Shinji stared down the range through the scope of the rifle. It was a four-power magnification piece; with it, he could see his man-sized target nearly a kilometer away. Beside him, Kaji watched through a pair of binoculars, patiently waiting for the boy to take the shot. Behind them, Rei sat with her usual stillness while Asuka fidgeted with impatience.
It wasn't that she didn't appreciate her wingmate's marksmanship skills or that she begrudged him the time he needed to practice. She was very proud of his skills with both rifle and pistol, constantly bragging about during class. It was one of the things that he seemed to care about on the level ordinary people did their hobbies, and it was a valuable martial skill to boot.
He was also much less frightening with a firearm than when he fought in a melee.
So, no, Asuka did not fidget because she was tired of waiting for Shinji to be done.
She was fidgeting because of Kaji, but not because of the reasons the man might have thought. She wasn't anxious for them to be done on the range and to get on with the rest of the day's activities. This was one of those few rare days where no tests were to be done, no drills, nothing. They were officially free for the day but remanded into the Agent's care while Misato was away at Kyoto, along with the rest of the senior NERV command staff, going over last week's events with some governmental investigative committee or another.
Asuka just didn't want to be anywhere near the man.
It was a beautiful spring day, and he asked them what they wanted to do. They could pick one activity each, and everyone would go and do it as a group. Shinji had won the draw to see what they did first and wanted to go to the range, while Asuka wanted to go shopping, followed by Rei's choice of the Tokyo-3 Science Museum. So, they headed to the range with the usual arsenal that accompanied the boy when he went.
Pistols, rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers, and even a recoilless rifle were all laid out for them on the NERV shooting range, and they had all run through them, though only Shinji had fired the 84mm 'Carl Gustav' recoilless rifle. If Kensuke were to ever accompany them to the range, he'd probably die of happiness seeing the assembled weaponry. Then again, he would also die of sheer embarrassment at how outclassed he was by the pilots. His weekends of running about the woods with an airsoft rifle were no match for actually using the weapons on a near-daily basis. Both girls were proficient with rifles and pistols, standard armaments for the Evangelions, but Shinji always shot better than them. It seemed that there was nothing that he couldn't hit once you put a firearm in his hands. It was perhaps the one aspect of being a pilot that she did not begrudge his superior skill – no one was a better shot than Shinji. No one.
His prone form stilled even more for a fraction of a second as he held his breath, and his finger gently pulled back on the trigger. There was the crack of the shot, and Rei nodded as she lowered her pair of binoculars.
"He hit it," she remarked, an unnecessary piece of conversation. Shinji always hit what he was aiming for. It didn't matter if it was the behemoth bulk of Ramiel or a man-sized target moving erratically along a series of hiding places at eight hundred meters. His marksmanship needed no commentary, but Rei spoke more often now, dropping 'unnecessary' comments into her speech like a normal person as the months of living with the Horakis had taken their toll on the taciturn girl. Their friend was proud of this, even if most of Rei's comments were strange and seemed to only make sense to herself.
"Of course he hit it," Asuka said with a smile and shake of her head. "He always hits them." She clapped dutifully as the others came over, the man grinning and the boy with a small, satisfied smile. "Good job, Third Child." She sprang up from the bench, stretching. "Now, let's get a move on – it's time to go shopping!"
Shinji nodded as he set the rifle down on the table. Today, he wasn't going to clean the weapons he had shot, with the sole exception of his pistols. But they would wait until the end of the day after the girl's activities were done. Rechecking his pair of pistols to ensure they were cleared, he locked them into their cases. One of the Section 2 agents would see that they were delivered to the apartment while they were out.
His hand seeking Rei's, he nodded again. "Let's go."
Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!
"So you have no idea how it happened." The board member's voice was dry and bordering on the sarcastic, making a statement of fact rather than posing a question. This was somewhat to be expected, as the incident behind the now infamous "Day that Tokyo-3 Stood Still" (as the news agencies were calling it) had been discussed at great length, and it had been already established that none of the NERV personnel present knew just what had happened.
Misato, for once in her dress uniform, forced herself to not roll her eyes at the statement. Of course, she didn't know how it had happened! That's why it was a mystery! But these dried-up stiffs had no appreciation for that fact, just like they had no appreciation for how hard she worked to keep things running under the most trying of circumstances or the fact this stupid investigative committee owed their very existence to her pilot corps. It was quite the trade-off, saving the world. On one hand, the world continued to exist, and almost everyone was on it.
