.
Ritsuko looked over her shoulder to see a giant standing knee deep in the red sea that composed over two thirds of the strange island in the nothingness. It looked like a giant made entirely of red liquid, but it glowed, the same way most people imagined that nuclear waste glowed. Great robotic hands graced the end of either arm, and it wore boots of shining metal that Ritsuko could see through the red LCL it stood in. On top of each of the thing's shoulders stood another Naoko doppelganger. One wore a lab coat, while the other was dressed like a 50's housewife (apron and everything), which was ironic, since Naoko had never actually dressed like that in her life.
As she was watching, the monster released an inarticulate roar and lifted one of its feet out of the LCL, then brought it stomping down on what little of the grassy land was left. The ground the beast had stepped upon immediately began to sink, soon becoming subsumed by the sea of LCL.
The whole picture really should have been more absurd than anything else, but somehow, Ritsuko found herself utterly terrified by the sight.
It might have had something to do with the fact that the Eleventh Angel's avatar was at least fifteen stories tall, Ritsuko decided.
"How do we fight that?!" she sputtered.
"Simple," Casper replied. "By connecting your brain to the MAGI network, you seem to have increased our capabilities. So—"
"Wait, wait, wait!" Ritsuko said, holding up her hands. "The MAGI—you—are using my brain's processing power to give yourself a boost?"
"Yes," Casper answered simply. "By the way, you might want to disconnect immediately if we lose this, because the Angel might try to reprogram you next."
"Wonderful," Ritsuko groaned. "So what's the plan?"
"As I was saying, with you connected, I can extrapolate the rest of the self-destruct program you were writing to destroy the Angel," Casper said. "Unfortunately, I don't have enough time, so you have to slow the Angel down. Distract it for a few seconds."
"You want me to distract that?" Ritsuko asked incredulously, pointing at the Angel.
"Unless you have a better idea," Casper replied, glowering.
"I guess I don't," Ritsuko said with a grimace. "Fine, I'll do my best. But are you sure you can hold out long enough to make this work? You don't look so hot."
"I'll keep fighting it so long as the Angel doesn't overwrite me completely," Casper replied. "I'm stubborn like that. Now go!"
"This is completely insane," Ritsuko said, even as she began to run toward the shoreline. "Hey! Long, tall and ugly! Down here! You want a piece of me?"
It apparently did not, because the Angel ignored her, and brought one of its size five hundred boots crashing down onto part of the rapidly diminishing bit of land, causing it to break off from the rest and dissolve into the LCL. With a growl of frustration, Ritsuko reached down and soon found a rock lying among the grass. Not bother to wonder at which program it might represent, she hefted it, and then hurled it at the Angel with all of her might.
The rock impacted solidly against one the beast's legs, creating a splash as it entered the being of living liquid. Moments later, the rock seemed to dissolve completely. Ritsuko didn't even know if she'd hurt it.
However, it soon became apparent that she had managed to annoy it. Both Melchior and Balthasar leapt off the Angel's shoulders, and went flying through the air at her. Ritsuko was so surprised by this that she didn't move out of the way in time, and the possessed parts of the MAGI crashed into her, knocking her into the ground.
"Get off me!" Ritsuko yelled, as he wrestled with the two shadows of her mother.
"You have to distract the Angel itself, Ritsuko!" Casper called. "Not just the other parts of the MAGI!"
"God, I'd forgotten how demanding my mother could be," Ritsuko grumbled, even as she continued to struggle ferociously.
Balthasar landed a solid punch against her solar plexus, and Ritsuko saw stars, momentarily loosing her focus. Melchior grabbed hold of Ritsuko's head with both hands, and for a moment, the scientist thought that the supercomputer was going to snap her neck.
Then Ritsuko felt something strange, something that was terrifyingly not-her, something more alien than the scarab could ever be. And that something was invading her very being.
"No!" she shrieked as she realized that Angel was invading her mind now as well.
The blonde woman redoubled her efforts to escape the two supercomputers' grip, but their hold on her was too strong.
