The Ghost of Evangelion (NGE/GitS) - Page 2

bullethead · Jan 10th 2010, 6:19pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by LatwPIAT

-snip spoiler text-

Welcome to the life of creative people, writers in particular. We're all kinda messed up on some level, although for some reason your situation sounds frighteningly like mine, which is kinda weird. But if you can harness the wangst and channel it into your writing, it makes it less all consuming.

Robo Jesus · Jan 10th 2010, 6:27pm

LatwPIAT · Feb 26th 2010, 6:21am

With thanks to EarthScropion.

COMPLEX/A wind that blows, strongly
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The Ghost of Evangelion – Layer i
A Neon Genesis Evangelion/Ghost in the Shell crossover
Present day, present time
The CEO of the Earth Coincidence Control Office, Gendo Ikari, sat with folded hands in the safety of his office, letting trichromatic laser light refract against his glasses, painting red, green and blue afterimages on his retina, forming a coherent, consensual hallucination in his mind of a dark room illuminated only by those who shared this hallucination with him.

There was a tense silence hanging in the imaginary room, only waiting to be broken – as it was:

“You handed a demigod over to your son, Ikari...” a man illuminated by a yellow haze prompted. His dissatisfaction and the implications of nepotism were clear. Ironic, considering that nepotism was one of the many tools IGIGI used to watch and affect, and only affect, not control, or so they claimed, the world. They were, of course, lying.

“It was necessary to stop the first Rakbu,” Gendo replied, not even breaking eye-contact with some imagined point in the air somewhere above his desk, looking simultaneously at all the IGIGI heads and none of them at all.

“Isimud has always been faithful to Enki,” a sickly green man, due to the luminescent cloud of light that surrounded him, retorted “It should not have been a threat at all,”

“Yet you managed to wreck two Units,” a man in a dark blue shade joined in, “and significant parts of the city, I might add,” although they all knew none of them cared about that.

“Gentlemen,” Gendo began his explanation, “The circumstances affected the situation. Despite the name, ECCO cannot control even a significant fraction of all the coincidences on Earth,” Still, it controlled more than IGIGI were aware of...

“This is irrelevant,” Lorenz Kiel interrupted. “Remember that the Human Acceleration Project is your primary duty.”

“Of course,” Gendo replied. Had he not devoted every waking moment of his life the past 12 years to realizing the Human Acceleration Project? He had forgone his son. He had, regretfully, neglected Rei. He had betrayed his love to his beloved Yui twice with the Akagi family, and it was his devotion they questioned? It was his loyalty they should question (they most certainly did, he knew) not his devotion; the god they were to create with their own hands should know he was devoted.

“Do not think you are not expendable. There are others,” Blue spoke harshly, as always.

“Yes, how does the construction of Dilmun go?” Gendo asked, trying to suppress a smirk “Please send my regards to Ms Avalon,” he added, as an afterthought.

“Another woman you are planning to seduce, Ikari?” Red joked. “Our business with AvalonCorp is hardly the subject of this meeting; the Acceleration Project is,” he said, leaning forwards for emphasis.

“We will consider your budget proposal. The committee will take over now.”

The figures disappeared. All but one; Kiel still remained.

“You can’t go back, Ikari,” he added, as if they were old friends, or at least as if Gendo had been his protégé; a badly faked attempt at a warning, revealed by his blatant ulterior motives. Then he too disappeared.

Gendo Ikari took off his glasses and massaged his tired eyes; staring into the unblinking eye of myriads of lasers was rather painful, and he still hadn’t gotten used to his new glasses; his somewhat weak myopia had worsened since last time he had bough new lenses, and now he had to adjust to a slightly sharper world-view. He could see things clearly now; he could see the future.

The Ghost of Evangelion – Layer 03
A Ghost in the Shell/Neon Genesis Evangelion fanfic

Shinji turned the handle of the door to his new classroom and swung it open. For a moment, he stared at the half-empty room and the groups and cliques that filled it, all clothed in either the teal-blue and white sailor-esque dress, or the same black/white (and how he had come to loathe that colour!) combination of trousers and shirts that he wore, with the exception of a muscular-looking, rowdy-haired student in a track suit. After Shinji’s eyes had scanned the room, he decided he would pass discretely in through the door, not slamming it, and simply sit down on the nearest empty desk.

“Hello,” a voice suddenly spoke to him, with a smiling face framed by long blue hair appeared directly in front of him. There goes discretely…

“…you must be Shinji Ikari,” the female face said. A sudden feeling of uncertainty rose through Shinji. Dis-cre-te-ly! he repeated to himself. At least it was only one person.

“Y-yes!” he said hurriedly. Oh dear was that too loud? Nobody even looked at him, except for the girl.

“In that case,” she said, “Welcome to our class; I hope you’ll make some friends!”

“Thank you …“ Shinji hazarded a guess, his statement accidentally rising into a question, “…Class Rep?” The girl’s smile widened.

“Temarei,” she answered, “but I’m not the Class Representative,” she said. ...I shouldn’t have guessed! “...that would be Miss Hokari, over there,” she said and waved in the direction of another girl, talking to the boy in the track suit. “Please, find a seat if you wish.”

Shinji found a seat central in the classroom. It was not the best seat he could imagine, but the back row had already been taken by earlier birds. He wasn’t even going to try the pleasant row by the windows; they were always taken early, and he wasn’t going to get into an argument on his first day of school over seating arrangements.

The other Eva pilot (Misato had mentioned in passing that her name was ‘Rei Ayanami’) already sat in her seat and stared out through the windows, with her arm in a cast. Actually, he should try to talk with someone for once, and they already had something in common to talk about but… he didn’t actually want to talk about that, and… well… nah. He didn’t know what he’d say; he’d only make a fool of himself He could see it now; he tried to talk to her and all she would do was to frown say something like “What do you want?” or “Shut up.” …maybe. Not worth the risk.

…

“Rise, bow!” the Class Rep ordered.

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ESAGILA ACADEMY FOR YOUNG STUDENTS, August 22nd, 2030
“…now, on May 15th 1932,” the history teacher droned on, “radical elements of the Imperial Japanese Navy, aided by officers in the Imperial Japanese Army successfully attempted to assassinate Prime Minister Inukai…”

As the reverberating hum continued, Shinji nonchalantly flipped through the History book; he had actually already covered the Shōwa period in his previous school, a (one might even say ‘another’) prestigious school for the progeny of diplomats, politicians, plutocrats and other assorted filthy rich, and although he probably should study it again (his grades hadn’t been exceptional) he just couldn’t be bothered to do so. Instead, he was making “independent studies” of the History book and Ayanami. …erm, no.

Insert: Although most historians place the start of the Fourth World War [footnote: alternatively known under the name “Second Vietnam War”] in October 2015 when wars resulting from food shortages…

The sound of fingers hitting a keyboard with great enthusiasm made Shinji cast a glance at the student next to him. Despite the total prevalence of standard neural interfaces in Shinji’s class, all schoolwork was still done on laptops; a combination of widespread cyberbrain-hacking paranoia, preventive measures against Cyberbrain Closed Shell Syndrome and a desire to protect children against the horrors of the ‘net meant very few of the aforementioned neural interfaces had Wireless Network Access nodes. Momentarily disturbed, Shinji went back to reading.

…following the Impact Event [footnote: see Chapter 7.2 ‘The 2013 Tidal Disaster’] broke out in the Indochinese Peninsula, some have chosen to place the cause of WWIV at the American Empire Fleet expedition into Antarctica and the subsequent People’s Republic of China (PROC) annexation of Vietnam and Laos…

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Since the invention of computers, their processing power has, roughly, doubled every eighteenth months, an observation made by Gordon E. Moore, an Intel (a now defunct corporation, since their headquarters were nuked) co-founder in 1965, although he referred explicitly to transistor density, which is a rather outdated concept in this day and age.

It follows that if information can be processed at atrocious speeds, you need to feed that information into the processor at equally sacrilegious speeds, especially when light itself takes a noticeable fraction of a second to travel from one side of the Earth to the other.

The ‘net was fast.

Which was why Ishikawa cursed and swore at the seed-virus that had suddenly hit servers all over the World.

Someone, somewhere, had taken a seed-virus, loaded it up with sensitive images (like, say, Shinji Ikari being retrieved from Unit-01) and placed it in a “Toy Box” Trojan, disguised as, oh, those very same pictures of Shinji Ikari, and released the infectious image library all over the world. The images spread like wildfire, at the speed of human thought, setting neurons aflame, through the infosphere that joined everyone together, establishing itself in fresh neural pathways established three weeks earlier by images of a climactic battle between two giant monsters in the middle of Japan.

Needless to say, those images hadn’t been possible to contain either.

It didn’t help, at all, that news companies all over the world circumvented their respective press blackouts by exploiting various and numerous loopholes in the law. Japanese law, for example, couldn’t restrict reporting on any story that had hit private sites, so all the press had to was to wait for the news to spread to a private server, and by “wait” Ishikawa really meant “leak it themselves,” those bastards!

Had Shinji Ikari been an Ordinary High School Student (besides the whole “pilots giant robot” part) it might have been possible to subtly DDoS-attack the social networking sites he’d used and just pull his face off their servers while overwriting the allocated hard-drive space about five hundred times just to make sure, but no; Shinji Ikari was the son of Gendo Ikari, a Tachibana Labs shareholder and wealthy plutocrat, whose son’s portrait occasionally appeared as boring filler in articles on his father’s latest economic endeavours. Taking all those images down was a lost cause and, even if feasible, would reek of government intervention; the idea (meme if you will) would still exist even if there was no proof, only reinforced by the cries of “Conspiracy!”

Ones which would, incidentally, have been eminently justified in this case.

Instead, Ishikawa used his Hunter-Killer viruses to give himself time to set a more realistic plan into action; a disinformation campaign that took advantage of modern advances in photo-manipulation. Counter-productively enough, he programmed a seed-virus to release the photos – altered photos, in which fake JPEG artifacts surrounded Shinji’s face, while shadows fell slightly wrong; a trained-but-not-quite-trained-enough eye would conclude that Shinji Ikari’s face had been superimposed on the photograph.

Releasing a second batch of photos with a different (fake) pilot altogether probably helped just as much.

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[Shinji Has Mail]
> READ

FROM: asuka.langely.soryu@tannhauser.bundesregierung.de
TO: ikari.shinji@ecco.mod.go.jp
SUBJECT: Congratulations
Hello, Third Child
Congratulations on your first Rakbu kill. It’s good to see that there are other people than me around who can fight the monsters. As an experienced pilot with years of piloting, I would be most pleased if you would tell me all about your experiences. I am looking forwards to meeting you.

Kindest regards,
Asuka Langley Soryu, Second Child and Pilot of Unit-02

There was the unmistakable sound of chairs scraping against the floor, followed by rustling, as if class had ended in a disorganized fashion, (and if Shinji had learnt anything about Hikari Hokari, such a thing was not allowed to happen) despite it being in the middle of a boring history lesson. What had only moments ago been a near-complete silence, if not for the constant droning on about the rise of militarism during the Shōwa period during which he could sneak looks at Temarei’s beautiful legs …eh had been replaced by a loud chatter, of which he was both the centre and subject. Wait, what?

In one fell swoop, he was surrounded by an impenetrable wall of students (it would have been insulting to comment on their density, he felt), quite unlike the Wall of Jericho, as Hokari was unable to make the crumble back to their seats. This isn’t happening! Most of them had their mobile phones or HandyNAVIs out, pushing them into his face. No no no! The pack grew denser and denser around him, until he was forced to stand. Not now, not here, not ever…

“Is this really you?”

“How did you get picked?”
“Was there some sort of test?”
“How are the controls like?”
“Are there WALDOes?”
“What are its weapons?"

“Be quiet! Show some respect! Class is still in session” …although that was more distant, in Hokari’s voice; a few students hadn’t stood up to squeeze the air out of him, for which he was eternally grateful, even if it made little difference.

“Pay attention to the teacher!” the Class Rep yelled through her teeth “You’re being disrespectful,” her face was burning scarlet and her firsts were clenched as she’d risen from her chair, or perhaps Shinji just imagined that, as he couldn’t really see her through the mass of students. There shouldn’t be enough students... an elbow was jostled into Shinji’s stomach. left to even make a crowd!

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Calamity. Noise. Disorder.

It was distracting and unnecessary, Rei thought. Although she stared out through the nearest window, she could still see their ghost-like reflections in the double glass, like a faint glass painting against the clear blue sky. Although it will not be clear much longer. Rei wasn’t actually staring at the sky at the moment, despite the interesting patterns, unique-yet-recognizable, formed by the rawsilk-white clouds. Instead, she stared at the kaleidoscopic patterns of colour that occasionally formed the classroom windows, dancing back and forth, but dancing is not the correct term, broken into frames by the windowsills and adjoining pieces of wall.

Then Rei noticed the distorted mirror image of herself in the glass pane. This is me. The new me. Same as old me? She stared into her own red eyes, looking down the lens of her reflection and into the artificial eye’s active pixel sensor.

Her eyes widened. Momentarily.

She stared into the black abyss of her pupil, and found it staring back at her; sentient and self-aware. That was not supposed to happen. She blinked, once, and it was gone. I am, but what am I?

Rei immediately stared down into her desk and dropped her stylus. Smoke, steam, actually, rose from her fingers. Like a schizophrenic hallucination, the faintly white vapour ascended towards the ventilation ducts without anyone noticing – This is probably not normal.

Class was over.

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Shinji took a jab to the face. The full force of the blow pushed him off his feet. His head slammed into the outside wall of the school and he sank together on the grassy soil. A huge boy in a jumpsuit has just walked up to him and punched him in the face; what was up with that? His attacker massaged his hand.

“Sorry, transferee,” the large boy said “I had to punch you to be at peace with myself

Shinji cradled his bleeding nose, feeling blood flow down his arm and drip onto his shirt and the grass under him. The huge boy was flanked by a thinner, shorter boy in glasses. Right now he had taken them off to cover half his face half-heartedly with his hand.

“Toji…” the bespectacled boy began accusingly “he’s their pilot; we’re going to get into trouble for this!” he raised his head and smiled guiltily “and with those leaked images I sort-of-kind-of saved on my PDA…” He paused, sucking in a worried breath. “Oh dear, their suited men-in-black are coming over already…”

“That jerk hurt my sister!” the boy named Toji yelled to his friend, who cowered at the volume. Shinji staggered back onto his legs.

“Look, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…” Shinji said and took a cross-punch to the chest. He could swear the impact sounded like a subdued car-crash. He squinted and saw another punch lined up. Ouch. He closed his eyes and braced himself poorly.

But it never came. He opened his eyes and saw Toji dangle a meter in the air, oddly enough, looking terrified. There was a loud, reverberating humming, like electric power lines, and two giant grey spider tanks materialized out of thin air, one holding Toji up with its arms.

“Whoa!” the boy in glasses said, with mixed awe and terror.

“Put him down Tachikoma,” an adult voice said. The owner was a JSDA soldier with a mullet. “Don’t leave him hanging up in the air.”

“But I caught a terrorist!” the urban-camouflaged tank said.

“He’s not a terrorist,” the soldier said exasperatedly. “At worst; he’s a violence-prone delinquent. Now put him down.”

“Okay…” the Tachikoma said, a disappointed whine entering its voice, but obliged. It carefully lowered the muscular boy onto the ground, letting go off his arms as soon as his feet rested safely on the grass.

The man turned to Toji and his friend.

“You’re Toji Suzahara and Kensuke Aida, right?” he asked without acknowledging their replies “Go back to your classes. We’ll send someone to talk to you later,”

They both heard the Self-Defence “We,” (as opposed to the “Imperial ‘We’” discarded 85 years earlier) and absconded in an intimidated manner.

“I’m Togusa,” the man said and reached out a hand to help Shinji get his posture back.

“...nothing’s going to happen to them, right?” Shinji asked through the flood of blood that emanated from his nose. “His sister got hurt in the battle and…”

“We might send his parents a harshly worded letter, if that’s what you mean,” Togusa replied.

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A strong south wind blew across the bow of the JDS Nagato before sweeping over the deck of her sister ship, the JDS Mutsu. Both were flanked by the helicarriers JDS Kaga and the JDS Junyo. The American contribution to this specific brick in the Pacific Wall was a Zumwalt-class destroyer, the IAS Moorer.

Kaisō-chō Heiya Kotani stood at the front deck of the Nagato and watched the waves break against the sharp edge, dividing into trails of white foam, and leaving a wake of cold water behind the Nagato. Like her namesake, the Nagato-class missile destroyers were slightly aged, having been built after WWIII and used for peacekeeping in Korea in WWIV, but nonetheless some of the most advanced and powerful ships around, combining missile batteries with advanced sensors an AI for a network-centric vessel that could be run almost entirely without crew from a central computer in Kyosho if such were necessary.

She was a beautiful ship, and Kotani was proud to serve on it. He stared once more down into the waves, and that was odd, he thought, as he gazed into the depths. The water was pitch black right below the bow of the ship, as if something was moving below it, but the Captain would have alerted them if there were any submarines, allied or otherwise, this close to their destroyer-group. He then spotted a faintly glowing red light in the middle of the black surface. It swept along his field of view, and he turned his head and saw that it was headed straight at the Moorer. He reached, for the lack of a better term, for the alarm-executable in his cyberbrain.

Before he’d navigated his way to it, all hell broke loose.

All possible alarms flared. The wind hit stronger, and the knife-like Moorer bent and snapped in two at its middle, splintering and bleeding diesel and motor oil into the water. As the crippled halves sank into the cold sea with American sailors frantically swimming in the water, the Junyo’s stern was lifted out of the water in a fraction of a second. Kotani could swear he’d seen a fucking tail throw it out of the water. What was this, the Kraken? Akkorokamui? Personnel were thrown overboard and the Junyo dived bow-first into the water and toppled, giving Kotani a clear view of the crumpled stern hull.

He didn’t have much more to think at that point, because a giant glowing tentacle burst up through the Nagato’s CIC. The bright white appendage ripped sideways out from the destroyer, tearing the hull into flakes. Like a deer in the headlights, Kotani could only watch as he fell off the deck (or rather, the deck fell with him) into the chilled water. He ducked his head under, ripping off his motor-oil-soaked uniform jacket while underwater; soon the oil-spill would light on fire, and he’d rather not burn.

He had to swim up to take another breath. When he surfaced, he watched the sea monster, a reddish-brown bug-like thing with tentacles rise vertically up through the innards of the Mutsu, boring a hole through the engine-room and command centre.

The monster kept on rising, as if it wasn’t constrained by such petty laws like gravity; it seemed to hang, much like bricks don’t. Then, as if attacking the destroyer group had just been its idea of a game, it curled together and stretched out towards mainland Japan, oblivious of the Kaga peppering it with CWIS-fire and anti-air missiles. As each bullet hit, or rather, didn’t, the creature blinked in primary colours against the blue sky, like a tasteless post-contemporary neon-painting. Soon, it was out of range, and Kotani swam towards a life-boat the Kaga had deployed to pick up survivors.

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The pale afternoon light reached in through the windows of the abandoned classroom, spreading outwards from each window it passed through like a reiterated macroscale double-slit experiment. The sharp contrast between shadow and light, projected on the floor and walls almost created a film-noir like feeling, helped by how washed-out everything seemed in the poor light. Shinji Ikari even wore black and while clothes with artistically applied blood, and the ventilation fan was, if not slow-turning, quite noisy.

The flow of blood emanating from his nose had eventually stopped, thanks to a seemingly ever-growing pile of discarded tissue papers that had been periodically dumped into a trashcan Togusa had dragged over to their conscripted table. Technically Shinji was supposed to attend an after-school club at this moment, but as he had recently transferred and hadn’t been in any hurry to join any of them, he defaulted to the Go Home Club, and by then actually being in school, he was doing a lot better than all those other slackers, right? Right…

A pair of muscular men in black suits, eyes hidden behind large black sunglasses stood on either side of the only door to the classroom. Shinji felt assured that they wore those sunglasses even at night; their vision was augmented, he was certain. In either case, Togusa waved them off, and they demonstratively took up the exact same positions on the other side door. Shinji slurped the last of his canned green tea, letting the relaxing-yet-energizing (and how did that work?) astringent caffeine-and-polyphenol mixture warm his body.

“So you pilot a giant robot,” Togusa said with the tone of voice that made his surprise at Shinji’s age clear.

Shinji looked away. “It was really only that one time,” he said “…according to Mis... Captain Katsuragi, they have other pilots with more experience. I just happened to be available,” Shinji said, trying to deflect any further questions, or at the very least dodge them.

“What do you need the giant robots for?” Togusa asked. To ruin my life, Shinji thought. It took him a small fraction of milisecond to realize that he was actually a legal employee of ECCO now, and ‘you’ therefore referred to the organization as a whole.

“I don’t know,” he answered plainly. He wished for another can of tea. It was as if the air had suddenly gone colder. It probably had, actually; he could hear the howling of the wind now, blowing into the city from the sea.

“How are you coming along with the other pilots?” Togusa asked.

“Very well,” Shinji replied, trying to keep the bitterness he felt about the whole subject out of his voice, and failing, “we’re in a perfectly harmonic state of mutual obliviousness,” Which wasn’t exactly true, Shinji realized, but close enough.

There were no further questions, and Shinji spent a few minutes trying to wring the last precious drops of green tea from the can, while at the same time trying not to cut his tongue on the sharp metal edges; he’d bled enough for one day, he thought.

Togusa looked away and let a mildly annoyed sigh escape under his breath, too subdued to really be heard. Shinji Ikari seemingly knew nothing about ECCO, their giant robots or their enemies, which consequently made asking (because this was certainly not an informal interrogation) him about it a rather futile task. Hopefully the Major and Ishikawa were finding their investigations somewhat easier.

There were three rapid knocks on the door to the not-that-empty classroom, and the door swung open, revealing Rei Ayanami. Her pale skin was almost unnaturally white in the light, only distinguished by the contrast to the truly white bandages on her right arm and her school uniform. She headed straight for Shinji.

“There has been an alert,” she said flatly “Follow me. I’ll go on ahead,”

Then, before she’d even verified that Shinji had understood or even caught her message, she turned and left. Togusa found himself on the receiving end of a cyberlink call.

“Togusa, get Shinji Ikari and Rei Ayanami over here immediately,” Maj. Kusanagi said.