On the other hand, that included men like these. It was always the soldiers who suffered and died and the politicians who picked at things later on, like vultures. But that was the status quo, and that's what it was all about. God's in His Heaven, all's right with the World.
"No, sir. I have no idea how it happened. It should have not been possible." Not a lie, but not a complete truth. She had a hunch about how it happened, and it was an ugly one. One with the direst of implications, one that raised more questions than it answered.
Sabotage. She also had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, and she was sure she knew who was responsible for it, too.
It seemed, however, that it was a popular hunch.
"No, Major Katsuragi. It should have been quite impossible for three separate nuclear plants to go offline simultaneously. What's even more impossible is there is not even the slightest shred of evidence as to how any of it happened. That alone would be cause to convene this panel of inquiry."
True, she thought to herself. But it's just as impossible as how the Angel escaped being noticed by any other of the MAGI networks around the world, the JSSDF's sensor system, the United Nations, or the Americans. But it did.
"It is a mystery," she offered, "but the investigation is still underway."
"By the very organization that failed to protect the Geo-Front in the first place." The old man's voice dripped with scorn. Once again, Misato had to wonder what the point was. It wasn't as if she could be reasonably expected to know what had happened. That wasn't her lane. She hadn't even known there had been an Angel until after the fact, trapped in the elevator as she was.
Someone was playing games, and she knew the stone-faced bearded man sitting two seats to her left was one of the players. She didn't know who was on the other side of the chessboard.
"The Second Section of NERV is very good at what they do, sir."
"And what is it, exactly, that they do? NERV is a black organization, Major. Money and men enter it, but nothing seems to come out again. There is no real oversight on NERV apart from the superficial appointment of liaison officers like yourself and even less on Project E. This is quite surprising when one considers that the UN, NATO, and the Commonwealth of Independent States all funnel funds into NERV and that the so-called Angels can only be defeated by the Evangelions. These weapons are fielded solely by NERV, and there is little going on in the way of research into other ways to protect Mankind, or even study the remains of the monsters outside this organization."
Misato frowned, confused. This meeting wasn't going the way the others had. "Sir?"
The chairman narrowed his eyes at her. "You seem to misunderstand why we are here today, Major. We are no longer investigating the event. We are now investigating NERV." He looked to the other members of the day's panel as he opened the dossier before him. "Now, if everyone will open to page thirty-seven, we will begin with the agreed services and goods to be provided to the United Nations, and then we will discuss what the drafters of the legislature were led to believe. Following that, we will begin with the second set of files and examine the agreed-upon responsibilities of NERV in the so-called Angel Incidents."
Vier, Drei, Zwei, Eins!
Rei frowned at her reflection in the window, feeling a faint uneasiness stirring in her stomach. While she was not unacquainted with the feeling, it was still a feeling she was not accustomed to. In almost all things and events, she was completely sure of herself and her purpose. There were clear and perfectly reasonable explanations in those rare cases where she was ill at ease.
There was no such reason now, which also added to her unrest.
The current lesson was algebra, which she had thoroughly mastered some years ago. Shinji sat beside her, paying rapt attention to the instructor, oblivious to his surroundings, humming softly. This was as it should be, so he was not the cause. In front of them sat Hikari and Sohryu, the class representative, taking careful notes that she did not need but would use to help tutor other students. The Captain of the Evangelion pilots was ostensibly following along in the math textbook but was instead idly paging through a book written in German, and thus obviously more interesting to the girl than the lesson. She, too, had mastered the lesson being taught this hour long ago.
So, everything was as she was accustomed to it being. Nothing appeared out of place nor posed a potential danger to Shinji, herself, Sohryu, or Hikari.
Still, the queasiness in her stomach bothered her. It was not quite like the strange distant feelings she experienced when the Angels were approaching, nor the overpowering crush of feelings that came from being in the company of Lilith. Even the sheer terror of her exposure to the reduced sample of ADAM had not left her feeling like this. This was like a gentle lullaby compared to a frenzied orchestra. But it was somehow familiar to her, like a faint and distant echo.
Turning from the window, she called up the messaging program on her laptop and connected to the MAGI.
