My favorite ramen restaraunt had to shutter up a few months ago / seems they just weren't able to make ends meet between customer attrition from the ongoing pandemic and rising food/ingredient costs. I was very sad to see them go.
Ōkami reference
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Chapter 44
Under His Wings I Find RefugeX-X-X
Mari had outright whooped when Rei had offered to cover their meals. Shinji, Kaworu and Hikari had been more subdued, but still sported grateful smiles.
Asuka, however, pulled Rei aside at the back of their impromptu formation.
"Are you really going to be okay covering food for six?"
"Lieutenant-Commander Fuyutsuki has issued many years of back pay to my bank account. I can afford it - and I have little to spend my money on but my friends."
Asuka blinked, then nodded, letting her hand fall from Rei's sleeve. "Okay. Yeah… um, sorry for assuming."
"On the contrary. Thank you." Rei took Asuka's hand in her own. "I know your concern comes from a place of affection."
Asuka felt her cheeks reddening.
"Y-yeah. It does." She managed to force the words out with only a little unsteadiness. "But, if you're not worried, spend your money on whatever you want. It's good to build your own… sense of, um, financial agency."
The corners of Rei's eyes softened in one of her secret little smiles. Asuka felt her flush deepen in anticipation of a dose of Rei's signature dry wit, her usual reward for letting herself ramble on.
This time, however, Rei just leaned up on her tiptoes and kissed Asuka's cheek.
Oh.
Blinking with surprise, Asuka spotted Hikari glancing back in the queue and flashing a sincere, if slightly jerky, thumbs-up gesture with her prosthetic right arm.
The line shuffled inexorably forward. Despite the dragging, near-death pall that hung over most of Tokyo-3's businesses, this ramen stall seemed very much alive and well. There were six other customers across four groups already seated at the outdoor tables.
I wonder how much of the NERV-J staff body relies completely on them for daily meals. It's less than a block away from the geofront tram exit…
"Your Chinese-style hot and sour noodles are vegetarian, right?"
Rei had made it to the front of their little pack, which had in turn made its way to the front of the queue.
"Aye, no meat in that dish."
"I will have the Chinese-style hot and sour noodles, then." Rei turned and gestured stiffly to the other pilots. "My friends are on my order."
Shinji and Hikari both ordered Sapporo ramen. Kaworu ordered tantanmen.
"Princess." Mari nudged Asuka urgently. "Princess. Help me out."
"Was?"
"I can't remember the name of the ramen I like."
Asuka sighed, rolling her eyes.
"Don't be like that. You always took to Japan way more than I did." Mari's anxious expression morphed into a smile. "Even if you still suck at reading."
"Tonkotsu. You like tonkotsu ramen. If you can't hold that word in your head, just say you want what I ordered." Asuka deftly stepped around her older sister, fighting the urge to roll her eyes a second time. "Hi. Tonkotsu ramen for me, please."
"You got it."
Asuka stepped out of line and headed for the table where the others were waiting. Behind her, she heard Mari parrot "I'll have what she ordered," and she chuckled softly to herself.
Rei brought up the tail of the line, pulling a NERV-issued debit card from a very glossy and new-looking black wallet. As she tapped her card on the stall's payment point, Asuka caught a flash of another color, a tiny charm in a pattern of pink, white and orange.
Is that-?
She tried to stifle the thought before it could precipitate a blush. Based on how her cheeks were starting to warm, she was a little late.
Rei made her way over to the table and sat down next to Asuka, unconcerned by Asuka's internal struggle.
I can't believe she beat me to the pride-merch milestone!
Despite her indignation, the warmth in her chest continued to spread, filling her with what she imagined must have been a visible glow.
After all, if it wasn't visible, than how would Mari know to give her that sidelong look with the subtle smirk and quirked eyebrow?
Asuka was snapped out of her mess of thoughts by a touch of soft fingers to her chin, pulling her head to the side. Before she could question what was going on, Rei kissed her; the motion was quick and soft, yet it left warmth tingling on Asuka's lips all the same.
Rei opened her eyes as she drew back, and Asuka allowed herself an indulgent moment to do nothing but look, letting her gaze dwell on Rei's eyes. In the early afternoon sun, the deep red of her irises shone like embers of a fire burning low.
