X-X-X
CHAPTER 7
X-X-X
Deep beneath the waves of the Pacific Ocean, something stirred. An astral echo reached into the deeps and woke a sleeping beast.
A huge, dark shape - at first appearing to be just a massive underwater hill, until it shed eons' worth of mud - ruffled its fins and pushed off the abyssal plain, swimming up towards the light.
X-X-X
"Well, well! Someone is dressed up fancy." Asuka's tone was cutting. "Could it be that our valiant captain has a date?"
"No," Misato said shortly, walking with uncharacteristic haste to the bathroom. "It's business."
"Business with Kaji, maybe?"
"No." The neutrality in the captain's tone left Asuka somewhat taken aback; normally Misato would get at least a little irritated if Kaji was brought up. "Me and Dr. Akagi are going to the Old Tokyo dead zone to observe a weapons test."
Oh right, Dr. Akagi. Who is Misato's secret girlfriend… or at least fuckbuddy? Scheisse, if the former, no wonder she can stay composed at the mention of Kaji. Has everything I thought I knew been a lie?
"I may be gone for up to three days." Misato put the last pins in her hair. "So don't wait up for me."
"A weapons test?" Asuka frowned, stepping up off the couch and looking down the hallway at the captain. "Are we getting new toys?"
Misato paused, and turned, fixing the pilot with a glare. "Asuka, I don't ever want to hear you calling military hardware 'toys' again." She looked back at the mirror. "And no. The manufacturer is trying to produce something that can compete with Evangelion. I doubt this will be a productive trip."
Shinji finally spoke up. "Then… why are you going?"
"The pilots aren't the only NERV personnel that get ordered around, Shinji." Misato's demeanor was cold, in a way Asuka wasn't used to hearing outside of the Central Dogma ops floor. "The Commander wants us to observe the test, so observe we will. Goodbye."
"Hey, w-" Asuka began, but Misato strode past her and out the front door before she could even finish.
Shinji stared after her blankly, while Asuka wore a sour expression.
"Hmph," she grumbled. "Just leaving the two of us alone here? For as long as three days? Just when I thought she couldn't get more irresponsible."
"Maturity… doesn't seem to be her strong point," Shinji murmured.
"You're telling me!" Asuka folded her arms. "She's just as bad as she was when she was my guardian back in Germany. In fact, worse, if -"
No, Asuka, that can't be right. Rei's living conditions can't be Misato's work. Misato struggles with being a competent guardian, but she'd have to be a heartless monster to stash a teenage girl in an abandoned concrete hovel like that!
"If…?" Shinji raised an eyebrow.
"None of your verdammt business," Asuka growled.
Misato would go ballistic over the notion that a pilot's being treated like that. So either she's under orders to keep quiet… or she doesn't know. If the latter, it might just be oversight - but Misato is ops director, so it's a serious oversight, and that still wouldn't answer why she was there in the first place. If the former, well, then this rabbit hole goes deeper than I thought.
"Umm… I'm going to go make lunch," Shinji finally said.
"Yeah, you do that," Asuka said dismissively. After a moment, she dug out her phone. Kaji's number was dead, just like Mari's, but she was pretty sure a simple email would get through to him eventually.
NEW MESSAGE to -Kaji-
Heyyy~! Sorry to be all business, but I've got a favor I want to ask of you. You're the kind of guy who finds things out, right?
X-X-X
A boom and a shudder jerked Kaji awake. He sat up immediately - and flailed briefly as the thick liquid around him threw off his balance.
"You just had to wake up now," Mari murmured from the front of the entry plug. "Oh, there it goes. Sync rate dropping, dropping… holding… I guess sixty-four percent isn't too bad. Try not to think to loudly, will you?"
"Sure." Kaji hated being sidelined, but he knew better than to argue. As a passenger in an Evangelion's entry plug, there was nothing he could do beyond sit quietly and keep out of the pilot's way.
"Wondering what's going on?" Mari smirked, and Kaji was once again reminded that this was very firmly her battleground and not his. "Well, so am I, really. I'll tell you when I actually know."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Kaji's eyes narrowed, and he stood up, leaning over the back of Mari's chair. He remembered why this was a futile exercise a moment too late.