Unknown: Hello, Pilot Ayanami. What can We do for you?
R. Ayanami: Is there anything unusual on the sensor net?
Unknown: We have not noticed anything. Please wait.
….
Unknown: There is nothing out of the ordinary on any scans. Nothing on the primary, secondary, or tertiary defensive nets. The main sensor walls report all clear. All internal systems are reporting as expected. Are you concerned as to the status of your current experiments?
R. Ayanami: No. The only experiments of immediate concern are well in hand. All is proceeding according to the predicted schedule, and no delays are anticipated at this stage of events.
Unknown: You have let many other experiments fall to the wayside instead of concentrating on the current two. Although both of these experiments can also hardly be called such, as well.
Rei blinked. She could agree that the two current experiments she was conducting were not, in fact, genuinely Scientific, but she had not thought the MAGI would be so disapproving of them. The genius intelligences that comprised the secondary parent of her childhood had always supported her pursuit of Science, if not always helpful.
While she was well aware she had halted a not inconsiderable amount of research on various subjects in addition to the experiments that were, for want of a better term, purely for fun, she had not thought much of it. She was, after all, exploring new territory with her work on Shinji, and it wasn't as if anything she was going to discover would matter in the long run. She was still just marking time until her death, even if she no longer wished each day that it would be the one she was called upon to die.
They had expressed what could be called concern for her recent choices in the past, but never had they been so disapproving of the body of her work.
She closed the program down without further comment, slouching forward again with her chin in one hand and staring into space. The Commander had always said that one's personal feelings were not a deciding factor in the ultimate problem. Was she letting personal attachment cloud her judgment?
It bore further attention, even if she did not think her growing unease meant she was developing a 'guilty conscience' over the fact that she had abandoned her previous methodology and rigorous experiments for a set of experiments of a different nature.
Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!
Kaji looked down at the young man slouched against the wall of his apartment with open doubt. "You're from higher?"
Kaworu smiled smugly. "From the Highest," he confirmed with a nod. He nodded at the sheaf of papers in the spy's hands. "You have your instructions, and I have mine." He pushed himself off the wall and walked down the hall to the apartment's front door, pausing at the entrance, not looking back. "I'll be seeing you around, Mr. Kaji."
Leafing through the extensive document, Kaji frowned as he read. His new assignment was more in-depth than mere information gathering – sabotage was much more dangerous than observation and in more ways than the obvious. This was something a senior handler ought to have brought to him. Not some kid, no matter if he had somehow managed to get inside his apartment.
And just what had he meant by his parting remark?
Shaking his head, he dumped the papers into the sink and started the faucet. This new move would place him at odds with Ikari and NERV – not something he was ready for. He was on the verge of breaking into something big – he knew it; he just knew it.
He had been spoiled thus far into this assignment, he knew. Of course, he had done a lot of string-pulling to get it. But it had to end sometime. Everything did.
Mashing the sodden mass of rice paper into a ball, he scooped it up and tossed it into the trash. He had to get back to work. Soon, it was going to be dagger and cloak work, and he would have to act fast if he was going to keep all the plates he had in the air spinning.
Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!
Shinji sighed as he set the phone on the table, slumping slightly back against the couch. Asuka snorted in general derision at him and resumed reading her magazine. Misato smiled understandingly at the boy over her beer. "Didn't go so well, huh?"
"No," he said, glumly shaking his head, "it didn't. I thought it was getting better..." He trailed off, staring into space. "I mean, it's not that I don't want you to go to parent-teacher night, Misato, but..."
"But you want Daddy to come instead?" Asuka finished her wingman's sentence, a small amount of scorn in her voice. "Your Father is even weirder than your girlfriend. I don't know why you'd want him to come to parent-teacher night. I don't know why you even care about such a thing! Big deal, so he doesn't want to come to some boring function. It's not like he notices you in the halls at NERV or anything."
"Asuka!" Misato snapped a bit reproachfully. "He just wants his father to see him as a son, not just an employee." Asuka rolled her eyes but kept silent, content with shaking her head dismissively.
"Misato, how well do you know my father? I mean, you've worked at NERV for a while, right? I just don't understand him."
Misato shrugged half-heartedly. "I've known of him for longer than I've known him."
