Down Range-II
Tokyo-3
5:43 PM
Sousuke Sagara was...concerned.
The first stage of their trip had been uneventful, but soon after they exited the train station and parted company with Rei and Mana, a creeping suspicion hovered at the edge of his awareness. Not the feeling of someone watching, his traveling with two attractive young women explained that well enough, but as though something scratched at the back of his skull, warning that things were not as they should be.
As they traveled the short distance to the next station, the young soldier's scan of the surrounding crowd intensified. Not just of individual appearance, which was meaningless, but patterns in the mass.
Groupings that remained together longer than chance would allow.
Glances that lingered a moment too long.
A face that appeared just a shade too often in the store window reflections he was using to watch their back trail.
"Pilot Langley, please contact Section 2 and verify the status of the overwatch teams." Asuka's eyes widened in surprise as she broke off conversing with Chidori, but she complied, pulling out her issue phone and dialing swiftly. Noting his other companion's surprised expressions, Sousuke spoke just above the sound of the rain drumming on the group's umbrellas, "I have detected three persons maintaining positions at our one, three, and five o'clock. I suspect they have followed us for the past several minutes, since we left the train station. Pilot Langley?" he queried the girl still trying to raise their perimeter teams.
"They say the teams checked in confirming contact with us when we got off the train, but now they aren't responding. They want us to halt somewhere defensible until they sort it out," she replied with a snort, the tone in which she delivered the message making her opinion crystal clear. Sousuke agreed, the street was lined by small shops with floor to ceiling glass windows and large glazed doors. Defensible was perhaps the one thing any of them wasn't.
It was as if a vision were upon him. Motive was still unclear, but means was almost certainly the three keeping pace with them not quite well enough to avoid detection. Opportunity was just as certainly the losing contact with their perimeter by either communications failure or, as Sousuke was increasingly and sickeningly certain, because said perimeter was no longer in a condition to communicate.
"When I signal, you three are to sprint for the alleyway thirty meters to our right rear and halt at the first turn. On three. One..."
"What is he talking about?" Chidori demanded.
"Two..."
"Never you mind, just get ready to run like hell," Sam snapped as he prepared to do just that.
"But..."
"Three!" Sousuke shouted.
----------
Any further protest Kaname might have made was drowned out by the roar of automatic gunfire. The effect was instantaneous, one second an orderly flow of pedestrians, the next a screaming mob charging in all directions. For one horrified instant she thought the maniac had fired into the crowd when several people dropped to the ground, but the next moment found them cowering terrified, partially trampled, but very much still alive in the street.
The next burst from the compact weapon he'd pulled from his bookbag with a viper's speed was for keeps. The slap on the back from a passing pilot, she couldn't tell which one, startled her into remembering -his- instructions.
Kaname's shelves at home held trophies from several sports, but track had always been her best event, and she proved it now. Devouring the pilots' small lead with long strides, she pulled ahead of the pair and skidded to a halt at the first turn, pulse thundering in her ears.
So it was that she saw it happen. Sam and Asuka pelted along perhaps two seconds behind her, Asuka in front by a few strides, the staccato crackle of returning gunfire from the surprised assailants muted by the cinderblock walls. Langley's foot had just touched the ground when a puff of pink mist followed by a wet smack exploded from her leg just above the knee. The pilot tumbled to a halt in a heap, blood already leaking from the injury. Sam nearly tripped on the downed girl, vaulting the unexpected obstruction before skidding to a halt.
The redhead's gaze, still locked on the safety just meters away, fastened onto hers for one fragile moment. She ran.
----------
The good news was that with the crowd thinned out, Sousuke was able to engage the shooters he'd identified previously.
The bad news was they had called for backup before they died.
Another rifle round cracked past trailing the shockwave of its supersonic passage from up the street. The corporal had taken cover behind a handy cement flower pot once the shooting started, preparatory to following his charges in escape, and it was just about time to leave.
As he emptied the last of his magazine at the corner he estimated the latest attempt to perforate his anatomy came from and turned to sprint for safety, he witnessed a sight to make his blood run cold.
Soryu-Langley lay in a spreading pool of blood clutching a wound that, while medically survivable, would very possibly doom any chance of escape. Either he or Roberts was going to have to carry her with Chidori probably long gone, and with the reduction in firepower on top of slowing their advance to a crawl...
Seeing the other pilot attempting to assist, he abandoned his plan and thumbed the magazine eject. Escape would have to wait.
----------
Kaname was -fairly- sure she'd done something more suicidally insane at some point in her life, but at the moment she couldn't think of an example for some reason. The sharp crackle the girl recognized as belonging to Sagara's weapon was barely recognizable against the heavy rattle of their attackers' in spite of its relative nearness, the snap of incoming and outgoing fire lending speed to her steps as she scorched out of safety and made a beeline for the injured girl caught in the open.
The boy pilot had raised his comrade to a sitting position, kneeling to bring her arm across his shoulders. Without exchanging a word, she followed suit on the other side, between the two of them they could carry the other pilot even at a dead run. A pause in their defender's fire caused her to glance back in concern, with him gone they had no protection, after all.
The killer still glared over his gunsights hunting for a target, but the boy she knew from school was nowhere to be seen. Along with the rest of the class, Kaname had mentally pegged Sousuke as being cut from the same cloth as the other military geek in their grade, Kensuke Aida.
To be fair, the resemblance was more than superficial. Both showed interest well beyond the norm in the more violent means of interpersonal relations, tended to be socially withdrawn, and showed little understanding of the ultimate cost of their obsession to those caught in its midst.
Clearly, -this- boy was not a clone of Kensuke. She refocused on her footing, a misstep now didn't bear thinking on. The trio raced on, the entrance stubbornly refusing to draw nearer, if the race to safety seemed endless it was only because she hadn't attempted it a second time...
Finally the trio made it safely within, and set down their burden around the first bend.
"Thanks," Sam spoke between deep, heaving breaths. Kaname began to nod, and started at the realization she could hear clearly. Given the racket they just subjected their ears to outside, the change to almost normal volume was jarring.
"N-no problem. Now what?"
"Good question. Sousuke?" the pilot asked, looking past her.
Kaname was grimly certain those that witnessed her two meter leap from a standing start would ever let her live it down, but at the time no one gave her a second glance.
"We move. The enemy will be sending detachments to seal off exits from this route. I can discourage pursuit, but we need to leave the area as quickly as possible."
"Sounds great. One -small- problem," Asuka grimaced from her position propped against the wall.
Sousuke grunted agreement. "True." He frowned in thought. "Cauterization would be fastest, but we'll never get a fire burning quickly in this weather. I should have a needle and thread to stitch it though..."
"Not fast enough," Asuka cut him off. "Chidori, look in my purse. There should be a Tampax in there somewhere."
Kaname blinked, and smiled understanding as she started digging. Her eyes peering in the poor light to decipher the contents of the bag, she still heard Sam complain, "Normally I'd keep my mouth shut, but don't we have a lot bigger problems than..."
"Idiot!" Snatching the proffered device from Kaname's hand, Asuka tore the wrapper off and glared at the two equally baffled boys as she prepared to insert it into the entrance wound. "Well?! Make yourselves useful and get me a bandage roll!"
----------
"Ops director to CIC. Ops director to CIC," the gender neutral, computer generated voice of the paging system echoed slightly from the speakers in the hallway. Misato Katsuragi fought the urge to sprint down the corridor. Only the knowledge that an extra thirty seconds spent arriving would have no bearing on the situation, while inducing additional worry in her subordinates very well might, let her succeed.
"Go ahead, Hyuuga," she called as the door whined open. The look of profound relief on his face at her presence might have been worth a smile under other circumstances. Not now.
"Yes, ma'am. Corporal Sagara reports he and his section are under fire from unknown aggressors and have taken casualties. They are attempting to break contact, but due to mobility limitations from their wounded he does not expect to succeed," Makoto recited in a distant, detached voice, only the report's quick, clipped cadence indicating he was keeping his reactions on a very short leash indeed. "I've relayed to Security and they dispatched a response team, ETA ten minutes. Municipal police units are mobilizing as well."
Misato kept her expression composed as she considered. For the first, all that could be done was being done, it would do no one any good to worry. She would have to complement the team on duty, that was a good response time from Section 2. For the second, Tokyo-3's police department was typical for most Japanese cities its size. Good enough for handling routine traffic and criminal cases, but few in number compared to most western cities, and with far less firepower. Dedicated as they might be, sending them into this would be nothing but a slaughter of the innocent.
"Warn the police off, politely. What about the other pilots?"
"Aboard their Evas and running pre-launch checks." At her questioning look, he continued "I wasn't thinking of launching them, but it seemed like the safest place. I haven't contacted Rei, but I heard from her perimeter teams when the alarm sounded, and they're ok."
----------
Lieutenant Isei Nagato cinched the friction strap connecting his Steyr TMP to his body armor a fraction tighter. A transfer from the GSDF after an unfortunate incident involving a stripper, a...well, several, bottles of a very good scotch, and the colonel's command helo, he had looked forward to a quiet stint on call now that the boys and girls in Ops had done their thing. This was not what he had in mind.
One of the other six trooper's harness clanked as the van hit a break in the pavement, drawing a glare from the officer. The abashed man rearranged his load. Crammed as they were into a glorified minivan, it took a lot more imagination than he had to imagine himself as the cavalry riding to the rescue.
To be fair, the pair of vans were a lot more than met the eye, equipped with run flat tires, reinforced body panels, and bullet resistant polycarbonate windows which could be supplemented by armored shutters at need. In all, more than able to handle anything a gang of mooks should be able to dish out.
That thought would be a lot more comforting if the security perimeter around the city were a lot less like a sieve. Though the Tokyo-3 and Nerv chains of command ultimately terminated in the same persons, the security apparatus for the two areas were completely separate. Section 2 was responsible for the security of the HQ, geofront, and Nerv personnel outside it, end of story. T3PD picked up where they left off, in theory. But with a larger area of responsibility and fewer people to cover it with, the quality of that protection was debatable.
As the kids they were racing to save had learned to their cost.
----------
"Outpost 2 here, convoy sighted. Two vehicles. Can I kill 'em?" a vaguely whining voice asked through the expensive digital radio.
"Stand by," the radio's owner flipped channels. "Fisher teams, this is Net. Status, please."
"Line. All Lure teams in position, we are ready now," a crisper voice on the other end replied.
“Float here, we are still in contact!” a different voice than expected replied. “The bastards took down Reel and beat feet, we are in pursuit but I think we can...” An explosion halted the message in its tracks. “Shit! Our point just ran into another booby trap! I thought these were a bunch of kids?!”
“I said they were fourteen, not that they were children,” the commander coolly reminded the frazzled listener. He could honestly care less if the pilots Float was pursuing survived or not, but the loss of that team mattered less still... “The Nerv relief convoy is en route, withdraw if you wish.”
The answer was short and pungent, terminating with “We'll take these sons of bitches. Float out.”
The commander shook his head, the whisper of his long hair shifting mingling with the background crackle of radio static. "Very well, we will activate the black boxes now." A flick back, the soft click of the switch seeming to reverberate in the empty apartment. "Execute. Use route 2 for exfiltration."
The cough of a man-portable missile launcher overlay the satisfied grunt of reply.
6:15 PM
"Anything?" Kaname hissed as they hobbled along.
Asuka lowered her phone from her ear, thumbing it closed. "No," she replied, showing far too little concern about the situation for her taste.
It had been perhaps half an hour by her watch since the shooting started, though it seemed far longer, and she doubted they had covered more than two blocks. Part of the reason was the extreme care they took with their route, looping and doubling back to cross their trail. But most of it was the girl who's arm was looped over her shoulders while the pilot tried to keep weight off her bad leg. Looking down, Kaname saw the once white sock had turned crimson from the small rivulet of blood leaking down the pilot's calf past the makeshift dressing they had been able to apply. A pinkish swirl formed in the puddles with each step. She looked hastily away.
The weapon Sam borrowed from their protector had been pressed into service covering their retreat, with the pilot watching their rear half a dozen meters behind. An equal distance ahead, Sagara did the same. Still feeling dazed by how suddenly things had changed, all she could think of was how things like this just weren't supposed to -happen-.
"Do you need to rest? If so now is the time, we are approaching a good area." Her classmate stood before her, loosely gripping his weapon in one hand while absentmindedly wiping his other hand on his pants, the disordered hair plastered flat to his forehead by the rain doing nothing to hide the cold, focused intensity of his gaze. Right then, as she met his eyes, she realized that this is where he belonged. Not in the safe sanity of peaceful Japan, but in the nightmare chaos of the killing fields. How could she have possibly thought otherwise?
Her fear must have shown as she stared back speechless, like a bird paralyzed by the sinuous motion of an approaching snake, for he ceased his level regard. His eyes lowered to the ground for a moment.
"I see," he murmured, just above the rain. He turned to Asuka, who apparently missed the byplay. "Security has not reestablished contact, either HQ or the field teams. I suggest we assume that help is not forthcoming," he reported baldly, making no effort to soften the news for either of their benefits.
Asuka grimaced, thinking much the same. "No, probably not. We should pull back to one of the Alpha sites and fort up. Seven should be closest."
Sousuke considered. The suggestion made sense, but at their current speed they would never reach even that site before being overtaken. "Agreed to the first. But to the second, it is the least defensible of our options. Nine is a better choice for defense and ease of extraction."
"And twice as far away!" the wounded girl snapped. "What good is it if we can't get there?"
"Then it will be my task to do something about that." He signaled to Sam, the other boy leaving his position covering the rear to join the group. “Pilot Roberts, your magazine please.” The taller male complied, the confusion in his eyes abating when when Sousuke removed one of his submachinegun's magazines and began topping up the pilot's partly used one. “You will escort Pilot Langley and Miss Chidori to Site Nine. I will draw the enemy's attention while you accomplish this task,” he commanded, his tone brooking no disagreement as he returned the filled magazine.
“Not exactly safe,” Sam pointed out. “-How- many of these bastards are out there?” he asked rhetorically.
The senior pilot snorted. 'What's the plan then? Bait and hook?' Asuka confirmed with the Marine.
“Precisely. I will engage and withdraw, leading them onto a further set of improvised explosives on the way to Seven. We haven't left any recently, so it should come as a surprise. It will also convince them that we are running that direction, else we would not spend the effort.”
As he spoke, protest visibly built among his charges. Kaname remained silent. If the lunatic wanted to run off and play hero, who was she to stop him?
“This is non-negotiable,” Sagara informed them. “You have your instructions. I will meet you at Site Nine.”
6:35 PM
The Nerv security men died well, Ismael decided as he finished tying a bandage around a flesh wound too close to his radial artery for comfort. The other surviving member of his four man team was unscathed, but then he'd also been last through the door. The first two were lying in pools of their own bodily fluids. One silently, the other making a most distracting high pitched keening. A testament to the skill of their foes, in spite of the grenade that led the way.
A gunshot silenced the noise. Ismael never spared a glance at his comrade safeing his weapon. There hadn't been any saving that one anyway.
"Line here. Perimeter team down, two effectives."
His radio crackled back a moment later "Sinker. Team neutralized. Two effectives, one wounded."
"Hook. Target is still in position. I will move in when you arrive."
----------
Rei reflexively turned to look in the direction of the dull 'whump' from across the street. From the other side of the apartment, Mana shook her head, Steyr TMP submachinegun in hand. The pilot nodded, settling herself again on the cold linoleum floor of her kitchen with her guard's sidearm leveled at the doorway. The sailor gave a tight grimace bordering on smile from behind the upturned bed she had positioned across the corner opposite the door. There was little hope the thin pallet would stop even grenade fragments, much less rifle fire, but they could only use what they had.
The soft click of safeties coming off echoed in the tense silence. Seconds dragged into minutes, each more grating than the last. The only measure of time was how long it took a single drop of sweat to roll from her hairline down to her nose, to land on the floor with a soft plop. Another took its place. The soft, almost inaudible clank of the loose spot in front of the door was almost a relief.
----------
The point man died before he could scream. Quick as thought, a burst of submachinegun fire perforated the hapless man. The next man bravely kicked down the door, flinging a grenade through the opening. An unmistakably female voice cursed immediately before the crump of detonation. Ismael charged in ahead of the remaining three men, spraying the improvised fortlet the pilot had sheltered behind.
He was rewarded with a scream.
----------
Rei's mind moved at a glacial speed, the gunman spraying Kirishima's position illuminated strobe fashion in the indoor dimness as her pistol rose with agonizing slowness. Another gunner charged through, turning his back to her as he searched near the window, followed by a third, this one's Kalashnikov swinging to cover her direction. The bore of the weapon seemed the size of a sewer pipe as his eyes widened to match.
Squeeze. Squeeze. Two holes appeared in his chest, the gunshots muted in her ears as two matching splotches of crimson appeared at her target's center of mass. The one facing away from her began to turn in surprise, and died before he so much as saw his killer. The next fell into the tiny refrigerator pushed in front of the overturned bed, pulling the door off its hinges as he collapsed. The final enemy finished changing his weapon's magazine, staring at her with his expression a rictus of hate as he brought his weapon around with a mongoose's speed. Brown eyes locked with red, and two trigger fingers twitched as one, Rei certain she was too late.
A strange feeling of warmth invaded her senses, blurring her vision as the muzzle flashes dazzled it. Seconds passed.
She was still breathing.
That was a surprise. The crumpled body of her would-be killer lay sprawled face down, three nine millimeter holes forming a near right triangle about fifteen centimeters wide just to the left of the sternum. A detached part of her chided her on her sloppy marksmanship, while the rest moved with dazed automatism to safe her weapon after ensuring the gunmen were truly dead.
A whimper from the left drew her attention.
The mattress was shredded by the supersonic passage of metal, it came apart in her hands as she thrust it aside. Lying prone, an ominously large pool of blood around her, was her protector. Rei gingerly turned the girl over, and hissed a breath between her teeth.
A round, or possibly grenade shrapnel, must have hit the bed frame, fragmenting into razor edged buckshot and impacted roughly at her hairline. The steady stream from the hamburger-like mass probably accounted for most of pooled blood, but the girl's lack of response to being moved was ominous. A dangerous wound, but not immediately fatal and somewhat susceptible to the crude first aid she could offer. The second was worse. The rounds must have been jacketed, for one had penetrated cleanly, clipping the left clavicle to pass out behind the armpit on that side. Pinkish froth at the entrance wound confirmed her suspicions of lung damage.
The pilot began shredding the damaged bedclothes, packing the wounds as the girl under her care had taught her on another visit that seemed a lifetime ago, and used the less damaged strips to hold the dressings in place. Her meager resources exhausted, Rei withdrew her phone, hoping against hope that service had been reconnected in the few minutes since they last tried contact.
No such luck. She sat back on her heels and thought, deliberately closing out the smells beginning to permeate the air. Time spent planning was never wasted. If she ran at full speed for the nearest geofront access point, she could arrive in approximately six minutes. Allowing another ten, or more probably fifteen, for a covering force and trauma team to be assembled, and another ten for it to arrive, and nearly half an hour would elapse before help could possibly arrive. It was doubtful the guard had that long to spare.
Or, she could attempt to carry her to aid. Granted, the sailor was larger by a significant margin, but Rei was reasonably athletic from her training program and recovered from her recent injuries. It would be no picnic, as the saying went, but not flatly impossible. It would, however, take easily three times longer than going alone. Still, it was faster than her first option's estimate. Others might have also factored in the much higher risk to her person involved in the second plan but, as many in Nerv could attest, this would be low on her list of priorities regardless.
Nodding sharply, she set her feet, gingerly extended her hands and worked her arms under the girl, gagging slightly from the sensation of the tacky blood on her skin the copper and iron reek mixing with gunpowder to assault her nose, and dragged her clear of the wreckage.
----------
"Dammit! First comms, and now sensors?!" Misato snarled. "Ritsuko!"
"Don't look at me, if anything it's probably feedback from that monster jammer of theirs inducing signals in the lines. It was much too weak to be anything else.” I hope, the doctor failed to add.
"Fine. Deal with it from here, I'm going out."
Ritsuko looked up from the battle being waged between the communications network of the field teams and the enemies attempting to deny it to them, and noted for the first time her friend's changed appearance. Gone was the red uniform jacket and beret over a black dress. In its place was a set of gray mottled coveralls under a suit of body armor, a helmet perched on the back of her chair.
"And where do you think you're going?" she asked, certain she wouldn't like the answer.
She was right. "To follow up on a phone call to Atsugi. Then, I'm going to the helipad to wait for the reinforcements that had better be arriving from there shortly."
"And then what? Your place is here, this is Security's job. Let them do it," she tried to reason with the officer. “Bringing outside elements into this mess is going to make the situation even worse.” Not to mention make fabricating something to tell the Committee and Secretary General practically impossible. And were the -hell- were the Directors? Fuyutski could conceivably be stuck on the surface due to the alert and lockdown, but Ikari nearly lived on site, he should be here by now...
To no avail. "Doctor, I'll make a deal with you," her friend replied in a voice of frozen helium. "I won't tell you how to dissect an Angel, and in return, -you- won't tell me how to run a rescue operation." She turned towards the lifts. "Excuse me while I see about getting our Children back."
But Loyal to Their Own
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TabascoOne
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Re: But Loyal to Their Own
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TabascoOne
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Re: But Loyal to Their Own
Down Range III
Tokyo-3
October 10, 2015
7:34 PM
A shadow glided through the pouring rain, passing without a trace through the dimness of the abandoned street. Ahead, three other shapes hustled along the sidewalk, shoulders hunched in their hooded dark blue jackets, weapons in plain view as they made for an unknown destination.
The shadow paused, and considered. The trio were not the first group it had encountered, but it was the smallest. A singleton would be ideal for his purposes, but unfortunately the opposition were not that stupid. These would have to do.
The group halted at the intersection, near a corrugated steel warehouse. One of them apparently speaking into a radio. Another fiddled with his weapon while they waited, head bent as he cycled the bolt of his rifle experimentally while listening to the conversation. The last kept his gaze moving, ignoring his two companions. A consensus was reached between the two ends of the communication, the speaker barking instructions and moving off once more.
He died first. Their assailant descended from the roof of the structure like a tiger from a tree, tackling the leader to the ground, leaving a crushed larynx behind as he bounded to his feet. The alert one was bringing his submachine gun to bear, shock and bewilderment showing in his widened eyes.
That was a mistake. The large, serrated backed knife that materialized in the enemy's hand demonstrated why, knocking aside the weapon's muzzle to bury itself at the solar plexus, tip striking upwards to lacerate the diaphragm and left ventricle of the heart. The man with the balky rifle had the sense to drop his weapon, reaching around behind him for another. The telescoping baton cleared the owner's jacket as the killer covered the few steps separating them, a desperate swipe with the weapon causing him to leap aside. The wielder swung again, prompting another dodge, but overextending himself. A steel hard hand clamped onto his wrist, twisting painfully to lock the elbow before slamming it against a braced knee with a sickening crack. The baton skittered away, rolling to a halt against the still form of the team leader. A final blow to the temple splintered the eggshell thin bone there, dropping the last man like a puppet with its strings cut.
Corporal Sousuke Sagara paused, listening with experienced ears for the sound of comrades rushing to the rescue. He heard none. Better than he deserved, the Marine decided, furious with himself. Never again! He would pack a silencer with him at all times, Kirishima could rag him about James Bond wannabes all she liked.
As the soldier efficiently searched the newly-made corpses of his enemies, he allowed a moment to wish his comrade well before returning his full attention to the business at hand. The findings were skimpy, evidently their employers hadn't seen fit to equip them for a long fight, confirming Sousuke's suspicions that the situation had escalated far beyond everyone's expectations.
Upon completing his preparations, and rearranging the bodies more to his liking, Sousuke took up one of the rifles, a glow of familiarity suffusing him at the touch of the familiar weapon. The Kalashnikov series were to him what a squirt gun would be to a boy of his age in the western world. It took him less than a moment to snug the rifle in properly, select automatic fire, and empty the magazine in a pair of long bursts into the roof of the warehouse.
Time was critical now, he primed a grenade from his belt, tossing it lightly in the middle of the trio of corpses and sprinting away to his chosen position. By the time the crump of the detonation hammered his ears, he was scrambling up the rickety fire escape of the building across the intersection, making for the roof.
As he predicted, response was quick to arrive. A team totaling seven converged from further down the street, a four man section from the east joining with another trio emerging from an alleyway in the same direction. Sousuke checked to the east. Surely he wasn't all the way out on their left flank, that would be far too much to hope for. Further reinforcements failed to appear from that direction, however. The radio he liberated from its previous owner lay next to him, the volume turned down to a whisper. The language was foreign to him, but their tone was clear enough.
The group advanced cautiously to the site of the ambush. The point man gestured at the bullet and shrapnel holes marring the structure, the two leaders conferring a respectable distance from the corpses. Perhaps he had been a little -too- prolific with the explosive traps, Sousuke wondered? Shaking his head slightly to banish the alien thought, he saw that if so it was having the effect of preventing anyone from approaching too close. All to the good, his hasty improvisation wouldn't bear scrutiny from anyone familiar with combat injuries. Snugging the Steyr TMP against its strap, he sighted in.
He had killed his first men at the age of eight, squeezing the trigger of a command detonated mine that destroyed a truck carrying a platoon of Afghan army soldiers. That had been the first of many such tasks, in which he had often played a part because he was simultaneously unflappable, inconspicuous, and expendable. The players changed, but the game remained the same.
The first face thirty meters away blurred above the sights. He tapped the trigger. With his eyes defocused in a timed fire drill, so served was the next target, and the next.
7:45PM
Misato Katsuragi shifted the armor gouging her hip, wishing she could get out of the Orca and push to make it go faster. The tiny task force she had whistled up arrived just inside her time window, a commendable response time for a no-notice scramble. But every second she waited grated on the Major's already raw nerves that little bit more.
Around her, the dozen Marines sharing the compartment kept their own counsel. Unlike most soldiers who bore their title, UN Marines were army troops assigned to shipboard duty, not a separate branch. In practice they were considered more as soldiers a cut above the average infantry unit, than specialized amphibious assault troops. In keeping with this, five of the six VTOLs in company with her's were identical in configuration to the Army models she was familiar with: infantry transports fitted with additional weapons pylons for support of their cargoes. The last was unique to the Marines and the heavy iron.
If only Ritsuko had been right, and she was overreacting. But any hope of that had long since faded, as the fragmentary comms traffic they could glean with the aircraft's larger and more sensitive transceivers poured in. The police were completely overwhelmed maintaining order in the as yet unaffected areas, and crippled by the same communications problems as the rest of the city. Nerv Security was operating blind, several scratch search teams were canvassing the city after the destruction of the original relief convoy, but with little result and one known friendly fire incident already. And still no word from her wayward pilots as the situation deteriorated by the minute.
"Variable flight, Central. We have an update."
"Go ahead, Central," Misato sighed, knowing the compressed sideband channel they could barely maintain would scrub any emotional context from her reply.
"Good news this time, Major. Pilot Ayanami arrived with PO Kirishima just a few minutes ago. Rei is ok, Dr. Akagi and the directors are debriefing her now. Kirishima is in a bad way, but she's supposed to make it.”
Relief at part of the burden lifting from her shoulders washed through the embattled officer. "Thank you. When they're done, tell her I'm proud of her, of both of them. Nothing on the others?"
"Negative. But considering we can hardly find each other out there, that certainly isn't conclusive," Makoto reminded her.
No, just damned bad. "Right. We're almost on station, go ahead and pull the mobile security teams back to reinforce the access points, then have them push their perimeters out as far as they can. Let's give the kids as good a chance as possible to get in on their own. Meanwhile, we're going to do some flybys and see if we can get their attention."
"Copy that, Major. Good luck."
8:00 PM
Kaname Chidori huddled against a cold cement wall and felt very sorry for herself. After Sagara had split off to live out his action hero fantasies, the remainder of the haggard little group shuffled towards the safehouse. She surveyed their position, and hid a snort. If it deserved such a title.
Site 9, as the pilots and soldier had called it, was a bus stop. Not a reinforced underground bunker boasting racks of the latest weapons and gear, with thick steel doors to keep out the enemy. Not even a decent building with a non-leaking roof. Just a garden variety, slope-roofed and glass-sided structure built around a pair of benches painted with local advertisements. Disappointing didn't -begin- to cover it.
And to top it off, they couldn't even use it! With armed enemies roaming the streets only a few blocks from here, putting themselves out in the open with nothing between them and detection but a sheet of plexiglass bordered on suicidal. So instead, they hunkered down in the lee of an office building, trying to find a dry spot while staying out of sight. Kaname shivered, her thin shirt and denim shorts refusing to dry in spite of cover from the huge building she huddled against.
It had been over an hour since they'd made the decision to split up, sporadic gunfire echoing from further towards the city center. They were among the high rises that had been one of Tokyo-3's main attractions before the war, the huge structures built on rails so they could be lowered to safety within the geofront in the event of attack or natural disaster. A few blocks to the northwest the skyscrapers petered out into the commercial and warehousing districts, filled with simple, utilitarian structures that were deemed unworthy of protection.
Kaname's mood darkened, slipping dangerously close to despair. Protection was something sorely lacking for them too. The trip here had been nerve wracking in its own right, fearing that every sound they made, every glimpse they allowed from outside the warren of alleyways that had come to mean safety could betray their location to those who meant them harm. It took little imagination to see why paranoia was an occupational hazard to those who did this for a living.
Her gaze turned to rest on her two companions. Asuka was nearest to her, tucked into a little alcove where the stairs leading to the building's main lobby met the structure itself, her wounded leg propped up on her purse. A small folding makeup mirror had been placed on the ground, tilted to give a view of the alleyway behind her. The pilot noticed her gaze, her sky blue eyes flickering away from watching the mirror to meet Kaname's own for a moment. She raised an eyebrow questioningly, as if to ask what the schoolgirl's problem was. Kaname shook her head and turned away.
The other pilot was invisible to her gaze, having crawled under a decorative bush soon after they arrived here and not emerged since. From his position he could keep the entire broad, four lane street on their other side under observation. The big, clunky-looking assault rifle he dragged in with him ensured anyone he did spot would regret it.
Asuka perked up, her body language shifting from bored watchfulness to high alert. Kaname tensed as well when the pilot hissed “Sam! Get ready,” at her comrade. The soft click of his weapon answered, followed by one from the redhead's own. Gifts of another ugly memory this night on the town from hell had left them.
The trio had been crossing a street, Sam covering with the pistol he borrowed from Sagara while the two girls hobbled ahead, when a pair of gunmen turned the corner perhaps 12 meters away. For a fragile moment, everyone froze. Then the shooting started.
“GO, GO, GO!” Sam screamed at them, leveling his pistol and pumping lead down the street. The girls did so with all the speed they could muster, which didn't seem like nearly enough. A bark of automatic fire sent bullets flying who knew where, followed by another series of cracks from their escort's weapon. Silence followed them, when the two reached the safety of the opposite side of the street, Kaname turned to look behind.
The lanky blond boy was still in a crouch, pistol pointed down the street. Even from this distance she could see the deep, heaving breaths he was taking as he held that position for a moment, before standing up and lowering the weapon.
“I think we're clear,” the pilot said in a raspy voice.
“Great, grab their stuff and let's get -out- of here!” Asuka snapped.
