Ritsuko Akagi is seriously considering breaking into Misato's office and finding her emergency liquor supply. There's some in the Commander's office of course, but she's not yet desperate or stupid enough to try raiding that. Given how things were going, he'd be there and she'd have to try to explain. She didn't even know what it was she'd be trying to explain.

Maya approaches her cautiously, "I have something that might be good news, sempai."

Akagi looks up.

"The limiters actually held. Shinji did not actually exceed 98% synchronisation with an Eva."

She sighs, "Does this one come with illustrations or just a headache? We all saw the recorded rates."

Maya shakes her head, "No visualisations yet sempai, the Magi are throwing strange error messages whenever I try to get them to process the data."

That gets Akagi's attention, "But you think you have something anyway?"

"I can tell you what it looks like to me, but then I start to understand why the Magi are having problems and think I must be seeing things that aren't there."

"Out with it!" Akagi doesn't have much patience or nerves left for Maya's caution right now.

Maya takes a physical step back along with a mental one, "He hit the limiters shortly after Ayanami went negative. The strain gauges indicated Unit 01 was trying to turn towards 02, but Shinji doesn't appear to have initiated it. What the data suggests he was doing was synchronising with himself."

"That makes no sense, Maya."

"It gets worse, sempai."

Ritsuko takes out a bottle of painkillers, swallows a couple with the dregs of disgustingly cold coffee and hands the bottle to Maya.

"Once the ghost effect appeared in Unit 02, it barely reached activation level, the rest was wildly fluctuating synchronisation levels with Ayanami and Asuka not with the Eva. I think. Their synchronisation data is also all over the place."

"That's quite some theory Maya. Anything else?"

"Ayanami's flip back to a positive synchronisation rate was almost instantaneous and happened a second and a half after Shinji called her 'Rei' rather than 'Ayanami'. Then the video feed is all static until the power fails and Ayanami is sitting with Asuka. The Magi give different answers as to who the sensor grid is reporting in the front seat during that time."

"Do I need to remind you there's three of them? If there's any doubt at all, they should come to a consensus. Though how they could doubt who was in the fucking plug I don't know."

Maya dry swallows what looks like half the bottle of painkillers and shakes her head.

"Three pilots. Three Magi. Four answers. Two of them sealed as eyes-only for Dr. Akagi."

"Well, let me have a look then."

Maya shakes her head, "Not you, sempai."