"I mean, he commented on my improved performance in the drills a few days ago, and he nodded at me this morning, and that's more than he's ever done since I got here!"
"And you thought he might decide to go himself instead of delegating it to me? Shinji, while I agree he could probably stand to get out from underground to be a father for a few hours, he is a very busy man. Ritsuko says that sometimes he doesn't leave his office for days."
"Well, yeah, I suppose it was a dumb idea..." the boy trailed off, depressed and unconvinced.
Asuka sat up straight, the magazine violently crumbling in her hands. "Look, Idiot, why is he going to take the time out of his busy schedule of doing god knows what to do to something that Misato is already going to be at? Of all the idiotic, harebrained ideas you could ever entertain about that man, this is one of the worst!" She switched to German, ranting for a minute until Misato tossed a crumpled-up napkin at her.
"How did you meet my father, Misato?"
The older woman paused momentarily, caught off guard by her charge's question. After a moment's consideration, she sighed. "It's pretty complicated. I first met him long ago, before he was the Commander." This caused both teenagers to sit up and look at her, obviously interested. "He worked for, or with, I'm not sure which, my father. Before the Second Impact, he was a researcher in my father's expedition."
"Wait, your father had an expedition?" Asuka interrupted, frowning, and then, with a little shriek, she scooted back against the couch, pointing at the woman, gaping in shock. "The KATSURAGI Expedition? That one?"
"It was in the Mountains of Madness where I met him for the first time. My father probably introduced him to me, but I don't remember. I probably met your mother, too, although I don't think she was ever at the site as much or as long as your father. I was just a kid then. My parents were fighting again, and my mother wanted a divorce. He brought me along for a trip, mostly as a peace offering to her. He was much more traditional than she was – he wouldn't dream of a divorce."
Shinji was staring, his eyes wide. "He... your father was there at the Impact, wasn't he?" he asked, his voice small and catching a little.
"Yes, he was there," Misato said with a sigh. "From what I understand, your father missed it by a few days." She drained the last of her beer and stood up, heading for her room. "Don't stay up too late, kiddos."
Vier, Drei, Zwei, Eins!
The room was padded and lit with soft, comfortable lights. Nothing in the room was deemed dangerous, but the room's occupant paid no heed to anything in the room at all, instead just sitting in the chair and staring straight ahead and reliving the same thirty minutes over and over. The attendants could have left anything in the room, and the girl would not have noticed it.
She was pale but clean, and her hair was cut at the shoulders but not in any style of her choosing. It was all the doing of her caretakers, but she paid them no more heed than she did the room's furniture. Living in the past, she had no time for those in the present.
In her mind, she was not in the special care ward but back on a continent that no longer existed. It had been three years since the Day of Second Impact, but for Misato Katsuragi, the sole survivor of the now infamous Katsuragi Expedition, every day was the same half hour, over and over again.
She had been up late the night before, far past bedtime, but her father never bothered to enforce curfew.
She had been playing with some of the local penguins, despite repeated warnings from other expedition personnel not to interact with the wildlife, as she could get severely hurt, citing several examples and rules. No one ever bothered to enforce those rules, either. But whenever they yelled at or lectured her, well, at least it was attention.
So she had been sleeping in when suddenly there was a tremendous earthquake, setting off numerous alarms all over the wildly shaking base. Her father had barged into her room, scooping her up off her bed in one panicked motion before turning around and running through the halls. Frightened, she clung tightly to her father, not saying a word, staring in turns at his bloody head, his panicked expression, and the hallways of the compound. The base was on fire, smoke filling the halls, and the screams of the alarms only added to the hellish landscape. The ground shook again as a new scream tore through the air, overpowering the other alarms. Something hit her head, and then when she woke up again, she was lying down in one of the emergency life support capsules, her father kneeling over her, hands looped around her head. He gently pushed her back down onto the cushioned interior before saying what would be his last words, almost inaudible over the screaming klaxons.
"I've always loved you, Misa-chan. Always."
He pulled back suddenly, hands fumbling at the external controls, and the protective cowling slid out and locked into place, the automated life support systems switching on.
The same terrifying scream sounded again, and there was a massive flash of light, blocked out momentarily by the shape of her father, who had thrown himself over the window in one last vain attempt to protect his daughter.