After a moment, the magic was broken. Hikari said something, and Rei's attention was pulled away as she replied.
Belatedly, Asuka swept her eyes over the rest of the street seating around the ramen stall. Acting friendly with her team in public wasn't any concern, but acting more than friendly with Rei was the sort of thing Section 2 might be interested to know. She cursed herself for not checking earlier.
But there were no clearly identified Section 2 personnel at the ramen stall. A man in NERV's office worker uniform was lazily scrolling on his phone at the periphery of the tables, absently picking at his food. A man and an androgynous-looking person seated close to the stall, both in LCL-stained coveralls, were talking animatedly. A checkpoint guard, his carbine, helmet and plate carrier missing, was eating his ramen like he was worried someone might take it from him. Another pair of NERV employees - Asuka recalled they were also office workers - had already gotten up and left, no doubt back to the cubicles for the rest of their shift.
There were no civilians.
Still, none of the NERV personnel seemed actually interested in the pilots' little group. No one was overtly watching. No convinently angled smartphones that could be recording. No suspiciously stiff or bored-looking bystanders.
Why would Section 2 not be watching this place? It seems like the obvious choice for a watch point. Is there something I'm not seeing?
There were a few security cameras on the street, one or two of which might have caught the pilots in the corner of their FOV. None seemed new enough to have been installed after the stall moved onto the block outside the geofront exit.
And if someone was watching at a distance via binoculars… well, at that point Asuka could feel justified concern shifting into paranoia.
Exhaling softly, she lowered her shoulders and closed her eyes, forcing her body to be more relaxed. After a moment, she started timing her breaths, dissolving the last scraps of anxiety in careful counts of seconds passing by.
A few more moments later, and she let herself lean sideways. Not far, but far enough for her shoulder to nudge Rei's, grounding herself in the other girl's solidity.
Rei's response was to reach over behind Asuka's back and gently lay her hand on Asuka's opposite shoulder. And for just that moment, Asuka felt that maybe God truly was in his heaven, and all truly was right with the world.
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With practice, Rei had found it easier to enter the strange LCL-colored void. She could pull it off while awake now, even standing upright. Of course, since it occupied her entire senses of sight and sound, it was quite hazardous to do while moving - but sitting through a mindless lesson in school was not the sort of thing she needed her perception for.
This body is 10.89 years old and its heart has beat 456,999,819 times.
Once again she followed the thread.
I wonder if I could ever bring someone else… I have only seen half-angels here so far, but all the pilots are connected to Adam and Lilith now, if in less direct ways.
Just like before, the trace of herself led her to Kyū; the other Lilith, the younger branch of the god tree.
Rei had expected that Kyū would feel her reaching out. Instead, the younger girl was fast asleep, curled up on her side, oriented ninety degrees to Rei's viewpoint so she seemed to be 'lying down' on an invisible wall.
Interesting. Did I pull her in? Or maybe she sleeps here.
Out in the material world, the teacher droned on. Once again a history class had been sidetracked by meaningless trivia, and several other students had their heads down on their desks. Had Rei been trying to pay close attention, she would probably have found herself falling asleep too, despite all her carefully cultivated mental discipline.
"Kyū," Rei called softly in the void, hoping to nudge her little sister awake without startling her.
Kyū twitched and shifted, but then settled again. Rei huffed.
"Kyū," she said again, reaching out her arm to delicately poke Kyū's shoulder.
The other girl startled awake, bolting upright. In doing so, she lost her balance, tumbling off the 'wall' she had been lying on and falling - upwards, landing in a messy heap of limbs on an equally invisible 'ceiling'.
Rei let out a small noise that was absolutely not a choked laugh. The spatial logic of this place certainly was… something.
Now wide awake, Kyū picked herself up, standing eye to upside-down eye with Rei. She still didn't quite look fully real - she was a little wobbly in some spots and a little translucent in othera - but she was distinctly human-shaped, not just an abstract glyph of personhood.
Rei?
Rei nodded. "Have you been well?"
Mom doesn't let me out much.
She didn't seem bitter, just a little sad. Rei reached out and awkwardly touched the side of Kyū's upside down shoulder.
