Adeptus Evangelion: The Sun Never Sets (IC)

[Jade_Tarem]

Undisclosed Location

Commander Cross sat down at the oversized desk in the middle of the otherwise barren room, briefcase open in front of her. Moments later, the room went pitch black and a light shone down from above on her, as the enormous monolithic black stones, each labeled with the number of a member of SEELE, coalesced from thin air to surround her.

Mustering all of her willpower, she managed not to snort at the cheap theatrics, which seemed to get a bit more melodramatic every time. They did serve a purpose - disguising the identities and voices of the members of SEELE, but she had seen far, far worse than the interrogation setup she now sat in, and if the "Old Men" felt that this was going to be intimidating or even unusual for the NERV Commander, then they were going to be disappointed.

A gravelly baritone emerged from the general direction of SEELE 01. "Commander Cross, it is time for your report. The time is nearly at hand and NERV must be ready. What is the status of your organization? Your pilot and machine?"

Glasses glinting with the odd light angle, grin hidden behind her hands, Cross looked up at SEELE 01 - or more specifically, at the camera she knew fed to his monitor. "Status? Well..."

Combat: Phase 2, Round 3, Base of Operations

Unit 04's visual feeds click back on. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=FOUYltDtsG0) The angel's last takedown maneuver had hurled the Evangelion straight back into the sports stadium that had been built, in hindsight, perhaps a bit too close to NERV HQ. Fortunately for NERV, an Evangelion wins virtually any collision with a civilian structure, and while the stadium had been flattened along one side, no permanent damage was visible on the Unit.

The angel, however, is similarly lacking damage. The MAGI had indicated early on that Ahkraziel had integrated a significant portion of its AT Field directly into its skin, and had indicated that "momentum of ranged attacks might be compromised." Captain Palmer and NERV's conventional forces had quickly discovered that "compromised" meant that the angel could simply stop any shell, missile, bullet, or beam attack in midair and throw it at whatever it wished, and two tank squadrons and the pallet turret had paid the price. The missile banks had been saved by their own extreme range, which had apparently caused the angel's counterattacks to miss.

Getting up shows Ahkraziel in Unit 04's scopes once more. The angel had the basic appearance of a wide-bodied hooded serpent with an enormous unhinged jaw, full of long, metallic fangs that curved inward and appeared to even be bladed. But worse was the rippling layer on its skin, what appeared to be feathers made of mirrors running down the length of its body, covering it - actually the visual effect of the integrated AT Field as human eyes and technology struggled to make sense of it.

The angel's sapphire eyes glitter as they follow Unit 04's movements. So far, the Angel had displayed no traits beyond an absurd strength - it had bitten one of the harbor's reinforced docks in half in a way that suggested that the armored plating hadn't even slowed it down.

Ahkraziel's form curls up, its hooded head and enormous jaw looking down at Unit 04 - the Angel, despite its serpentine nature, towers over the Evangelion.

Roll for initiative. Ahkaziel is coiled 20dm west of your position, with its AT Field at maximum. Your AT Field is similarly fully spread, and you are positioned at what used to be the east end of the M&T bank stadium. Your umbilical is attached to the nearest launch port.

Combat: Phase 2, Round 3, Command Deck

NERV HQ's operations bridge could be described as what a movie theater auditorium wants to be when it grows up. While true hologram technology is still "a few years away," the command deck can fake it with remarkable grace.

Officer Hawkins speaks up, remarkably calm given that the angel appears to be immune to everything that comes out of a barrel, and able to bite armored targets in half so hard that its teeth click when the meet in the middle. "MAGI analysis complete. Readings indicate that the Angel's ability to reflect attacks might fail if the AT Field is completely neutralized."

It only takes a moment for the remaining two to chime in.

"Firefly launch completed successfully, ETA one minute. VTOL Wings pulling back as ordered. Tank squadron 4 is boxed in by debris and looking for an alternate exit route."

"Umbilical cable remains intact, sir, Unit 04 is still receiving power."

Above, Sub-commander Cao Yin watches, but says nothing. Neither he nor the Commander typically elected to micro-manage Captain Palmer, and Yin was even less likely to butt in if, like today, the NERV Commander was absent.

The same could not be said for the other two guests on the bridge.

"I'm just saying, if it's a simulation run then we could take the opportunity to test the equipment still in development. The HE Bolt weapons, for instance, or positron guns. We could at least give the pilot a progressive weapon to help her out." Dr. McShane looked on, having the somewhat boring job of monitoring MAGI System performance. She was in a rare bad mood - well, not absurdly cheerful, anyway - having objected to using up so many system resources, on what was, effectively, more pilot training and testing.

Across the bridge, at the other auxiliary monitoring station, Dr. Mittal watched the data collection efforts of the MAGI as Rata's synchronization ratio, biometric data, and physiological status data were pulled in. "The girl is already fighting in a gloriously wonderful magical world where our weapons never break or jam and our communications never fail. Besides, the purpose of this run is to simulate conditions as they exist now, not one of your fantasies."

"Why? The MAGI could do that far more efficiently on their own and be used for something else."

"Because this simulation is political." Yin finally broke in, his characteristic humor gone. "We have to prove here and now that we can and will defend London-2 and the GeoFront from angel encroachment, so cut the chatter and allow Captain Palmer and Pilot Rata to do their jobs."

Roll for initiative.

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

Inside the plug, wrapped in her plugsuit, breathing in the tang of the red LCL, Rata's focus was straining. Her heart was pounding, and her breathing low and shallow as her body reacted to the danger. It didn't matter to her that this was a simulation, that the stadium Unit 04 had just crushed was in reality intact. The divide between what is real and what is fake didn't matter. She was, as far as she cared, in her Eva. It's grey body and neon green highlights, it's technological marvels, and its sword, held in a death grip, were perilously close to an Angel. That was the truth of the moment for her. Her physical body forgotten, she twisted and writhed in sympathetic motion as her mind willed the Eva into action.

Amber eyes intensely focussed on the Angel, it's core held brashly in its mouth. Twenty decameters. Rata's small mouth framed the words as her Eva lifted itself up at her command, its right arm drawing the massive sword back until it was pointing directly behind her. They were perilously close to the Angel, but not close enough! Rata wanted to charge, to close the distance, and to shove their sword into the Angel's mouth. She wanted to pin it to the ground while she worked it over with the knife in their wing dock! Rip and tear her anger into the Angel! Instead, unclenching her jaw as she realized she'd been biting into her lip, she lifted their left arm and focussed the Eva's AT field. "Neutralizing AT Field!" She reported on instinct as Unit 04 smashed its own AT Field into that of the Angels with full force.


OOC
Using the Neutralize power. Utilizing all of my ATP to try and punch straight through. Then I use Delay in case I need a Half Action before my next turn.

[Jade_Tarem]

Undisclosed Location

"A simulation with full synchronization? Is this not a danger to the pilot?" SEELE 03's oily voice leaked into the room. "Do you truly believe this to be the wisest course of action?"

"Seeing as I am not in the habit of doing things that I consider unwise, yes." Cross leaned back and folded her arms across her chest, and her voice clearly expressed the unspoken "idiot." Shuffling the papers from her briefcase, a largely unnecessary action, she took a moment to collect her thoughts. "It all comes down to the nature of our interaction. You hide in the shadows and demand the impossible, and I sit in the spotlight and provide it."

SEELE 04's voice, complete with a horrible synthetic obfuscation that sounded like someone had run a Russian accent through the world's worst auto-tune program, rang out. "We are not sure we like your tone. You were chosen for your ability to do just that. If you are not up to the task-"

"Enough, five. She is qualified to make this decision, the wisdom of it will be decided by historians." There was a heavy silence, before the voice returned. "That said, we would like to know what you hope to accomplish."

"Reliability, of course, which can only come from experience." Cross looked back up at the multifaceted lenses hidden beyond the hologram. "Any given angel is stronger than all the conventional armies of the world put together. Nuclear stockpiles, N2 mines, biological agents, chemical weapons... based on the MAGI projections, none of these things can disable an angel. The only thing that can stop one..."

Combat: Phase 2, Round 3, Base of Operations

Whether it was shift in Unit 04's stance or some deeper, more enigmatic instinct, Ahkraziel chose its moment to attack, uncoiling forward with far more speed than anything its size should have, the shimmering, featherlike scales flashing brightly in the simulated sunlight in a way that would make pre-Impact video game consoles green with envy. The gleaming fangs were halted a fraction of a second early, by intersection with Unit 04's sword. The blade resonated with the hit, and the metals, fabricated with the finest alloys NERV could produce...

...held. Unit 04 managed to keep its footing at the expense of yet more of the stadium's playing field, which buckled to the point of becoming unrecognizable. Temporarily thwarted, Ahkraziel roared - a distinctly alien sound - directly in Unit 04's face, showing the dim glow of the core hidden deep within its body as its jaw gaped open, hanging as it usually did.

Undeterred, Unit 04 reached out and grabbed hold of the tangible, flickering barrier that materialized in front of the angel, and pulled it free with a tremendous ripping noise - then reached over and pulled off another layer, then another, keeping the horrid fangs away from it with the sword it held. When the fourth layer was pulled away, the scales lost their impossible shimmer, turning a dull blue. Flickering traces of the shine dance back and forth along the angel's body as it tries to bring its defenses back up...

Combat: Phase 2, Round 3, Command Deck

Hawkins practically bounces out of her chair. "Angel's AT Field is disrupted!" At practically the same time, Moon shouts, "Pilot Rata has burned off all AT power, repeat, Unit 04 has no active ATS."

Leo says nothing, instead leaning forward in anticipation of the instructions soon to come from NERV's Operations Director...

[TheDarkDM]

Captain Palmer

As Rata engaged the Angel, Captain Palmer stood silently on the command deck, his eyes darting between a dozen different readouts. Though this was only a simulation, he'd been uncharacteristically dour all morning, a clear sign that he was taking this a good deal more seriously than the lead scientists. Ignoring their banter, the grip on his cane tightened as Unit-04 was thrown into the stadium.

"All batteries, prepare to fire."

He knew this was a perfect opportunity - the Angel was in the open, and had foolishly closed with Rata's Evangelion. All he needed now was for her to break it's AT...

"Neutralizing AT Field!"

His fingers were against the headset's mic in a flash, making sure his words were understood.

"All batteries, open fire, open fire!"

Attacks

Missile Batteries (3)
BS 85 (75 + 20 full auto - 20 fire into melee + 10 target size)

Attack: [roll0]
Damage 1: [roll1]; pen 1
Damage 2: [roll2]; pen 1
Damage 3: [roll3]; pen 1
Damage 4: [roll4]; pen 1

Attack: [roll5]
Damage 1: [roll6]; pen 1
Damage 2: [roll7]; pen 1
Damage 3: [roll8]; pen 1
Damage 4: [roll9]; pen 1

Attack: [roll10]
Damage 1: [roll11]; pen 1
Damage 2: [roll12]; pen 1
Damage 3: [roll13]; pen 1
Damage 4: [roll14]; pen 1

Tank Squadrons (2)
BS 60 (60 - 20 fire into melee + 10 target size + 10 aim)

Attack: [roll15]
Damage: [roll16]; pen 0

Attack: [roll17]
Damage: [roll18]; pen 0

VTOL Wings (2)
BS 70 (60 + 20 full auto - 20 fire into melee + 10 target size)

Attack: [roll19]
Damage 1: [roll20]; pen 0
Damage 2: [roll21]; pen 0
Damage 3: [roll22]; pen 0
Damage 4: [roll23]; pen 0

Attack: [roll24]
Damage 1: [roll25]; pen 0
Damage 2: [roll26]; pen 0
Damage 3: [roll27]; pen 0
Damage 4: [roll28]; pen 0

[Jade_Tarem]

Combat: Phase 2, Round 3-4

Even as the missiles launch, the tanks open fire. Rebounding from Unit 04's sword, Ahkraziel twists to avoid the first cluster of missiles, and the second impact it directly for very little damage as the scale-plates turn to try to absorb the blast. More missile stream in, doing slightly more damage, and a pair of absurdly huge "feathers" fall away to crash to the street below as blood dribbles down in gobs. Despite all of this, it appears as though minimal damage is being done.

Until the tanks shells arrived.

The first hit the scale-feathers at an odd angle and skip off, but the second appears to take the angel right in the eye, snapping its head back just in time for the VTOL Missiles to arrive nearly simultaneously. When the smoke clears, the angel is stretched out on its back, its body mostly gone. For one moment, everything is still.

Then, from within the command deck, Hawkins shouts "AT Spike detected within the angel's core, it-"

The remaining mirror-feathers ripple and the body suddenly grows back in. In fact, the regeneration keeps going, covering the entire body, thickening and elongating it. A moment later, the Angel rears back up, streaming blood from beneath the shining featherlike plates, but even larger than before. It gives Unit 04 a baleful stare before a silver, forked tongue flicks back and forth, and it lashes out.

Command Deck

Moon leans forward. "Pilot Rata is unconscious! Synch and lines of communication still active."

Hawkins begins rattling off data. "Angel has grown to roughly half again its original size. AT Field strength is back up to what it was before."

Dr. McShane leans far forward in her chair, staring intently at the MAGI data. "That's new. This isn't being registered as a MAGI fault. It seems they think this kind of regenerative ability is within Angel norms."

"But why did the girl pass out?" Dr. Mittal leans back, scowling. "Don't tell me she fainted, because that is the last thing we need. Is the Eva alright?"

"No damage detected to Unit 04. The angel... missed?"

Base of Operations

Ahkraziel blinks and shakes its head as though to clear it - though the city block behind Unit 04 has now been devastated by the force of attack - the initial row of buildings knocked back into the others - the Eva is undamaged.

[TheDarkDM]

Captain Palmer

Captain Palmer managed the hint of a wolfish grin before warning klaxons began blaring over the command deck. His smile twisting into a snarl, he stepped towards the central console.

"Shut those damn things off! Status report on Unit-04!?"

The Captain didn't turn his attention towards Moon as she informed him of Rata's condition, didn't turn towards Hawkins or McShane as they argued the science. This may have been a simulation, but he'd be damned if he lost a pilot to a computer program.

"All batteries, hold fire!"

Finally turning his attention away from the central display, Palmer's eyes swung towards Lieutenant Moon.

"Lieutenant, patch me in to Unit-04."

Leaning against the console, Palmer began speaking into his headset, the steady, measured tenor of his voice almost hypnotic.

"Pilot King, this is Captain Palmer. I know this is going beyond anything we've asked of you so far, but you need to get up. It's may be unfair, it may be cruel, but the fate of the world rests on what you choose to do in this moment. So, get ahold of yourself, and blast this alien bastard back to his second-rate heaven."

Rolls

Command Roll (Fel 49):
[roll0]

[Jade_Tarem]

Combat: Phase 2, Turn 4-5, Base of Operations

The angel doubles back as Rata struggles back to consciousness, and her awakening is greeted with the mirrored behemoth flashing by to her right as she stumbles out of the way. For a moment, it almost seems as though the angel missed, before the pain lanced through her and Unit 04's arm hits the ground dozens of meters away. The sword it held lands point-down in the ground beside the Eva as blood geysers out, slicking the remains of the stadium and the sword hilt.

Command Deck

"Oh hey, she's up again. That - Unit 04 has lost an arm! It came right off! The armor didn't even slow the angel down!"

"Angel is showing higher levels of self-preservation following the barrage. There's a shift in the creature's anatomy... it seems it can... burrow?"

Base of Operations

Ahkraziel doesn't wait to see the outcome of its attack. The feathers around it shift and then rapidly knife forward, spinning, as it tunnels straight through the street, throwing a cloud of debris and dust into the air.

Through a red haze of pain, the monitors inside Unit 04's entry plug clearly show that the angel is making no effort to fill in the hole after itself. It pushes 20dm straight down, burrowing toward the west edge of the GeoFront.

Command Deck

Hawkins leans back, engrossed in the new data. "Angel is indeed burrowing, seemingly at just over half the rate it can travel by land. It has not yet made contact with the first layer of armor." After a moment, she nods. "Angel structure analyzed. Displaying current integrity."

Head: 4 Wounds
Body: 7 Wounds
Core: 14 Wounds

Moon seems to have calmed down. "Pilot Rata seems to be in control again. Synch ratio stable at 53. She could still fully neutralize the angel's AT Field..."

"Angel is out of line of attack for the missile banks and tanks squadrons. VTOL wing commanders say they can get back into position to attack immediately, including the Firefly." Leo half-turns. "Orders?"

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

Eyes fluttering open, a heavy fog pressed on Rata as her mind grudgingly awoke. Then the pain swum through her, spider-webbing out from her shoulder down her torso and arm. At once the heavy fog was ripped from her and from her came a piercing scream. Grabbing her shoulder Rata dug her fingers into her flesh through the plugsuit, but the agony had already subsided and all that remained was a diminishing throb. Her breathing heavy and irregular, Rata unclenched her hand from her shoulder. She wasn't listening to the chatter, she wasn't listening to anything. Her stammered breathing hadn't been a sign of pain, it had been a sign that she had just lost control of her temper. It was with a roar she twisted the Eva around, it's left hand lancing out and ripping the sword viscously from the stadium floor. Inside the plug she was repeating the same words over and over as she once again reached out with the Eva's AT Field: "I'll kill him."


OOC
Grabing my sword: Half Action. Neutralizing the Angel's AT Field: Another Half Action. Badger-baiting a god-like weapon? Priceless.

[Jade_Tarem]

Undisclosed Location

"The only thing? Angels have been stopped without an Evangelion before. There are always alternatives, commander."