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With the possible exception of the capital city/region/fucking island Kyosho, Ashigarashimo District was the most well-defended geographical location in Japan. The district was a veritable fortress, surrounded by military bases and airfields. Destroyed and sunken cities served as uninhabited buffers that could be destroyed without repercussions, while the numerous mountains and lakes would hinder the mobility of anything with the magnitude of a Rakbu.

To outside observers, the Chinese certainly, it might look less like a series of defences and more like preparations for war. The fake skyscrapers hiding missile batteries certainly looked suspect, although the Japanese Government had made a press release stating they were not intended for use in combat, and therefore not in violation of the Geneva Conventions. It didn’t quite help their credibility that they’d also hollowed out hills and filled them with even more missile batteries. Short of invading Korea or bringing nukes into the country (and in the name of all that is good and holy, some of the right-wing militarists wanted that too!) there was little the state of Japan could to avoid accusations of a second Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere under the iron fist of the Imperialist American devils. Thanks to cybernetic enhancements and general medical advances, survivors from the first Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere were still alive to keep the old wounds open, and by default, those aging centenarians had lived through WWIII and WWIV too, and with those the resulting American peacekeeping (though many preferred the less politically correct term “occupation”)

On the other hand, actually being attacked by the enemy the defences had been built for in the first place helped loads.

Being attacked twice was a particularly nasty godsend.

“Target in sight, Air Boss,” 2nd Lt. Poole transmitted back to the Philip Mead as his F/A51 caught the alien on its radar. “Weapons are locked and we’re ready to fire,”

“You’re gonna have to wait for JASDF clearance,” ‘Air Boss’ Gen. Duane K. Patrick replied over the distributed cyberlink.

Two flights of AEN F/A51 fighter swept over the seas towards the hovering Rakbu. In their minds, they also tracked the positions of a flight of Japanese ATF29s. Both groups of fighter aircraft were bound to intercept the alien invader at approximately the same time, not that it really mattered when an F/A51 could shoot beyond the horizon, had they been fitted with long-distance missiles, which they hadn’t. Instead, some Pentagon officer had boarded the ship and insisted that napalm and fragmentation missiles were used against the alien fuckers. On one hand, he looked like a typical ground-locked pencil-pusher, so what did he know? On the other hand, his uniform sleeve patch read ‘Defence: Extraterrestrial and Alien Threats’ so what did he truly know?

“Target is flying dangerously low; cherub-two!” 2nd Lt. Poole reported, using military aviator jargon to refer to heights, in hundreds of feet, below 1000 “and it’s over the city”

“JASDF reports the area as low-risk; we’ve marked your map,” an AEN Operator android reported.

“Okay pilots, listen up!” Air Boss shouted over the cyberlinks, “We’ve just received confirmation from the Japanese; Operation Tsubasa is ‘go’, so engage target at will!”

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Ninurta floated quite comfortably, although buoyancy had little to do with it, when the first wave of napalm struck. The missiles exploded against its carapace and scattered burning petrol-jelly all over its reddish-brown back. The nearby towers of stone the pest-like humans had constructed everted itself and spat out shooting stars (for what else could it be?) at the Rakbu. Ninurta banked and let the AA-missiles strike the AT-field enhanced hard shell ineffectually. Did the killer apes really think glorified archery was any threat at all to a god? The Messenger had been a fool; how could you reason with that which could not comprehend or understand?

With one fell swoop, it sliced the top off the anti-air fortification. The concrete and metal top ground against the remaining bottom, releasing heaps of concrete dust as it slid down. Once it had come halfway, it tipped and smashed against another abandoned building. Soon thereafter, it fell towards the ground, steel, concrete and plaster crumpling against the ground under its own weight.

Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean and Indochinese refugees watched as the huge clouds of dust were whipped up and out through the streets from the truly uninhabited areas of old Odawara. Debris shot out as metal beams were wrung and twisted into unnatural positions. Parents hoisted their children up on their arms, and wrists were grabbed and dragged away from the approaching battle. The refugees had all lived through WWIV, and the older had lost parents or friends to WWIII; running away from warzones was near-instinctual to them.

Once more the speakers sounded over Ashigarashimo: “Today, a special state of emergency has been declared throughout the Kanto and Chubu districts around the Tokai Area. Please take refuge in your designated shelter.”

There was just one problem. The refugees didn’t have a designated shelter that wasn’t neck-deep in polluted water.

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“Awwww…” Kensuke complained, “There’s a big battle again and I have to go and get locked up in a shelter.” Laboriously, he dragged himself along with the rest of the school towards their shelter

“It’s better than staying up here,” Toji retorted “Last time they practically nuked the city twice to get that thing,” he said, looking between rows of houses directly into the heart of Odawara, where recently abandoned construction machines repaired the massive damage to the buildings at Ground Zero. “Stupid pilot,” he muttered

“I’m still of the opinion that the second giant explosion was caused by the giant monster, not the JSDA,” Kensuke said, pushing his glasses back up on the bridge on his nose. That’s it, I’m getting optics when I turn 16, he though. ...if I can afford it, was the unpleasant afterthought. “Besides,” he un-digressed, “if they use nuclear-grade weapons in the city, I might not survive.” Nuclear bunkers were, after all, not built to withstand direct nuclear impacts, something he had spent quite some time explaining to his classmates before Class Rep Horaki had shut him up, citing ‘morale considerations’, and, more unofficially, ‘you’re being annoying’.

“I just want to get one clear look before I die!” Kensuke said, loud enough for emphasis, but not loud enough to pull attention from people not in the conversation, except maybe Horaki or Temarei, but they heard everything
.
“Stop being so melodramatic,” Toji ordered as they stopped, for some reason or the other, right before the entrance to the underground shelter. “You’re not going to die,”

“Besides,” Toji continued as they waited for an explanation for why they were standing outside in a potential warzone while there were perfectly fine and not-too-uncomfortable and not to mention warm shelters just waiting to be occupied at the bottom of a flight of stairs “...if what you want is a better look, why don’t you just ask your girlfriend,” he said, emphasising the word mockingly, “for some high-res photos from her father?”

“She’s not my girlfriend!” Kensuke protested.

Ignoring the vehement objections, Toji continued teasingly: “Or is it because every time you’re around her, there’s something else you’d rather see?” he asked and made crude, cup-like motions with his hands. Kensuke just frowned and faked a pout.

“What are we waiting around here for, anyway?” Toji asked after a while. It’s cold, damnit!

“If you’d been listening,” a female voice said. It belonged to Nell Fubuki, a loner girl who had been sitting in the back row of their classroom for three years, “you’d have heard that refugees have occupied the school’s shelter,” she said dryly, “so now we have to walk across the city to find an available shelter,” she sighed and impolitely nudged Kensuke in the direction they’d come from. “Now get going before the Class Rep chews us all out,”

01001110 01001001 01001110 01010101 01010010 01010100 01000001

The ECCO Combat Information Centre was bustling with life, or its android equivalent. Bustling with activity was probably a more accurate and general descriptor, all in all. Once more, rows upon rows were filled with android military-grade Operators in brand new auxiliary JSDA uniforms; the human staff had likewise received their own sets of tan and olive-green uniforms, except for 2nd Lt. Maya Ibuki, who wore her C.B.C.M. uniform, and Cpt. Katsuragi, who wore skivvies, with the sole military addition her beret, cocked at a rather non-regulation jaunty angle. Truly, what male or curious female could deny her that right, with her shorts leaving much of her legs exposed and hugging tightly around her? Granted, the uniform statistics were skewed from the most likely distribution somewhat by the absence of Gendo Ikari, who couldn’t be there to insist on arriving wearing only an anonymous, black suit and further increase the standard deviation.

“We have visual confirmation of the target. It has entered the refugee district.”

The hideous visage of the giant vermin appeared on the main screen, alternating angles between a number of surveillance and recognizance drones released to gather intelligence, though Misato suspected the Rakbu, in fact, had none at all, much like non-neglible proportions of the JASDF high command. On the screen, the Tactical Staff and the token Scientific representatives could clearly see how the Rakbu used its long tentacles to strike missiles out of the air long before they could hit. The few that passes its point defences exploded harmlessly against its reddish-brown carapace.

“Fortifying city in t-minus three, two, one…”

All over Ashigarashimo, especially in Yugawara and Manazuru, giant mechanical and hydraulic locks slid out of their holes, detaching buildings from their foundations and leaving them to rest on giant hydraulic slave-pistons. Hydraulic fluid was pumped out of giant reservoirs, dropping the towering skyscrapers deep into the ground over select places; it was an experimental system exclusive to Ashigarashimo District, built after WWIII when the cities were potential candidates for the position of capital city; the variable profile was supposed to lessen the impact of nuclear strikes by lowering the total surface area of the buildings, but the cost in structural integrity had been deemed too high, and the system had been left as a relic of interwar paranoia.

“The central block and districts 1 through 7 have been housed,”

Captain Misato Katsuragi stood, arms folded, in her command position and awaited the launch order; she hadn’t expected the second Rakbu to be capable of flight; the First Rakbu had been humanoid, just like all encountered Anunnaki, but I don’t have to think about that now, not ever. Her mind should be on the task; how to command Unit-01 against the second Rakbu. Then again, what could stop her from getting her sweet, sweet revenge?

“Am I just going to sit here?” Shinji complained from Unit-01.

“We’re just awaiting a launch order from the JSDA, Shinji,” Misato replied “Please be patient.”

Misato leaned over the edge of the command floor and shouted down at Maj. Kusanagi: “Hey, Major! Why are you here? Shouldn’t the JSDA have deployed already?”

Maj. Kusanagi leant back and twisted her head, looking back up at Cpt. Katsuragi. “Firstly, my unit are security forces,” she replied, “not combat forces,” But you’re Special Forces! Misato thought, “…and secondly,” Maj. Kusanagi mumbled something; all Misato caught was ‘embarrassing’, “I’ve been relieved of its command pending an investigation into my behaviour as an officer,”

“What?” was all Cpt. Katsuragi could reply; it was somewhat hard to believe.

“It turns out the top brass weren’t too happy about my attempted ghosthack of a child,” the Major explained, her tone as artificially neutral as her body, “so until the unofficial investigation reaches a verdict on whether ghosthacking Shinji Ikari was ‘excessive use of force,’ or not, I’m an overqualified courier.”

Well, that makes sense… “Where’s that damn launch order!?” Misato shouted. “We should have deployed a long time ago!”

She looked up at Deputy Commander Fuyutsuki. He was on the phone, probably asking just the same question. He put his hand over the microphone and looked at the big screen, where the second Rakbu twisted impossibly fast in the air and launched itself at an AEN F/A51, slicing it in two with a tentacle.

“The Ministry of Defence has turned the responsibility for Operation Tsubasa over to the JASDF,” Fuyutsuki reported. “What a waste of taxpayer money,” he added mostly to himself.

01001110 01001001 01001110 01010101 01010010 01010100 01000001

A fragmentation missile struck Ninurta’s soft thorax. The cutting, high-velocity shards of metal cut into its legs. Pain shot through the Rakbu’s body, and it shuddered. The charring heat of the gelatinous napalm left charred smudges on its carapace as it slid down the frictionless AT field. Hundreds of tiny metal fragments had embedded themselves in the hard shell on its back; harmless, but painful every time they struck, wedging and cutting closer and closer to the soft insides. Its tentacles ached. Perhaps… Perhaps it was not as strong as it thought it was.

Perhaps it had been wrong to take to the skies; the AT field it needed to sustain its flight demanded qualia that it could have used to fight with, and the black-haired people were better warriors than expected. It twisted itself around and swept an elongated tentacle out at an ATF29, cutting off its wing. A missile struck it between the thick carapace of its back and the thinner frontal armour, wedging itself between the armour plates and exploding. Three of Ninurta’s many legs were blown straight off. Quite a lot of blood (better described as ichor) and disgusting juices were scattered over a nearby building.

The words Ninurta used to describe this had never been recorded on cuneiform tablets.

In pain, it lashed out at a boresighting fighter jet. The white-hot tentacle stretched around, behind its back, and by intuition, it stabbed upwards. The thick appendage stabbed the pilots head, vaporizing it in an instant. With the pilot and most of his neural interface gone, the F/A51 dived without changing course. 20 tons of dead-weight aircraft crashed into the Rakbu, quite painfully; the first hit that really mattered.

Having the F/A51 light on fire and explode, halfway inside Ninurta mattered just as much. Like a burning wreck, it fell towards the ground, where it could be safe and recuperate.

01001110 01001001 01001110 01010101 01010010 01010100 01000001

“Captain Katsuragi,” Fuyutsuki called “you have full command over this situation. The Ministry of Defence demands that we dispatch Unit-01 immediately.”

“They’re more obnoxious than the aliens!” Misato commented. “I’d have mobilized even if they hadn’t asked!” The Captain thrust her still biological hand onto a fingerprint scanner, removing the last lock on the Unit-01 launch procedure. It had already been locked to the mass driver frame, which was as far as Misato had been willing to push against the constraints of the “no-launch” order. The plastic cover slid off and Cpt. Katsuragi flipped the molly guard that remained as the last barrier between her index finger and sweet, sweet revenge. “Launch in t-minus zero seconds! Launch!”

At that, Shinji was forced down into his seat by four-and-a-half times his own weight once more. He could feel the blood rush from his head and down to into his legs, only to be stopped by the tight g-suit that clasped around his legs and abdomen. Again, he wanted to vomit, and again, he couldn’t. Blood rushed back into his head. Why do I even bother doing this? He asked himself. My father isn’t even here! he reminded himself. ...and why do I even care if he’s here or not? It doesn’t matter, he concluded. Right?

The Eva-frame slammed hard against the top of the lift. Shinji likewise slammed up against his five-point seat-belt. Couldn’t they have made launch a less painful procedure? The door slid open, and re-rendered sunlight flooded the Entry Plug unsurprisingly like an artificial sunrise. He lifted his rifle to his shoulder, manually locking the trackpoint to the crosshairs, and took a step out, sweeping the Eva-rifle from side to side. Two weeks of training had taught him something, at least.

The Rakbu was straight ahead of him, half dragging, half hovering towards him, standing on its pygidium like a praying mantis, tentacles raised for combat. Shinji took aim and fired. A three-round burst slammed the rifle into his, or rather the Eva’s, shoulder, and three shells slammed against Ninurta’s AT field, scattering a monochrome field of noise into the air. Another three rounds bursts forth, into the cloud of snow and artillery smoke. And another burst. And another.

“Idiot, you’ve covering the enemy in smoke!” Misato yelled. Shinji depressed the trigger. He hyperventilated, I got it, right? “Control your fire! Don’t squander shells!”

The Rakbu was covered in a pillar of dust-grey smoke, like a burning pile of something nasty. While Shinji couldn’t see anything, ECCO CIC had linked UAV surveillance drones to smaller CIC screens. To their horror, the Rakbu still stood unharmed. “Shinji, move out of–“

A glowing tentacle burst from the pillar of smoke and sliced at Shinji, and missed. As he took a step backwards, his gun fell apart in his hands, cut to pieces by something ultra-thin. A nearby building’s top half slid of the bottom half onto the street, crumbling to dust and debris as it hit the ground. Seconds later, two tentacles cut through the remaining steel frame like it was a pen against a pair of particularly sharp swords. The rest of the Rakbu shot out of its dust-cloud, ramming Shinji in his chest. The 500 ton giant fell backwards, denting the road as it hit.

“Shinji, get back up!” Misato yelled, over the cyberlink. “Shinji, please, get back up!”

Ninurta towered over the fallen Eva, blocking out the sun with its hideous head. Shinji watched as it floated on top of him, dwarfing even Unit-01 with its sheer length. Oh no… A tentacle burst forth. It wrapped itself around his neck and shoved Unit-01 headfirst into a nearby building, then slammed him to the ground. Shinji yelped at the pain that shot up his entire body. Oh please no…

“Shinji, get up, please!” he heard, vaguely.

01001110 01001001 01001110 01010101 01010010 01010100 01000001

“It’s not going very well for the new guy,” Kensuke declared, as he watched the battle through the zoom of his mobile phone/PDA/camera. “He’s losing already!”

“Then let’s get underground,” Toji suggested, dragging Kensuke by his collar. The Esagila Academy-students had zig-zagged between shelters, trying to find available room; the shelters had been built soon after WWIII, not expecting the following population boom, nor the industrialization of Ashigarashimo, and especially not the millions of refugees who had (non-violently) stormed and occupied all available space. There was always space for a handful of students, but the Esagila Academy numbered in the low hundreds, leaving the older students to walk back and forth between supposedly vacant shelters. Right now, they had walked up the hills towards Hakone, which was further from the refugee centres and less likely to overpopulated.

It also gave Kensuke a nice view of the battle, but since they had been led up the hill by Hikary Hokari and Tomoe Temarei, this was probably unintentional. And required that you use a value of “probably” which included “not a chance in hell” to get that concession.

Through his camcorder, Kensuke watched the Rakbu lash out against Unit-01 and grab it once more by the neck. Its long appendages lifted the 500 ton Type 36 “Evangelion” ignoring such petty conventions as “centre of mass” and “classical mechanics” and tossed it in a high arc against the nearest mountain.

Which happened to be quite close to where Toji, Kensuke and the rest of their class stood.

Oh crap…

01001110 01001001 01001110 01010101 01010010 01010100 01000001

Shinji Ikari arced through the air, quite comfortably actually, when compared to the impact against the asphalted hillside, fortunately not cushioned on soft, crackling classmates. They had pulled away, or been pulled away, once they saw where he was headed. Still, landing really hurt, damnit!

“Shinji Ikari,” he heard the less-familiar voice of Maj. Kusanagi shout, “watch yourself. There are unevacuated civilians in the area.”

“Shinji,” the voice of Dr Akagi continued, from where the Major had left off, “your umbilical cord has been detached; you only have five minutes of operational power left.” In his peripheral vision, he could see a timer count down in digital numbers, counting hundreds of seconds at a rate, in a shocking show of innovation, of one second per second.

“Shinji, pull back to the nearest power bus,” Misato shouted “we’ve requested a joint JSDA/JASDF attack to cover your retreat!”

Shinji leant forwards, trying to gather his senses. Or maybe it was Unit-01 doing that; he wasn’t really sure anymore. He stood up, watching his terrified and/or cheering classmates through the artificially transparent Entry Plug. Something about retreating…

01001110 01001001 01001110 01010101 01010010 01010100 01000001

Kensuke Aide watched the really awesome Evangelion-unit from a perfect frog angle. He was close; really close. In fact, even he didn’t really consider standing so close he could feel hydraulic oil drip down a safe position. When Toji grabbed his shirt, he happily ran along with him.

“Did you see that!?” he asked, as if a giant 40m robot was a sight that could be ignored “It just stood back up again!” Pant “It was airborne!” Wheeze “And it stood back up again!”

Toji dragged him harder “Just shut up, just shut up,” he mumbled and yelled at the same time, if such a thing is possible. His sister – he couldn’t forget what had happened to his sister. Just run! he thought as Ninurta rose over the horizon, in all his godlike glory, burning red against the greying blue sky.

01001110 01001001 01001110 01010101 01010010 01010100 01000001

“Retreat, Shinji!” Misato shouted as Shinji’s blood, flowing from his nose, danced around the cockpit, like a thin but visible smoke, slowly tinting the crystal-clear LCL with a deathly red shade. In his groggy state of mind, it almost seemed more natural that way.

“Shinji Ikari,” he heard someone transmit, “we’ve sent an armoured patrol to secure your classmates. You need to pull the field of battle away from them.”

Ooooh, was all Shinji could think through the pain “…pull back Shinji,” What should he do? I mustn’t run away, I mustn’t run away! The Rakbu stood there, like it was awaiting a mere demigod’s first move. He couldn’t let civilians come to harm again… “Shinji, pull yourself together!” I mustn’t run away, I can’t, I just can’t run away… He had to protect- “SHINJI! Retreat! That’s an O-R-D-E-R!” Mustn’t… Su gish-sha ni di-dam… he thought, wait, that can’t be… He looked down on his retreating classmates, then back at the glowing red core of the Rakbu. Damiq dayyanutum-a maru.

01011001 01010101 01001001

Ninurta swung its twin tentacles towards Unit-01. As it was about it wrap one of them around the Eva’s throat, a white gauntlet shot up and clasped around the glowing limb, forcing it away and bending it painfully. The other flexible line-segment of incandescent light impaled Unit-01 through the armoured torso, bursting out through the rear neck armour and looping back into Unit-01’s head. All Shinji felt was pain.

Nearby, on the ground, Toji hauled a cowering Kensuke as far away as he could. A giant, glowing tentacle cut down towards him and he jumped back, dragging Kensuke with him. The white-hot mass-of-Rakbu sliced down into the concrete, flopping up and down, making mince-meat of the asphalt and soil beneath.

“Shinji, you’re disobeying a direct order!” Misato tried, then: “Please Shinji, pull back; you’ve only got a few minutes remaining!”

All she received back was an ear-pitching scream.

Unit-01 deployed its knife, a large carbon-steel blade the weight of a small car and the length of a telephone pole. Frantically, Unit-01 swept at Ninurta’s apparent face, while a tentacle burrowed through its skull. Then, it thrust towards the Rakbu’s red, crystalline core, slicing through the thick, or perhaps it was thin, relatively, flesh and carapace like it was made from paper. Unit-01 stabbed up harder and harder into the vital organ, trying to burst through it and the spine behind, assuming Ninurta even had a spine.

Then, Unit-01 ran out of power, and Shinji’s body felt limp as power died in Unit-01’s augmented muscles and the synchronization faded. The internal screens went black, showing only token diagnostics. [EMERGENCY LIFE SUPPORT ACTIVATED] as the strongest source of light, and all he could hear was the sizzling sound of his own, Unit-01’s, flesh being burnt to a black char.

Then, it all stopped.

01001110 01001001 01001110 01010101 01010010 01010100 01000001

Toji watched as the giant alien monster stopped the incandescent glowing. Its tentacles slid out of Unit-01 hand, head and torso. A thick, un-blood-like red fluid poured from the monster’s chest, spraying the giant robot’s hand in the unknown fluid. Drops of the stuff were dripping from the giant knife.

“Kensuke,” he said, quietly, “it’s dead; the giant monster is dead!”

Kensuke was hyperventilating and cowering in a near-foetal position. Toji was doing pretty much the same thing, but had looked up when the sounds died out. They had been in the middle of a giant robot battle, against alien invaders from space, like some bad sci-fi movie, and they were alive, like the male comic relief pair. Except there was nothing funny about this, Toji thought. It was quite possibly the worst thing he had ever experienced.