Sam hesitated, visibly unwilling to approach his targets, never mind handle them. A final look at the two of them, and he turned away, trotting quickly towards the fallen forms of the terrorists, one flat on his back with several bleeding holes scattered across the chest. The other sprawled face down in a heap facing back they way the came, weapon several strides away as though they had hit the ground at a run. Kaname watched as he turned the bodies over, unzipping their jackets and removing several objects to his own pockets before rejoining them.
Their stuff was mostly the two assault rifles the pilots now held and ammunition for them, along with a small stainless steel flask of something that smelled alcoholic and a radio they promptly stripped the batteries out of and left behind, lest it have a tracking function. Sam hadn't brought himself to search more thoroughly, not that Kaname could blame him. The boy had looked positively nauseous when he returned, and had barely said a word since.
The intruder scuffed his foot twice, and then twice more. Immediately the red haired pilot relaxed. Three taps of her weapon's muzzle against the wall answered in the prearranged response.
"Well?" she questioned when the last member of their party joined them.
"Both good and bad news.' Sousuke reported, squatting down to remain out of sight from the street. “The good is they seem to be moving considerably more carefully now. The bad is that they will still find this place if they search at all."
The girl pilot blew out a breath, briefly puffing her cheeks. "Great. No progress here either. I still can't raise anyone, and Chidori went to try one of the landlines with no luck. Whoever the bastards are, they're thorough." Sousuke glanced at Kaname when she was mentioned, but the girl avoided eye contact. Turning his attention back to Asuka's report, he nodded at her conclusion.
“Then our options are either to defend this location and hope Nerv finds us, or move on to another site,” the corporal summarized. “I admit, neither option seems favorable.”
“Something else was worrying me too,” Sam spoke up, having extricated himself from his position. “There can't be all that many of these bastards, but we...bumped into some on the way here. And that was with you pulling them another direction. What if that isn't coincidence?”
“I wondered about that. Do you think they have our beacon data?” Asuka questioned.
“No...no I don't think so. They'd be on top of us by now if they did. But if they have a list of our rally points and are checking them off one by one, it explains a lot.”
“Better and better,” the redhead grumbled, nodding. “If we start avoiding those, Nerv won't have a clue where to find us.”
"What..." a hesitant voice interrupted. All eyes turned to Kaname. "What if we got out of these buildings? The cell towers and radio relays are all up in the mountains, right? Wouldn't that help us?"
"A little," Asuka allowed grudgingly. "But maybe not enough. And we'd have less cover. That district is more open visually, the multipath interference from the skyscrapers may degrade our radios a bit, but this area is also a lot easier to stay hidden in."
"But do we have a choice?" Kaname pressed, her voice gaining strength. "We don't have long before we're pinned down anyway, according to what you've said. Anything that increases our chances of getting out before than has to be worth trying, right?"
"She has a point there..." Sam allowed, glancing at the others. "Sousuke? Asuka?"
The two mentioned shared a look. It wasn't a decision either wanted to make, not really. While Asuka was a graduate of the UN's officer candidate school, appointed lead pilot of her battlegroup, and had full confidence in her leadership abilities, she also had no practical experience in infantry combat. Sousuke was as experienced in the nuts and bolts of mayhem as most soldiers a decade older, but he had nearly as little experience in leading a combat unit as she did.
The moment passed. They shrugged.
"Ok, let's do it."
----------
It was, in the vernacular, a clusterfuck.
The diversionary team charged with hitting the pilots in the open had hit, and then refused to run after losing several of their own unexpectedly. The primary unit, meanwhile, had reported success in its initial objective of eliminating the objective's perimeter teams, but since then all contact had been lost. And finally...
His evac team leader's voice crackled across the command channel. "Boss, we've got a problem."
'So what else is new?' the young man muttered. “Explain.”
"I have incoming air, at least six, from the east. Looks like Orcas."
-That- was what he'd been afraid of. Half a dozen VTOLs could lift most of a company, and provide air support after their passengers were dropped off. If they were coming from the east, that meant Atsugi, which meant UN troopers rather than Japanese ground forces. Someone in Nerv must have been on the ball to get help out here this quickly. Fortunately, it was something he had accounted for.
"Very well then. The sharks are here, so it is time for everyone to get out of the water. Contact Reel and inform them of the situation and that we are withdrawing. Has there been any word from Hook, Line, or Sinker?' He knew perfectly well what the answer was, but it was just as well to put it on the record.
“No, no contact since they reported they were entering the First Child's apartment.”
That, he was less worried about. Ismael was far and away the more experienced of his two task force leads, any number of possible explanations were more likely than a single pilot and a teenage civilian girl defeated him and four other seasoned men.
“Rod team is already aboard our transport. That leaves us, then.” The four men making up his command post nodded agreement, beginning to break down the assortment of monitoring gear and communications equipment. The jammers and limpets scattered through the city would be a heavy investment to leave behind. Frankly, they could better afford to lose the field teams than those technological jewels, but it was understood that recovery was impractical under the circumstances. The man snorted. It wasn't as though his employers had reason to be frugal in any case.
The field teams would arrive for extraction, or they wouldn't. The thirty five strong diversionary force he would write off without qualm to attract the attention of the UN forces, it was half the reason he allowed them free reign on their wild goose chase. The primary team would be a greater loss, but its chances of survival were commensurately greater as well.
All that could be done had been. 'Then we're finished here.' As he followed the men to their waiting panel truck for the long ride to Nagoya, the thin, pale-hued man turned gray eyes to the east, searching the overcast for the arriving aircraft.
“Au revoir, gentlemen,” he murmured with a smirk. “And good hunting.”
----------
Kaname's mind had seesawed between jagged-edged adrenaline highs of fear, and the abysmally deep, soul draining weariness that was its silent partner for the last several hours. She was an athlete, and had the trophies on her wall to prove it, but right now it was a grueling fight to just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Her head bowed, gazing where she was about to step next, she didn't notice Sousuke's twitch, as the corporal cocked his head, a curious expression beginning to form on his rain splattered face.
He held up a hand to stop. "Listen. Do you hear something?"
Asuka began to shake her head, then paused. Kaname looked from one to the other at a total loss, as Sam screwed up his expression too. At a total loss as to how they could hear much of anything over the pounding rain that had returned in the last few minutes, she was about to give up when a thin whine penetrated the background noise. Eyes widening, she stared at the others, their mix of hope and exhausted relief mirroring her own.
"Langley! The radio, now!"
------------
"Un....air..aft, unknown air.....in...ease. ...nown....ircra..., please respond.' A pause as a wash of static drowned out the signal almost entirely, clearing in time for a faint 'goddammit I know you're up there!' to come in almost perfectly, much to their amusement. 'Unknown......nkno....aircraft..."
"This is United Nations Variable flight. Transmitter on this frequency, be advised this is a military channel. Identify at once," Misato replied per protocol, hope rising in her chest as she hurriedly gestured for the pilot to circle back. The signal strengthened, washes of static fading enough to finally come in unmistakably.
"Repeat, Variable flight this is Pilot Asuka Soryu-Langley, in company with Nerv personnel and civilians. -Please- tell me you have a pickup for us."
Over the babble coming from the troop compartment behind her at the unexpected development, Misato felt her heart leap. For all the fervor with which she'd bullied, cajoled, and extorted this unit from the base commandant at Atsugi, somewhere in the back of her mind she'd been preparing for the possibility it was all in vain.
Thank you, Misato breathed to whomever might be listening. “Major Misato Katsuragi of UN Nerv, it's good to hear from you Asuka. <"I had no idea what I was going to do with all my leftovers,"> she added in German.
<"Cremation and burial at sea springs to mind,"> the voice responded in the same language, passing the test. "We're clear right now, but the bastards seem to be everywhere. We've been trying to get a decent line of sight to the radio relays, or failing that try for Foxtrot, but we can't seem to hold a steady course," she explained, referring to a geofront access point nearby.
"Understood, stand by." There was no way they could land an Orca in the street in this part of town, especially in this weather, but... "Lieutenant, there's a park about 1200 meters west of here, can you get this crate in there?"
"No problem, ma'am," the pilot shook his head after craning to look at the spot indicated. "Not real defensible though, all that clutter."
"We'll burn that bridge when we come to it," she replied, changing back to the ground channel. "Asuka, move about half a kilometer to your east and wait at the edge of the park. We'll try for pickup there."
8:30 PM
It was not the finest day in Grigoriy's life.
Quick, easy, in and out in an hour, tops! A chance to avenge those heroes who were felled by the hated proxies in Moscow, and slay the red eyed she-devil who was their pawn! A chance to be part of an action that would be trumpeted around the world! And they had, of this he had no doubts. But only at a terrible price. Barely twenty of the original team still survived, the rest slaughtered by fiendish traps or gunfire that came from nowhere. Some of his subordinates chose to obey the call for extraction, but not him, not yet. He had an even fourteen with him who wanted blood for their fallen, and they would have it!
He heard the growl of the damned UN jets somewhere overhead, circling like rabid wolves around a flock. "Better luck next time," he smirked grimly. The so- called children would be able to contact the help orbiting above them soon, if they had not already. The jammer pods that prevented the enemy from coordinating against them would run out of power, if nothing else.
But no matter. There were a limited number of places a big VTOL like an Orca could land in this city, and he was gambling they would take the nearest. Upon seeing the meeting point, he signaled to his comrades behind and trotted forward. With any luck at all, they could finish this, shake the dust of this accursed city off their boots, and be home in a week.
----------
It started, as so many things do, with a murmured “Huh, that's funny.”
Sousuke turned to glance at the boy across from him. Sam looked the way they all felt, cold, wet, miserable, and afraid. The open-faced good nature he displayed to the world in other times was long gone, buried under the stress of the last hours.
“What do you mean?”
The pilot tilted his head towards one of the nearby shops. “I thought I saw something move in there.”
The corporal studied the indicated building. The shop was part of a building containing several across the small square. A circular fountain and reflecting pool made up the center, surrounded by a poured concrete slab set with several benches. Further out a series of brick enclosures held several medium sized bushes, one of which they sheltered behind now.
The light was poor, even worse inside the structure, but as Sousuke peered into the dimness patiently, he too saw a patch of lighter color that shifted position.
“Well done. I count another two in my sector, one in the window third from the right, the other hiding behind the parapet at 11 o'clock. Engage on three. One...two...three.”
Two rifles crackled simultaneously. The AK-47 and its derivatives were not famous for accuracy, but at this range it barely mattered. The shape twisted and fell out of sight behind a counter.
The world exploded.
-------------
"Shots fired, shots fired. Repeat, we are taking fire from across the square," Asuka shouted into the radio over the din. For her part, she was crouched behind a nice, thick abutment at the edge of a small plaza fronted by a hardware store, a florist's, and a pizza place Kaname was fond of in other times.
Times when a boy she might call a friend wasn't screaming from a rifle round that punched through his guts, while a girl she knew bled in the street from a reopened wound no one had time to tend. When a maniac she'd thought was just a classmate wasn't sending hot metal howling back down a narrow pedestrian street.
"Chidori!" Kaname turned, noticing that the other girl had crawled up next to her. "Take this, and guide them in!" Asuka shouted over the din, pressing the small, boxy shapes of the radio and marker beacon into her shocked hands.
"How?! And where are you going?!" she shrieked back in shock.
"To take his place! Just lob this up on the roof where they can see it and do as they say!"
She nodded speechlessly as Asuka moved away, covering the area Sam had previously. No strategist she, even Kaname could tell there was no retreat here, the open, well manicured grass was spotted with a handful of trees and ringed by a sidewalk, a near perfect kill zone. A squawk from the radio brought her back.
"Asuka, we are in position. Please mark your location,” the voice requested, unaware the pilot was otherwise occupied. "Ok," she answered, and readied the other object had given her. She pulled the tab on the IR beacon and lobbed it into a clear area. Hopefully, that was that.
A few seconds passed. "Negative acquisition, have you tossed the strobe?" Kaname froze in horror.
"YES!"
"Shit!' the voice snarled before regaining control “Ok, we need to verify which building you're near, they all look alike from up here. Try to find something to help us: a flashlight, a road flare, something like that." Kaname stared at the radio, her hopes sinking even as the never dormant fear washed higher. Not now, not when they were so close.
The two remaining fighters were pinned behind their respective shelters, barely able to raise their heads from the volume of bullets pouring on them. Kaname had seen a movie set once, as a little girl. At the end, two men were trapped in a house somewhere in South America, surrounded by soldiers and nearly out of ammunition. The men loaded their guns for the last time, said their parting words, and charged out the door into the teeth of their enemies as the screen faded to black.
At the time, she thought those men were insane. She still did. But on some level, she had simply had enough. If huddling in a hole from some false sense of safety was going to get her killed anyway, then perhaps it was just as well to be hung as a lion than a lamb. Maybe she -was- crazy, as nuts as her companions even, though that would take some work. But no one would say she didn't try.
The soaked, exhausted girl pushed herself up, scanned the battlefield until she found the person she sought, and broke into a run. Darting across the plaza, weaving between and behind obstructions, she felt a breeze as a stray round went past with a snap-pop, followed by another tugging at her rain soaked hair trailing behind like a streamer.
The sprinter slid in beside Sousuke like a runner skidding for home plate, bumped to a stop against the rough brick, and grabbed at his pants.
"Chidori, what..." he stammered incoherently, his reaction fit to make a tomato proud as she reached in and rummaged a moment.
“Don't argue!” she snapped, before emerging with what she sought. The round, cylindrical object was different than she expected, but she'd seen enough war movies to identify the pull ring of a grenade easily enough.
Not for nothing had she been starting pitcher on the girl's softball team two years running. The incendiary/smoke grenade flew straight and true across the square, through the hardware store's window, caromed off a bank of shelving...
And rolled to rest directly in front of a display of economy size Krylon spray paint.
----------
Misato pounded the edge of her jumpseat rhythmically, eyes locked on the low light camera display. Of all the stupid things to go wrong, it would be a dud marker. The screen was a muddled mess, the downpour scattering and absorbing infrared signatures even as it blanketed the visible spectrum. The flashes of light from weapons fire eerily lit the tiny plaza as she waited with brittle patience. Dropping into that park without support could be a nightmare against someone with anti-tank missiles, but without knowing where the kids were air support was out of the question.
Come on, she implored. Come on, don't make me do this.
A flicker of motion near a building caught her eye, but most likely it was an image artifact. As she was about to order them to drop anyway, support be damned, a shout from the gunner caused her to whip back to her panel.
“Vishnu! Massive thermal bloom bearing 353! What did she do, set off a bomb?!"
Panting came from the radio, pausing a moment to speak. "Enemy position..." the voice took a breath, "marked. That's -enemy- position marked! How's that?" it continued, a little saucily Misato thought.
"Good enough! We have you, stand by," she changed frequencies, "Variable 7, rapid fire on the north side of the plaza centered on marked location, execute," she ordered before flipping back. "Ok honey, help is on the way. Pull in as close as you can and sit tight. We are coming to get you."
----------
Two thousand meters above, a lone Orca circled the battlefield. Its 'A' model cousins came equipped equipped with a troop compartment, 3 barrel 12.7mm Gatling, and underwing weapons pylons compatible with everything from rocket pods, to guided missiles, to cluster bombs. The C traded all that for one weapon and one weapon only. The official literature might designate it as an Orca, but to its users it was Spooky Junior.
Mounted within the troop compartment, its barrel snouting out the left side adorned by a fantastically ugly and surprisingly effective flash hider/muzzle brake, was a 90mm low velocity gun. Resembling nothing so much as a six shooter scaled for a giant, it fed from a magazine taking up the rest of the compartment containing a mix of high explosive, incendiary/smoke, and HEAT anti-armor rounds.
With a squeeze of the gunner's finger, the first of the shells already loaded in the cylinder was sent on its way, followed a second later by the next, and the next.
----------
The roar of the conflagration across the square seemed to drown out the hammering of gunfire. Or perhaps it had simply stunned the enemy as much as it had them, Sousuke mused. The girl beside him raised her head from the ground, uncovering her ears and looking over the edge of the brick planter that had sheltered them.
The radio interrupted before he could say anything, Chidori informing their rescuers the enemy were marked. Her actions now making perfect sense, the Marine realized they could only mean one thing...
Grabbing her by the shoulder, he pulled the girl back behind the planter over her objections. Moments later, thunder descended from the heavens.
The ground jumped beneath their prone bodies as Spooky walked its fire along the north edge of the square, each explosion followed by the rumble of collapsing masonry in the interval before the next as the cataclysm went on and on.
Once, a secondary explosion rattled their teeth instants after the impact. Hopefully they hadn't hit a gas main, that could get very ugly for everyone...
They raised their heads again once the barrage ceased, ears ringing. Chidori's lips seemed to be moving, but he hadn't the faintest idea what she was saying. Since she wasn't facing his direction, he assumed it wasn't meant for him anyway. The two wounded looked unharmed by the recent destruction, Soryu-Langley on all fours, yawning to clear her ears as she levered herself off the ground. She was the first to point out the sight behind them.
His hearing only just returning, the deep-throated howl of jet engines sounded tinny in his ears as a pair murky gray shapes dropped through the curtains of rain. At first indistinct through the slackening downpour, the descending craft resolved clearly as they scooted in just over the warehouse fronting the western side of the park. Nose mounted Gatling guns swiveled in their turrets, hunting targets that escaped the preparatory bombardment as landing gear unfolded from their bellies. Brief ripping canvas snarls from other machines' weapons indicated there were still some to be found.
The transports grounded in the park, jet blast sending a swing set tumbling away while trees bent under the gale.
No words needed to be said, it was time to go.
----------
Misato waited for the Marines to exit and set up their perimeter first, but it was a near run thing, as the scuffs on the back of the last one's boots could attest. Above, the other four Orca As loitered over the two able to discharge their cargoes, already heading for the perimeter in a leapfrog pattern, one pair advancing while another covered. She raised the handset to her lips.
"All units, be on the lookout for four teenagers very much the worse for wear. Shoot at them and your asses -will- be mine," she reminded the Marines before changing back to give a message she had longed to deliver since the fracas began.
"Children, we are leaving!"
The low hiss of background static answered her. Grip tightening on the handset, she prepared to call again when a sight she never stopped fearing she wouldn't see made it pointless.
Emerging from the downpour, stumbling on the shards of concrete cast by the bombardment, came four familiar figures. Two were carried by their companions until a quartet of Marines detached from the force moving into the rubble to assist them.
Her lips tightened as the two injured were brought past, Sam mercifully unconscious when they lay him on the transport's deck for a hasty dressing to be applied. Asuka met her eyes as she hobbled past with one arm wrapped around her helper's neck, refusing to be carried.
“You gave us quite a scare there, Asuka,” Misato remarked, shouting over the idling roar of the Orca's engines. “I appreciate the enthusiasm, but let's try to avoid that much property damage in the future.”
The redhead stared for a long moment. She said nothing, uncharacteristically at a loss for words. A hiccup escaped her lips. As if it broke the dam, the pilot let forth a peal of laughter that startled those clustered around the tail of the aircraft into silence. When he recovered, she gestured with her free arm behind them. “You're one to talk, Misato. Besides, I'm innocent.” With that she urged her temporary minion forward up the ramp.
Misato turned her attention to the last pair to arrive, and the only ones to do so under their own power. To the radio still clutched in the girl's hand. 'I see. Well who am I to argue with results?' she asked with a raised eyebrow.
Kaname flushed crimson as she seated herself in the transport. 'It worked, right?'
'No argument there! Corporal, keep an eye on them for a little longer.' The officer hopped down, signaling to the flight crew to take off. As the ramp retracted and the jets wound up to a basso roar, she turned her face away from the downwash, crouching against the blast of gravel and grass. As it ascended back into the overcast, she looked up at the departing machine and spoke quietly.
“Just this once, everyone goes home.”
-------------------------------------------
Author's notes:
And there we have it. This is a chapter I've been itching to write for a long while now, almost since the time I was planning this story in the first place.
For those curious, the Orca As in this chapter I envisioned more or less as the gunships we saw in the first episode of Eva. The Orca C is purely my own invention, as far as I know. What can I say, I have a weakness for firepower in a small package. Probably why I'm also a Nanoha and To Aru Kagaku no Railgun fan, come to think of it...
No proofing on this chapter, so any issues are entirely my fault.
Tokyo-3
October 10, 2015
7:34 PM
A shadow glided through the pouring rain, passing without a trace through the dimness of the abandoned street. Ahead, three other shapes hustled along the sidewalk, shoulders hunched in their hooded dark blue jackets, weapons in plain view as they made for an unknown destination.
The shadow paused, and considered. The trio were not the first group it had encountered, but it was the smallest. A singleton would be ideal for his purposes, but unfortunately the opposition were not that stupid. These would have to do.
The group halted at the intersection, near a corrugated steel warehouse. One of them apparently speaking into a radio. Another fiddled with his weapon while they waited, head bent as he cycled the bolt of his rifle experimentally while listening to the conversation. The last kept his gaze moving, ignoring his two companions. A consensus was reached between the two ends of the communication, the speaker barking instructions and moving off once more.
He died first. Their assailant descended from the roof of the structure like a tiger from a tree, tackling the leader to the ground, leaving a crushed larynx behind as he bounded to his feet. The alert one was bringing his submachine gun to bear, shock and bewilderment showing in his widened eyes.
That was a mistake. The large, serrated backed knife that materialized in the enemy's hand demonstrated why, knocking aside the weapon's muzzle to bury itself at the solar plexus, tip striking upwards to lacerate the diaphragm and left ventricle of the heart. The man with the balky rifle had the sense to drop his weapon, reaching around behind him for another. The telescoping baton cleared the owner's jacket as the killer covered the few steps separating them, a desperate swipe with the weapon causing him to leap aside. The wielder swung again, prompting another dodge, but overextending himself. A steel hard hand clamped onto his wrist, twisting painfully to lock the elbow before slamming it against a braced knee with a sickening crack. The baton skittered away, rolling to a halt against the still form of the team leader. A final blow to the temple splintered the eggshell thin bone there, dropping the last man like a puppet with its strings cut.
Corporal Sousuke Sagara paused, listening with experienced ears for the sound of comrades rushing to the rescue. He heard none. Better than he deserved, the Marine decided, furious with himself. Never again! He would pack a silencer with him at all times, Kirishima could rag him about James Bond wannabes all she liked.
As the soldier efficiently searched the newly-made corpses of his enemies, he allowed a moment to wish his comrade well before returning his full attention to the business at hand. The findings were skimpy, evidently their employers hadn't seen fit to equip them for a long fight, confirming Sousuke's suspicions that the situation had escalated far beyond everyone's expectations.
Upon completing his preparations, and rearranging the bodies more to his liking, Sousuke took up one of the rifles, a glow of familiarity suffusing him at the touch of the familiar weapon. The Kalashnikov series were to him what a squirt gun would be to a boy of his age in the western world. It took him less than a moment to snug the rifle in properly, select automatic fire, and empty the magazine in a pair of long bursts into the roof of the warehouse.
Time was critical now, he primed a grenade from his belt, tossing it lightly in the middle of the trio of corpses and sprinting away to his chosen position. By the time the crump of the detonation hammered his ears, he was scrambling up the rickety fire escape of the building across the intersection, making for the roof.
As he predicted, response was quick to arrive. A team totaling seven converged from further down the street, a four man section from the east joining with another trio emerging from an alleyway in the same direction. Sousuke checked to the east. Surely he wasn't all the way out on their left flank, that would be far too much to hope for. Further reinforcements failed to appear from that direction, however. The radio he liberated from its previous owner lay next to him, the volume turned down to a whisper. The language was foreign to him, but their tone was clear enough.
The group advanced cautiously to the site of the ambush. The point man gestured at the bullet and shrapnel holes marring the structure, the two leaders conferring a respectable distance from the corpses. Perhaps he had been a little -too- prolific with the explosive traps, Sousuke wondered? Shaking his head slightly to banish the alien thought, he saw that if so it was having the effect of preventing anyone from approaching too close. All to the good, his hasty improvisation wouldn't bear scrutiny from anyone familiar with combat injuries. Snugging the Steyr TMP against its strap, he sighted in.
He had killed his first men at the age of eight, squeezing the trigger of a command detonated mine that destroyed a truck carrying a platoon of Afghan army soldiers. That had been the first of many such tasks, in which he had often played a part because he was simultaneously unflappable, inconspicuous, and expendable. The players changed, but the game remained the same.
The first face thirty meters away blurred above the sights. He tapped the trigger. With his eyes defocused in a timed fire drill, so served was the next target, and the next.
7:45PM
Misato Katsuragi shifted the armor gouging her hip, wishing she could get out of the Orca and push to make it go faster. The tiny task force she had whistled up arrived just inside her time window, a commendable response time for a no-notice scramble. But every second she waited grated on the Major's already raw nerves that little bit more.
Around her, the dozen Marines sharing the compartment kept their own counsel. Unlike most soldiers who bore their title, UN Marines were army troops assigned to shipboard duty, not a separate branch. In practice they were considered more as soldiers a cut above the average infantry unit, than specialized amphibious assault troops. In keeping with this, five of the six VTOLs in company with her's were identical in configuration to the Army models she was familiar with: infantry transports fitted with additional weapons pylons for support of their cargoes. The last was unique to the Marines and the heavy iron.
If only Ritsuko had been right, and she was overreacting. But any hope of that had long since faded, as the fragmentary comms traffic they could glean with the aircraft's larger and more sensitive transceivers poured in. The police were completely overwhelmed maintaining order in the as yet unaffected areas, and crippled by the same communications problems as the rest of the city. Nerv Security was operating blind, several scratch search teams were canvassing the city after the destruction of the original relief convoy, but with little result and one known friendly fire incident already. And still no word from her wayward pilots as the situation deteriorated by the minute.
"Variable flight, Central. We have an update."
"Go ahead, Central," Misato sighed, knowing the compressed sideband channel they could barely maintain would scrub any emotional context from her reply.
"Good news this time, Major. Pilot Ayanami arrived with PO Kirishima just a few minutes ago. Rei is ok, Dr. Akagi and the directors are debriefing her now. Kirishima is in a bad way, but she's supposed to make it.”
Relief at part of the burden lifting from her shoulders washed through the embattled officer. "Thank you. When they're done, tell her I'm proud of her, of both of them. Nothing on the others?"
"Negative. But considering we can hardly find each other out there, that certainly isn't conclusive," Makoto reminded her.
No, just damned bad. "Right. We're almost on station, go ahead and pull the mobile security teams back to reinforce the access points, then have them push their perimeters out as far as they can. Let's give the kids as good a chance as possible to get in on their own. Meanwhile, we're going to do some flybys and see if we can get their attention."
"Copy that, Major. Good luck."
8:00 PM
Kaname Chidori huddled against a cold cement wall and felt very sorry for herself. After Sagara had split off to live out his action hero fantasies, the remainder of the haggard little group shuffled towards the safehouse. She surveyed their position, and hid a snort. If it deserved such a title.
Site 9, as the pilots and soldier had called it, was a bus stop. Not a reinforced underground bunker boasting racks of the latest weapons and gear, with thick steel doors to keep out the enemy. Not even a decent building with a non-leaking roof. Just a garden variety, slope-roofed and glass-sided structure built around a pair of benches painted with local advertisements. Disappointing didn't -begin- to cover it.
And to top it off, they couldn't even use it! With armed enemies roaming the streets only a few blocks from here, putting themselves out in the open with nothing between them and detection but a sheet of plexiglass bordered on suicidal. So instead, they hunkered down in the lee of an office building, trying to find a dry spot while staying out of sight. Kaname shivered, her thin shirt and denim shorts refusing to dry in spite of cover from the huge building she huddled against.
It had been over an hour since they'd made the decision to split up, sporadic gunfire echoing from further towards the city center. They were among the high rises that had been one of Tokyo-3's main attractions before the war, the huge structures built on rails so they could be lowered to safety within the geofront in the event of attack or natural disaster. A few blocks to the northwest the skyscrapers petered out into the commercial and warehousing districts, filled with simple, utilitarian structures that were deemed unworthy of protection.
Kaname's mood darkened, slipping dangerously close to despair. Protection was something sorely lacking for them too. The trip here had been nerve wracking in its own right, fearing that every sound they made, every glimpse they allowed from outside the warren of alleyways that had come to mean safety could betray their location to those who meant them harm. It took little imagination to see why paranoia was an occupational hazard to those who did this for a living.
Her gaze turned to rest on her two companions. Asuka was nearest to her, tucked into a little alcove where the stairs leading to the building's main lobby met the structure itself, her wounded leg propped up on her purse. A small folding makeup mirror had been placed on the ground, tilted to give a view of the alleyway behind her. The pilot noticed her gaze, her sky blue eyes flickering away from watching the mirror to meet Kaname's own for a moment. She raised an eyebrow questioningly, as if to ask what the schoolgirl's problem was. Kaname shook her head and turned away.
The other pilot was invisible to her gaze, having crawled under a decorative bush soon after they arrived here and not emerged since. From his position he could keep the entire broad, four lane street on their other side under observation. The big, clunky-looking assault rifle he dragged in with him ensured anyone he did spot would regret it.
Asuka perked up, her body language shifting from bored watchfulness to high alert. Kaname tensed as well when the pilot hissed “Sam! Get ready,” at her comrade. The soft click of his weapon answered, followed by one from the redhead's own. Gifts of another ugly memory this night on the town from hell had left them.
The trio had been crossing a street, Sam covering with the pistol he borrowed from Sagara while the two girls hobbled ahead, when a pair of gunmen turned the corner perhaps 12 meters away. For a fragile moment, everyone froze. Then the shooting started.
“GO, GO, GO!” Sam screamed at them, leveling his pistol and pumping lead down the street. The girls did so with all the speed they could muster, which didn't seem like nearly enough. A bark of automatic fire sent bullets flying who knew where, followed by another series of cracks from their escort's weapon. Silence followed them, when the two reached the safety of the opposite side of the street, Kaname turned to look behind.
The lanky blond boy was still in a crouch, pistol pointed down the street. Even from this distance she could see the deep, heaving breaths he was taking as he held that position for a moment, before standing up and lowering the weapon.
“I think we're clear,” the pilot said in a raspy voice.
“Great, grab their stuff and let's get -out- of here!” Asuka snapped.
Sam hesitated, visibly unwilling to approach his targets, never mind handle them. A final look at the two of them, and he turned away, trotting quickly towards the fallen forms of the terrorists, one flat on his back with several bleeding holes scattered across the chest. The other sprawled face down in a heap facing back they way the came, weapon several strides away as though they had hit the ground at a run. Kaname watched as he turned the bodies over, unzipping their jackets and removing several objects to his own pockets before rejoining them.
Their stuff was mostly the two assault rifles the pilots now held and ammunition for them, along with a small stainless steel flask of something that smelled alcoholic and a radio they promptly stripped the batteries out of and left behind, lest it have a tracking function. Sam hadn't brought himself to search more thoroughly, not that Kaname could blame him. The boy had looked positively nauseous when he returned, and had barely said a word since.
The intruder scuffed his foot twice, and then twice more. Immediately the red haired pilot relaxed. Three taps of her weapon's muzzle against the wall answered in the prearranged response.
"Well?" she questioned when the last member of their party joined them.
"Both good and bad news.' Sousuke reported, squatting down to remain out of sight from the street. “The good is they seem to be moving considerably more carefully now. The bad is that they will still find this place if they search at all."