"That was almost fifteen years ago. Humanity will not survive if the Lance of Longinus is used in that manner a second time. This was the purpose behind NERV's creation. After all..."

Command Deck

"...it became necessary to create new weapons, new technologies. The fields of applied sciences and engineering were pushed to their breaking points..."

Lieutenant Moon leaned back, eyebrow raised. "Well, she's in control of Unit 04, anyway..."

Base of Operations

"...to think past convention and tradition, and employ weaponry once thought infeasible or even impossible..."

The VTOL Wings spiraled in, seeking their target through the cloud. It wasn't hard - the thing was forty stories high and reflective. The rounded, stubby missile launchers spun, and a new brace of missiles loaded itself into the launch tubes.

One VTOL instead positioned itself directly over the deepening hole. A massive array of lenses and projectors rotated to point at the angel. "This is Flight Officer Lynch. Firefly in position."

Burrow Point

"...but even this wasn't enough. My report, gentlemen, is that the Evangelion units are operational and effective..."

Unit 04, lacking a free hand, instead grabbed the sword and swung it around and down, crashing through the one-two-three-four layers of Ahkraziel's AT Field. The mirror-feather effect shattered again, revealing the dull blue scales once more as the angel hissed in aggravation.

Command Deck

"...We have escaped from Einstein's cage."

"Angel AT Field is down again. The MAGI have given the green light to conventional fire!" Hawkins shouts.

"Unit 04's AT Field strength has hit zero again. She's not playing it safe, director!"

Though his face is partly shadowed, Yin's voice is tinged with the faintest hint of amusement. "Better give her a hand, then."

[TheDarkDM]

Captain Palmer

Palmer ignored Yin as he assessed the situation.

"VTOL wings, open fire! Tank battalions, move to the impact crater and assume firing positions!"

Attacks:

VTOL Wings (2)
BS 100 (60 + 20 target size + 20 full auto)

Attack: [roll0]
Damage 1: [roll1]; pen 0
Damage 2: [roll2]; pen 0
Damage 3: [roll3]; pen 0
Damage 4: [roll4]; pen 0

Attack: [roll5]
Damage 1: [roll6]; pen 0
Damage 2: [roll7]; pen 0
Damage 3: [roll8]; pen 0
Damage 4: [roll9]; pen 0

[Jade_Tarem]

Combat: Phase 2, Turn 5-6, Base of Operations

As the missiles pile in, Ahkraziel lets out another metallic screech. With another flash of mirrored, spinning feathers it burrows straight out of sight.

Command Deck

Information bombards Captain Palmer.

"Angel is... well, it's retreating from the battle, but it's coming right toward us. The tunnel it's making has changed angles to be a more direct course toward the GeoFront. AT Field is once again up."

"VTOL Wings have lost sight of the target. They say they can follow the tunnel down, but that could allow the angel to attack them directly."

"The tunnel now exceeds 60dm in length. Unit 04 cannot maintain umbilical contact if it pursues."

MAGI ANGEL UPDATE: ANGEL HEAD AND CORE INTEGRITY FAILING, NO EFFECT ON ANGEL BODY FROM LATEST MISSILE BARRAGE.

Angel Wounds:
Head: 3
Body: 7
Core: 5

The tunnel now goes 20dm down and 40 at a 45 degree angle east. It is considered to be a foggy area. (-20 to BS tests)

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hnTHRwFC5w&feature=related)

"Oh no you don't!" At that declaration Unit 04 crouched low on its haunches, and with ungodly dexterity leaped feet first into the Angel's tunnel. At almost the same moment the umbilical detached at her behest, its automatic thruster rockets cushioning its fall as it would in reality while Unit 04 plummets a hundred and eighty metres straight down. All the way down, every single metre, the Eva roared down with the sound of air resistance as its forty metre, several thousand ton body fell like a stone. Even though Rata was shouting, primitive responses engraved in her mind responding to the fall, she wasn't scared. "I'm coming for you!" She shouted with a hoarse voice.

With the one hundred and eighty metre fall at an end, Unit 04 smashed into the now gently sloping tunnel with a calamitous roar. Earth, metal, and flesh groaned as the monster glided down the tunnel on the back of its feet, its back barely gliding above the rough rock. Rata already knew her plan, and the massive sword her Eva wielded was in position almost as she thought it; her Eva's AT Field focussed on that point as she half charged, half fell on the serpentine Angel. All the while, Rata yelled with fury.


OOC
WS: 67 (+10); [roll0]

And in case I pass, here's the damage.

[roll1]

Also, there's this damage because I'm a nutter-butter.

[roll2]

[Jade_Tarem]

Combat: Phase 2, Turn 6, Command Deck

Dr. Mittal shot up out of her seat so hard that the chair rolled backwards and bounced off the bridge railing. "Is she insane?"

Lieutenant Moon, having yanked off her headset when Rata's shout grew to a painful volume, digs at her ear. "Yes! Yes she is."

Leo, finally showing a bit more enthusiasm, hunches forward. "Firefly VTOL has them on scopes. Impact in 3... 2... 1..."

Base of Operations... sort of

Ahkraziel hisses in defiance at all the thousands of tons of Evangelion war machine headed at it. It coils its body into a defensive posture and lashes out with its head.

What happened next had to be carefully reconstructed from MAGI Event Logs and the Firefly VTOL's built in targeting optics, but in the blink of an eye, Rata's attack sheared through 4 layers of AT Field as well as cleaving the creature roughly in half. As Ahkraziel had shown, this was rated as barely more than an inconvenience as far as the angel was concerned, although it was certainly painful and, had the simulated horror been able to feel such a human emotion, probably somewhat embarrassing to be bisected by a fourteen year old girl in a one-armed robot.

The impact, however, overbalanced them both, sending Rata off course and straight into the creature's oversized mouth. The impact slammed Unit 04 and Ahkraziel's core into a bloody mess against the back of its throat, then punching through the back of its head and slamming into the chamber wall back-to-core first with a force that the MAGI assessed to be "unhealthy," then quickly revised to "extremely unhealthy."

Within the entry plug, the sound of escape rockets firing can be heard - except that instead of the deafening roar that would carry the pilot to safety, there was instead an anemic wheeze and a rude noise.

Command Deck

Dr. McShane threw her hand into the air. "Even in the bloody simulator the damn thing doesn't work!"

Base of Operations
The Firefly VTOL quickly pulled back, largely because the hole had begun glowing. A moment later a massive azure cross of energy shot into the sky from the hole, lingering for a full 20 seconds.

Mercifully, Rata's entry plug stopped transmitting sensations by this point, but the blast blew a hole clear through the torso of Unit 04 and lit the entire Evangelion on fire - which was just as quickly snuffed by the lack of oxygen in the tunnel. Glowing with heat, the Unit lay there, barely stirring before finally resting.

And then the simulation ended.

There was a moment of anticipation in the command center, before the MAGI flashed the simulation statistics on the screen.

SIMULATION CONCLUSION:
UNIT 04: DEFEATED
- EXTREME DAMAGE TO TORSO REGION
- CRITICAL ENTRY PLUG EJECTOR MALFUNCTION
- RIGHT ARM SEVERED AT SHOULDER JOINT
- REMAINING LIMBS AND HEAD SIGNIFICANTLY BURNED

LONDON-2: MINOR DAMAGE
- SOME REPAIRS NEEDED IN NONESSENTIAL AREAS.

TANK SQUADRON 1 DESTROYED
TANK SQUADRON 2 DESTROYED
PALLET TURRET 1 DESTROYED

ANGEL: DEFEATED
- CORE INTEGRITY REDUCED TO ZERO
- REMAINING BODY MATERIAL VAPORIZED DURING CORE EXPLOSION

There was a pause, and then...

ENTRY PLUG INTACT
PILOT SURVIVAL PROBABLE
UNIT 04 REPAIRABLE
COST OF BATTLE WITHIN NERV DESIRED BUDGET CONSTRAINTS
MISSION SUCCESS

The entire command center let out a cheer - as did those throughout HQ who had stopped work temporarily to watch the fight. The screens ceased showing images of the nonexistent carnage and started displaying a wealth of statistical data concerning the fight's minutiae.

Sub-commander Yin shuts down the recording feed and looks down at Palmer while the rest of the bridge crew is distracted. "Well done, Captain." He says, quietly. "Perhaps you should go see to your pilot before celebrating. Congratulate her, then twist her ears until she agrees to not try anything that stupid again. I need to meet with our PR group - despite our best efforts this data will no doubt be leaked to the press eventually and we need to be sure that it happens in a way favorable to NERV." The Sub-commander turns and departs, vanishing out of sight.

Undisclosed Location

Commander Cross paused as her earpiece chirped. "Excuse me." After a moment, she nodded, then pushed a button within her briefcase. All around the room, the walls lit up showing the results of the mission - something she shouldn't have been able to do. "As you can see, gentlemen, NERV is capable of sustaining a defense. Especially with the inclusion of a second Evangelion unit."

SEELE 06 recovered first. "Do you refer to Unit 08? No child was ever found that could synchronize with it."

"I am afraid I must correct you on that matter." Cross grinned, the light from above reflecting on her glasses again. "Not only does the child exist, but she is already here."

SEELE 01 spoke again. "This is excellent news indeed. See to it that you keep up this level of performance and all will be well. We leave NERV in your hands, Dame Victoria." The monoliths faded from view.

Cross stood up and stretched. Running the simulation during the meeting had been a gamble, but it had paid off. Moreover, she had managed to deliver a number of short, sharp shocks to SEELE in the process. They had resources to dwarf her own - but their resources were all tied up in indirection, puppets, and cat's-paws. She had no illusions about what SEELE represented - an alliance of convenience that would end as soon as she deviated from their "master plan," whatever that was.

Until then, however, they all had to pretend to be friends. At least, they did in person. She knew enough about SEELE's goals to know that London-2 was supposed to get its second Evangelion much later. That Unit 08 might be synch-compatible with someone after all did not fit into SEELE's plan, and that meant the child was in a certain amount of danger. She had already dispatched agents to collect her - if SEELE had truly not known about her until today's meeting, there would be no trouble bringing him in. If they had found out sooner...

Well, that was what she paid Section 2 for.

She reviewed the MAGI data as she walked back to her ride. The damage to the digital London-2 had been minimal, but Unit 04 had been nearly totaled. That was unfortunate, but perhaps the inclusion of the second pilot would be a good influence on Rata.

As she climbed into an unmarked black car, Cross snorted lightly. She would settle for the new pilot not being a screaming berserker.

Opening, Part 1: Queen's Pawn Gambit (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7p1z_vl8Y0)
"Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field."

- Genesis 3:1

Evangelion Cages

The engineering crew gives a round of applause and a few appreciative shouts as Captain Palmer strides into Unit 04's standby cage, and he soon finds himself looking at the pulled entry plug for Unit 04 as the hatch slides open, LCL spilling out over the edges into the pool below.

[TheDarkDM]

Captain Palmer

As the cheer went up through the Command Deck, Palmer allowed himself to take a breath. With a smile he didn't necessarily feel, he addressed the room.

"Excellent work, everyone. You should all be proud of what we accomplished here. Now, get your debriefs in order and report to the bar - the first round is on me."

Hearing the sub-commander above him, Palmer lit a cigarette and saluted.

"Trust me, sir, she won't be pulling another stunt like that on her own."

Eva Cages

Stalking into the cages, Palmer was preceded by the ringing of his cane on concrete. As the cage crews began cheering, he raised his free hand, calling for silence.

"Please, everyone - this victory is yours as much as it is mine. You've all done some exemplary work."

The splash of LCL on the dock interrupted him, and Palmer turned to see Rata crawl from her plug. Moving over to her, he placed a hand on her shoulder.

"The same goes for you, Rata. With you on our side, London-2 is in good hands."

Leaning in close, Palmer whispered something just for her.

"But if you ever feel the need to total an Eva without authorization again, I might just feel the need to hire a cleaning service for your room."

Rata's expression was met only by a half-encouraging, half-mocking smile by Palmer as he resumed his stiff posture and gave her a salute.

"Report for debrief, Pilot. I'm sure the Commander will have questions for you."

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

Pulling herself out of the plug, the smell of LCL clinging to her and her dark grey plugsuit, Rata had a self-satisfied smile on her face. That smile went away at three feet; that was the circle of personal space she kept between her and the Nerv personnel, and it was the personal space Palmer violated to put his hand on her shoulder. She didn't bat him away though. Instead she froze in place and stared at him, a slight frown in place on her face. At the threat to her clutter, her eye twitched. "Yeah, for me." Her face turned toward his, cruel glee on her face. "For the 'little girl'. That's got to be emasculating." She waited, her eyes intent on him, searching for his response to her lash. She wanted to see it land.

[TheDarkDM]

Captain Palmer

His eyebrows raised at Rata's retort. It was easy to forget she was just a teenager when she was piloting the Eva, even easier to forget she wasn't military. Still, this kind of insubordination wasn't something he was willing to take.

"Not really, Pilot. It isn't my competency that's in question. Debrief is in twenty."

Without another word, he turned and strode out of the Cages, making his way towards the debriefing room.

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

Rata, caught up in her little mind game, took his response as his confession of emasculation masquerading as authority. "Hey, no need to get defensive." Rata rattled off the adage with the same cruel glee as before. In truth, she was annoyed he hadn't done something more. A more obviously snide comment would have been nice, or maybe a terse storm-off. "I wasn't there to see it, but I'm sure you sat in your chair very well." Accompanied with a flourish of her hand that she had seen on television. It was then, as her mind expanded beyond the moment, that a part of her questioned the effectiveness of her taunting on the taciturn captain. She opened her mouth a third time, but with no momentum pushing her forward she faltered, doubting herself. "Y-yeah... well." Her head lowered, and her eyes focussed on the exit. "Bye." It was quick and to the point, just like her march to the exit, and beyond - in all likelihood to the debriefing, and in all likelihood without thinking about it very much.

[Jade_Tarem]

NERV HQ Auditorium 3

NERV's debriefing auditorium would have seemed extravagant, save by comparison to the command deck and the entry plug of a giant robot. Shaped like three eighths of an octagon, it wasn't the largest of rooms, but it more than made up for it in atmosphere - more of the command deck's pseudo-holographic technology had been incorporated onto the three "front" walls, and the lighting and detail in the room allowed the audience to feel almost as if they were floating in a sea of images when all of the equipment was turned on. The senior bridge staff and technical leads were already seated by the time Rata and Palmer made their way in, although they managed to beat Commander Cross by just under half a minute.

Chat revolves largely around the simulation, still fresh in everyone's minds. Their are inquiries into Rata's well-being, although everyone avoids the subject of Unit 04 getting trashed.

Eventually, Cross walks in with Sub-commander Yin in tow, and everyone immediately goes quiet as the lights dim. The six colossal screens at the front of the small amphitheater light up, showing MAGI-generated statistics, a bird's-eye view of simulated London-2 right after the fight, images of Ahkraziel under fire, and several shots of the projected expense reports and damage and repair diagrams for the simulated Unit 04.

Cross stands toward the back of the room, near the pseudo-holographic projector, her voice seeming to float in the darkness. Yin stands opposite her, near the front, and uses a small but powerful laser pointer to shine a bright purple dot on anything either of them feel is important.

"Allow me to begin with congratulations. The simulation was a success, and it is important that we keep that in mind throughout the debriefing. Considering the level of firepower that the mock Angel represented, it may seem unfair to offer heavy criticism."

"But we're going to do it anyway." Yin adds.

"Correct. Let's begin with what went right. The bridge crew's performance fell within acceptable ranges for both efficiency and professionalism. The angel was detected before it reached the Base of Operations and intercepted at optimal firing range. Nearly all resources were utilized efficiently. Tactics - with two exceptions - were also sound; neutralizing the AT Field and allowing our conventional forces to saturate the area with missiles proved effective, although we need to have a contingency in mind for the future in the event that an angel shows up with enough personal armoring to laugh off an attack like that."

"Working on it!" Dr. McShane calls cheerfully from somewhere to the left.

"Thank you." At her signal, Yin's pointer flits to an image of the reflected weapons fire. "Captain Palmer, the sole complaint I have with your otherwise excellent performance is your choice of opening tactics. You opted to leave the angel to its own devices until you could ambush it with everything you had. Against a conventional foe this is, as they say, a 'no brainer' - dispersing your attacks only increases the odds of a foe defeating you in detail. However, conventional foes do not possess an AT Field or a physiology that we barely understand the basics of, and a nontrivial portion of your forces paid the price when that firepower was turned on you."

There's a pause, and then she continues. "I do not want to give you the idea that you should assault the angels less aggressively, but in the time between now and the first true attack you may wish to consider what you could do to avoid a repeat of this event. The MAGI consider this application of an AT Field possible and for all we know every angel will be able to do it."

At this point, Yin takes over. "This leads us to Pilot Rata. Your initial performance was fine, and we are happy to see that you've mastered the techniques involved in neutralizing an AT Field. We don't blame you for losing the arm - the high stress environment and the fact that the angel's bite was clearly beyond any cleaving attack the world has ever seen can account for that, and the MAGI say that it would only take a few days and a moderate thunderstorm to wash the bloodstains out of the city. No, our general concern is with this."

At his last word, the screen on the far right comes to life, showing Unit 04's final plunge and the subsequent carnage.