Unit-01 slumped together, sliding down the hill under its own weight. It stopped when it hit a building, and what remained of the rear hatch popped. It creaked and screamed as hydraulic pistons fought metal wrung into unnatural positions. With a deathly scream, it half-slid, half-fell open, revealing a badly damaged cylinder. The transferee, Ikari-or-something climbed out, seemingly lost.

Then he vomited.

LCL, breakfast, lunch and a can of green tea burst forth from Shinji’s oesophagus, leaving a foul taste in his mouth. He was shaking, and breathing unnaturally, and hurting, and afraid, and terrified, and lonely and a thousand other feelings and emotions he couldn’t even name, all at once. He settled for wandering and staring aimlessly at nothing at all, before crawling up into a foetal position. Foetal positions were safe. He wanted to feel safe. Also, he wanted to talk to his father. Right now, all he wanted was a phone.

The JSDA arrived minutes later with an ambulance.

01001110 01001001 01001110 01010101 01010010 01010100 01000001

Jonen C · Feb 26th 2010, 7:34am

This is acceptable.

And at least none of the security people wore baggy coats to make them look bigger than they really are.

RazorSmile · Feb 26th 2010, 7:42pm

Sweet. Hints of ontological weirdness to come.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jonen C

And at least none of the security people wore baggy coats to make them look bigger than they really are.

What's this referring to?

OrkKaptin · Feb 26th 2010, 8:23pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by bullethead

Welcome to the life of creative people, writers in particular. We're all kinda messed up on some level, although for some reason your situation sounds frighteningly like mine, which is kinda weird. But if you can harness the wangst and channel it into your writing, it makes it less all consuming.

Quote:

Originally Posted by LatwPIAT

It might have to do with ANE being my favourite piece of written fiction after Cryptonomicon at the moment, coupled with the belief that anything that doesn't merge the setting almost as well as ANE is of sub-standard quality.[1] (Which is a stupid attitude.) It might be so that EarthScorpion is writing a mix between a cosmic horror story, a giant robot show and a piece of hard military science fiction, while I'm writing a mix between a giant robot show and an espionage technothriller, but that doesn't mean I don't cry myself to sleep every time I see how perfectly he blends the conflicts of the Aeon War into a coherent narrative with the Eva storyline, knowing that everything I do will be inferior table-scraps jaggedly mashed together because the plot demands it, sprinkled with a few good ideas that I feel will only be painfully juxtaposed by the torturous methods...

Someone once told me it's not fun to listen to an author decry their own work...

...at times it feels like I just slave on, knowing in my tortured soul that the only reason I'm putting out this miserable drivel is from some imagined obligation to the faceless, unseen masses that were mistakenly mislead with false promises (made substantially more difficult by the revered holy one whose ground he walks on I worship (had we not been physically separated by a fairly large body of water) being among the faceless masses) of a story of quality, not knowing that I have never ever as much as tried to lead pen to paper to write anything even resembling a story (barring bad attempts in English class, forced by the limitations of curriculum) and a penchant towards procrastination with a tendency to start projects I never finish - that I'm really only fooling myself and prolonging the eventual hiatus and failure, only setting myself up for a painful fall as I betray even those I adore the most...

Ha ha ha

...all of which is caused by the sexual frustration I experience from my complete inability to approach, or even strike up conversation with, the immensely cute girl I harbour extreme affection towards purely by virtue of her physical, myopic appearance - the first person for whom I have really felt like this - knowing all too well the my own horror and awkward nature and perceived, self-deprecating ugliness in any social situation will never allow me to bring myself to...

...

...as I feel I draw myself towards what can only be called "Hikikomori" as I spend less and less time with my friends and withdraw from social situations I once used to gain some form of joy from, spiralling even further down into an evil circle of self-enforcing belief that there is some excuse in the form of a psychological disorder that will somehow make me exempt from my actions and/or inability to act, clinging to looser and looser definitions of sane only because I feel I lack the maturity of my peers, feeling ill-adopted towards my rapidly approaching adulthood and increase in responsibilities, fearing I've never really gown up, but am rather some miserable husk of a proper human being, knowing that when my own towering pile of repressed flaws come collapsing down and I am exposed, naked, to the rest of the world, I will go mad, having lived a lie of being smarter and more mature than everyone else, knowing that if I had been a better human being, I could have avoided all this...

A wangsty Eva-fanfic-writer. Who'd have guessed.

...yet even in these moments of self-reflection, I am only using a sardonic overblown style because I am not willing to face the cold hard reality of my own flaws, hoping that I am really blowing everything out of proportion for the aforementioned pride and haughty nature...

I guess you're right.

[1]eh... That's one of my problems and perks - I set my standards for quality so high I can easily afford any piece of fiction I want, because the number of fictive works that approach Cryptonomicon is, in my opinion, quite low, at the cost of leaving me quite starved. I stopped watching TV quite a long while ago, and most of the games I buy are at least half, sometimes a whole, decade old.

goddamnit get out of my HEAD

Jonen C · Feb 27th 2010, 1:49am

Quote:

Originally Posted by RazorSmile

What's this referring to?

This (bolded for emphasis).

Quote:

A pair of muscular men in black suits, eyes hidden behind large black sunglasses stood on either side of the only door to the classroom. Shinji felt assured that they wore those sunglasses even at night; their vision was augmented, he was certain. In either case, Togusa waved them off, and they demonstratively took up the exact same positions on the other side door. Shinji slurped the last of his canned green tea, letting the relaxing-yet-energizing (and how did that work?) astringent caffeine-and-polyphenol mixture warm his body.

Also, this may help explain.

Stormwind · Feb 27th 2010, 5:25am

Sunglasses... Augmented vision... Sounds somewhat fami-

Oh, primusdaamit, LatwPIAT!!

*went off to reinstall DX*

Jonen C · Feb 27th 2010, 5:54am

I note that each binary string that serves as scene break is different. Anyone want to help me figure out the significance of this?

Jonen C · Feb 27th 2010, 6:13am

Okay. According to a binary translator, the scene breaks read as this:

ISIMUD (all through chapter 1 and 2) (wiki !!!)

NINURTA (Chapter 3 subline) (wiki)

BEWARE (First scene break) (WMG: Referring, perhaps, to [REDACTED]*? Something in the school is not as it seems)

ESAGILA (second) (wiki) (The name of the school, too)

SORYU (third) (Note particularly that this string comes just before the Email)

NIDABA (fourth) (wiki)

Rei (fifth) (This string comes after the scene from Rei's POV)

NINURTA (several times)

YUI (third to last)

NINURTA (last two)

There is definitely something significant there.

* = I am convinced that [REDACTED] is in fact the [REDACTED]. However, because First Impressions Have to be False, it is probable that she is not [REDACTED], but something else entirely. [REDACTED].

Either way, my significant sense is tingling.

LatwPIAT · Feb 28th 2010, 2:11am

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jonen C

I note that each binary string that serves as scene break is different. Anyone want to help me figure out the significance of this?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jonen C

* = I am convinced that [REDACTED] is in fact the [REDACTED]. However, because First Impressions Have to be False, it is probable that she is not [REDACTED], but something else entirely. [REDACTED].

Yay! I hoped somebody would notice those and translate them. I'm sure you could can figure out the significance of some of them too. (Although keeping your WMG's hidden from the author; that's a new one. You're stealing my right to gloat and laugh at your faulty first impressions, Jonen C!)

Jonen C · Feb 28th 2010, 4:27am

Autocensors are preventing me from saying it in the clear, but it should pretty easy to figure out who I am referring to seeing as [REDACTED] is the first new character introduced in that segment, and as for who I think she might be, well, there's only one within [REDACTED] that has been confirmed as using [REDACTED] when the situation calls for it.
Besides that, it would be much easier for [REDACTED] to provide security for the [REDACTED] if they had a [REDACTED] on the inside, so it even makes a startling amount of sense. Whether or not she got permission to do it is another question entirely.

But as I said, First Impressions Have to be False. I'm sure that [REDACTED] has (or will soon be) [REDACTED] (in) the [REDACTED], but I'm equally sure that she is not [REDACTED] and that [REDACTED] is just the blue herring to lead us away from the real [REDACTED], leaving [REDACTED] to be either a) perfectly normal (which is highly improbable) or b) something else entirely (which is highly disturbing).
Unless of course you - the author - has decided that this was likely to be the likely chain of thought of the audience and thus decided to give us another layer of obfuscation, in which case [REDACTED] is probably [EXPLETIVE] regardless.

Barricade · Feb 28th 2010, 5:02am

We've got the Major, Misato, Tachikomas (and relatives), Shinji getting the cyberbrain equivalent of a Brightslap from the Major (effectively), and Asuka is sending him e-mails.

*grabs Kamina's shades, while dressing up like the Blues Brothers*

"Hit It."

Mastigo · Feb 28th 2010, 10:04am

You know, I just realized that with cyberization and customizable bodies, Older Asahina and Younger Asahina don't neccessarily have to be the same person.

Jonen C · Feb 28th 2010, 11:24am

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mastigo

You know, I just realized that with cyberization and customizable bodies, Older Asahina and Younger Asahina don't neccessarily have to be the same person.

Alternatively - and you'd best sit down for this - there is no reason it would not also be possible for 'young' Asahina to be the more senior operator/agent.

What? Would you entrust the fate on the world on one individual? A mere child at that?

LatwPIAT · Mar 30th 2010, 3:39pm

...pair of cybershells controlled by one ghost over a time-traveling comlink?

REI v1.0/Reflections of a closed mind
01010010 01100101 01101001 00100000 00110001 00101110 00110000

The Ghost of Evangelion – Layer 04
A Ghost in the Shell/Neon Genesis Evangelion crossover

ESAGILA ACADEMY FOR YOUNG STUDENTS, July 31st, 2030
”Wait, Ayanami is still here?” someone said, with non-sarcastic astonishment. A quiet (this was the Literary Club, after all) whisper ran through the assembly of bibliophiles, occasionally breaking into actual speech. To them, this was a totally unexpected situation; Rei Ayanami had not attended a single club meeting, save the two first, since the beginning of the academic year, three-and-a-half months ago except possibly a few minutes each week to pick out a new book. This was, of course, discounting the interterm school break, a week-long token holdover from when the mid-July-to-late-August period of the year had been the warmest time of year, too warm to spend time inside a badly ventilated school building. In present day, that period of the year was much cooler, some would say uncomfortably so, and the Teachers Union had successfully pushed to shift the school year around in accordance with the new tides and times.

In fact, even though her name was on their official list of members (despite their best efforts), she had not been considered a member for the last three months.

“So, you’ve decided to finally attend, for once?” the Club President, one Upperclassman Jijuu Kishi, asked rhetorically, though Rei had no intention to let it stay rhetorical.

“By necessity,” she answered flatly “I have to leave earlier than usual today.” she continued cryptically; today was a special day, Commander Ikari had told her, and she would have to be at the ECCO GeoFront before the after-school clubs ended. Therefore, she would not have time to take the train back home and instead stayed at school until the Commander could pick her up. I should perhaps explain that part, Rei though to herself.

“Well then, Ayanami, why don’t you tell us about the central themes in the books you’ve been reading lately? We haven’t heard much from you,” asked Nene Hosokawa, the head librarian, voice dripping with sarcasm.

Rei looked up from her book and considered the question.

“I am not certain I understand the exact symbolic nature of the, quote: ‘Nipponese-eating lizards,’ unquote, in this book.” she said without a hint of interest, then flipped the page and returned to her reading.

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As time passed, the sun hung lower and lower in the school-ground-facing classroom, and for each new page Rei read, the light from the window she sat next to crept further and further out towards the edges of the leaves. As she finished the last page (of the actual content; the advertisements went on for a few more pages) she spotted, from the corner of her eye, a jet-black German-produced car pull up to the gate of the Academy. Dutifully, she stood up and reached up for a new book, before approaching Hosokawa.

“Two books Ayanami?” Hosokawa asked as her eyes mechanically darted over the barcodes. “Oh, you’re returning this one,” she corrected herself as she took it from Rei’s outstretched hand. She mumbled something about it being shockingly underdue, then reflexively looked upwards as she opened the browser that connected her to the Lit-Club’s library database. “Well, in that case, only one book, Ayanami?” Hosokawa corrected herself, quizzically raising an eyebrow and smiling a little at the unexpected modesty as she handed the volume over.

This attitude was entirely typical in Rei’s experience. There seemed to be something about librarians which made them plumb the depths of vitriol towards those people who removed books from the shelves and read them. No Ayanami, I can’t let you borrow more than three books at once; other people might want to read a few of them, she had said on a previous occasion, the blue-haired girl recalled.

“Thank you,” she said quietly, as she leapt towards the window and waved at the Commander. The genres and styles of these exact books… she had answered in return,…are inconsistent with the likes and enjoyed genres of all other Literary Club members, Miss Hosokawa.

Rei slipped the book down into her laptop bag and walked hurriedly out of the designated Lit-Club classroom and towards the stairs.’It’s a matter of principle, Ayanami.’ She was not alone in the corridor; her classmate, Temarei, was walking in the opposite direction, most likely with a Student Council errand.
’…it is a principle that I, exclusively, am not allowed to borrow more than three books?’ she might have responded, in the would-have-beens of a long-past conversation. But she had not, and so would not ever. The time had passed.

“Oh, Ayanami!” Temarei said as they passed each other “I was meaning to ask you; will you join Hikari and me after school today?” Temarei lifted the blue hair-bangs from her own eyes, and smiled. Soon an imperfect measure of time, as the weather got colder, and the winter-uniforms’ long sleeves would cover the seams in her arms leaving her hair as the only (ambiguous) indication of her partial cyberization.

“I cannot,” Rei responded, and subtly tried to indicate that someone was waiting for her.

“Oh, don’t be like that Ayanami!” Temarei said “I bet there’s a really fun girl wrapped up in that shell of yours, just dying to get out!”

“…” was Rei’s only response. (Or rather, a lack thereof, as silence is not audible.)

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Commander Gendo Ikari stood, in his tailor-fit black suit, in the middle of the Esagilia Academy’s schoolgrounds. South-west of him rested the large block-like building, a hollowed square brick with a smaller amputated, equally hollow wing stretching on southwards. He was flanked on one side by a large but narrow swimming hall, the track field and the sports fields, and on his other side by the Botany Club’s enormous garden; a spectrum of natural (and occasionally unnatural, whenever the biology-inclined students got to buy seeds) colours imported from all over the world. If Yui Ikari had seen the garden, she would have found to be like out of her daydreams, designed and built according to her fragmented specifications. After all, it was. Gendo Ikari owned the school.

Once Rei had hurriedly reached the Commander, they walked over to his private car. Rei’s eyes widened when the driver rolled down the reflective windows, revealing herself.

“Why is Captain Katsuragi driving?” she asked. It was a reasonable question.

“Well Rei, today is a big day,” the Captain explained, as she electronically popped the rear doors “Everyone in Scientific and Tactical are positively excited about this!” she continued as she pulled the car onto the main road “Even Ritsuko…” she continued “Well, Rits… Rits gives me chances of success with too many zeroes, but I’ve known her for such a long time I can tell that she’s excited too, even if she hides it behind pessimism.” Understandably. “…besides, the Commander has an awesome car!” Misato continued, letting the engine roar as she waited at an intersection.

“But there are an infinite number of zeroes in any given number,” said Rei. “How can there be too many?”

The Captain paused. “Too many zeroes after the decimal point, I mean,” she corrected herself, recalling why she tried not to get into conversations with Rei.

“That is an interesting point. As the chance of success is a real number, the probability is incalculably large that it, too, contains aleph-zero zeroes after the...”

“Rei, it’s a very small chance.”

“Oh.”

Rei was not relieved.

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The Evangelion Unit-00 Prototype Unit, a genetically engineered nano-cyber-pharmaceutically augmented bioroid, to use the technical term, had been lowered into a vertical shaft of water. The white, rust-proof-painted shoulders and the white, wedge-like head, with its two giant lenses; a red frontal one and a green on the top, was above the water. It was surrounded by a floating walkway bolted to its shoulders. The head had been peeled open, like a skull split by a giant axe while redundant armour-plates slid away to give access to the artificial cerebellum. A cluster of cables coiled up from the brainstem and reached towards the giant cyberbrain-like titanium shell that contained an artificial neural network, suspended from the ceiling by a crane.

Rei watched as the ECCO technicians lowered the neurocomputer into Unit-00’s shell. There was a loud hiss when pneumatic locks secured it to the vertebra and neck structure, almost deafening out Dr Akagi’s bemoans for careful handling. One by one, the unfolded internal carbon-fiber armour-plates folding back in like a blossoming flower in reverse. Lastly, the face tilted back, lifting its gaze, though it has no such thing, Rei thought, upwards, until it stared right at her, uncannily.

Rei looked at her own reflection, a dark shade of her own paleness against the iris of the red eye, surrounded by the inscription of the optician who had made the prosthetic eye. Her proportions and angles were warped by the slight curvature, stretched over the darkness that allowed the reflection in the first place. What would she look like from the other end of that mirror, seen through a lens darkly?

She did not know.

Rei made her way to the white-on-white Entry Plug, which protruded from the neck of Unit-00. In its weird symbiosis with the Eva, it was just as likely that it also intruded, to complicate the terms. Rei climbed into the cylinder, a dark pool of clear LCL lit only by bluish LEDs. Without offering it a synapse of thought, she let the cold fluid seep into her lungs while she interfaced herself with the Prototype Unit.

Her thoughts turned inwards.

“…connecting the Outer Receptors” Dr Akagi said somewhere distant in the centre of Rei’s mind, ending the introspection. She let go of her thoughts, and felt the sensory input flow into her, crossing the barriers between the two minds, where there should only have been one.

Rei remembered, she was walking towards her school. The tall buildings around her towered against the bright-white sky. All the colours were pale, washed out in the dull light. She reached an intersection and waited at the red light in a crowd. She wasn’t the only student from her school there; the plain school uniform could be seen interspersed in the crowd, greyscale spots in a patternless background of colours. Wouldn’t the fucking light change soon?

“Initiating Second Layer” 2nd Lt. Ibuki said.

The interactions of two cyberbrains are perhaps best represented a pair of fractal fields representing abstract mathematical calculations and transformations, each fractal layer revealing new complexities. It became almost pointless to imagine their interactions in only three dimensions, once the neural networks of pair of minds shot cubic packets of information back and forth between the sleep/wake centres of the brain and the ventral tegmental system. The visual space exploded hyperdimensionally between the two self-propagating electric fields, shaped to fit the neural networks they inhabited. Even when the functions of the human brain could be augmented with comprehensible mathematics and programming, and something as elusive as memories be converted to a standardized file, (ignoring the fact that there were at least two functionally indistinguishable but incompatible file systems) the brain as a whole remained as incomprehensible as it was when Egyptian priests dissolved it in wine and threw it away to preserve the shell of dead Egyptian kings.

Finally, the lights changed and she could cross. On each side of the intersection two crowds merged, joined, and almost seamlessly split as if they had never met or even interacted. A random stranger, though little is random, handed her a facial tissue wrapped in plastic, for no reason. Odd.

“Hey,” a younger kid about Rei’s age called “Mind if I hit on you?”

“Prepare for the Third Layer” Dr Akagi ordered. The flow of data between the two abstractions had increased in magnitude, and the effective distance between Rei’s ghost and the other cyberbrain was shortening as predicted as the half-dive continued.

“Counting down to Absolute Borderline,” Maya reported from her dive station, “Zero-point-nine, zero-point-eight, zer-“

She ignored the brat and shoved him out of the way. Sweet droplets scattered over her face and her sleeve felt moist. The little shit had spilled his soft-drink on her! She reached for the paper handkerchief events come into existence because they are prophesised and ripped the plastic. She was about to unfold it and clean her school uniform, but stopped. The facial tissue was covered in red paint or ink. The other side is overcrowded. The dead will have nowhere to go.

That’s when everything went wrong.

“The dataflow is recursing!” Maya yelled.

While an accurate description of the events, Ritsuko realized that it was not an apt description; Zero-Zero was trashing spasmodically and pullet at its restraints. Heavy, slow movements in the water, but filled with momentum and force. The shoulder-bridge was crumpled like a thin sheet of aluminium foil. Underwater microphones screamed for a second, like a submarine being crushed by water pressure, until they were cut off by a technician.

The restraints held.

The armature they’d been welded to did not.

Unit-00’s white arm tore hundreds of ceramic plates from the wall as it reached towards the observation module mounted to the wall. The black steel, bent out of shape by the force of the Eva, trailed behind like the strings of a puppet. Concrete dust fell by the kilos into the blue water, colouring it a dull grey.

It was just a bad joke, I must have been. In traditional Japanese fashion, she discarded the (untraditionally unused) facial tissue onto the street. She really had to get to school now. She was about to begin walking, but stopped. She could see herself standing in the middle of the road-crossing perpendicular to the one she had just crossed. Rei was crossing, or rather, not-crossing, on a red light. Cars ran past her, neither party acknowledging the other. What was she doing here? Rei spoke to nobody in particular, staring down at her feet, reciting without pause.

Weird.

“We can’t abort the half-dive?” Ritsuko asked Aoba, herself digging through the explosion of data that emanated from the MAGI, concerning Unit-01.

“The Synchronization Control Software has locked up!” he responded, trying to manually force a shutdown.

A task made a lot more ardours by the process manager locking up the moment he selected any of the processes tied to Unit-00. His screen exploded with error messages, as did every other screen. The local MAGI terminal’s memory stacks overflowed with recursive functions trying to model the complex (in both the common and mathematical meanings of the word) interactions of two noetic fields in the 3+ dimensions of our universe, currently limited to a simplified model of Euclidian-derived Minkowski space, trapped in a self-augmenting feedback loop.

It would be really bad for pretty much everyone if negative numbers were fed into the Feynman diagrams.

Or, more correctly and even more terrifying, derived from the rational solutions.

Unit-00 punched the giant, meter-thick armoured glass of the command module. Giant cracks manifested all over the many glass plates, saved from shattering inwards only by the outer (that is to say, inner room-wise, but on either side of the glass, so outer) layer of flexible, transparent plastic. The giant hybot’s arms had not been designed to punch with, and only been fitted with thin armour plates that would soon break; the stress from the gigantic punches the Eva delivered too much. Unfortunately, the plastic would break first, being a lot weaker than steel.

