*Disclaimer: I own nothing of Gainax, Khara, NBC, CBS, Warner Bros., or any of the characters and ideas of Misters Melvin Kaminsky and Henry Zuckerman. No celebrities were harmed in the making of this fanfic.*
Prologue 1 - The In Media Res Affair
The announcement from Dr. Akagi signaled the end of yet another sync test session for Shinji and his fellow Evangelion pilots, along with the test plug being emptied of LCL. Once out of the plug, and having coughed up whatever LCL was still in him, Shinji, along with Asuka and Rei, walked to their respective locker rooms to cleanse themselves of any lingering goop. (While Rei was indifferent, Asuka and Shinji especially hated being caked in dried LCL, hence their underlying constant eagerness for the showers at the end of each testing session.) Once all three pilots were adequately squeaky clean enough, they returned to the Pribnow Box that faced the testing facility, where Dr. Akagi and Misato briefed them on their scores this round. Unsurprisingly, and with the boast that followed, Asuka was top of the heap, with Shinji second, and Rei last. After being dismissed for the day, the trio of pilots made their way towards one of NERV's exits back up to the surface of Tokyo-3.
Along the way, Shinji stopped at one point, telling the girls to go on ahead of him, saying that he'd just remembered leaving something in his locker. Not bothering with asking what specifically, Asuka and Rei kept going, while Shinji, as soon as he determined that they were far enough from his sight, dropped his signature meek look as he straightened himself up, and turned in the opposite direction, quietly and carefully making his way to where his true destination was: Dr. Akagi's office. On the way, any time he passed by members of NERV's staff, he quickly resumed his more slumped, meek disposition; by now he'd cultivated something of a reputation among the lower-tier staff members as the 'mope' of the three pilots, so no one batted an eye as they briefly noticed Shinji passing them by. Unfortunately, given how many people worked down in the Geofront that served as NERV-Central's headquarters, Shinji had to swap between 'masks' at every other passage so much that he felt as if his facial muscles were experiencing mood whiplash. Thankfully, he finally reached the office of NERV's overall scientific head, and here was where the hard part of his 'errand' began.
Taking a brief moment to eye the security cameras that faced the door while remaining out of their sight, Shinji raised and aimed his wristwatch-a device he heard the Chief once describe as something a Dick Tracy (whoever that was) would be proud of-in their direction. After selecting the appropriate command on the watch face's screen, he pressed the button on the side and beamed a signal into each camera-one that reprogrammed them to play a loop of the hallway outside Akagi's door using footage that had been uploaded at the same time. Once confirmed that the loops were running, Shinji walked up to the door and proceeded to remove from his backpack the next gizmo for his purposes: what Bruce and Lloyd had named the "anycard". Having managed to successfully 'clone' Dr. Akagi's access/ID card earlier, Shinji swiped the anycard into the reader, which opened the door to the office without incident; as an added bonus, the card also released a program that erased whatever 'footprints' were left by it in the access log overseen by NERV's central supercomputer, the MAGI.
Once the door closed behind him, Shinji slipped on a pair of plastic gloves and began searching the office. He did a double-take on realizing that he was being 'watched' by a black cat that was curled up on top of a filing cabinet in one corner of the office. Having anticipated this ahead of time thanks to some earlier 'recon' he'd done, he opened a small pocket of his backpack and took out a small cat treat, which he then tossed up towards the cat. The cat caught the treat in its mouth on instinct, and soon the effects of the specially-prepared delicacy began to take effect, lulling the creature into quite the long 'cat nap'. Once he heard the purring that approximated a cat's snoring, Shinji breathed a brief sigh of relief and returned to his main task. It was then that he noticed on Dr. Akagi's desk just the items he was looking for: a set of decorative cat-shaped salt-and-pepper shakers (white for the salt, black for the pepper, naturally). A small grin on his face, he quietly walked up to the desk, and removed yet another item from his backpack. While the object in question looked like a typical pack of Smarties candy, the contents of said pack were far from edible. Unwrapping the pack, he took out one of the tiny pastel-colored discs with one hand, and used the other to lift the head/lid of the salt shaker off; he then placed the disc inside the 'body' and put the lid back on, ensuring that it looked as if it hadn't been moved at all. What he'd just put inside was, in fact, a new type of listening device Bruce and Lloyd and come up with that was completely undetectable to the current bug-sweeping devices available, mainly thanks to its lack of overly-metal components.
His job done, Shinji quickly, but quietly opened the door, exited the office, and closed it just as fast, before getting as far away from Akagi's office as swiftly as possible. Managing to avoid a number of personnel along the way, as soon as Shinji reached the tram that would take him topside, he slumped in his seat with relief, thankful that the tram was empty. Accessing another feature of his watch, he soon opened a line of communication to his handler.
"86 to 99-mission accomplished," he reported quietly. "The cat's come down with a bug."
"...How long were you workshopping that one?" the voice on the other end, 99, posed incredulously.
"Eh...oooohhh...*Sigh* Would you believe...the entire time I was en route to Akagi's office?" Shinji replied. "I mean, cut me a little slack, I'm still trying to get the hang of 'post-mission quipping'."
"For now, I wouldn't worry too much about your quipping," 99 advised. "Even so, good job, 86. Return home, and we'll contact you with your next assignment. Besides, any longer and your housemates might riot over a lack of their prized chef and his five-star dinners."
"Heh-good point," Shinji said. "And thanks, 99. Over and out."
End of Prologue.
**Author's Note(s)**
And so begins my next big story in the "Super-Wackos of EVA" series. With "NERV Gets Juiced", I gave you a spoofernatural tale; with "NERV Freaks Out", I fed you a spooferhero story. And now with this one, I give you-the "sixties spoofer-spy" entry in the franchise. (Sidebar, be aware that the chapter titles riff on the episode naming conventions of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.)