"Now, I don't know if you felt that the Eva would be able to survive such a stunt, or if someone said 'bock bock' and made gestures comparing you to a chicken immediately prior to the simulation, but this maneuver displays more courage than tactical acumen. By which I mean it was stupid. While it did defeat the angel, it could very well not have and you guaranteed that Unit 04 would be disabled in the process. Had you failed to eliminate the angel, we would be undergoing a simulated Third Impact. The fact is, though, that even with the angel's defeat a disabled Unit 04 leaves us at risk. While it is cheaper to replace Eva parts than all the layers of the GeoFront armor, it is not faster, and in the event of another angel attack we would be left severely weakened or even defenseless. Also I think I speak for everyone when I say that we do not want you to die, for all of the usual reasons and some extra ones too."

"And speaking of not dying, this takes us to the technical assessment." Cross gestures and Yin points to the diagram of Unit 04. "Our conventional forces deployed and operated well, and the Firefly proved itself to be worth what we paid for it, but the entry plug ejection mechanism's performance can best be described as 'pathetic.' What happened?"

"Ejector charge electronics malfunction, probably caused by the tremendous impact Unit 04 sustained right before they fired." Dr. Mittal shrugs. "It's not my design, so I don't know what they were hoping to accomplish. It's like the team that created the entry plugs wanted to eject it like a rocket instead of an ejector seat, but didn't account for the fact that they'd be doing it mid-combat. Really, we were lucky the rockets didn't boil Pilot Rata alive inside the plug."

"Unacceptable. I want the science team all over that." The screens blank and the room returns to normal illumination. "As I said, this was a successful mission, and you are to be congratulated. Are there any questions?"

Katsuragi Memorial High School, Lunchtime, Cafeteria

As expected, her NERV handlers had eventually made her go to a boring, normal school, although she was at least taking classes along the most advanced "track." With any luck, given her age, she'd be able to account for one or two years' worth of college credit and skip straight to the cool stuff when it came time to actually attend a university. They also hadn't cut off her self study, although it wasn't being officially recorded.

None of it came with a better meal ticket, though. Joo-Eun had seen worse food than what was being served in the cafeteria, but only in documentaries about the horrid conditions in the worst parts of Africa and South America. A great portion of the stores of whatever it was appeared to have survived Second Impact - not surprising, given that it appeared to be both inorganic and largely indestructible.

Fortunately, she wouldn't be eating it. A voice emerged from behind her. "Hey there. Feel like playing hookey today?" Joo-Eun turned to find a young woman in dark glasses and semi-casual clothing flanked by two men she didn't know. And despite the young woman's smile, Joo-Eun knew that it wasn't a request.

[Nefarion Xid]

Katsuragi Memorial High School, Lunchtime, Cafeteria

Ciaran burned under the saccharine gaze of the assistant principal. For a moment he hovered awkwardly over the blue plastic chair before shutting his eyes tight and rising. He wanted to pretend they weren't here for just a moment. There couldn't possibly be a good reason for the trio pulling him out of class. Maeve hadn't been in the apartment when he'd gotten ready for school. They always had breakfast together, if cold pizza could be called breakfast. He'd had a pain his his stomach all day and it wasn't because of the jalapeno and sausage medley.

"It's not really hookey if it's sanctioned by the administration. Mr. Hewitt." He gave a dismissive, but polite, nod to the assistant principal before giving his sister a squeeze about the waist.

"Just... be honest with me."

[Jade_Tarem]

NERV HQ Auditorium 3

Lieutenant Hawkins raises a hand. "The usual." The other two bridge officers snickered.

"The usual answer, too." Commander Cross begins to make her way to the front of the room. "We have too many high-priority demands on the MAGI to shut it down looking for the problem with your ID picture." A trace of dry humor creeps into her tone. "Besides, we're hoping to snare more funding by attracting a prince." At this, the snickers become more widespread, and Andrea's face reddens as she adopts an obvious sulking pose.

Without raising a hand, Dr. McShane speaks up. "Any word on the Mjolnir project?"

"I'm not allowed to confirm or deny anything about that, as you well know. That's not within our security domain." Cross sighs. "Any questions relevant to the mission?"

Silence greeted her. "In that case, you are all dismissed, except for Pilot Rata and Captain Palmer. You are off duty a bit early today, as well, so enjoy yourselves - it's back to work tomorrow."

Everyone files out, still in good cheer. The lights come part of the way back up but still remain dim enough for easy viewing. The screens all shift to show a young girl, not much older than Rata's biological age, as well as an average-looking high school. More interestingly, though, is the fact that the central screen shows the second Evangelion holding cage, which up until now had been used for upkeep on spare parts - these parts have all been removed, and now a new Evangelion unit sits there. The unit has been painted matte black with thin neon orange highlights, and is a bit taller than Unit 04 despite featuring more of a hunch. The face is dominated by an array of sensors around a single, cyclopean "eye," providing a somewhat disturbing or insectile look, and you're left with the disconcerting impression that the armored plating makes it look more, rather than less, human. "Unit 08" is splashed on the outer sides of the shoulder wings in bright white paint.

"As you can see, this is Unit 08. It arrived this morning and was moved to Cage 2 while we were doing our final preparations for the simulation. And this," The laser point shines on the picture of the boy, "is the young lady we hope will pilot it. Her name is Kwon Joo-Eun, and she's a native of South Korea and, by all accounts, a genius. So far she's been living with a host family at a home near the edge of the city."

Cross breaks in. "We're picking her up for final synch testing today, and were hoping you two could be ready to greet her, since in the event that she is synch capable and willing, she would be working more closely with you than anyone else at NERV."

"And by 'hoping,' we mean 'ordering.'" Yin adds, smirking. Cross gives him a look that could melt Eva armor, and then finishes. "Unless you have some extreme objection, yes, you really ought to be at the underground when she arrives."

The Underground was a bit different for London-2 than it had been for its predecessor. Among other things, the more modular construction of the city and the plans for recessed buildings restricted the number of tunnels that could be created for a public transit system. Not to be outdone, the engineers had gone vertical, using more modern technology to install a fast and efficient monorail system that went underground, on elevated tracks, and even through certain buildings. More impressively, it could be retracted and reconfigured into several different patterns and do so with very little in the way of human supervision. The platform that Rata and Palmer are to wait at is actually elevated, within the Science Center.

"If that's all, then you're dismissed." Cross nods, and the lights go all the way back up.

[TheDarkDM]

Captain Palmer

Palmer remained quiet through the debriefing, accepting the Commander's criticism with a single, clear nod. He chuckled along with the others at Hawkins' request, before lapsing into his own thoughts as the majority of the command crew exited the room. Then came the news about a new pilot, and Palmer's calm facade flickered. While he was glad to have another Eva on base, he was loathe to create yet another child soldier - and even more loathe to deal with another Rata every day for the rest of his natural life. He regained his composure quickly, however, and met Yin's jibe with a cold look that served as a perfect counterpoint to the Commander's. Standing, he gave a crisp salute.

"As you say, Sir. Come on, pilot, I'll buy you some lunch at the Science Center."

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

Rata spent the briefing playing with the zipper on her coat, though the speed at which she perked up when her name was spoken indicated she had been paying attention. At the Commanders evaluation of her ability she was practically beaming, and when it came time to show her stunt from earlier she seemed particularly proud. Once the Commander had finished though she went right back to playing around with her coat until her name was mentioned again. This time though she seemed less than pleased: it could have been the new pilot and a sense of being replaced, but more likely it was the fact she was being ordered to go and meet him. Captain Palmer and his offer didn't last long.

"Really?" False enthusiasm extruded from her as she stuffed her hands in her too big coat pockets. "Can we eat on the balcony so I can throw myself off?" Her face then returned to its usual pout as she nevertheless followed behind the Captain -- pain in the ass and complete brat she may be, but when it came to the day to day details she usually followed orders with only an accompanying remark. "Don't know why I have to go meet him." She grumbled. "Stupid, stupid face-kid."

[TheDarkDM]

Captain Palmer

Leading Rata to the base's Station, Palmer stood beside her in silence while they waited for the next train. It arrived with a roar, and after it had come to a screeching halt Palmer held the door open for Rata to board first. Entering behind her on the empty car, he too the seat opposite where she slumped down. Fixing her with a steady gaze, he tapped his cane against the floor to get her attention.

"You don't like me very much, do you Rata?"

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

Following the Captain, Rata tried not to pay attention to where they were going and as a result failed miserably. Instead all she could think about was how she didn't want to go, and how much more comfortable she would obviously feel in her shoebox. Quite naturally she found herself annoyed by everything rather than simply being bored as she had been for most of the debriefing, so when the Captain tapped his cane to get her attention: "You really do work for that rank, don't you?" Rata retorts with a crisp tone as she stared at the floor of the train. "Is it the constant nasty remarks or the way I avoid you?'" Her head didn't move, but her eyes swung up to stare at him. "I do what I'm told, but that isn't enough. I don't like you. I don't like any of you, but as long as I'm needed I'll do what I'm told because that's what I'm supposed to do." Rata's eyes then settled back on the train floor, and her hands fiddling with the fluff in her pockets as she did.

[TheDarkDM]

Captain Palmer

At Rata's rebuke, Palmer looked down at his cane with a contemplative expression. As she continued, he turned his eyes back to her, and his eyebrows raised upon hearing her opinion of the rest of Nerv.

"I'm sorry to hear you don't like any of us. I'm fairly sure no one intended to insult you when you joined Nerv. Is it the plug suits? I hear their designer was Japanese."

Palmer gave Rata a look implying the Japanese origins of the suits to be sufficient explanation to their...unique aesthetic.

"Or is it something else? I know very little about you Rata, and I'd like to rectify that. After all, we're saving the world from monsters that could very well kill us all - there's no sense in bearing grudges."

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

Rata lifted her eyes to meet his, and they were so filled with anger it poured out of her. Her nose had crinkled, and her eyebrows were sloping down; her mouth was forming a slight but unmistakable snarl. "Why, he said. You have a point, and the plugsuits are weird, but when you're having your arm ripped off the fact you're wearing spandex doesn't really register. However, no. Gun to my head I'd say it was because you bastards abducted me from my father!" The last sentence was almost shouted, and her legs and arms tensed as if she was about to get up and punch him. "You didn't ask, you didn't say anything! One day I was in my room, and the next I was on a plane with no idea what was happening!" An evil glint then caught in her eye. "Maybe I should have said that to the Commander: asked her if she'd like me to tell the new recruit how you bastards recruited me. She's not here, so I guess you'll do: do you think I should tell him?"

[TheDarkDM]

Captain Palmer

Captain Palmer sighed. He'd been told Rata's recruitment hadn't gone as planned, but he'd assumed that Nerv would at least have the good sense to ensure their genetic wunderkind didn't abjectly hate the organization. It struck him as a bad trait in someone relied upon to save the human race. So, when he raised his head back to look at Rata's defiant eyes there was a touch of empathy in his gaze.

"I am sorry for what Nerv did to you. If it were within my power, I'd try and make it up to you, but it isn't. All we can do is try and work together, and despite what you might think I'm not involved in the forced abduction of children."

Shifting in his seat, Palmer let out a rueful laugh at Rata's last comment.

"Considering the boy may very well volunteer? No, I don't think your input would be conducive to the long term survival of the human race."

[Jade_Tarem]

Majordomo Network Studios, Maintenance Elevator

Lyle Drake pocketed (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X95dn04x7Mc) his wallet, having finished retrieving his identification from the guards who'd taken it from him. The ID had told them a great deal - that he was who he claimed to be, that he had every right to be there, doing what he was doing and going where he was going. It had told them not to log this incident in their duty logs, and not to search or even question him about the very long case he was carrying.

As he got in the elevator, he had just enough time to reflect on how he'd come to be there. NERV had offered a number of interesting job opportunities for out-of-work soldiers, soldiers who had lost their units, their careers, and their futures, but not their skills. Soldiers who were beyond tired of watching people kill other people in pointless pissing matches for the last few bits of surrogate toilet tissue. They'd offered that, and a lot of therapy.

And now they wanted him to start killing people again, although he was hardly surprised. One thing he'd learned in Cambodia was that as long as there were two people left on the planet, someone was going to want someone else dead. And now someone was going to be coming after Captain Palmer and the King girl, although whether they were trying to capture or kill either or both was unknown. Despite the number of variables and NERV's tendency toward wheels-within-wheels obfuscation, they'd given him a very clear set of objectives. This was due to necessity more than trust - if they were to turn him loose with the instructions to shoot "everyone who looks suspicious," there would be no one left within a five kilometer radius of NERV HQ.

As he emerged onto the roof, he stood stock-still for a moment. There was no wind, which was good, and there was an extra man-shaped shadow on the ground, which was not...

Grand Court Station (NERV Terminal), Blue Line Waiting Area

Casey Tern monitored the captain and the pilot from the corner of her eye. Her partner kept a watch on the various other people in the station who were also watching the good captain and the brat. There were too many of them for her liking, but she didn't want to make her own move until she knew that Drake was in position. In the meantime, she tugged at the lapels of her jacket and tried to maintain the correct persona - a pretty yet bland media persona for Majordomo Network News - the leading local media outlet in London-2 whose headquarters she sat in the shadow of. MNN had taken over locally by embracing any and all possible technological advancements since second impact, even the ones that hadn't worked out, and spreading news any way they could. They also had offered to air government and NERV-issue bulletins and press conferences for a severely reduced rate, in return for which they possessed exclusive broadcasting rights for those related topics, effectively underbidding the competition to be the NERV PR department's "face."

They had also created a number of jobs in the area, many of which were filled by agents of NERV, completing the headache-inducing cycle of complex loyalties. She sighed. "Tern still in position. Come on, Drake. This isn't the time for a smoke. Where are you?"

Majordomo Network Studios

Drake leaned the bound man up against the safety railing. He took a look at the other man's rifle and eyed it critically. "Not bad. But next time you should lock the door, like I did. And maybe find a better ambush spot."

Wasting no more time, he set up and sighted in on Court Station's north platform. He turned his earpiece and microphone on. "Monocle in position."

Katsuragi High School*

The woman who'd been introduced to her as Maeve led Joo-Eun through the halls and out to the back parking lot, bypassing the front desk entirely. Somewhere along the way, the men in the suits and dark glasses disappeared, heading toward the front of the building. Out back, she walks toward a black sedan with government plates - and keeps walking, instead getting into a green Civic. As soon as Joo-Eun got in, she had the car moving at a speed that might conservatively be called "unreasonable."

Maeve pulled out a small phone and hit "8" - apparently assigned to speed dial. "This is Pocket Watch, I'm three minutes behind schedule." She snapped the phone shut without waiting for a response.

Her mind raced with potential scenarios. They were safer now than at the school, but until they actually reached NERV HQ - which was practically across the city - anything was possible. She ignored Kwon's protest about her speed, deciding that she didn't have time to explain to him how she knew that there were no police around - if NERV hadn't waved them off, then whoever was after her brother certainly had.

And someone was after him, of that she had no doubt. Synch capable children had a bad habit of disappearing in this country and turning up weeks later in morgues, and her job was to find out why.

That was one of her jobs, anyway. For now, her job was to drive like a bat out of hell.

Grand Court Station (NERV Terminal), Blue Line waiting area

Casey winced. Three minutes behind put the ninth child at serious risk, but it wasn't the worst case scenario. The situation at Grand Court? That looked like the worst case scenario. She had so far identified twelve possible attackers, which was a bit more than she and Montgomery could handle.

So it was time for plan B. She got up, dear Monty hovering right over her shadow with his camera pointed like a weapon, and closed in on Captain Palmer and Rata King. She stopped part way and turned to Monty, then started speaking clearly into her microphone, as though in response to an anchor prompt. "Yes, Clive, and I'm here now with Operations Director Palmer and Pilot King at Grand Court Station. Rumors are flying concerning the results of what could be a full-world MAGI-orchestrated model simulation that will truly test the capabilities of the Evangelion machinery." She spun toward the pair, closing in, and gleefully watched the the potential troublemakers freeze. That's right, smile for the camera. You're going to have to wait to make your move until I'm done! To her potential interview subjects, she asked loudly, "Captain Palmer, NERV is preparing a press conference for later this evening, but do you have anything you would like to add? Would either of you like to make a statement?"

Need a second perception check from Rata and Palmer.

[TheDarkDM]

Captain Palmer

Palmer smiled easily as the camera crew approached, standing with the aid of his cane to meet Casey. There was barely a flicker in his smile as he noticed the logo on the side of the microphone, but his gaze immediately sharpened and met hers.

"Of course, Ms. Tern. I won't bore you with the technical details, but suffice it to say that the test exceeded our expectations. Not only was the city spared, but Pilot Rata's daring prevented the Angel from breaching even one of our defensive layers. When the time comes, I am confident we'll be ready to protect this city from any threat."

As he spoke, Palmer gestured out over the platform and the skyline beyond, scanning the crowd as he did so. There was tension, far too much tension, and at least a dozen people he didn't want anywhere near Rata.

"But I'm sure you're more interested in what our fine pilot has to say. Ms. Tern, let me introduce you to Rata King, one of NERV's greatest assets."

Guiding Case over to Rata, Plamer positioned himself surreptitiously between her and the crowd on the platform. Turning his head to watch them, he gave the civilians a winning smile, trying to gauge their intent by their reactions.