Dr Akagi shattered a safety-glass case surrounding a large red button. It was big and it was obvious. It was the sort of button that begged through its very existence to be pushed hard without concern for what it really did. It was lined with a yellow-and-black diagonal pattern that screamed out to every enemy agent, bumbling fool and curious child that it should be pushed for no other reason that that it merely was there.

That was the point, after all. An ECCO technician missing half his brain and most of his limbs should still be able to push the button that cut power from the Eva. Preferably, even while blinded and on drugs. It was better to be safe than to never have the chance to be sorry.

Ritsuko pushed the button, as it begged her to, though she had never listened, and there was a quiet roar; four explosive lock bolts had detonated underwater, to push the Umbilical Cord away from the otherwise powerless Evangelion.

“Why hasn’t it shut down?” Gendo Ikari demanded to know, when the Eva failed to power down. Even with the actual supply of power physically cut, the charge that remained in the Umbilical cord could keep Unit-00 powered for minutes.

Several minutes more than the armoured window and Ayanami’s brain could hold; the few seconds of the Eva’s internal capacitors were much gentler on both pilot and staff.

Rei, for once, screamed. She flailed and spasmed in her seat, bouncing off and drifting slowly until the nearly random direction of gravity within an equally spastic giant mecha pulled her back against the walls of the Entry Plug. She felt as if her head was about to rupture out from behind her right eyeball, bringing with it tortured grey matter. Her vision was clouded in red and black and she swallowed further screams when her left eyeball saw the explosion of blood from the right one.

On order from the Commander, who was already running down the stairs at a rate usually reserved for hyperactive children, the second set of explosive lock-bolts were detonated, and the Entry Plug ejected with solid-state rockets to force a shutdown. Rei felt the cyberlink-cables tear at her neural interface as she was thrown against the rapidly approaching Entry Plug wall, by her own inertia. There was a cracking sound.

It was followed by several more.

Gendo Ikari, meanwhile, was uncharacteristically pulling the ‘open’ switch of the door to the SynchTest chamber frantically while the light was still red. He would fire the idiot who hadn’t made the drainage valves bigger, he would personally kick them out of whatever subsidiary they belong to, he would... [I]No.[I] He was angry, and afraid. He was overreacting. He was, however, going to dock their pay; they were emergency drainage valves, after all.

Finally the door swung open after one-too-many annoying beeps. He ran across the still-wet floor, not really caring whether he would slip or not. His walking became heavier as he approached the plug, and ejected LCL mixed with the water. The Entry Plug had been sucked away by the draining vortex, held against the grid that served as a filter, on the far end of the room. There were reddish clouds in the water, clearly blood pouring out. Lots of it. Please, Rei, no...

He burned his hands on the Entry Plug door’s opening levers. Reflexively, he withdrew his hands only to try again, ignoring the burning feeling, sound and smell. As he recoiled his glasses fell from his face. Dr Akagi could go fuck herself for placing the solid-state rockets pointing towards the door. He did not have the patience or mood to care for her ego today.

At last, the Entry Plug hatch swung open, revealing Rei cradled face-down in a reddish-pink pool of LCL and blood.

“Rei!” Gendo yelled as he moved over to pull her head out “Rei!”

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ESAGILA ACADEMY FOR YOUNG STUDENTS - Wednesday August 28th, 2030
It was oddly relieving to be back in school, Shinji Ikari thought. After ‘Operation Tsubasa,’ (a name that was mentally less evocative of the actual events than ‘the second time this month I almost got killed by rampaging alien invaders’) he had been subjected to a battery of cognitive tests, involving everything from his hand-eye coordination, pupil dilation, speech, skill in mathematics (there had been some worry until they checked his report-card and found that, yes, he was just poor at math) facial recognition, whatever they did through his neural interface and probably a lot of other tests he couldn’t even remember. If he was pulled out of his comfortable bed, in the early hours of morning, even again, to answer grade-school questions concerning saccharine-cute anthropomorphized animals, he would end his life right there and then with the pen they’d given him, to escape the torturous pain and embarrassment. In the end, he’d practically begged Misato to put him back into school. It was that, or the nearest tall window.

Hah! I’m being rather suicidal today. Maybe they should have checked for depression, rather than ‘psychic backlash,’ and PTSD while they were at it… he thought sarcastically.

There were also the nightmares he’d had the first few days while still in pain, but he’d rather not think about them. According to the medical staff, stuff like that was pretty normal, and nothing to worry about.

But he was back in school, surprisingly undisturbed by his classmates. Rather than trying to crush him to death by grinding their bodies against him, or annoyingly ask him “Are you OK?” ad nauseam they had simply left him in peace to drown out the world around him with the music of relatively obscure composers and artist who’d had their fifteen minutes of fame (or were still bitterly awaiting it) in the shallow waters of the ‘net. That is, he was, until Horaki and Temarei walked over to his desk; he had earlier tried to ignore the Class Rep once, much to the displeasure of his ears when she had yanked the earplugs out. In all fairness, he had deliberately ignored her, but she could at least have gotten his full attention less painfully.

“On behalf of the class,” Horaki started “I’d like to thank you for saving us from the alien,”

“And on behalf of the rest of the school, I’d like to thank you too,” Temarei continued.

That’s not right… “Uh, if I hadn’t almost landed on you,” Shinji said “…I wouldn’t have almost gotten you killed twice in the first place, so I really don’t…”

“Hey, New Guy!” a loud voice interrupted him, or perhaps, interrupted Horaki’s interruption. At least, she shot the interrupting party; Suzahara with Aide in tow, an indignant stare.

“I’m sorry,” Shinji said back, not drawing quite as much ire from Horaki, despite the continued cycle of interruption “I’m really sorry! I didn’t mean to get any of you caught up in the battle, I just…”

“Hey, don’t apologize!” Toji interrupted once more (would it ever end?) “I’m the one who should apologize, for punching you – ” Shinji didn’t quite hear the next part, which was drowned out by Horaki’s “You did what!?” but nonetheless “ – uo for saving me and Kensuke!”

“Yeah, the JSDA held this mandatory seminar a few days ago that explained everything…” Kensuke began, stopping Shinji from making any further apologies “…well, everything they’re willing to tell us civilians anyway, about your special situation,”

“You idiot!” Toji groaned to Kensuke “Now he’s going to think I’m only apologizing because of that stupid seminar!”

“As opposed to; because your sister, a second-grader, verbally harassed you?” Kensuke retorted. Toji angrily groaned once more and then walked over to his desk as the teacher walked in. Immediately the lights were subdued and the whiteboard lit up, painted with the login screen of the school’s network, courtesy of an overhead projector linked by WLAN to their teacher’s cyberbrain. “Man, that one woman holding the seminar was hot!” Kensuke mumbled as he opened the lid of his laptop.

“Rise, bow!”

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Some people might think that with the advent of cyberization and the consequential radical changes to all forms of body image, that society had changed; with a perfectly sculpted physique free of the genetically predispositioned failings of the biological bodies, bereft of the quirks of evolutionary biology (or if one were so inclined, the divine quirks of one’s deity of choice) and the very real prospect of having a body designed to fit one’s own self-image, that people in general and teenagers in particular, cared less for the exact development and contours of their (or perhaps, others’) teenage bodies.

Those people were wrong. Evolutionary biology still cared. Its voice could not be silenced.

It could be told to look the other way though, such as by splitting the genders whenever any one of them would be wearing tight clothing that left a lot of skin exposed. Especially when that skin would also be wet, and glistening in the sun.

Or perhaps that was a Sisyphus-task, as evident by the all male students currently having a break from the basketball game staring in at the girls in swimming hall; placing the sports-fields next to the swimming hall, and then designing the latter out of large, clear panes of glass was somewhat counterproductive. The boys didn’t particularly mind though. In fact, they quite enjoyed the opportunity.

“Man, all the girls have such great breasts,” Toji noted in an exposed-skin-induced daze, heightened by the soft blue fabric that faintly accentuated the developing breasts. Shinji’s gaze was somewhat less general.

Ayanami climbed out of the pool and into view. She loosened a white-and-blue floatation device from her right arm, a buoyant sleeve to compensate for the increase in weight from prosthetics. She looked so sad, where she stood alone, with nobody cheering at her when she swam, or any friends to talk to; all she did was to sit down alone on a bench with a towel.

“Hey, Shinji!” Toji yelled, having caught his indecent staring, through really there was nothing indecent about it since it was out of concern rather than lecherous lusts, Shinji told himself. Despite the fact that she was very pretty. “What are you staring so intently at?”

“No-no-nothing!” he objected.

“He’s staring at Ayanami!” Kensuke joined in, “...and her silky thighs,”

“...or maybe Nakashima’s giant tits, or Temarei’s creamy legs?” Toji continued, the pair of minds as one. Shinji took advantage of the slip-up:

“What? Temarei’s over there, playing baseball in the field. I can’t have stared at her!” he said and pointed at the medium-to-heavily cyberized girls in their class, who, because they sank, did not participate in the swimming. They could perhaps have used larger versions of the floatation devices girls like Ayanami used, but that was seen as degrading and embarrassing. “...you’re the one who has been looking in that direction, not me,” he continued, motioning towards Kensuke.

“Oh,” Toji began with a mischievous smile “...it’s not the Student Council Rep he’s been ogling...” to which Kensuke responded by turning a very deep shade of pink. “See that girl with the reddish-brown hair next in line to bat?” Toji said to Shinji and pointed at a girl standing in the batter’s box. “Kensuke has a crush on her –“ Kensuke protested “–just because she’s named after an aircraft carrier,”

“Kongo-class battlecruiser,” the boy with glasses corrected while pushing them back onto his nose “...and lots of girls in the school have the names of warships, not just Mana,”

“On a first-name basis already?” Shinji offered as his entry into the “make fun of Kensuke” communal activity “...you seem to know her really well,” he said with a smirk. Kensuke just folded his arms and lifted his nose in the air with self-righteous indignation and a ‘hmpf!’

Then everything was forgotten and forgiven as a girl with a full-conversion shell and a lack of full control batted a foul ball hard into Toji’s chest. The baseball then bounced off the muscular boy and into Shinji’s face, much to Kensuke’s amusement. They all laughed.

Well, they all laughed once Toji was able to breathe again, and Shinji’s world had stopped spinning.

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A suspicious food-like odour hit Shinji with force as he opened the door to Misato’s (and mine, he reminded himself) apartment. It was not particularly atrocious, (yet Shinji thought) although Misato had used too much onion again. Shinji merely opened the door to the balcony, letting the hot air rush out. It actually smelled good, in its own way. That won’t last though… Shinji thought as he caught a small pile of brown packets of cyborg food-supplements in the corner of his eye.

“What’s the occasion?” he asked; he was supposed to cook today, this was better food than Misato usually bought, and there was too much of it, even for two humans and an uplifted penguin. …is that more beer? The fridge is still half-full from her latest alcohol-raid!

“I’ve invited Ritsuko and Major Kusanagi over so we can get to know each other better, so I’m making something special,” Misato explained. Special? It’s unique! Your food’s sheer lack of quality is unparalleled! It is also instant! “Besides, you cook all the time Shinji; I feel like a poor housemate, so I decided to make up for it.”

I cook all the time on purpose. Making you feel bad enough about it to you do the laundry was just an added bene… I shouldn’t think like that.

“Thank you,” Shinji eventually said.

Much to his displeasure, Misato dropped the cyborg food packets right into the curry. A sickeningly sweet smell diffused throughout the room, a harbinger of unspeakable, incomprehensible tastes to come. He should probably do his homework on the balcony, even if it was rather cold outside. Penpen would undoubtedly join him, although being an uplifted penguin, he’d probably handle the cold better than Shinji.

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[Shinji has mail]
> READ

from: asuka.langeley.soryu@tannhauser.bunderegierung.de
to: ikari-shinji@ecco.mod.gov.co.jp
subject: I’m Impressed!
Hello again, Third Child

I’m almost annoyed with you now. Both of the stupid Rakbu have attacked the facilities in Japan, with not a single one attacking Germany. That’s not fair! Can’t they understand that Germany is an important target too, since we developed the latest Evangelion unit? Maybe I should ask to be transferred to Japan.

Best regards,
Asuka Langley Soryu, Second Child and Pilot of Unit-02

Well, it certainly wouldn’t bother Shinji to have someone a little more enthusiastic fight the Rakbu rather than him. Perhaps he should also reply to this one, rather than promising himself that he would some eventual tomorrow...

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Shinji poured the thick sludge from its pot, onto Dr Akagi’s plate of rice. Curry should probably not be that thick. In fact, until he had met Misato, Shinji did not think it possible to make curry that thick, but now he had evidence to the contrary, which he hoped he could just forget about, gastronomic-scientific integrity be damned.

“Is this instant?” Dr Akagi asked. Ms Akagi, Shinji recalled that she insisted, since she wasn’t working. Imagining that Dr/Ms Akagi had a life outside that of being a doctor of metacryptology, and that she could actually not wear a labcoat was something Shinji still had problems comprehending. “You still eat this junk? You have a salary now, you know!” the off-hours doctor complained.

“Hey, you’re the guest; you have no right to complain!” Misato retorted equally impolite.

Ritsuko formed a ball of rice with her spoon and lifted it up through the curry, soaking it in the sauce, though, as Shinji, Ritsuko and Maj. Kusanagi noted, it was less soaking and more like lifting tasty lard that itself tried to eat and dissolve the rice.

‘Tasty lard’ was a presumptuous claim, to say the least.

“Misato cooked, didn’t she? I can tell by the fact that we appear to have found a cheaper way to mass-produce combat-suitable non-Newtonian fluids,” Ritsuko stated. Her spoon suddenly lay neatly on her plate, as if denying that she had eaten could somehow wash away the saccharine, oil-like taste. “…hasn’t she heard about emulsifiers?” she mumbled under her breath.

“You can tell?” Misato asked while gobbling down her curry-beer-noodles. Has she not realized that the beer is the only reason she herself can eat that stuff? thought Shinji. “Well, dig in guys!” Misato said.
Yes, we should dig it down in the back yard… was the instant mental retort of three of the four people at the table.

“Ms Akagi, Maj. Kusanagi” Shinji leant over and whispered “Find some excuse to meet me in the kitchen; I have some day-old yakitori and frozen ostrich-gyudon that might interest you”

“I really can’t taste what so bad about this,” Maj. Kusanagi said as she shovelled rice and curry down with her chopsticks. She, like Misato and Ms Akagi, wore non-work clothes; a light blue loose-fitting t-shirt and dark blue baggy pants. Shinji supposed he shouldn’t be surprised to see her like that, since he’d seen the same shell in anything from parkas to almost nothing, but all full-conversion cyborgs, even those with mass-production faces, always ended up with a sort of inseparable individuality tied to their ghost and shell. It was only natural to find it odd to not see her in the olive-green JSDA uniform.

All illusions of normality were interrupted by the horrified wail of a man-penguin decrying Misato’s cooking. Sorry, Penpen. Misato insisted. I’ll sneak you some tempura later…

“You know Shinji, you really ought to consider moving out,” Ms Akagi broke the silence “You shouldn’t let one bad roommate ruin your entire life.”

Shinji looked away from the foaming aquatic avian: “It doesn’t matter; I’ve grown used to it,” Granted, ‘used to it’ in this case meant having his head filled with comments that measured red on the universal indicator, and a constant desire for Misato to grow up! but it was becoming second nature to him.

“He’s right Ritsuko,” the now-drunken Misato joined in “Never underestimate the natural ability of the human animal to adapt to its environment,”

“Humans have a greater tendency to alter their environments to suit themselves” Maj. Kusanagi noted with crossed arms, uncrossing them to take the occasional sip of canned beer “…and in the last forty years, themselves on a radical level”

“That’s not an attribute exclusive to humans,” Ms Akagi said while eating a ball of rice that hadn’t been touched by the curry “many animals, best exemplified by the dam-building beaver, instinctively alter their environment to suit themselves”

“I remember reading an article about bobaddah bobaddah, yadga blah yadda yadda Dr Norden fuzjaimy boppobop fzink oh yeah ,” Ms Akagi and Maj. Kusanagi said, or words to that effect, only to be broken off by Misato:

“…well, if Shinji tried to move, or build a beaver-dam in downtown Yugawara, for that matter –” Misato shook her beer can and disappointingly found it empty “Shinji, can I please have another one? Thank you!” she continued: “–he’d have to go through a mountain of red tape and angry desk-jockeys; he only just got his permanent security card, you know.”

“Oh!” Dr Akagi exclaimed “I almost forgot again,” she dug through her purse and withdrew a small plastic card “Shinji, I need a favour,”

“What is it?” he asked.

“This is Rei’s new security card. I keep forgetting to give it to her, and her old one will be locked out tomorrow. Could you give it to her after school tomorrow?” Dr Akagi explained and passed him the card without waiting for a reply. Shinji was about to object, but then again he didn’t really have anything against having an excuse to talk to her, did he? Shinji looked at the picture of Ayanami; there was no doubt it could only be her; she looked so sad, or rather, she looked so indifferent and in lack of happiness in a way that was saddening. She didn’t really have any friends either, despite being quite pretty and smart, going by how accurately she answered questions their teachers posed, when and only when prompted.

Very pretty, in fact.

“What’s the matter?” Misato said with a tone of voice that divided double-entendres by two and a look that turned suggestive comments into proclamations. Ritsuko looked at Shinji with a slightly raised eyebrow and a corner of her mouth raised in an amused smile. Maj. Kusanagi, well... She was a lot like Rei and if she had even stared at him, it had been momentary so that she could get back to drinking and eating. “You’re staring at Rei’s picture aren’t you?” Misato continued.

“Wha-“ Shinji exclaimed “I’m not!”

“Oh yes, you were, Shinji!” she teased.

“Was not,” he objected, although the luminescent blush of his cheeks helped little. At least Ritsuko had derived all fun from the joke and returned to salvaging scraps of food from the assimilating curry, and Maj. Kusanagi was looking at Misato, not him, with an eyebrow raised as if asking ‘are you for real?’

Misato laughed. “I think I embarrassed him,” She laughed more behind her hand, the other occupied by her umpteenth can of beer that evening. I’m right here, damn it! Shinji thought It’s not an witty aside when I can hear it! Also, it’s not witty!

“Well, now you’ve got an excuse to go over to Rei’s place,” the teasing slob said with a smile “...don’t you?” Why me? he asked himself. I already get this kind of crap from Toji and Kensuke concerning you daily. Next thing I know Ayanami will ask very overtly whether I have a crush on the Student Council Rep! he said, picking someone at random. That bore reiteration; random. Honestly.

Shinji resolutely sat down and whined angrily “Stop teasing me!” he said and glared at her. Misato just laughed.

“But I love teasing you,” she said with a grin and the smell of alcohol on her breath, not that she didn’t tease Shinji while sober. “...you go so ballistic!”

“...you certainly are a tease, aren’t you?” Maj. Kusanagi offered, her tone as flat as a plane.

Now there were two blushing individuals in the room; luckily alcohol mends many faults.

“Apparently Misato isn’t the only one to go ballistic...” Ms Akagi commented, to level the amount of embarrassment between her old room-mate and the Third Child, which until that point had been unfairly biased towards the younger of the two. That neither she herself, nor by consequence of being present, Maj. Kusanagi, had been embarrassed at all during the evening, was irrelevant.

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Maj. Kusanagi stared out through the window of Rei Ayanami’s apartment. Beyond the windowsill, there were dozens of apartment buildings just like the one the blue-haired girl lived in, each an anonymous grey monolith of prosaic proportions, with a uniform pattern of dull windows in a gird strew across the façades. Smog from nearby industry and the thick lines of jammed cars along the high-way bridges drifted in through the narrow streets, like a poisonous flood. The purple-haired woman could hardly believe they let one of their pilots live in a dump like this.

That wasn’t the real problem though. The real problem was that there were unhealthily many ways to kill Unit-00’s only pilot while she was at home. Unhealthy for the pilot, that is; the only window to her tiny apartment opened directly into the main room and corridor, leaving a line-of-fire to the door and only escape route. The windowless bathroom could only be accessed by running through the aforementioned corridor. Which idiot thought this was a safe place? It didn’t even have guards before the JSDA arrived. Anyone could have walked up and just shot her, because her door is broken!

With her nose almost against the glass of the window, Maj. Kusanagi could hear the reverberant hum of the Tachikoma on the other side, hanging from the smoggy grey façade and using its thorax and pod as an inhuman Tachikomatic, perhaps... shield against sniper fire and/or grenades. The optical cloak was active, re-rendering the depressing picture of undying grey buildings on a convex, radar-stealthed canvas with a brain of its own.

“You really live here?” she asked the teenage girl rhetorically.

“It is adequate,” the girl answered and looked away from her screen.

“Then you won’t mind that the JSDA are arranging for your transfer to somewhere more secure,” she said to the indifferent girl.

“I don’t mind,” was the response, her red eyes reflecting the luminescent glow of the laptop screen. Her fingers moved awkwardly across the keyboard, unsynchronized with one hand rapid and inhumanly precise and the other jaggedly mechanical. Maj. Kusanagi leant in to look at Ayanami’s work. The girl ceased typing and stared at her with open eyes. It was almost unnerving.

Maj. Kusanagi turned to leave. There were no hidden microphone or explosives, no breaches of security, and the target was not engaged in suicidally stupid activities like downloading uncensored infowarfare files.

“Miss Ayanami,” she said as she reached for the door-handle “use static_cast<double>(n) rather than (double) n. ‘double’ in parenthesis is just a holdover to ensure backwards compatibility. You shouldn’t use it.”

There were sounds of a chair being shuffled.

“...”

“Thank you,”

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Shinji looked at Ayanami’s security card as he let his PDA guide him to her apartment. It had taken some time to find out where she lived—her address had been impossible to get off the ‘net. He’d found references to one ‘Ayanami Rei’ on the first search, but since she lived eight hours by shinkasen express train away in Kyosho, it couldn’t be the ‘First Child’ as Dr Akagi occasionally called her. First, Second, Third... Is there a fourth? I’ll ask Misato, he thought. There had been several more failed attempts at finding ‘Ayanami Rei, Ashigarashimo’ in public registers. He’d found nothing more than verification of her existence proving that she was not merely an elaborate joke set up by his father to torment him with a hunt for the metaphorical left-handed catcher’s mitt I’m hanging out way to much with Kensuke...

Eventually he’d given up and asked the Class Rep, who thankfully didn’t give him a hard time about why he wanted to know where she lived. The other half of the undividable pair, the Student Council Rep had been downright encouraging, smiling at him and telling him that Ayanami needed more friends.