"Oh, for crying out loud…" she heard Casper say.
Then she heard one of the last things she might have expected. The sound of dogs barking reached her ears and began to draw closer.
Ritsuko turned her head and saw that two enormous canines of no specific breed were running toward the group, and they both looked mean and hungry.
Balthasar and Melchior didn't fail to notice the feral looking mutts approaching. The two both reluctantly released Ritsuko and began to wrestle with the dogs. It was a much more even fight than it would have been had it occurred in real life rather than virtual reality.
Ritsuko struggled to her feet while the rogue supercomputers were distracted and looked down at her hand. The same legions that had infected all three MAGI units were now on her, having actually grown on the surface of her armor, and she could feel them spreading, albeit at a much slower pace than they had been while she was pinned to the ground.
Can't worry about that now, she thought.
"Where the hell did those dogs come from?" Ritsuko demanded of Casper.
"They're the Guard Dog Anti-virus Program," Casper explained. "I rebooted it so they could help you! This is a computer, and you can manipulate the programming, just like I can!"
"Why didn't you tell me about this?!" Ritsuko yelled.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I thought the brilliant computer programmer like you would have been able to figure it out!" Casper responded.
"Casper! You—"
"Less yelling! More fighting!" Casper snapped.
Releasing a wordless growl, Ritsuko turned back to the Angel. Concentrating, she cast her mind out, finding that a number of options she hadn't noticed before were indeed at her disposal.
It was extremely strange sensation that was both like discovering a limb you never knew you had before, and feeling as though there was command prompt inside your head, patiently waiting to be used. However, Ritsuko didn't bother to worry at the oddness of it, and activated a software security program.
A half a dozen VTOL attack aircraft suddenly appeared in the air around the Angel, each one with the "T3PD" emblem emblazoned on the side, along with the gold star of the city's police station.
As one, the virtual planes opened up, spewing missile barrages at the Angel. The monster was too huge and too slow to hope to dodge the hail of ordnance, and they blossomed into orange fireballs that briefly obscured her view of a good portion of the Angel.
Then, out of the corner of her eye, Ritsuko saw the rogue AI's approaching. Balthasar and Melchior had apparently managed to deconstruct the guard dog program and were charging her again.
"Not this time," Ritsuko spat.
The ground around her erupted, and a barrier of red-orange flame burst forth in a ring around her, keeping her out of the conquered supercomputers' reach.
"Firewalls!" the blonde exclaimed. "Feel the heat ladies!"
Good god, that was corny, she thought immediately afterwards. It sounds like something out of some crazy giant robot anime, or maybe a comic book.
Meanwhile, the flames around the Angel had faded, revealing what passed for a face on the thing. It looked largely unscathed, but it released pissed off sounding roar, and began to flail its thick arms about, trying to knock the VTOLs out of the air.
"Well, I managed to distract the thing," Ritsuko said. "Now to keep up the pressure."
There was a brief flash of light, and a massive bazooka appeared in her hands. The words "Spyware Blaster" were written across the barrel in big yellow kanji.
"Eat this, you bastard," she said, pulling the trigger.
A great rocket burst forth from the barrel and went spiraling up toward its very big target, bursting into a cloud of flame as it impacted with the Angel.
That was when the beast of living liquid given form turned its gaze upon her.
Oh, that was a bad idea, Ritsuko thought.
The Angel roared, and a tidal wave of LCL was suddenly sent Ritsuko's way. The bottle blonde in the blue armor screamed as it crashed over her, dousing her firewalls and sending her reeling.
Like the rabid dogs they had so easily put down, Melchior and Balthasar pounced, pinning Ritsuko to the ground. The blonde screamed at the top of her lungs as she felt the pace of the Angel's invasion of her mind speed up, able to feel everything that she was being overwritten and turned into something foreign and cold.
Summoning strength she didn't know she had, Ritsuko flung both corrupted MAGI off of her.
"Not gonna happen!" she shouted.