He died instantly, and so she was spared having to watch him suffer, but as the massive wave of fire and energy washed over them, she watched him vaporize, leaving nothing but an outline etched into the window, indelibly etching into her memory the moment she became an orphan. Then the tube was picked up and wildly thrown around by the blast, and she blacked out again.
When she came to, she scrambled to open up the capsule. The cowling slid open without complaint, and warm air rushed in. Sitting up, she stared at the hell that had been brought to Earth. With one hand clasped to her aching head, she lifted the crucifix pendant her father had given her, staring into its reflective surface in shock. Impossibly, she heard the screaming alarm again. Misato looked up, and where the heart of the continent of ice had been was only a massive giant, His burning radiance responsible for the reddish light bathing the seascape. He stood there, His waist rising out of the clouds of steam and smoke that hung over the waters, reaching His vast arms towards the sky, either in supplication or joy. Four great wings slowly unfolded from His back, tracing incandescent through the sky, and then He looked at her. His eyes were even brighter pinpoints of fire in the burning light, and when His mouth opened to scream, it too was alight with dancing flames.
She began to scream and was screaming still a few days later when the rescue crews found her, sitting still in the capsule as it bobbed up and down on the waves, not feeling anything, not the heat, not dehydration or starvation, not her concussion or the fact she had been partially disemboweled, a gaping wound running diagonally across her abdomen, the sole survivor of the fury of Second Impact, the miracle child. She would scream for another three months, almost constantly when she was awake, until the day when she woke up one morning to find she could scream and cry no more. But although she had been quiet for over two years, she was still lost in that same nightmare.
She would not have remembered him from the base if she had even been cognizant of the man standing against the wall watching her. They had moved in different circles, and she had only been introduced to him once. But he knew who she was; not many children were in attendance in the labs. He watched her for a few more minutes before kneeling, staring into her blank eyes. It was a look he recognized. It was a look he had seen countless times in the mirror. But he was not daunted by this task, this seemingly impossible errand, any more than he allowed the fact that he was building an altar upon which to sacrifice his son to give him pause. That was not the path to victory. Then, in a low, emotionless voice, he began to explain.
He told her of the incident and the impact. He spoke of shattered families, of broken homes. Myriads of plots, the tightly woven plans of old men he laid bare before her, and more. He spoke of the current and coming conflicts and of the terrifying, inescapable conclusion that lay before them of Third Impact. Then, he spoke to her of hope, hate, and plans. He talked for over five hours, laying out the basis of his plots and plans and the parts she might take within them. He had no way of knowing if he was getting through to her or if he was just wasting his time, but he kept talking until there was simply no more to say.
"Learn to fight. Become a master of combat, strategy, and tactics. Learn to lead others into battle, fearless and without doubt. Master these own emotions within you, and master them well. The Angels will return, and if no one stands against them, then Man will pass from this place. Our time is running out, but we can flip the hourglass. Any place can be Heaven if we make it so.
Do you want vengeance? So, you want them to pay the price for their callousness? For their insult to you? They took your father from you and your mother. They took everything from you. Will you have the will to take from them sevenfold in vengeance repaid?
Become a master of war. Do this, and I will seek you out. Together, we shall have our revenge. Together, we shall save the world."
He stood up and carefully, almost reverently, placed the battered crucifix around her neck before kissing her forehead.
"Keep the faith, Misato Katsuragi. You are not alone in this world. You have nothing to lose," he said with a small, apologetic smile, "and nothing to lose means that you have everything to gain."
He turned and left, leaving the hospital the same way he had entered it, unnoticed by anyone but those he wanted to know. It would not do for this visit to be noted by his enemies, even at this stage of affairs.
The next day, Misato scared the living daylights out of the day shift nurse when she walked out into the hallway, asking for breakfast. It would be a long time until the young girl began to slow down instead of rushing about at high speed. It seemed to everyone who knew she was trying to make up for lost time. While they were thankful she was back, nobody knew what had prompted the change. Not even she knew. When pressed for an explanation, she could only shrug and say that she 'just woke up'. She had no idea what had happened, no memory of any part of the past three years.
But she knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to help make the world a safer place, a better place. A place where the innocent and weak would not be preyed upon by the evil and the strong. The United Nations Army seemed like a logical starting point.
Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!