"Yes… Tokyo-3 can be dangerous for nephilim to wander unattended right now." Rei breathed in, measuring her breath again. "Soon, I hope, it will be safer."
Kyū just blinked at Rei, apparently failing to conceptualize a Tokyo-3 that was any different than it was now. Rei withdrew her hand.
"Anyway… I am glad to see you are well."
Thanks.
All sounds were strange here, but Kyū didn't make sounds, nor indeed even open her mouth. Her words simply appeared in Rei's immediate memory, bypassing the step of being perceived as auditory sensation.
"You have grown a lot since I last saw you."
Yeah! I can walk and talk without help now!
Rei nodded. That was good. She would need Kyū able to walk and talk as smoothly as possible, for what was to come.
Talking is pretty hard out in the world. It's easier here.
"Is it?"
It's more like talking is supposed to be like. When I'm… big. I don't have to move my face.
Of course. Kyū's initial neural pathway blueprint - the dummy plug pattern - had been built to communicate exclusively through an advanced radio transceiver in her head; Rei, for all her differences from a baseline human, had at least grown up speaking from a human throat.
"Hmm."
Hmm?
"Oh… just idle thoughts."
I see.
Kyū's eyes were still wide and attentive.
"I called you here to discuss some things. Do you recognize this man?"
She conjured the visage of Gendo Ikari. Rei knew his face well; there had been a time of her life when she had barely ever seen any other human face.
Kyū scrutinized the carefully, pursing her lips and squinting her eyes.
… I feel like… I might have seen him before.
"I thought you might." Rei dismissed the image. "He… among other things, he headed the project that produced the Guf Chamber, and took it over after Yui's passing. He bears a lot of the responsibility for bringing me into existence, and you, too, indirectly."
He is our father?
"Perhaps the closest we have to one, yes."
Can I meet him?!
"No."
A sharp wave of disappointment rolled through the aether.
"Not… yet, at least. It is not safe."
Of course, Gendo would most likely order Kyū killed if he learned of her existence. But if there was one thing Rei had learned from spending time around Asuka, it was that people in intense emotional states needed to be approached cautiously.
Why isn't it safe?
"Commander Ikari is not a nice man," Rei replied, inwardly chuckling at the depth of the oversimplification. "I am his daughter too, yet he has treated me badly. I think he might try to hurt you if he knew you existed."
Oh…
Kyū's disappointment was still palpable. Rei could not tell if the younger girl had grasped her meaning.
Would he kill me?
"… He might."
The Kyū silhouette flickered for a heartbeat, her unmarked pants and t-shirt giving way to shiny red armor. Then it was gone.
I won't meet him, then.
"if for some reason you are forced to, I will do all I can to keep you safe through it."
The disappointment started mellowing into hope.
"In the mean time, I want to ask - do you remember NERV headquarters?"
Yes.
"How would you feel about going back there?"
It was cold. And being in the tube hurt sometimes.
Kyū's face scrunched up as she relayed her complaints. In a twisted way, it warmed Rei's heart to realize that Kyū - dissatisfied though she was with hotel NERV-J's services - still had far fewer traumatic memories tied to the place than Rei herself did.
"Would you prefer to stay away, then?"
No. Isn't there more to see there? It… I'm sure I remember bigger spaces. I know mom's lab couldn't have been all of it!
Rei let herself smile.
"Well. If you are comfortable with it, then, I suppose I need to talk to Doctor Akagi about taking you on a field trip."
X-X-X
Ritsuko's data sheets and reports had told Misato a great deal about Unit 10's strengths and weaknesses and functional performance data. In a completely inexplicable coincidence, much like the late Unit 01, she was set to be the corps' powerhouse of AT field manipulation.
The files had not included any photos of the beast in her finished hyperdiamond armor.
She still had two eyes, despite the current template for mass production being externally eyeless. Lacking the forward-facing horn of the former Unit 01, instead her mouth guard protruded forward and the upper back plates of her helmet swept up and back into triangular structures, complete with cosmetic concavities to give the impression of ears. The helmet wasn't exactly like a wolf's head… but it looked more like a wolf's head than anything else.