Tired of being clever, Ritsuko grabbed a handful of Melchior's lab coat and fired a punch straight at the scientist's face. Balthasar moved to try and defend her comrade, and Ritsuko threw the scientist at her, causing them both to fall to the ground.
"Take that, you—ack!" Ritsuko screamed.
The Angel had reached down and actually picked her up, holding her within its metal hand. The monster began to tighten its fingers, and Ritsuko could soon feel the armor that covered her body starting to crack.
"No!" she shouted. "No!"
It looked like it was going to be the end for Ritsuko, and she supposed there were worse ways for her die. At least this way, she wouldn't survive to see Third Impact and bear witness to all her sins coming to life.
Then she heard what seemed to be the two sweetest words that had ever reached her ears.
"Executing program," Casper said.
Red light suddenly flared from beneath her, and Ritsuko looked down, just in time to see a ruby sphere form in the very center of the Angel's torso. The Angel raised its free hand, and Ritsuko could see its long, sharp fingers shaking badly.
"Do it, you bastard," she said.
As though it heard her command, the Angel suddenly plunged its free hand into itself, shattering its own core. The monster let out a howl of pain, and then abruptly burst like a water balloon. Its metallic parts abruptly dissolved away into nothing, and Ritsuko went crashing down back to the ground.
"Ow," she groaned. "Is virtual reality supposed to hurt?"
"Resetting system," Casper said.
The sea of LCL abruptly vanished, being completely replaced with grassy plains, and the legions that had grown on all the women present quickly faded and then disappeared. Ritsuko allowed herself to lay down.
Balthasar, now free of the Angel, walked over to Ritsuko and squatted down next to her, caressing her cheek. "You did good, Ritsuko-chan. Thank you."
Ritsuko opened her mouth to make some kind of reply, but suddenly—
—She was back within the bowels of the MAGI, and the only part of her that was clad in the scarab's armor was her right hand, which she quickly removed from the brain of Casper.
That was insane! She thought, willing the armor over her hand to vanish, which it did, painfully.
The scientist just sat there for several seconds, panting and rubbing her temples. She had the mother of all migraines, which didn't exactly surprise her, given what had just transpired.
"Sempai!" Maya's voice suddenly echoed through the tunnel she sat in. "You did it! I knew you could!"
Seconds later, the petite brunette herself appeared next to Ritsuko. However, her jubilation soon turned to concern. "Are you all right?" she asked. "You look very pale."
"I'm fine," Ritsuko said. "The adrenaline rush is just demanding payback, with interest. I hope you didn't have plans for later, because I think we're going to be pulling an all-nighter making sure that MAGI are clean."
As it turned out, it was three days and two nights before Ritsuko managed to return home and sleep in her own bed, rather than take quick cat naps on the hard couch in the lounge.
She probably would have gotten back sooner, but Tech Division One had made a rather incredible discovery while cleaning out the Pribnow Box. Though most of the Angelic cells that had collectively composed the Eleventh Angel were dead, a small number had survived in a dormant form.
What made the discovery even sweeter was that these weren't just any cells; they were the Angelic nanotech equivalent of stem cells, being undifferentiated and, even more so than the Angels themselves, endlessly adaptable.
There was some talk of destroying them, for fear of resurrecting the Eleventh Angel, but Ritsuko had no such worries. She had seen the thing die herself, after all. Therefore, she wasn't the least bit anxious about the Angel when she pocketed a vial of the cells and took it home with her.
Thanks to the scarab, she hadn't been able to do her job nearly as well as she should have. A lot of people had nearly died, although the scarab had managed to help her rectify the situation. Still, the current status quo was unacceptable, and Ritsuko could only think of one way to change it.
The scarab was broken. She was going to fix it.
"This is such an awful idea," she said to herself as she stood in her own bedroom, but she was committed to this course of action now. "Scarab, I need the armor!"
The scarab seemed only too pleased to comply; it immediately crawled out of her and began to grow, causing the blue and black armor to spread out all over her form. In seconds, she was completely covered by the stuff again.
"At least putting it on doesn't hurt like taking it off does," she muttered.