Did she really live here?

His line of thought was broken when he passed Maj. Kusanagi at the entrance to Ayanami’s apartment complex. ...couldn’t she have delivered it? Then again, he now had an excuse to visit the apartment of a cute girl and even talk to her ...so never look a gift horse in the mouth, but beware of Greeks bearing gifts, yet if you do not enter the tigers cave, you will not catch its cub... argh! Proverbs are no help!

Apartment 402. The alarm bell didn’t work. He tried it twice to verify. To his surprise, the door was not locked. As he swung the door open, a thick wad of dead-tree letters joined a heap of mail on the floor, falling from the mail slot. He called her name. No answer. He called again, slightly louder.

“I’m sorry to disturb. It’s Shinji Ikari. I’m here to deliver your new security card. I’m coming in, OK?”

Still no response; she was probably not home. Then why is the door open? Odd He slipped out of his shoes and entered the corridor. He stared into the main living room. He’d never seen anything that lifeless—it was so empty even the cramped Japanese living standard seemed enormous; the walls were bare and grey, almost the same colour as the whitish floor. There was a letterbox window, halfway hidden behind blue curtains, letting light seep through to bleach the already colourless room.

If he had been presented with the room with no foreknowledge, he’d almost have guessed it was abandoned; it was almost devoid of personal belongings; no posters of famous idol singers, boybands or celebrities; there was a bookshelf though, filled with thick books that bore dry titles—none he recognized, at least, except for the schoolbooks. Her desk only held school stationary and an active laptop.

The room was as empty as Ayanami’s circle of friends, to make a comparison, and about as telling as Ayanami herself. Well, she likes reading, he thought and looked at the piles of books scattered around, with small paper slips stuck between pages ...but I knew that already, as he’d occasionally seen her sitting on a bench during lunch breaks enveloped in a book.

So she’s a girl, she doesn’t talk much, and she likes books. I really don’t know much about her, do I? What did I expect to find in her apartment? Proof to the contrary? Stupid.

Where should I leave this card so she can find it? Shinji asked himself. There was a change of clothes, Ayanami’s school uniform, laid out neatly on her bed, next to the blood-soaked pillow. Ugh... There was an entire cardboard box of blood-soaked bandages, and the top of her refrigerator was littered with medication of some sort, including a popular brand of painkiller. He felt a tinge of guilt.

But what are the glasses doing here? Ayanami doesn’t wear glasses, does she? He looked at them; large, almost rectangular halfrims, not quite browlines, but that was the limit of his glasses-vocabulary. He placed them in from of his eyes and looked through the cracked lenses; myopic. He tried to imagine her wearing them. He didn’t know... ‘cute’ perhaps? Her eyes hidden behind the lenses—she’d look even colder...

Then he heard the sound of a door being closed. He smiled; if she had returned he could just hand the card to her and...

She was stark naked.

He was standing in Rei Ayanami’s apartment, and she was naked.

He was also wearing her glasses, but that was a lesser worry.

“Ayanami, I...” he stammered “I...

She walked resolutely towards him and stretched out an arm—he anticipated a sharp pain in his face.

“I didn’t mean...” he tried to apologize.

With one arm, she grabbed his shoulder hard. With the other, she took the glasses. Oh, so it’s just the glass-

Then he slipped in something that made a cracking sound, like stepping on eggshells. They fell, awkwardly. His school bag snagged something, and he was thrown further off balance. There was a sharp pain to his face when his head struck her bare, wet skin on the way down. He wasn’t really sure what was going on. Then they both hit the ground and lay slumped there. He looked right into her face.

She was beautiful.

Her red eyes were stunning, looking right back into his.

She cleared her throat.

“Are you going to mo-“

Then, the situation exploded. The sound of crashing glass filled his ear, and he could hear the thousand shards scatter down on Ayanami’s desk.

“Stop right there, evil pervert!” a child’s voice shouted. Shinji rolled off Ayanami Oh, god. I was holding her breast, wasn’t I he was sure was going to be his last conscious thought. He stared right down the barrel of an urban-grey spider tank. It stood halfway through the broken window and fixed two of its three eyeballs on him. No, please... this was just embarrassing. “Don’t move. I’ve got you right where I want you!” it continued.

Rei Ayanami got onto her feet and stared at the grey, cybernetic arachnid. Her eyebrows were lowered, a little. Still naked and wet, she walked over to her desk and lifted the dark blue curtains. With a decisive movement, she drew the curtains over the spider-tank, covering it. Then, and he could not believe this, she pushed at it, and it withdrew.

Its silhouette was still visible against the curtains. Shinji was fairly certain it still aimed at his head.

“What?” Ayanami asked him, breaking the new, painful silence.

“I... uh...” he stuttered, trying not to look as she got dressed. “I was asked to... Card. You card. I...”

Tried not to look. She was tying up a single bundle of long hair with a black hair band now. He looked away again, as she pulled the skirt of her school uniform on.

“...Dr Akagi asked me to, uh... I didn’t mean to...”

The door slammed. She’d left.

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Shinji Ikari walked at a steady pace a fixed distance from Rei Ayanami. He really didn’t know how to apologize to her. ’I’m sorry I walked into your house, caught you naked, fell on you and then groped you. It wasn’t my fault!’ doesn’t sound sincere enough. ‘I’m really sorry. At least I didn’t break your window.’ <beat> *laugh* wouldn’t even work on other people! What to say, what to say?

And then there was the Tachikoma, protector of Miss Ayanami’s dignity!, the giant urban-camouflaged spider-tank that followed him uncomfortably close. It scowled at him. It had no eyebrows, yet it scowled at him. It rolled on its tiny wheels, furtively sliding back and forth around him, as if he would suddenly veer off if it didn’t keep both sides well guarded. He sighed.

Only five minutes to the metro. It’ll only follow me for another five minutes. It can’t fit through the train doors.

...though I know it will try.

He let out another sigh.

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There was a regular staccato beat as the metro train-wagon’s wheels hit the junctures between two rails at regular intervals. It was accompanied by the electric humming of the electric cables that ran alongside the railway in a chaotic and unpredictable pattern, yet at the same time constant and harmonic, like ambience. Rei flipped a page in her book more correctly, belonging to the School Library and borrowed, and let her eyes pan over the katanka.

But the Wizard was undoubtedly a machine. She had not yet had the opportunity to study it in detail, but after her experiences in all of King Coyote's other castles, she suspected that it, too, was just another Turing machine. Her study of the Cipherers' Market, and particularly of the rulebooks used by the cipherers to respond to messages, had taught her that for all its complexity, it too was nothing more than another Turing machine.

This was very interesting. She could, if she wanted, talk about this to the Literary Club, the next time there was a meeting; she could compare and contrast the author’s views on the same subject matter over a three-year time period in two different works of literature. It is too dry and technical, she thought but that is not the object of the exercise. She would need to think about this.

She tried to read on, but the electric humming was becoming annoying. It was like small voices, constantly filling her head; broken fragments of conversation that was not being spoken Rei felt sweat form under her hair—she tried to concentrate on her book.

"Very funny," he said. "You snuck a zero divide past all of my defences."

The noise grew louder, like the rasping of silk paper. Electrified voices that reminded her of the noise in the Entry Plug.

She wished it would be quiet.

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Rei swiped her security card through the card-reader at the entrance to the ECCO GeoFront. There was a buzz, a red light, and the door did not open. She swiped the card again, making sure that the magnetic line was on the right side against the card-reader. The door did still not open. She tried again. Dust on the reader? She swiped again. It still did not work. Puzzling.

“Here, try this,” she heard the voice of Shinji Ikari say. He held out a security card bearing her name and image. She snatched it from his hand and swiped it. It worked.

She headed towards the long escalators that would bring her down to the Evangelion pens in Central Dogma. She could hear footsteps following her, probably belonging to Shinji Ikari, who would have passed the Security checkpoint moments after her. The footsteps ceased as he boarded the escalator she’d picked.

The escalator was long. She wished she hadn’t deposited her book topside. Next time she would bring it; she’d seen the inside of the GeoFront more time than she could count, though she had a fairly good estimate of how many times it must have been, since she was 16 years old and couldn’t remember it not being present as a daily occurrence. Of course, memory is imperfect.

“I’m sorry,” she heard Shinji Ikari’s voice say. What is he sorry about? Wearing the glasses? Unlikely.

“About what?” she asked flatly.

“I... uh...” he began. “...aren’t you going to have a re-activation test today?” he finally asked. Why is he sorr—he changed subject, she realized.

“Yes,” she answered.

“Aren’t you scared, Ayanami?” he asked “Aren’t you afraid of piloting Unit-Zero?”

“Why?” she asked. She could think of no reason she should be scared.

“Well, Misato told me you were hurt in an earlier test, so...” he said.

“Aren’t you Commander Ikari’s son?” she asked. Dr Akagi implies it, but the Commander has never referred to him as such, she remembered. Strange.

“Uh-huh,” he replied

“Don’t you trust your father’s work?” she asked, keeping her tone quiet and neutral.

“No!” he shouted at her “Of course not! How can I ever trust him again?”

She turned around and faced him, entirely possible on an escalator. How can he not trust in his father? The Commander does many great things, she thought. It was an annoyingly selfish way of thinking, she realized, to judge people by single incidents in the past. It was...

Agitating.

She struck him across the face with her hand, with an audible ‘slap’. Artificial pain ran up her arm as the fiber-optic skin was pressed against his face. She turned around and formed her hand to a fist around the pain. That was wrong, she thought. I overreacted. I will not let it happen again.

And my judgement may be clouded too, she said and clutched the broken glasses in the pocket of her school uniform.

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Shinji sat in Unit-01, at a perpendicular angle to Unit-00, and half-slept through a battery of neural- and synchronization- tests. On order from Misato, he was trying to familiarize himself with the cluttered user-interface he was supposed to use, distributed between a tactile one and the one stuck inside his head. He still awoke in the middle of night scratching it to rash, trying to regain the sense of touch, or even pain in his neck.

Did you know, he said to an imaginary persona ...that the Eva has a sonar that activates when the head is submerged in water? That was a feature, according to Dr Akagi. Without pilot input? I’ve been killed twice in VR simulations because it gives my location away. Dr Akagi promises she’s been working on a not!bug-fix, but honestly I think she’d been putting it off.

He keyed a radial menu that was faintly superimposed over his left field of view. Points of blue and red light danced around in his head as he rotated between the different options. Some of them made little sense. ’[WEAPONS CONTROL]’ doesn’t make any sense, because Unit-01 doesn’t have any weapons It could carry and use a giant rifle and a knife, but they were covered in another menu under ‘[MODULAR WEAPONS SYSTEM]’ and ‘[EMERGENCY KNIFE] respectively, so why is there another menu for weapons the does nothing?

And what does ‘[BODEN-WELTRAUM WAFFENSTEURUNGSSYSTEME]’ mean? That’s not Japanese. It’s not even English!

‘[ZOOM]’ was rather easy to figure out though. He played around with the digital zoom, enlarging different parts of his view while he waited for Dr Akagi and Lt. Ibuki to finish toying around inside his head.

He could, for example, get a close-up of his father talking to Rei Ayanami, if he wanted. ...is Ayanami smiling? She was smiling with her entire face, eyebrows lifted high, and talking entire sentences, and his father was smiling back, and talking to her. ...can I get sound on this thing to? I think I saw an option for—what am I thinking? I’m not that desperate! Besides, it would be impolite to eavesdrop. That’s an as good reason as any. Right.

Rei climbed into the Entry Plug of Unit-00 and connected the cyberlinks to her own neck. As she swallowed the LCL and let it pour into her lungs, he heard Dr Akagi order to connection of the Outer Receptors of the KIDs system. She felt a small tinge in her neck as her senses spread out like a vapour and inhabited the Evangelion.

She was sitting in the middle of a busy city intersection. She stared wide-eyed at the red ‘Don’t Walk’ lights as cars passed her. She could feel her own heartbeat in her throat. She had nowhere to go in the thick stream of cars—none of them acknowledged her, almost hitting her as they passed. Nobody acknowledged her sitting there in her old school uniform. People, waiting for the green lights. So many people. Their colours washed out and they blended into each other, to faceless, anonymous shapes clad in—no ...made form black and smokey grey. She felt afraid, gasping at the total wrongness. She looked skywards and found herself trapped in the shadow of something terrible.

“Initiating Second Layer” 2nd Lt. Ibuki said.

She sat in a coffee shop and stared down at her shivering hand for ten minutes. Rei couldn’t remember how she’d gotten out of the street, between the non-sentient automated cars. She tried to swallow, but her throat was too upset to let her. Her eyes widened and pupils dilated. She turned her head—nothing.

“Thank you!,” someone said. She turned her head to the noise; school girls still in Lower Secondary school discussing boys—“Hey, don’t you think he’s pretty cute?” She turned her head and looked at the other patrons; people, just normal people, Rei thought. “How did it go with him?” their conversation continued. “Come on, you can tell us!”

Rei’s thoughts returned to the coffee she’d bought I do not usually drink coffee. Then again this is not usual she reached her shaking hands towards the lid and tried to struggle it off; they always made the damn plastic—the lip popped off and the cup fell, spilling coffee over her table. She licked her finger to at least get one drop. I should clean this up, She tried to gather her thoughts before the coffee poured onto the floor. It was already dripping away, the holes forming shapes and—these shapes are unnatural Rei thought. They looked like... words: Fulfill the prophecy!

”W-What prophecy?” she yelled. The coffee-shop was empty. It was not empty the moment before. What was wrong with her?

“Counting down to Absolute Borderline,” Maya reported from her dive station, “Zero-point-nine, zero-point-eight, zero-point-seven...“

Rei remembered, she was hyperventilating over a sink. She felt like she could throw up. “zero-point-six” she looked at... herself? in the mirror, her pupils like small pinheads and her hair frazzled. “What’s going on?” she said to herself.”Zero-point-five” “I usually have dinner with mom and dad—“wait, that thought is wrong? “...about now,” the lights cut out, and Rei saw her pupils dilate to fill almost the entire iris “Wha—“ “Zero point four” Her eyebrows were quivering in the mirror. She just wanted to go home. She just wanted to go home. “What’s happening?”

A door squeaked behind her. She swallowed. “I—is there someone there?” she asked with an uneasy voice “Come on, I know you’re there!” She walked towards the toilet stall. ”Zero-point-three” She was hyperventilating. She reached out an arm and fumbled towards the toilet stall door in the dark. She couldn’t control her breathing anymore. She pushed the door open--

and there was no one there. Empty. “Zero-point-two...” The lights returned. Rei relaxed, and she let out a heavy breath. The door to the toilet stall closed and covered her in dark shadows. She jumped, span around, and could feel her heart jump again. Fulfil the prophecy! Fulfil the prophecy! Fulfil the prophecy! Fulfil the prophecy! Fulfil the prophecy! Fulfil the prophecy! Fulfil the prophecy! Fulfil the prophecy! Fulfil the prophecy! Fulfil the prophecy! Fulfil the prophecy! written in red paint all over the toilet stalls door. She screamed, yet did not. Rei stared into the blue dataspace of the Entry Plug, a snowcrashed fractal pattern of a sea of information. She looked down at the broken pair of glasses. Why did I bring those? she asked herself. They serve no purpose in the Entry Plug.

“Zero-point one and rising,” she heard Maya Ibuki report “Borderline passed; Unit-Zero has been activated!”

“OK, everyone,” Dr Ritsuko Akagi said over the intercom “Let’s get the rest of this batch of tests done, and we might go home early tonight,”

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Five hundred years ago, a man carried pen to paper and claimed that life was short, brutal and nasty.

To be specific, he claimed that the life of man was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short which is no less depressing. It might be a slight relief to know that Thomas Hobbes has specifically referred to the ‘time of warre’ and life without any security, and that ‘short, brutal and nasty’ was not a cynical commentary on the nature of human life itself, but rather a blanket statement about living in fear being much like being trapped in a war.

There are many words that could be used to describe the life of an ancient god that had spent the last 3 million years of eternity in a sentient embryonic state in an underground sea of information with no tangible or perceptible form.

Short is not one of them.

Nor, parenthetically, is human.

The Lyndon B. Johnson, a George Dewey-class aircraft carrier was en route from Pyongyang, Korea, where it had previously acted as 200,000 tons of deterrence against Chinese communist aggression, together with its sister ship, the George W. Bush. In true military style, American Empire Navy High Command had decided that the only suitable response to the failing of one George Dewey-class aircraft carrier against the first Rakbu was the deployment of twice as much firepower.

Since the George Dewey-class was the epitome of imperialistic gunboat diplomacy; a massive warship whose very continental presence could force smaller nations into surrender, already famous for having shot the second Rakbu out off the air, there might have been something to that strategy.

Sailing without sails after a brief stop in Wakanai, Hokkaido, the Lyndon B. Johnson maintained an airborne wing of helicopters and other recon aircraft. Unlike the other aircraft onboard the warship, these neither bore the insignia of the American Empire Navy, nor the American Empire Marine Corps, but instead of a special organization subordinate to the General of the Air Force only. The Captain of the Lyndon B. Johnson, Read Admiral Ornellas, wondered what blind idiot had picked the initialism of the organization, Defence: Extraterrestrial and Alien Threats, when it so easily turned into an unfortunate abbreviation. Why couldn’t they have picked “FORCE: Extraterrestrial and Alien Threats” for a more positive impression, was what she wanted to ask.

Then again, if D.E.A.T. officer Captain Williams was anything to go by, they probably revelled in the raised eyebrows and slight drop of temperature that occurred whenever they presented their top secret, top priority orders with that foreboding header. The slight smirk he had whenever he gave orders, or rather, “advice” as to how to fight the alien invaders, and the way his government prescription shades not quite concealed his military-grade, inhuman optics were the telltale signs of an organization that enjoyed its power a little bit too much. What is he so smug about? The Anunnaki was defeated by the American Navy, not some Air Force subcommittee. Stuck-up landlubber flyboys with their heads in the air, thinking they’re the alpha and omega of modern warfare.

And yes, he was insufferably smug when the ‘Pattern BLUE’-classed report of alien activity within the Lyndon B. Johnson’s operational range arrived.

Post-WWIII Imperial American doctrine and strategy was one of totally overwhelming firepower in the face of the enemy; why risk the lives of good American boys and girls fighting a ‘Gentleman’s war’ on enemy terms, when you had one of the World’s largest militaries and could just waltz right in, bomb your enemy back to the stone age are reduce their fighting power to nothing without breaking sweat?

Because of UN regulations, Japanese demands for caution, limited deployment pacts with China and the Russo-American Union, and all those other civilian pacifist regulations that proved Clemenceau wrong, that’s why.

The grin on Rear Admiral Ornellas face was therefore wide when Cpt. Williams reported that the Third Rakbu had been detected in International Waters, where most of these regulations did not apply.

The total armament of the Lyndon B. Johnson and the Zumwalt-class destroyers that escorted it numbered over one hundred carrier-specialized fighters and bombers, and several dozen other aircraft for refuelling, anti-submarine warfare, recognisance or anti-satellite warfare. In addition to their Close-In-Weapons System, the not-so-innovatively-named Phalanx II, the George Dewey-class carried enough anti-aircraft missiles, depth charges, cruise missiles, and tactical nuclear weapons alone to make landings under fire in Russian-held ‘Vichy’ Germany, should the need ever arise again.

On orders from the very sensible, in her opinion, Naval High Command, Rear Admiral Ornellas had deployed two-thirds of her entire air wing against the reflective octahedron. On ‘advice’ from Cpt. Williams, they were armed with armour-piercing missiles, rather than shrapnel, flechette and napalm, as previously ‘suggested’

She’d thrown in a few cruise missiles with tactical nuclear warheads, as a personal gift.

They were opened first.

Cpt. Williams stood in the bridge and watched the first explosion turn the red evening sky turn white. A mushroom-shaped plume smoke and water rose up in an instant. Moments later, it was dispersed and recreated by a second bright flash.

Then there was a third flash.

The retaliatory shot cut the Lyndon B. Johnson in two.

The remaining halves collided as the propellers pushed the stern half against the aft. Steel crumpled under the pressure, bending like modelling clay. Nuclear waste and reactor-grade plutonium leaked out into the sea, boiling the water to steam. Oil leaked out and caught on fire. The aft half capsized, throwing the sailors on deck and some unscrambled A/F51s into the water. There was screaming for help among the men and women. Tiny, compared to the sinking capital ship, they swam frantically towards life-boats deployed by the Zumwalt-class destroyers. In their red, blue, yellow, purple, white and brown uniforms, the deck-crew held onto bleeding, howling and/or unconscious brothers-and-sisters-in-arms, kicking hard with their legs to keep their heads out of the water. Cpt. Williams tried to hold onto Ornellas, who had fallen through a window and landed next to him in the water. Her face was lined with cuts from the glass window and she was bleeding from her neural interface. From the way she’d landed it was probable she’d broken her neck. She’d live; she might never walk again. He wasn’t a doctor, and passing that judgement now was the least of his priorities.

And in the distance, he could see the white glow of the Rakbu vaporizing the carrier air wing. Long beams of light reached out and vaporized pilots and their aircraft around them.

Their lives were short, brutal and nasty.

We truly are at war with the Rakbu, Cpt. Williams reflected.

01001001 01010011 01001000 01001011 01010101 01010010

“OK Shinji,” Misato called over the cyberlink in Unit-01 “The target is a giant-“ the signal cut off for a moment “’octahedron’, eh... Do you know what an octahedron looks like?” Shinji nodded. Either because she had a visual feed Shinji didn’t know about, or because she didn’t particularly care, Misato continued “that’s passing over Odawara right now. It’ll be in Manazuru in a few moments, and it’s headed straight at the GeoFront, so we’ve deployed you right into the middle of it,”

Shinji felt his stomach turn a little at the reminder of the railgun lift.

“We’ve got a report via the American Empire embassy that the Rakbu has previously engaged an AE carrier group, so we’re co-operating with DEAT to clear out the details on its know capabilities. All we have now is that uses a long-ranged version of the beam the first Rakbu used, so make good use of the cover the fortified buildings provide you with,” she continued.

Shinji looked at the projected viewscreen feed of the Entry Plug. He was holding the Eva-rifle to his shoulder and leant a giant white elbow on the roof a 10 storey building, while a taller building hid the rest of the Eva from view; Misato had taught him quite strictly that leaning out from cover was always better than peaking over the top. Had to do with his silhouette, or something.