The girl pilot blew out a breath, briefly puffing her cheeks. "Great. No progress here either. I still can't raise anyone, and Chidori went to try one of the landlines with no luck. Whoever the bastards are, they're thorough." Sousuke glanced at Kaname when she was mentioned, but the girl avoided eye contact. Turning his attention back to Asuka's report, he nodded at her conclusion.
“Then our options are either to defend this location and hope Nerv finds us, or move on to another site,” the corporal summarized. “I admit, neither option seems favorable.”
“Something else was worrying me too,” Sam spoke up, having extricated himself from his position. “There can't be all that many of these bastards, but we...bumped into some on the way here. And that was with you pulling them another direction. What if that isn't coincidence?”
“I wondered about that. Do you think they have our beacon data?” Asuka questioned.
“No...no I don't think so. They'd be on top of us by now if they did. But if they have a list of our rally points and are checking them off one by one, it explains a lot.”
“Better and better,” the redhead grumbled, nodding. “If we start avoiding those, Nerv won't have a clue where to find us.”
"What..." a hesitant voice interrupted. All eyes turned to Kaname. "What if we got out of these buildings? The cell towers and radio relays are all up in the mountains, right? Wouldn't that help us?"
"A little," Asuka allowed grudgingly. "But maybe not enough. And we'd have less cover. That district is more open visually, the multipath interference from the skyscrapers may degrade our radios a bit, but this area is also a lot easier to stay hidden in."
"But do we have a choice?" Kaname pressed, her voice gaining strength. "We don't have long before we're pinned down anyway, according to what you've said. Anything that increases our chances of getting out before than has to be worth trying, right?"
"She has a point there..." Sam allowed, glancing at the others. "Sousuke? Asuka?"
The two mentioned shared a look. It wasn't a decision either wanted to make, not really. While Asuka was a graduate of the UN's officer candidate school, appointed lead pilot of her battlegroup, and had full confidence in her leadership abilities, she also had no practical experience in infantry combat. Sousuke was as experienced in the nuts and bolts of mayhem as most soldiers a decade older, but he had nearly as little experience in leading a combat unit as she did.
The moment passed. They shrugged.
"Ok, let's do it."
----------
It was, in the vernacular, a clusterfuck.
The diversionary team charged with hitting the pilots in the open had hit, and then refused to run after losing several of their own unexpectedly. The primary unit, meanwhile, had reported success in its initial objective of eliminating the objective's perimeter teams, but since then all contact had been lost. And finally...
His evac team leader's voice crackled across the command channel. "Boss, we've got a problem."
'So what else is new?' the young man muttered. “Explain.”
"I have incoming air, at least six, from the east. Looks like Orcas."
-That- was what he'd been afraid of. Half a dozen VTOLs could lift most of a company, and provide air support after their passengers were dropped off. If they were coming from the east, that meant Atsugi, which meant UN troopers rather than Japanese ground forces. Someone in Nerv must have been on the ball to get help out here this quickly. Fortunately, it was something he had accounted for.
"Very well then. The sharks are here, so it is time for everyone to get out of the water. Contact Reel and inform them of the situation and that we are withdrawing. Has there been any word from Hook, Line, or Sinker?' He knew perfectly well what the answer was, but it was just as well to put it on the record.
“No, no contact since they reported they were entering the First Child's apartment.”
That, he was less worried about. Ismael was far and away the more experienced of his two task force leads, any number of possible explanations were more likely than a single pilot and a teenage civilian girl defeated him and four other seasoned men.
“Rod team is already aboard our transport. That leaves us, then.” The four men making up his command post nodded agreement, beginning to break down the assortment of monitoring gear and communications equipment. The jammers and limpets scattered through the city would be a heavy investment to leave behind. Frankly, they could better afford to lose the field teams than those technological jewels, but it was understood that recovery was impractical under the circumstances. The man snorted. It wasn't as though his employers had reason to be frugal in any case.
The field teams would arrive for extraction, or they wouldn't. The thirty five strong diversionary force he would write off without qualm to attract the attention of the UN forces, it was half the reason he allowed them free reign on their wild goose chase. The primary team would be a greater loss, but its chances of survival were commensurately greater as well.
All that could be done had been. 'Then we're finished here.' As he followed the men to their waiting panel truck for the long ride to Nagoya, the thin, pale-hued man turned gray eyes to the east, searching the overcast for the arriving aircraft.
“Au revoir, gentlemen,” he murmured with a smirk. “And good hunting.”
----------
Kaname's mind had seesawed between jagged-edged adrenaline highs of fear, and the abysmally deep, soul draining weariness that was its silent partner for the last several hours. She was an athlete, and had the trophies on her wall to prove it, but right now it was a grueling fight to just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Her head bowed, gazing where she was about to step next, she didn't notice Sousuke's twitch, as the corporal cocked his head, a curious expression beginning to form on his rain splattered face.
He held up a hand to stop. "Listen. Do you hear something?"
Asuka began to shake her head, then paused. Kaname looked from one to the other at a total loss, as Sam screwed up his expression too. At a total loss as to how they could hear much of anything over the pounding rain that had returned in the last few minutes, she was about to give up when a thin whine penetrated the background noise. Eyes widening, she stared at the others, their mix of hope and exhausted relief mirroring her own.
"Langley! The radio, now!"
------------
"Un....air..aft, unknown air.....in...ease. ...nown....ircra..., please respond.' A pause as a wash of static drowned out the signal almost entirely, clearing in time for a faint 'goddammit I know you're up there!' to come in almost perfectly, much to their amusement. 'Unknown......nkno....aircraft..."
"This is United Nations Variable flight. Transmitter on this frequency, be advised this is a military channel. Identify at once," Misato replied per protocol, hope rising in her chest as she hurriedly gestured for the pilot to circle back. The signal strengthened, washes of static fading enough to finally come in unmistakably.
"Repeat, Variable flight this is Pilot Asuka Soryu-Langley, in company with Nerv personnel and civilians. -Please- tell me you have a pickup for us."
Over the babble coming from the troop compartment behind her at the unexpected development, Misato felt her heart leap. For all the fervor with which she'd bullied, cajoled, and extorted this unit from the base commandant at Atsugi, somewhere in the back of her mind she'd been preparing for the possibility it was all in vain.
Thank you, Misato breathed to whomever might be listening. “Major Misato Katsuragi of UN Nerv, it's good to hear from you Asuka. <"I had no idea what I was going to do with all my leftovers,"> she added in German.
<"Cremation and burial at sea springs to mind,"> the voice responded in the same language, passing the test. "We're clear right now, but the bastards seem to be everywhere. We've been trying to get a decent line of sight to the radio relays, or failing that try for Foxtrot, but we can't seem to hold a steady course," she explained, referring to a geofront access point nearby.
"Understood, stand by." There was no way they could land an Orca in the street in this part of town, especially in this weather, but... "Lieutenant, there's a park about 1200 meters west of here, can you get this crate in there?"
"No problem, ma'am," the pilot shook his head after craning to look at the spot indicated. "Not real defensible though, all that clutter."
"We'll burn that bridge when we come to it," she replied, changing back to the ground channel. "Asuka, move about half a kilometer to your east and wait at the edge of the park. We'll try for pickup there."
8:30 PM
It was not the finest day in Grigoriy's life.
Quick, easy, in and out in an hour, tops! A chance to avenge those heroes who were felled by the hated proxies in Moscow, and slay the red eyed she-devil who was their pawn! A chance to be part of an action that would be trumpeted around the world! And they had, of this he had no doubts. But only at a terrible price. Barely twenty of the original team still survived, the rest slaughtered by fiendish traps or gunfire that came from nowhere. Some of his subordinates chose to obey the call for extraction, but not him, not yet. He had an even fourteen with him who wanted blood for their fallen, and they would have it!
He heard the growl of the damned UN jets somewhere overhead, circling like rabid wolves around a flock. "Better luck next time," he smirked grimly. The so- called children would be able to contact the help orbiting above them soon, if they had not already. The jammer pods that prevented the enemy from coordinating against them would run out of power, if nothing else.
But no matter. There were a limited number of places a big VTOL like an Orca could land in this city, and he was gambling they would take the nearest. Upon seeing the meeting point, he signaled to his comrades behind and trotted forward. With any luck at all, they could finish this, shake the dust of this accursed city off their boots, and be home in a week.
----------
It started, as so many things do, with a murmured “Huh, that's funny.”
Sousuke turned to glance at the boy across from him. Sam looked the way they all felt, cold, wet, miserable, and afraid. The open-faced good nature he displayed to the world in other times was long gone, buried under the stress of the last hours.
“What do you mean?”
The pilot tilted his head towards one of the nearby shops. “I thought I saw something move in there.”
The corporal studied the indicated building. The shop was part of a building containing several across the small square. A circular fountain and reflecting pool made up the center, surrounded by a poured concrete slab set with several benches. Further out a series of brick enclosures held several medium sized bushes, one of which they sheltered behind now.
The light was poor, even worse inside the structure, but as Sousuke peered into the dimness patiently, he too saw a patch of lighter color that shifted position.
“Well done. I count another two in my sector, one in the window third from the right, the other hiding behind the parapet at 11 o'clock. Engage on three. One...two...three.”
Two rifles crackled simultaneously. The AK-47 and its derivatives were not famous for accuracy, but at this range it barely mattered. The shape twisted and fell out of sight behind a counter.
The world exploded.
-------------
"Shots fired, shots fired. Repeat, we are taking fire from across the square," Asuka shouted into the radio over the din. For her part, she was crouched behind a nice, thick abutment at the edge of a small plaza fronted by a hardware store, a florist's, and a pizza place Kaname was fond of in other times.
Times when a boy she might call a friend wasn't screaming from a rifle round that punched through his guts, while a girl she knew bled in the street from a reopened wound no one had time to tend. When a maniac she'd thought was just a classmate wasn't sending hot metal howling back down a narrow pedestrian street.
"Chidori!" Kaname turned, noticing that the other girl had crawled up next to her. "Take this, and guide them in!" Asuka shouted over the din, pressing the small, boxy shapes of the radio and marker beacon into her shocked hands.
"How?! And where are you going?!" she shrieked back in shock.
"To take his place! Just lob this up on the roof where they can see it and do as they say!"
She nodded speechlessly as Asuka moved away, covering the area Sam had previously. No strategist she, even Kaname could tell there was no retreat here, the open, well manicured grass was spotted with a handful of trees and ringed by a sidewalk, a near perfect kill zone. A squawk from the radio brought her back.
"Asuka, we are in position. Please mark your location,” the voice requested, unaware the pilot was otherwise occupied. "Ok," she answered, and readied the other object had given her. She pulled the tab on the IR beacon and lobbed it into a clear area. Hopefully, that was that.
A few seconds passed. "Negative acquisition, have you tossed the strobe?" Kaname froze in horror.
"YES!"
"Shit!' the voice snarled before regaining control “Ok, we need to verify which building you're near, they all look alike from up here. Try to find something to help us: a flashlight, a road flare, something like that." Kaname stared at the radio, her hopes sinking even as the never dormant fear washed higher. Not now, not when they were so close.
The two remaining fighters were pinned behind their respective shelters, barely able to raise their heads from the volume of bullets pouring on them. Kaname had seen a movie set once, as a little girl. At the end, two men were trapped in a house somewhere in South America, surrounded by soldiers and nearly out of ammunition. The men loaded their guns for the last time, said their parting words, and charged out the door into the teeth of their enemies as the screen faded to black.
At the time, she thought those men were insane. She still did. But on some level, she had simply had enough. If huddling in a hole from some false sense of safety was going to get her killed anyway, then perhaps it was just as well to be hung as a lion than a lamb. Maybe she -was- crazy, as nuts as her companions even, though that would take some work. But no one would say she didn't try.
The soaked, exhausted girl pushed herself up, scanned the battlefield until she found the person she sought, and broke into a run. Darting across the plaza, weaving between and behind obstructions, she felt a breeze as a stray round went past with a snap-pop, followed by another tugging at her rain soaked hair trailing behind like a streamer.
The sprinter slid in beside Sousuke like a runner skidding for home plate, bumped to a stop against the rough brick, and grabbed at his pants.
"Chidori, what..." he stammered incoherently, his reaction fit to make a tomato proud as she reached in and rummaged a moment.
“Don't argue!” she snapped, before emerging with what she sought. The round, cylindrical object was different than she expected, but she'd seen enough war movies to identify the pull ring of a grenade easily enough.
Not for nothing had she been starting pitcher on the girl's softball team two years running. The incendiary/smoke grenade flew straight and true across the square, through the hardware store's window, caromed off a bank of shelving...
And rolled to rest directly in front of a display of economy size Krylon spray paint.
----------
Misato pounded the edge of her jumpseat rhythmically, eyes locked on the low light camera display. Of all the stupid things to go wrong, it would be a dud marker. The screen was a muddled mess, the downpour scattering and absorbing infrared signatures even as it blanketed the visible spectrum. The flashes of light from weapons fire eerily lit the tiny plaza as she waited with brittle patience. Dropping into that park without support could be a nightmare against someone with anti-tank missiles, but without knowing where the kids were air support was out of the question.
Come on, she implored. Come on, don't make me do this.
A flicker of motion near a building caught her eye, but most likely it was an image artifact. As she was about to order them to drop anyway, support be damned, a shout from the gunner caused her to whip back to her panel.
“Vishnu! Massive thermal bloom bearing 353! What did she do, set off a bomb?!"
Panting came from the radio, pausing a moment to speak. "Enemy position..." the voice took a breath, "marked. That's -enemy- position marked! How's that?" it continued, a little saucily Misato thought.
"Good enough! We have you, stand by," she changed frequencies, "Variable 7, rapid fire on the north side of the plaza centered on marked location, execute," she ordered before flipping back. "Ok honey, help is on the way. Pull in as close as you can and sit tight. We are coming to get you."
----------
Two thousand meters above, a lone Orca circled the battlefield. Its 'A' model cousins came equipped equipped with a troop compartment, 3 barrel 12.7mm Gatling, and underwing weapons pylons compatible with everything from rocket pods, to guided missiles, to cluster bombs. The C traded all that for one weapon and one weapon only. The official literature might designate it as an Orca, but to its users it was Spooky Junior.
Mounted within the troop compartment, its barrel snouting out the left side adorned by a fantastically ugly and surprisingly effective flash hider/muzzle brake, was a 90mm low velocity gun. Resembling nothing so much as a six shooter scaled for a giant, it fed from a magazine taking up the rest of the compartment containing a mix of high explosive, incendiary/smoke, and HEAT anti-armor rounds.
With a squeeze of the gunner's finger, the first of the shells already loaded in the cylinder was sent on its way, followed a second later by the next, and the next.
----------
The roar of the conflagration across the square seemed to drown out the hammering of gunfire. Or perhaps it had simply stunned the enemy as much as it had them, Sousuke mused. The girl beside him raised her head from the ground, uncovering her ears and looking over the edge of the brick planter that had sheltered them.
The radio interrupted before he could say anything, Chidori informing their rescuers the enemy were marked. Her actions now making perfect sense, the Marine realized they could only mean one thing...
Grabbing her by the shoulder, he pulled the girl back behind the planter over her objections. Moments later, thunder descended from the heavens.
The ground jumped beneath their prone bodies as Spooky walked its fire along the north edge of the square, each explosion followed by the rumble of collapsing masonry in the interval before the next as the cataclysm went on and on.
Once, a secondary explosion rattled their teeth instants after the impact. Hopefully they hadn't hit a gas main, that could get very ugly for everyone...
They raised their heads again once the barrage ceased, ears ringing. Chidori's lips seemed to be moving, but he hadn't the faintest idea what she was saying. Since she wasn't facing his direction, he assumed it wasn't meant for him anyway. The two wounded looked unharmed by the recent destruction, Soryu-Langley on all fours, yawning to clear her ears as she levered herself off the ground. She was the first to point out the sight behind them.
His hearing only just returning, the deep-throated howl of jet engines sounded tinny in his ears as a pair murky gray shapes dropped through the curtains of rain. At first indistinct through the slackening downpour, the descending craft resolved clearly as they scooted in just over the warehouse fronting the western side of the park. Nose mounted Gatling guns swiveled in their turrets, hunting targets that escaped the preparatory bombardment as landing gear unfolded from their bellies. Brief ripping canvas snarls from other machines' weapons indicated there were still some to be found.
The transports grounded in the park, jet blast sending a swing set tumbling away while trees bent under the gale.
No words needed to be said, it was time to go.
----------
Misato waited for the Marines to exit and set up their perimeter first, but it was a near run thing, as the scuffs on the back of the last one's boots could attest. Above, the other four Orca As loitered over the two able to discharge their cargoes, already heading for the perimeter in a leapfrog pattern, one pair advancing while another covered. She raised the handset to her lips.
"All units, be on the lookout for four teenagers very much the worse for wear. Shoot at them and your asses -will- be mine," she reminded the Marines before changing back to give a message she had longed to deliver since the fracas began.
"Children, we are leaving!"
The low hiss of background static answered her. Grip tightening on the handset, she prepared to call again when a sight she never stopped fearing she wouldn't see made it pointless.
Emerging from the downpour, stumbling on the shards of concrete cast by the bombardment, came four familiar figures. Two were carried by their companions until a quartet of Marines detached from the force moving into the rubble to assist them.
Her lips tightened as the two injured were brought past, Sam mercifully unconscious when they lay him on the transport's deck for a hasty dressing to be applied. Asuka met her eyes as she hobbled past with one arm wrapped around her helper's neck, refusing to be carried.
“You gave us quite a scare there, Asuka,” Misato remarked, shouting over the idling roar of the Orca's engines. “I appreciate the enthusiasm, but let's try to avoid that much property damage in the future.”
The redhead stared for a long moment. She said nothing, uncharacteristically at a loss for words. A hiccup escaped her lips. As if it broke the dam, the pilot let forth a peal of laughter that startled those clustered around the tail of the aircraft into silence. When he recovered, she gestured with her free arm behind them. “You're one to talk, Misato. Besides, I'm innocent.” With that she urged her temporary minion forward up the ramp.
Misato turned her attention to the last pair to arrive, and the only ones to do so under their own power. To the radio still clutched in the girl's hand. 'I see. Well who am I to argue with results?' she asked with a raised eyebrow.
Kaname flushed crimson as she seated herself in the transport. 'It worked, right?'
'No argument there! Corporal, keep an eye on them for a little longer.' The officer hopped down, signaling to the flight crew to take off. As the ramp retracted and the jets wound up to a basso roar, she turned her face away from the downwash, crouching against the blast of gravel and grass. As it ascended back into the overcast, she looked up at the departing machine and spoke quietly.
“Just this once, everyone goes home.”
-------------------------------------------
Author's notes:
And there we have it. This is a chapter I've been itching to write for a long while now, almost since the time I was planning this story in the first place.
For those curious, the Orca As in this chapter I envisioned more or less as the gunships we saw in the first episode of Eva. The Orca C is purely my own invention, as far as I know. What can I say, I have a weakness for firepower in a small package. Probably why I'm also a Nanoha and To Aru Kagaku no Railgun fan, come to think of it...
No proofing on this chapter, so any issues are entirely my fault.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one insists on adapting the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
- George Bernard Shaw
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- George Bernard Shaw
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TabascoOne
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Re: But Loyal to Their Own
Two for the price of one in this update.
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Livin' on a Prayer I
There is nothing wrong with being scared...as long as you don't let it affect you until the danger is over. Being hysterical is okay too...afterwards and in private. Tears are not unmanly...in the bathroom with the door locked. The difference between a coward and a brave man is usually a matter of timing.
-Alexander Hergenshiemer, _Job: A Comedy of Justice_ by R.A. Heinlein
Neon Genesis Evangelion characters copyright Studio Gainax
Full Metal Panic! characters copyright Shoji Gatou
All characters now and forever used without permission
Tokyo-3
Nerv infirmary, Trauma ward
October 11, 2015
7:15 AM Local Time
Asuka Soryu-Langley, slayer of Angels, Pilot of Eva-02, awakened to wonder where the hell she was. The unfamiliar acoustic tiles making up her ceiling were no help, nor were the room's blank, sterile walls. On further reflection, she decided this really didn't bother her. Her bed was warm, the light was dim, the room was quiet. In all, life could be worse.
Time strolled by, measured by the steady crawl of the sunbeams from gaps in the blinds down the wall. The door latch clicked, drawing her gaze from the race between two of them towards a crack in the paint. A portly, middle aged woman with her dark brown hair drawn up in a bun at the back of her neck opened the door slowly. Noticing Asuka awake, she favored the pilot with a friendly smile before treading softly to her bedside, her shadow erasing the dueling slivers of light, to the pilot's disappointment.
"And how are you feeling this morning?" the nurse asked, one eye on the readouts of a screen fixed to a rolling stand festooned with hooks and clamps, all but two of them empty.
The teenager tilted her head to one side, giving the question the consideration it deserved for a few seconds before deciding, "Not bad."
"Good, you poor dears had a terrible time yesterday." She fiddled with a control on the rather intimidating looking contraption at her bedside before speaking again. "There. Now, it's still a little early, but how about some breakfast?"
While she picked through the meal brought in perhaps 10 minutes later, the lassitude that filled her mind like a warm mist began to clear, something approaching her normal speed of thought returning in its wake.
"A terrible time, huh?" Asuka mused. "Lady, you don't know the half of it." The returning memories brought with them echoes of the emotional whiplash of that evening, the grudging civility of the start of the trip home giving way to puzzlement and dawning horror as the first inklings of the depth of their danger unveiled itself. After that, a kaleidoscope of memory snippets bore down in a torrent, each of them overlain with desperation and something perilously close to terror as the tiny group of fugitives limped and scrambled for safety that rain drenched night, culminating in exhausted, exhilarated relief at the 'better late than never' arrival of their rescuers with fire and steel to bring them home.
The nurse from before returned, this time without the preamble of the door unlatching, since it had been propped open earlier. "All done?" At Asuka's affirmative nod, she picked up the tray from the collapsible table over her bed before stowing it in its slot along the side. "I'll go drop this off," she informed the pilot, who now noticed the name badge reading Yoriko pinned to the right front pocket. "And you have some visitors outside." 'Yoriko' left before receiving an answer, though given the visitors who next entered that was forgivable.
The contrast between the current Misato Katsuragi and the one of the night before was a drastic as anyone could imagine. The battle gear was long gone, of course, replaced with her duty uniform of dress, red leather jacket, and beret. So was the bleak, focused purpose that had radiated from every line, her only concern in the world bringing about either victory or vengeance. The average height, balding, overall unassuming man in the dark blue Section 2 uniform who trailed behind the officer drew only a fraction of her attention.
"Good morning. I hadn't expected to see you awake, honestly," the major greeted. "Everyone else is sound asleep. Will be for another two hours."
"What makes you say that?" People with such divergent sleep schedules as habitual early risers Shinji or Rei and saner individuals such as herself shouldn't be able to be timed nearly that accurately.
The major shrugged nonchalantly. "I left orders for everyone to get something to help them through the night."
"So you drugged us," the redhead clarified, teeth beginning to grind in prelude to a major eruption.
"And it worked. Given the circumstances it was probably kinder than letting you all wake up shaking like leaves in the middle of the night with adrenaline letdown and post-stress reactions," Misato noted.
“That isn't the point and you know it! What in -hell- gives you...”
“Careful, -Pilot- Langley,” the emphasis on her title crystal clear. “Hate me if you want, but I did it in your best interests. Now, since you're awake and at least look alert, do you feel up to telling me what happened out there?"
Asuka's expression promised that this issue was far from dropped, but she began to confidently state she was born ready.
"I mean it, Asuka. We're assembling a report on this mess, and after a near disaster like this one you can bet it's going straight to the top. We need the best information you all can give us, especially since our sensor and comms networks were so badly compromised. Eyewitness testimony is about all we have left to work with, and we absolutely cannot afford to take chances with it. If you haven't gotten your head around things, then believe me, I understand. We can always come back," she added this last with a pointed look at the man's direction.
"The longer we wait, the greater the chances of her recollections becoming tainted," the man replied. "Even more so once she interacts with others."
"Acceptable risks, we need..."
"I'm ready," the pilot repeated, halting the impending argument. "I took the combat psych course, Misato. The spy is right. The longer we wait, the fewer details I'll be able to give you."
The major nodded gesturing assent to her dapper companion. He responded by removing a voice recorder from his pocket, unfolding the lap table on her bed and centering the recorder precisely on it before flipping the power switch. "All right. Everyone state your name and position for the record.”
8:30 AM
Kaname Chidori awoke to light streaming through a set of windows set high in a blank, cream colored wall. Looking at the arm poking out from under the sheets, she noticed a set of hospital scrubs replaced her rain soaked, blood stained, and grit begrimed street clothes, for which she was grateful. Twisting to stretch her back, she sat up, causing the bed linens to pool around her waist.
"Welcome back," a voice greeted her.
She turned quickly to face it, finding a seated woman in a red jacket and beret. "Oh. Misato. Where am I?"
"Nerv's infirmary, the trauma wing specifically,” the affable officer supplied.
"Oh," she replied dumbly. Her eyes widened, her mind reconstructing the previous day. "Where are..."
"Sam and Asuka are fine. And on this floor, actually. I had to chase Sagara home when I got back, he better have stayed there and gotten some sleep if he knows what's good for him."
"I doubt it," Kaname whispered, remembering his attempt to join the search and destroy teams sweeping the city. Instead, the woman before her shepherded the lot of them into one of her transports, barking orders to her troops. Her last really clear memory was a glimpse of the smoldering plaza through the closing hatch, while the craft rose like a homesick angel.
"Anyway, things are in hand for now, though you wouldn't know it from all the screaming going on upstairs. Which incidentally brings me to something interesting. You never mentioned your father is a High Commissioner."
Well, that explained why she didn't just stick her head in to say hi. "We don't talk much, and haven't for a long time. I didn't think it was worth mentioning."
"It's your business. But that's not what I stopped in for. As you've seen, Sousuke and Mana are not what they seem.”
Kaname snorted.
Misato chuckled at the rude noise. "Right, news flash. Well, there's a saying I happen to believe in that surprise is the most dangerous weapon known to mankind. A big part of why they were able to foil that ambush is because no one knew they were there."
The girl nodded emphatically. "That is -not- a problem, I don't want to think about what happened out there, forget about talking about it!"
Misato shrugged. "For the record, it's better if you do. Talk about it, that is. Just make sure they're cleared for it first. But back on point. Our story right now is that the three pilots were caught outside and fought their way out of the ambush until UN forces could come to the rescue. We're not mentioning which pilots, but any fool can probably figure it out if they try. Since we are keeping quiet about anyone else who happened to be there with them, that will work to your benefit too. So far, your father hasn't contacted anyone to bring you home. If he were to find out you had been put in danger, I would be very surprised if he didn't. Should that happen, there would be little I or anyone could do."
Or would do, Kaname added, recognizing the unspoken part of the message as she nodded solemnly.
Misato shook off her own grave demeanor, more of her off-duty persona showing through. "Ok then, enough of the heavy stuff. I would hate for you to think that because we need to keep this quiet you've done something wrong. There are veteran soldiers who wouldn't have done as well as you did last night. And because you were there, people lived who might not have otherwise.” She paused a moment, giving the startled girl to process her last comment. “The others are upstairs in one of the waiting areas, you're free to join them if you like. I had some breakfast sent up from the cafeteria for them, if you hurry there might be some left.” She rose from her seat, favoring the girl with a friendly smile as she exited.
The teen lay back on her pillow, her gaze wandering far past her room. So this is what it feels like to be a hero, she mused. No wonder Shinji doesn't talk about his job. It was nice, on the one hand. To have the gratitude, even respect, of people she admired. But right along with it were memories she could gladly have gone the rest of her life never acquiring. Like the sound a bullet makes when striking flesh, or the distinctive 'snap-POP' as one goes past. The smell of burning buildings, burning -other- things, laced with the reek of gunpowder. What it felt like to know every moment you were one wrong step, one bad roll of the dice, away from death.
And having learned these things, to feel a wave of self loathing for how petty she had been that night, and in the process hurt someone who had striven so hard to keep them safe. If anyone deserved to have his praises sung, by her most of all, it was Sagara. Instead, Kaname had reacted as though he were an attack dog off his leash.
Guilt trickled in next, as she squeezed her eyes shut as though to block out the feeling. She had thought she was better than that. It seemed she was wrong. Kaname hadn't lied to Misato, she and her father hadn't spoken beyond the odd holiday card for well over a year. Even now, an ember of fury still burned at his response to her demand that he step up to the plate and act like a parent. But for all his many flaws, he had loved her mother, and raised his daughters as well as he could. So she would succeed where he had so catastrophically failed, and face down her mistakes.
The teenager tossed the sheets aside, wincing as her feet met the chilled tile floor. A frown after failing to turn up a set of footwear forming, she strode towards the door with bare feet. If her friends were upstairs, then it was certain -he- would be nearby. What to do next she was still working on, but something would occur to her.
Failure was not an option.
---------
Meanwhile, Shinji Ikari awakened beneath a depressingly familiar ceiling.
"I wonder if they keep it reserved..." he mused disconsolately, the cracked acoustic tile three rows out from the right-hand wall telling him instantly where he was. In contrast to his last visit, it was empty of medical equipment. Just a bare tile floor illuminated by squares of sunlight from the high, narrow windows separated him from the closed door, the muted sounds of people walking the corridors outside indicating it was probably well into morning.
After a few moments, he pulled the scratchy hospital sheet aside and climbed out of bed, his bare feet protesting the chill of the floor tiles. Shinji restlessly paced the rest of the way towards the door, pausing as he eased it open to step through. Technically, he really should stay here until someone came to get him...
Looking back at the tousled bed, and sterile room full of so many memories decided him. He didn't want to be in here a moment longer than he had to be.
Once outside, he began to pad down the hall, a recollection of doing this very thing soon after awakening from his first mission rising from the depths of his memories. Even the pajamas were the same. A rustling from behind nipped the playback of that incident in the bud. Shinji turned, scanning the hall for the source, but the nearest person was at least twenty meters away, walking the opposite direction. Frowning, he began to turn back around, when it happened again.
This time, he pinpointed the source, and got his first surprise of the morning. What he had at first taken as a shadow behind a large, leafy potted plant tucked in an alcove turned out to be nothing of the sort. Two gray irises regarded him from behind the fauna, only a dim outline of a darker mass within the shadow breaking the illusion of a disembodied pair of eyes. The occupant of the unorthodox position slid out, revealing himself to the puzzled teenager.
"Good morning, Pilot Ikari. You are well?" Sousuke Sagara greeted as he stood up, as though absolutely nothing was amiss. There had been a time when this kind of behavior would have worried Shinji, but several months acquaintance had taught the pilot that this was one of his more harmless oddities.
"Ah...good morning." Shinji hesitated, unsure how to phrase 'what are you doing here?' without sounding accusatory. "Have you been here long?" he finally questioned.
"I relieved Sgt. Jun-Kyu at 0500, so I suppose not. If you are searching for Major Katsuragi, she was interviewing Miss Chidori when I last saw her."
The younger boy nodded. "Thanks. Did she say I needed to stay here? I'm kind of hungry..." he elaborated, deciding not to mention the actual reason he left his room.
The corporal shook his head. "No, though I believe she would wish you to remain within the infirmary. There is a snack counter on the next floor if you wish to eat, I will inform her she can find you there."