Mari was focused attentively on empty LCL, her eyes flickering over displays that were invisible to anyone not synced with the Evangelion. Her body shifted subtly when she moved the massive creature, but there was no other visible indication that she was even piloting. Even the one usable hand that she kept on the control yoke was relaxed, barely holding the handle.
Kaji had to admit he was impressed - Mari herself had said it took a special kind of skill with the link circuit to keep one's human body entirely relaxed while moving the monster.
"Felt something funny to the port side in my longrange AT sense," Mari said cheerfully. "I'm keeping course away from it. The sense can pick up a ton of false positives at that distance - pretty much any aggregation of life can trigger it, particularly a large cluster of humans - but you never know. Could be an angel. Or, worse, another Evangelion."
Kaji stiffened. "Worse? What do you mean?"
"If SEELE thinks they can cut us down without Gendo pinning it on them, then they'll send Evas to kill us. And, believe it or not, a lone Evangelion is a deadlier force than a lone angel, going by what battle data exists so far." Mari's tone was a brittle kind of cheerful. "Baal is scrap metal and bones if she gets into an Eva fight in this state. It's a sprint to Japan from here. I'm pushing her as fast as she goes; let's hope."
Kaji winced. "Is there anything -"
"Sit down and shut up, Kaji. I need to listen."
"Wha- listen? To what?"
"To the AT ambience. Now - sit down, and shut up!"
Reluctantly, Kaji did as he was told.
X-X-X
The longboat cut a rapid wake through the frigid, scarlet water. Gendo pushed the rudder slightly, his eyes still fixed on the horizon.
"Are you going to tell me what you've got up your sleeve yet?" Fuyutsuki grumbled. "SEELE has been searching for the lance for over a decade now. What makes you think you can suddenly pinpoint it?"
"Not up my sleeve, Kozo. In my glove." Gendo's voice was as eerily calm as ever. "I can pinpoint it because I have the entity it exists for."
Fuyutsuki frowned, looking back at the Commander. "Adam?"
"Of course. The lifeseed knows its lance." Gendo smiled slightly. "I felt it respond to the presence of Shamshel, and after a few tests around the Evangelions, I can reasonably say that the embryo is extremely attuned to AT resonance. The lance is not exactly the same, but the sensations Adam has produced over the course of the past two hours or so lead me to believe it is definitely capable of seeking out the soul breaker."
Fuyutsuki grimaced at the wording, looking away.
I can hardly blame him. The very existence of a weapon like the lance is horrifying to beings like us. Gendo shifted the rudder again. A spear that can pierce the border of the soul… effortlessly rending the inviolable Ænima Terminus. A terrifying weapon against the angels - and even I don't want to dwell on what it might do to a human.
"You brought Adam. You brought Adam here." Fuyutsuki's tone was heavy with trepidation. "Here, where the world is thin and frayed enough, and things already leak through the cracks. Are you insane, Ikari?"
"On the contrary, Kozo," Gendo replied, still smiling slightly. "I am simply willing to take a calculated risk. We need the lance. Our scenario cannot play out without it."
"Of course." Fuyutsuki still didn't sound happy, but he let the matter drop, instead opting to look out over the expanse of red water and stained icebergs. "The scenario takes priority."
"Indeed it does."
I will risk anything for you, Yui.
X-X-X
Old Tokyo, now merely part of the Itto Sanken dead zone. One of many sunken cities, drowned by the hubris of man. Ritsuko flicked her cigarette filter away, watching the thin trail of smoke arc out over the water and fall. It landed with a ripple, near a rusted structure girder that stuck out of the sea like a jagged spear - one of many such edifices that dotted the immense shallow bay beside the test range.
Reinforced concrete slabs, support beams, even leaning walls or half-collapsed structures. She pulled out another cigarette. Once these were buildings that touched the sky, making up the mightiest metropolis that mankind has ever built. Now they are no more than rock and ruins. The sea-washed bones of a dead human hive, slowly decaying under the inevitable march of time and tides.