A UAV-feed followed the sky-blue, almost shining giant Octahedron fly, or perhaps ‘drift’ or ‘hover’ were better words, over the cityscape, letting Shinji see the crystalline surface of the Rakbu. Compared to the hideous visage of the first Rakbu, or the disgusting, vermin-like appearance of the second, with its glowing tentacles, it looked almost harmless.

That’s a bad attitude, and you know it, Shinji, he said to himself.

“Target should enter visual and firing-range in T minus 20 seconds,” an ECCO Operator informed him in its mass-produced voice.

“T minus 15 seco—target has stopped moving,” it reported both to the pilot of Unit-01, and to the GeoFront CIC, where its shell was housed. Reflexively, Cpt. Katsuragi turned her head towards it. “Stopped?”

“Correct, Captain Katsuragi. The target has stopped moving,” it restated mindlessly.

“...wait,” 2nd Lt. Aoba mumbled as he watched the thermal display projected onto his eyes. “There’s a massive heat build-up in the target core!” he said as each of the Rakbu’s eight triangular planes got a red-orange spot in the centre, where the distance to the core was shortest.

“What!?” Cpt. Katsuragi yelled. “What does that mean?”

Above ground, the Rakbu fired a white beam that ionized a tunnel of air. The beam struck a tall skyscraper in Manazuru. Then the same beam struck the building behind the skyscraper, then the building behind that one again. And a fourth building.

Then it left Manazuru and continued across Yugawara harbour into island above the GeoFront, where it hit another three buildings, leaving gaping holes with slagged edges and seeping liquid metal dripping down to the streets.

Then it left a gaping hole in Unit-01’s ventral armour.

Shinji met insurmountable pain and predictably lost. As the LCL around him boiled, he recoiled in pain, reflexively kicking backwards in an unbalanced jump. The 40 metre giant fell backwards through an apartment complex. The 500 tons of Eva crashed into it, crumbling it like a sandcastle. Concrete and armoured steel fell to pieces like a ruptured bag building material. Dust and shrapnel scattered all over the streets.

Unit-01 continued falling backwards, stumbling on Shinji’s reflexes and trying to regain its balance. Human balance, unfortunately, is not built to handle weight/height ratios that are off by a factor of 8000. Shinji felt himself roll backwards and land head-first against the bridge that connected the GeoFront island to Yugawara. Then everything went black.

[EMERGENCY LIFE SUPPORT ACTIVATED]

01001001 01010011 01001000 01001011 01010101 01010010

Jonen C · Mar 30th 2010, 6:24pm

Translating the binary strings as they come:

String 1 Rei 1.0

July 2030 - The Past.

Cryptonomicon. Rei is reading the cryptonomicon?

2: Rei 1.0

Temarei is around. So maybe she's not [REDACTED]... Or maybe [REDACTED] began their [infiltration] earlier than I had previously believed.

3: Rei 1.0

"Why is captain Katsuragi driving?" is always a reasonable question.

4: MIKA

For some reason I'm reading the narration with the voice of Academician Prokhor Zakharov... Specifically the bit about the interactions of two cyberbrains.

It works.

Very ominous error.

Push the button, Ritsuko.

5: MIKA

Late August 2030 - What we laughingly call the Present.

They put him through something like a Voight-Kampff test?

"Suzahara with Aide" - I can not tell if this was intentional or not.

6: Think Blue

Mana Kirishima. Also, a good observation by Ken - a lot of people at or around the school are share names with warships, or have otherwise naval themes.

7: Count One Tow

The snark is strong in this one variant of Shinji. Be careful, you're threading close to the Kyon line.

"Making you feel bad enough about it to you do the laundry was just an added bene" missing a word in there, I think.

8: SORYU

Heh. You can procrastinate on responding. Won't come back to bite you in the ass at all.

9: Rei 1.0

"Imagining that Dr/Ms Akagi had a life outside that of being a doctor of metacryptology, and that she could actually not wear a labcoat was something Shinji still had problems comprehending." - Wait. Not wear a labcoat? Forget Shinji - I am having trouble comprehending it.

And we cross the Kyon-line as Shinji proves himself an unreliable narrator. I think. And confirmed with gusto. Well done.

10: Rei 1.0

Female bonding.

11: Rei 1.0

... If Temarei telling Shinji Ayanami needs more friends is not a reference to Haruhi, I will destroy one of my hats.

"Proverbs are no help!" made me laugh.

Shinji does not have a glasses fetish.

Tachikoma intervention! They DO make everything better!

12: Pervert

Tachikoma chaperone!

13: Rei 1.0

The Diamond Age. Rei is a fan of Neal Stephenson then, I take it.

Also ominous hum...

14: Rei 1.0

She slapped him with her prostethic arm, didn't she. Ouch.

15: Rei 1.0

Heh. Not a bug!

"[GRUND-RAUM WAFFENSTEURSYSTEME]" ... My German is Kaput, but Ground-Space Weapons Control System?

Also, switching narrator on us without warning?

16: ISHKUR
The Oncoming Storm... Well, the Thunderer.

George Dewey, Lyndon B. Johnson, George W. Bush... The Imperial Americans name their carriers for Imperialists.

"DEAT" or "FORCE: ETAT"? You know, I think I prefer the former.

Annunaki... Uh oh.

17: ISHKUR

[EVANGELION BATTLE THEME]

18: ISHKUR

END OF LINE

Jonen C · Mar 30th 2010, 6:57pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by LatwPIAT

...pair of cybershells controlled by one ghost over a time-traveling comlink?

One ghost? Or a committee?

And almost missed commenting on this:

Quote:

[I]She ignored the brat and shoved him out of the way. Sweet droplets scattered over her face and her sleeve felt moist. The little shit has spilled his soft-drink on her!

I can bet what flavor. And Ayanami hates Lemon-Lime.
And her finger did not slip. She pushed Orange.

[Serious] Those little flashes though... Very ominous indeed. And I am overusing that word.
You would think it does not mean what I think it means. You would be wrong.

EDIT: Though, in retrospect, I suspect it would take Soryu to request a Skul-gun... Ah well.

shanejayell · Mar 30th 2010, 7:23pm

*thumbs up*

I likey.

The Sun Emperor · Mar 31st 2010, 12:55am

The sooner this story is finished, the sooner the Deus Ex crossover can be written. So I applaud this new installment.

LatwPIAT · Mar 31st 2010, 8:15am

Jonen C: [TEXT EXPUNGED] but it will be revealed in [THIS LINE HAS BEEN SHUT DOWN BY ORDER OF UNATCO]

...and I think we all know who is to blame for Shinji being Kyon-ish. It just works to damn well, especially the way I like writing, which is some freak hybrid of the aforementioned {THREAT} and Neal Stephenson (at least, that's what I aim for) (And yes, you're right on the two books, though how you guessed the latter I'll never know...)

I guess it says something about me that my ideas of female bonding involve computer programming.

(It's supposed to read FEAT, that abreviation. Slightly better than DEATh.)

And you may keep your hat. Though I think you should hang on to it in case you need to eat it some other time.

The Sun Emperor: I guess you'll be pleased to know that I haven't stopped jotting down notes, so I'm constantly working on it, just not very devotedly at the time?

EarthScorpion · Mar 31st 2010, 9:52am

Quote:

Originally Posted by LatwPIAT

...and I think we all know who is to blame for Shinji being Kyon-ish. It just works to damn well, especially the way I like writing, which is some freak hybrid of the aforementioned {THREAT} and Neal Stephenson (at least, that's what I aim for)

And the fact that I'm betaing, and inserting sarcasm and Unholy Vitriol Prana into the text when I think it would be funny, isn't helping. Well, it is. A lot. Just not in a... helpful... sense of the word.

LatwPIAT · Mar 31st 2010, 10:21am

Quote:

Originally Posted by EarthScorpion

And the fact that I'm betaing, and inserting sarcasm and Unholy Vitriol Prana into the text when I think it would be funny, isn't helping. Well, it is. A lot. Just not in a... helpful... sense of the word.

I don't think there was any indication canon!Rei had such great knowledge of mathematics or quantum physics either, but I see no reason to correct that part of Alternate Character Interpretation anytime soon.

Nor does she ever read anything other than books on genetics, as far as we're concerned.

Jonen C · Mar 31st 2010, 11:08am

Quote:

Originally Posted by LatwPIAT

Jonen C: [TEXT EXPUNGED] but it will be revealed in [THIS LINE HAS BEEN SHUT DOWN BY ORDER OF UNATCO]

[REDACTED] [CENSORED BY ORDER OF OIS, PENDING INVESTIGATION] ~~THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK~~

Quote:

...and I think we all know who is to blame for Shinji being Kyon-ish. It just works to damn well, especially the way I like writing, which is some freak hybrid of the aforementioned {THREAT} and Neal Stephenson (at least, that's what I aim for)

I wasn't complaining, mind. Just warning.

Quote:

(And yes, you're right on the two books, though how you guessed the latter I'll never know...)

All hail the allmighty Google, the White Spawn of the Web with a Thousand Pseudopods!

Besides, Rei's cryptic comment about comparing the works by the same author is kind of a giveaway, isn't it?

Quote:

I guess it says something about me that my ideas of female bonding involve computer programming.

Given the fact that these are two rather anomalous samples as far as females go, I'd say it works.

Quote:

(It's supposed to read FEAT, that abreviation. Slightly better than DEATh.)

I like FORCE: ETAT better.

Quote:

And you may keep your hat. Though I think you should hang on to it in case you need to eat it some other time.

Thank you sir. As I suspected. But I shan't ever eat it. I know where it has been. If it comes to that, it shall be DESTROYED!

Quote:

Originally Posted by LatwPIAT

I don't think there was any indication canon!Rei had such great knowledge of mathematics or quantum physics either, but I see no reason to correct that part of Alternate Character Interpretation anytime soon.

Nor does she ever read anything other than books on genetics, as far as we're concerned.

Personally, just for the laugh, I like to think she's read several books on the subject of anthropology in the past, and has gradually worked down to more basic levels because it just doesn't make sense.

EarthScorpion · Mar 31st 2010, 11:17am

Quote:

Originally Posted by LatwPIAT

I don't think there was any indication canon!Rei had such great knowledge of mathematics or quantum physics either, but I see no reason to correct that part of Alternate Character Interpretation anytime soon.

I Blame Yuki.

Quote:

Nor does she ever read anything other than books on genetics, as far as we're concerned.

Pah! Mine reads Mythos Tomes, thank you very much, and then leaves corrections in the margins. Gendo has not been able to stop her from only doing that to his copies, as of yet, so has instead put really, really massive encryption on her handheld, so no-one else can get an advantage from this.

Oh, and of course, more modern books on magic and the arcane sciences. And books that are meaningful (tm). Or that she has to read for school.

Jan 10th 2010, 6:27pm	#27
Robo Jesus More Than Human です Join Date: 27 Dec 2005 Posts: 6,026	__________________ A Thinking Ape’s Critique of Trans-Simianism. Dungeon Keeper Ami; Proving that sometimes the best Villians are the ones who used to be Heros. Ow, My Sanity: There are things man was not meant to love. A link to over 400 well written and entertaining fanfiction stories. If you like both videogame remixes and Super Mario Bros., you'll love this remix album. The Economics of the Singularity. Literally stealing his dead enemies' power, Megaman is what cannibals aspire to.