The base coat of her paint job was white all over, but it was distinct from Unit 00's understated smoothness. Here there were fiery orange swirls splashing bold highlights on her shoulders and upper arms, hips and outer thighs, and even around the eye shields; there was also shading in the form of inky black edging at the joins of larger panels. Even her insignia was two-toned, with the callsign 'AMATERASU' in orange and the big '10' below it in black.
It all meshed together to give the evangelion a very high-contrast aesthetic.
Misato keyed the intercom on the control panel in front of her.
"Alright, Shinji, last routine." She looked over at the procedural folder. "Drop to a crouch, then slowly stand up."
From the entry plug, Shinji willed the beast to move. And move it did.
"Very good. Please lift your arms over your head and touch the cage ceiling."
The low-sync latency caused a fraction of a second's delay before the Evangelion moved. Misato was never quite sure if it was actually perceptible from outside, or if it was just imagination making her see what she expected to see; still, it was certainly real enough from the pilot's internal perspective.
Unit 10's motor calibration was incredible, though. Even with Shinji's sync levels barely over half of his last recorded sync in Unit 01 - he was currently hovering at 46.02% - the Evangelion moved with grace, without a single errant twitch or lurching overcorrection.
Hyperdiamond gauntlets brushed the ceiling, so gently as to leave no scratches on the concrete.
From the other side of the control booth, Ritsuko tapped at the console keyboard and dismissed several open windows on the computer screen. "I have all the data I need."
Misato nodded, keying the intercom.
"Alright, Shinji, we're done here. Stand against the back wall of the test box and the elevator will take you back to the cages."
On the comm monitor, Shinji nodded. "Yes, Major," he replied.
The smooth poise of Unit 10 almost concealed the tension in Shinji's posture. Head slightly canted down, shoulders slightly lifted. It spoke to Misato of resignation… and fear.
"Think he'll be ready for the grand reveal?"
Misato cringed, bringing her hands up to cover her face.
"Don't remind me…"
"It's a genuine operations question, Major… Misato. He won't have to do much, but he has to be level-headed enough not to kill anything."
"He'll be level-headed enough not to kill anything." Misato pulled her hands away from covering her face for long enough to massage the soft skin around her eyes. "I can't believe we're going to throw him to the press like that, though."
Ritsuko reached out, snagging her fingers in the end of Misato's jacket sleeve.
"If it helps, I'll be setting up some heavy duty comm encryption. The press isn't supposed to be asking the pilots anything directly, but, well. I don't trust them to respect boundaries. This way the pilots won't hear them, and they won't hear the pilots, even if they smuggle in some unsanctioned radio gear."
There was a creak and a boom as hydraulic clamps closed around Unit 10's sabatons and pauldrons.
"… Yeah. It will help." Misato leaned a little towards Ritsuko, just enough to let her properly entwine their hands. "I just wish I knew what changed. The Commander was always happy to let the Evas be seen as faceless, heartless war machines before."
"Ahh, yeah. I asked Fuyutsuki about it, and apparently it was mainly his idea, not the Commander's. He said it was 'long overdue' that NERV make efforts to, how did he put it? 'Remedy its ailing public image', or something like that." Ritsuko reached for her lab coat pocket, hesitated, then put her hand down. "After all the collateral damage Tokyo-3 has suffered in our war, I'm inclined to agree. Despite what is, at this point, a pretty robust supply chain, NERV still leans heavily on public funding."
A deep rumble rolled through the control booth as the elevator began to descend, the entire back wall of the test cage and adjacent strip of floor sliding inexorably downward.
"I… I hope he's up to it."
"I think he will be. For your flaws, you're not a terrible surrogate parent, Misato." Ritsuko kept fidgeting with her lab coat pocket. "Shinji trusts you."
"Not terrible, huh? Thanks for the vote of confidence, doc."
"Anytime." Ritsuko finally lowered her hand, locating her digital pen and lifting it to chew on the end. "Although…"
"What?"
"Well, what with our first sensitive PR event coming up and all…" Ritsuko chewed anxiously. "Just remember that Shinji isn't the only traumatized teenager on the force that might need help holding it together, yeah?"
"… Yeah."
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