"Uh, Rits? The test range is that way. And the tour's almost over, anyway - wanna head back to the hotel room?"
Gods, I love her voice. If smiles made a sound, that's what they would sound like. Ritsuko took a deep drag on her cigarette, and leaned heavily against the guardrail that separated her from a 20-foot drop into the lagoon of ruins. Now or never, Ritsuko, and never isn't an option. Savor that voice. It might be the last time she ever sees fit to speak to you.
Ritsuko turned quickly, fixing Misato with a serious look. The captain flinched; in her tall heels, Ritsuko's eyes were a few inches higher than Misato's.
"I've sabotaged the test," Ritsuko said tonelessly, though it took all of her self-control not to blurt it out like a middle schooler.
Misato's eyes widened. "… what?" She asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
"I've sabotaged the Jet Alone test," Ritsuko repeated, a slight tremor entering her voice this time. She brought up her cigarette again, trying to keep her hands from shaking.
Misato blinked. Then she blinked again. "Why?!" She managed, aghast. "The power plant in it is five times the size of an Evangelion reactor and half as stable - the thing's already a walking nuclear accident! Ritsuko, project E's results speak for themselves. There's no need to rig a weapons test just to show off for the Commander!"
Ritsuko held up her hands. "I didn't want to do it! He - the Commander ordered me." She looked away. "I did what I could. Units Zero and One are ready to launch to airlift on five minutes' notice if the test turns into a large-scale accident."
"Oh, don't give me the 'just following orders' line!" Misato clenched her fists. "What exactly have you done? No, wait, don't tell me. Knowing how cold-blooded Gendo is, it has to involve at least the threat of a large-scale meltdown. This test range isn't far from a major city, Ritsuko! How could you? How could you?!"
Ritsuko winced, then looked down, still unable to meet Misato's gaze. "I… wish I could answer that," she whispered.
"What happened to you, Ritsuko?" Misato's cold glare cut Ritsuko like a knife. "This - this isn't the woman I fell in love with. Screw following orders, you had a choice. Why?"
"Because I'm in too deep," Ritsuko said, her voice still soft. "The moment I openly show disloyalty, I'm dead. And -"
"And that justifies killing millions?"
" - And, the Jet Alone reactor won't melt down." Ritsuko sucked nervously on what was left of her cigarette. "At least… not if everything goes according to plan. I was as meticulous as I possibly could be. It should stay a scare, not a real accident."
Misato stepped back, her eyes still focused on Ritsuko. "We have to stop it," she said softly. "We… we have to stop the test. We can't put those people at risk like this - we've got to tell them!"
The captain took another step back, and Ritsuko desperately stepped forward, reaching out to her estranged lover. "Misato, no! You can't -"
"I can't what, Dr. Akagi?!" Misato slapped Ritsuko's hand away, but it was the formal title that made Ritsuko wince. "I can't do the right thing?"
Ritsuko opened her mouth. Then she shut it again, the terror in her eyes dying away as a dark resignation surface. "Do what you have to do," she finally whispered. "I won't… I can't stop you."
Despite herself, however, Misato paused. "No," she muttered. "You're doing it again - this isn't you, Ritsuko. What, are you suddenly not afraid they'll kill you?"
Ritsuko let out a soft chuckle as she stubbed her cigarette out on the railing. "No, I just… I don't want to fight you anymore," she said. "And I know they'll kill me, if the test is stopped. It would mean I betrayed Gendo, and by extension SEELE. What worries me is that I think they'll kill you, too."
"They'll…" Misato hesitated, one hand moving to fidget nervously with her cross pendant. "They'd really do that? Kill both of us?"
"I'm more at risk; I'm in deeper than you are. But on the other hand - and god, I'm sorry for how cold this sounds - you're probably more replaceable."
Misato drew back as if she'd been slapped. "I'm more replaceable?!"
"No - I didn't mean -" Ritsuko pinched the bridge of her nose. "Misato, you're more important to me than anything. I meant to NERV."