Shinji nodded, leaving the marine to return to his vigil. Sousuke had once explained that he always slept underneath his bed in order to get the drop on anyone who attacked during the night. At the time, he had been appalled at the amount of paranoia that idea implied, but now he wondered. Maybe it's an occupational hazard, he mused as the elevator dropped him off. A convenient sign pointed Shinji in the right direction, and as promised the small eatery appeared a few dozen meters later.
The small counter was typical of its type, a waist high Formica slab with a cash register at one end, a glass fronted mini fridge and set of wire racks at the other, and a trash can tucked against the adjacent wall. The quiet hum of the refrigerator compressor provided the only background noise besides the rustle of his clothes as he approached.
Shinji purchased a can of green tea, the cashier thanking him automatically before returning to polishing the refrigerator case. He turned to regard the only other customer, whereupon he received his second surprise of the morning. He hesitated, and finally sat down across from her.
"Hello, Ayanami," he greeted quietly.
The girl's attention returned from wherever it had gone, somewhere far in the distance to judge by her gaze. She turned to look at him, for a long moment seeming not to recognize him.
"Ikari," she spoke, finally returning the greeting.
She...looked terrible, Shinji decided, now that he had a good view. Never one to spend much effort on her personal grooming, Rei had always lacked the 'healthy glow' the girls in his class tried to cultivate. But even what little color she did possess was gone now. Perhaps washed out by the harsh fluorescent light, but perhaps not. The loose white pajama-style hospital gown she wore highlighted the effect.
But even worse was the way she stared fixedly at him for a few more seconds, before listlessly turning away, the motion as she returned to her private contemplation rustled her already tousled hair a little further. Under the circumstances, 'How are you feeling?' seemed about as redundant as he could imagine, but he said it anyway. There didn't seem to be anything else to do.
"Acceptable," Rei supplied, this time not meeting his gaze as the silence stretched.
"They said Mana will be ok," Shinji ventured.
Rei nodded once. "Good."
Shinji's courage failed him then, in the face of her seeming indifference. He wanted to say it was a brave thing she had done, and everyone was amazed someone Rei's size had been able to bring Mana back. That it had gone a long way toward changing many of those people's opinion of her as a colorless automaton into someone who truly cared about others. But in the end, he only sipped his tea.
The sound of hard soled shoes on the tile floor gave Shinji an excuse to turn away as well, noting one of the bridge technicians/transport pilots approaching.
"Shinji, Rei," Lt. Aoba nodded to them in greeting. "Sagara thought you'd be here. We're sending some people to your apartments to pick up a few things, is there anything in particular you want added to the list?"
Shinji shook his head, followed a moment later by Rei.
"Ok, well we're reopening your old rooms in the dorm, if you feel like waiting somewhere more comfortable."
"Thank you," Rei replied, taking the proffered key from the lieutenant. She began to walk down the hall towards the elevators, presumably to take him up on his offer.
"Bye," Shinji called softly after her, but she made no sign of hearing.
Aoba sighed, shaking his head after Rei was out of sight. He turned back to Shinji. "The major wants to talk to the four of you who where on base before she turns you loose."
Nerv HQ
Residence Block 1J
10:34 AM
Ritsuko Akagi would have woken at an absurdly late hour, had she been asleep the night before. The doctor stretched under the tousled sheets, resettling herself to relieve the weight on her elbow.
The arms encircling her tightened in instinctive response, their owner beginning to rouse as well. The bed really was a little narrow for two, but as always they managed. A smile formed at the thought, as she debated whether to officially wake up. Duty called, as always, though on the other hand...
But all good things come to an end. Her partner fully awakened and swung himself out of bed with a perfunctory 'good morning'. She didn't mind, sappy morning after pillow talk was for teenagers and mush minded romantics, and she had long been neither.
The sound of the shower starting came from the adjacent bathroom, the blonde removed her blouse and skirt from where they were neatly hung from the chair beside the bed. The room was lightly furnished for a permanent residence, a desk matching the chair pushed against the wall opposite the bathroom door, with a nightstand on the left. A brown and tan couch that was clearly standard issue with the room sat against the opposite wall, matched by a low coffee table. A few minor personal touches rounded out the picture, but given that the occupant not only ruled the facility and surrounding facility by decree, was responsible for directing the defense of Earth against interstellar marauders, not to mention held final authority over weapons systems light years in advance of any conventional military in the process, it was positively Spartan.
Ritsuko finished gathering her clothes, preparing to take her own shower once the owner vacated it. That was typical of the man, though. The world was his concern, not the puny piece he happened to stand on. That none of their erstwhile superiors would have tolerated such conditions for a moment was beneath concern.
The shower shut off, the sound of rustling coming from behind the door for a few moments before it finally opened. Though closer to fifty than forty, Gendo Ikari carried his years extremely well, in Ritsuko's not so humble opinion. Certainly he'd escaped the twin curses of many men his age, a steadily thickening middle and thinning hairline. His children would do well to be as fortunate at his age, assuming they were also lucky enough to have the chance.
“A problem, Doctor?” her lover questioned, pulling an undershirt from a drawer.
“Not at all,” she assured him. “I was considering some of our findings from earlier.” Mentioning her true considerations would be pointless, and it was well past time to return to work in any case.
Gendo grunted understanding, pulling the shirt over his head before tucking it into one of his seemingly limitless supply of razor creased black slacks.
“The salvage teams had interesting things to say about some of the recovered equipment,” she began. “It seems that some of our technology spread farther than we believed, if the power sources for the jammers are any indication. The surviving examples have almost identical chemistry to an Eva power cell, which at least explains how they could maintain such preposterously high outputs for so long.”
The Director's expression darkened at the news. Some technology leakage was inevitable, given that Nerv was likely penetrated by most every intelligence agency on the planet that deserved the name. The Eva battery designs were hardly critical knowledge, but the loss of any protected data was unsettling.
“This wasn't mentioned in the reports last night,” he noted, unrolling a set of socks.
“It was discovered once we had a working sample. Maya mentioned it before I arrived here, but I'm afraid I never had the opportunity to pass it along,” Ritsuko informed him with a perfectly composed expression.
The message was received. “Indeed,” Gendo conceded after a moment. Bidding her to continue, he finished pulling on his socks. The doctor felt no particular discomfort and essentially giving a status report from the midst of their bed. It was hardly the first time, after all.
“The recovery was complicated by the use of large thermite charges as a means of tamper prevention, which of course slowed down the operation considerably.” The means of that discovery had helped with that. A Marine fire team happened upon one of the first jammer installations to be detected, mounted in a plastic, garden variety, industrial sized garbage can. While no obvious antennas were present, one of them noticed that rain was sizzling on the lid of the container from the heat of prolonged transmission. What happened next was unclear, but perhaps one of the survivors occupying the burn ward in the infirmary could fill in the details.
“The rest of the components are apparently mil-spec, though off the shelf, electronics. I assume Security can trace those readily enough.”
“And our 'guests'?”
“Major Katsuragi is dealing with the situation, she planned to begin interrogation of the prisoners this morning.”
Gendo nodded, his daily preparations complete. Removing his glasses from the nightstand beside her, his image once again matched what his subordinates were long accustomed to. A little thrill of the 'I've got a secret!' variety ran through the doctor at the thought that she was almost unique in having opportunity to see past the mask.
“Leaving the issue of what to do with the outsiders she brought with her, however. Not to mention reliable replacements for Section Two,” he grumbled. “Very well, I expect the Major has formulated alternate security plans making use of them?”
“She mentioned a few changes she intends to implement,” Ritsuko confirmed. “In fairness, given this escalation by our...opposition, I think she has the right idea.”
“The 'opposition' oversteps itself,” the Director intoned with utter finality. “As they will eventually learn. And Rei?”
Ritsuko looked away. “Nominal. No complications thus far.”
“Excellent. I will expect you in the CIC shortly then.” With that, the most powerful man in the prefecture pulled on his shoes and departed.
For her part, his paramour bundled her clothes into her arms and claimed the bathroom. As she restarted the shower and hung up her outerwear to let the steam de-wrinkle them, she spared a glance for the face in the rapidly fogging mirror. Short, tousled blonde hair fell above clear brown eyes with the beginnings of crow's feet at the corners if one looked closely. Further down, a jawline that was a little rounder than she remembered it being when she joined Nerv faded into a neckline that had managed to remain as slender as before. Entropy might be putting up a fight, but it wasn't winning, not yet.
Smirking at the thought, Ritsuko stepped into the shower. As it should be, as much time as she spent swimming in the LCL filled Eva cages doing monitoring work. It wasn't strictly necessary to keep them immersed,of course, they were perfectly capable of being exposed to open air for weeks at a time, but periodic treatments were called for.
She reached for her shampoo, one of the few extravagances she afforded herself, but necessary given the stress long term dyeing put on her hair. It was kept company by a soap dispenser smelling faintly of lavender from its contents. Once the doctor became a regular visitor, a small stash of such products mysteriously appeared in this bathroom. Gendo, a formerly married man and well aware of how the game was played, wisely said nothing.
The smirk faded at the next thought memory of her lover triggered. Both directors had been on the surface when news of the first attacks came in, enjoying a rare non-working dinner. The first thought of the security teams was that the attack against the homeward bound pilots was a cover for a decapitation strike on the two directors. That isolation, combined with the loss of reliable communications soon afterwards, meant the two top figures of Nerv would have had an easier task controlling their supposed domain had they been on Mars. Only when Security retrieved them via a second convoy sent by a circuitous route through the 'safe' zones of the city had they been able to reestablish their authority, and by that point Misato's actions were a fait accompli.
Ritsuko shook her head, turning off the spray. She supposed it doesn't really matter in the end, with as many eyes as had been trained on Nerv in the last few months. It wasn't as though the soldiers would have access to the geofront, never mind the secure areas beneath its floor. Nodding firmly to herself as she dressed, the blonde stepped into her skirt and reached for her blouse. Yesterday had been a setback, on many levels. But the most important problem had been dealt with, and the rest were by definition annoyances beside the disaster potential -that- had represented!
Still, he was going to need her, and the thought brought a lightness to the doctor's step as she exited the room, swinging her lab coat over her shoulders as she went.
Livin' on a Prayer II
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate its contents.
- _The Call of Cthulhu_ by H. P. Lovecraft
Livin' on a Prayer II
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate its contents.
- _The Call of Cthulhu_ by H. P. Lovecraft
Tokyo-3
Residence block 4A, Apartment 402
October 17, 2015
10:30 AM Local Time
“I'll give this town one thing, they're aces when it comes to cleaning up a mess.”
Rei Ayanami could only agree, stepping through the open door of her residence to stand beside the much taller man. Sensing her presence, Sgt. Jun-kyu turned to her, lowering his voice. “Are you sure you're ok with this? You know there's always a place for you over with the others.”
She turned as well, raising her gaze to compensate for only coming up to the shoulder of his tan t-shirt. “I will be fine,” she replied, giving the same answer as the last three times he had asked the question or one like it. “It appears everything is in order here.”
“Yeah, if anything the place is in better condition than it was before you and Mana went and had a firefight in it,” the Marine agreed, hopefully accepting her response this time as well as the change of subject. “Sagara, excuse me, -Sergeant- Sagara, would you mind terribly bringing in the rest so we can get the lady set up?”
The aforementioned personage ignored the teasing of his comrade, placing the paper bags filled with various consumables on her kitchen counter. Among the more positive fallout of the attacks was the guard's recent promotion, and a well deserved one.
The two men began rapidly unpacking the cluster of bags, fitting the various perishables into the refrigerator first before starting on the boxed dinners and canned goods. Major Katsuragi had insisted that if she was going to reoccupy her old apartment, it would be after it had been equipped with in her words 'the essentials of civilized life.'
“Look, I won't pretend to guess at the Director's logic in this,” her superior had begun the night before, during their meeting ostensibly for a quick end of the day cup of tea. “Though I'm sure he has reasons that seem good to him. But, a few things are going to happen before we carry out his instructions. First,” she tapped the cafeteria table's formica surface, “The covering force out at your place is being substantially reinforced by Section 2. We're also installing a dedicated line from there that doesn't go through the city exchange, so hopefully no one can play games with our telecom network to leave you stranded again. If I get the chance, I'll see about adding something extra later on.”
She paused for Rei to indicate understanding. When she had it her brisk, businesslike pacing quickened further. “Second, contrary to popular belief around here, I do know that woman does not live by instant noodles alone, and I'm amazed you've managed it as long as you have. So here is what is going to happen. Bright and early tomorrow, you and two strapping young men are going to go downtown. You will then spend the morning purchasing such items as are needed to make your apartment fit for human habitation. Don't worry, I've provided them with a list of the basics, but you should feel free to add to it if anything catches your attention.”
By now on the edge of protesting the whole exercise as unnecessary, the pale girl found her superior was far ahead of her. “Do you understand your instructions, Pilot Ayanami? Good, then be ready tomorrow.” With that, the officer slugged back the last of her tea and rose from her seat. “I suggest you call it a night soon, you'll have a busy day after all.”
Rei looked on for a few seconds. Finally she replied “Very...well ma'am,” to her commander's retreating figure in a small voice, now aware of what the verb 'to railroad' meant.
While her protectors finished provisioning her kitchen, she eased the shoulder pack containing the few belongings brought from onto her bed. While she undid the flap holding it closed, the pilot ran her fingers over the plain white sheets. The texture felt coarse against her fingertips, but perhaps they were still oversensitized.
“Ayanami? We're finished here, is there anything else you need before we go?” Jun-kyu questioned, bringing her out of her reverie. She shook her head in negation.
“Ok, we'll probably be over at the Major's place for the rest of the day. Which reminds me, dinner's at six, and Shinji is doing the cooking this time,” he reassured her.
That was a memory she had already recovered, explaining her subtle wince. The Major's attempt to 'help' prepare the chili Pilot Roberts served one memorable evening had resulted in a concoction so spicy that it threatened to melt holes in the saucepan, according to its victims. Only the emergency acquisition of several boxes of Popsicles had averted disaster. She acknowledged the reminder, bidding the pair farewell.
The sound of the closing door echoed from the bare walls as she looked down at the spread of underclothes and spare uniform parts dumped unceremoniously on her bed. Time enough to deal with that later, she decided. Leaving the laundry where it lay, the pilot began to walk slowly around the perimeter of her apartment, tracing delicate fingers over familiar objects and features while her mind drifted. Touch and smell were the oldest and deepest-rooted senses, she knew, tied most directly into memory. Now that she was in a familiar place, it was important to reacquire those pieces of her as swiftly as possible.
In many ways, her mental state could be compared to a brand new house invaded by remarkably incompetent movers. The individual pieces of her nature were all present, hopefully, but the boxes were unlabeled and stacked at random. Already her comrades had noted Rei was 'out of it' when they believed she couldn't hear, it was vital that no further cause for suspicion was given.
Her hand ran across the counter top now, its finish gleaming as it hadn't since she first moved in so long ago. Pausing to open a drawer, several bags of disposable chopsticks greeted her attention. Nothing else of note presented itself, so she closed it in favor of another. This one proved to be equipped with several cooking spatulas, which presumably matched the trio of skillets now nestled in the cabinet directly beneath. No clues here either.
The next drawer held a black rip-stop nylon case closed by a zipper running around three sides. This was also new, but she didn't remember purchasing it... Laying the case on the counter, she quickly opened the zipper and folded it open. Inside, a compact semiautomatic pistol rested within a foam cutout, a folded sheaf of papers tucked underneath it. The opposite side held a pair of magazines, a loop of elastic keeping each in place. Taking it in her hands, she ejected the magazine already inserted to note that it, like the other two, was pre-loaded. After easing the pistol's slide back just enough to verify the chamber was empty, she reinserted the clip. Rei placed the weapon on the counter beside its case, unfolding what she expected to be the manual and cleaning instructions.
A little something extra.
Please give it a good home!
The message scrawled across the blank space at the top of the first page was signed with something that looked like it might be a K, then devolved into a random looking scribble. After a moment of pondering this new find, the girl refolded the sheaf, tucking it under her apparent new weapon before rezipping the case and stowing it back in the drawer.
The rest of the kitchen held no further surprises, a basic selection of canned vegetables had taken residence in her other cupboard, a few cleaning products similarly housed under the sink. The bathroom was, again, cleaner than it had been in years, but held nothing unexpected either. Her survey finished, Rei completed her circuit of the residence, ending up once again at the bed tucked into the corner beneath the window. The pile of clothing was right where she left it. After gathering the bundle and depositing it in the washer, she stretched out face down on the bed, breathing the scent of freshly laundered linens.
It had been about five days since she had met her end in this very room. She supposed most would feel a kind of existential uneasiness at knowing that, but it wasn't as though she remembered it. Nor had it been 'her' in the first place, if one looked at the issue from the right angle, she mused as her mind wandered back.
The light from the massive floor to ceiling windows behind the men at the desk would have lit the room to noontime brilliance had the polarization not been almost at maximum. Instead a kind of half light leaked through, enough for the symbology above and below her to be visible without becoming overwhelming. She halted precisely three paces from the pair, her posture expectant.
“Good afternoon, Rei,” Director Ikari greeted her. “I see you're doing well?” he phrased the observation questioningly.
“Yes, sir. I anticipate I will be ready for duty by the end of the week. Doctor Akagi has a compatibility test scheduled for that time.”
“Very good,” he nodded approvingly. “Your reintegration is in the earliest stages, I know, but it is important to have the facts in order before you return to active status. So far as almost anyone outside this room is aware, you and Petty Officer Kirishima defeated a team of assailants that wiped out your Section 2 bodyguards, after a furious gun battle in your apartment. After this, you tended to the petty officer's injuries and single handedly brought her to the nearest geofront access point for further treatment, thereby saving her life.” He folded his hands upon the desk, his expression solemn. “Unfortunately, this heroic story in no way matches reality.”
“Based on the available evidence, you and Kirishima mounted a spirited defense, building a barricade from available materials in your apartment and attempted to establish a crossfire on the doorway. The bodies of two of your attackers were found with you, and a trail of blood droplets from a poorly bound injury suggest at least one other was severely wounded. The remaining members then used a explosive device, most probably a grenade, before moving in to finish their work.” The director regarded her from behind his glasses for a long moment as she digested her predecessor's fate. “We are uncertain why no effort was made to confirm both of you were killed, it is possible that the team was sloppy or, more likely, pressed for time. Regardless, the security team which arrived on the scene shortly afterward stabilized Kirishima and returned you both to HQ. Once there, your predecessor was confirmed deceased, and you were duly activated.”
The Deputy Director spoke up, his careworn, grandfatherly face sympathetic. “The deception is necessary for several reasons, Rei. First among them of course is to disguise your nature, for while one day it may be possible to admit your origins, now is not the time. The second is...more complicated. The attacks were impossible to black out entirely from the outside, too many phone calls cut off in mid-conversation, too many radio and satellite signals were interrupted by unmistakable jamming. This without mentioning the hasty mobilization of the UN Atsugi response force. The damage to Nerv's image is enough of an inconvenience by itself, but those forces are also regarded as heroes both by the city residents and many within Nerv. It is vital we have a counter-example to act as a brake on their enthusiasm, and the actions of the pilots, yourself included, fit the bill perfectly. Simply put, we need all the good publicity we can get right now.”
The pilot had accepted, if not completely understood, her new orders. Rei turned her head, gazing back towards the rectangle of light from her window, the far edge just on one of the expansion joints in the concrete slab making up her floor. That place was most likely where the rescue team from Section 2 found her. The geometry of the room suggested it would make a good position to set up a crossfire on the doorway when paired with Kirishima's position near where she now lay.
Rei rolled onto her back, bringing her gaze to rest on the unadorned concrete ceiling. “Tomorrow will be difficult,” she spoke softly to the empty room. The currently mobile pilots would be returning to school, and supposedly their daily lives. An entirely new environment for her, with its own clues to her past identity and pitfalls to avoid while piecing it back together. Fortunately, her fellow pilots seemed to comprise most of those who knew her to any degree, simplifying matters considerably. Any slips on her part in the next few days could be blamed on their recent ordeal, which would not be far wrong. Her comrades would be the real challenge to maintaining the deception, since others would naturally take their cues from their behavior towards her.
A short, willowy girl paced the corridors of Nerv HQ, navigating the maze that was Central Dogma like the native she was. A scattering of techs and admin personnel flickered across her view as she made her way to her destination. Though she normally kept her day planner scrupulously up to date, a look at it now would find it grossly inaccurate. As of its last update the previous week, she was scheduled for a mock battle with Pilots Roberts and Lin in thirty-two minutes, followed by a physical therapy session, and then further simulator training. Upon completion of her tasks, she would return to school for the remainder of the day. It was a schedule much like the one she had been following for most of her life, and barring the occasional perturbation she had fully expected it to continue for the foreseeable future.
But that was then, and the disconcerting lurch her own personal life had taken recently was simply one amongst many. She arrived at the elevator, thumbing the call button before turning at the tapping of a sneaker clad foot behind her.
“Didn't expect to see you out here, what's the occasion?” Pilot Soryu observed, resting on her crutches. Rumor had it that the medical staff had threatened to handcuff her to the devices in order to make her use them. Rei knew this to be false, only a direct order from Major Katsuragi had been required.
“I intended to visit the infirmary, as I am currently not assigned any tasks.”
Her comrade barked a laugh. “Welcome to the club,” she replied. “How hard up -are- you to visit those two?” The elevator door opened, the occupants making a hole for the two girls as they edged inside. As the doors slid shut, the previous conversations resumed. Here a pair of engineers mulling what sounded like rebuilding the armature to one of the cage door motors, another sounded like the preliminary planning for a social gathering of some sort to celebrate an upcoming wedding. Remove the uniforms and insider jargon, and it was easy to imagine that they could be taking place anywhere in the country. At least that was Rei's intuition, having never left Tokyo-3 it was difficult to say for certain. The elevator halted, the door opening to release a cluster of passengers, including the two pilots.
The paler of the pair regarded her companion questioningly.
“I never said I was in any better shape,” her target muttered, moving ahead. Not surprisingly, Soryu's distinctive gait blended in better here in the infirmary than anywhere else in the geofront, given the other patients getting their morning exercise. The redhead halted at the charge nurse's desk momentarily, then set off at a brisk clip for one with her disability. Rei followed a few paces behind, content to let the redhead lead. Outside the indicated room, a dull, rhythmic noise escaped through the crack in the door left propped ajar.
Thump-clap. Thump-clap. Thump-clap. Thump-clap. Thump-
Pilot Soryu frowned as Rei caught up, before pushing the door fully open. “What in the world are you doing?” She demanded as she hobbled through. “And how do you stand it, that has to be maddening!”
“Good morning to you, too. And what?” Petty Officer Kirishima replied quizzically, catching the neon orange tennis ball in her free hand, the other tethered to an IV bag. “I might as well do do -something- until this patch comes off,” the brunette gestured with the ball at the gauze pad taped over one eye, a by blow of the shrapnel wound that put her out of action. “Besides, its not like -he- cares right now,” she continued quietly in deference to the patient in the bed across from her.
Her roommate was a recent addition, and a symptom of an unanticipated problem. Tokyo-3 boasted some of the finest and newest medical facilities in Japan as a by product of its association with Nerv and its state of the art technology, plus generous contributions from the same. What those facilities were not, was large. The two real hospitals in the city were normally adequate to service the demand any urban area of this size generated, but the Angels changed all that, as they had so much else. The second attack claimed the north tower of Misaka General in spite of its location on the west side of the city, theoretically well out of harm's way, reducing the city's capacity by nearly one third. Despite the rapid fall in the city's population since then, that was far from adequate. Non-emergent cases were being diverted to Kazari Hospital in Gora until the destroyed facilities could be replaced, but until that project was complete, the geofront infirmary was the only other major medical facility in the area. With the surge in cases after the events of the last few days, space was at a premium everywhere.
“What are you doing here, anyway? I thought everyone was being retested or something,” the patient wondered, switching to tossing the ball straight up rather than off the wall in deference to her guest's 'request'.
“Everyone but the walking wounded, anyway,” Pilot Soryu agreed with considerable bitterness. Taking a seat on a plastic chair by the wall, she propped her crutches next to her and began furiously rubbing at her injured leg.
“Hurting again?” Kirishima questioned, frowning concern.
“Not as much, it just -itches-” the pilot grumbled.
The petty officer shrugged. “Means the wound channel is closing. When did they say you'll be off the crutches?”
“The weekend, if I'm lucky. Then no strenuous movements, no heavy lifting, and stay off my feet as much as possible until the muscle can re-compensate, but at least I can use a simulator and test again. Can't be a moment too soon is all I'll say.” The pilot looked away as she finished the sentence, a pensive expression crossing her face.
“Yeah, hospital time always sucks. On the one hand, this is the first vacation I've had since I got here, but on the other there's nothing to do pretty much all day except sleep and kill time.”
The skin around Soryu-Langley's eyes tightened as she agreed. The reaction was apparently unnoticed by Kirishima, but Rei's gaze sharpened, filing it away for later consideration. Though her own feelings were as often as not a mystery, a lifetime at Nerv had taught her to be a keen observer of others. That trace reaction was too far at odds with her words to be dismissed as residual annoyance, there was clearly something more at work. Rei even had a reasonable idea of what, for how could she miss something she felt equally deeply? Being cut off from her entire purpose for being during the month after Eva-00's failed reactivation had been perhaps the most difficult time of her life.
“Speaking of, and not that I'm unhappy to see you, I figured you would be with the others,” Kirishima questioned her, breaking the chain of thought.
The truest answer was that in her current state of reintegration, contact with an Evangelion would be even riskier than usual. Fortunately, there was a cover for this eventuality as well. “Doctor Akagi has questions about the simulator's link integrity to Eva-00.”
Pilot Soryu snorted. “That'll make Commander Tightass happy.” Kirishima smirked agreement, but failed to add anything further. The three girls regarded each other for a moment, the obvious conversation topics exhausted.
Or, at least the easy ones.
“Thanks, by the way.”
Rei looked quizzically at Kirishima.
“I know the Directors probably gave you crap about dragging me out instead of running, and being cold and reasonable about it they're right. There are plenty more just like me, but you can count the number of Pilots on your fingers with room to spare.” She grinned at the startled girl. “But being selfish and, you know, -me- I can't quite bring myself to complain. So... ” the girl shrugged eloquently.
As she muttered a soft reply, eyes downcast, Rei felt a sour sensation in the pit of her stomach. As the Director had said, it would be nice if the fable told for public consumption were true, but reality was crueler than that. It should make no difference that this was so, her mission was to serve the needs of the moment and play the role assigned to her. Most of the time it was simple enough, the unknown faces of people tangential to her existence caused no particular guilt as she wore the mask.
But for every hundred who passed without a ripple, there was one who left a riptide in their wake.
“Oh for...don't you start that bullshit too. We get enough false modesty and self-deprecation from Shinji, don't tell me everyone here had their pride beaten out of them!”
“I don't think that means what you think it means, Soryu,” Kirishima retorted. “I'm just as happy -somebody- shows a little restraint in proclaiming from the rooftops...
“-That- isn't restraint, and if you have a problem with me then out with it!”
“No, no. No problem. But I did notice that you seemed awfully interested in making sure a certain someone heard all about your little walk downtown...”
If it were physiologically possible, steam would have been coming out Pilot Soryu's ears. “You need your head examined again if you think I have the slightest care about what Shinji does or doesn't think!” Leaning forward in her chair, she rejoined, “I'm going to say this one time, and one time only. That boy has no business here. If Nerv collectively had the brains of a fruit fly, they wouldn't let him within a hundred kilometers of an Eva! The whole so-called process of his selection was a joke, and...”
“And yet he keeps winning.” In contrast to the venomous heat of the pilot's accusation, the guard's tone was bitter, bitter cold. “That's what hacks you off, isn't it? That he gets out there and makes it happen in spite of the odds against him. No fanfare, damned few attaboys, just results. And that is something you just can't stand.” She met her target's blazing gaze, and sneered. “I was there, Princess. Back when he did crack, just like you expect would happen to somebody dropped into his position cold. And once Sagara and I dragged his carcass back from his walkabout, the Major point blank told him he had a free ride home if he wanted it, no strings attached. He turned her down. I won't say it was easy, that he wasn't sorely tempted, but he did it. He might not have deserved his place in the beginning, but he has more than earned it since. Don't -ever- think otherwise.”
That revelation took even Rei aback. Her pitifully incomplete memories held no such incident, but of course that meant nothing. Though she had the feeling that her predecessor had no knowledge of this either, the sense of deja vu that sometimes arose on encountering a bit of fact she already knew on some level was nowhere in evidence. Perhaps the second truly hadn't known?
“So he's an idiot on top of everything else, so what! All he did was put himself and us at risk by forcing us to work with an unqualified pilot,” her fellow pilot rallied in defense of her argument. “Never mind that after that dog's breakfast of a mission Misato -should- have dismissed him for incompetence!”
If Kirishima's declaration had been frigid before, it was positively arctic now. Rei gave a barely audible hiss as the bed bound girl launched into a new tirade. Though recognizing the growing confrontation was in danger of ending in disaster, she hadn't the faintest idea how to defuse it. Perhaps her predecessor did, but that knowledge was lost if she ever had it...
“Jesus Christ on a Harley, does even getting your asses shot off not shut you two up!?”
Soryu rounded on the interloper in an instant. “-You- have no room to talk, given how much time you spend talking out of yours! And what do you think you're doing eavesdropping on people who came to visit in spite of having better things to do?!”
“I wasn't eavesdropping, I was getting some damned sleep. Blame the painkillers, I haven't had to take an afternoon nap since I was six,” Roberts grunted, trying to push himself into a sitting position while using his abdominal muscles as little as possible, rolling to one arm and using the other to reposition a pillow before lying back. “Ahhh, much better. Now what's the problem again?”
“Never mind, it's none of your business anyway,” Soryu snapped, the other participant in the 'discussion' shooting her a warning look. In any case, the dispute seemed to peter out once it was interrupted and tempers had time to cool, a fact Rei filed away for future reference.
“So what did we miss out on?” he asked, ignorant of the byplay. “You were in CIC for the last part, right? Please tell me you got pictures of the Director's face once the UN showed up, I could retire on what I could get for those!” he grinned.
Rei shook her head. “I was in the infirmary until the Directors requested my presence, as I had the only firsthand knowledge of the opposition at the time. Afterward I was instructed to remain near the CIC should I be needed further. Once you, Pilot Soryu, Kaname Chidori, and Corporal Sagara returned safely, the Director released me to the dormitory within the geofront.”
“That's a shame. I was...” her teammate's response was drowned out by the buzzing emanating from the IV stand at his bedside. He continued speaking, as though unaware of the noise. Just as the question began to form on her lips, her body jerked.
Clean, though now slightly rumpled sheets whispered against her cheek as she took in her surroundings. Frowning, she lifted her head, catching sight of the sunbeam on the floor now significantly advanced from where she last remembered seeing it. Shaking her head, Rei swung her feet off the bed, her first few steps unsteady as she recovered from the effects of her unscheduled catnap. Tapping the cutoff switch to silence the buzzer, she began pulling the assorted clothes out of the washer in lumps before tossing each in the dryer.