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

Rata smiled and began to sidestep the whole thing when Palmer guided the damned woman toward her. Rata gave Palmer a nasty glare, forgoing the need for her to enthusiastically ask him what he thought he was doing. Whatever it was Rata was damn sure she wasn't going to play along, but that thought stalled itself on the fact she wasn't sure what he was up to. Instead she was left standing there, a camera pointed at her and a vague sense of defiance welling up. "Er... I... er." A million different wondrously terrible things she could say tumbled through her mind, and all Rata had to do was pick one and let fly. That was, at least, how it felt, but as she stared at the camera and searched her mind for something particularly unfortunate to say her mind went remarkably blank -- later she'd probably punch something and rattle off eloquently a half-dozen particular sentences she'd wish she'd said, but at that present moment her brain was still too concerned with brooding to say anything.

Acutely aware of the silence she continued to stare blankly as she couldn't even decided whether to glare at Palmer or to look at the ground. "I'm..." She began, falling back on the most instinctive words she could remember, but by now she was so embarrassed her words were mumbled gibberish -- it had been an introduction, which given that she was already introduced just made her feel even worse as her face turned scarlet.

[Jade_Tarem]

Driving

Maeve continued to drive, and Ciaran felt a sudden impact from behind, one that rattled the car. Looking back, he saw that the black unmarked car that Maeve had abandoned had exploded, throwing dust, chunks of concrete, and car parts in all directions as a fireball erupted on the spot.

The car swung around onto a new street to find a police barricade already in place. "Ciaran, stay down."

"What?"

"Stay down." Maeve reached over and shoved his head forward and down under the glove compartment, and leaned over sideways herself before slamming the pedal to the floor. Ciaran felt the car go over the curb and hit something that made a tremendous banging noise, and then heard the gunshots that passed through the windows of the car, shattering them and putting a pattern of holes in the windshield.

Maeve got up, and let Ciaran back up, as the car turned the corner - amazingly back in the correct lane despite having cut across three lines of traffic while effectively blind.

Katsuragi Memorial High School

"Fowler here." The man in the black sunglasses stood looking at the contents of Ciaran's locker as he spoke into his headset. "No books, but we do have some kind of chemical weapon. Yes, I'm working on it. No, the ninth child is not here. Check with Firefly. Out."

He put away the headset and leaned in to try to disarm the device. He had no idea what it was going to disperse, but by the timer on it he had maybe five minutes left to shut it down. A normal man would have evacuated the building and called the bomb squad, but he'd already pulled the fire alarm - and he was the bomb squad. As if on cue, an explosion from somewhere out back rattled the building.

Fowler shook his head. He hated Tuesdays.

Majordomo Network Studios - Roof

Drake could see, just barely the smoke rising from what used to be the sedan. He would have missed it if he hadn't known what to look for. "Code names from now on, the operation is on," he said, "Monocle has a visual on Pocket Watch, but it will be a minute before they're in firing range. Please confirm targets at the Manor."

Grand Court Station (NERV Terminal), Blue Line waiting area

"Top Hat to Monocle, confirming twelve, repeat twelve heroes at the Manor." Montgomery spoke quietly into his 'camera' - a complex device that featured everything but recording equipment - while Casey continued to ask the usual insipid TV media questions of Captain Palmer and the ever-reddening pilot. "Plan B?"

Majordomo Network Studios

"Plan B." Drake confirmed. "Balloon incoming in twenty seconds. Villain exits stage left." He watched the train pull in to the station, but it would be up to Tern to get them out. The sniper leaned forward, inhaled, and then let his breath out slowly...

Grand Court Station (NERV Terminal), Blue Line waiting area

"...and so London-2 will wait with baited breath to see what happens at the press conference. This is Casey Tern with MNN, signing off." Instead of holding the smile for the requisite awkward seconds, though, she twisted the bottom of her microphone and tossed it into the air. A moment later it exploded with a blinding flash. She lunged forward and leaned between Rata and Palmer. "Time to go. Move."

Majordomo Network Studios - Roof

Drake shut his eyes right before the flashbang exploded, then opened them to track the chaos through the smoke. Naturally there was a panic going on - and that helped highlight the twelve that weren't panicked. They were disoriented and confused, but one recovered enough to spot the hustling NERV personnel, to draw a weapon, aim...

He went down as Drake squeezed the trigger. "Thanks for holding still, wanker." Drake sighted in again... and stopped as the train pulled away, he did a quick count and came up with eleven, including the one he had shot.

He frowned, and recounted. Eleven. "Top Hat, be advised, I'm a target short, one might be on your train and Pocket Watch needs cover." He switched his frequency to Lynch's phone...

Driving

"Maeve, are you crazy? Those were the police!"

"They weren't police. Real police wouldn't have had their guns out before I turned the corner."

At about the time Maeve had the car drifting through an on ramp to the elevated highway, her phone rang again. "Could you get that? I'm a bit busy."

Blue Line Monorail

Tern and Mongomery rush both of you into the car and as the door closes the train leaves the station, heading south. Tern listens to her earpiece for a moment, then frowns. "Sorry, Captain, but I think we might have an assassin on the train, too. Is there any chance you're armed?"

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

Only a few times had Rata been bundled along like this, and none of them had been pleasant. The first had been when she was taken to London-2, and the rest had been the occasions Nerv had decided it wouldn't let her live as she was -- which entailed keeping her docile with narcotics while people cleaned the festering pit she called an apartment. Flailing about as she's forced onto the train Rata pulls away from the woman and Palmer with a distinct mix of anger and fear. "Don't touch me!" She yapped at them. "Don't touch me."

[TheDarkDM]

Captain Palmer

Safely aboard the train, Palmer directed his full attention to Tern. His face grew grim with news of the assassin, only to be distracted as Rata pulled away from them.

"Rata! Get in a seat and stay down!"

Turning back to Tern, Palmer reached under his coat to pull a Nerv sidearm from his shoulder holster.

"Are we sure it's just the one?"

[Jade_Tarem]

Blue Line Monorail

"Can't confirm that sir; it's one or more." Tern states calmly, removing her shoes. She hands one to Palmer, "If you run out of ammunition, use this." She pauses at the odd look Blaine gives her, then explains, "It's a high explosive, you twist the heel and throw."

"Is all of your clothing and gear weaponry?"

"Yes." Tern hands the other shoe to Rata. "Don't use this unless all of us are dead. And don't be in the same car with it after it explodes."

Majordomo Network Studios

Drake heard a distant noise, a familiar one. He looked around for it and quickly spotted a bulky painted-black VTOL. "HQ, I've got a VTOL over downtown. Is it ours or the UN's?" He listened for a moment. "What do you mean, 'neither'? The other crew wasn't supposed to be able to field air support!"

The bound man began chuckling, having finally worked the gag free. "NERV's bright future is ending a little early. This is one party where you don't have the biggest gun."

"Can it." Drake set his frequency to Tern's again. "Top hat, you have a VTOL incoming. Looks like one of the new Dragonfly models, and the armor is too thick for my rifle. Does Goatee know of any assets we can throw at it?"

Blue Line Monorail

Tern tenses and nods to Palmer. "Monocle says we have a hostile VTOL incoming. He wants to know what we've got that can stop it. Do you know if we have any of our own forces in the area?"

Driving

For the game to keep moving, posting for Ciaran again.

Ciaran hits the speakerphone. "Pocket Watch, this is HQ, we're looking at an ETA for opening the Embarkation Point."

"ETA two minutes at this speed. Is traffic cleared?"

"Affirmative, it's just you and your new friends on the road now."

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

"Absolutely not!" Rata shouted like... well, like what she is: an angry child. Not that her protest had any bearing on what she actually did though, and with her ass firmly planted on a nearby seat she started giving Palmer the evil eye. That was, naturally, before she was given an explosive shoe. She perked up disturbingly after that -- especially so if either of her guardians remembered her diving down a three-hundred metre deep hole, turning her Eva into a ballistic missile. "Where do you buy this stuff?" She asks with a slight tinge of awe mixed in with the sense of loathing a brick wall couldn't hide.

[TheDarkDM]

Captain Palmer

At Tern's question, Palmer's eyebrows slowly raise with a slight smile.

"Ms. Tern, this is London-2."

Pulling a cell phone from his pocket, Palmer input an overlong string of numbers before bringing it to his ear.

"Operations command, this is Captain Palmer, ID code Alpha-5-4-7-3-Gamma-Zulu. We have a Code 17. I repeat, we have a Code 17. One hostile VTOL confirmed - activate the city defense grid and bring it down."

[Jade_Tarem]

Blue Line Monorail

What comes over the phone are the most hated words in all of human history.

*Beee-deee-VWEEEEP* "We're sorry. The number you are trying to to reach can not be completed as dialed. Please hang up and try again."

The phone's screen, though, shows a different message, courtesy of some slightly more advanced communications software installed by NERV:

Wireless Jammed

This followed by a string of coordinates - far too many to disable from a moving train.

"Clever of them." Blaine snorts. "I've got a small rocket in this thing, but I don't think it will bring down a Dragonfly..."

"Men." Tern shakes her head. "We're not out of the loop yet. I did a story once about safety features on these trains. They're mostly run by computer but they keep an engineer in the front just in case, and they can talk to the station through a... well... I didn't understand all of it, but it's a phone with a chip that converts signals to be processed as analog rather than digital, and that apparently can get through the kind of jamming that knocks out cell phones. They installed it after those terrorist attacks in Tokyo-2" She fiddles with her lapel again, "Once there, get the operator to transfer you to HQ, and you'll be able to light up the defense grid." She flushes at the stares she gets. "It was a slow news day, alright?"

Montgomery frowns. "Getting to the front is tricky. It takes us past however many assassins are on this train - and there are innocent people on here too. We'd have to walk right into whatever they have prepared and check our fire."

"And protect Miss King." Tern draws a small gun and flips the safety off. "But if we wait long enough, the train will pull into a station, stop, and then the Dragonfly has a free shot at us. We could hit the emergency stop and try to get off the train now... but that's one hell of a climb - we're two hundred feet in the air."

Blaine nods. "Your call, Captain. How do we do this?"

Driving

Maeve puts the petal to the floor as first two, then four other vehicles swarm onto the road behind her. As she begins to outdistance them, Joo-Eun wonders what the hell kind of engine is in this dinky sedan. One of the cars suddenly loses its windshield - it shatters despite the safety glass - and it bounces up on the curb before flipping into a roll.

"Open embarkation point." And then a remarkable thing happens - the road in front of the sedan rises up, more than a block away, revealing a dark maw of an opening. Maeve shows no sign of stopping, instead shifting gears, spinning the car to face backwards, and then flooring it again, causing the tires to squeal. The car leaves the ground for a moment, falling... and then hitting a new floor with a tremendous bang. The ceiling closes over them, and suddenly all is dark.

But only for a moment. Lights snap back on to reveal a massive platform, slowly descending down what seems to be an interminably long shaft. Maeve finally relaxes. "We're in," she says, before turning off the phone. She finally looks at Joo-Eun and smiles wryly. "We're safe for the moment, and I'm sure you have questions."

Majordomo Network Studios

Drake nods as he watches the car slide into the embarkation elevator. "Nice." Maeve was new to Section-2, but certainly talented. "Monocle to HQ, Pocket Watch is clear." He frowns. "HQ...?"

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

Annoyed at being ignored there was only one thing for Rata to do! One thing that she knew, without a doubt, would annoy them just as much. She would turn their own weapons on them! She'd ignore them right back. Let them see how it feels to be treated like you're not even there when, rather clearly, you were there.

[TheDarkDM]

Captain Palmer

As the call failed, Palmer began muttering obscenities in a dozen different languages. Thrusting his phone back inside his jacket, he took a moment to consider.

"We have to risk it. If we can't call in support, we're easy targets for a VTOL. But if you have a shot, you take it - the risk of civilian casualties is nothing compared to the risk of losing an Eva pilot."

Turning to Rata, Palmer reached out his hand.

"Rata, we need to move. Stay behind me, and take cover if there's trouble."

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

Despite her best attempts to ignore the trio of stupid people who had been ignoring her (which, of course, they were because they had been ignoring her) Rata found herself begrudgingly standing up and following behind Palmer. No closer than three feet though. As long as she had the option she'd stay at least as far away from him as that.

[Jade_Tarem]

Blue Line Monorail

Moving into the next car, the group holds the formation - Blaine, Palmer, Rata, Tern. The next car is packed almost to occupancy, but people press out of the way of the armed group coming through.

Without warning (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGzJs49RIqc), moving almost too fast to see, an unassuming-looking gentleman near the front quietly turns and fires, but he's beaten to the punch by Blaine, who fires first. The passengers shriek and look for nonexistent cover while a thin spray of blood splatters on the wall behind the attacker's thigh - a hit, but not a good one. The assassin's own bullets pass through the train's picture window before the gun misfires, leaving holes with starred cracks around them that rapidly spread through the safety glass.

Roll for initiative!

The train car is fairly cramped, so movement is difficult and all targets have various kinds of cover in the form of other passengers. The assassin's head, left arm, and left leg are currently exposed. All shots are point blank, but the conditions of the car reduce the bonus to +10 instead of +30.

[Whiskeyjack]

Throughout the car ride, Joo-Eun alternates between whimpering during the scarier moments, pulling her cute little backpack close to her, and either cheering or berating Maeve in Korean when she does something truly outlandish and epic, not sure whether to be more afraid of her driver or her pursuers, but at least temporarily siding with the person at least apparently keeping her from being shot. At one point Joo-Eun has her cell phone in hand, but a sharp turn sends it clattering to the floor and under the seat.

As the car slams to a stop and the ground closes over her head, Joo-Eun realizes how heavily she's breathing, looks up at the inner roof of the car. She makes small squeaks as she exhales, eyes brimming with tears as she starts to scream in broken English. "Wh---what was all that?! Who are you?! You're with the UN, are you?! O-or Todai? I...I did what they wanted! W-what you all wanted! I s-stopped looking at the files! I did e-e-every-thing an-and now y-you...I-I..." sobs wrack her body, big tears rolling down her cheeks and catching pieces of her hair, matting them to her face.

In a flash of motion she's slammed her seat back as far as it could go and dove to the floor in front of the seat, scrambling for something under it...she pushes against the door and rolls out, cell phone in hand as she tries to hide under the car, speed-dialing one of her Chinese Federation handlers and sobbing. (Korean) "Somebody help! I'm k-kidnapped a-and...an...a-and..."

Unsurprisingly, she has no signal and just slumps defeated on the cold pavement as her phone beeps at her. Slowly, she crawls back out and looks at Maeve, sighing. Korean)"W-what can I even do..." she wipes her face on one sleeve. (English)"W-w-what do you even want from me? And what did they want in k-killing me?"

[Jade_Tarem]

Blue Line Monorail

Tern's gun whips around and she takes a crucial split second to aim even as the attacker tracks his gun toward Rata, firing. Bullets whiz by the NERV personnel, but Tern's shot hits the attacker in the face, causing something to fly off and blood to spray up onto the ceiling of the compartment.

In the distance, a dull roar starts growing louder.

Embarkation Elevator

Maeve gets out of the car slowly and stretches, then leans back against it, appearing tired. "It does seem unfair, doesn't it?" She waves unhelpfully at the ceiling. "Actually, I'm with NERV. It's a special semi-public organization funded by the UN, and they're the ones you've been working for here in London-2."

She gets off the car and turns to face Joo-Eun, still smiling, as the elevator picks up speed, now descending alarmingly fast. "I'm not sure who, exactly, was shooting at you, but it wasn't because of anything you did. It's because of what you are, or might be." The texture of the walls around her change, seemingly becoming darker and more dense, and a massive sign reading "ARMOR 1" drifts up into view. It seems impossible, but this armored layer is thicker than most buildings! Surely nothing could penetrate it, yet before long the previous wall re-emerges, and soon "ARMOR 2" drifts by.

Maeve, however, doesn't comment on then and instead seems to change the subject. "My boss told me that you're a genius, that you hacked into some of the secure files. Did you see anything in there about the Evangelion?"

[Whiskeyjack]

"I...n-not a genius. J-just Korean," Joo-Eun mutters irritably. "I-I know what NERV is, I-I just thought y-you were, er, it was...like.." she shrugs. "A PR branch or-or s-something." She's finally finished drying her tears and she bows awkwardly to Maeve. "Kahm-sa-hahm-ni-da...err...s-so sorry. T-thank you, Maeve-seonbae, y-you saved m-my life."

She collects her things into her little bag and leans against the car, not looking at Maeve...instead inspecting the ground the great armored layers, the car...everything but the woman. "I saw...some...thing. Wiring diagram o-or...neural connect...connection map?" Joo-Eun admits slowly, dabbing at her red face. "B-but I wasn't trying to do anything b-bad with it! I was just curious, with the tests in H-Hong Kong a-and...t-they. They said I was going to...to-to work on the project somehow? B-but...it's like...battle...robot, yes? UN's next-g-generation system...I-what can I even d-do with that? My old projects were just...particle physics hypo-theses. E-energy stuff, like my dad does, but n-non-nuclear. M-maybe one day they could use it for a force field? I-I saw something about a field...but i-it didn't m-make any sense, not mathematically. But n-not weaponry! I never d-did anything like that! Energy stuff! Like...like...like my brother did before he died!" she blurts out, tears welling up again.

"W-what I can be, w-what do you even mean? Battle r-robots a-a-and...space monsters y-you call kami...A-Angels...or whatever! And car chases and...a-all this!" she spreads her hands at the layers and layers of armor. "Hidden bases in the city and stuff! I-it's like a bad movie version o-of Big O!"

With her furtive looks, it's painfully clear she knows more than she's letting on, but all she does is noisily blow her nose into a Hello Kitty handkerchief.