The captain's eyes narrowed and she clenched her fists, but then she seemed to deflate. "Fuck. I… can't argue with that."
Ritsuko reached out, as hesitantly as if she were trying to pet a skittish kitten, and put her hand on Misato's cheek. "I've… I've covered every possible risk I could find," she said. "And like I said, Units Zero and One are ready and on standby. The pilots will be at NERV headquarters during the Jet Alone test - I scheduled their sync test at the same time. Even if it looks like my safeguard isn't going to work, they'll be able to handle the situation."
"Asherah and Ishtar?" Misato cocked an eyebrow, although she didn't pull away from Ritsuko's touch. "That leaves out our best pilot. Why?"
Ritsuko finally smiled, rolling her eyes slightly. "That loudmouthed brat would never let you hear the end of it if you deployed her for 'civilian duty,' and her unit is non-optimal in any case." She pulled her hand back, retrieving another cigarette. "I've been keeping running tabs on battle data. Unit Zero is exceptionally tough, and she regenerates damage quicker than the other two; Unit One is showing a clear edge in AT field strength. Unit Two wins out in the pure physical strength department, which is great against an angel, but it's just not as useful in the context of nuclear accident containment."
Misato looked away from Ritsuko, gazing down at the massive figure at the far end of the test range. Then she looked back, her eyes hard once more.
"I hope you're right, and this goes to plan," she said. "For your own sake, as well as all the lives you'll have destroyed."
Ritsuko's smile remained in place, and she chuckled again - though it was a little more hollow than before. "I hope so too," she whispered. "God, I hope so too.
X-X-X
This body is 10.52 years old and its heart has beat 442,851,917 times.
Sync tests were not easy for Rei, despite the blank passivity of her demeanor throughout the many she had attended over the course of her lives. Although her uplinks provided a hardware wiring into Unit 00's nervous system and destrudo, it was not truly a complete connection to her soul, and the uplinks were insufficient without working in tandem with the LCL circuit; the fact that the test plugs were not physically within the Evangelions for the test tended to mar her scores. While the other pilots received and transmitted whole animara signals through the link circuit alone, Rei essentially synced through two different interfaces - and the response disparity between the nerve-taps and the link circuit became more pronounced when stretched out through a couple hundred or thousand meters of fiber-optic cable.
29.9%, which means that when actually piloting it should be about 38%. My sync rate has improved slightly. The Commander will be pleased.
For a moment, she felt a flash of memory - of delivering cold-voiced status reports to the back of Gendo's head while he gave terse, cursory replies.
The Commander is… not one to waste words. He is pleased when I perform well; I know this, and he must know I know this, so why would he state the obvious?
"Rei?" It was Maya's voice. "You just dropped by three percentage points. Is everything okay?"
Rei opened her eyes, although she did not look at the comm window on her display. "No problems, Lieutenant," she murmured.
Introspection is not my purpose. I must focus on synchronizing.
She pulled her attention back to the distant light of Unit 00's core, and the distorted image of her own face that lay within. Her sync rate ticked back up, topping out at a flat 30.0%.
"Hey, try to keep up, First!" Her comm crackled. "I won't be putting up with weak links on my team!"
Rei's gaze slid slowly over to the comm window, where Asuka's face hovered. The other pilot couldn't see her - as per the Commander's orders, she kept her outgoing comm on sound only - but Asuka didn't seem fazed; the German pilot was staring straight ahead as if she were looking at the view of at battle rather than the end of the test plug.
Rei's eyelid twitched ever so slightly. It would have been an almost imperceptible movement, even to someone who knew her, and yet there it was.
I must rectify these defects. Being near another pilot should not make me faulty.
Asuka had, for whatever reason, not closed her comm channel. Rei reached out in her mind to close it from her end - then stopped.
There was something about the second child's visage that gave her pause. The orange LCL muted the blue of her eyes to a dark grey, and her hair - floating around her head in the thick liquid like a halo - was accentuated to a brilliant red, as if she was wreathed in the light of a lithium flare.