Her phone remained silent in her skirt pocket, evidently no calls came in while she was indisposed. The position of the light from her window indicates it is early afternoon, perhaps Pilots Soryu, Lin, and Testarossa are already returning from the lunch they had planned at the cafe? Impossible to say, though she finds herself curious in spite of this. The load successfully transferred, she twists the knob to the default setting, the rumble of the old motor assuring her the machine was active.
If the last days were any indication, she had once possessed close ties with her associates. Each of them had at some point gone out of their way to communicate with her, and had no aversion to spending time in her presence. Some, Ikari and Kirishima came to mind, seemed genuinely pleased to do so. Her returning memories of school and Nerv indicated this was far from the norm. Her mind drifted to the phone in her pocket. Perhaps...
But no. Had anyone required her presence, they would have communicated that fact already. For now, hers was simply to wait.
--------
Livin' on a Prayer I
There is nothing wrong with being scared...as long as you don't let it affect you until the danger is over. Being hysterical is okay too...afterwards and in private. Tears are not unmanly...in the bathroom with the door locked. The difference between a coward and a brave man is usually a matter of timing.
-Alexander Hergenshiemer, _Job: A Comedy of Justice_ by R.A. Heinlein
Neon Genesis Evangelion characters copyright Studio Gainax
Full Metal Panic! characters copyright Shoji Gatou
All characters now and forever used without permission
Tokyo-3
Nerv infirmary, Trauma ward
October 11, 2015
7:15 AM Local Time
Asuka Soryu-Langley, slayer of Angels, Pilot of Eva-02, awakened to wonder where the hell she was. The unfamiliar acoustic tiles making up her ceiling were no help, nor were the room's blank, sterile walls. On further reflection, she decided this really didn't bother her. Her bed was warm, the light was dim, the room was quiet. In all, life could be worse.
Time strolled by, measured by the steady crawl of the sunbeams from gaps in the blinds down the wall. The door latch clicked, drawing her gaze from the race between two of them towards a crack in the paint. A portly, middle aged woman with her dark brown hair drawn up in a bun at the back of her neck opened the door slowly. Noticing Asuka awake, she favored the pilot with a friendly smile before treading softly to her bedside, her shadow erasing the dueling slivers of light, to the pilot's disappointment.
"And how are you feeling this morning?" the nurse asked, one eye on the readouts of a screen fixed to a rolling stand festooned with hooks and clamps, all but two of them empty.
The teenager tilted her head to one side, giving the question the consideration it deserved for a few seconds before deciding, "Not bad."
"Good, you poor dears had a terrible time yesterday." She fiddled with a control on the rather intimidating looking contraption at her bedside before speaking again. "There. Now, it's still a little early, but how about some breakfast?"
While she picked through the meal brought in perhaps 10 minutes later, the lassitude that filled her mind like a warm mist began to clear, something approaching her normal speed of thought returning in its wake.
"A terrible time, huh?" Asuka mused. "Lady, you don't know the half of it." The returning memories brought with them echoes of the emotional whiplash of that evening, the grudging civility of the start of the trip home giving way to puzzlement and dawning horror as the first inklings of the depth of their danger unveiled itself. After that, a kaleidoscope of memory snippets bore down in a torrent, each of them overlain with desperation and something perilously close to terror as the tiny group of fugitives limped and scrambled for safety that rain drenched night, culminating in exhausted, exhilarated relief at the 'better late than never' arrival of their rescuers with fire and steel to bring them home.
The nurse from before returned, this time without the preamble of the door unlatching, since it had been propped open earlier. "All done?" At Asuka's affirmative nod, she picked up the tray from the collapsible table over her bed before stowing it in its slot along the side. "I'll go drop this off," she informed the pilot, who now noticed the name badge reading Yoriko pinned to the right front pocket. "And you have some visitors outside." 'Yoriko' left before receiving an answer, though given the visitors who next entered that was forgivable.
The contrast between the current Misato Katsuragi and the one of the night before was a drastic as anyone could imagine. The battle gear was long gone, of course, replaced with her duty uniform of dress, red leather jacket, and beret. So was the bleak, focused purpose that had radiated from every line, her only concern in the world bringing about either victory or vengeance. The average height, balding, overall unassuming man in the dark blue Section 2 uniform who trailed behind the officer drew only a fraction of her attention.
"Good morning. I hadn't expected to see you awake, honestly," the major greeted. "Everyone else is sound asleep. Will be for another two hours."
"What makes you say that?" People with such divergent sleep schedules as habitual early risers Shinji or Rei and saner individuals such as herself shouldn't be able to be timed nearly that accurately.
The major shrugged nonchalantly. "I left orders for everyone to get something to help them through the night."
"So you drugged us," the redhead clarified, teeth beginning to grind in prelude to a major eruption.
"And it worked. Given the circumstances it was probably kinder than letting you all wake up shaking like leaves in the middle of the night with adrenaline letdown and post-stress reactions," Misato noted.
“That isn't the point and you know it! What in -hell- gives you...”
“Careful, -Pilot- Langley,” the emphasis on her title crystal clear. “Hate me if you want, but I did it in your best interests. Now, since you're awake and at least look alert, do you feel up to telling me what happened out there?"
Asuka's expression promised that this issue was far from dropped, but she began to confidently state she was born ready.
"I mean it, Asuka. We're assembling a report on this mess, and after a near disaster like this one you can bet it's going straight to the top. We need the best information you all can give us, especially since our sensor and comms networks were so badly compromised. Eyewitness testimony is about all we have left to work with, and we absolutely cannot afford to take chances with it. If you haven't gotten your head around things, then believe me, I understand. We can always come back," she added this last with a pointed look at the man's direction.
"The longer we wait, the greater the chances of her recollections becoming tainted," the man replied. "Even more so once she interacts with others."
"Acceptable risks, we need..."
"I'm ready," the pilot repeated, halting the impending argument. "I took the combat psych course, Misato. The spy is right. The longer we wait, the fewer details I'll be able to give you."
The major nodded gesturing assent to her dapper companion. He responded by removing a voice recorder from his pocket, unfolding the lap table on her bed and centering the recorder precisely on it before flipping the power switch. "All right. Everyone state your name and position for the record.”
8:30 AM
Kaname Chidori awoke to light streaming through a set of windows set high in a blank, cream colored wall. Looking at the arm poking out from under the sheets, she noticed a set of hospital scrubs replaced her rain soaked, blood stained, and grit begrimed street clothes, for which she was grateful. Twisting to stretch her back, she sat up, causing the bed linens to pool around her waist.
"Welcome back," a voice greeted her.
She turned quickly to face it, finding a seated woman in a red jacket and beret. "Oh. Misato. Where am I?"
"Nerv's infirmary, the trauma wing specifically,” the affable officer supplied.
"Oh," she replied dumbly. Her eyes widened, her mind reconstructing the previous day. "Where are..."
"Sam and Asuka are fine. And on this floor, actually. I had to chase Sagara home when I got back, he better have stayed there and gotten some sleep if he knows what's good for him."
"I doubt it," Kaname whispered, remembering his attempt to join the search and destroy teams sweeping the city. Instead, the woman before her shepherded the lot of them into one of her transports, barking orders to her troops. Her last really clear memory was a glimpse of the smoldering plaza through the closing hatch, while the craft rose like a homesick angel.
"Anyway, things are in hand for now, though you wouldn't know it from all the screaming going on upstairs. Which incidentally brings me to something interesting. You never mentioned your father is a High Commissioner."
Well, that explained why she didn't just stick her head in to say hi. "We don't talk much, and haven't for a long time. I didn't think it was worth mentioning."
"It's your business. But that's not what I stopped in for. As you've seen, Sousuke and Mana are not what they seem.”
Kaname snorted.
Misato chuckled at the rude noise. "Right, news flash. Well, there's a saying I happen to believe in that surprise is the most dangerous weapon known to mankind. A big part of why they were able to foil that ambush is because no one knew they were there."
The girl nodded emphatically. "That is -not- a problem, I don't want to think about what happened out there, forget about talking about it!"
Misato shrugged. "For the record, it's better if you do. Talk about it, that is. Just make sure they're cleared for it first. But back on point. Our story right now is that the three pilots were caught outside and fought their way out of the ambush until UN forces could come to the rescue. We're not mentioning which pilots, but any fool can probably figure it out if they try. Since we are keeping quiet about anyone else who happened to be there with them, that will work to your benefit too. So far, your father hasn't contacted anyone to bring you home. If he were to find out you had been put in danger, I would be very surprised if he didn't. Should that happen, there would be little I or anyone could do."
Or would do, Kaname added, recognizing the unspoken part of the message as she nodded solemnly.
Misato shook off her own grave demeanor, more of her off-duty persona showing through. "Ok then, enough of the heavy stuff. I would hate for you to think that because we need to keep this quiet you've done something wrong. There are veteran soldiers who wouldn't have done as well as you did last night. And because you were there, people lived who might not have otherwise.” She paused a moment, giving the startled girl to process her last comment. “The others are upstairs in one of the waiting areas, you're free to join them if you like. I had some breakfast sent up from the cafeteria for them, if you hurry there might be some left.” She rose from her seat, favoring the girl with a friendly smile as she exited.
The teen lay back on her pillow, her gaze wandering far past her room. So this is what it feels like to be a hero, she mused. No wonder Shinji doesn't talk about his job. It was nice, on the one hand. To have the gratitude, even respect, of people she admired. But right along with it were memories she could gladly have gone the rest of her life never acquiring. Like the sound a bullet makes when striking flesh, or the distinctive 'snap-POP' as one goes past. The smell of burning buildings, burning -other- things, laced with the reek of gunpowder. What it felt like to know every moment you were one wrong step, one bad roll of the dice, away from death.
And having learned these things, to feel a wave of self loathing for how petty she had been that night, and in the process hurt someone who had striven so hard to keep them safe. If anyone deserved to have his praises sung, by her most of all, it was Sagara. Instead, Kaname had reacted as though he were an attack dog off his leash.
Guilt trickled in next, as she squeezed her eyes shut as though to block out the feeling. She had thought she was better than that. It seemed she was wrong. Kaname hadn't lied to Misato, she and her father hadn't spoken beyond the odd holiday card for well over a year. Even now, an ember of fury still burned at his response to her demand that he step up to the plate and act like a parent. But for all his many flaws, he had loved her mother, and raised his daughters as well as he could. So she would succeed where he had so catastrophically failed, and face down her mistakes.
The teenager tossed the sheets aside, wincing as her feet met the chilled tile floor. A frown after failing to turn up a set of footwear forming, she strode towards the door with bare feet. If her friends were upstairs, then it was certain -he- would be nearby. What to do next she was still working on, but something would occur to her.
Failure was not an option.
---------
Meanwhile, Shinji Ikari awakened beneath a depressingly familiar ceiling.
"I wonder if they keep it reserved..." he mused disconsolately, the cracked acoustic tile three rows out from the right-hand wall telling him instantly where he was. In contrast to his last visit, it was empty of medical equipment. Just a bare tile floor illuminated by squares of sunlight from the high, narrow windows separated him from the closed door, the muted sounds of people walking the corridors outside indicating it was probably well into morning.
After a few moments, he pulled the scratchy hospital sheet aside and climbed out of bed, his bare feet protesting the chill of the floor tiles. Shinji restlessly paced the rest of the way towards the door, pausing as he eased it open to step through. Technically, he really should stay here until someone came to get him...
Looking back at the tousled bed, and sterile room full of so many memories decided him. He didn't want to be in here a moment longer than he had to be.
Once outside, he began to pad down the hall, a recollection of doing this very thing soon after awakening from his first mission rising from the depths of his memories. Even the pajamas were the same. A rustling from behind nipped the playback of that incident in the bud. Shinji turned, scanning the hall for the source, but the nearest person was at least twenty meters away, walking the opposite direction. Frowning, he began to turn back around, when it happened again.
This time, he pinpointed the source, and got his first surprise of the morning. What he had at first taken as a shadow behind a large, leafy potted plant tucked in an alcove turned out to be nothing of the sort. Two gray irises regarded him from behind the fauna, only a dim outline of a darker mass within the shadow breaking the illusion of a disembodied pair of eyes. The occupant of the unorthodox position slid out, revealing himself to the puzzled teenager.
"Good morning, Pilot Ikari. You are well?" Sousuke Sagara greeted as he stood up, as though absolutely nothing was amiss. There had been a time when this kind of behavior would have worried Shinji, but several months acquaintance had taught the pilot that this was one of his more harmless oddities.
"Ah...good morning." Shinji hesitated, unsure how to phrase 'what are you doing here?' without sounding accusatory. "Have you been here long?" he finally questioned.
"I relieved Sgt. Jun-Kyu at 0500, so I suppose not. If you are searching for Major Katsuragi, she was interviewing Miss Chidori when I last saw her."
The younger boy nodded. "Thanks. Did she say I needed to stay here? I'm kind of hungry..." he elaborated, deciding not to mention the actual reason he left his room.
The corporal shook his head. "No, though I believe she would wish you to remain within the infirmary. There is a snack counter on the next floor if you wish to eat, I will inform her she can find you there."
Shinji nodded, leaving the marine to return to his vigil. Sousuke had once explained that he always slept underneath his bed in order to get the drop on anyone who attacked during the night. At the time, he had been appalled at the amount of paranoia that idea implied, but now he wondered. Maybe it's an occupational hazard, he mused as the elevator dropped him off. A convenient sign pointed Shinji in the right direction, and as promised the small eatery appeared a few dozen meters later.
The small counter was typical of its type, a waist high Formica slab with a cash register at one end, a glass fronted mini fridge and set of wire racks at the other, and a trash can tucked against the adjacent wall. The quiet hum of the refrigerator compressor provided the only background noise besides the rustle of his clothes as he approached.
Shinji purchased a can of green tea, the cashier thanking him automatically before returning to polishing the refrigerator case. He turned to regard the only other customer, whereupon he received his second surprise of the morning. He hesitated, and finally sat down across from her.
"Hello, Ayanami," he greeted quietly.
The girl's attention returned from wherever it had gone, somewhere far in the distance to judge by her gaze. She turned to look at him, for a long moment seeming not to recognize him.
"Ikari," she spoke, finally returning the greeting.
She...looked terrible, Shinji decided, now that he had a good view. Never one to spend much effort on her personal grooming, Rei had always lacked the 'healthy glow' the girls in his class tried to cultivate. But even what little color she did possess was gone now. Perhaps washed out by the harsh fluorescent light, but perhaps not. The loose white pajama-style hospital gown she wore highlighted the effect.
But even worse was the way she stared fixedly at him for a few more seconds, before listlessly turning away, the motion as she returned to her private contemplation rustled her already tousled hair a little further. Under the circumstances, 'How are you feeling?' seemed about as redundant as he could imagine, but he said it anyway. There didn't seem to be anything else to do.
"Acceptable," Rei supplied, this time not meeting his gaze as the silence stretched.
"They said Mana will be ok," Shinji ventured.
Rei nodded once. "Good."
Shinji's courage failed him then, in the face of her seeming indifference. He wanted to say it was a brave thing she had done, and everyone was amazed someone Rei's size had been able to bring Mana back. That it had gone a long way toward changing many of those people's opinion of her as a colorless automaton into someone who truly cared about others. But in the end, he only sipped his tea.
The sound of hard soled shoes on the tile floor gave Shinji an excuse to turn away as well, noting one of the bridge technicians/transport pilots approaching.
"Shinji, Rei," Lt. Aoba nodded to them in greeting. "Sagara thought you'd be here. We're sending some people to your apartments to pick up a few things, is there anything in particular you want added to the list?"
Shinji shook his head, followed a moment later by Rei.
"Ok, well we're reopening your old rooms in the dorm, if you feel like waiting somewhere more comfortable."
"Thank you," Rei replied, taking the proffered key from the lieutenant. She began to walk down the hall towards the elevators, presumably to take him up on his offer.
"Bye," Shinji called softly after her, but she made no sign of hearing.
Aoba sighed, shaking his head after Rei was out of sight. He turned back to Shinji. "The major wants to talk to the four of you who where on base before she turns you loose."
Nerv HQ
Residence Block 1J
10:34 AM
Ritsuko Akagi would have woken at an absurdly late hour, had she been asleep the night before. The doctor stretched under the tousled sheets, resettling herself to relieve the weight on her elbow.
The arms encircling her tightened in instinctive response, their owner beginning to rouse as well. The bed really was a little narrow for two, but as always they managed. A smile formed at the thought, as she debated whether to officially wake up. Duty called, as always, though on the other hand...
But all good things come to an end. Her partner fully awakened and swung himself out of bed with a perfunctory 'good morning'. She didn't mind, sappy morning after pillow talk was for teenagers and mush minded romantics, and she had long been neither.
The sound of the shower starting came from the adjacent bathroom, the blonde removed her blouse and skirt from where they were neatly hung from the chair beside the bed. The room was lightly furnished for a permanent residence, a desk matching the chair pushed against the wall opposite the bathroom door, with a nightstand on the left. A brown and tan couch that was clearly standard issue with the room sat against the opposite wall, matched by a low coffee table. A few minor personal touches rounded out the picture, but given that the occupant not only ruled the facility and surrounding facility by decree, was responsible for directing the defense of Earth against interstellar marauders, not to mention held final authority over weapons systems light years in advance of any conventional military in the process, it was positively Spartan.
Ritsuko finished gathering her clothes, preparing to take her own shower once the owner vacated it. That was typical of the man, though. The world was his concern, not the puny piece he happened to stand on. That none of their erstwhile superiors would have tolerated such conditions for a moment was beneath concern.
The shower shut off, the sound of rustling coming from behind the door for a few moments before it finally opened. Though closer to fifty than forty, Gendo Ikari carried his years extremely well, in Ritsuko's not so humble opinion. Certainly he'd escaped the twin curses of many men his age, a steadily thickening middle and thinning hairline. His children would do well to be as fortunate at his age, assuming they were also lucky enough to have the chance.
“A problem, Doctor?” her lover questioned, pulling an undershirt from a drawer.
“Not at all,” she assured him. “I was considering some of our findings from earlier.” Mentioning her true considerations would be pointless, and it was well past time to return to work in any case.
Gendo grunted understanding, pulling the shirt over his head before tucking it into one of his seemingly limitless supply of razor creased black slacks.
“The salvage teams had interesting things to say about some of the recovered equipment,” she began. “It seems that some of our technology spread farther than we believed, if the power sources for the jammers are any indication. The surviving examples have almost identical chemistry to an Eva power cell, which at least explains how they could maintain such preposterously high outputs for so long.”
The Director's expression darkened at the news. Some technology leakage was inevitable, given that Nerv was likely penetrated by most every intelligence agency on the planet that deserved the name. The Eva battery designs were hardly critical knowledge, but the loss of any protected data was unsettling.
“This wasn't mentioned in the reports last night,” he noted, unrolling a set of socks.
“It was discovered once we had a working sample. Maya mentioned it before I arrived here, but I'm afraid I never had the opportunity to pass it along,” Ritsuko informed him with a perfectly composed expression.
The message was received. “Indeed,” Gendo conceded after a moment. Bidding her to continue, he finished pulling on his socks. The doctor felt no particular discomfort and essentially giving a status report from the midst of their bed. It was hardly the first time, after all.
“The recovery was complicated by the use of large thermite charges as a means of tamper prevention, which of course slowed down the operation considerably.” The means of that discovery had helped with that. A Marine fire team happened upon one of the first jammer installations to be detected, mounted in a plastic, garden variety, industrial sized garbage can. While no obvious antennas were present, one of them noticed that rain was sizzling on the lid of the container from the heat of prolonged transmission. What happened next was unclear, but perhaps one of the survivors occupying the burn ward in the infirmary could fill in the details.
“The rest of the components are apparently mil-spec, though off the shelf, electronics. I assume Security can trace those readily enough.”
“And our 'guests'?”
“Major Katsuragi is dealing with the situation, she planned to begin interrogation of the prisoners this morning.”
Gendo nodded, his daily preparations complete. Removing his glasses from the nightstand beside her, his image once again matched what his subordinates were long accustomed to. A little thrill of the 'I've got a secret!' variety ran through the doctor at the thought that she was almost unique in having opportunity to see past the mask.
“Leaving the issue of what to do with the outsiders she brought with her, however. Not to mention reliable replacements for Section Two,” he grumbled. “Very well, I expect the Major has formulated alternate security plans making use of them?”
“She mentioned a few changes she intends to implement,” Ritsuko confirmed. “In fairness, given this escalation by our...opposition, I think she has the right idea.”
“The 'opposition' oversteps itself,” the Director intoned with utter finality. “As they will eventually learn. And Rei?”
Ritsuko looked away. “Nominal. No complications thus far.”
“Excellent. I will expect you in the CIC shortly then.” With that, the most powerful man in the prefecture pulled on his shoes and departed.
For her part, his paramour bundled her clothes into her arms and claimed the bathroom. As she restarted the shower and hung up her outerwear to let the steam de-wrinkle them, she spared a glance for the face in the rapidly fogging mirror. Short, tousled blonde hair fell above clear brown eyes with the beginnings of crow's feet at the corners if one looked closely. Further down, a jawline that was a little rounder than she remembered it being when she joined Nerv faded into a neckline that had managed to remain as slender as before. Entropy might be putting up a fight, but it wasn't winning, not yet.
Smirking at the thought, Ritsuko stepped into the shower. As it should be, as much time as she spent swimming in the LCL filled Eva cages doing monitoring work. It wasn't strictly necessary to keep them immersed,of course, they were perfectly capable of being exposed to open air for weeks at a time, but periodic treatments were called for.
She reached for her shampoo, one of the few extravagances she afforded herself, but necessary given the stress long term dyeing put on her hair. It was kept company by a soap dispenser smelling faintly of lavender from its contents. Once the doctor became a regular visitor, a small stash of such products mysteriously appeared in this bathroom. Gendo, a formerly married man and well aware of how the game was played, wisely said nothing.
The smirk faded at the next thought memory of her lover triggered. Both directors had been on the surface when news of the first attacks came in, enjoying a rare non-working dinner. The first thought of the security teams was that the attack against the homeward bound pilots was a cover for a decapitation strike on the two directors. That isolation, combined with the loss of reliable communications soon afterwards, meant the two top figures of Nerv would have had an easier task controlling their supposed domain had they been on Mars. Only when Security retrieved them via a second convoy sent by a circuitous route through the 'safe' zones of the city had they been able to reestablish their authority, and by that point Misato's actions were a fait accompli.
Ritsuko shook her head, turning off the spray. She supposed it doesn't really matter in the end, with as many eyes as had been trained on Nerv in the last few months. It wasn't as though the soldiers would have access to the geofront, never mind the secure areas beneath its floor. Nodding firmly to herself as she dressed, the blonde stepped into her skirt and reached for her blouse. Yesterday had been a setback, on many levels. But the most important problem had been dealt with, and the rest were by definition annoyances beside the disaster potential -that- had represented!
Still, he was going to need her, and the thought brought a lightness to the doctor's step as she exited the room, swinging her lab coat over her shoulders as she went.
Livin' on a Prayer II
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate its contents.
- _The Call of Cthulhu_ by H. P. Lovecraft
Livin' on a Prayer II
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate its contents.
- _The Call of Cthulhu_ by H. P. Lovecraft
Tokyo-3
Residence block 4A, Apartment 402
October 17, 2015
10:30 AM Local Time
“I'll give this town one thing, they're aces when it comes to cleaning up a mess.”
Rei Ayanami could only agree, stepping through the open door of her residence to stand beside the much taller man. Sensing her presence, Sgt. Jun-kyu turned to her, lowering his voice. “Are you sure you're ok with this? You know there's always a place for you over with the others.”
She turned as well, raising her gaze to compensate for only coming up to the shoulder of his tan t-shirt. “I will be fine,” she replied, giving the same answer as the last three times he had asked the question or one like it. “It appears everything is in order here.”
“Yeah, if anything the place is in better condition than it was before you and Mana went and had a firefight in it,” the Marine agreed, hopefully accepting her response this time as well as the change of subject. “Sagara, excuse me, -Sergeant- Sagara, would you mind terribly bringing in the rest so we can get the lady set up?”
The aforementioned personage ignored the teasing of his comrade, placing the paper bags filled with various consumables on her kitchen counter. Among the more positive fallout of the attacks was the guard's recent promotion, and a well deserved one.
The two men began rapidly unpacking the cluster of bags, fitting the various perishables into the refrigerator first before starting on the boxed dinners and canned goods. Major Katsuragi had insisted that if she was going to reoccupy her old apartment, it would be after it had been equipped with in her words 'the essentials of civilized life.'
“Look, I won't pretend to guess at the Director's logic in this,” her superior had begun the night before, during their meeting ostensibly for a quick end of the day cup of tea. “Though I'm sure he has reasons that seem good to him. But, a few things are going to happen before we carry out his instructions. First,” she tapped the cafeteria table's formica surface, “The covering force out at your place is being substantially reinforced by Section 2. We're also installing a dedicated line from there that doesn't go through the city exchange, so hopefully no one can play games with our telecom network to leave you stranded again. If I get the chance, I'll see about adding something extra later on.”
She paused for Rei to indicate understanding. When she had it her brisk, businesslike pacing quickened further. “Second, contrary to popular belief around here, I do know that woman does not live by instant noodles alone, and I'm amazed you've managed it as long as you have. So here is what is going to happen. Bright and early tomorrow, you and two strapping young men are going to go downtown. You will then spend the morning purchasing such items as are needed to make your apartment fit for human habitation. Don't worry, I've provided them with a list of the basics, but you should feel free to add to it if anything catches your attention.”
By now on the edge of protesting the whole exercise as unnecessary, the pale girl found her superior was far ahead of her. “Do you understand your instructions, Pilot Ayanami? Good, then be ready tomorrow.” With that, the officer slugged back the last of her tea and rose from her seat. “I suggest you call it a night soon, you'll have a busy day after all.”
Rei looked on for a few seconds. Finally she replied “Very...well ma'am,” to her commander's retreating figure in a small voice, now aware of what the verb 'to railroad' meant.
While her protectors finished provisioning her kitchen, she eased the shoulder pack containing the few belongings brought from onto her bed. While she undid the flap holding it closed, the pilot ran her fingers over the plain white sheets. The texture felt coarse against her fingertips, but perhaps they were still oversensitized.
“Ayanami? We're finished here, is there anything else you need before we go?” Jun-kyu questioned, bringing her out of her reverie. She shook her head in negation.
“Ok, we'll probably be over at the Major's place for the rest of the day. Which reminds me, dinner's at six, and Shinji is doing the cooking this time,” he reassured her.
That was a memory she had already recovered, explaining her subtle wince. The Major's attempt to 'help' prepare the chili Pilot Roberts served one memorable evening had resulted in a concoction so spicy that it threatened to melt holes in the saucepan, according to its victims. Only the emergency acquisition of several boxes of Popsicles had averted disaster. She acknowledged the reminder, bidding the pair farewell.
The sound of the closing door echoed from the bare walls as she looked down at the spread of underclothes and spare uniform parts dumped unceremoniously on her bed. Time enough to deal with that later, she decided. Leaving the laundry where it lay, the pilot began to walk slowly around the perimeter of her apartment, tracing delicate fingers over familiar objects and features while her mind drifted. Touch and smell were the oldest and deepest-rooted senses, she knew, tied most directly into memory. Now that she was in a familiar place, it was important to reacquire those pieces of her as swiftly as possible.
In many ways, her mental state could be compared to a brand new house invaded by remarkably incompetent movers. The individual pieces of her nature were all present, hopefully, but the boxes were unlabeled and stacked at random. Already her comrades had noted Rei was 'out of it' when they believed she couldn't hear, it was vital that no further cause for suspicion was given.
Her hand ran across the counter top now, its finish gleaming as it hadn't since she first moved in so long ago. Pausing to open a drawer, several bags of disposable chopsticks greeted her attention. Nothing else of note presented itself, so she closed it in favor of another. This one proved to be equipped with several cooking spatulas, which presumably matched the trio of skillets now nestled in the cabinet directly beneath. No clues here either.
The next drawer held a black rip-stop nylon case closed by a zipper running around three sides. This was also new, but she didn't remember purchasing it... Laying the case on the counter, she quickly opened the zipper and folded it open. Inside, a compact semiautomatic pistol rested within a foam cutout, a folded sheaf of papers tucked underneath it. The opposite side held a pair of magazines, a loop of elastic keeping each in place. Taking it in her hands, she ejected the magazine already inserted to note that it, like the other two, was pre-loaded. After easing the pistol's slide back just enough to verify the chamber was empty, she reinserted the clip. Rei placed the weapon on the counter beside its case, unfolding what she expected to be the manual and cleaning instructions.
A little something extra.
Please give it a good home!
The message scrawled across the blank space at the top of the first page was signed with something that looked like it might be a K, then devolved into a random looking scribble. After a moment of pondering this new find, the girl refolded the sheaf, tucking it under her apparent new weapon before rezipping the case and stowing it back in the drawer.
The rest of the kitchen held no further surprises, a basic selection of canned vegetables had taken residence in her other cupboard, a few cleaning products similarly housed under the sink. The bathroom was, again, cleaner than it had been in years, but held nothing unexpected either. Her survey finished, Rei completed her circuit of the residence, ending up once again at the bed tucked into the corner beneath the window. The pile of clothing was right where she left it. After gathering the bundle and depositing it in the washer, she stretched out face down on the bed, breathing the scent of freshly laundered linens.
It had been about five days since she had met her end in this very room. She supposed most would feel a kind of existential uneasiness at knowing that, but it wasn't as though she remembered it. Nor had it been 'her' in the first place, if one looked at the issue from the right angle, she mused as her mind wandered back.
The light from the massive floor to ceiling windows behind the men at the desk would have lit the room to noontime brilliance had the polarization not been almost at maximum. Instead a kind of half light leaked through, enough for the symbology above and below her to be visible without becoming overwhelming. She halted precisely three paces from the pair, her posture expectant.
“Good afternoon, Rei,” Director Ikari greeted her. “I see you're doing well?” he phrased the observation questioningly.
“Yes, sir. I anticipate I will be ready for duty by the end of the week. Doctor Akagi has a compatibility test scheduled for that time.”
“Very good,” he nodded approvingly. “Your reintegration is in the earliest stages, I know, but it is important to have the facts in order before you return to active status. So far as almost anyone outside this room is aware, you and Petty Officer Kirishima defeated a team of assailants that wiped out your Section 2 bodyguards, after a furious gun battle in your apartment. After this, you tended to the petty officer's injuries and single handedly brought her to the nearest geofront access point for further treatment, thereby saving her life.” He folded his hands upon the desk, his expression solemn. “Unfortunately, this heroic story in no way matches reality.”
“Based on the available evidence, you and Kirishima mounted a spirited defense, building a barricade from available materials in your apartment and attempted to establish a crossfire on the doorway. The bodies of two of your attackers were found with you, and a trail of blood droplets from a poorly bound injury suggest at least one other was severely wounded. The remaining members then used a explosive device, most probably a grenade, before moving in to finish their work.” The director regarded her from behind his glasses for a long moment as she digested her predecessor's fate. “We are uncertain why no effort was made to confirm both of you were killed, it is possible that the team was sloppy or, more likely, pressed for time. Regardless, the security team which arrived on the scene shortly afterward stabilized Kirishima and returned you both to HQ. Once there, your predecessor was confirmed deceased, and you were duly activated.”