Hikari glanced over at Rei, who was running a brush through Nozomi's hair with mechanical precision as she explained the fundamentals of the Scientific Process to the younger girl as she worked through her homework.
She was going over her sister's literature homework, checking with a practiced eye for spelling mistakes and other errors. Something had been bothering Rei ever since they had cleaned up after dinner, with Kodama going out for the night with her latest boyfriend and her father disappearing into his study. The girl had seemed more distant than she had been in recent weeks.
It was a few hours later, they were going through their nightly routine of preparing for bed, when she brought it up. "What's been bothering you? You've been kinda distant today."
Rei rinsed off her toothbrush, running it back and forth under the water until it was satisfactorily clean. "Family dinners serve as a primary means of bonding, do they not?" She paused momentarily before elaborating. "It builds trust between the provider of the meal and the recipients, and promotes mutual feelings of belonging and promotes discussion."
"Sure, I suppose they are if you look at it like that." Hikari was unsure where her friend was going with her question. "I mean, for many families these days, it is the only time they get to spend together. Maybe it's just in Tokyo-3, but in most families, both parents work."
"Family units with tasks at various times and places do not often have schedules with other opportunities for joint recreation and verbal discourse."
Hikari wasn't sure if Rei was agreeing with her or simply making another statement. She decided to press on anyway.
"So what's got you thinking about it?"
Rei sat down on the toilet, staring at the towel rack. "Kodama brought her boyfriend to dinner tonight. Does this imply more familiarity and that he is considered part of the family unit?"
"Well... yes and no," Hikari said after a moment's deliberation. "He's not part of the family, but it shows they are good friends and she wants us to like him, and vice versa." She started brushing her teeth again to buy time. This was a tricky subject and certainly more complicated than all that! But Rei had a thing about gray areas and complicated subjects – she had to niggle and worry at them, pick them apart until she was satisfied with how they were supposed to work. Rei would be up all night asking questions and "doing research" if she let her. As it was, Rei was watching her expectantly, waiting for more information to clarify the statement.
"So he is not considered part of the family but is thought of in more intimate terms by Kodama?"
Hikari nodded, although not altogether sure she wanted to be thinking of her sister and just who she was feeling intimate with. But it was a fair explanation, even without going into all the little details. Rinsing, she washed off her toothbrush and set it in the cup. "So what brought all of this on?"
Rei stood up, yawning. "I would like to have a family dinner with Shinji."
Hikari nodded with a smile, satisfied she had both figured out the mystery behind her friend's questions and that the girl had properly cleaned herself up for the night. "You want to invite him to dinner tomorrow? I'll tell Dad about it in the morning."
"No," Rei said, shaking her head. "I want a family dinner with him and Commander Ikari."
Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!
Rei stood before the Commander, a mirror image of his stoic exterior. She explained what she wanted to do and waited for him to agree. There was nothing else to do but wait. There was no argument he could use to deny her request, for she had a counter for any point or issue he might raise.
He had sat at his desk, putting aside the report he had been reading when she had entered the office, and had listened to her as he always did. The plan was simple enough and straightforward in its execution, and the expected outcome was generally considered to be positive by normal standards. It also wasn't anything he was personally opposed to, either. They had made plans for an unspecified dinner at the Major's residence, which had been ruined by the appearance of the Angel at the volcano. They had not rescheduled after it had been defeated. Furthermore, shortly after the pilot's little adventure in vandalism, she and the boy had been spending almost all of their free time together. There had been scant opportunities for them to have any other meals.
Now, she had decided to expand on her original request with a much more specific one. Studying the expectant girl before him, he thought about accepting the invitation.
However, it would completely ruin things. It was undeniable that as time went on, as the Scenario progressed, things began to hinge more and more on a few key pieces. He was constructing a tower of cards, and almost anything could bring things crashing down around them. Too much pressure at any juncture could cause the boy to snap, and he was the key to Unit-01, and Unit-01 was the key to victory. He had thought he had been doing well at keeping the two at arm's length from him while still being secure in their loyalties, but Shinji's recent request for him to show up to the parent-teacher meeting showed that he wasn't doing enough. He had forced himself to walk a thin, hard line with little room for error. It was hard being the Commander.
"I will think about it."