A halo of fire. Like a seraphim of myth: a burning one.
She was a perfect mirror of Rei herself, right down to the hard expression where Rei knew her own displayed only neutral apathy.
What is it about her? Had Rei been the type of person to express herself, she would have furrowed her brow. She is everything I am not, and everything I should hate. I should avoid her - indeed, I have made no move towards her, and yet she has approached me herself. I cannot bring myself to actively drive her away.
The Commander would disapprove of my interest, and order me to cease association with her if he knew about it. Why, then, have I not reported this deviation to him?
Rei found she had no answers for herself. Every instinct drilled into her mind over her fourteen years of existence told her that the Second Child's willful disregard of authority, her self-righteous fury, her passion, her confidence, her individuality were all traits that Rei herself should abhor. And yet time and time again her thoughts drifted back to the German girl.
If you ignore a fire, it may grow. And a fire that grows too large will consume everything it touches.
Rei's eyes narrowed imperceptibly, and she drove the errant thoughts from her mind with an ironclad discipline.
This body is 10.52 years old and its heart has beat 442,852,006 times.
Her eyes flickered back to the comm screen for a fraction of a second - then snapped back to looking straight ahead. Rei focused her thoughts into the plug systems, and comm line beeped as it closed out.
This body is 10.52 years old and its heart has beat 442,852,006 times.
Abruptly, the plug speakers beeped again. This time the screen - a data readout, rather than a comm window - appeared in the dead center of Rei's telepathic HUD.
Sync test status: hour 2 of 3
First Child: 30.0% +/- 0.1%, adj. approx. 38%
Second Child: 80.1% +/- 0.2%
Third Child: 47.6% +/- 0.8%
A second later, Asuka's comm line opened yet again. "Oh yeah! Still the best there is, motherfuckers!" She crowed. "Eighty percent broken - suck it, Four Eyes!"
"Well done, Asuka," Maya said - in a considerably calmer tone. "That's a new personal record - and probably a new record, flat. I don't have Pilot Illustrious' scores on hand to check, though."
This time, Rei couldn't make herself look away from the frenzied grin on Asuka's face.
Would the Commander commend me in such a manner if my scores were that high?
"You don't have to check! I know Mari's scores. She's been hovering at an average of seventy-eight point nine. She's never spiked higher than seventy-nine point five." Asuka sounded almost drunk on pride. "She'll be so mad that I broke eighty percent before she did! I guess all her talk about the wisdom of age doesn't translate into the practical after all!"
Rei's eye twitched again.
This body is 10.52 years old and its heart has beat 442,852,006 times.
This body is 10.52 years old and its heart has beat 442,852,007 times.
This body is 10.52 years old and its heart has beat 442,852,008 times…
X-X-X
Scheisse, is three hours really necessary? Asuka gritted her teeth, fighting to keep herself focused on the connection to Unit 02 despite the mounting boredom. I haven't managed to pull another percentage point out of my ass - it's a fucking stretch to sync any deeper than I'm already at. I don't think any human is designed to synchronize this closely with these hellenic titans.
Come on, Asuka. Test's almost over. Let's try one more push. She closed her eyes.
Her mind stretched out into the link, reaching into the huge other thing that lurked there. Intellectually, she knew it was just the feel of the nervous system and cybernetics that moved the Evangelion - but when she was literally mind-jacked into it, Asuka had difficulty thinking of the presence as anything other than the beast's soul.
Evangelions aren't anywhere near as scary from the inside. Moloch is fiery, but she's never felt unsafe to me. She's warm and strong, like a roaring hearth fire, or the embrace of a mother's arms…
Asuka flinched, and felt her sync drop slightly in response. Mama… this is the last place she was before the madness took her.
Are you proud of me, Mama?
Her brow furrowed as she concentrated, trying to call to mind memories of her mother that weren't painful. It wasn't easy; despite her prodigious intellect, even Asuka didn't have well formed memories of her very early childhood.
There were a few fleeting impressions, though - a flash of blonde hair, a laugh, a smile. She tried to assemble them into a coherent picture, visualizing a proud Kyoko Soryu sitting in Moloch's entry plug.