The Deputy Director spoke up, his careworn, grandfatherly face sympathetic. “The deception is necessary for several reasons, Rei. First among them of course is to disguise your nature, for while one day it may be possible to admit your origins, now is not the time. The second is...more complicated. The attacks were impossible to black out entirely from the outside, too many phone calls cut off in mid-conversation, too many radio and satellite signals were interrupted by unmistakable jamming. This without mentioning the hasty mobilization of the UN Atsugi response force. The damage to Nerv's image is enough of an inconvenience by itself, but those forces are also regarded as heroes both by the city residents and many within Nerv. It is vital we have a counter-example to act as a brake on their enthusiasm, and the actions of the pilots, yourself included, fit the bill perfectly. Simply put, we need all the good publicity we can get right now.”
The pilot had accepted, if not completely understood, her new orders. Rei turned her head, gazing back towards the rectangle of light from her window, the far edge just on one of the expansion joints in the concrete slab making up her floor. That place was most likely where the rescue team from Section 2 found her. The geometry of the room suggested it would make a good position to set up a crossfire on the doorway when paired with Kirishima's position near where she now lay.
Rei rolled onto her back, bringing her gaze to rest on the unadorned concrete ceiling. “Tomorrow will be difficult,” she spoke softly to the empty room. The currently mobile pilots would be returning to school, and supposedly their daily lives. An entirely new environment for her, with its own clues to her past identity and pitfalls to avoid while piecing it back together. Fortunately, her fellow pilots seemed to comprise most of those who knew her to any degree, simplifying matters considerably. Any slips on her part in the next few days could be blamed on their recent ordeal, which would not be far wrong. Her comrades would be the real challenge to maintaining the deception, since others would naturally take their cues from their behavior towards her.
A short, willowy girl paced the corridors of Nerv HQ, navigating the maze that was Central Dogma like the native she was. A scattering of techs and admin personnel flickered across her view as she made her way to her destination. Though she normally kept her day planner scrupulously up to date, a look at it now would find it grossly inaccurate. As of its last update the previous week, she was scheduled for a mock battle with Pilots Roberts and Lin in thirty-two minutes, followed by a physical therapy session, and then further simulator training. Upon completion of her tasks, she would return to school for the remainder of the day. It was a schedule much like the one she had been following for most of her life, and barring the occasional perturbation she had fully expected it to continue for the foreseeable future.
But that was then, and the disconcerting lurch her own personal life had taken recently was simply one amongst many. She arrived at the elevator, thumbing the call button before turning at the tapping of a sneaker clad foot behind her.
“Didn't expect to see you out here, what's the occasion?” Pilot Soryu observed, resting on her crutches. Rumor had it that the medical staff had threatened to handcuff her to the devices in order to make her use them. Rei knew this to be false, only a direct order from Major Katsuragi had been required.
“I intended to visit the infirmary, as I am currently not assigned any tasks.”
Her comrade barked a laugh. “Welcome to the club,” she replied. “How hard up -are- you to visit those two?” The elevator door opened, the occupants making a hole for the two girls as they edged inside. As the doors slid shut, the previous conversations resumed. Here a pair of engineers mulling what sounded like rebuilding the armature to one of the cage door motors, another sounded like the preliminary planning for a social gathering of some sort to celebrate an upcoming wedding. Remove the uniforms and insider jargon, and it was easy to imagine that they could be taking place anywhere in the country. At least that was Rei's intuition, having never left Tokyo-3 it was difficult to say for certain. The elevator halted, the door opening to release a cluster of passengers, including the two pilots.
The paler of the pair regarded her companion questioningly.
“I never said I was in any better shape,” her target muttered, moving ahead. Not surprisingly, Soryu's distinctive gait blended in better here in the infirmary than anywhere else in the geofront, given the other patients getting their morning exercise. The redhead halted at the charge nurse's desk momentarily, then set off at a brisk clip for one with her disability. Rei followed a few paces behind, content to let the redhead lead. Outside the indicated room, a dull, rhythmic noise escaped through the crack in the door left propped ajar.
Thump-clap. Thump-clap. Thump-clap. Thump-clap. Thump-
Pilot Soryu frowned as Rei caught up, before pushing the door fully open. “What in the world are you doing?” She demanded as she hobbled through. “And how do you stand it, that has to be maddening!”
“Good morning to you, too. And what?” Petty Officer Kirishima replied quizzically, catching the neon orange tennis ball in her free hand, the other tethered to an IV bag. “I might as well do do -something- until this patch comes off,” the brunette gestured with the ball at the gauze pad taped over one eye, a by blow of the shrapnel wound that put her out of action. “Besides, its not like -he- cares right now,” she continued quietly in deference to the patient in the bed across from her.
Her roommate was a recent addition, and a symptom of an unanticipated problem. Tokyo-3 boasted some of the finest and newest medical facilities in Japan as a by product of its association with Nerv and its state of the art technology, plus generous contributions from the same. What those facilities were not, was large. The two real hospitals in the city were normally adequate to service the demand any urban area of this size generated, but the Angels changed all that, as they had so much else. The second attack claimed the north tower of Misaka General in spite of its location on the west side of the city, theoretically well out of harm's way, reducing the city's capacity by nearly one third. Despite the rapid fall in the city's population since then, that was far from adequate. Non-emergent cases were being diverted to Kazari Hospital in Gora until the destroyed facilities could be replaced, but until that project was complete, the geofront infirmary was the only other major medical facility in the area. With the surge in cases after the events of the last few days, space was at a premium everywhere.
“What are you doing here, anyway? I thought everyone was being retested or something,” the patient wondered, switching to tossing the ball straight up rather than off the wall in deference to her guest's 'request'.
“Everyone but the walking wounded, anyway,” Pilot Soryu agreed with considerable bitterness. Taking a seat on a plastic chair by the wall, she propped her crutches next to her and began furiously rubbing at her injured leg.
“Hurting again?” Kirishima questioned, frowning concern.
“Not as much, it just -itches-” the pilot grumbled.
The petty officer shrugged. “Means the wound channel is closing. When did they say you'll be off the crutches?”
“The weekend, if I'm lucky. Then no strenuous movements, no heavy lifting, and stay off my feet as much as possible until the muscle can re-compensate, but at least I can use a simulator and test again. Can't be a moment too soon is all I'll say.” The pilot looked away as she finished the sentence, a pensive expression crossing her face.
“Yeah, hospital time always sucks. On the one hand, this is the first vacation I've had since I got here, but on the other there's nothing to do pretty much all day except sleep and kill time.”
The skin around Soryu-Langley's eyes tightened as she agreed. The reaction was apparently unnoticed by Kirishima, but Rei's gaze sharpened, filing it away for later consideration. Though her own feelings were as often as not a mystery, a lifetime at Nerv had taught her to be a keen observer of others. That trace reaction was too far at odds with her words to be dismissed as residual annoyance, there was clearly something more at work. Rei even had a reasonable idea of what, for how could she miss something she felt equally deeply? Being cut off from her entire purpose for being during the month after Eva-00's failed reactivation had been perhaps the most difficult time of her life.
“Speaking of, and not that I'm unhappy to see you, I figured you would be with the others,” Kirishima questioned her, breaking the chain of thought.
The truest answer was that in her current state of reintegration, contact with an Evangelion would be even riskier than usual. Fortunately, there was a cover for this eventuality as well. “Doctor Akagi has questions about the simulator's link integrity to Eva-00.”
Pilot Soryu snorted. “That'll make Commander Tightass happy.” Kirishima smirked agreement, but failed to add anything further. The three girls regarded each other for a moment, the obvious conversation topics exhausted.
Or, at least the easy ones.
“Thanks, by the way.”
Rei looked quizzically at Kirishima.
“I know the Directors probably gave you crap about dragging me out instead of running, and being cold and reasonable about it they're right. There are plenty more just like me, but you can count the number of Pilots on your fingers with room to spare.” She grinned at the startled girl. “But being selfish and, you know, -me- I can't quite bring myself to complain. So... ” the girl shrugged eloquently.
As she muttered a soft reply, eyes downcast, Rei felt a sour sensation in the pit of her stomach. As the Director had said, it would be nice if the fable told for public consumption were true, but reality was crueler than that. It should make no difference that this was so, her mission was to serve the needs of the moment and play the role assigned to her. Most of the time it was simple enough, the unknown faces of people tangential to her existence caused no particular guilt as she wore the mask.
But for every hundred who passed without a ripple, there was one who left a riptide in their wake.
“Oh for...don't you start that bullshit too. We get enough false modesty and self-deprecation from Shinji, don't tell me everyone here had their pride beaten out of them!”
“I don't think that means what you think it means, Soryu,” Kirishima retorted. “I'm just as happy -somebody- shows a little restraint in proclaiming from the rooftops...
“-That- isn't restraint, and if you have a problem with me then out with it!”
“No, no. No problem. But I did notice that you seemed awfully interested in making sure a certain someone heard all about your little walk downtown...”
If it were physiologically possible, steam would have been coming out Pilot Soryu's ears. “You need your head examined again if you think I have the slightest care about what Shinji does or doesn't think!” Leaning forward in her chair, she rejoined, “I'm going to say this one time, and one time only. That boy has no business here. If Nerv collectively had the brains of a fruit fly, they wouldn't let him within a hundred kilometers of an Eva! The whole so-called process of his selection was a joke, and...”
“And yet he keeps winning.” In contrast to the venomous heat of the pilot's accusation, the guard's tone was bitter, bitter cold. “That's what hacks you off, isn't it? That he gets out there and makes it happen in spite of the odds against him. No fanfare, damned few attaboys, just results. And that is something you just can't stand.” She met her target's blazing gaze, and sneered. “I was there, Princess. Back when he did crack, just like you expect would happen to somebody dropped into his position cold. And once Sagara and I dragged his carcass back from his walkabout, the Major point blank told him he had a free ride home if he wanted it, no strings attached. He turned her down. I won't say it was easy, that he wasn't sorely tempted, but he did it. He might not have deserved his place in the beginning, but he has more than earned it since. Don't -ever- think otherwise.”
That revelation took even Rei aback. Her pitifully incomplete memories held no such incident, but of course that meant nothing. Though she had the feeling that her predecessor had no knowledge of this either, the sense of deja vu that sometimes arose on encountering a bit of fact she already knew on some level was nowhere in evidence. Perhaps the second truly hadn't known?
“So he's an idiot on top of everything else, so what! All he did was put himself and us at risk by forcing us to work with an unqualified pilot,” her fellow pilot rallied in defense of her argument. “Never mind that after that dog's breakfast of a mission Misato -should- have dismissed him for incompetence!”
If Kirishima's declaration had been frigid before, it was positively arctic now. Rei gave a barely audible hiss as the bed bound girl launched into a new tirade. Though recognizing the growing confrontation was in danger of ending in disaster, she hadn't the faintest idea how to defuse it. Perhaps her predecessor did, but that knowledge was lost if she ever had it...
“Jesus Christ on a Harley, does even getting your asses shot off not shut you two up!?”
Soryu rounded on the interloper in an instant. “-You- have no room to talk, given how much time you spend talking out of yours! And what do you think you're doing eavesdropping on people who came to visit in spite of having better things to do?!”
“I wasn't eavesdropping, I was getting some damned sleep. Blame the painkillers, I haven't had to take an afternoon nap since I was six,” Roberts grunted, trying to push himself into a sitting position while using his abdominal muscles as little as possible, rolling to one arm and using the other to reposition a pillow before lying back. “Ahhh, much better. Now what's the problem again?”
“Never mind, it's none of your business anyway,” Soryu snapped, the other participant in the 'discussion' shooting her a warning look. In any case, the dispute seemed to peter out once it was interrupted and tempers had time to cool, a fact Rei filed away for future reference.
“So what did we miss out on?” he asked, ignorant of the byplay. “You were in CIC for the last part, right? Please tell me you got pictures of the Director's face once the UN showed up, I could retire on what I could get for those!” he grinned.
Rei shook her head. “I was in the infirmary until the Directors requested my presence, as I had the only firsthand knowledge of the opposition at the time. Afterward I was instructed to remain near the CIC should I be needed further. Once you, Pilot Soryu, Kaname Chidori, and Corporal Sagara returned safely, the Director released me to the dormitory within the geofront.”
“That's a shame. I was...” her teammate's response was drowned out by the buzzing emanating from the IV stand at his bedside. He continued speaking, as though unaware of the noise. Just as the question began to form on her lips, her body jerked.
Clean, though now slightly rumpled sheets whispered against her cheek as she took in her surroundings. Frowning, she lifted her head, catching sight of the sunbeam on the floor now significantly advanced from where she last remembered seeing it. Shaking her head, Rei swung her feet off the bed, her first few steps unsteady as she recovered from the effects of her unscheduled catnap. Tapping the cutoff switch to silence the buzzer, she began pulling the assorted clothes out of the washer in lumps before tossing each in the dryer.
Her phone remained silent in her skirt pocket, evidently no calls came in while she was indisposed. The position of the light from her window indicates it is early afternoon, perhaps Pilots Soryu, Lin, and Testarossa are already returning from the lunch they had planned at the cafe? Impossible to say, though she finds herself curious in spite of this. The load successfully transferred, she twists the knob to the default setting, the rumble of the old motor assuring her the machine was active.
If the last days were any indication, she had once possessed close ties with her associates. Each of them had at some point gone out of their way to communicate with her, and had no aversion to spending time in her presence. Some, Ikari and Kirishima came to mind, seemed genuinely pleased to do so. Her returning memories of school and Nerv indicated this was far from the norm. Her mind drifted to the phone in her pocket. Perhaps...
But no. Had anyone required her presence, they would have communicated that fact already. For now, hers was simply to wait.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one insists on adapting the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
- George Bernard Shaw
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- George Bernard Shaw
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TabascoOne
- Redshirt
- Posts: 49
- Joined: 2003-04-03 12:28am
Re: But Loyal to Their Own
Livin' on a Prayer III
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.
-anonymous
North Municipal Junior High
Tokyo-3
October 20, 2015
7:45 AM Local Time
Kaname doodled on her pocket notebook, listening to the chatter of her classmates as the assembled teens waited for the beginning of another day. It was strange in a way, how quickly things returned to normal. The first few days after the attacks had been tense, with news scarce and fear abundant. But as time passed, the perpetrators confirmed either deceased or fled, it slowly became treated as just another bump on the road by most.
“I suppose compared to building-sized aliens rampaging through downtown, a thing like a terrorist incident
is small potatoes,” she mused.
“True, it isn't like we haven't seen parts of town get leveled before,” Hikari agreed. The two girls sat across from each other, the class president alertly watching the goings on while the two chatted. “Though with the Angels, it's nothing personal, you're just in the way. I'm not sure if that's better or not.”
Better, definitely better, the other girl decided. Getting angry at an Angel was like being pissed at a typhoon, it did what it did, no malice needed. Seeing someone staring back at you over a gunsight, knowing they were measuring you for a bullet or worse was a whole different proposition.
“Mmm. Maybe.” Kaname took her own look around the sparsely populated classroom. Aside from them, there were only seven classmates sharing the room. Granted, there would be a scattering of late arrivals, but at this time last year there would have been three times as many. The initial torrent of relocations had started to slow once it became obvious that the Angels might attack anywhere, not just Tokyo-3, but the losses had picked right back up over the last few days.
Her gaze returned to the girl across from her, Hikari gave her a knowing smile. “Remember back in August? The big party we had when Itsuki, Tenjo, and Harumi left?”
“And the card we all signed for each of them on their last day,” Kaname nodded. It seemed like such a big thing at the time, even though she hadn't been close to any of the three. Or much of anyone, to be fair. But having more than one classmate leave in the middle of the semester was unheard of, it was sure to be talked about for weeks afterwards. Four days later, the war began. No one planned to do any such thing now.
The two girls Hikari spent most of her time with before were among those who went away, explaining her somber mood. Not to mention what she was doing talking with her of all people in the first place. Though never hostile, the two girls had never had much to say to each other prior to the arrival of the second wave of pilots. Since then, they had bumped into each other while visiting their respective pilot friends, but even now they could hardly be called friendly.
Desperate times and all I guess, Kaname thought. With their friends either gone or tucked beneath a kilometer of rock and armor, who else was there? Actually, that was probably unfair, I wasn't like the class president's presence was a chore. Of course, she knew the other girl was a lot nicer than the stern disciplinarian face she wore in class just from previous contact at Misato's or after school. But even knowing that, it was still a surprise how much more personable Hikari was, once they had gotten past a little initial awkwardness of two people who kind of know each other but not really enough to be sure of common ground.
“I heard they're going to merge us with class 2-B starting next week,” Kaname ventured experimentally.
Hikari smirked, confirming the rumor. “That's the plan. I don't know who they're planning to put in charge, but...”
“We can hope,” her compatriot agreed. On the one hand, their existing homeroom teacher was as sweet an old man as you could ever hope to meet. On the other, as Hikari had earlier pointed out, they would be taking placement tests next year, and endless stories about pre-Impact life would be of microscopic value then. With any luck at all, the school administration would take the opportunity to put the poor man out to pasture and bring in someone who knew their business.
“I'm not too worried, their original class president is one of those who left, and the replacement is more than willing to let me have the job, so no need for a vote. With any luck, we'll walk in next Monday and have a few new faces around here for a change.”
“Sounds good,” Kaname agreed as the scuff of tennis shoes on tile signaled the later arrivals. Turned away from the door, her only warning that something was out of the ordinary was the dawning shock on Hikari's face.
“Asuka! What on Earth are you doing here?!”
“This is Japan, they don't give anyone a day off without a death certificate,” the redhead grumbled as she hobbled down the aisle. “A little emptier than usual, did we have some more people jump ship?” she queried, propping her crutches against her desk.
Leave it to Asuka to cut straight to the heart of the matter, Kaname snorted. At the front of the room, Rei took her seat, followed by Sagara making his way to the back of the room. And that was it, the sum total of the Nerv presence. The happy chatter halted like truck ramming a bridge abutment, their classmates regarding the two girls in horror, the obvious question visible on everyone's face.
Hikari took it on herself to answer it. “Asuka, where are the others? Did they get hurt, or...” the girl stopped, unable to finish the thought.
“On duty. They sent the wounded up here to keep us busy. The mobile wounded anyway, Roberts is still down there.” She shrugged. “Could've been worse.”
The tension in the room faded, side conversations discussing the latest information quietly beginning. Kaname and Hikari shared a look. Casually, the class president rose from her borrowed seat, making her way to her friend. The information was nothing she didn't already know, of course. The day after the attacks, she had heard the whole story from the other participants, those parts which she hadn't lived through herself, anyway. Even if she hadn't, while unauthorized cell phones were useless in the geofront for obvious reasons, email contact was still possible. A quick note to her friends combined with the fact she knew the pilots' watch schedule nearly as well as they did told her all she needed. The four currently down in the 'gravel pit', to use Nami's nickname, would remain on duty for another eight days until the next shift changeover. By then, Roberts and Mana should be out of the hospital and available for light duty, while hopefully by that time the issues with Eva-00 would be ironed out and Rei could return as well. Asuka would of course be ready long before then, given her relatively minor injury.
Kaname sighed, resting her chin on her hand. It was going to be a -long- week. The thought prompted an ironic smile. As little as two months ago, a week without anyone to really talk to besides her family overseas would have been just another day in the life. Now it was a hollow feeling to think she wouldn't see either of her two friends for so long, even before there was always at least one off duty. How things change...
Her attention turned away from the trio of girls centered around Asuka, moving back to catch a look at Sagara, Sgt. Sagara now, she'd been informed just the other day. As always, he was alertly watching those near his two charges, though that was much easier in Rei's case given the ring of empty seats around her. Still, he didn't seem very different from her previous impressions, at least on the surface. Even when Kensuke wandered over to chat with his fellow appreciator of things that went 'bang', he maintained the same focused, constipated-looking if one was unkind, look as always.
After she was released to go home, Kaname made sure to reassure her father and sister she was fine and the recent events had nothing to do with her, which was at least technically true. She wondered about that decision, now. No one would blame her for an instant if she decided to leave, it wasn't as though -she- had signed on to shot at like the others who had shared her ordeal. She might not like her father, and he might not be much of one either, but he wasn't a monster. If he knew his eldest daughter was at risk, he would gladly bring her back to New York, and no matter how uncomfortable living with him again would be, it beat dying. Better still, she could live with her little sister again, rather than just talk over a phone. That by itself would make up for a multitude of discomforts and inconveniences. There were even a couple of friends she might be able to look up, Tori would definitely be happy to see her again, even if Kaname had been a little lax about writing lately...
But she didn't. Instead, she assured them both that she was perfectly healthy, perfectly safe, that the security teams had wrapped everything up neatly, that reinforcements were on the way to make the city even safer, and finally she wasn't worried or willing to leave. The amount of hair splitting needed to give those technically factual reassurances grated on her basically straightforward nature nearly as much as outright lying would have, but she had done it. Would keep doing it, for that matter.
The teenager wondered at first, especially after a conversation like that, why she bothered. Why she was so hell-bent on staying in a place that most reasonable people were fleeing at top speed? A chance encounter with an old friend changed all that.
When she moved here, the moving company hadn't been very selective about what got packed. Old book reports, required reading, all sorts of junk was mixed in with her things she might actually have a use for again. But she'd kept most of it all the same, neatly stacking it in a box out of the way. She hadn't more than glanced at any of it in months, but with her friends unavailable and nothing much else to do, Kaname had decided to shuffle through it with a view to actually cleaning the mess out. Most of the schoolwork went straight into the trash, excepting a poetry notebook she had had to compile and rather liked. The books were harder, it went against her grain to just throw them away, whether she would ever touch one again or not. On the other hand, she couldn't quite see a great demand for English language copies of Lord of the Flies, Catcher in the Rye, or Macbeth here in Japan. Shrugging, she stacked them aside with an eye towards shipping them home. Ayame might need them someday for -her- classes, after all. Digging deeper, she felt her fingertips hit the bottom of the box. With the end in sight, she shifted the next pile onto her lap.
7th grade yearbook, she'd wondered were that had gone. Keep.
Essay on early modern textile manufacture for world history. Toss.
Silver medal for 100 meter dash in the 6th grade sports rally. Keep.
'Reflective essays' for art. Burn, and wash hands after touching.
The next find made her pause. It was another book they had been assigned, but one she had actually enjoyed at the time, for a change. Of course the cover art didn't hurt, a nice rendition of a sword-wielding hottie leading a troop of horsemen at a gallop through light woods. In the distance, a faint outline of armored men and horses stretched across the horizon in the open field before them.
“That isn't quite how I remember that scene playing out,” Kaname muttered. Horribly impractical, come to think of it. Sousuke would be appalled. He would find a well placed dagger or a stealthily planted demolition charge infinitely more effective in achieving victory than a headlong charge against a prepared enemy. Thumbing quickly to the correct chapter, passing penciled annotations and comments in the margins, she found the run up to the Battle of Agincourt.
King Henry was traveling from campfire to campfire the night before battle, pretending to be a common soldier as he gauged the mood of the army. It was bleak, but defiant, a feeling she could relate to. Flipping forward a few pages, she halted, and paused to read.
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's Day.
She mused for long minutes, leaving the book open on her crossed legs. She had always liked that speech, even when she first read it. Much better than the earlier one, the 'once more unto the breach' sequence. That one was a little bloodthirsty for her taste, but this...somehow she could see it.
There were friends at her old school she might have been willing to stand by in dangerous times. One, maybe two if she stretched it. But they were people she had known for years, since she had arrived there from Japan in the case of one. Never anyone whom she had met just a month ago. But there it was in plain black and white, the feeling she had whenever the idea of being separated from her newfound friends entered her mind. The same motive that impelled her to remain in spite of common sense arguing vehemently otherwise. Not glory, or holding her womanhood cheaply, none of that. But the idea of walking away, of leaving her newfound friends to their fate, was as abhorrent to her as doing so to Ayame would have been.
So here she was, she thought with a wry smirk. Sanity is overrrated. Returning her attention to the present, Kaname opened her bag, putting the thoughts aside.
Nerv Infirmary, Trauma Ward
10:14 AM
“Come on, its not like there's anything better to do!”
“Nothin' doin'. We've done this three times today already, I'm tired of it.”
“One more time...” he wheedled, riffling the cards in his hands.
The cold, level stare of his roommate halted his effort in its tracks, one-eyed or not. “Roberts, this is the kind of conversation that can only end in a gunshot,” Mana informed him from her seat beside his bed. “And before you say we're unarmed, remember that -I'm- mobile, and you're -not-.”
“Only halfway, cyclops,” the boy rejoined. “I was at the last physical therapy session too, remember?”
“'And in the kingdom of the blind, the one eyed woman is queen.' Remember that if you want to live to see lunchtime!”
Sam muttered that that was hardly an incentive given their usual fare, but his heart wasn't in it. Neither was Mana's for that matter, all threats aside. Accident or not, both had long since come to the conclusion that having the other around had made their stay a much less arduous experience than it ever would have been alone. Especially now that everyone was back in school or at work, leaving their sole visitor for most of the day the nurse who dropped in every hour or so. They kept each other company instead through the long afternoons. It was easier now that his painkillers were tapered back so he was alert most of the day. There were still entirely too many tubes plugged into him for comfort, but from what Mana had said, that was a small price to pay. As little as ninety years ago, a gut wound like his would've been a death sentence, and a slow and agonizing one at that. Maybe that was one of the reasons he didn't mind having a roommate who periodically tweaked his metaphorical nose. Banter and fun were nice, but if he asked a serious question, a serious answer was exactly what he got.
“And to think I was wondering how such a nice girl wound up in the Navy. Shows how much I was paying attention.”
“If you still thought I was a nice girl after this long, you deserve anything you get!” Mana chuckled. “But then I guess it wasn't all that different than how you wound up driving a monster war machine. It was the best of a bad bargain.”
Sam nodded, genuinely interested. So far as he knew, the subject had never come up with any of the Pilots. Major Katsuragi almost certainly knew, and her two fellow guards probably did as well, but she was quick to steer the conversation elsewhere anytime the conversation veered in that direction.
“And?” he prompted when she paused. For a moment it looked like she might do it again, but with a shrug she forged ahead.
“It's probably as good an idea as any to start at the beginning. Mana Kirishima is the only name I remember, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't the name I was born with. I was maybe two when Second Impact kicked off, not that I remember any of that, thankfully. I might have been a military brat, probably from the base at Yokohama. You don't see all that many blue-eyed Japanese wandering around, after all. Or maybe the kid of some foreign businessman on a long term stay who started a family over here. Who knows, after the tsunamis hit, and Old Tokyo went under, none of that mattered anymore. Either way, up north of what used to be Chiba a truck driver dropped me off with a retired couple he knew who's kids had already left home. No doubt there were enough starving, dying people back then, so why he went out of his way for me I don't know. Maybe he couldn't bring himself to add one more to the list.”
“Probably charmed him into taking you along, unless I miss my guess.”
“That would be quite a trick for a two year old, but I can be pretty cute when I want to be,” Mana admitted with a grin, demonstrating her point.
“Which isn't often...”
“Who's telling this story? Anyway. The couple, obviously named the Kirishimas, named me after a sister the wife had who died when she was young. I don't want to sound like I'm complaining, I owe them everything and they did their best with me. I can't ask for more than that. But it's asking a lot for a pair of going on seventy year olds to keep up with an...active two year old, and I'm sure I took a hell of a toll on them.”
“Growing up in Japan back then wasn't exactly fun packed, not with so many professionals and services just -gone-, never mind the infrastructure damage. I remember when the first road repair crew came through town, I was about nine. Even then, they were just there to fix the bridge, they said up front the road wasn't their problem and they didn't have to materials to fix it even if it was. Didn't make anyone happy, to say the least, but the situation was what it was. The schools were about the same way, the ones that got damaged in the earthquakes were closed and left abandoned, the rest of us shoehorned in wherever we had space. There was one teacher, and if we were lucky an assistant, for about forty of us, so it could get pretty wild when the adults were occupied elsewhere. Especially with some of the kids who came out of the orphanages. Yakuza material in the making, looking back now.”
Mana paused, as though remembering. Noticing his questioning look after a long moment, she shook herself. “Anyway, I can't complain too much. It was like that everywhere, outside of Potemkin Villages like Tokyo-2 and -3. And as I got into junior high, it was getting a little better every year.”
Sam nodded, listening quietly. It was different than when their teacher spun his tales about life before the cataclysm. The scenery was a lot better, which of course helped. But the subject was just as important. He could relate to this, in a way that earlier times simply didn't resonate. Neither of them had ever known a time when humanity hadn't been one step from the abyss, tales of the lost '90s prosperity weren't tangibly real the way they might be with someone even ten years older. Back home, food rationing had only been phased out in 2009, fuel rationing had started phasing out in some states two years ago, Oklahoma was actually due next spring. True, as far into the interior as his home was, tsunamis were something seen only on the evening news, but the area wasn't called Tornado Alley for nothing. The consequences of nature gone berserk were nothing new for him.
“So things were looking up. And then I get a call at school that Jiro, my adoptive father, was in the hospital for a stroke. A bad one.” Mana sighed, eyes downcast. “He lost control down pretty much his entire right side, even trying to talk with half his facial muscles gone was a struggle. But he lived, and once they got him stabilized we brought him home. Naïve that I was, I thought our troubles were over. Medically, I was sort of right, financially not so much. Japan has always had government funded healthcare, so it wasn't like we were staring at a mountain of debt from his treatments. But with Dad out of work for a good while, and Mom staying home to take care of him, the bills were starting to stack up anyway. Before we always had the pension plus the part time stuff they both did, and it was enough, even if things got tight some months. But without that extra, one pension isn't nearly enough for three people to live on.”
“Your mother didn't have a pension too?” Sam questioned.
“She was always a housewife, they were traditional like that. Nice for me growing up, but it sure didn't do our finances any favors. Either way, I could see the writing on the wall. It was summer vacation by this time, and it was obvious Dad was as good as he was going to get, and that wasn't nearly enough to go back to work. We couldn't afford a nurse obviously, and with Mom taking care of him that left me.” Mana gave a bitter laugh. “That didn't go over well, even though I knew the numbers as well as they did. One thing they were always adamant about was that I not have a job during school months, though,” she admitted wryly, “I bent that a bit by filling in for friends sometimes. I don't know if they ever found out, but if so they decided to wink at it. But in order to make up the difference, I had to drop out entirely and work full time, and -that- made them hit the ceiling. So, I took option 2, and here I am.”
“And they were happier that you went and enlisted?!” Sam exclaimed. “And while we're at it, wait a minute. The UN accepts recruits at 16. You were just barely out of middle school. So how...”
“Oh, that's easy,” the girl shrugged airily. “I lied, they're also notorious about taking anyone who will swear they're 16 and sign on the dotted line.” At his further incredulity, she added “And no, if anything they were even more pissed. Remember, they were always a little old fashioned, with the whole housewife thing. Me joining the military, any military, just about gave Dad another stroke. But it was the only way. I get better pay than anything I could manage outside with only junior high to my credit, and I've been keeping up on the coursework and vocational stuff. One of the UN's big selling points has always been that you come out with skills other than pulling a trigger. So far, that's been true. By the time my contract expires in a couple years, I should be just about where I would if I had gone on to high school.” She shrugged again. “Not exactly my first career choice, but it pays everyone's bills and I turned out to be pretty good at it.” A grimace this time, “I admit, I didn't expect to literally be going back to school in the bargain.”