[Jade_Tarem]

Embarkation Elevator

Maeve laughs out loud at the mention of NERV being a PR department, but otherwise lets Joo-Eun finish. "That's one way of looking at it. I'll let Dr. McShane or Dr. Mittal explain what the Evangelion really is, but there's something you need to know first." The armored plates continue whizzing by.

ARMOR 4... ARMOR 5...

"A lot of recent world history is constructed of lies. Lots of them. For instance, 'Second Impact' was... not what you were told it was in school. NERV is not just a snappy name for a PR department. And the 'All purpose battle unit' actually has just one purpose."

ARMOR 6... ARMOR 7...

"Humanity - all of it - is about to come under attack. Not by a nation, or an insurgent group, or even a natural disaster, but by the alien life forms that we've code named "Angels." They are almost completely immune to conventional weapons, which is why NERV developed new weapons and new technologies to defend ourselves."

Armor 8... ARMOR 9...

"And that's where you come in. Your research, and your brother's, are being used in the production of what's being called an AT Field - a manipulation of energy far beyond anything previously dreamed of." She crosses her arms. "But of course, not everyone is of the opinion that this is the right course of action. There are groups that want to take NERV's place, those that are terrified of what NERV is working on, and even those that think that these alien beings really are messengers from God. Any one of them could have been out to kill you today. We tried to collect you before they could make their move, but didn't quite manage it in time to avoid putting you in danger, and for that I'm sorry."

[Whiskeyjack]

"What about the N2 mine? N...nothing could stand up to that. Could it?" She frowns, looking at the ground. "A.T. Field...was that that...particle-wave barrier...t-thing? I don't know who thinks you can just...just write a bunch of unrelated equations together and hope to get hard light out of the mess, b-but..." she blushes furiously. "O-oh, so sorry, I-I was just...thinking...not very nice things a-about your, uh, friends," she stammers. "I'm sure they're very smart! And the rest, so, there a-are really space monsters that-that came here when the meteor hit. Oh, but you said it wasn't a m-meteor and...oh, then what was it..." She frowns. "B-but...those people...they looked like police? O-oh no, they were at my school...waiting for me with you?! How do you...protect against that? S-so...am I just going to live here...wherever we're going...from now on?"

She doesn't exactly seem broken up about it, having gone to the nearest wall to look at the hydraulics that are moving the floor and touching the armor plating.

"I-I liked the pictures I saw," she finally says in the growing silence. "One looked like B-Badtz-Maru, except with...with a whale head and like a Hilbert E-Effect visor like KOS-MOS in Xenosaga...Nŏ-mu cho-a-yo! " she blushes a little. "So I'm going to work on the robot? Help with...force field? I, um...it's an honor, even if th-the math doesn't make sense yet," she finally says, bowing.

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

For all her combat training, simulated trials, and synch tests with unit aught-four Rata had never seen anyone (or anything) die, and so it was with wide, amber eyes she watched the man Tern had shot with a disturbing fascination. Typical, cultural responses to death were devoid in that unblinking stare, but she was keenly aware of how everyone else was starting to react to her grim fascination and that, more than the man's death, disturbed her. A rising feeling of isolation and panic gripped her stomach, and slowly it began to crawl with sick claws up her spine to the seat of her mind.

[Jade_Tarem]

Blue Line Monorail

Blaine steps in front of Rata, fully shielding her from the dazed attacker with his body, and pulls the trigger on his weapon...

...and the gun jams. "Bloody...! Captain, take him out!"

Majordomo Network Studios

Drake watched the VTOL hover near the monorail line, only a few seconds away from where the train would soon pass. He lined up his shot on the front of the aircraft, where he knew the pilot sat, and pulled the trigger. Unfortunately, the Dragonfly appeared to have armored over those areas of the vehicle. C'mon, Top Hat, that VTOL is almost in range...

Embarkation Elevator

ARMOR 10... ARMOR 11...

"The N2 mine could probably hurt one, yes, but all analysis indicates that these 'Angels' could recover from such a strike inside a week - and each successive N2 blast appears to do less damage than the previous ones. We, however, are not immune, so if one gets inside a populated area we can't exactly nuke it, now can we?" Maeve doesn't sound aggravated, just tired.

ARMOR 12... ARMOR 13...

Surely there couldn't be too many more layers of armor! How many could "NERV" possibly need? The woman standing on the other side of the car, though, doesn't seem to find it remarkable. "We'll protect you from the attackers by limiting the number of ways they can get to you and guarding the rest - hopefully we'll be able to avoid disrupting your life too much. It's possible that you'll end up staying here, but it's more likely that you may end up living with a member of the command staff, since the personnel and resources for protecting them are already in place." The young woman brightens. "But you don't need to worry about the incomplete equations. The files you looked at on the topic were a bit... dated. They've actually produced an AT Field and tested it, but there's still a great deal to learn."

[Whiskeyjack]

"The field...you...it can work with that gibberish?! Heh...so sorry." She pauses, frowning. "Oh...so...what do you n-need me for...if n-not...my work? You-you said it had to do with m-me and m-my brother...b-but..."

She ponders the new information. "You make a good point, so...these robots...you send them in to fight instead of deploying WMDs...l-like a...a Gundam? W-what can I do to help with that, a-aside from maybe..." she thinks for a moment and just shrugs. "I mean, I do o-okay with Go. I could he-help with...no, I could never help w-with tactics, haha, what do I know about a real war?"

She kicks at the ground. "If...if they fixed that bad math...c-can you tell me why? Why exactly I'm here, what I can do, w-why the Federation made me come here...and all that? I-I mean, I know about physics and stuff, I-I guess all that helps with new weapons and engineering b-but...it's not structural, it's n-not even that practical!"

She takes a breath and blushes. "I......don't have to tutor that other girl, do I?"

[Jade_Tarem]

Embarkation Elevator

Maeve laughs. "No, no... we wouldn't inflict that on you, at least not on purpose." She grows pensive. "How do I explain this...?" A long silence emerges as the plates continue to whiz by.

ARMOR 14... ARMOR 15... ARMOR 16...

"Well, for one thing, the AT Field can theoretically do anything - but obviously, we haven't made it do everything, or we wouldn't need any more help or funding. It's an ongoing field of research that we may be working on forever. More importantly, it wasn't completely reliable even in testing due to the nature of how we produce it, so we're hoping to improve on that, too. But..." She sighs. "Really, you've been brought here for more than just research, and we're not really interested in Protoss tactics either. We made the Evangelions, but the programs required to start up and run one take up terabytes of space - and making one move? That's beyond the abilities of even modern computers - even the MAGI couldn't quite pull it off."

ARMOR 17... ARMOR 18... ARMOR 19...

"So... oh, we're getting close to the last layer. Can we put this discussion off? There's something you're going to want to see." Maeve moves over to the side of the platform, near the ultra-thick glass separating the side of the car from the armor and metal zooming past. She waves Kwon over. "Come on! This is always neat. Um... you're not afraid of heights, are you?"

[Whiskeyjack]

"Oh...something to see? Um. Where...exactly...what is this place we're going? Something like...like CERN? I'm trying to think how deep underground we must be. Are-are we in the, uh, the hole that was made by that attack on London? Wait, n-no...we're not in the same area at all but...I'd think I might h-have heard or read about such a deep dig project..."

She walks over, giving the woman a wide berth, and touches one hand to the glass. "I'm not really afraid of heights, my grandmother lived in the mountains but we haven't been there sin-since..." she bites her lip, her face still red and her voice shaky from the cryng earlier. "Well, I've lived in the city a long time. I've been to the tops of buildings before, so..." she trails off, looking at the glass and waiting.

[TheDarkDM]

Captain Palmer

As the assassin's head snapped back from Tern's shot, Palmer took careful aim. Letting out a shallow breath, he squeezed the trigger of his sidearm twice, sending a pair of hollow point bullets through the crowd. Zipping past the civilians, the bullets impacted the assassin's left side in an explosion of gore, the shrapnel tearing through with enough force to send his arm flying into a terrified old woman. As the assassin bled out on the floor of the train, Palmer raised his voice.

"NERV business, please move aside!"

Turning back to Rata and the others, he nodded towards the door behind the dead man.

"Come on, we have to hurry."

[Jade_Tarem]

Blue Line Monorail - Exterior

The VTOL Pilot brought his craft around into a smooth hover, his crosshairs hanging over the rail. "Silver Two is in position."

Control crackled back over the line. "Copy that, you are weapons-free."

The Blue Line Monorail came into view. His instructions were clear - hit the car they'd entered and then the cars to either side, just to be sure. As the train flashed by, he pulled the trigger.

Blue Line Monorail - Interior

As the monorail rounds another bend, the distant roar suddenly gets much louder - out the window, a massive jet-black VTOL comes into view, guns already spinning. A moment later, white tracer rounds streak out, and everything goes straight to hell.

Now, one might think that in such a situation, everyone inside the NERV group's car would be doomed. Indeed, it would be reasonable to think that the train itself would be completely destroyed by such an attack, but two things prevented that from being the case.

1) The pilot focused most of his attack on the car the group had entered, having been told of it by the agents back at the station before the cell phones were jammed.

2) In the wake of the post-Impact conflicts, a higher demand was made for public transportation that could withstand, say, a terrorist attack. As a result, any vehicles manufactured post-Impact that were able to carry twenty or more passengers was required by law to carry a minimum amount of armor, as well as glass of a certain thickness and durability. While not capable of standing up to the guns of a aerial warship like the Dragonfly, the car would not completely disintegrate under such an assault.

As a result, there are indeed pockets of safety - however tiny they might be - in the first car as the four massive rounds tear through it, sending shattered glass, metal bits, and other structural materials whirling through the train like a grenade. Tern dives for Rata but misses, the move sending her underneath a bench. Rata simply drops, a shell passing immediately above her, glass shards slicing wetly into the passengers around her. Palmer begins his roll a moment too late, and something hot and sharp pierces his leg, momentarily pinning it to the seat behind him. Blaine, however, is caught fully by a shot, and simply vanishes in a red haze that spatters among the rest of the gore or drifts out through the exit hole in the wall behind him. Tern's scream is unintelligible, but can still be heard over the rest of the cacophony.

Nor do the rest of the passengers do much better. Some have miraculously escaped unharmed, but the rest are injured, mortally injured, or dead outright. Screams, sobs, and shrieks join the new sound of air roaring through the compartment as the train speeds along.

The roar of the VTOL, however, is fading as it loses its line of sight. It ascends to above the level of the rooftops and vanishes, no doubt to set up at a new firing position...

The party is now in narrative time. There is one car left before the lead car.

Embarkation Elevator

ARMOR 20... ARMOR 21...

"Oh, it's better than CERN. You're about to see NERV HQ, and it's in a place called the GeoFront. It's a massive underground chamber discovered after Second Impact." Maeve presses a hand up against the glass. "It's a bit overwhelming no matter how many times you see it."

ARMOR 22... GEOFRONT FINAL APPROACH

"So without further ado... here it is."

The sudden influx of light, so much brighter than the distant overhead emergency illumination, is momentarily blinding, but the vista is staggering - a massive dome stretches over an area far larger than London-2. Indeed, a collection of railings about the size of the city can be seen at the top of the dome, distant sparks of light suggesting that some sort of construction work was going on there.

For that matter, the floor beneath the dome appeared to be some kind of lost world. Everything that wasn't linear-system railings or buildings appeared to be some kind of temperate forest, complete with trees and streams, although hydroponics were distantly visible. A violet-hued pyramid sat next to an inverted polyhedral body of water. The sheer scale of it all was staggering - tiny dots that moved around initially appeared to be people before finally turning out to be vehicles. There appear to be at least two stations for the underground, as well as other elevators nearly as massive as the one Maeve and Kwon are standing on - and several massive platforms that seem to descend even deeper into the ground.

For her part, Maeve says nothing, waiting for Joo-Eun's reaction.

[TheDarkDM]

Captain Palmer

Gritting his teeth against the pain, Palmer assessed the damage. Six inches of jagged armor plate had impaled his thigh, nailing him to the opposite wall. There was surprisingly little blood, but he knew that was only by virtue of the shrapnel blocking off most of the flow. Groaning as he re-positioned himself, Palmer removed his belt and wrapped it securely above the wound, clinching it tight with a gasp. Reaching across the devastated train to grasp at one of the few remaining hand rails, he pulled himself free and stood shakily. Reaching down to retrieve Blaine's abandoned camera, Palmer reached down to help up Tern.

"Come on soldier! You can lie down when you're dead! We're getting to the front of this train, now!"

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

Move! With an indelicate shove Rata almost threw herself upright as Palmer helped Tern. The young pilot didn't notice what they were doing though because she was staring at her reflection in the glass window of the train door ahead. Without a thought more than the simple need to keep moving she bolted forward.

[Jade_Tarem]

Blue Line Monorail

"Wait!" Tern blinks, clearly in shock, but grabs Rata's arm. "The shoe... do you still have it?"

Majordomo Network Studios

Drake held his breath as the VTOL tore the train car apart, but relaxed when he saw Palmer and the pilot still up. Drake followed the VTOL's line of flight, knowing that his scope was recording and that his superiors would want every detail. He took another shot at it, hoping to hit something sensitive, but it didn't seem to do much good.

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

"This isn't the time to fret about your outfit, train-nerd!" Rata shouted at Tern as she began yanking her arm away from her. "And get off me!" She almost screeches the second part. "Get off me, or I swear to God..." Snarling now she continues trying to yank her arm free.

[Jade_Tarem]

Blue Line Monorail

"Not that, pilot. The shoe is a stun grenade. We don't have time to softshoe our way through the next compartment, worrying about which of the passengers might be an assassin! Now take my shoe and throw it in there."

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

"Slow you down maybe, fat-arsed, fat-chested train-nerd!" She growled at Tern as she stops flailing uselessly and instead grabs back at Terns arm with her captured arms hand. "Let. Go." Her other hand was gripping the heel, but whether or not she intended to use it or not was a question of how good Gehirn's mental conditioning was, and how strong-willed Dr. Mittal had made her.


WP: 35; [roll0]

[Whiskeyjack]

"F-father, brother...is-is this the natural outcome of your work?" she stammers, hand clenching against the glass, pressing her nose against it and fogging it with her breath. "Bevelle and Midgar and Balamb Garden and pre-Impact New York and Seoul and Tokyo-1 and-and-and...everything...all rolled into one!" she breathes, face splitting in a grin as she looks everywhere.

As she starts to understand the scope and beauty, she sinks to her knees, hand still pressed against the glass. "Can...can I go to the forest? What's that pyramid? How do you have so many trees...and people? How many people are here? Do they all work for NERV? What do you use to power it? What's that pyramid? Do people here play Go? Can I go to the forest? Has my dad been here before? Do I really have to leave?" she looks at Maeve with big eyes.

[Jade_Tarem]

Blue Line Monorail

Tern nods and lets go of Rata's arm.

Embarkation Elevator

A bemused Maeve answers Joo-Eun's questions as best she can. Yes, she could probably go to the forest later. Yes, most everyone here worked for NERV. No, she didn't think Mr. Kwon had ever been here. She didn't know who did or did not play Go. The pyramid was the command center. No, she didn't know when or if Joo-Eun would leave.

Eventually the elevator reaches the bottom, and what appears to be an APC rolls into view, with a woman in a lab coat clinging to the outside. She hops off readily enough and strides breezily forward while a tinny voice states that the embarkation door is about to open.

When it does, air whips forward into the GeoFront, blasting the woman's lab coat back - it seems the air pressure is actually higher in the elevator. Maeve grins and introduces her. "Miss Kwon, this is Dr. Bethany McShane, the head of NERV's London-2 based Engineering Teams. Dr. McShane, this is Miss Kwon Joo-Eun." McShane smiles easily and steps forward, hand extended. "Delighted to meet you. Dr. Mittal would have been here too, but she's in the middle of analysis and isn't that sociable." Armed guards emerge from the APC, but don't seem particularly hostile, instead remaining near the vehicle. "I'm glad you made it in safely."

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

Rata, with her arm free of Tern, activated the heel grenade as had been explained to her, and threw it into the next compartment -- aiming it to hit the ceiling somewhere in the centre and bounce back down onto the floor in the same area. While the shoe sailed through the air Rata took cover to avoid getting herself in the blast of the stun grenade.

[Whiskeyjack]

Joo-Eun awkwardly takes a deep, long bow, catching an occasional peripheral glance at the doctor and the armed guards but mostly looking at the ground or other surroundings, head tilted down.

"S-seosang-nim, mannaso bang-gap sumneeda, she murmurs, then blushes, breaking into a slight sweat. She still doesn't look up. "Oh, ah, m-my apologies, h-how rude of me, I mean 'very nice to meets you, doctor.'

She doesn't offer her hand, just bows until it seems like it'd be appropriate for her to straighten. When she does she still looks at the ground, shoulders hunched together and shaking slightly as she eyes the soldiers.

[Jade_Tarem]

Blue Line Monorail

The stun grenade goes off with a deafening bang, and light flashes through the windows, casting the carnage in the car into sharp and bizarre relief for a moment. The agents of NERV, however, are able to quickly push through the ensuing chaos and into the lead car.

As Rata, Tern, and Palmer pile into the front car, the man up front shrieks "What's going on? Is this a robbery?"

Tern ignores him and grabs the slightly bulky phone tethered to the controls, pushing it at Palmer. "Here, this one!"

GeoFront

McShane eventually lowers her hand and, following Kwon's gaze, gives an unconcerned wave. "Don't worry about the guards. We're on a Level Two alert right now due to the attacks on you and Unit 04's Pilot, but that won't last forever. In the meantime, I'm your self-appointed guide through the science wing and the Eva hangar, but it's a bit of a trick getting around on foot. That's what the APC is for!"