Asuka?
The pilot started, although she didn't open her eyes. "Did… did you just say something, Maya?"
"… no?" Maya sounded confused. "You jumped to eighty-one for a minute there, though."
Asuka shifted uncomfortably, then concentrated again.
Stupid, stupid. Thinking of Mama. I don't need a mother, Asuka thought angrily. She might have loved me once, but then she replaced me with a fucking doll. I don't need a gottverdammt hug, and I don't need anyone to tell me they're gottverdammt proud of me.
She clenched her hands around the control yokes, forcing the thoughts from her mind.
Asuka!
Her eyes snapped open.
Two images assaulted her senses at once - the view of the end of the entry plug, and the view of a cage wall and umbilical bridge in front of her.
Asuka!
A spike of pain lanced through Asuka's head, and she cried out, clutching at her temples. One set of hands moved freely - the other pulled in vain against creaking hyperdiamond clamps.
She felt the vague impression of an alarm sounding, and -
The next thing she knew, the comm was crackling, and Maya's worried voice echoed in her test plug. " - you hear me? Asuka!"
"I - ugh," the German girl began, shaking her head. "Yeah, I can hear you. What the fuck happened?"
"Unclear. Moloch somehow got switched on to full power a minute ago. Your… let's see." There was a brief burst of typing sounds. "Your sync spiked over ninety percent and your harmonic readings… well… all I can say for sure is they went kind of crazy. Then, as far as I can tell, you blacked out for about fifteen seconds."
Asuka let her head fall back against the seat. "Great. Any idea what went wrong?"
"Nothing conclusive yet. I'd guess the activation was a random power fault in the umbilical cable - Evas can be finicky about their power supply." There was another flurry of keystrokes. "As for the weird harmonics and blackout… hard to say. I'll have to show the results to Dr. Akagi before I'll know anything. I'd hazard a guess that it was due to being synced during the activation sequence, which isn't normally supposed to happen."
Asuka brought her hands up, rubbing her face slowly. "Scheisse. Good to know…" she shook her head, realizing that the link to Moloch was gone. "Can I get out now? I don't think I can muster sync again… not for a little bit, at least."
"The test's over in seven minutes anyway. I'll call it early." Asuka's entry plug jolted, and began to shift slowly upwards to the pool dock. "Well done, pilots."
X-X-X
"Gottverdammt! Fucking LCL." Asuka threaded her fingers through the tangled knot in her damp hair, trying to tease it out. "Should have washed it out better…"
She looked back at the other two pilots, who were trailing behind her. Shinji was spacing out with his SDAT headphones in, though he paled and pulled one of them out the moment she looked at him, apparently assuming he was the target of her wrath. Rei was, as always, walking with methodical strides and a blank expression.
"Hmph." She looked away, increasing her pace. "Of course, neither of those dummkopfs even have enough hair to understand," she muttered to herself.
Unfortunately, her other companion was more attentive than Shinji.
"If you cut your hair shorter, pilot Soryu, it will not become tangled after exposure to LCL."
Asuka stopped short, whirling to face the other pilot. "Care to repeat that, dolly?"
"If you cut your hair shorter, pilot Soryu, it will not become tangled after exposure to LCL." Every inflection was identical, to the point where Asuka actually wondered briefly if Rei had a tape recorder hidden on her person. "And I am not a doll."
Asuka's eyes narrowed, and she stepped forward - bringing her close enough to lean forward and loom over the small Japanese girl. "Wow, look who finally decided to grow a spine! I'd say I was proud of you, if you weren't mocking me!"
"Uh. I don't think she was trying to mock you, Soryu -"
"Shut up, Shinji. And I told you to call me Asuka." The taller pilot didn't break her staring contest with the other girl.
True to form, Rei simply stared right back, her head inclined upwards to meet Asuka's eyes. This time, Asuka didn't let the neutrality faze her. There's a person in there, I fucking know that. You've just gotta prod her a little to show it.