“Hmph. Welcome to life, I guess. I think when I came here I was expecting something like those old Saturday morning cartoons.” At her smiling nod he continued, “The ones with giant robots fighting evil madmens' creations or genocidal aliens, you know? So far, it's been a lot less Voltron and a lot more Blackhawk Down than I bargained for. Maybe I should complain?” he asked impishly.
Mana barked a laugh. “You get right on that. All right, one more time for the fans,” she agreed, taking up the deck of cards for another round.
------------------
It was lunchtime in Tokyo-3, a time treasured by all of its inhabitants, but none more so than its dwindling student population. Even as families unafilliated with Nerv moved on, often accompanied by the dependents of those who were, the few dedicated teaching staff who remained tried to keep their pupils' educations from slipping behind. From Kaname's perspective, they were annoyingly successful.
She carried her own lunch (prepared herself, there was no way she was going to brave the press around the cafeteria tables) outside to the usual meeting spot on the roof. The wind was starting to pick up from the east today, blowing faintly salt-tinged air from the not too distant sea. Tucking her hair behind an ear, she quickly scanned the roof.
“Small crowd today,” she murmured, making her way over. Of course, there were barely over a hundred students left, out of a good five times that many not so long ago. But even her crew was looking pretty depopulated. She noticed Asuka and Hikari down in the courtyard, sitting at a table with a 3rd year girl Kaname didn't recognize offhand. The three seemed cheerful, chatting and generally catching up. The pilot was of course doing most of the talking, but neither of the other girls seemed to mind, practically hanging on every word. As far as she could tell, Asuka took recent events in stride, injury and all. Hard to say for sure, given the aggressive, omni-competent persona she put on, but if there was a problem the pilot was hiding it well.
“Hey, Sagara,” she greeted, tucking her skirt underneath her as she sat. And in this corner...
The thought trailed off, not really needing to be completed. Sousuke and Rei were the sole occupants of the patch of rooftop that had become the de facto meeting place for the pilots and company. The group's dynamic was as different as its location. Where the one was chatty, almost boisterous, this one was calm, almost solemn. Not so much enjoying the present moment as waiting for the next one, if you wanted to be a little philosophical. At the moment, she didn't, so after noting Rei's latest reading material, a manual for something called a Type-27 linear accelerator, and turned her attention back to the boy across from her.
“You know, if you're not careful people are going to start wondering if you're sweet on one of those two,” Kaname remarked. “With the whole eagle-eyed guardian thing and all.”
Sousuke made a confused sort or noise, like a cross between a grunt and snort. “I don't follow. With Kirishima unavailable, I am the only on-site security available.” He frowned mightily. “My task would be vastly simplified had Soryu-Langley been willing to relocate here. Unfortunately, she declined.”
The fact that she and Rei can barely stand each other might have a little to do with that, his companion mused. Not anyone's fault, per se, though Asuka's early attempts at friendship/intimidation hadn't helped, but still. “Didn't they reinforce the security around the school? Surely you can take a break -sometimes-.”
“I can't afford to rely on that. For planning purposes, I must assume that all other security is either neutralized or compromised. Anything less would leave dangerous assumptions which may prove unfounded.”
The thought occurred to Kaname that if she weren't aware of what exactly his job description was, she would have recommended he be sized for a straitjacket as soon as possible after that little speech. Fortunately for everyone, including the poor souls who would have had to carry out that task, she was intimately familiar with his role in their lives.
“On an unrelated issue, there is a problem you may be able to assist me with.” Sousuke began to rummage in a pants pocket. “I uncovered information not long ago that you might be interested in. Ordinarily I would seek Kirishima's opinion since this involves aspects of civilian life I am unfamiliar with, but under the circumstances I will leave it to your judgment.” With that he handed her a folded piece of paper, probably pulled from a spiral notebook. Undeniably curious, Kaname unfolded it, quickly scanning the tersely worded document.
“I overheard a conversation last month in which your name was prominently, if unflatteringly, mentioned. I would have ignored it, but a reference to the worst of the incidents defaming you caught my attention. From there, I began back tracking the information when I had the chance. Some of the informants needed persuading, but eventually I was able to prove beyond any doubts I might have had.”
Kaname was tempted to ask just what kind of persuasion might have been needed, but only slightly. What she didn't know, she couldn't be arrested for. “Mizuki Inabe, huh? No surprise there,” she snorted. “Bitch. She evacuated already, I don't suppose...” she cocked her head at Sousuke.
“Not without pulling school records. As I said, ordinarily I would have followed Kirishima's recommendation, but ...” he paused, searching for the right word. “I suppose we can call it payment on a debt. A down payment at least.”
The girl looked back into his level, firmly sincere gray eyes for a moment, then refolded the sheet. “Thank you, Sagara,” she responded quietly. “That means quite a bit. Not to mention you just made my week.” She loosed an ironic chuckle. “If you have any other 'civilian problems' you need help with, I'm happy to oblige.”
He nodded, taking the statement at face value. “I will make sure to remember that.” He returned to his vigil, leaving Kaname to shake her head, and unpack her meal.
Sanity is overrated.
Author's notes
Finally. I was planning on releasing a section every two weeks or less, we can all see how well that turned out. But such is life. The only other thing of note is that I picked the chapter title for a reason. I like the song well enough, true, but with the completion of this section we are in fact half way there.
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.
-anonymous
North Municipal Junior High
Tokyo-3
October 20, 2015
7:45 AM Local Time
Kaname doodled on her pocket notebook, listening to the chatter of her classmates as the assembled teens waited for the beginning of another day. It was strange in a way, how quickly things returned to normal. The first few days after the attacks had been tense, with news scarce and fear abundant. But as time passed, the perpetrators confirmed either deceased or fled, it slowly became treated as just another bump on the road by most.
“I suppose compared to building-sized aliens rampaging through downtown, a thing like a terrorist incident
is small potatoes,” she mused.
“True, it isn't like we haven't seen parts of town get leveled before,” Hikari agreed. The two girls sat across from each other, the class president alertly watching the goings on while the two chatted. “Though with the Angels, it's nothing personal, you're just in the way. I'm not sure if that's better or not.”
Better, definitely better, the other girl decided. Getting angry at an Angel was like being pissed at a typhoon, it did what it did, no malice needed. Seeing someone staring back at you over a gunsight, knowing they were measuring you for a bullet or worse was a whole different proposition.
“Mmm. Maybe.” Kaname took her own look around the sparsely populated classroom. Aside from them, there were only seven classmates sharing the room. Granted, there would be a scattering of late arrivals, but at this time last year there would have been three times as many. The initial torrent of relocations had started to slow once it became obvious that the Angels might attack anywhere, not just Tokyo-3, but the losses had picked right back up over the last few days.
Her gaze returned to the girl across from her, Hikari gave her a knowing smile. “Remember back in August? The big party we had when Itsuki, Tenjo, and Harumi left?”
“And the card we all signed for each of them on their last day,” Kaname nodded. It seemed like such a big thing at the time, even though she hadn't been close to any of the three. Or much of anyone, to be fair. But having more than one classmate leave in the middle of the semester was unheard of, it was sure to be talked about for weeks afterwards. Four days later, the war began. No one planned to do any such thing now.
The two girls Hikari spent most of her time with before were among those who went away, explaining her somber mood. Not to mention what she was doing talking with her of all people in the first place. Though never hostile, the two girls had never had much to say to each other prior to the arrival of the second wave of pilots. Since then, they had bumped into each other while visiting their respective pilot friends, but even now they could hardly be called friendly.
Desperate times and all I guess, Kaname thought. With their friends either gone or tucked beneath a kilometer of rock and armor, who else was there? Actually, that was probably unfair, I wasn't like the class president's presence was a chore. Of course, she knew the other girl was a lot nicer than the stern disciplinarian face she wore in class just from previous contact at Misato's or after school. But even knowing that, it was still a surprise how much more personable Hikari was, once they had gotten past a little initial awkwardness of two people who kind of know each other but not really enough to be sure of common ground.
“I heard they're going to merge us with class 2-B starting next week,” Kaname ventured experimentally.
Hikari smirked, confirming the rumor. “That's the plan. I don't know who they're planning to put in charge, but...”
“We can hope,” her compatriot agreed. On the one hand, their existing homeroom teacher was as sweet an old man as you could ever hope to meet. On the other, as Hikari had earlier pointed out, they would be taking placement tests next year, and endless stories about pre-Impact life would be of microscopic value then. With any luck at all, the school administration would take the opportunity to put the poor man out to pasture and bring in someone who knew their business.
“I'm not too worried, their original class president is one of those who left, and the replacement is more than willing to let me have the job, so no need for a vote. With any luck, we'll walk in next Monday and have a few new faces around here for a change.”
“Sounds good,” Kaname agreed as the scuff of tennis shoes on tile signaled the later arrivals. Turned away from the door, her only warning that something was out of the ordinary was the dawning shock on Hikari's face.
“Asuka! What on Earth are you doing here?!”
“This is Japan, they don't give anyone a day off without a death certificate,” the redhead grumbled as she hobbled down the aisle. “A little emptier than usual, did we have some more people jump ship?” she queried, propping her crutches against her desk.
Leave it to Asuka to cut straight to the heart of the matter, Kaname snorted. At the front of the room, Rei took her seat, followed by Sagara making his way to the back of the room. And that was it, the sum total of the Nerv presence. The happy chatter halted like truck ramming a bridge abutment, their classmates regarding the two girls in horror, the obvious question visible on everyone's face.
Hikari took it on herself to answer it. “Asuka, where are the others? Did they get hurt, or...” the girl stopped, unable to finish the thought.
“On duty. They sent the wounded up here to keep us busy. The mobile wounded anyway, Roberts is still down there.” She shrugged. “Could've been worse.”
The tension in the room faded, side conversations discussing the latest information quietly beginning. Kaname and Hikari shared a look. Casually, the class president rose from her borrowed seat, making her way to her friend. The information was nothing she didn't already know, of course. The day after the attacks, she had heard the whole story from the other participants, those parts which she hadn't lived through herself, anyway. Even if she hadn't, while unauthorized cell phones were useless in the geofront for obvious reasons, email contact was still possible. A quick note to her friends combined with the fact she knew the pilots' watch schedule nearly as well as they did told her all she needed. The four currently down in the 'gravel pit', to use Nami's nickname, would remain on duty for another eight days until the next shift changeover. By then, Roberts and Mana should be out of the hospital and available for light duty, while hopefully by that time the issues with Eva-00 would be ironed out and Rei could return as well. Asuka would of course be ready long before then, given her relatively minor injury.
Kaname sighed, resting her chin on her hand. It was going to be a -long- week. The thought prompted an ironic smile. As little as two months ago, a week without anyone to really talk to besides her family overseas would have been just another day in the life. Now it was a hollow feeling to think she wouldn't see either of her two friends for so long, even before there was always at least one off duty. How things change...
Her attention turned away from the trio of girls centered around Asuka, moving back to catch a look at Sagara, Sgt. Sagara now, she'd been informed just the other day. As always, he was alertly watching those near his two charges, though that was much easier in Rei's case given the ring of empty seats around her. Still, he didn't seem very different from her previous impressions, at least on the surface. Even when Kensuke wandered over to chat with his fellow appreciator of things that went 'bang', he maintained the same focused, constipated-looking if one was unkind, look as always.
After she was released to go home, Kaname made sure to reassure her father and sister she was fine and the recent events had nothing to do with her, which was at least technically true. She wondered about that decision, now. No one would blame her for an instant if she decided to leave, it wasn't as though -she- had signed on to shot at like the others who had shared her ordeal. She might not like her father, and he might not be much of one either, but he wasn't a monster. If he knew his eldest daughter was at risk, he would gladly bring her back to New York, and no matter how uncomfortable living with him again would be, it beat dying. Better still, she could live with her little sister again, rather than just talk over a phone. That by itself would make up for a multitude of discomforts and inconveniences. There were even a couple of friends she might be able to look up, Tori would definitely be happy to see her again, even if Kaname had been a little lax about writing lately...
But she didn't. Instead, she assured them both that she was perfectly healthy, perfectly safe, that the security teams had wrapped everything up neatly, that reinforcements were on the way to make the city even safer, and finally she wasn't worried or willing to leave. The amount of hair splitting needed to give those technically factual reassurances grated on her basically straightforward nature nearly as much as outright lying would have, but she had done it. Would keep doing it, for that matter.
The teenager wondered at first, especially after a conversation like that, why she bothered. Why she was so hell-bent on staying in a place that most reasonable people were fleeing at top speed? A chance encounter with an old friend changed all that.
When she moved here, the moving company hadn't been very selective about what got packed. Old book reports, required reading, all sorts of junk was mixed in with her things she might actually have a use for again. But she'd kept most of it all the same, neatly stacking it in a box out of the way. She hadn't more than glanced at any of it in months, but with her friends unavailable and nothing much else to do, Kaname had decided to shuffle through it with a view to actually cleaning the mess out. Most of the schoolwork went straight into the trash, excepting a poetry notebook she had had to compile and rather liked. The books were harder, it went against her grain to just throw them away, whether she would ever touch one again or not. On the other hand, she couldn't quite see a great demand for English language copies of Lord of the Flies, Catcher in the Rye, or Macbeth here in Japan. Shrugging, she stacked them aside with an eye towards shipping them home. Ayame might need them someday for -her- classes, after all. Digging deeper, she felt her fingertips hit the bottom of the box. With the end in sight, she shifted the next pile onto her lap.
7th grade yearbook, she'd wondered were that had gone. Keep.
Essay on early modern textile manufacture for world history. Toss.
Silver medal for 100 meter dash in the 6th grade sports rally. Keep.
'Reflective essays' for art. Burn, and wash hands after touching.
The next find made her pause. It was another book they had been assigned, but one she had actually enjoyed at the time, for a change. Of course the cover art didn't hurt, a nice rendition of a sword-wielding hottie leading a troop of horsemen at a gallop through light woods. In the distance, a faint outline of armored men and horses stretched across the horizon in the open field before them.
“That isn't quite how I remember that scene playing out,” Kaname muttered. Horribly impractical, come to think of it. Sousuke would be appalled. He would find a well placed dagger or a stealthily planted demolition charge infinitely more effective in achieving victory than a headlong charge against a prepared enemy. Thumbing quickly to the correct chapter, passing penciled annotations and comments in the margins, she found the run up to the Battle of Agincourt.
King Henry was traveling from campfire to campfire the night before battle, pretending to be a common soldier as he gauged the mood of the army. It was bleak, but defiant, a feeling she could relate to. Flipping forward a few pages, she halted, and paused to read.
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's Day.
She mused for long minutes, leaving the book open on her crossed legs. She had always liked that speech, even when she first read it. Much better than the earlier one, the 'once more unto the breach' sequence. That one was a little bloodthirsty for her taste, but this...somehow she could see it.
There were friends at her old school she might have been willing to stand by in dangerous times. One, maybe two if she stretched it. But they were people she had known for years, since she had arrived there from Japan in the case of one. Never anyone whom she had met just a month ago. But there it was in plain black and white, the feeling she had whenever the idea of being separated from her newfound friends entered her mind. The same motive that impelled her to remain in spite of common sense arguing vehemently otherwise. Not glory, or holding her womanhood cheaply, none of that. But the idea of walking away, of leaving her newfound friends to their fate, was as abhorrent to her as doing so to Ayame would have been.
So here she was, she thought with a wry smirk. Sanity is overrrated. Returning her attention to the present, Kaname opened her bag, putting the thoughts aside.
Nerv Infirmary, Trauma Ward
10:14 AM
“Come on, its not like there's anything better to do!”
“Nothin' doin'. We've done this three times today already, I'm tired of it.”
“One more time...” he wheedled, riffling the cards in his hands.
The cold, level stare of his roommate halted his effort in its tracks, one-eyed or not. “Roberts, this is the kind of conversation that can only end in a gunshot,” Mana informed him from her seat beside his bed. “And before you say we're unarmed, remember that -I'm- mobile, and you're -not-.”
“Only halfway, cyclops,” the boy rejoined. “I was at the last physical therapy session too, remember?”
“'And in the kingdom of the blind, the one eyed woman is queen.' Remember that if you want to live to see lunchtime!”
Sam muttered that that was hardly an incentive given their usual fare, but his heart wasn't in it. Neither was Mana's for that matter, all threats aside. Accident or not, both had long since come to the conclusion that having the other around had made their stay a much less arduous experience than it ever would have been alone. Especially now that everyone was back in school or at work, leaving their sole visitor for most of the day the nurse who dropped in every hour or so. They kept each other company instead through the long afternoons. It was easier now that his painkillers were tapered back so he was alert most of the day. There were still entirely too many tubes plugged into him for comfort, but from what Mana had said, that was a small price to pay. As little as ninety years ago, a gut wound like his would've been a death sentence, and a slow and agonizing one at that. Maybe that was one of the reasons he didn't mind having a roommate who periodically tweaked his metaphorical nose. Banter and fun were nice, but if he asked a serious question, a serious answer was exactly what he got.
“And to think I was wondering how such a nice girl wound up in the Navy. Shows how much I was paying attention.”
“If you still thought I was a nice girl after this long, you deserve anything you get!” Mana chuckled. “But then I guess it wasn't all that different than how you wound up driving a monster war machine. It was the best of a bad bargain.”
Sam nodded, genuinely interested. So far as he knew, the subject had never come up with any of the Pilots. Major Katsuragi almost certainly knew, and her two fellow guards probably did as well, but she was quick to steer the conversation elsewhere anytime the conversation veered in that direction.
“And?” he prompted when she paused. For a moment it looked like she might do it again, but with a shrug she forged ahead.
“It's probably as good an idea as any to start at the beginning. Mana Kirishima is the only name I remember, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't the name I was born with. I was maybe two when Second Impact kicked off, not that I remember any of that, thankfully. I might have been a military brat, probably from the base at Yokohama. You don't see all that many blue-eyed Japanese wandering around, after all. Or maybe the kid of some foreign businessman on a long term stay who started a family over here. Who knows, after the tsunamis hit, and Old Tokyo went under, none of that mattered anymore. Either way, up north of what used to be Chiba a truck driver dropped me off with a retired couple he knew who's kids had already left home. No doubt there were enough starving, dying people back then, so why he went out of his way for me I don't know. Maybe he couldn't bring himself to add one more to the list.”
“Probably charmed him into taking you along, unless I miss my guess.”
“That would be quite a trick for a two year old, but I can be pretty cute when I want to be,” Mana admitted with a grin, demonstrating her point.
“Which isn't often...”
“Who's telling this story? Anyway. The couple, obviously named the Kirishimas, named me after a sister the wife had who died when she was young. I don't want to sound like I'm complaining, I owe them everything and they did their best with me. I can't ask for more than that. But it's asking a lot for a pair of going on seventy year olds to keep up with an...active two year old, and I'm sure I took a hell of a toll on them.”
“Growing up in Japan back then wasn't exactly fun packed, not with so many professionals and services just -gone-, never mind the infrastructure damage. I remember when the first road repair crew came through town, I was about nine. Even then, they were just there to fix the bridge, they said up front the road wasn't their problem and they didn't have to materials to fix it even if it was. Didn't make anyone happy, to say the least, but the situation was what it was. The schools were about the same way, the ones that got damaged in the earthquakes were closed and left abandoned, the rest of us shoehorned in wherever we had space. There was one teacher, and if we were lucky an assistant, for about forty of us, so it could get pretty wild when the adults were occupied elsewhere. Especially with some of the kids who came out of the orphanages. Yakuza material in the making, looking back now.”
Mana paused, as though remembering. Noticing his questioning look after a long moment, she shook herself. “Anyway, I can't complain too much. It was like that everywhere, outside of Potemkin Villages like Tokyo-2 and -3. And as I got into junior high, it was getting a little better every year.”
Sam nodded, listening quietly. It was different than when their teacher spun his tales about life before the cataclysm. The scenery was a lot better, which of course helped. But the subject was just as important. He could relate to this, in a way that earlier times simply didn't resonate. Neither of them had ever known a time when humanity hadn't been one step from the abyss, tales of the lost '90s prosperity weren't tangibly real the way they might be with someone even ten years older. Back home, food rationing had only been phased out in 2009, fuel rationing had started phasing out in some states two years ago, Oklahoma was actually due next spring. True, as far into the interior as his home was, tsunamis were something seen only on the evening news, but the area wasn't called Tornado Alley for nothing. The consequences of nature gone berserk were nothing new for him.
“So things were looking up. And then I get a call at school that Jiro, my adoptive father, was in the hospital for a stroke. A bad one.” Mana sighed, eyes downcast. “He lost control down pretty much his entire right side, even trying to talk with half his facial muscles gone was a struggle. But he lived, and once they got him stabilized we brought him home. Naïve that I was, I thought our troubles were over. Medically, I was sort of right, financially not so much. Japan has always had government funded healthcare, so it wasn't like we were staring at a mountain of debt from his treatments. But with Dad out of work for a good while, and Mom staying home to take care of him, the bills were starting to stack up anyway. Before we always had the pension plus the part time stuff they both did, and it was enough, even if things got tight some months. But without that extra, one pension isn't nearly enough for three people to live on.”
“Your mother didn't have a pension too?” Sam questioned.
“She was always a housewife, they were traditional like that. Nice for me growing up, but it sure didn't do our finances any favors. Either way, I could see the writing on the wall. It was summer vacation by this time, and it was obvious Dad was as good as he was going to get, and that wasn't nearly enough to go back to work. We couldn't afford a nurse obviously, and with Mom taking care of him that left me.” Mana gave a bitter laugh. “That didn't go over well, even though I knew the numbers as well as they did. One thing they were always adamant about was that I not have a job during school months, though,” she admitted wryly, “I bent that a bit by filling in for friends sometimes. I don't know if they ever found out, but if so they decided to wink at it. But in order to make up the difference, I had to drop out entirely and work full time, and -that- made them hit the ceiling. So, I took option 2, and here I am.”
“And they were happier that you went and enlisted?!” Sam exclaimed. “And while we're at it, wait a minute. The UN accepts recruits at 16. You were just barely out of middle school. So how...”
“Oh, that's easy,” the girl shrugged airily. “I lied, they're also notorious about taking anyone who will swear they're 16 and sign on the dotted line.” At his further incredulity, she added “And no, if anything they were even more pissed. Remember, they were always a little old fashioned, with the whole housewife thing. Me joining the military, any military, just about gave Dad another stroke. But it was the only way. I get better pay than anything I could manage outside with only junior high to my credit, and I've been keeping up on the coursework and vocational stuff. One of the UN's big selling points has always been that you come out with skills other than pulling a trigger. So far, that's been true. By the time my contract expires in a couple years, I should be just about where I would if I had gone on to high school.” She shrugged again. “Not exactly my first career choice, but it pays everyone's bills and I turned out to be pretty good at it.” A grimace this time, “I admit, I didn't expect to literally be going back to school in the bargain.”
“Hmph. Welcome to life, I guess. I think when I came here I was expecting something like those old Saturday morning cartoons.” At her smiling nod he continued, “The ones with giant robots fighting evil madmens' creations or genocidal aliens, you know? So far, it's been a lot less Voltron and a lot more Blackhawk Down than I bargained for. Maybe I should complain?” he asked impishly.
Mana barked a laugh. “You get right on that. All right, one more time for the fans,” she agreed, taking up the deck of cards for another round.
------------------
It was lunchtime in Tokyo-3, a time treasured by all of its inhabitants, but none more so than its dwindling student population. Even as families unafilliated with Nerv moved on, often accompanied by the dependents of those who were, the few dedicated teaching staff who remained tried to keep their pupils' educations from slipping behind. From Kaname's perspective, they were annoyingly successful.
She carried her own lunch (prepared herself, there was no way she was going to brave the press around the cafeteria tables) outside to the usual meeting spot on the roof. The wind was starting to pick up from the east today, blowing faintly salt-tinged air from the not too distant sea. Tucking her hair behind an ear, she quickly scanned the roof.
“Small crowd today,” she murmured, making her way over. Of course, there were barely over a hundred students left, out of a good five times that many not so long ago. But even her crew was looking pretty depopulated. She noticed Asuka and Hikari down in the courtyard, sitting at a table with a 3rd year girl Kaname didn't recognize offhand. The three seemed cheerful, chatting and generally catching up. The pilot was of course doing most of the talking, but neither of the other girls seemed to mind, practically hanging on every word. As far as she could tell, Asuka took recent events in stride, injury and all. Hard to say for sure, given the aggressive, omni-competent persona she put on, but if there was a problem the pilot was hiding it well.
“Hey, Sagara,” she greeted, tucking her skirt underneath her as she sat. And in this corner...
The thought trailed off, not really needing to be completed. Sousuke and Rei were the sole occupants of the patch of rooftop that had become the de facto meeting place for the pilots and company. The group's dynamic was as different as its location. Where the one was chatty, almost boisterous, this one was calm, almost solemn. Not so much enjoying the present moment as waiting for the next one, if you wanted to be a little philosophical. At the moment, she didn't, so after noting Rei's latest reading material, a manual for something called a Type-27 linear accelerator, and turned her attention back to the boy across from her.
“You know, if you're not careful people are going to start wondering if you're sweet on one of those two,” Kaname remarked. “With the whole eagle-eyed guardian thing and all.”
Sousuke made a confused sort or noise, like a cross between a grunt and snort. “I don't follow. With Kirishima unavailable, I am the only on-site security available.” He frowned mightily. “My task would be vastly simplified had Soryu-Langley been willing to relocate here. Unfortunately, she declined.”
The fact that she and Rei can barely stand each other might have a little to do with that, his companion mused. Not anyone's fault, per se, though Asuka's early attempts at friendship/intimidation hadn't helped, but still. “Didn't they reinforce the security around the school? Surely you can take a break -sometimes-.”
“I can't afford to rely on that. For planning purposes, I must assume that all other security is either neutralized or compromised. Anything less would leave dangerous assumptions which may prove unfounded.”
The thought occurred to Kaname that if she weren't aware of what exactly his job description was, she would have recommended he be sized for a straitjacket as soon as possible after that little speech. Fortunately for everyone, including the poor souls who would have had to carry out that task, she was intimately familiar with his role in their lives.
“On an unrelated issue, there is a problem you may be able to assist me with.” Sousuke began to rummage in a pants pocket. “I uncovered information not long ago that you might be interested in. Ordinarily I would seek Kirishima's opinion since this involves aspects of civilian life I am unfamiliar with, but under the circumstances I will leave it to your judgment.” With that he handed her a folded piece of paper, probably pulled from a spiral notebook. Undeniably curious, Kaname unfolded it, quickly scanning the tersely worded document.
“I overheard a conversation last month in which your name was prominently, if unflatteringly, mentioned. I would have ignored it, but a reference to the worst of the incidents defaming you caught my attention. From there, I began back tracking the information when I had the chance. Some of the informants needed persuading, but eventually I was able to prove beyond any doubts I might have had.”
Kaname was tempted to ask just what kind of persuasion might have been needed, but only slightly. What she didn't know, she couldn't be arrested for. “Mizuki Inabe, huh? No surprise there,” she snorted. “Bitch. She evacuated already, I don't suppose...” she cocked her head at Sousuke.
“Not without pulling school records. As I said, ordinarily I would have followed Kirishima's recommendation, but ...” he paused, searching for the right word. “I suppose we can call it payment on a debt. A down payment at least.”
The girl looked back into his level, firmly sincere gray eyes for a moment, then refolded the sheet. “Thank you, Sagara,” she responded quietly. “That means quite a bit. Not to mention you just made my week.” She loosed an ironic chuckle. “If you have any other 'civilian problems' you need help with, I'm happy to oblige.”
He nodded, taking the statement at face value. “I will make sure to remember that.” He returned to his vigil, leaving Kaname to shake her head, and unpack her meal.
Sanity is overrated.
Author's notes
Finally. I was planning on releasing a section every two weeks or less, we can all see how well that turned out. But such is life. The only other thing of note is that I picked the chapter title for a reason. I like the song well enough, true, but with the completion of this section we are in fact half way there.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one insists on adapting the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
- George Bernard Shaw
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TabascoOne
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Re: But Loyal to Their Own
Chapter 10- Apogee I
Rule 37- There is no 'overkill.' There is only 'open fire' and 'I need to reload.'
-Schlock Mercenary _The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates_ by Howard Taylor
Neon Genesis Evangelion characters copyright Studio Gainax
Full Metal Panic! characters copyright Shoji Gatou
All characters forever and always used without permission
Tokyo-3
October 25, 2015
4:00 PM Local Time
A picturesque landscape of rocky outcroppings and craggy escarpments surrounded Eva-06 as it picked its way cautiously, about halfway up the eastern side of a large ravine. At the bottom, a muddy stream meandered through a large rock field, splitting and reforming as it slowly undercut the massive granite blocks.
Ok, now if I was an Ikari, where would I be? Nami Lin pondered. The 'playing field' was fairly open as far as Eva scale opponents went, which was to the good. Today's test was supposed to be a sweep and clear operation against a single opponent to help define the requirements for a new energy weapon. Eva-portable, unlike the Type 34 that killed Ramiel, rate of fire high enough to allow multiple shot bursts, enough power to kill an Angel without closing to suicide range, and a magazine capacity large enough to give a decent chance of killing the target before having to reload.
It went without saying that those requirements could be mutually contradictory, but the point of today's exercise was to help find an acceptable tradeoff between them. Given Eva-01's stats and configuration had been boosted for this test to match those of the first angel to come rampaging through Tokyo-3, he could definitely give her new toy a fair shakedown, but...
//Anthrax "Pipeline" _Attack of the Killer B's_//
The AT field alarm screamed its warning moments before a purple streak speared across the sky. Raising her own field, Nami executed a dive which if done properly would take her clear of Eva-01's attack and, ideally, in a position to return fire before it could reengage. Nami rolled her Eva to its feet and readied her weapon, seeing Shinji reacting with impressive aplomb, shifting position and readying another shot.
Impressive, but not quite impressive enough. He was stuck on the opposite side of the valley, helpless until his beam finished recharging. Staring down the barrel of an high-end energy weapon, the owner's finger already tensing on the trigger. The eruption of blazing fury never came. The two pilots paused, staring at the crushed portion of the rifle's casing running from the barrel shroud halfway to the breech, and then at each other. Shinji reacted first by fractions of a second, leaping to the side to escape a burst of 57mm shells and the six missiles scorching in their wake, rolling as he he hit the ground. Nami sidestepped as she fired, though none of the thousand rounds in her built-in autocannons' magazine were tracers, their path was obvious in the shadows cast by the valley walls. The glowing stream attached itself to her enemy's left forearm for an instant before being left behind by its maneuvers, though not without leaving mangled armor and a ruined hand behind.
With the test weapon destroyed, this whole exercise was now pretty pointless. But they were here, and willing, so what the hell? Never waste an opportunity for training, she reminded herself virtuously. Eva-01/Sachiel lined up and fired it's main beam again, disabling her left arm and roasting that side of the torso, but missing the center of mass shot he'd hoped for. Silently blessing the lockouts on the production model neurosystems as the area flared with pain before going numb, she answered with another volley of missiles. Shinji once again took evasive action in what was rapidly into a game of cat and mouse, with her on the wrong end.