Feb 26th 2010, 6:21am	#28
LatwPIAT Registered Join Date: 9 Nov 2009 Posts: 132	With thanks to EarthScropion. COMPLEX/A wind that blows, strongly 01001110 01001001 01001110 01010101 01010010 01010100 01000001 The Ghost of Evangelion – Layer i A Neon Genesis Evangelion/Ghost in the Shell crossover Present day, present time The CEO of the Earth Coincidence Control Office, Gendo Ikari, sat with folded hands in the safety of his office, letting trichromatic laser light refract against his glasses, painting red, green and blue afterimages on his retina, forming a coherent, consensual hallucination in his mind of a dark room illuminated only by those who shared this hallucination with him. There was a tense silence hanging in the imaginary room, only waiting to be broken – as it was: “You handed a demigod over to your son, Ikari...” a man illuminated by a yellow haze prompted. His dissatisfaction and the implications of nepotism were clear. Ironic, considering that nepotism was one of the many tools IGIGI used to watch and affect, and only affect, not control, or so they claimed, the world. They were, of course, lying. “It was necessary to stop the first Rakbu,” Gendo replied, not even breaking eye-contact with some imagined point in the air somewhere above his desk, looking simultaneously at all the IGIGI heads and none of them at all. “Isimud has always been faithful to Enki,” a sickly green man, due to the luminescent cloud of light that surrounded him, retorted “It should not have been a threat at all,” “Yet you managed to wreck two Units,” a man in a dark blue shade joined in, “and significant parts of the city, I might add,” although they all knew none of them cared about that. “Gentlemen,” Gendo began his explanation, “The circumstances affected the situation. Despite the name, ECCO cannot control even a significant fraction of all the coincidences on Earth,” Still, it controlled more than IGIGI were aware of... “This is irrelevant,” Lorenz Kiel interrupted. “Remember that the Human Acceleration Project is your primary duty.” “Of course,” Gendo replied. Had he not devoted every waking moment of his life the past 12 years to realizing the Human Acceleration Project? He had forgone his son. He had, regretfully, neglected Rei. He had betrayed his love to his beloved Yui twice with the Akagi family, and it was his devotion they questioned? It was his loyalty they should question (they most certainly did, he knew) not his devotion; the god they were to create with their own hands should know he was devoted. “Do not think you are not expendable. There are others,” Blue spoke harshly, as always. “Yes, how does the construction of Dilmun go?” Gendo asked, trying to suppress a smirk “Please send my regards to Ms Avalon,” he added, as an afterthought. “Another woman you are planning to seduce, Ikari?” Red joked. “Our business with AvalonCorp is hardly the subject of this meeting; the Acceleration Project is,” he said, leaning forwards for emphasis. “We will consider your budget proposal. The committee will take over now.” The figures disappeared. All but one; Kiel still remained. “You can’t go back, Ikari,” he added, as if they were old friends, or at least as if Gendo had been his protégé; a badly faked attempt at a warning, revealed by his blatant ulterior motives. Then he too disappeared. Gendo Ikari took off his glasses and massaged his tired eyes; staring into the unblinking eye of myriads of lasers was rather painful, and he still hadn’t gotten used to his new glasses; his somewhat weak myopia had worsened since last time he had bough new lenses, and now he had to adjust to a slightly sharper world-view. He could see things clearly now; he could see the future. The Ghost of Evangelion – Layer 03 A Ghost in the Shell/Neon Genesis Evangelion fanfic Shinji turned the handle of the door to his new classroom and swung it open. For a moment, he stared at the half-empty room and the groups and cliques that filled it, all clothed in either the teal-blue and white sailor-esque dress, or the same black/white (and how he had come to loathe that colour!) combination of trousers and shirts that he wore, with the exception of a muscular-looking, rowdy-haired student in a track suit. After Shinji’s eyes had scanned the room, he decided he would pass discretely in through the door, not slamming it, and simply sit down on the nearest empty desk. “Hello,” a voice suddenly spoke to him, with a smiling face framed by long blue hair appeared directly in front of him. There goes discretely… “…you must be Shinji Ikari,” the female face said. A sudden feeling of uncertainty rose through Shinji. Dis-cre-te-ly! he repeated to himself. At least it was only one person. “Y-yes!” he said hurriedly. Oh dear was that too loud? Nobody even looked at him, except for the girl. “In that case,” she said, “Welcome to our class; I hope you’ll make some friends!” “Thank you …“ Shinji hazarded a guess, his statement accidentally rising into a question, “…Class Rep?” The girl’s smile widened. “Temarei,” she answered, “but I’m not the Class Representative,” she said. ...I shouldn’t have guessed! “...that would be Miss Hokari, over there,” she said and waved in the direction of another girl, talking to the boy in the track suit. “Please, find a seat if you wish.” Shinji found a seat central in the classroom. It was not the best seat he could imagine, but the back row had already been taken by earlier birds. He wasn’t even going to try the pleasant row by the windows; they were always taken early, and he wasn’t going to get into an argument on his first day of school over seating arrangements. The other Eva pilot (Misato had mentioned in passing that her name was ‘Rei Ayanami’) already sat in her seat and stared out through the windows, with her arm in a cast. Actually, he should try to talk with someone for once, and they already had something in common to talk about but… he didn’t actually want to talk about that, and… well… nah. He didn’t know what he’d say; he’d only make a fool of himself He could see it now; he tried to talk to her and all she would do was to frown say something like “What do you want?” or “Shut up.” …maybe. Not worth the risk. … “Rise, bow!” the Class Rep ordered. 01000010 01000101 01010111 01000001 01010010 01000101 ESAGILA ACADEMY FOR YOUNG STUDENTS, August 22nd, 2030 “…now, on May 15th 1932,” the history teacher droned on, “radical elements of the Imperial Japanese Navy, aided by officers in the Imperial Japanese Army successfully attempted to assassinate Prime Minister Inukai…” As the reverberating hum continued, Shinji nonchalantly flipped through the History book; he had actually already covered the Shōwa period in his previous school, a (one might even say ‘another’) prestigious school for the progeny of diplomats, politicians, plutocrats and other assorted filthy rich, and although he probably should study it again (his grades hadn’t been exceptional) he just couldn’t be bothered to do so. Instead, he was making “independent studies” of the History book and Ayanami. …erm, no. Insert: Although most historians place the start of the Fourth World War [footnote: alternatively known under the name “Second Vietnam War”] in October 2015 when wars resulting from food shortages… The sound of fingers hitting a keyboard with great enthusiasm made Shinji cast a glance at the student next to him. Despite the total prevalence of standard neural interfaces in Shinji’s class, all schoolwork was still done on laptops; a combination of widespread cyberbrain-hacking paranoia, preventive measures against Cyberbrain Closed Shell Syndrome and a desire to protect children against the horrors of the ‘net meant very few of the aforementioned neural interfaces had Wireless Network Access nodes. Momentarily disturbed, Shinji went back to reading. …following the Impact Event [footnote: see Chapter 7.2 ‘The 2013 Tidal Disaster’] broke out in the Indochinese Peninsula, some have chosen to place the cause of WWIV at the American Empire Fleet expedition into Antarctica and the subsequent People’s Republic of China (PROC) annexation of Vietnam and Laos… 01000101 01010011 01000001 01000111 01001001 01001100 01000001 Since the invention of computers, their processing power has, roughly, doubled every eighteenth months, an observation made by Gordon E. Moore, an Intel (a now defunct corporation, since their headquarters were nuked) co-founder in 1965, although he referred explicitly to transistor density, which is a rather outdated concept in this day and age. It follows that if information can be processed at atrocious speeds, you need to feed that information into the processor at equally sacrilegious speeds, especially when light itself takes a noticeable fraction of a second to travel from one side of the Earth to the other. The ‘net was fast. Which was why Ishikawa cursed and swore at the seed-virus that had suddenly hit servers all over the World. Someone, somewhere, had taken a seed-virus, loaded it up with sensitive images (like, say, Shinji Ikari being retrieved from Unit-01) and placed it in a “Toy Box” Trojan, disguised as, oh, those very same pictures of Shinji Ikari, and released the infectious image library all over the world. The images spread like wildfire, at the speed of human thought, setting neurons aflame, through the infosphere that joined everyone together, establishing itself in fresh neural pathways established three weeks earlier by images of a climactic battle between two giant monsters in the middle of Japan. Needless to say, those images hadn’t been possible to contain either. It didn’t help, at all, that news companies all over the world circumvented their respective press blackouts by exploiting various and numerous loopholes in the law. Japanese law, for example, couldn’t restrict reporting on any story that had hit private sites, so all the press had to was to wait for the news to spread to a private server, and by “wait” Ishikawa really meant “leak it themselves,” those bastards! Had Shinji Ikari been an Ordinary High School Student (besides the whole “pilots giant robot” part) it might have been possible to subtly DDoS-attack the social networking sites he’d used and just pull his face off their servers while overwriting the allocated hard-drive space about five hundred times just to make sure, but no; Shinji Ikari was the son of Gendo Ikari, a Tachibana Labs shareholder and wealthy plutocrat, whose son’s portrait occasionally appeared as boring filler in articles on his father’s latest economic endeavours. Taking all those images down was a lost cause and, even if feasible, would reek of government intervention; the idea (meme if you will) would still exist even if there was no proof, only reinforced by the cries of “Conspiracy!” Ones which would, incidentally, have been eminently justified in this case. Instead, Ishikawa used his Hunter-Killer viruses to give himself time to set a more realistic plan into action; a disinformation campaign that took advantage of modern advances in photo-manipulation. Counter-productively enough, he programmed a seed-virus to release the photos – altered photos, in which fake JPEG artifacts surrounded Shinji’s face, while shadows fell slightly wrong; a trained-but-not-quite-trained-enough eye would conclude that Shinji Ikari’s face had been superimposed on the photograph. Releasing a second batch of photos with a different (fake) pilot altogether probably helped just as much. 01010011 01001111 01010010 01011001 01010101 [Shinji Has Mail] > READ FROM: asuka.langely.soryu@tannhauser.bundesregierung.de TO: ikari.shinji@ecco.mod.go.jp SUBJECT: Congratulations Hello, Third Child Congratulations on your first Rakbu kill. It’s good to see that there are other people than me around who can fight the monsters. As an experienced pilot with years of piloting, I would be most pleased if you would tell me all about your experiences. I am looking forwards to meeting you. Kindest regards, Asuka Langley Soryu, Second Child and Pilot of Unit-02 There was the unmistakable sound of chairs scraping against the floor, followed by rustling, as if class had ended in a disorganized fashion, (and if Shinji had learnt anything about Hikari Hokari, such a thing was not allowed to happen) despite it being in the middle of a boring history lesson. What had only moments ago been a near-complete silence, if not for the constant droning on about the rise of militarism during the Shōwa period during which he could sneak looks at Temarei’s beautiful legs …eh had been replaced by a loud chatter, of which he was both the centre and subject. Wait, what? In one fell swoop, he was surrounded by an impenetrable wall of students (it would have been insulting to comment on their density, he felt), quite unlike the Wall of Jericho, as Hokari was unable to make the crumble back to their seats. This isn’t happening! Most of them had their mobile phones or HandyNAVIs out, pushing them into his face. No no no! The pack grew denser and denser around him, until he was forced to stand. Not now, not here, not ever… “Is this really you?” “How did you get picked?” “Was there some sort of test?” “How are the controls like?” “Are there WALDOes?” “What are its weapons?" “Be quiet! Show some respect! Class is still in session” …although that was more distant, in Hokari’s voice; a few students hadn’t stood up to squeeze the air out of him, for which he was eternally grateful, even if it made little difference. “Pay attention to the teacher!” the Class Rep yelled through her teeth “You’re being disrespectful,” her face was burning scarlet and her firsts were clenched as she’d risen from her chair, or perhaps Shinji just imagined that, as he couldn’t really see her through the mass of students. There shouldn’t be enough students... an elbow was jostled into Shinji’s stomach. left to even make a crowd! 01001110 01001001 01000100 01000001 01000010 01000001 Calamity. Noise. Disorder. It was distracting and unnecessary, Rei thought. Although she stared out through the nearest window, she could still see their ghost-like reflections in the double glass, like a faint glass painting against the clear blue sky. Although it will not be clear much longer. Rei wasn’t actually staring at the sky at the moment, despite the interesting patterns, unique-yet-recognizable, formed by the rawsilk-white clouds. Instead, she stared at the kaleidoscopic patterns of colour that occasionally formed the classroom windows, dancing back and forth, but dancing is not the correct term, broken into frames by the windowsills and adjoining pieces of wall. Then Rei noticed the distorted mirror image of herself in the glass pane. This is me. The new me. Same as old me? She stared into her own red eyes, looking down the lens of her reflection and into the artificial eye’s active pixel sensor. Her eyes widened. Momentarily. She stared into the black abyss of her pupil, and found it staring back at her; sentient and self-aware. That was not supposed to happen. She blinked, once, and it was gone. I am, but what am I? Rei immediately stared down into her desk and dropped her stylus. Smoke, steam, actually, rose from her fingers. Like a schizophrenic hallucination, the faintly white vapour ascended towards the ventilation ducts without anyone noticing – This is probably not normal. Class was over. 01010010 01100101 01101001 Shinji took a jab to the face. The full force of the blow pushed him off his feet. His head slammed into the outside wall of the school and he sank together on the grassy soil. A huge boy in a jumpsuit has just walked up to him and punched him in the face; what was up with that? His attacker massaged his hand. “Sorry, transferee,” the large boy said “I had to punch you to be at peace with myself Shinji cradled his bleeding nose, feeling blood flow down his arm and drip onto his shirt and the grass under him. The huge boy was flanked by a thinner, shorter boy in glasses. Right now he had taken them off to cover half his face half-heartedly with his hand. “Toji…” the bespectacled boy began accusingly “he’s their pilot; we’re going to get into trouble for this!” he raised his head and smiled guiltily “and with those leaked images I sort-of-kind-of saved on my PDA…” He paused, sucking in a worried breath. “Oh dear, their suited men-in-black are coming over already…” “That jerk hurt my sister!” the boy named Toji yelled to his friend, who cowered at the volume. Shinji staggered back onto his legs. “Look, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…” Shinji said and took a cross-punch to the chest. He could swear the impact sounded like a subdued car-crash. He squinted and saw another punch lined up. Ouch. He closed his eyes and braced himself poorly. But it never came. He opened his eyes and saw Toji dangle a meter in the air, oddly enough, looking terrified. There was a loud, reverberating humming, like electric power lines, and two giant grey spider tanks materialized out of thin air, one holding Toji up with its arms. “Whoa!” the boy in glasses said, with mixed awe and terror. “Put him down Tachikoma,” an adult voice said. The owner was a JSDA soldier with a mullet. “Don’t leave him hanging up in the air.” “But I caught a terrorist!” the urban-camouflaged tank said. “He’s not a terrorist,” the soldier said exasperatedly. “At worst; he’s a violence-prone delinquent. Now put him down.” “Okay…” the Tachikoma said, a disappointed whine entering its voice, but obliged. It carefully lowered the muscular boy onto the ground, letting go off his arms as soon as his feet rested safely on the grass. The man turned to Toji and his friend. “You’re Toji Suzahara and Kensuke Aida, right?” he asked without acknowledging their replies “Go back to your classes. We’ll send someone to talk to you later,” They both heard the Self-Defence “We,” (as opposed to the “Imperial ‘We’” discarded 85 years earlier) and absconded in an intimidated manner. “I’m Togusa,” the man said and reached out a hand to help Shinji get his posture back. “...nothing’s going to happen to them, right?” Shinji asked through the flood of blood that emanated from his nose. “His sister got hurt in the battle and…” “We might send his parents a harshly worded letter, if that’s what you mean,” Togusa replied. 01001110 01001001 01001110 01010101 01010010 01010100 01000001 A strong south wind blew across the bow of the JDS Nagato before sweeping over the deck of her sister ship, the JDS Mutsu. Both were flanked by the helicarriers JDS Kaga and the JDS Junyo. The American contribution to this specific brick in the Pacific Wall was a Zumwalt-class destroyer, the IAS Moorer. Kaisō-chō Heiya Kotani stood at the front deck of the Nagato and watched the waves break against the sharp edge, dividing into trails of white foam, and leaving a wake of cold water behind the Nagato. Like her namesake, the Nagato-class missile destroyers were slightly aged, having been built after WWIII and used for peacekeeping in Korea in WWIV, but nonetheless some of the most advanced and powerful ships around, combining missile batteries with advanced sensors an AI for a network-centric vessel that could be run almost entirely without crew from a central computer in Kyosho if such were necessary. She was a beautiful ship, and Kotani was proud to serve on it. He stared once more down into the waves, and that was odd, he thought, as he gazed into the depths. The water was pitch black right below the bow of the ship, as if something was moving below it, but the Captain would have alerted them if there were any submarines, allied or otherwise, this close to their destroyer-group. He then spotted a faintly glowing red light in the middle of the black surface. It swept along his field of view, and he turned his head and saw that it was headed straight at the Moorer. He reached, for the lack of a better term, for the alarm-executable in his cyberbrain. Before he’d navigated his way to it, all hell broke loose. All possible alarms flared. The wind hit stronger, and the knife-like Moorer bent and snapped in two at its middle, splintering and bleeding diesel and motor oil into the water. As the crippled halves sank into the cold sea with American sailors frantically swimming in the water, the Junyo’s stern was lifted out of the water in a fraction of a second. Kotani could swear he’d seen a fucking tail throw it out of the water. What was this, the Kraken? Akkorokamui? Personnel were thrown overboard and the Junyo dived bow-first into the water and toppled, giving Kotani a clear view of the crumpled stern hull. He didn’t have much more to think at that point, because a giant glowing tentacle burst up through the Nagato’s CIC. The bright white appendage ripped sideways out from the destroyer, tearing the hull into flakes. Like a deer in the headlights, Kotani could only watch as he fell off the deck (or rather, the deck fell with him) into the chilled water. He ducked his head under, ripping off his motor-oil-soaked uniform jacket while underwater; soon the oil-spill would light on fire, and he’d rather not burn. He had to swim up to take another breath. When he surfaced, he watched the sea monster, a reddish-brown bug-like thing with tentacles rise vertically up through the innards of the Mutsu, boring a hole through the engine-room and command centre. The monster kept on rising, as if it wasn’t constrained by such petty laws like gravity; it seemed to hang, much like bricks don’t. Then, as if attacking the destroyer group had just been its idea of a game, it curled together and stretched out towards mainland Japan, oblivious of the Kaga peppering it with CWIS-fire and anti-air missiles. As each bullet hit, or rather, didn’t, the creature blinked in primary colours against the blue sky, like a tasteless post-contemporary neon-painting. Soon, it was out of range, and Kotani swam towards a life-boat the Kaga had deployed to pick up survivors. 01001110 01001001 01001110 01010101 01010010 01010100 01000001 The pale afternoon light reached in through the windows of the abandoned classroom, spreading outwards from each window it passed through like a reiterated macroscale double-slit experiment. The sharp contrast between shadow and light, projected on the floor and walls almost created a film-noir like feeling, helped by how washed-out everything seemed in the poor light. Shinji Ikari even wore black and while clothes with artistically applied blood, and the ventilation fan was, if not slow-turning, quite noisy. The flow of blood emanating from his nose had eventually stopped, thanks to a seemingly ever-growing pile of discarded tissue papers that had been periodically dumped into a trashcan Togusa had dragged over to their conscripted table. Technically Shinji was supposed to attend an after-school club at this moment, but as he had recently transferred and hadn’t been in any hurry to join any of them, he defaulted to the Go Home Club, and by then actually being in school, he was doing a lot better than all those other slackers, right? Right… A pair of muscular men in black suits, eyes hidden behind large black sunglasses stood on either side of the only door to the classroom. Shinji felt assured that they wore those sunglasses even at night; their vision was augmented, he was certain. In either case, Togusa waved them off, and they demonstratively took up the exact same positions on the other side door. Shinji slurped the last of his canned green tea, letting the relaxing-yet-energizing (and how did that work?) astringent caffeine-and-polyphenol mixture warm his body. “So you pilot a giant robot,” Togusa said with the tone of voice that made his surprise at Shinji’s age clear. Shinji looked away. “It was really only that one time,” he said “…according to Mis... Captain Katsuragi, they have other pilots with more experience. I just happened to be available,” Shinji said, trying to deflect any further questions, or at the very least dodge them. “What do you need the giant robots for?” Togusa asked. To ruin my life, Shinji thought. It took him a small fraction of milisecond to realize that he was actually a legal employee of ECCO now, and ‘you’ therefore referred to the organization as a whole. “I don’t know,” he answered plainly. He wished for another can of tea. It was as if the air had suddenly gone colder. It probably had, actually; he could hear the howling of the wind now, blowing into the city from the sea. “How are you coming along with the other pilots?” Togusa asked. “Very well,” Shinji replied, trying to keep the bitterness he felt about the whole subject out of his voice, and failing, “we’re in a perfectly harmonic state of mutual obliviousness,” Which wasn’t exactly true, Shinji realized, but close enough. There were no further questions, and Shinji spent a few minutes trying to wring the last precious drops of green tea from the can, while at the same time trying not to cut his tongue on the sharp metal edges; he’d bled enough for one day, he thought. Togusa looked away and let a mildly annoyed sigh escape under his breath, too subdued to really be heard. Shinji Ikari seemingly knew nothing about ECCO, their giant robots or their enemies, which consequently made asking (because this was certainly not an informal interrogation) him about it a rather futile task. Hopefully the Major and Ishikawa were finding their investigations somewhat easier. There were three rapid knocks on the door to the not-that-empty classroom, and the door swung open, revealing Rei Ayanami. Her pale skin was almost unnaturally white in the light, only distinguished by the contrast to the truly white bandages on her right arm and her school uniform. She headed straight for Shinji. “There has been an alert,” she said flatly “Follow me. I’ll go on ahead,” Then, before she’d even verified that Shinji had understood or even caught her message, she turned and left. Togusa found himself on the receiving end of a cyberlink call. “Togusa, get Shinji Ikari and Rei Ayanami over here immediately,” Maj. Kusanagi said. 01001110 01001001 01001110 01010101 01010010 01010100 01000001 With the possible exception of the capital city/region/fucking island Kyosho, Ashigarashimo District was the most well-defended geographical location in Japan. The district was a veritable fortress, surrounded by military bases and airfields. Destroyed and sunken cities served as uninhabited buffers that could be destroyed without repercussions, while the numerous mountains and lakes would hinder the mobility of anything with the magnitude of a Rakbu. To outside observers, the Chinese certainly, it might look less like a series of defences and more like preparations for war. The fake skyscrapers hiding missile batteries certainly looked suspect, although the Japanese Government had made a press release stating they were not intended for use in combat, and therefore not in violation of the Geneva Conventions. It didn’t quite help their credibility that they’d also hollowed out hills and filled them with even more missile batteries. Short of invading Korea or bringing nukes into the country (and in the name of all that is good and holy, some of the right-wing militarists wanted that too!) there was little the state of Japan could to avoid accusations of a second Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere under the iron fist of the Imperialist American devils. Thanks to cybernetic enhancements and general medical advances, survivors from the first Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere were still alive to keep the old wounds open, and by default, those aging centenarians had lived through WWIII and WWIV too, and with those the resulting American peacekeeping (though many preferred the less politically correct term “occupation”) On the other hand, actually being attacked by the enemy the defences had been built for in the first place helped loads. Being attacked twice was a particularly nasty godsend. “Target in sight, Air Boss,” 2nd Lt. Poole transmitted back to the Philip Mead as his F/A51 caught the alien on its radar. “Weapons are locked and we’re ready to fire,” “You’re gonna have to wait for JASDF clearance,” ‘Air Boss’ Gen. Duane K. Patrick replied over the distributed cyberlink. Two flights of AEN F/A51 fighter swept over the seas towards the hovering Rakbu. In their minds, they also tracked the positions of a flight of Japanese ATF29s. Both groups of fighter aircraft were bound to intercept the alien invader at approximately the same time, not that it really mattered when an F/A51 could shoot beyond the horizon, had they been fitted with long-distance missiles, which they hadn’t. Instead, some Pentagon officer had boarded the ship and insisted that napalm and fragmentation missiles were used against the alien fuckers. On one hand, he looked like a typical ground-locked pencil-pusher, so what did he know? On the other hand, his uniform sleeve patch read ‘Defence: Extraterrestrial and Alien Threats’ so what did he truly know? “Target is flying dangerously low; cherub-two!” 2nd Lt. Poole reported, using military aviator jargon to refer to heights, in hundreds of feet, below 1000 “and it’s over the city” “JASDF reports the area as low-risk; we’ve marked your map,” an AEN Operator android reported. “Okay pilots, listen up!” Air Boss shouted over the cyberlinks, “We’ve just received confirmation from the Japanese; Operation Tsubasa is ‘go’, so engage target at will!” 01001110 01001001 01001110 01010101 01010010 01010100 01000001 Ninurta floated quite comfortably, although buoyancy had little to do with it, when the first wave of napalm struck. The missiles exploded against its carapace and scattered burning petrol-jelly all over its reddish-brown back. The nearby towers of stone the pest-like humans had constructed everted itself and spat out shooting stars (for what else could it be?) at the Rakbu. Ninurta banked and let the AA-missiles strike the AT-field enhanced hard shell ineffectually. Did the killer apes really think glorified archery was any threat at all to a god? The Messenger had been a fool; how could you reason with that which could not comprehend or understand? With one fell swoop, it sliced the top off the anti-air fortification. The concrete and metal top ground against the remaining bottom, releasing heaps of concrete dust as it slid down. Once it had come halfway, it tipped and smashed against another abandoned building. Soon thereafter, it fell towards the ground, steel, concrete and plaster crumpling against the ground under its own weight. Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean and Indochinese refugees watched as the huge clouds of dust were whipped up and out through the streets from the truly uninhabited areas of old Odawara. Debris shot out as metal beams were wrung and twisted into unnatural positions. Parents hoisted their children up on their arms, and wrists were grabbed and dragged away from the approaching battle. The refugees had all lived through WWIV, and the older had lost parents or friends to WWIII; running away from warzones was near-instinctual to them. Once more the speakers sounded over Ashigarashimo: “Today, a special state of emergency has been declared throughout the Kanto and Chubu districts around the Tokai Area. Please take refuge in your designated shelter.” There was just one problem. The refugees didn’t have a designated shelter that wasn’t neck-deep in polluted water. 01001110 01001001 01001110 01010101 01010010 01010100 01000001 “Awwww…” Kensuke complained, “There’s a big battle again and I have to go and get locked up in a shelter.” Laboriously, he dragged himself along with the rest of the school towards their shelter “It’s better than staying up here,” Toji retorted “Last time they practically nuked the city twice to get that thing,” he said, looking between rows of houses directly into the heart of Odawara, where recently abandoned construction machines repaired the massive damage to the buildings at Ground Zero. “Stupid pilot,” he muttered “I’m still of the opinion that the second giant explosion was caused by the giant monster, not the JSDA,” Kensuke said, pushing his glasses back up on the bridge on his nose. That’s it, I’m getting optics when I turn 16, he though. ...if I can afford it, was the unpleasant afterthought. “Besides,” he un-digressed, “if they use nuclear-grade weapons in the city, I might not survive.” Nuclear bunkers were, after all, not built to withstand direct nuclear impacts, something he had spent quite some time explaining to his classmates before Class Rep Horaki had shut him up, citing ‘morale considerations’, and, more unofficially, ‘you’re being annoying’. “I just want to get one clear look before I die!” Kensuke said, loud enough for emphasis, but not loud enough to pull attention from people not in the conversation, except maybe Horaki or Temarei, but they heard everything . “Stop being so melodramatic,” Toji ordered as they stopped, for some reason or the other, right before the entrance to the underground shelter. “You’re not going to die,” “Besides,” Toji continued as they waited for an explanation for why they were standing outside in a potential warzone while there were perfectly fine and not-too-uncomfortable and not to mention warm shelters just waiting to be occupied at the bottom of a flight of stairs “...if what you want is a better look, why don’t you just ask your girlfriend,” he said, emphasising the word mockingly, “for some high-res photos from her father?” “She’s not my girlfriend!” Kensuke protested. Ignoring the vehement objections, Toji continued teasingly: “Or is it because every time you’re around her, there’s something else you’d rather see?” he asked and made crude, cup-like motions with his hands. Kensuke just frowned and faked a pout. “What are we waiting around here for, anyway?” Toji asked after a while. It’s cold, damnit! “If you’d been listening,” a female voice said. It belonged to Nell Fubuki, a loner girl who had been sitting in the back row of their classroom for three years, “you’d have heard that refugees have occupied the school’s shelter,” she said dryly, “so now we have to walk across the city to find an available shelter,” she sighed and impolitely nudged Kensuke in the direction they’d come from. “Now get going before the Class Rep chews us all out,” 01001110 01001001 01001110 01010101 01010010 01010100 01000001 The ECCO Combat Information Centre was bustling with life, or its android equivalent. Bustling with activity was probably a more accurate and general descriptor, all in all. Once more, rows upon rows were filled with android military-grade Operators in brand new auxiliary JSDA uniforms; the human staff had likewise received their own sets of tan and olive-green uniforms, except for 2nd Lt. Maya Ibuki, who wore her C.B.C.M. uniform, and Cpt. Katsuragi, who wore skivvies, with the sole military addition her beret, cocked at a rather non-regulation jaunty angle. Truly, what male or curious female could deny her that right, with her shorts leaving much of her legs exposed and hugging tightly around her? Granted, the uniform statistics were skewed from the most likely distribution somewhat by the absence of Gendo Ikari, who couldn’t be there to insist on arriving wearing only an anonymous, black suit and further increase the standard deviation. “We have visual confirmation of the target. It has entered the refugee district.” The hideous visage of the giant vermin appeared on the main screen, alternating angles between a number of surveillance and recognizance drones released to gather intelligence, though Misato suspected the Rakbu, in fact, had none at all, much like non-neglible proportions of the JASDF high command. On the screen, the Tactical Staff and the token Scientific representatives could clearly see how the Rakbu used its long tentacles to strike missiles out of the air long before they could hit. The few that passes its point defences exploded harmlessly against its reddish-brown carapace. “Fortifying city in t-minus three, two, one…” All over Ashigarashimo, especially in Yugawara and Manazuru, giant mechanical and hydraulic locks slid out of their holes, detaching buildings from their foundations and leaving them to rest on giant hydraulic slave-pistons. Hydraulic fluid was pumped out of giant reservoirs, dropping the towering skyscrapers deep into the ground over select places; it was an experimental system exclusive to Ashigarashimo District, built after WWIII when the cities were potential candidates for the position of capital city; the variable profile was supposed to lessen the impact of nuclear strikes by lowering the total surface area of the buildings, but the cost in structural integrity had been deemed too high, and the system had been left as a relic of interwar paranoia. “The central block and districts 1 through 7 have been housed,” Captain Misato Katsuragi stood, arms folded, in her command position and awaited the launch order; she hadn’t expected the second Rakbu to be capable of flight; the First Rakbu had been humanoid, just like all encountered Anunnaki, but I don’t have to think about that now, not ever. Her mind should be on the task; how to command Unit-01 against the second Rakbu. Then again, what could stop her from getting her sweet, sweet revenge? “Am I just going to sit here?” Shinji complained from Unit-01. “We’re just awaiting a launch order from the JSDA, Shinji,” Misato replied “Please be patient.” Misato leaned over the edge of the command floor and shouted down at Maj. Kusanagi: “Hey, Major! Why are you here? Shouldn’t the JSDA have deployed already?” Maj. Kusanagi leant back and twisted her head, looking back up at Cpt. Katsuragi. “Firstly, my unit are security forces,” she replied, “not combat forces,” But you’re Special Forces! Misato thought, “…and secondly,” Maj. Kusanagi mumbled something; all Misato caught was ‘embarrassing’, “I’ve been relieved of its command pending an investigation into my behaviour as an officer,” “What?” was all Cpt. Katsuragi could reply; it was somewhat hard to believe. “It turns out the top brass weren’t too happy about my attempted ghosthack of a child,” the Major explained, her tone as artificially neutral as her body, “so until the unofficial investigation reaches a verdict on whether ghosthacking Shinji Ikari was ‘excessive use of force,’ or not, I’m an overqualified courier.” Well, that makes sense… “Where’s that damn launch order!?” Misato shouted. “We should have deployed a long time ago!” She looked up at Deputy Commander Fuyutsuki. He was on the phone, probably asking just the same question. He put his hand over the microphone and looked at the big screen, where the second Rakbu twisted impossibly fast in the air and launched itself at an AEN F/A51, slicing it in two with a tentacle. “The Ministry of Defence has turned the responsibility for Operation Tsubasa over to the JASDF,” Fuyutsuki reported. “What a waste of taxpayer money,” he added mostly to himself. 01001110 01001001 01001110 01010101 01010010 01010100 01000001 A fragmentation missile struck Ninurta’s soft thorax. The cutting, high-velocity shards of metal cut into its legs. Pain shot through the Rakbu’s body, and it shuddered. The charring heat of the gelatinous napalm left charred smudges on its carapace as it slid down the frictionless AT field. Hundreds of tiny metal fragments had embedded themselves in the hard shell on its back; harmless, but painful every time they struck, wedging and cutting closer and closer to the soft insides. Its tentacles ached. Perhaps… Perhaps it was not as strong as it thought it was. Perhaps it had been wrong to take to the skies; the AT field it needed to sustain its flight demanded qualia that it could have used to fight with, and the black-haired people were better warriors than expected. It twisted itself around and swept an elongated tentacle out at an ATF29, cutting off its wing. A missile struck it between the thick carapace of its back and the thinner frontal armour, wedging itself between the armour plates and exploding. Three of Ninurta’s many legs were blown straight off. Quite a lot of blood (better described as ichor) and disgusting juices were scattered over a nearby building. The words Ninurta used to describe this had never been recorded on cuneiform tablets. In pain, it lashed out at a boresighting fighter jet. The white-hot tentacle stretched around, behind its back, and by intuition, it stabbed upwards. The thick appendage stabbed the pilots head, vaporizing it in an instant. With the pilot and most of his neural interface gone, the F/A51 dived without changing course. 20 tons of dead-weight aircraft crashed into the Rakbu, quite painfully; the first hit that really mattered. Having the F/A51 light on fire and explode, halfway inside Ninurta mattered just as much. Like a burning wreck, it fell towards the ground, where it could be safe and recuperate. 01001110 01001001 01001110 01010101 01010010 01010100 01000001 “Captain Katsuragi,” Fuyutsuki called “you have full command over this situation. The Ministry of Defence demands that we dispatch Unit-01 immediately.” “They’re more obnoxious than the aliens!” Misato commented. “I’d have mobilized even if they hadn’t asked!” The Captain thrust her still biological hand onto a fingerprint scanner, removing the last lock on the Unit-01 launch procedure. It had already been locked to the mass driver frame, which was as far as Misato had been willing to push against the constraints of the “no-launch” order. The plastic cover slid off and Cpt. Katsuragi flipped the molly guard that remained as the last barrier between her index finger and sweet, sweet revenge. “Launch in t-minus zero seconds! Launch!” At that, Shinji was forced down into his seat by four-and-a-half times his own weight once more. He could feel the blood rush from his head and down to into his legs, only to be stopped by the tight g-suit that clasped around his legs and abdomen. Again, he wanted to vomit, and again, he couldn’t. Blood rushed back into his head. Why do I even bother doing this? He asked himself. My father isn’t even here! he reminded himself. ...and why do I even care if he’s here or not? It doesn’t matter, he concluded. Right? The Eva-frame slammed hard against the top of the lift. Shinji likewise slammed up against his five-point seat-belt. Couldn’t they have made launch a less painful procedure? The door slid open, and re-rendered sunlight flooded the Entry Plug unsurprisingly like an artificial sunrise. He lifted his rifle to his shoulder, manually locking the trackpoint to the crosshairs, and took a step out, sweeping the Eva-rifle from side to side. Two weeks of training had taught him something, at least. The Rakbu was straight ahead of him, half dragging, half hovering towards him, standing on its pygidium like a praying mantis, tentacles raised for combat. Shinji took aim and fired. A three-round burst slammed the rifle into his, or rather the Eva’s, shoulder, and three shells slammed against Ninurta’s AT field, scattering a monochrome field of noise into the air. Another three rounds bursts forth, into the cloud of snow and artillery smoke. And another burst. And another. “Idiot, you’ve covering the enemy in smoke!” Misato yelled. Shinji depressed the trigger. He hyperventilated, I got it, right? “Control your fire! Don’t squander shells!” The Rakbu was covered in a pillar of dust-grey smoke, like a burning pile of something nasty. While Shinji couldn’t see anything, ECCO CIC had linked UAV surveillance drones to smaller CIC screens. To their horror, the Rakbu still stood unharmed. “Shinji, move out of–“ A glowing tentacle burst from the pillar of smoke and sliced at Shinji, and missed. As he took a step backwards, his gun fell apart in his hands, cut to pieces by something ultra-thin. A nearby building’s top half slid of the bottom half onto the street, crumbling to dust and debris as it hit the ground. Seconds later, two tentacles cut through the remaining steel frame like it was a pen against a pair of particularly sharp swords. The rest of the Rakbu shot out of its dust-cloud, ramming Shinji in his chest. The 500 ton giant fell backwards, denting the road as it hit. “Shinji, get back up!” Misato yelled, over the cyberlink. “Shinji, please, get back up!” Ninurta towered over the fallen Eva, blocking out the sun with its hideous head. Shinji watched as it floated on top of him, dwarfing even Unit-01 with its sheer length. Oh no… A tentacle burst forth. It wrapped itself around his neck and shoved Unit-01 headfirst into a nearby building, then slammed him to the ground. Shinji yelped at the pain that shot up his entire body. Oh please no… “Shinji, get up, please!” he heard, vaguely. 01001110 01001001 01001110 01010101 01010010 01010100 01000001 “It’s not going very well for the new guy,” Kensuke declared, as he watched the battle through the zoom of his mobile phone/PDA/camera. “He’s losing already!” “Then let’s get underground,” Toji suggested, dragging Kensuke by his collar. The Esagila Academy-students had zig-zagged between shelters, trying to find available room; the shelters had been built soon after WWIII, not expecting the following population boom, nor the industrialization of Ashigarashimo, and especially not the millions of refugees who had (non-violently) stormed and occupied all available space. There was always space for a handful of students, but the Esagila Academy numbered in the low hundreds, leaving the older students to walk back and forth between supposedly vacant shelters. Right now, they had walked up the hills towards Hakone, which was further from the refugee centres and less likely to overpopulated. It also gave Kensuke a nice view of the battle, but since they had been led up the hill by Hikary Hokari and Tomoe Temarei, this was probably unintentional. And required that you use a value of “probably” which included “not a chance in hell” to get that concession. Through his camcorder, Kensuke watched the Rakbu lash out against Unit-01 and grab it once more by the neck. Its long appendages lifted the 500 ton Type 36 “Evangelion” ignoring such petty conventions as “centre of mass” and “classical mechanics” and tossed it in a high arc against the nearest mountain. Which happened to be quite close to where Toji, Kensuke and the rest of their class stood. Oh crap… 01001110 01001001 01001110 01010101 01010010 01010100 01000001 Shinji Ikari arced through the air, quite comfortably actually, when compared to the impact against the asphalted hillside, fortunately not cushioned on soft, crackling classmates. They had pulled away, or been pulled away, once they saw where he was headed. Still, landing really hurt, damnit! “Shinji Ikari,” he heard the less-familiar voice of Maj. Kusanagi shout, “watch yourself. There are unevacuated civilians in the area.” “Shinji,” the voice of Dr Akagi continued, from where the Major had left off, “your umbilical cord has been detached; you only have five minutes of operational power left.” In his peripheral vision, he could see a timer count down in digital numbers, counting hundreds of seconds at a rate, in a shocking show of innovation, of one second per second. “Shinji, pull back to the nearest power bus,” Misato shouted “we’ve requested a joint JSDA/JASDF attack to cover your retreat!” Shinji leant forwards, trying to gather his senses. Or maybe it was Unit-01 doing that; he wasn’t really sure anymore. He stood up, watching his terrified and/or cheering classmates through the artificially transparent Entry Plug. Something about retreating… 01001110 01001001 01001110 01010101 01010010 01010100 01000001 Kensuke Aide watched the really awesome Evangelion-unit from a perfect frog angle. He was close; really close. In fact, even he didn’t really consider standing so close he could feel hydraulic oil drip down a safe position. When Toji grabbed his shirt, he happily ran along with him. “Did you see that!?” he asked, as if a giant 40m robot was a sight that could be ignored “It just stood back up again!” Pant “It was airborne!” Wheeze “And it stood back up again!” Toji dragged him harder “Just shut up, just shut up,” he mumbled and yelled at the same time, if such a thing is possible. His sister – he couldn’t forget what had happened to his sister. Just run! he thought as Ninurta rose over the horizon, in all his godlike glory, burning red against the greying blue sky. 01001110 01001001 01001110 01010101 01010010 01010100 01000001 “Retreat, Shinji!” Misato shouted as Shinji’s blood, flowing from his nose, danced around the cockpit, like a thin but visible smoke, slowly tinting the crystal-clear LCL with a deathly red shade. In his groggy state of mind, it almost seemed more natural that way. “Shinji Ikari,” he heard someone transmit, “we’ve sent an armoured patrol to secure your classmates. You need to pull the field of battle away from them.” Ooooh, was all Shinji could think through the pain “…pull back Shinji,” What should he do? I mustn’t run away, I mustn’t run away! The Rakbu stood there, like it was awaiting a mere demigod’s first move. He couldn’t let civilians come to harm again… “Shinji, pull yourself together!” I mustn’t run away, I can’t, I just can’t run away… He had to protect- “SHINJI! Retreat! That’s an O-R-D-E-R!” Mustn’t… Su gish-sha ni di-dam… he thought, wait, that can’t be… He looked down on his retreating classmates, then back at the glowing red core of the Rakbu. Damiq dayyanutum-a maru. 01011001 01010101 01001001 Ninurta swung its twin tentacles towards Unit-01. As it was about it wrap one of them around the Eva’s throat, a white gauntlet shot up and clasped around the glowing limb, forcing it away and bending it painfully. The other flexible line-segment of incandescent light impaled Unit-01 through the armoured torso, bursting out through the rear neck armour and looping back into Unit-01’s head. All Shinji felt was pain. Nearby, on the ground, Toji hauled a cowering Kensuke as far away as he could. A giant, glowing tentacle cut down towards him and he jumped back, dragging Kensuke with him. The white-hot mass-of-Rakbu sliced down into the concrete, flopping up and down, making mince-meat of the asphalt and soil beneath. “Shinji, you’re disobeying a direct order!” Misato tried, then: “Please Shinji, pull back; you’ve only got a few minutes remaining!” All she received back was an ear-pitching scream. Unit-01 deployed its knife, a large carbon-steel blade the weight of a small car and the length of a telephone pole. Frantically, Unit-01 swept at Ninurta’s apparent face, while a tentacle burrowed through its skull. Then, it thrust towards the Rakbu’s red, crystalline core, slicing through the thick, or perhaps it was thin, relatively, flesh and carapace like it was made from paper. Unit-01 stabbed up harder and harder into the vital organ, trying to burst through it and the spine behind, assuming Ninurta even had a spine. Then, Unit-01 ran out of power, and Shinji’s body felt limp as power died in Unit-01’s augmented muscles and the synchronization faded. The internal screens went black, showing only token diagnostics. [EMERGENCY LIFE SUPPORT ACTIVATED] as the strongest source of light, and all he could hear was the sizzling sound of his own, Unit-01’s, flesh being burnt to a black char. Then, it all stopped. 01001110 01001001 01001110 01010101 01010010 01010100 01000001 Toji watched as the giant alien monster stopped the incandescent glowing. Its tentacles slid out of Unit-01 hand, head and torso. A thick, un-blood-like red fluid poured from the monster’s chest, spraying the giant robot’s hand in the unknown fluid. Drops of the stuff were dripping from the giant knife. “Kensuke,” he said, quietly, “it’s dead; the giant monster is dead!” Kensuke was hyperventilating and cowering in a near-foetal position. Toji was doing pretty much the same thing, but had looked up when the sounds died out. They had been in the middle of a giant robot battle, against alien invaders from space, like some bad sci-fi movie, and they were alive, like the male comic relief pair. Except there was nothing funny about this, Toji thought. It was quite possibly the worst thing he had ever experienced. Unit-01 slumped together, sliding down the hill under its own weight. It stopped when it hit a building, and what remained of the rear hatch popped. It creaked and screamed as hydraulic pistons fought metal wrung into unnatural positions. With a deathly scream, it half-slid, half-fell open, revealing a badly damaged cylinder. The transferee, Ikari-or-something climbed out, seemingly lost. Then he vomited. LCL, breakfast, lunch and a can of green tea burst forth from Shinji’s oesophagus, leaving a foul taste in his mouth. He was shaking, and breathing unnaturally, and hurting, and afraid, and terrified, and lonely and a thousand other feelings and emotions he couldn’t even name, all at once. He settled for wandering and staring aimlessly at nothing at all, before crawling up into a foetal position. Foetal positions were safe. He wanted to feel safe. Also, he wanted to talk to his father. Right now, all he wanted was a phone. The JSDA arrived minutes later with an ambulance. 01001110 01001001 01001110 01010101 01010010 01010100 01000001 __________________ Ghost in the Evangelion, where Section 9 has been called in to provide security for the Eva-pilots, and Major Motoko Kusanagi and Captain Misato Katsuragi interact. Also, there are Tachikomas. It now has a TVTropes entry! (Thanks, ES!) Last edited by LatwPIAT; Mar 6th 2010 at 5:19am.