After a moment she blinked, in her weirdly slow and exaggerated way. "Pilot Ikari is correct, pilot Soryu. It…" she paused, and her head tilted slightly to the side.
Woah, is she actually… struggling? With something like this? Those micro-expressions mean everything with her.
"It was not my intention to slight any aspect of your person," Rei finally concluded. "It was a statement of factual advice."
And now she's apologizing. Woah. Next I'll see pigs flying. Asuka straightened. "Well -"
She never got to finish whatever cutting remark she had prepared - she was interrupted by the hallway lights dimming from white to yellow. Yellow alert.
"Evangelion pilots to the Central Dogma briefing room. Repeat: Evangelion pilots to the Central Dogma briefing room."
There was no angel alarm, but Asuka didn't let that stop her. She immediately ducked around Rei and began sprinting back to the Central Dogma complex.
As she rounded the corner, a flash of blue just behind her caught her eye.
Is she really only a half step back?! Fuck, for a tiny freakin' doll, she sure can move!
Predictably, Shinji was the straggler of the pack; he lacked the machine-like focus or leg length of the other pilots. Despite this, they made impressive time back to Central Dogma.
Lt. Makoto Hyuga was waiting for them in the briefing room. "Ah, you're here. This isn't an angel attack, but it is a crisis - there's an uncontrolled nuclear hazard at the Old Tokyo ruins. Captain Katsuragi is on site, and has ordered Evangelion backup. I need two pilots ready to deploy by airlift ASAP. Volunteers?"
"Eww, you called us back here for public service work?" Asuka wrinkled her nose. "I call not it!"
A faint smile tugged the corner of Hyuga's mouth. "The captain anticipated something along those lines. Ikari, Ayanami, will you take this mission?"
"Yes," Rei replied immediately. Of course she did, she probably gets off on being a good little dolly. Shinji hesitated, but nodded.
"Alright. Suit up and get on the express shuttle car to the airfield; I'll meet you there."
Shinji and Rei double-timed it out of the briefing room, and Hyuga followed. Asuka abruptly found herself on her own.
Well… scheisse. I don't exactly have anything going on now, do I? She slowly padded out of the room, then stopped in the corridor - looking first down the long and convoluted route that would take her to one of the exit elevators, then the other way, which would lead her into the heart of B wing and Central Dogma. I could go home, but there's nothing to do there. Hikari will be studying - she's never available to hang out with less than a day's notice. And despite being the most popular girl in the school, I wouldn't want to give any of the other idiots the time of day.
Guess I could go to the ops room. If nothing else, I could get a look at all those fancy control panels that the bunnies get to play with.
She turned right, towards Central Dogma, and started walking.
Mein Gott, this place is big… it's ten times the size of the NERV-G facility. She passed numerous doors marked with no more than bland and uninformative room numbers. There were even two elevators she wasn't familiar with, opposite the entrance to the ops room.
Upon second inspection, one was familiar: it was marked Level Zero - Express Elevator. She'd taken that particular elevator back up from the cages with Misato and Ritsuko when Sachiel had attacked; it also connected to the pilots' locker rooms.
The other one had two labels on its panel: Artificial Evolution Laboratory sub-level, and LCL Production Plant. It was also guarded by a keycard scanner that was embedded in a single-piece titanium shell rather than the usual plastic casing.
Somehow, I don't think my keycard is going to get me into that one. Asuka frowned. Artificial evolution… sounds shady. I'll have to see what I can find out about that later.
She turned back towards the ops room, opening the door quietly.
She'd expected at least some kind of activity - a tapping of keys, yelled reports, something to indicate that they were coordinating a deployment. But the ops room was nearly silent. A relaxed-looking Lt. Aoba had his feet up on his desk and was reading a Rolling Stone magazine; Maya was focused on her laptop instead of her station computer, apparently reading through lines of computer code.
"Hey, what's going on?" Asuka said aloud. "Aren't there pilots on deployment?"
Aoba didn't even look up. "Yeah, but that's not our problem. It's a small op." He turned the page. "Cap'n's on site already, and Makoto will be more than enough backup when he gets there."