"Couldn't we take the railcar to-"

"Down for maintenance." McShane cuts her off before turning her attention back to Joo-Eun. "How about it, Miss Kwon? Interested in seeing more of NERV?"

[Whiskeyjack]

Joo-Eun looks up a bit, tendrils of curiosity wending through her fear at seeing the soldiers. "U-um...so, so sorry seonsong-nim, I-I-I'm just n-not used...to...seeing...or, erm, being around m-men with guns. N-not even when Second B-Brother started his com...compulsory service." She gives another awkward bow, her eyes mostly focused on the personnel carrier until she fully processes what the doctor said.

"Unit 4? S-so...there's m-more than just the...the one that looks like Badtz-Maru, t-the one marked 0...08?" She looks up a bit, blushing as she stares at the soldiers through her bangs, then shifts to look at the doctor, gaze averting again quickly. "I, uh, saw a picture of, a, um...p-pauldron or something," she explains. "I suppose, ah, y-yes...if I'm to, um, work here...or whatever, then y-yes I'd like to see it...I mean everything,oh, but is that other girl o-okay? Wait, she-she's the pilot for that battle robot?! I............um, so sorry, b-but don't the Geneva Conventions o-or...some other UN thing...o-outlaw ch-child soldiers or something?" She's completely red-faced at this point, eyes starting to well up again, and she quickly glances at the APC and back at the elevator.

[TheDarkDM]

Captain Palmer

Grabbing the phone out of Tern's hands, Palmer quickly input the number for the connection to the Geofront. Pressing the receiver to his ear, he was gratified by the rapid clicking that indicated the call being processed through NERV security. Within moments, female voice came through the other end.

"NERV Operations."

"This is Palmer, authorization code Alpha-5-4-7-3-Gamma-Zulu. We have a Code-17 above the Blue Line Monorail, one hostile VTOL. Initiate Serenity Protocol. I repeat, initiate Serenity Protocol."

[Jade_Tarem]

Elevated Track Segment 333 (Currently Serving: Blue Line Monorail)

The VTOL pilot brought his craft to a hover over the harbor, training his weapons on the elevated rail passing over it. There were additional aircraft scrambling from the UN base nearby, so this attack would have to finish off the idiots from NERV.

Fortunately, finishing them wouldn't be a problem. "Arm missiles one through four."

"Copy, arming missiles one through four." His gunner responded with the speed and professionalism that he had come to expect. "Missiles one through four armed. Seeking lock... sixty four seconds to range..."

Blue Line Monorail/London-2/Command Center

The woman on the line was immediately recognizable as Warrant Officer Perkins, who frequently handled HQ's defense coordination when Hitzig was off duty and had a voice that sounded like it came from an Outback Steakhouse commercial - and an eyepatch that suggested that she'd been part of the horrific post-Impact fighting in Australia. She didn't waste time asking what was the matter, either - she simply ran a vocal analysis on Captain Palmer, checked his code, and initiated (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1grf4MRuv4) the ironically-named Serenity Protocol. "Aye sir, Serenity Protocol active."

The Angel Attack alarm didn't sound, but in many ways London-2 responded exactly like such an attack was taking place. Commercial aircraft were ordered to ground or diverted from London-2's airspace and all ships were ordered to cut engines to zero. Traffic wasn't halted entirely, but every toll booth and gated intersection locked up.

Then the defense grid came online. Missile racks popped out of hillsides surrounding the city, turrets with stationary versions of Pallet Guns mounted on them rose from building tops, from parks, from empty lots, and even out of the waters of the harbor.

Owing to the MAGI's coordination and sickening numbers of drills, it took a whopping thirty five seconds to totally lock down the city - and most of that was Perkins running her checks on Captain Palmer's credentials. It took only slightly longer to bring the guns online and run an abbreviated system check. Sensing no catastrophic errors, the turrets received their targeting data, and rapidly received a target in the form of an anomalous Dragonfly VTOL hovering over the harbor. The aircraft was determined to be of UN make, and the onboard computer was queried for the correct IFF codes.

It did not have the correct IFF codes.

Elevated Track Segment 333 (Currently Serving: Blue Line Monorail)

The VTOL Gunner's view was suddenly obscured by something huge - a massive cannon that swung around to point at the Dragonfly. "What the...? How did they get it online? They can't..."

The pilot, with a clearer view of the weapon, simply pulled back into the best evasive maneuver the large craft was capable of, but in hover mode his options were limited. "Fire dammit! Just fire already!" Around the city, he could see other guns trained on his craft. "Oohhh, sh-"

London-2

The pallet gun's deficiencies were already a matter of some public spectacle. It was the kind of government bungle everyone loves - spending millions to develop and produce a weapon that even NERV's optimists didn't think would work out very well against the Angels. But when the Angels were removed as the bottom line, the gun wasn't very terrible at all. It was reasonably accurate, powerful, and worked in virtually all conceivable combat conditions, including pure vacuum and underwater.

And, while easy to forget, the system was primarily a modification of a weapon normally carried on battleships. The MAGI-assisted targeting subroutine calculated the necessary ballistics, and then, in a fit of boredom, began attempting to determine the probability that the members of the Dragonfly's crew would feel pain before they died. Then it obeyed the commands of its controllers to fire.

The VTOL was not "shot down" so much as it was simply obliterated in midair. What few pieces of the large aircraft made it into the harbor were no larger than the average recliner and pronounced unrecoverable.

Blue Line Monorail

Perkins' voice comes back over the line. "Target Destroyed... expected casualty rate 100%. Turret shots have landed in the English Channel. As it stands, Serenity Protocol will remain in effect until you have returned to base." There's a pause, and she can be heard tapping keys. "You'll transfer to the Black Line at the next station; we have additional Section 2 agents there. Awaiting further orders... do you have injured, sir?"

GeoFront

"We're not thrilled about it ourselves. The Valentine Treaty overrode that restriction in extreme circumstances. It will make more sense as you learn more about the Evangelion." McShane shakes her head, and gestures to the front of the APC. "Come on," she says brightly, "We'll start with the GeoFront itself and then get to the good stuff."

The APC sets off (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1grf4MRuv4) at a brisk pace, if not a hurried one, but this proves to be a good thing as the enormity of the GeoFront would make a slower tour infeasible. McShane makes a decent enough guide, and even through the disorienting shift in circumstances Kwon learns a lot about the nature of the GeoFront itself and a lot of the utilities built into it by NERV, including the linear magnetic rail system and the command structure.

In fact, it isn't lost on Joo-Eun that since the 'operations director' and the commanders were out, McShane would seem to be the ranking officer on the base, but no explanation was given for why the Engineering Lead was giving a tour. It only made sense if Joo-Eun was some kind of VIP...

You can ask whatever questions you want here, and have them answered 'in transit' - because next post the group finally unites!

[TheDarkDM]

Captain Palmer

As the adrenaline of the chase began to ebb, Palmer became acutely aware of the grievous wound in his leg. Looking down, he saw that despite the makeshift tourniquet his slacks were stained with his own blood.

"Roger that, Warrant Officer - kill confirmed. We have an affirmative on injured, civilian and NERV. Have local EMT services standing by, but don't allow them access - our priority is assuring the safety of the first child."

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

"Idiot." Rata scoffs at the driver as the urgency of reaching the front car dissipated. "God cowers in Heaven, and you think anybody on Earth is stupid enough to believe they'd get away with robbing a train in London-2?" Smiling maliciously Rata contents herself with thinking how stupid the man is as she leans herself against a wall.

[Whiskeyjack]

Joo-Eun holds her face very near the armored windows, peering out at the strange subterranean sights, each more marvelous than the last. She's especially started--and gleeful--when a small group of tiny deer emerge from one of the forested areas to graze, only to dash back into cover when the APC rolls a little too close. But despite the sense of wonder, she has about a hundred questions.

"S-so, how did you excavate this again?" she asks nervously. "The sides seem al-almost too perfect for some kind of strip-mine drilling, and the shape would be all off, not to mention I-ah, there was never any press on this and it seems like...like it would be hard not to notice this going on. Especially with the city right on top.

"How does it look like there's natural sunlight when we're so far underground?

"What does it run on, n-nuclear power?

"Why's that thing a pyramid, it looks so out of place, p-pardon me for saying so!

"How many different things retract into here?! Oh, and you can launch aircraft out too?

"Those trains are great! How many people can they transport...how m-many people actually live down here?! Do they all work for the UN and NERV?"

As the tour starts to wind down, Joo-Eun gives another awkward bow, this time sitting. "Thank you for the sightseeing, seonsang-nim, um, but I have a q-question about all this. Um. If I have th-the command hierarchy right, you're in charge right now, yes? W-well...what makes me so important to get a tour f-from the person in charge of this w-whole facility? I-it's very flattering," she says quickyl, lowering her eyes, "And the tour was a-amazing, but s-surely you have more i-important things to do t-than...than to just, um, show around some kid," she finishes quietly, looking at the floor. "I get the feeling that, um, the average new employee...doesn't get this kind of treatment," she murmurs after a few seconds of silence.

[Jade_Tarem]

Majordomo Network Studios

Lyle Drake pocketed his wallet, having finished retrieving his identification from the guards who'd taken it from him. The ID had told them a great deal - that he was who he claimed to be, that he had every right to be there, doing what he was doing and going where he was going. It had told them not to log this incident in their duty logs, and not to search or even question him about the very large bag he was carrying. They didn't even raise an eyebrow when the bag let out a remarkably authentic groan on the way out the door.

Out in the street - now jam packed with traffic, thanks to the Serenity Protocol - Drake gave the bag an unfriendly thump. "Hush. I know you wanted to be in the news, but you'll have to settle for Miss Tern interviewing you instead. You're not that photogenic anyway."

Knave's Station

As the damaged train pulls in, Palmer and Rata quickly discover that Perkins has a talent for understatement. "Additional Section 2 agents" could easily be mistaken for all the Section 2 agents - the terminal is nearly packed with black suited NERV personnel and even a few of the Khaki-clad guards with red berets and submachine guns. Were an assassin to reveal himself, it is entirely possible that the genuine NERV guards could stone the attacker to death by throwing their guns at him.

No such dramatic reveals occur, though, and the Black Line train takes off straight toward the HQ terminal without a hitch - and without any passengers save Rata, Palmer, Tern, and the trauma team from NERV's medical ward on board.

They make good use of their time - going through the preliminaries for removing Palmer's shrapnel bit, helping Tern to clean up, and trying to help Rata clean up and settling for giving her a towel and a bowl of water after being rejected.

It isn't long before the train pulls into the GeoFront Terminal - the line primarily ran underground - where they're greeted by the site of an APC rolling in...

GeoFront

"We didn't excavate it." McShane says, almost mischievously. "The cavern was discovered after the original London was nuked, and London-2 was built over it even as HQ was built into it."

***

"That's one of the mysteries of the GeoFront that we haven't solved yet - natural sunlight seems to come down from the dome during the day, although there's no visible sun. At night, the illumination is reduced to about that of a moonlit night. We have artificial lighting too, of course, but nothing compared to that of the dome itself."

***

"Nuclear, Hydroelectric, and some wind and geothermic - not to mention the massive solar panels at the north edge of the city. London-2 has a somewhat extensive power grid, even considering how big it is, and on a normal day NERV runs on that."

***

"The pyramid shape was settled on for a number of reasons, but the primary benefit from an engineering standpoint was that it was that it offered the most efficient support for the MAGI supercomputers in terms of cooling lines, power, and connections."

While McShane goes on about that, Maeve winks at Joo-Eun. "Also, triangular armored plating was cheaper than we expected."

***

"At the moment? Nothing actually retracts into here. We're working on the tracks, locks, and armor necessary to recess the buildings into the ground during an Angel attack, but the project is behind schedule due to all the issues we had with the amphibious defense systems and vehicles." The doctor looks up at the construction going on overhead. "Well, they're making progress, at least."

***

McShane watches one of the rail cars shoot by. "Well, it depends on the situation. The passenger trains are the ones you've seen around London-2 already, and they usually have a maximum occupancy of about forty per car. Other, more specialized units carry weaponry, ammunition, and even the Evangelions themselves."

***

As Joo-Eun finishes her question, the APC rolls around to a stop near one of the terminals for the underground, and what appears to be a medical team rolls a gurney out with a man on it, heading toward what seems to be a modification on an ambulance as fast as they can.

A few guards and other medical staff walk out, accompanied by a disheveled looking woman who looks oddly familiar, and a girl with bright blue and white hair and fairly pale skin walks out, amber eyes seeking out the APC with some hostility. It doesn't escape anyone's attention that her clothing, and that of the other woman, is heavily bloodstained...

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

Rata, the bloodstained girl with the hostile, now fixed her stare on Kwon. "You!" Rata barks at her. "You're the reason for all this!" Stomping toward her Rata looked like she was on the verge of decking Kwon, but she stopped short just before striking distance -- just around three feet. "You're the new pilot..." A derisive snort issued from Rata before she continued. "Yeah you are. Just look at you!" Then, characteristically, Rata held on her hand -- her face angled away from her while her stare remained on her. "I'm Rata. Rata King, and there's a pretty good chance I'll end up dying to keep you alive, so I'll say this in advance: don't **** up."

[Whiskeyjack]

It all happens so fast. One minute on the tour, the next watching an image of horror, pain, and carnage as the injured man is rushed away and the strange girl confronts her. But Joo-Eun was raised right, she knows the proper formalities to be observed even when being yelled at...

"P-pleased to......." Joo-Eun begins reflexively and she's mid-bow before she processes the words. Joo-Eun freezes and straightens stiffly, her eyes wide and skin pale. "Wh-wh-what? How-why would someone attack you be-because of me?! Pilot....? Oh no, th-there must be some mistake Rata-King-ssi, I-I......I'm not a pilot..." she giggles nervously for a second, painfully aware that she's the only one laughing. Her brow breaks out in a cold sweat.

Joo-Eun looks around frantically at Maeve and the doctor. "Tell her it's not true! Tell her th-that's not why I'm here! That's not wh-why......I didn't do anything! I'm not a...a pilot of anything! Tell her I--I do research! Why won't you tell her?!" She starts to shout hysterically in a mix of Korean and English.

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

"Whoops." Rata said in an entirely unconvincing manner. "Didn't anybody tell her?" Now she attempted to feign horror, but the massive grin on her face at the outcome of her actions betrayed any sense of guilt. At that moment Rata gave up the charade and proceeded to grin from top to bottom. She looked very much like the proverbial cat that caught the canary.

[Whiskeyjack]

Between the bomb dropped by Rata, the car chase, all these big reveals and the sights of the GeoFront, Joo-Eun just can't take it anymore.

None of them...I didn't get a straight answer from any of them...and they expect me to-to...to just do what they say, to kill people?!

With a strangled cry she wrenches open the door to the APC, clumsily half-steps, half-falls from the vehicle with her bag in hand. She takes off in a mad dash away from the people, the train, and the road, towards the nearest natural site - forest, meadow, whatever.

[Jade_Tarem]

GeoFront - APC

The bespectacled woman looks at Maeve. "You didn't tell her? I thought she was being remarkably calm about all this..."

"I... I was getting to it!"

McShane actually plants her face into her palm, her cheer finally gone. "This is why we can't have nice things." She sighs and looks up. "You'd best go find her before she gets mistaken for a spy and shot."

Maeve nods and hops out of the APC, heading in the same direction Kwon had taken.

McShane also steps out of the APC and turns to Rata, the transitional lenses in her glasses darkening in the faux-noon light. Her grin has reappeared, but there's nothing cheerful about it. "Would you like to take a little trip with me, Rata?"

GeoFront - ???

*SHOOM*

The glade would be peaceful if not for the linear rail system sending massive platforms past overhead.

*SHOOM*

Despite the noise, the area isn't devoid of life. Fish can be seen swimming in the small pond, and somehow there are even insects flitting about.

*SHOOM*

Not to mention an older woman. Not objectively old, but still senior to both Maeve and Dr. McShane. The stranger has long blond hair cascading back over the standard NERV uniform - the phrase "GeoFront Services" is stenciled over the left breast pocket. "Trouble?"

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

"No." The girl said quite plainly. "Of course, I'm assuming I actually have a choice, but... well, that's not how things work around here." Resigned to the 'trip' Rata made her way toward McShane, but despite her resignation she was still carrying herself with confidence and pride -- her pessimistic view of Nerv, and the people that worked for them, firm in the face of the mirthless grin before her.

[Jade_Tarem]

GeoFront - APC

"Awesome. This way."

McShane leads Rata toward the massive pyramid that houses the command deck, but stops halfway there and pops open a maintenance hatch in the side of the road. After climbing down, she continues walking down the tunnel, finally stopping in the middle of a snarl of plumbing and wiring, marked only by tags with esoteric designations on them like 'CDFOC 122-187' and 'MCL5'.

Without warning, she starts pointing out the various components and naming them. "Cooling line for the MAGI. Fiber optics for the command deck. Plumbing for the hydroponics and fisheries. Backup line from the third emergency generator. Land line to the phone at Officer Hawkins' desk. Toxic disposal line from the bio labs, and clean water to the emergency plumbing in those same labs. And this is the air conditioner that keeps the temperature under one hundred degrees in here."