Rei seemed to be satisfied with the answer and left without further comment. Gendo turned his attention back to his work, reading over the reports from the laboratory over in the Americas, where they were working on the Angelic remains from the fourth Angel. The west-coast American facility was tasked with building an S2 Engine, building upon the work of Yui and Dr. Katsuragi. Doctors Anderson and Smith were supposedly close to a breakthrough if their exuberant emails were to be believed. The most recent reports did look promising, but Gendo wasn't getting the feeling of being tantalizingly close to discovering the secret of the Super-Solenoid. As things were right now, the system was only slightly less cost-prohibitive than harnessing the released energy from matter annihilation in an anti-matter reactor.
Putting the papers back on the desk, he sighed and stood up to pace the room, trying to expend some of the nervous energy building up in him. He had a meeting in a few hours with SEELE, supposedly to discuss the current timeline and the expected arrival of the next Angel. The documents remained vague, but he had to admit that Chairman Lorenz did seem to have some insight in deciphering the mystic mumbo jumbo they were written in.
Stopping to stare out over the Geo-Front, he watched the lift trains ferrying their passengers to and fro, traversing between the surface world and the sanctuary of the subterranean one. On one of those trains, Rei was leaving his kingdom for the surface to meet, no doubt, with his son, perhaps allowing him to escort her to her new home. The allegory was not lost on him. They were still separated by degrees of uncertainty and doubt, but the growing familiarity between the two would win before too long. They were loyal to each other and, within limits, to Pilot Sohryu. But he needed them to be loyal to NERV, to him. The young German girl was not as important as she thought, but she had her uses. Shinji and Rei, however, were the keys to his plans, and at this point, it was not advantageous to decant a new clone. Her bonds to him remained strong but tenuous. This would be an excellent way to ensure they stayed faithful to him and that she would remain true to him.
As pessimistic as he was, he did not see anything too terrible that could come from a simple, homemade dinner. He had enough self-control for an entire monastic order. If he could keep his calm in the presence of mass murdering genocidal lunatics, he could enjoy dinner with three-quarters of what could pass for his family.
The door chimed as it opened, allowing Ritsuko Akagi entry. The door whispered shut behind her, the lock engaging with a soft click. "It's time for your checkup."
He turned away from the view, withdrawing his hands from his pockets. He peeled off the glove on his right hand, the white leather coming free with an awful, wet, sucking sound as blood splattered onto the floor, a deep red intermixed with blobs of orange. "It no longer hurts as bad as it first did." He flexed his hand, opening and closing his fist, watching the nascent god-thing quiver with each movement. "But… there is something else... a whisper in the dark."
The scientist scrutinized the skinless hand with its wet red muscle and embryonic Angel. "What does He say?" she asked as she pulled on a pair of latex gloves. Taking his pulse, she avoided her lover's eyes. "Does He give any insight into His Progeny?"
"No. He does not speak. It is music that I hear in the back of my mind."
"Music?"
Gendo nodded. "The Music of the Spheres, and the Song of Creation. It is unsettling. It haunts my every waking moment and is there at night when I sleep." He stared at his bloody hand, at the slightly twitching fetus. "I have seen things outside the confines of time and space in my dreams, of midnight abysses and cities shining with a light of brilliant, blinding radiance. I have seen worlds populated with the children of the Angels, and I know that these worlds will never come to be; they must not come to be, for it will mean we have failed and Mankind has gone into the abyss."
He looked extremely weary, years of worry and little sleep etched onto his face. Ritsuko felt her heart leap and spasm in her chest to see him that way. But even here, as worn down as he appeared, there was no denying he was made of iron, his will hard and unyielding. "SEELE thinks of joining all of us in Instrumentality, realizing the power of the Angels, and joining our souls as one. What will they reign over? Lilith chose to skip the intermediary step. She bore us, instead of several younger gods, to fight and vie for supremacy. Ours is not their way; Her way is not Adam's." He watched the sleeping god twitch, under-developed legs kicking. "Their way is madness."
Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!
Rei walked around the Evangelion cage, empty save for her and Unit-00. All of the routine maintenance had been completed for the day, and the technicians assigned to Unit-00 had left to oversee the work on the spare component pieces for her war machine. To the casual observer, she was simply checking the data feeds from the blue and white titan. Rei needed nothing so crass to check up on the Evangelion, however. She was instead deep in conversation with her older sister.