Unable to quite shake the feeling that she was inviting disaster, Ritsuko uncorked the vial of Angelic stem cells and placed the contents over the damaged section of the scarab.
The results were both incredible and instantaneous. Before Ritsuko's very eyes, the damage was repaired, circuits going back into alignment, and the casing of the scarab covering up what had once been broken. In seconds, the thing was in pristine condition.
Then…nothing happened.
"Well," Ritsuko sighed, "that was anticlimactic."
The next moment, she wished she'd kept her big mouth shut. The scarab unleashed another burst of chattering, and Ritsuko felt phantom fingers—no, phantom feelers, like the antennae of an insect—probing along the surfaces of her brain, and within it. Her knees buckled and she fell down to them, clutching at her head and screaming.
The only thing that kept her from losing it entirely was that the strange thing she felt brushing up against her conscious mind wasn't nearly as alien as the Angel had been.
Then, all of a sudden, it stopped, leaving her on her knees, panting.
(Ritsuko Akagi) The scarab spoke inside her mind. (Thank you very much for fixing me.)
Author's Notes: If Ritsuko's method of fighting the Angel felt a little silly to you, well, you're not alone. I was tempted to simply have her use the armor's offensive capabilities to do so, but I had planned to wait for her to fix the scarab before she discovered them and I decided to stick with that.
I have to say, I was afraid I'd have trouble doing a good job with this fic because of my general dislike for Ritsuko, but I'm getting into it. Maybe it's my love for the comic book hero she's becoming.
Merridian, on the subject of the Question, the only EVA character I could see pulling that off is Kaji, and his possession of a Y chromosome disqualifies him from getting his own SOE2 fic.
Gunman, I'm not positive, but I suspect that the third incarnation of the hero Rits is becoming wasn't around yet during the JLU series. Since the second version couldn't get the scarab to work and was basically a Batman-lite who had fun, I can understand why they didn't include him.
Anyway, thanks as always to my readers and reviewers, and thanks to my beta reader. Now for some fun.
Omakes
Rejected Heroes-Ritsuko Version (part one)
"Hello, all," Mike313 greeted the readers. "I hadn't planned to do this with any of the ladies besides Asuka, but I had some ideas for ol' Rits that I ultimately rejected but wanted to shared with you. So, without further ado, here to assist me is Ritsuko Akagi herself."
"I feel silly," the bottle blonde said as she emerged wearing a blue and red costume.
"Sillier than you felt after you realized that you'd brought a gun to Terminal Dogma but didn't even try to shoot Gendo with it in End of Evangelion?" Mike asked.
"Shut up, you damn jerk," Ritsuko growled.
"Hey, simmer down there, Ritsuko. So far, my treatment of you has been positively gentle compared to what Orionpax09 does to Asuka," Mike warned. "Did you see what happened to her in chapter eleven of Lilith's Herald?"
Ritsuko had seen that. She shuddered at the mere thought of something even half as unpleasant happening to her and immediately decided to play nice.
"Anyway, one idea I had for Ritsuko was The Atom," Mike said, turning his attention back to the readers. "She certainly has the workaholic scientist thing going, and…"
Klaxons suddenly began to blare, accompanied by flashing red lights.
"Well, lookie here, the Eleventh Angel appears to be attacking," Mike observed delightedly. "Ritsuko, why don't you use the size changing abilities granted by your belt to take the fight directly to it?"
"Fine," Ritsuko sighed, pressing a button on said belt.
Rings of energy appeared around her body, resembling the orbits of electrons around a nucleus. Ritsuko rapidly shrank, and though she could have made herself the size of a subatomic particle, she didn't go that small. It was time for the microscopic Angel to mess with someone its own size.
(Insert totally awesome battle of microscopic scale here)
"Wasn't that microscopic scale battle totally awesome?" Mike asked. "Yeah, it was, wasn't it? It was so awesome, that I'll have Rits face off against another opponent. Look, Rits! The Fourteenth Angel!"
"What? But how?" Ritsuko asked. "It's too early, and Angels Twelve through Thirteen haven't shown yet."