"So, what? You just slack all day?" Asuka frowned.
"Pretty much. Not a lot to do here when we aren't under fire, 'cept a bit of system maintenance here and there, and you pilots' training exercises." Aoba finally looked over at her. "Maya here is the only workaholic, 'cause Section Three is friggin' always busy. But me and Makoto usually like to take it easy in between the life-or-death-battle protracted shifts."
That… kinda makes sense, I guess. Asuka deflated slightly. Me and Mari and Shinji tend not to worry too much about NERV when we're not on deployment, too. No comment regarding Rei, of course.
"I guess that's fair," she said, somewhat grudgingly. "Mind if I look around the ops room?"
Aoba just shrugged. Maya stopped reading and arched an eyebrow, then turned to Asuka. "Don't poke anything that looks active, or touch the Commander's red phone," she said. "Other than that, go ahead."
Cautioning me like a fucking child, huh? Asuka bit back a sarcastic response. She's a superior officer, and she's being more lenient than many would be. Play nice, Asuka.
The ops room was eerily vast and silent without the support staff or the hectic noise of battle. The Commander's throne, as it was often referred to, was vacant; the ops floor was empty but for the two idle lieutenants and the softly humming MAGI cores.
The big screen showed a composite scan of an area with a huge radius - roughly a third of Japan in all, and a fair portion of sea. It was made up of hundreds of antennas and three geosynchronous satellite feeds, constantly sweeping the area for any sign of a blue AT field.
There was a soft beep from Aoba's console, and he briefly tilted his head to look around the magazine. "Looks like the sortie will land in about five minutes," he said.
"Jealous that Makoto's seeing more action than you?" Maya remained focused on her computer, but a faint smile twitched at the corner of her mouth.
"Nah, not really. I'm perfectly okay with staying far away from malfunctioning robot-borne nuclear reactors."
"Really?" Maya grinned outright, and arched her eyebrow in a sly expression. "And yet you work for NERV, in close proximity to Evangelions."
"Okay, first of all, they aren't robots. Second of all, the Eva hearts have never once malfunctioned since their final tests and installation." Aoba actually looked up from his magazine. "Dr. Soryu came up with a damn near flawless design. That ugly fuck that Misato's grappling down in old Tokyo can't compare."
Asuka looked up sharply at the mention of her own last name. Dr. Soryu? Mama designed the Evangelion reactors? She blinked. I thought she was just one of the biotech specialists that designed the DNA and nerve implants… I never knew she was a nuclear engineer too.
She sat down in Lt. Hyuga's chair, looking over his workstation. Its main screen was showing a similar scanner feed to the big screen, but with quite a few more control options.
Oh hey, cool. I wonder just how far out the search radius is?
"The Evangelions have landed," Aoba said. Though he was hardly electrified, he did pull his feet off the desk and close his music magazine, looking at his screen. "I guess watching this should kill a few minutes."
Speak for yourself, I'm not going to dignify her… I mean them by pretending it's a legitimate deployment. Asuka looked back at the screen in front of her. First things first, let's see how far out into the Pacific we can scan.
Fortunately, it seemed that Hyuga's monitor was independent of the big screen - Asuka vaguely recalled that it was the auxiliary crew that organized those feeds, and presumably the central scan was just its idle pattern.
She pressed a button on the observation controls, moving them as far eastwards as she could. Woah, NERV has scanning gear set up all the way out on Hawaii? That's pretty impressive. She began slowly dialling it back across the Pacific, and the observation automatically switched to satellite feed as she moved away from the island.
A few more remote islands also had small antenna installations, but most of the feed was satellite vie
w of open ocean. She was somewhere past the halfway point back to Japan when the workstation suddenly emitted a shrill beeping sound.
Asuka recoiled at the noise, almost falling over as she stepped back. "Scheisse! Was zur hölle? I didn't mess with anything -"
"Goddamn right you didn't," Aoba said, already standing and striding over to Hyuga's workstation. "The scanners don't need your fiddling to know their job. That's the signal for a blue pattern!"
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