"I love machines." She says, in a sudden segue. "Even big, complicated systems of machines. They're durable and reliable. If designed correctly, maintained regularly, and used for their intended purpose, they always do what they're supposed to." She throws her weight against one collection of pipes, which doesn't budge. "Not like people. People will do all kinds of crazy things - sometimes for no reason at all. Even when they're made right and properly cared for." McShane turns around. "A fun bit of trivia - there's actually a gap in the surveillance, right here. There was no room for any bugs or cameras after all of the other stuff we had to run through this spot. With that in mind... what, exactly is your problem?"

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

Rata follows McShane dutifully, but not without some confusion when she starts leading her through what could only be described as the guts of the GeoFront pyramid. Her confusion intensified when McShane began explaining what everything was so much that when she mentioned the lack of surveillance it took more that a few moments for the meaning of it to sink in. "What are you talking about?" Rata barked at her as she quickly assessed the distance between them and, if needed, corrected it to the requisite three feet. "And why do you need to babble about it here?"

[Jade_Tarem]

GeoFront - Maintenance Line

"It isn't that complicated." Weirdly, McShane is still grinning. "You ditched your injured commanding officer to come terrorize the new pilot. Then you put on a display of bad attitude and practically dared everyone to say something about it. I'm asking you why. I don't think it's an unreasonable question."

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

"You know why." Rata barked again. "Or are you too dense to realize it? News flash, genius! Taking a girl from her father doesn't endear you to her! The only reason I do anything -- anything -- you people tell me to do is because this is what my father told me was my purpose. I'm here to smash the Angels into the ground and tear apart their AT field so that you, and that Kwon girl, can turn the world around me into Hell." Rata's little hands were clenched as she continued on. "I'm not here to be friends with you bastards..."

[Jade_Tarem]

GeoFront - Maintenance Shaft

"Turning the world into Hell. Now that would be quite a project, wouldn't it?" McShane laughs. "I don't know if you've forgotten - or maybe it never occurred to you to begin with - but however much you might hate the organization we're working for, the 'world' you describe includes your father and anything else you might happen to like." She holds up a hand to forestall another comment. "Now, you say that you aren't here to make friends with all of the 'bastards' who work for this organization. But you could be. Or you should be. Do you understand what I'm getting at?"

[Whiskeyjack]

Joo-Eun ignores the shout from Maeve behind her and just keeps running, straight into the trees.

I can't get away. Even if I could, I can't get out of this place. What am I doing? They'll make me do whatever they want anyway...and if they don't they'll take it out on Papa and Second Brother and Younger Sister. If the UN doesn't those stinking Chinese will. But...it's all just too much!

Breaking the treeline, Joo-Eun pauses a moment before plunging on. Quickly she's gotten turned around so she just keeps going deeper into the woods, or what she thinks is deeper anyway. I'm sure ten cameras are watching me right now, she thinks.

"O-oh. So sorry to have disturbed you," she says sullenly, eyes welling up. "U-um. I'm not supposed to be here. I know your people will find me and-an make me do what you want. I just...I just want a little...time."

She sits, or more appropriately sinks to the ground, on a big flat rock near the pool. And looks at the fish.

After a couple minutes she speaks again. "This reminds me of my grandmother's house. Except for the railway. It...I...this is nice," she says quietly, dipping her hands into the pool and rubbing her face with the cold water before looking back up at the woman.

Quickly she scrambles to her feet and bows politely. "Oh, s-so sorry. Where are my manners? I'm Kwon Joo-Eun. This is my first day here, I came from Korea a couple weeks ago. They-they just told me I'm supposed to...to be an Evangelion pilot. They got such a kick out of seeing the dumb Asian girl freak out, like I should be happy I'm here getting chased and shot at and should be grateful I can put it on my resume. " The bitter words just come rushing out. She looks back at the water, tears welling up again. "I don't want to kill people," she whispers. "But I don't suppose that matters, does it." It's not a question.

Let me know if the older woman was, in fact, not talking to me.

[Jade_Tarem]

GeoFront - ???

The lady bows back. "My name is Victoria. It's nice to meet you, Kwon Joo-Eun." She takes a seat next to Kwon at the lakeside. "That does sound like something worth freaking out over. And whether or not you want to kill people always matters. It's what separates the monsters from the merely desperate." Victoria stares into the water for a second, then fishes something out of her pack. "Well, it seems like whoever is supposed to be on security fell asleep at their station. Care for a game to pass the time?" She brandishes a fairly large touchscreen computer, although it seems to be a bit sturdier than average and has the NERV logo stamped on it. "This thing comes with Chess, Checkers, Othello, and even Go." She smirks. "But I should warn you - I never lose."

[Whiskeyjack]

Despite herself, Joo-Eun smiles slightly though she refrains from looking directly at the woman. "Pleased to meet you, Victoria-seonbae. That, ah, that would be nice. I'm. S-sorry for all that it just---" she stops and takes a breath. "A game would be lovely. Your choice, seonbae. I don't make a point of losing either!" she adds.

After a few minutes, she says quietly, "What's it like? Living here? Working with---near, those robots?"

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

Staring at McShane as if he'd sprouted a second head -- and given the circumstances that necessitation the creation of Nerv that isn't off the table -- Rata's mouth gaped ever so slightly. "What? Shut up! I know what I'm doing, so shut up!" Then Rata turned on her heel and faced off in the opposite direction. Thankfully it didn't take her getting lost to realize she didn't know her way back. She could risk trying to remember the way McShane had come... and as she realized she couldn't remember because she'd been acting smug her face went even redder than it was. "Which way leads back..." Rata finally managed without turning to face McShane.

[TheDarkDM]

Captain Palmer

Lying in an emergency gurney on the Black Line, Palmer finally allowed himself to relax. Holstering his gun, he directed a look towards the paramedics that made it quite clear he would not be disarming himself. He waved away the anesthesia as they went to work removing the shrapnel, his body shaking with the pain of the operation. Any other member of NERV might have called him crazy, but while the pain was intense it was also familiar, the long accepted pain of battlefield medicine, and he needed to be sharp if they were going to get ahead of this attack.

The paramedics finished their initial work as the train pulled into the Geofront Terminal, stepping aside as a subordinate delivered a secured radio to Palmer. Immediately, he was barking orders, paying little attention to the APC that was slowly coming to a halt nearby.

"This is Palmer. I want full forensics teams at every confirmed incident location - full sweep of the scene as well as surrounding area. Put out an alert to all domestic security forces that terrorists have struck a rail line, and provide them any pertinent details we discover. We need to deflect media attention away from the Pilots - have PR fabricate an agenda for our attackers. And by all that is holy don't let any press near the incident sites until we've swept them clean. I'll be at command in 15, and I expect a full debrief when I arrive, particularly on how a hostile force was able to cripple our communications in our own city...yes, in the infirmary if it's necessary! Now-"

It was only then, as he was about to be wheeled onto a medical transport, that Palmer noticed McShane and Joo-Eun by the APC, and more importantly Rata stalking towards them. His eyes widened in anticipation of what was to come, but even he couldn't have predicted Joo-Eun's blind flight from the Terminal.

"Bloody hell!"

Before the paramedics could react, Palmer had yanked the IV from his arm and was off the gurney, running after Joo-Eun as well as he could. As she plunged through a light copse of trees, Palmer began swearing in such proficient and vulgar Korean as to embarrass a particularly vulgar sufferer of tourettes. Though he was slower than Joo-Eun, she left a trail that was easy to follow, and it was not long after her introduction to Victoria that he stalked into the clearing, his leg bleeding again, still muttering explosively vulgar Korean under his breath before he saw them.

"Miss Kwon!"

Coming to a halt, Palmer managed a slight smile.

"I'd appreciate it if you'd stop running - I'm somewhat short on good legs at the moment."

Seeing Victoria rise to salute, Palmer waved her back into her seated position. Taking a few stiff steps, he lowered himself down beside them.

"At ease, technician. Now, Miss Kwon, why don't you tell we what my Pilot said that made you run headlong into the wilderness?"

[Whiskeyjack]

The second that Palmer breaks through the tree, Joo-Eun is on her feet, a scared animal look in her eyes; the doe that's seen the wolf and trying to figure out which way to bolt to not run straight into an ambush.

But she relaxes, paling when she sees his leg, blood staining the tourniquet to a point that it's jut welling over and beading out, trickling down onto his uninjured lower leg. "I....so sorry," she apologizes for what feels like the millionth time today. "Y-you should really sit, seonbae, and...oh, you command piloting op-operations? Um. I'm sorry for causing the trouble..." She bites her lip.

"Rata King-ssi. S-she said I was a...a...a pilot. Of y-your combat robot. L-look, I-I'm no pilot. I don't even play flight simulator games! I'd just get in the way, get King-ssi killed like she said I would a-and I'm s-so-sorry I caused all this. I don't know how but it must be true, right? W-why would she lie about it? It must be my fault! S-she lives here, she knows how it is and now me coming here has killed.....how many people?"

Her eyes are welling up with tears. "I just want to go home. I-I know I can't. B-but. People don't hate me there. They may not like me but...they don't hate me! An-and you felt like you needed to chase me on a torn-up leg, and now I bet you'll hate me too, j-just like King-ssi." she mumbles.

[Jade_Tarem]

GeoFront - Maintenance Shaft

"Why run? The things you hate lie in every direction. The least you could do is talk to me and learn something."

GeoFront - ???

Victoria leans back. "Goodness. With all due respect, Captain, you really ought to go find the medical team again - and I think the Sub-commander was looking for you, too. You might be tough but you aren't immortal. I believe Miss Kwon was just looking for a few minutes of peace. Would it help if I promised to bring her to the command center when we're done?"

[Whiskeyjack]

Joo-Eun just stands there, looking alternatively at and away from Palmer's leg, feeling like she's in the middle of some strange social struggle loaded with factors she doesn't understand or even really perceive.

She just waits to see the soldier's response, though her brow furls at the amount of blood he seems to be losing.

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

"What are you talking about?" Derision thick in her voice the young girl turns to face the woman of science. "Nerv, the world, my father. What?" A pregnant pause ensues. "What!?" Another pause, and then Rata stepped beyond her three foot limit. Her fist was balled. "Go on, say it."

[Jade_Tarem]

GeoFront - Maintenance Shaft

"I'm talking about you, of course." McShane shakes her head. "I don't suppose you've read the Odyssey? Even for school? No? Well it's about Odysseus, the King of Ithaca, trying to get home after the Trojan War through trickery and the occasional act of extreme violence. But it's also about his son, Telemachus, and his wife, Penelope." She pulls out a small cigarette and lights (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vAj9kDoeac&feature=relmfu) it directly under a "no smoking" sign. "Now, try to follow me on this..."

"Penelope was in a pretty bad situation. Since Odysseus was taking his sweet time getting home, a hundred suitors moved into his house and started courting his wife. They told themselves and each other that he was dead, and tried to convince Penelope of it too. She disagreed, but women in ancient Greece didn't get to be taken seriously even if they were queens in a fantasy epic. In fact, for a woman to have power, she had to either be magical or very, very sneaky. Penelope wasn't magical, but she was very clever."

"So! She decided to stall - not just for a little while, but for ten whole years. She played the suitors off against one another, found ways to dangle what they wanted just out of reach, set various conditions for marriage that seemed reasonable but were actually impossible. And she did all of this because she knew it wouldn't last forever - that Odysseus would return one day - and that she merely had to stall for time until she had what she wanted. It looked like she didn't have any choices. One woman did not defy one hundred men - that just didn't happen in that time and place. But she did it anyway, and made them think they were in control the whole time. And at the end of it, she even tricked Odysseus into revealing who he was. She was the only character in two whole fantasy epics to trick the trickster king. Agamemnon described her as the ideal woman, and in many ways she was. Clever, strong, kind, beautiful, and powerful far beyond her means."

She drops the cigarette and steps on it. "This brings us to you. You, in several ways, are the ideal woman. Your genetic structure is nearly flawless. You're one of fewer than ten people who can synchronize with an Evangelion. You have an eidetic memory. Your coordination and muscle density are well above average. You will never get cancer and will only die of old age sometime in your fifteenth decade of life. And for all that... you're a walking wad of hate. Why? Because you say you don't have choices."

She looks squarely at Rata, still smiling. "You're a pure bampot, you know that? You think everyone at NERV wants to be here? That's insane. We're here because the world goes boom if we're not. And there you are making everyone miserable. For what? When you go off on the new pilot, it delays your reunion with dear daddy. When you take a swan dive down a hole in the Evangelion, it reduces the odds that you'll see dear daddy again. Not because of NERV, either - it's you. You can't see a way to get what you want right now, so you focus all of your energy into making things terrible. And this? It isn't even permanent. The fastest way to get away from NERV is to beat the Angels and make the organization irrelevant, but that seems to have escaped you somehow. And that 'beating the Angels' thing involves more than just getting in the Evangelion and not dying - it's a massive 24/7 effort for everyone, so the least you can do is not be a brat about it."

She starts walking. "I guess that's all I have to say. Assuming that you hate NERV so much that you're not willing to follow me out, I'm just going to leave you with a question - do you think Penelope could have held the suitors off for ten years if she had told them 'Piss off, I'm only doing this because Odysseus told me to?'"

[TheDarkDM]

Captain Palmer

Now close enough to see both Joo_Eun and Victoria clearly, Palmer's eyebrows rose a fraction, as though he were somehow surprised, before his expression returned to normal. Focusing again on Joo-Eun, he responded in excellent Korean.

"Director of all operations, actually, so long as they aren't under the purview of the science division. And I assure you, Miss Kwon, that you are anything but hated. Rata's issues go far deeper tha disliking you, and the rest of us are very happy you're here."

Pulling a packet of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket, Palmer ignited a lighter that seemed to appear in his hand from nowhere. Taking a long drag, he examined the sky of the Geo-Front before Victoria spoke. Turning to her, he gave a slight nod.

"I wouldn't worry - they aren't playing my song. Still, you have a point."

Bringing the NERV radio to his mouth, Palmer began to issue orders.

"Security, this is Palmer. Stand down the search for Miss Kwon, I've located her at junction Beta-56. Inform medivac of my location, and get a security detail down here to escort Miss Kwon to headquarters when she's ready. Palmer out."

Standing, Palmer gave the two Go players a last lingering look before snuffing out his cigarette.

"Please try and be ready soon. Given the events of today, I don't think it's wise for you to be outside a secured area longer than is necessary."

Turning, Palmer limped towards the approaching sirens of the ambulance, pushing through the treeline to one of the access roads that crisscrossed the Geofront. Flagging them down, he allowed himself to be laid back on the gurney and driven back to headquarters.

[Jade_Tarem]

GeoFront - ???

With Palmer's departure, Victoria returns to the game and the conversation as though nothing had happened. "You asked me, a moment ago, what working around the Evas was like."

There's a long pause, interrupted only by the linear rail system firing overhead. "It's terrifying. Not just because of what those things are, but because of what brought them into existence. Remember, the world already had armies and tanks and VTOLs and fighters and N2 mines. Even so... the greatest minds in the world took a look at the approaching threat and decided that we needed something even more terrible than all of that, just to survive."

"Perhaps you'd be willing to trade questions and answers with me?" Victoria places her next stone, and seems to be willing to start a ko fight. "Balanced against the destruction of the known world, which principles would you be willing to hold onto? Essentially, which moral restrictions or social taboos would you be willing to adhere to even if doing so would mean the end of everything?"

NERV Medical Ward

It isn't long before Palmer is in a bed in NERV's medical ward. His first visitor, surprisingly, is not Sub-commander Yin, but rather a face from the past.

Diana White walks in, accompanied by one of the now-ubiquitous Section 2 agents and wearing a large, gaudy visitor's ID badge. "They told me and I still don't believe it. The first terrorist attack on London-2 in five years and you're right in the middle of it, getting shot at. What are we going to do with you?"

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

As McShane talked the feeling of anger that had boiled inside Rata didn't fade, but it was accompanied by another feeling. Together they mixed together in her mind and on her face. Slowly, as McShane continued to talk a grudging ambivalence began to form. "..." Rata couldn't, or wouldn't, acknowledge that McShane was right but she didn't need to. The things McShane had said were settling in Rata's mind. "Nice." She said with hostility. Despite the hostility in her voice it hadn't come from the same deep, dark place it had before and now sounded hollow. Despite herself she was forming a nice opinion of McShane and couldn't find that well of anger that had seemed bottomless only a few moments ago. "You're still a bunch of jackasses though..." Even this broad statement, despite the anger she tried to force out into her voice, came across as something other than what she might have hoped. Rata realized this as soon as the words were spoken, and searching her mind for something else to say she latched onto something Palmer had said earlier. "Skin-tight cat suits for teenagers? Seriously... only jackasses could come up with that."

[Jade_Tarem]

GeoFront -Maintenance Hatch

"Well, I heard the designer was Japanese." McShane shrugs. "You should have seen the test suits. Two words: arse cleavage." She pauses at a ladder. "Here we go. We're going to go visit the other jackasses."

The ladder leads up, emerging just outside Central Dogma. "I think we'll wait here for the ninth child. Could you... could you be civil this time?" McShane leans in and stage whispers. "I've sort of got a pool going. I'd be willing to split the winnings with you."

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

"A pool?" Eyebrow raised Rata leans her head back away from McShane. "On what, exactly, and how much, so far, exactly?"

[Whiskeyjack]

Joo-Eun is a little taken aback by Palmer's use of Korean. Of course he doesn't sound like a true native speaker, but he sounds even better than those Chinese agents stationed in Korea. (Korean) "O-oh. Um. T-thank you, seonbae. I promise not to be long," Joo-Eun says simply to the Captain as he leaves, still a little in shock.