"This is omake, little issues like that are meaningless! Now go!"
"Right!" she said, rushing outside to confront the giant monster. "Beware, Angel, I'll destroy you with my ability to…shrink."
The Angel of Might actually seemed to laugh at her.
"Crap…" Ritsuko said.
"And that, dear readers, is why Ritsuko's not The Atom," Mike said. "It would be cool against the Eleventh. So much so I may have to do a 'what-if' one-shot one of these days, but against all the other Angels…not so much."
Rejected Heroes-Ritsuko Version (part two)
"Welcome to part two of our little informative omakes," Mike greeted the readers. "Ritsuko and I are glad to see you stuck around."
"Yeah, thrilled," Ritsuko grumbled, still looking rather charred from her encounter with the Fourteenth Angel in part one.
"Anyway, onto the next hero," Mike said, and with a few keystrokes, caused Ritsuko's outfit to change into a black and white costume.
"Who am I now?" Ritsuko asked.
"Dr. Light," Mike answered. "Uh, the good one who showed up during the Crisis on Infinite Earth, not the evil and crazy one who raped the Elongated Man's wife."
Ritsuko said nothing, she merely glared at the author.
"It seemed sort of appropriate since Dr. Light II was a Japanese woman and scientist," Mike said, "although I guess to win the irony points, Hikari would have had to fill the role, since I'm pretty sure Hikari means 'light,' but that's the only way EVA's class rep was suited for the role."
The author began to stare off into space, pondering largely moot possibilities. Ritsuko cleared her throat, impatient to get this over with.
"So, what powers do I have?" she asked.
"Powers involving…light!" Mike exclaimed in the most dramatic tone he could muster.
"You don't know, do you?" Ritsuko deadpanned.
"Not entirely, no," Mike confessed sheepishly. "Dr. Light's a pretty minor character, especially the second incarnation."
"Well, I guess we know why you rejected this idea, then," Ritsuko said.
"It also didn't help that none of the stuff you research has to do with solar energy, lasers, or light in any form," Mike said. "But yeah, that's the main reason. In fact, the only thing I'm fairly certain you can do is totally ruin Green Lantern Misato's day by seizing control of her constructs, or something like that."
"Really?" Ritsuko asked. "I can finally get her back for having bigger boobs than me!"
Mike sweat dropped. "You didn't mean to say that out loud, did you?"
"No," Ritsuko replied, though she was not the least bit nonplussed. "Now if you'll excuse me…"
Mike typed in a few quick commands on his computer and suddenly Ritsuko was back in her normal clothes.
"You suck, you know that?" Ritsuko asked. "You couldn't even let me have some fun in an omake, could you?"
"I find it more important to give you a fair shake in the story proper," Mike said. "Besides, I like Misato, and I'm not too fond of you. Do the math."
"You're a bastard," Ritsuko growled.
"Not as much as the guy you were sleeping with," Mike replied.
Ritsuko crossed her arms and growled wordlessly.
Must be something wrong with this thing…
"You Ritsuko Akagi?" the delivery man asked without preamble the moment he saw her.
"Yes," she replied. "How much?"
"Fifteen hundred yen," he replied.
Ritsuko handed him the money, and he gave her the brown bag of food, then began to count out the bills. She was about to put the food aside, but she abruptly stopped and stared at the man.
He must have felt her intent gaze upon him, because he looked up after a few seconds and said, "Something I can help you with, lady?"
"You have a…condition you're not aware of," Ritsuko said. "One that can potentially cause serious harm to your health at its climax."
The delivery guy blinked. "What?"
"You're pregnant," Ritsuko blurted out.
The man gave her a funny look. "Riiiiight," he said. "Well, see you in the funny pages, lady. Oh, and if happen to see Godzilla tomorrow, tell him I said hi."
Ritsuko smacked her forehead with her palm as she closed the door to her home.
"What the hell was that about?" she demanded.
In her head, the scarab unleashed a burst of chatters that sounded suspiciously like laughter.