Aisuka
Chapter 0
There was a dead silence in the Central Dogma, only the battlefield live screen glowed with cold white light.
Katsuragi Misato blankly stared at this high-definition screen, which was showing the last things of Tokyo-3. High buildings were now little more than ruins, sparsely adorned with colorful fragments. They were fragments of Evangelions' outer armor. But Evangelions themselves were nowhere to be found. A bottomless huge pit was particularly eye-catching in the middle of the screen, now Misato knew it had been once the place where the Adam lay.
"So this is the end. The end of humanity." It was Akagi Ritsuko's cold voice, sounded beside Misato.
Misato turned her head and glared at Ritsuko, who was relaxing against the back of her chair, picked her mug and took a sip. Her teasing passed through the aroma of the espresso. "Armageddon is here, we can raise a toast for it after work."
"Indeed. Raise a toast for it hasn't happened yet." With that said, Misato turned her head back, reached out to press the microphone button on the command console.
"All right, kids. That's the end of the simulated action test."
Bright lights came on, Tokyo-3 on the battlefield live screen disappeared without a trace in an instant, revealing three simulation entry plugs encased by various machines. Other staffs in Central Dogma also began to busy themselves, flooding the room with a small cacophony. Ritsuko duly interjected in the middle of it.
"It should have been ended long time ago. I have told you there was no point in repeating the Yashima Operation Test."
"What bad luck…" Misato ignored her words, and just stared at the simulation entry plugs mumbling to herself absently.
"Bad luck. Good choice of words. Today your kids let Angels blow us sky high three times. Considering all Angels they were defeated by are the same Angels they had defeated before, I think Wonderful luck would be a better description right now."
Misato rolled her eyes, but still couldn't help but speak out for her kids.
"Maybe the strength of simulated Angels is too high?"
"The simulated Angels were constructed according to battlefield scans and core analysis data. Theoretically, their simulated strength would only be lower but not higher."
"So you mean simulated Evangelions are weaker?"
"Evangelions were born in our hands. The difference between the real Evangelion and simulated one is less than 0.00000001%."
"But….."
"Are you questioning my work now, or are you just questioning the Magi?"
Ritsuko gave a cold icy answer back. Misato finally silenced and sighed, "Of course I know Magi never make mistakes, neither do you. Or at least rarely."
Had a look at Misato's dejected face, the blonde doctor leaned forward a bit, set aside the coffee mug and deftly code on the keyboard with her freed hands. "Angels are still the same, I have said it. But our pilots are not the same as they used to be."
"What does that mean?"
"Simply put, they are weaker than ever after hard training." Ritsuko paused for a moment ignoring Misato's puzzled frown, and then tapped lightly on a key. The computer screen in front of their faces immediately showed something new.
"During the two simulated Yashima Operations, obviously EVA-01 was just wasting the precious time that EVA-00 and EVA-02 had their shield up in defense. The Third Children made all his three fires missed, and the Magi said his firing line had not been deflected by Ramiel at all. It's the fault of the Third Children himself. Well, look, his aiming time was also 43% longer than his past record."
"Simulated Israfel told us more. You saw the twins' two cores were not destroyed synchronically which made the operation failed. Do you know how terrible the synchronization time difference is between EVA-01 and EVA-02? Here, 0.93s. This number means the fruit of their synchronization training is doomed now."
Misato stared blankly at the computer screen without making a sound.
"Particularly Shinji and Asuka performed quite poorly today. Besides their small drops in synchronization rate, their battle cooperation can not be even worse. A technical officer like me could tell they didn't coorperate with each other at all, but just got in each other's way! It's relief that the worst performing Rei in the past did not make mistakes today."
Ritsuko was about to say something else when Misato's rise stopped her. Misato tapped her hand on the microphone's button again, opening up communication with the Childrens, but the communication channel was being occupied now.
"Idiot! You killed me! You killed all of humanity!"
"You were the one rushed there rashly, why should I have to back you up!"
Katsuragi Misato, the battlefield commanding officer of the Childrens, twisted her eyebrows somberly in a split second. Akagi Ritsuko, the technical head of the Evangelion program, simply shrugged and picked up her coffee mug again.
"You two, shut up! Get out of the plug now and be in front of me in twenty minutes for your reports of your actions today!"
Finished yelling into the microphone, Misato turned to Ritsuko, who was sipping her coffee. "We've got to do something about this, they will be killed by the next angel because of that cooperating level!"
"Before you ask," Ritsuko sneered slightly, "Magi is now planning additional team tactics training for them right now."
"No, not that. I mean something more rooted." Misato sat back on her seat, looking much worried.
"Do something about the tension between Shinji and Asuka," said a new voice, Ibuki Maya, who had just finished her task at hand and joined the discussion. "Those two kids have been getting more and more hostile to each other recently." Maya began to feel constricted by the two glances from her senior immediately.
"Okay, it's teenage relationship issue. Maybe we should not accuse them in front of their guardian."
Misato pretended not to hear Ritsuko's sarcasm. "That's it, Maya! They do have a worse time with each other than before. "
"I think, both of them have wrong impressions of each other as enemies. In other words, they didn't see other sides of each other. Their eyes are blinded by Evangelions." Maya said while she secretly observing Ritsuko's reaction. But her senior just coldly continued to drink coffee. "They should communicate with each other more."
"You are absolutely right!" Misato nodded vigorously. "But, as you see, encourage them to communicate is pretty much the same as encouraging them to choke each other."
"In my opinion, having their guardian drink less Yebisu and spend more weekends with them quite helps."
"No. I tried, it didn't work." Misato shook her head. "Asuka is not Rei, none can change her mind except herself. And Shinji also began to intentionally ignore her lately, or continued to say 'sorry', which of course are both equal to provoke Asuka, made her angrier."
Three adult women fell silent for a moment, then Misato sighed helplessly.
"Well, now it's time to listen those kids pass the buck. Let's talk about this later." She stood up while Ritsuko began to hand off her duties to Maya.
"Work time Maya. Adjust Magi's work sequence, move the Childrens' tactical coorperating training to the second priority. Properly lower the strength of the simulated Angels this time."
And at this time, Katsuragi Misato got an idea.
It must be noted that Katsuragi Misato has a singular genius, the ability to got mad ideas to solve impossible problems. Such genius helped her become a tactical command officer of NERV against the Angels. And now, Katsuragi Misato got an idea.
"Can we get Magi to help?"
The two technicians who dealt with Magi the most stopped and both turned their heads to look at Misato.
"I mean, since they have some hostile perceptions to each other, could we get Magi to help them practice communicating with each other. Like, simulate an Asuka?"
Ibuki Maya covered her mouth with her hand. "You mean, an AI language model? Trained with Asuka's digital data collected by Magi? Yes! I think we can make it!"
Now, it was Ritsuko's turn to sigh, she hoped the Commander would stop this crazy plan secretly.
In fact, he would not.
TBC...
A.N: So it's my first English fanfic try. I'm not a native English speaker, so sorry for my poor English. PLEASE LEAVE COMMENTS.