"Damn Damn Damn" Nami cursed in a monotone. Her best weapon was gone, and Shinji was too smart to stray into her most effective range. Her machine had been conceived as a kind of 'heavy Evangelion', as peculiar as that sounded for a vehicle already massing better than 700 tons. While it was capable of mixing it up at short and melee range, it's usual tactics were to advance behind a barrage of its hypersonic missiles before slugging it out in the medium distance, trusting in its thick armor and reinforced endoskeleton to let it survive the experience. This kind of snipe and fade combat was Eva-03's forte, not her's. Sensing victory in his grasp, Eva-01's pilot halted to take advantage, dialing in his main gun for the killing shot. At this range, barely 1300 meters, dodging out of the kill zone wouldn't be trivial, and the salvo right behind it would be worse yet. She eyed the distance to the rock field at the bottom thoughtfully. Maybe...
Eva-01 fired. Nami immediately dodged to the left, and charged. Caught off guard, Shinji swiveled back around and tried to re-lay his sights on her. Eva-06's shoulder hardpoints each split and opened to either side to reveal a trio of exhaust ports. Designed originally as a system to boost overloaded UN transports from small runways, the rockets had more than enough juice to change an Eva's headlong charge into a thing of an eyeblink. No leisurely, sailing parabola, the trajectory of the boosted jump was flat and fast as a bullet. She met the ground like one too, a fact she hadn't completely taken into account.
An impartial judge might have given her landing a '3' if he was feeling generous, considering the job her landing did of finishing wrecking her paint job. But, Nami consoled himself, she wasn't here to look pretty.
“You expect me to be impressed?” the more experienced pilot questioned as he readied his 'palm beam thingies', to use a technical term.
“No, Mr. Ikari,” Nami grinned inside her cockpit. This was more like it! “I expect you to die!” The pilot drew her pistol and let fly, 152 mm rounds strobing against her enemy's residual field before the pummeling brought it down. A force beam answered her, the impact feeling like a freight train to the gut as it cracked her abdominal plating. Thumbing the selector wheel on her control stick to the desired setting, she slaved a laser designator to her view and mashed the launch button flat.
Twenty hypersonic guided missiles, nearly half her supply, boiled from their launch tubes to sleet into the overclocked Eva like a strormfront of destruction. The target emerged from the cloud of dust; limping, multiple armor breaches visible even from her position, an obvious rent over the mechanisms of its main energy beam projector. The enemy raised its working hand, palm glowing as the pair circled each other warily. Nami drew her other pistol, preparing to begin another round.
“That's enough pilots,” a voice from above commanded. “Take it from the top.”
“Data collection complete, beginning de-sync and simulation reset,” a different, younger sounding voice added next, before the world faded away to blank curved walls not unlike the inside of a sewer pipe. “Scenario loading complete in twenty seconds. Stand by.”
Spoilsports.
---------
“...and that covers R&D's observations of the latest test. Major Katsuragi?” Ritsuko yielded the floor to her colleague.
“Thanks. Besides the previously noted observation that durability should be added as consideration for the Type-20 project,” a few chuckles answered, though the speaker didn't join them, “I have no further comments. Thank you everyone, dismissed.”
Ritsuko's entourage departed the conference room, mingling briefly with her own assistants and the two pilots before leaving the women alone.
“Off to tuck your darlings in?” the doctor queried, gathering her PDA and clipboard.
“Hardly,” Misato snorted. “The last thing they need is me of all people trying to mother them. If anything, it's the other way around, I don't think I've cooked in weeks. Shinji especially has the place looking better than ever.”
A tiny smirk played around her friend's lips, boding ill. “Is that so...” she mused. “Must be almost like having a house husband, except without the sex.” Her eyes narrowed. “It -is- without the-”
“Yes!” the accused hissed back. “Thank you for the vote of confidence. But no, I am not banging the Director's son.” His admittedly cute son, granted. Fifteen, hell even ten, years ago she would have given it serious thought...
“Good to know. With Kaji away on business for so long I could understand if you decided to find a replacement, but do remember that the relevant age in this prefecture is sixteen.”
Misato bit firmly on her tongue, determined not to give her mildly smirking friend the satisfaction of a retort. Knowing she'd lost that round, the Major did as any good tactician would and disengaged until another day. “I'll bear that in mind. But in all seriousness, we need that cannon now, if not sooner. I for one don't plan to count on having numerical and positional superiority in every fight, and the next time we don't...”
Her voice trailed off, nothing more needing to be said. The story of Damocles was just a legend to most of humanity, but it held a very clear and immediate significance to those who battled the Angels. The Evangelions had first crack at any invaders that showed up on Earth, but only within limits. Adam brought disaster with him after a six hour rampage through the Katsuragi Expedition base and surrounding area. While it was unclear if a nuclear strike would have changed that, no one was willing to risk such ghastly consequences a second time. Should the Evas fail, or the signature of another Impact reappear, every nuclear power within range was treaty obligated to launch, and continue until the threat was eliminated. No exceptions.
“We'll get you your weapons, Major,” Ritsuko reassured her. “Just make sure we have people we can trust with them when the time comes.”
----------
Rei Ayanami flipped a page, wide crimson eyes looking past messy bluish bangs as she steadily consumed her latest acquisition. It was evening in the geofront, according to the clock on the wall of the cafeteria. She, along with her fellow pilots, waited for the test review session's end and the two participating pilots' return. Some more patiently than others, given that event was all that kept them from formally handing over the watch duty to the newly reconstituted Battlegroup 1 and returning to the surface for the first time in two weeks.
The second Child was uncharacteristically quiet for the moment, a set of earbuds piping in music from her phone on the table before her. Earlier in the weekend, it would have been playing over the device's internal speakers for everyone to enjoy, but she seemed to have taken the hint when a set earbuds wound up taped to her locker door with a politely worded note. In spite of this, when the redhead tilted her head just right as she read, the sound of the music's bassline could still be heard.
Roberts, Testarossa, and Fei formed a fairly boisterous trio at the end of the table, poring over some sort of magazine the former had received from home. The occasional laughter from them had prompted her to investigate earlier, finding it to be an 'insider' profile of the Evangelions. If so, said insider was remarkably incompetent, the only way her Eva could weigh 314 tons was if it were placed on the surface of Mars.
In between remarks questioning the veracity, and sometimes the sanity, of the author the two actually leaving this evening were planning an excursion to Lake Ashi with some of their associates on the surface. As Rei was about to recount information she recently overheard, that the majority of the lake's facilities were shut down due to plummeting attendance, the missing members made their appearance.
“Finally! Let's go, I've got places to be and I'll generously assume you do too,” the resident redhead commanded, grabbing Shinji's wrist and spinning him around to tow behind her. “Testarossa, Fei, get a move on!”
“Gently, Asuka. You break him you buy him,” their commander admonished as they passed, making her own entrance a few seconds behind her pilots'. Turning to the others, she tilted her head at the doorway before following the leading pair.
A few minutes and a relocation to a nearby conference room later, the cafeteria's proximity to these and the combat information center being one of the few features of HQ's layout generally praised by its denizens, the assembled pilots stood facing each other. separated into their assigned squads. One by one, a flat box subdivided into compartments passed across from one to the next. As they handed it along either emptied their pockets into a compartment or removed their effects based on whether they were scheduled to remain.
At length, it reached the end of the line, and in turn was handed to Major Katsuragi. Upon flipping the lid closed, she nodded firmly. “Battlegroup 1 has the watch. Battlegroup 2 stands relieved.”
With that, the solemnity that had filled the room dissipated, the off duty pilots filing out and making for the elevators. Misato turned to the three remaining.
“That's it for today. Remember, there is a cross compatibility and familiarization exercise scheduled at 7:30 tomorrow. Otherwise, you're free until then. Good night.” Her comrades returned the sentiment, Rei herself nodding agreement.
---------
The next morning started as most had since the invasions began. Wake with the sun, shower, dress for the day, depart. A schedule as consistently predicable as a planetary orbit, it was widely believed in Security that one could set his watch by the time Rei exited her dwelling, and like all good stories it had a basis in truth.
As for herself, she found it comforting to have a few certainties in her life, a touchstone of sorts especially important while her implanted memories were still solidifying. Even though the process was now complete, her recollections indicated this was how she had always begun her day, so she continued the habit.
Stirring a spoon through today's offering of oatmeal, Rei glanced up at a flicker of motion. Her two teammates' arrival, skating the line between tardiness and outright late today, signaled the moment when a certain unpredictability began making itself felt in her day.
“Morning, Ayanami,” Roberts nodded politely, seating himself across from her. To her left, Lin made her own greeting.
“Is it me, or does it take entirely too long to get here every morning?” Lin asked, presumably rhetorically continuing their previous conversation. It wasn't lost on her that the pair's interactions with her were somewhat cooler than most, particularly given the amount of time they spent together. It was only to be expected, her general lack of experience with informality meant she rarely encouraged it.
“It isn't you. Of course it helps when you know the way.”
“That wasn't -all- my fault. That map the Major gave us was a joke!” the diminutive brunette protested. “Who hand draws a map of their workplace with little pictures for landmarks?!”
“At least she tried...” Roberts put in.
“Badly. If it hadn't been for that girl in Admin they'd have been sending search parties before much longer.”
Rei ticked a mental checkbox, a minor mystery solved. Spooning up a portion of her breakfast, she contented herself with listening as she blew softly at the steam rising from it.
“Anyway, back to earlier. Was it or was it not a twenty minute walk to get here?” her male tablemate queried.
“Close enough. You want to start looking this evening then?”
“Yeah, there has to be a better place to wait out a shift than in here. If nothing else -my- combat effectiveness would be improved by not smelling grease and oven cleaner all the time. I guess we could borrow one of the conference rooms, those are free most of the day.”
The senior pilot's ears metaphorically perked up at the change to a subject she had actual interest in.
“Too far from the cages. It takes about 10 minutes and and elevator ride to get there from here, remember? Too far if we have to scramble. There has to be something closer.”
Rei carefully placed her spoon beside the bowl, and rose from her seat. Her teammates broke off, looking up questioningly. “I believe there is such a location. Follow me.”
A walk to the cages later, the trio arrived in front of a set of steel sheathed double doors, the only break in the hallway running along this level of the complex for as far as either could see to either side.
Roberts spoke first. “It's...a closet.”
Rei nodded agreement. “It housed a riding motorized floor buffer in the past. Since the janitorial department converted to smaller machines, this space has gone unused except for storage of solvents and unused shelving.”
“Huh,” the boy noted, opening the door and flipping on the lights. The room measured about three meters by four, several shelving units broken down and stacked at the far end. Against one wall was an intact unit loaded with several dingy white and yellow plastic bottles.
“I don't suppose you can tell what's in these?” Lin queried, peering at a label. “I'm afraid I'm not up to deciphering Japanese chemical names,” she chuckled ruefully.
“Sodium hydroxide. Ammonia. Citric acid solution. Surfactant/detergent combination. Petroleum based lubricant,” Rei confirmed, pointing at several containers. “It would be advisable to seek assistance in removing them and decontaminating the area if we choose to make use of this space.”
“If?” Roberts questioned. “It's near the cages and locker rooms, and has a decent amount of space once we get all this crap out of here. It even has extra wide doors so we can move in a little furniture without taking anything apart. Are you kidding, this is perfect!”
“I agree, you've outdone yourself this time,” her other companion chimed in. Glancing at her watch, she grimaced. “But we also need to get going.”
Rei felt a small heat in her face at the sincerity of the praise as they trooped out into the hall. “What do you think? Ask the Major first, or try Commander Mardukas and hope he's in a good mood?” Lin began, perhaps half seriously.
--------------
As it developed, Major Katsuragi was delighted with the idea, though she did insist that a cleaning crew go in first. That evening the trio returned in earnest. Armed with a ratchet set, a can of light blue latex paint, and a purpose, the three pilots set to work.
“Nice of them to leave a shelf set behind, I was afraid we'd have to go get one,” Lin remarked, setting down her load. “Right. I'm thinking we get some color on the walls, let it dry overnight, and worry about a table and chairs in the morning.”
“Works for me. I still say this place is going to look like a nursery with that color.”
“Save it. Ayanami and I like it, so deal.”
“All she said was it was 'acceptable'” Roberts pointed out. “Are you -sure- about this?” he questioned Rei.
The named pilot left off examining a patch of bare metal left where the pressure washer had scoured off a bit of the nonskid floor coating. In truth, Rei was unsure what need there was for painting the area in the first place. But both of her teammates seemed adamant about not spending their day in a 'sterile steel box' so there they were. After that was when the disagreement began.
She shook her head minutely. “I have no objections.”
“Fine,” he sighed. “But when Shinji and Han call me out on this, I'm telling them it's all your fault.”
“You wanting green was just your capitalist indoctrination.”
Robert's tone changed to a more stilted, formal one than usual, as though mimicking an oft repeated phrase. “And as a good Party member you cannot allow such doctrines to spread under your watch. You do know Japan is a capitalist country too, right? And doesn't Beijing have a stock exchange...”
“Don't bother me with details!” Lin grinned back over her shoulder, batting aside the objection with a wave of her fortunately paint-free brush. “Anyway, how do we want to do this?”
Rei considered a moment, framing the exercise as a tactical problem. After a moment she nodded slightly. “Pilot Roberts will use the roller and cover the majority of the walls. Pilot Lin and I will follow with the brushes.”
Opening the doors wide for ventilation, they laid out the rest of their tools. In truth, the purpose of her teammate's bantering was lost on her most of the time. She supposed it was enjoyable to them, else they would refrain from doing it, but from her point of view it was a waste of time better spent accomplishing the task at hand. A few minutes went by to the squelch of the roller and soft swipe of the brushes as the trio started on the right hand wall.
A muttered curse came from the roller wielding boy.
“Problem?” she queried.
“Not really. The drops of paint keep drying stuck in my arm hair. Every time I try to peel one off I lose a few.”
Lin snorted. “Would you like a razor to fix that with?”
“I have one. The hair on my feet gets ingrown when I wear a plugsuit.”
The girl paused. “Thank you. I -really- needed to know that,” Rei's fellow brush wielder said after a moment.
“You're welcome,” he agreed amiably.
Rule 37- There is no 'overkill.' There is only 'open fire' and 'I need to reload.'
-Schlock Mercenary _The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates_ by Howard Taylor
Neon Genesis Evangelion characters copyright Studio Gainax
Full Metal Panic! characters copyright Shoji Gatou
All characters forever and always used without permission
Tokyo-3
October 25, 2015
4:00 PM Local Time
A picturesque landscape of rocky outcroppings and craggy escarpments surrounded Eva-06 as it picked its way cautiously, about halfway up the eastern side of a large ravine. At the bottom, a muddy stream meandered through a large rock field, splitting and reforming as it slowly undercut the massive granite blocks.
Ok, now if I was an Ikari, where would I be? Nami Lin pondered. The 'playing field' was fairly open as far as Eva scale opponents went, which was to the good. Today's test was supposed to be a sweep and clear operation against a single opponent to help define the requirements for a new energy weapon. Eva-portable, unlike the Type 34 that killed Ramiel, rate of fire high enough to allow multiple shot bursts, enough power to kill an Angel without closing to suicide range, and a magazine capacity large enough to give a decent chance of killing the target before having to reload.
It went without saying that those requirements could be mutually contradictory, but the point of today's exercise was to help find an acceptable tradeoff between them. Given Eva-01's stats and configuration had been boosted for this test to match those of the first angel to come rampaging through Tokyo-3, he could definitely give her new toy a fair shakedown, but...
//Anthrax "Pipeline" _Attack of the Killer B's_//
The AT field alarm screamed its warning moments before a purple streak speared across the sky. Raising her own field, Nami executed a dive which if done properly would take her clear of Eva-01's attack and, ideally, in a position to return fire before it could reengage. Nami rolled her Eva to its feet and readied her weapon, seeing Shinji reacting with impressive aplomb, shifting position and readying another shot.
Impressive, but not quite impressive enough. He was stuck on the opposite side of the valley, helpless until his beam finished recharging. Staring down the barrel of an high-end energy weapon, the owner's finger already tensing on the trigger. The eruption of blazing fury never came. The two pilots paused, staring at the crushed portion of the rifle's casing running from the barrel shroud halfway to the breech, and then at each other. Shinji reacted first by fractions of a second, leaping to the side to escape a burst of 57mm shells and the six missiles scorching in their wake, rolling as he he hit the ground. Nami sidestepped as she fired, though none of the thousand rounds in her built-in autocannons' magazine were tracers, their path was obvious in the shadows cast by the valley walls. The glowing stream attached itself to her enemy's left forearm for an instant before being left behind by its maneuvers, though not without leaving mangled armor and a ruined hand behind.
With the test weapon destroyed, this whole exercise was now pretty pointless. But they were here, and willing, so what the hell? Never waste an opportunity for training, she reminded herself virtuously. Eva-01/Sachiel lined up and fired it's main beam again, disabling her left arm and roasting that side of the torso, but missing the center of mass shot he'd hoped for. Silently blessing the lockouts on the production model neurosystems as the area flared with pain before going numb, she answered with another volley of missiles. Shinji once again took evasive action in what was rapidly into a game of cat and mouse, with her on the wrong end.
"Damn Damn Damn" Nami cursed in a monotone. Her best weapon was gone, and Shinji was too smart to stray into her most effective range. Her machine had been conceived as a kind of 'heavy Evangelion', as peculiar as that sounded for a vehicle already massing better than 700 tons. While it was capable of mixing it up at short and melee range, it's usual tactics were to advance behind a barrage of its hypersonic missiles before slugging it out in the medium distance, trusting in its thick armor and reinforced endoskeleton to let it survive the experience. This kind of snipe and fade combat was Eva-03's forte, not her's. Sensing victory in his grasp, Eva-01's pilot halted to take advantage, dialing in his main gun for the killing shot. At this range, barely 1300 meters, dodging out of the kill zone wouldn't be trivial, and the salvo right behind it would be worse yet. She eyed the distance to the rock field at the bottom thoughtfully. Maybe...
Eva-01 fired. Nami immediately dodged to the left, and charged. Caught off guard, Shinji swiveled back around and tried to re-lay his sights on her. Eva-06's shoulder hardpoints each split and opened to either side to reveal a trio of exhaust ports. Designed originally as a system to boost overloaded UN transports from small runways, the rockets had more than enough juice to change an Eva's headlong charge into a thing of an eyeblink. No leisurely, sailing parabola, the trajectory of the boosted jump was flat and fast as a bullet. She met the ground like one too, a fact she hadn't completely taken into account.
An impartial judge might have given her landing a '3' if he was feeling generous, considering the job her landing did of finishing wrecking her paint job. But, Nami consoled himself, she wasn't here to look pretty.
“You expect me to be impressed?” the more experienced pilot questioned as he readied his 'palm beam thingies', to use a technical term.
“No, Mr. Ikari,” Nami grinned inside her cockpit. This was more like it! “I expect you to die!” The pilot drew her pistol and let fly, 152 mm rounds strobing against her enemy's residual field before the pummeling brought it down. A force beam answered her, the impact feeling like a freight train to the gut as it cracked her abdominal plating. Thumbing the selector wheel on her control stick to the desired setting, she slaved a laser designator to her view and mashed the launch button flat.
Twenty hypersonic guided missiles, nearly half her supply, boiled from their launch tubes to sleet into the overclocked Eva like a strormfront of destruction. The target emerged from the cloud of dust; limping, multiple armor breaches visible even from her position, an obvious rent over the mechanisms of its main energy beam projector. The enemy raised its working hand, palm glowing as the pair circled each other warily. Nami drew her other pistol, preparing to begin another round.
“That's enough pilots,” a voice from above commanded. “Take it from the top.”
“Data collection complete, beginning de-sync and simulation reset,” a different, younger sounding voice added next, before the world faded away to blank curved walls not unlike the inside of a sewer pipe. “Scenario loading complete in twenty seconds. Stand by.”
Spoilsports.
---------
“...and that covers R&D's observations of the latest test. Major Katsuragi?” Ritsuko yielded the floor to her colleague.
“Thanks. Besides the previously noted observation that durability should be added as consideration for the Type-20 project,” a few chuckles answered, though the speaker didn't join them, “I have no further comments. Thank you everyone, dismissed.”
Ritsuko's entourage departed the conference room, mingling briefly with her own assistants and the two pilots before leaving the women alone.
“Off to tuck your darlings in?” the doctor queried, gathering her PDA and clipboard.
“Hardly,” Misato snorted. “The last thing they need is me of all people trying to mother them. If anything, it's the other way around, I don't think I've cooked in weeks. Shinji especially has the place looking better than ever.”
A tiny smirk played around her friend's lips, boding ill. “Is that so...” she mused. “Must be almost like having a house husband, except without the sex.” Her eyes narrowed. “It -is- without the-”
“Yes!” the accused hissed back. “Thank you for the vote of confidence. But no, I am not banging the Director's son.” His admittedly cute son, granted. Fifteen, hell even ten, years ago she would have given it serious thought...
“Good to know. With Kaji away on business for so long I could understand if you decided to find a replacement, but do remember that the relevant age in this prefecture is sixteen.”
Misato bit firmly on her tongue, determined not to give her mildly smirking friend the satisfaction of a retort. Knowing she'd lost that round, the Major did as any good tactician would and disengaged until another day. “I'll bear that in mind. But in all seriousness, we need that cannon now, if not sooner. I for one don't plan to count on having numerical and positional superiority in every fight, and the next time we don't...”
Her voice trailed off, nothing more needing to be said. The story of Damocles was just a legend to most of humanity, but it held a very clear and immediate significance to those who battled the Angels. The Evangelions had first crack at any invaders that showed up on Earth, but only within limits. Adam brought disaster with him after a six hour rampage through the Katsuragi Expedition base and surrounding area. While it was unclear if a nuclear strike would have changed that, no one was willing to risk such ghastly consequences a second time. Should the Evas fail, or the signature of another Impact reappear, every nuclear power within range was treaty obligated to launch, and continue until the threat was eliminated. No exceptions.
“We'll get you your weapons, Major,” Ritsuko reassured her. “Just make sure we have people we can trust with them when the time comes.”
----------
Rei Ayanami flipped a page, wide crimson eyes looking past messy bluish bangs as she steadily consumed her latest acquisition. It was evening in the geofront, according to the clock on the wall of the cafeteria. She, along with her fellow pilots, waited for the test review session's end and the two participating pilots' return. Some more patiently than others, given that event was all that kept them from formally handing over the watch duty to the newly reconstituted Battlegroup 1 and returning to the surface for the first time in two weeks.
The second Child was uncharacteristically quiet for the moment, a set of earbuds piping in music from her phone on the table before her. Earlier in the weekend, it would have been playing over the device's internal speakers for everyone to enjoy, but she seemed to have taken the hint when a set earbuds wound up taped to her locker door with a politely worded note. In spite of this, when the redhead tilted her head just right as she read, the sound of the music's bassline could still be heard.
Roberts, Testarossa, and Fei formed a fairly boisterous trio at the end of the table, poring over some sort of magazine the former had received from home. The occasional laughter from them had prompted her to investigate earlier, finding it to be an 'insider' profile of the Evangelions. If so, said insider was remarkably incompetent, the only way her Eva could weigh 314 tons was if it were placed on the surface of Mars.
In between remarks questioning the veracity, and sometimes the sanity, of the author the two actually leaving this evening were planning an excursion to Lake Ashi with some of their associates on the surface. As Rei was about to recount information she recently overheard, that the majority of the lake's facilities were shut down due to plummeting attendance, the missing members made their appearance.
“Finally! Let's go, I've got places to be and I'll generously assume you do too,” the resident redhead commanded, grabbing Shinji's wrist and spinning him around to tow behind her. “Testarossa, Fei, get a move on!”
“Gently, Asuka. You break him you buy him,” their commander admonished as they passed, making her own entrance a few seconds behind her pilots'. Turning to the others, she tilted her head at the doorway before following the leading pair.
A few minutes and a relocation to a nearby conference room later, the cafeteria's proximity to these and the combat information center being one of the few features of HQ's layout generally praised by its denizens, the assembled pilots stood facing each other. separated into their assigned squads. One by one, a flat box subdivided into compartments passed across from one to the next. As they handed it along either emptied their pockets into a compartment or removed their effects based on whether they were scheduled to remain.
At length, it reached the end of the line, and in turn was handed to Major Katsuragi. Upon flipping the lid closed, she nodded firmly. “Battlegroup 1 has the watch. Battlegroup 2 stands relieved.”
With that, the solemnity that had filled the room dissipated, the off duty pilots filing out and making for the elevators. Misato turned to the three remaining.
“That's it for today. Remember, there is a cross compatibility and familiarization exercise scheduled at 7:30 tomorrow. Otherwise, you're free until then. Good night.” Her comrades returned the sentiment, Rei herself nodding agreement.
---------
The next morning started as most had since the invasions began. Wake with the sun, shower, dress for the day, depart. A schedule as consistently predicable as a planetary orbit, it was widely believed in Security that one could set his watch by the time Rei exited her dwelling, and like all good stories it had a basis in truth.
As for herself, she found it comforting to have a few certainties in her life, a touchstone of sorts especially important while her implanted memories were still solidifying. Even though the process was now complete, her recollections indicated this was how she had always begun her day, so she continued the habit.
Stirring a spoon through today's offering of oatmeal, Rei glanced up at a flicker of motion. Her two teammates' arrival, skating the line between tardiness and outright late today, signaled the moment when a certain unpredictability began making itself felt in her day.
“Morning, Ayanami,” Roberts nodded politely, seating himself across from her. To her left, Lin made her own greeting.
“Is it me, or does it take entirely too long to get here every morning?” Lin asked, presumably rhetorically continuing their previous conversation. It wasn't lost on her that the pair's interactions with her were somewhat cooler than most, particularly given the amount of time they spent together. It was only to be expected, her general lack of experience with informality meant she rarely encouraged it.
“It isn't you. Of course it helps when you know the way.”
“That wasn't -all- my fault. That map the Major gave us was a joke!” the diminutive brunette protested. “Who hand draws a map of their workplace with little pictures for landmarks?!”
“At least she tried...” Roberts put in.
“Badly. If it hadn't been for that girl in Admin they'd have been sending search parties before much longer.”
Rei ticked a mental checkbox, a minor mystery solved. Spooning up a portion of her breakfast, she contented herself with listening as she blew softly at the steam rising from it.
“Anyway, back to earlier. Was it or was it not a twenty minute walk to get here?” her male tablemate queried.
“Close enough. You want to start looking this evening then?”
“Yeah, there has to be a better place to wait out a shift than in here. If nothing else -my- combat effectiveness would be improved by not smelling grease and oven cleaner all the time. I guess we could borrow one of the conference rooms, those are free most of the day.”
The senior pilot's ears metaphorically perked up at the change to a subject she had actual interest in.
“Too far from the cages. It takes about 10 minutes and and elevator ride to get there from here, remember? Too far if we have to scramble. There has to be something closer.”
Rei carefully placed her spoon beside the bowl, and rose from her seat. Her teammates broke off, looking up questioningly. “I believe there is such a location. Follow me.”
A walk to the cages later, the trio arrived in front of a set of steel sheathed double doors, the only break in the hallway running along this level of the complex for as far as either could see to either side.
Roberts spoke first. “It's...a closet.”
Rei nodded agreement. “It housed a riding motorized floor buffer in the past. Since the janitorial department converted to smaller machines, this space has gone unused except for storage of solvents and unused shelving.”
“Huh,” the boy noted, opening the door and flipping on the lights. The room measured about three meters by four, several shelving units broken down and stacked at the far end. Against one wall was an intact unit loaded with several dingy white and yellow plastic bottles.
“I don't suppose you can tell what's in these?” Lin queried, peering at a label. “I'm afraid I'm not up to deciphering Japanese chemical names,” she chuckled ruefully.
“Sodium hydroxide. Ammonia. Citric acid solution. Surfactant/detergent combination. Petroleum based lubricant,” Rei confirmed, pointing at several containers. “It would be advisable to seek assistance in removing them and decontaminating the area if we choose to make use of this space.”
“If?” Roberts questioned. “It's near the cages and locker rooms, and has a decent amount of space once we get all this crap out of here. It even has extra wide doors so we can move in a little furniture without taking anything apart. Are you kidding, this is perfect!”
“I agree, you've outdone yourself this time,” her other companion chimed in. Glancing at her watch, she grimaced. “But we also need to get going.”
Rei felt a small heat in her face at the sincerity of the praise as they trooped out into the hall. “What do you think? Ask the Major first, or try Commander Mardukas and hope he's in a good mood?” Lin began, perhaps half seriously.
--------------
As it developed, Major Katsuragi was delighted with the idea, though she did insist that a cleaning crew go in first. That evening the trio returned in earnest. Armed with a ratchet set, a can of light blue latex paint, and a purpose, the three pilots set to work.
“Nice of them to leave a shelf set behind, I was afraid we'd have to go get one,” Lin remarked, setting down her load. “Right. I'm thinking we get some color on the walls, let it dry overnight, and worry about a table and chairs in the morning.”
“Works for me. I still say this place is going to look like a nursery with that color.”
“Save it. Ayanami and I like it, so deal.”
“All she said was it was 'acceptable'” Roberts pointed out. “Are you -sure- about this?” he questioned Rei.
The named pilot left off examining a patch of bare metal left where the pressure washer had scoured off a bit of the nonskid floor coating. In truth, Rei was unsure what need there was for painting the area in the first place. But both of her teammates seemed adamant about not spending their day in a 'sterile steel box' so there they were. After that was when the disagreement began.
She shook her head minutely. “I have no objections.”
“Fine,” he sighed. “But when Shinji and Han call me out on this, I'm telling them it's all your fault.”
“You wanting green was just your capitalist indoctrination.”
Robert's tone changed to a more stilted, formal one than usual, as though mimicking an oft repeated phrase. “And as a good Party member you cannot allow such doctrines to spread under your watch. You do know Japan is a capitalist country too, right? And doesn't Beijing have a stock exchange...”
“Don't bother me with details!” Lin grinned back over her shoulder, batting aside the objection with a wave of her fortunately paint-free brush. “Anyway, how do we want to do this?”
Rei considered a moment, framing the exercise as a tactical problem. After a moment she nodded slightly. “Pilot Roberts will use the roller and cover the majority of the walls. Pilot Lin and I will follow with the brushes.”
Opening the doors wide for ventilation, they laid out the rest of their tools. In truth, the purpose of her teammate's bantering was lost on her most of the time. She supposed it was enjoyable to them, else they would refrain from doing it, but from her point of view it was a waste of time better spent accomplishing the task at hand. A few minutes went by to the squelch of the roller and soft swipe of the brushes as the trio started on the right hand wall.
A muttered curse came from the roller wielding boy.
“Problem?” she queried.
“Not really. The drops of paint keep drying stuck in my arm hair. Every time I try to peel one off I lose a few.”
Lin snorted. “Would you like a razor to fix that with?”
“I have one. The hair on my feet gets ingrown when I wear a plugsuit.”
The girl paused. “Thank you. I -really- needed to know that,” Rei's fellow brush wielder said after a moment.
“You're welcome,” he agreed amiably.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one insists on adapting the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
- George Bernard Shaw
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- George Bernard Shaw
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Re: But Loyal to Their Own
It's good that Rei's coming out of her shell with these two. 
Me: Nope, that's why I have you around to tell me.
Nitram: You -are- beautiful. Anyone tries to tell you otherwise kill them.
"A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP" -- Leonard Nimoy, last Tweet