Feb 26th 2010, 7:34am	#29
Jonen C F.M.D.G. Join Date: 21 May 2007 Location: Lincopense, Ostrogothia - "Where IDEAS become REALITY" Posts: 9,142	This is acceptable. And at least none of the security people wore baggy coats to make them look bigger than they really are. __________________ Flying Monkey Death God! - Cpl_Facehugger Plays: Spellcross! Militant Procrastinators of the World! Assemble! Eventually! - Varje meddelande om att motståndet skall uppges är falskt. What is it you see / That makes you so intent / On that Horizon? Yeah, I don't take myself at all seriously, and neither should anyone else.

Feb 27th 2010, 5:54am	#34
Jonen C F.M.D.G. Join Date: 21 May 2007 Location: Lincopense, Ostrogothia - "Where IDEAS become REALITY" Posts: 9,142	I note that each binary string that serves as scene break is different. Anyone want to help me figure out the significance of this? __________________ Flying Monkey Death God! - Cpl_Facehugger Plays: Spellcross! Militant Procrastinators of the World! Assemble! Eventually! - Varje meddelande om att motståndet skall uppges är falskt. What is it you see / That makes you so intent / On that Horizon? Yeah, I don't take myself at all seriously, and neither should anyone else.

Feb 27th 2010, 6:13am	#35
Jonen C F.M.D.G. Join Date: 21 May 2007 Location: Lincopense, Ostrogothia - "Where IDEAS become REALITY" Posts: 9,142	Okay. According to a binary translator, the scene breaks read as this: ISIMUD (all through chapter 1 and 2) (wiki !!!) NINURTA (Chapter 3 subline) (wiki) BEWARE (First scene break) (WMG: Referring, perhaps, to [REDACTED]? Something in the school is not as it seems) ESAGILA (second) (wiki) (The name of the school, too) SORYU (third) (Note particularly that this string comes just before the Email) NIDABA (fourth) (wiki) Rei (fifth) (This string comes after* the scene from Rei's POV) NINURTA (several times) YUI (third to last) NINURTA (last two) There is definitely something significant there. * = I am convinced that [REDACTED] is in fact the [REDACTED]. However, because First Impressions Have to be False, it is probable that she is not [REDACTED], but something else entirely. [REDACTED]. Either way, my significant sense is tingling. __________________ Flying Monkey Death God! - Cpl_Facehugger Plays: Spellcross! Militant Procrastinators of the World! Assemble! Eventually! - Varje meddelande om att motståndet skall uppges är falskt. What is it you see / That makes you so intent / On that Horizon? Yeah, I don't take myself at all seriously, and neither should anyone else. Last edited by Jonen C; Feb 27th 2010 at 6:38am. Reason: "God was a dream of good government."

Feb 28th 2010, 4:27am	#37
Jonen C F.M.D.G. Join Date: 21 May 2007 Location: Lincopense, Ostrogothia - "Where IDEAS become REALITY" Posts: 9,142	Autocensors are preventing me from saying it in the clear, but it should pretty easy to figure out who I am referring to seeing as [REDACTED] is the first new character introduced in that segment, and as for who I think she might be, well, there's only one within [REDACTED] that has been confirmed as using [REDACTED] when the situation calls for it. Besides that, it would be much easier for [REDACTED] to provide security for the [REDACTED] if they had a [REDACTED] on the inside, so it even makes a startling amount of sense. Whether or not she got permission to do it is another question entirely. But as I said, First Impressions Have to be False. I'm sure that [REDACTED] has (or will soon be) [REDACTED] (in) the [REDACTED], but I'm equally sure that she is not [REDACTED] and that [REDACTED] is just the blue herring to lead us away from the real [REDACTED], leaving [REDACTED] to be either a) perfectly normal (which is highly improbable) or b) something else entirely (which is highly disturbing). Unless of course you - the author - has decided that this was likely to be the likely chain of thought of the audience and thus decided to give us another layer of obfuscation, in which case [REDACTED] is probably [EXPLETIVE] regardless. __________________ Flying Monkey Death God! - Cpl_Facehugger Plays: Spellcross! Militant Procrastinators of the World! Assemble! Eventually! - Varje meddelande om att motståndet skall uppges är falskt. What is it you see / That makes you so intent / On that Horizon? Yeah, I don't take myself at all seriously, and neither should anyone else.

Feb 28th 2010, 5:02am	#38
Barricade and his Chibi Neue Ziel! Otaku Join Date: 14 Feb 2005 Location: ↓, ↘, → + Punch Posts: 12,481	We've got the Major, Misato, Tachikomas (and relatives), Shinji getting the cyberbrain equivalent of a Brightslap from the Major (effectively), and Asuka is sending him e-mails. grabs Kamina's shades, while dressing up like the Blues Brothers "Hit It." __________________ Macross Daedalus Attack: Because nothing says "Fuck You" like punching them in the face with an aircraft carrier. Devout Worshipper at the Temple of Kawamori-San, He who is God of all Transforming Mecha "They will know pain, they will know suffering, and then, and only then, they will die." "Muda Da! MudaMudaMudaMuda! Za Warudo! Toki Wo Tomare. Soshite, toki ga ugoki desu. Muda Da! WRYYYYY!!!! -- Dio Brando / Sakuya Izayoi Known aliases: Anon-Non-Non, Mechy-San, Yukikaze-Kun Vae Victus

Mar 30th 2010, 6:24pm	#42
Jonen C F.M.D.G. Join Date: 21 May 2007 Location: Lincopense, Ostrogothia - "Where IDEAS become REALITY" Posts: 9,142	Translating the binary strings as they come: String 1 Rei 1.0 July 2030 - The Past. Cryptonomicon. Rei is reading the cryptonomicon? 2: Rei 1.0 Temarei is around. So maybe she's not [REDACTED]... Or maybe [REDACTED] began their [infiltration] earlier than I had previously believed. 3: Rei 1.0 "Why is captain Katsuragi driving?" is always a reasonable question. 4: MIKA For some reason I'm reading the narration with the voice of Academician Prokhor Zakharov... Specifically the bit about the interactions of two cyberbrains. It works. Very ominous error. Push the button, Ritsuko. 5: MIKA Late August 2030 - What we laughingly call the Present. They put him through something like a Voight-Kampff test? "Suzahara with Aide" - I can not tell if this was intentional or not. 6: Think Blue Mana Kirishima. Also, a good observation by Ken - a lot of people at or around the school are share names with warships, or have otherwise naval themes. 7: Count One Tow The snark is strong in this one variant of Shinji. Be careful, you're threading close to the Kyon line. "Making you feel bad enough about it to you do the laundry was just an added bene" missing a word in there, I think. 8: SORYU Heh. You can procrastinate on responding. Won't come back to bite you in the ass at all. 9: Rei 1.0 "Imagining that Dr/Ms Akagi had a life outside that of being a doctor of metacryptology, and that she could actually not wear a labcoat was something Shinji still had problems comprehending." - Wait. Not wear a labcoat? Forget Shinji - I am having trouble comprehending it. And we cross the Kyon-line as Shinji proves himself an unreliable narrator. I think. And confirmed with gusto. Well done. 10: Rei 1.0 Female bonding. 11: Rei 1.0 ... If Temarei telling Shinji Ayanami needs more friends is not a reference to Haruhi, I will destroy one of my hats. "Proverbs are no help!" made me laugh. Shinji does not have a glasses fetish. Tachikoma intervention! They DO make everything better! 12: Pervert Tachikoma chaperone! 13: Rei 1.0 The Diamond Age. Rei is a fan of Neal Stephenson then, I take it. Also ominous hum... 14: Rei 1.0 She slapped him with her prostethic arm, didn't she. Ouch. 15: Rei 1.0 Heh. Not a bug! "[GRUND-RAUM WAFFENSTEURSYSTEME]" ... My German is Kaput, but Ground-Space Weapons Control System? Also, switching narrator on us without warning? 16: ISHKUR The Oncoming Storm... Well, the Thunderer. George Dewey, Lyndon B. Johnson, George W. Bush... The Imperial Americans name their carriers for Imperialists. "DEAT" or "FORCE: ETAT"? You know, I think I prefer the former. Annunaki... Uh oh. 17: ISHKUR [EVANGELION BATTLE THEME] 18: ISHKUR END OF LINE __________________ Flying Monkey Death God! - Cpl_Facehugger Plays: Spellcross! Militant Procrastinators of the World! Assemble! Eventually! - Varje meddelande om att motståndet skall uppges är falskt. What is it you see / That makes you so intent / On that Horizon? Yeah, I don't take myself at all seriously, and neither should anyone else.

Mar 30th 2010, 7:23pm	#44
shanejayell Yuri Fan Join Date: 9 Mar 2010 Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada Posts: 711	thumbs up I likey. __________________ Yuri Fan! http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5874788/...ri_and_the_REE http://www.fictionpress.com/~shanejayell http://www.fanfiction.net/~shanejayell http://shanejayell.livejournal.com/ My Eva/Sailor Moon Fusion: http://forums.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=167549

Mar 31st 2010, 8:15am	#46
LatwPIAT Registered Join Date: 9 Nov 2009 Posts: 132	Jonen C: [TEXT EXPUNGED] but it will be revealed in [THIS LINE HAS BEEN SHUT DOWN BY ORDER OF UNATCO] ...and I think we all know who is to blame for Shinji being Kyon-ish. It just works to damn well, especially the way I like writing, which is some freak hybrid of the aforementioned {THREAT} and Neal Stephenson (at least, that's what I aim for) (And yes, you're right on the two books, though how you guessed the latter I'll never know...) I guess it says something about me that my ideas of female bonding involve computer programming. (It's supposed to read FEAT, that abreviation. Slightly better than DEATh.) And you may keep your hat. Though I think you should hang on to it in case you need to eat it some other time. The Sun Emperor: I guess you'll be pleased to know that I haven't stopped jotting down notes, so I'm constantly working on it, just not very devotedly at the time? __________________ Ghost in the Evangelion, where Section 9 has been called in to provide security for the Eva-pilots, and Major Motoko Kusanagi and Captain Misato Katsuragi interact. Also, there are Tachikomas. It now has a TVTropes entry! (Thanks, ES!)

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