He said that he would consider the invitation.
He will attend. He loves us too much to not do so. But I do not think he loves his son.
You are incorrect. He loves him very much, but he must save Mankind. To do so, he must sacrifice the both of us.
Somehow, Rei got the impression that the Evangelion shrugged. Her sister had never really accepted that the Commander was so dedicated to his cause that he would sacrifice them.
How are things going with you and Unit-01?
Things... are going. He still refuses to speak to me. But our suspicions are correct; it is not Yui Ikari who resides within the core. I know this much. Whoever it is, it is not an adult woman.
What does Doctor Sohryu think?
She is not certain. She knows no one else so profoundly involved with the boy to offer synchronization at the levels he can maintain. She also doesn't know who else could have participated in a contact experiment.
So she was unaware of the spare cores, then?
She claims she did not know. I find this spurious – I don't think that someone as involved in Project E as she could have been in the dark about the planned program for recruiting pilots. The system demands the joining of souls and utilizes the deep maternal instincts between mother and child to realize maximum effectiveness. That is why our father does not pilot Unit-01 with Yui Ikari. He loves her, but she does not love him enough to join with him.
Frowning, Rei closed out of the maintenance software. It was time to check up on another project several floors down, but the distance would not interfere with their conversation.
The men and women of NERV had long come to accept that the young girl had free run of the facility, no matter where or when she might be found. After several years of unaccompanied access to all levels of the fortress, she was ignored by everyone save a few security men, who did not bother to trail after her once she was inside the Geo-Front. They would wait for her to come back to the surface, no matter how long the wait was. The MAGI also aided in her jaunts around the inside by digitally removing her from the surveillance feeds when asked. They understood the necessity for security in specific experiments and were all too happy to help.
While this was less an experiment than others, they had agreed to doctor certain documents to cover her tracks. Resuming her work and experiments that had been on hold had pleased them, and the intelligences were amicable to her requests for small favors in other areas.
Areas such as the appropriation, or in this case, the manufacture of nuclear warheads.
Amongst other weapons and technologies, NERV had a small stockpile of the forbidden weapons, some manufactured on-site, some purchased through one or another of Gendo's under-the-table black market deals. They were vital to several scorched earth contingencies, hidden away in some of the deeper warehouses, in theory, accessible only under the direct orders of the Commander or Sub-Commander.
The somewhat distressing trend of the Angels becoming harder and harder to kill had not escaped the young woman. She wanted to ensure easy, almost immediate access to anything she needed to destroy the Angelic Invaders. If one turned out to be more than what they could handle with what NERV gave them, she would not be unprepared.
How is the process?
The Plutonium harvesting from the reactors is proceeding on schedule. The containment shell and delivery system will be done soon.
The Lance idea is still ridiculous.
Your idea was ridiculous. Fission weapons systems are meant to be used at range, not in a melee. The Lance of Ayanami will make an excellent addition to the armory, especially once we obtain the Lance of Longinus.
Our AT-Field will be more than enough to handle any sort of nuclear weapon. The attacks of the Angels have released more energy than most weapons in our arsenals.
I do not love Science enough to hug a mushroom cloud, no matter how often you suggest it.
Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!
Rei shifted slightly in her seat, hearing the phone vibrate inside her school bag. The message was brief and to the point.
Friday evening. I will be free from four to six.
She did not smile as she dropped the phone back into her bag. Instead, she sent Hikari an even shorter message.
R. Ayanami: Dinner is on Friday.
Hikari stirred out of studious stillness, her eyes snapping to the massage program.
H. Horaki: That's great! It gives us a few days to finalize the menu and go shopping!
H. Horaki: Have you told Shinji yet?
R. Ayanami: I will tell him today during practice at NERV.
She closed the program and went back to staring out the window, the droning of the history instructor fading into the background, not paying any attention to his review of the past decade. She was already satisfied with the menu they had come up with, and none of it needed anyone else's help in preparations – which was vital.
While it was true their father loved them both, he had his reasons for not showing it to Shinji except through the most remote and complicated ways, ways that the boy did not see or understand. He still resented his father and feared him on several levels as well. This dinner would help reunite the two men in her life. But she wanted to make this as successful as possible, and she would not accept any deviations in her Scenario – so she would be taking steps to ensure that everything went according to plan.