She turns back to Victoria, playing silently as she thinks, attempting to block her ko and form a seki around the portions of the table in which Victoria has heavily invested, trying to force her into gote by piercing her pieces' liberation continuity at multiple points.

She mulls over Victoria's question for a moment before responding in English. "What would I be willing to give up? Hm, I-I suppose more...learned people than me wrote the Valentine Treaty and those exceptions that will make it ok for me to be forced to pilot a battle robot. That's--I mean...how can people criticize the history of-of Africa and South America for doing that, hen...when Britain and China and the United States are doing it now? It's hypocritical! B-but, if we're talking about, um, the Angels...w-well...if our plan is to beat them and continue our civilization, then...we may not need rules of war against them but we do nee to have rules between ourselves still. Wh-when you treat one enemy like a monster, you have to remember that not all enemies are monsters. Who's to say that Eva won't...won't be used against other people? Th-that's...morally unacceptable. If we needed Eva for our species to survive since nothing else would work against the space monsters...it's unacceptable to turn our only savior against other human beings, knowing they have nothing that can counter it..."

She looks Victoria in the eyes. "If preserving the species means losing our humanity, I don't think it's worth it. We live on as...as terrible things, as things that don't...don't know or care when they jut kill for convenience rather than necessity. Science...science shows that extinction events happen all the time. I-I don't think we have a moral right to exist as a species, any more than the moa or the quagga did before we wiped them out, or the dinosaurs or the megafauna that died with...ancient climate change and...and meteor impacts..."

She pauses a moment, touching her chin as she makes a move. "Wait...meteor...the dinosaurs were...well, they say they were wiped out by a meteor. And...and Second Impact was a meteor, right? Was the Mesozoic extinction event First Impact? Oh, but Maeve-seonbae said...it wasn't a meteor...so, what was it? What could...do so much damage and release so much energy, aside from a meteor or supervolcano or something? And it brought the Angels here, right, from space? Like...extraterrestrial bacteria that thrived in our biosphere?"

[Jade_Tarem]

GeoFront - Central Dogma

McShane's lab coat flaps out behind her as a gust of air rushes between the big pyramid's opening doors. "When and where you would begin to grow up, of course." As the pair heads toward the command lift, she elaborates. "The science team started adding to the pot about a month after you transferred to London-2. Chump change, mostly, but it's added up."

GeoFront - ???

"That's an interesting answer. The truth is that we don't know when First Impact occurred, and are only dimly aware of what happened. Research into that is ongoing." Victoria makes her own set of moves, designed to hamper Joo-Eun's efforts.

"I'm more interested in your other answer. Of all those I've talked to, you're not the first to be concerned with what the Evangelions will be used for after the Angels are gone, but you are the first to say that humans have no moral right to exist as a species, and that extinction might be preferable to some alternatives." Victoria frowns at the screen. "That said, the Angels do not, as nearly as we can determine, possess a sense of morality - and if they do it isn't one that we can comprehend. Do they have a greater right to the planet than we do because of it? Most would disagree. And if that's the case, are we justified in using any means to stop them, assuming that those means aren't turned against humans later?"

"And what of the humans that are the aggressors. If the people who attacked you today were to go after your friends and family, and you could stop them, would you? Even if it meant using the Eva?"

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

The girl's mouth flaps open and shut a few times at that declaration. "The hell?" She finally questioned. "I'm not sure if I'm okay with that..."

[Whiskeyjack]

"I don't know that anything has a moral right to exist. What makes us more deserving than dinosaurs or whales? Sentience? In...in the end, whatever happens to us, bacteria will inherit the earth til it's rendered sterile. Doesn't mean that bacteria have a moral right to it. It's just...science!" she shrugs, blocking one of Victoria's aggressive moves, frowning that she allowed herself to be put on the defensive.

At the other question she looks up. "If they went after my father or my siblings, I-I-I would kill them. Not out of objective morality. Instinct....family bonding...you know. And...we've already lost so much in my family. My...of course you know this. My older brother was there. With Dr. Katsuragi. When...when Second Impact happened. Where would you draw the line? Do you think we as a species has a right...it sounds like some weird Western and a Christian idea, pardon me for-for saying. That kind of idea...there's nothing like it in eastern beliefs...aside from Islam."

[Jade_Tarem]

GeoFront - Central Dogma

As the elevator doors close, McShane laughs. "Write that down. It will be the new NERV motto."

When the pair emerges onto the command deck, they find it more sparsely populated than usual. Officer Perkins looks back and seems to relax. "Good, you're here. There's been an incident at Pilot King's residence, and at the home where Pilot Kwon was staying."

Synchronizing timeline... Rata will need to wait for Kwon and Palmer to catch up to where she is. This likely won't take long, though.

GeoFront - ???

Joo-Eun's opponent hesitates before (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivxT0m4LfXg&feature=related) her next move. "Beliefs are important, no matter where they come from. The willingness to fight for them has been the root cause of everything that humanity has ever done." Victoria looks up and at the treeline - the sound of multiple vehicles can be heard. "It won't be long now before the guards come again, and it doesn't look like we're going to finish our game. You really are as good as they say, though." She stands up and pulls a pair of glasses out of one pocket, putting them on. The taller lady looks down at the sitting Joo-Eun, light shining off the glass lenses. "That tablet computer is my gift to you, Kwon Joo-Eun. Here at NERV you're going to see the best and worst of humanity - often at the same time." Human shapes can be seen through the trees, making progress toward the pair. "I'd also like to leave you with one other bit of advice - NERV is a puzzle with many layers, and nothing is what it seems to be on the surface. The pilots are the alpha and the omega of NERV - the bottom rung of the hierarchy and the most important people in it." She turns to leave, bowing in farewell. "We'll most certainly meet again. Good luck."

[Whiskeyjack]

"Th-thank you for the compliment, Victoria-seonbae. It's a shame we couldn't play longer. You're probably the best waeguk-saram baduk player I've ever played against! I hope we have the chance to play a full match sometime!" she adds.

Joo-Eun stands and bows deeply, giving a shy smile though no longer looking directly at the woman as she was during their philosophical conversation. "Oh, I really cannot accept this gift, it's far too nice. But-but the advice. I look forward to seeing you again, seonbae."

As Victoria leaves without allowing Joo-Eun to return the computer, Joo-Eun packs the tablet in her bag and waits for the security team to retrieve her, for a moment just existing and observing the GeoFront around her. Surprisingly serene as she ponders the woman's words about NERV. "I...I suppose I'm ready to see what's next," she murmurs to nobody in particular.

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

"Or how about, 'God's in his Heaven because we stole the key'?" The girl retorted as the elevator took them to their destination.

[Jade_Tarem]

GeoFront - ??? to Evangelion Primary Hangar

The soldiers do eventually come, and the APC completes its journey to the command center.

But first, it stops by the Evangelion hangar (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-1ZaAGBx1o).

Whenever not submerged in LCL or Bakelite, the separation walls could be retracted, allowing the Evangelions to be easily seen from the ground floor of the hangar. Unlike the GeoFront, this was an enclosed space without the benefit of the mysterious illumination that suffused the huge dome. Unfortunately, while the overhead lights blazed with the intensity of Super Trooper spotlights, the area was just too large for any one lighting system to handle, and as a result the bluish back-lighting behind the Evas did more to illuminate the ground floor than anything else, casting surreal shadows in every direction. Indeed, there actually were spotlights pointed at portions of the Eva units, where work crews could be seen making presumably adjustments to the electronics under the armor, their tool racks hanging from adjustable scaffolding. In particular, there were a number of men and women gathered to one side, swarming around a large tube with the words "__TRY PLU__" wrapped around it, and what conversation and shouts drift over to Joo-Eun seem to suggest that everyone is unhappy with some kind of rocket.

But the odd lighting did nothing to dampen the impossible perspective provided by the Evas themselves. Either one could easily crush the massive APC beneath one foot. Even obscured behind workers, restraints, locks, equipment, machinery, and the poor lighting, they looked like they could come to life at any moment.

There were some similarities, of course. Both were bipedal, both were obviously covered in armor. Both had stubby "wings" poking up from the shoulders, and both had a sort of stooped-over posture in the upper back that did nothing to lessen the sensation that they were looming over the other occupants of the hangar.

But there the similarities ended. The dull gray coloration of Unit 04 contrasted with the screaming neon green highlights. It looked almost like a haunted knight out of western folklore, magnified to the size of a civic center. The unit appears to be the larger of the two by a small margin, appearing somehow bulkier. A visor crosses the enormous "face" in a sinister V-Shape, darker patches within hinting at a pair of eyes.

By contrast, Unit 08 appears more alien. The dull black armor and bright, thin, glossy orange secondary coloration could be found on a tropical and dangerous insect, but the head belongs to no creature of this world - a single eye-like sensor dominates the face, with secondary clusters of lenses showing around it. The armor wraps around these, and depending on the angle it could once again be considered insect-like... or perhaps more nautical.

And for just a moment, as Joo-Eun steps out of the APC, the big eye on Unit 08 flickers with a dangerous silver light and swivels to track the APC.

It might have just been the imagination. Certainly no one else reacted to it, and any speculation on it is interrupted by a tall, dark-skinned man, covered in what appears to be a heavy-duty version of the standard NERV coveralls and a hardhat, running over. "Hello! So this is the new pilot? Nice to meet you!" He bows and then offers his hand. "I'm Tech Specialist Johnson."

[Whiskeyjack]

Joo-Eun just stares at the massive machine for several moments, it's color scheme obscured by the shifting shadows and bright lights. She sees...and somewhere within her feels the flash of light in the Eva's eyes and swallows a hard dry lump in her throat. She thinks about classic giant robot design, such as it is: Gundams were designed standin ramrod-straight with hard angles, shining white contrasted with navy and the distinctive V-shaped antenna. Each of these robots was hunchbacked, seemingly overbalanced forward or leaning into a strange leer; strangely painted, all organic lines. And no protrusions except for massive vertical, rounded-edge pauldrons akin to giant helicopter rotor blades. She swallows again, pulse rising, sweat sticking her hair to her forehead.

Several seconds after the tech speaks, Joo-Eun processes it and blushes, bowing and not looking at any part of him but his feet. "O-oh. I'm Kwon Joo-Eun, pleased to meet you, a-and...they tell me I'm a robot pilot. I guess," she stutters. Joo-Eun bows back, glances at his hand but does not extend her own, shifting her gaze quickly and looking around the hangar.

Her eyes shift between the massive bodies, the gear, the scale of people compared to them. "So...so there are j-just two of, 'us' pilots? Or...just two mobile suits? What, ah, what do you do, Johnson-seonbae? Are you an engineer?"

[Jade_Tarem]

Evangelion Hangar

"Oh yeah," he nods. "Just the two pilots in London-2. There's no control system sophisticated enough to allow a human to manually control all the functions of the Eva with just their hands and feet - it has to "synch" with the whole nervous system. Dr. Mittal can explain the particulars to you later." He looks up at Unit 08. "Unfortunately, very few humans have a compatible nervous system and ego. The long and short of it is that there's maybe a dozen people on the whole planet who can actually make one of these move, and we haven't found all of them yet - and all of them were born after second impact. You're the ninth child discovered who can do it. The rest are either stationed at the other NERV bases... or are Rata King." He gives a mock shudder.

"As for me, I am indeed an engineer, although I'm more on the systems end of things under Dr. McShane. I'm in charge of operations in the Evangelion Hangar, including the maintenance, upgrade, and repair schedules." He gestures vaguely at the units behind him. "They've gone all out on these units. The head on Unit 08 has more fancy electronics packed into it than some modern militaries."

[TheDarkDM]

Captain Palmer

Setting aside the security report in his hand, Palmer's face lit up with a genuine smile.

"Well, a parade would be nice. How have you been, Diana?"

[Jade_Tarem]

NERV Medical Ward

"Oh, you know how my work is. If I'm not in transit between Japan, Germany, and England, then someone's knickers get in a twist." She takes the seat next to the cot. "The whole UN is in an uproar over some of Commander Cross's latest changes. The simulation results are actually being reviewed right now, along with Mr. Yin's press conference, so that should quiet most of the complaints, but you can expect a pretty volatile reaction after the first Angel shows up." She irritatedly blows a stray strand of hair away from her face. "I'll warn you - there is literally no possible level of performance on NERV's part that won't draw someone's ire. If NERV performs perfectly with no collateral damage, they'll say you're being overfunded. If Third Impact happens, you can expect at least one angry phone call before the world ends." She grins. "We need you to just walk outside and stare at any Angels until they go away, and we need you to do it for free. Can you manage that?"

[Whiskeyjack]

"I, ah...saw something about...about the sensor suite," she admits. "The miniaturization is...just incredible! How does it connect to the human CNS? Where's the cockpit - in the head? It runs on an external power source, right? And you develop things for these robots? I-I'm sorry, I should have called you seonsang-nim, not seonbae!"

Sort of amazed to see the Evas up close, Joo-Eun temporarily forgets that she's going to be expected to fight in one of these things; at the moment she's having a pure science geek-out.

Suddenly she pauses. "Can-can you tell me how the A.T. Field works? Is it a bioelectrical thing, or a user-defined hard light projector, or some kind of remote device triggering a controllable topological defect under a managed state of decay, or...?"

[TheDarkDM]

Captain Palmer

Palmer chuckled as Diana finished speaking, leaning his head back against the pillow before turning to her.

"Oh, of course. I'll just put on my angry face and those extradimensional genocide machines will just go running."

Palmer's face twisted into an exaggerated scowl - doubtless, his "angry face".

"And then, we can get back to what's important, like deciding which nations get gold stars this year. Can't forget to assign the gold stars."

Palmer's scowl broke, and he chuckled again.

"Still, I have to imagine someone at the UN enjoys reviewing the Eva after action reports. Is it true they make popcorn?"

[Jade_Tarem]

Evangelion Hangar

"Oh, don't worry about it." Johnson takes Joo-Eun over to a standalone table with a number of computers and monitors arranged on it. "Actually, you can't see the cockpit spot or the power supply from here. The Evangelion connects to the city power grid whenever it can, and runs off a battery when it can't. See those massive cables up there? We've got them all over the city, and if we have to deploy you elsewhere then we'll move the requisite generators and cables into position ahead of time."

He pulls up an image of a curious pill-shaped chamber, one that looks identical to the one being swarmed over at the far wall. "This is the cockpit - actually called the Entry Plug. The connection between the pilot and the machine is purely wireless, done entirely through an LCL medium with the assistance of a special suit full of medical equipment and synch boosters. The piloting yoke and foot controls are mostly a focus to help the pilot concentrate on what they want the Eva to do." He nods to the plug at the far end of the room. "For safety and security reasons, the entry plugs spend most of their time outside their respective units."

NERV Medical Ward

"Only when Miss King is piloting." White laughs. "And despite the angry faces being made among members of the UN, the security council says that they aren't even going to consider cutting the budget until they have a better understanding of the Angel threat, though they are in the market for a more stable alternative. I understand that your science and engineering leads were hoping to have a word with you about that, but it can wait." She leans back. "It's a little early for them to be airing the conference..."

"But not too early to put in an appearance, I trust?" Yin walks through the door without breaking stride. "Nice to meet you, Miss White. Captain Palmer! I hate to impose on you, but we need to get you into contact with the command center as soon as we can. Do you think you'd be up for an early release?"

Evangelion Hangar, Catwalk

Dr. Mittal looked down at the APC, far below. "Really? They're already showing her the Evangelions and she hasn't even agreed to pilot yet?"

Gail Samson, her assistant, raised an eyebrow. "Is she getting a choice?"

"Well, no, but that's not the point. She doesn't have clearance yet." Mittal sighed. "And where the hell is Bethany?"

"Out with Pilot King, I believe."

"Hrmph. She can have her."

Gail prodded her with an elbow. "Oh, you don't fool me, doc. You went nearly as pale as Rata when the Serenity Protocol went active."

"That girl is half of our chance for survival! Of course I'd be concerned that some idiot wants to use her for target practice!" Mittal huffed. "She's still a complete brat, and I think we should transfer her to NERV Atlantis."

Her assistant laughed. More than a decade before, an unsanitized database input had led to the 'official' existence of some scattered records confirming the operation of one more NERV base than actually existed. Even more humorously, the base's phony coordinates put it somewhere at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. The organization's jokers had quickly labeled it "NERV Atlantis" and, like Lieutenant Hawkins' photo ID, the MAGI refused to completely purge it from the records. Since then, many a new and gullible employee had been sent on a snipe hunt to find the lost records of NERV Atlantis. "Well, have it your way, but you're still a matched pair - especially when you get mad."

"C... Can it! We're starting test suite 49 from the top. Are we set?"

[Whiskeyjack]

"What do you mean 'synchronize?' And you didn't answer my question about the A.T. Field..." she begins, then pales. "D-deploy me? O-oh...I forgot that...the, uh, Angels and all..." she looks away.

"What a-are they like? The...space monsters I mean? I haven't seen anything about them...on-online or in the media. Is it all a secret, oh, but if they're attacking people, how can that be secret?" Joo-Eun frowns. "And if they're so big that those," she points at Unit-08, "are of comparable size, how haven't we seen any in the media? It'd be impossible to cover up something that big!"

[Jade_Tarem]

Evangelion Hangar

"Apex Predators."

The voice emerges (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1RBZHhvJk4&feature=relmfu) from above as Joo-Eun asks about the Angels. Even as the APC crew looks up, a small, open elevator descends from the catwalk, the person on it silhouetted by the blue-white gleam from the Eva cages. Despite the lack of detail, it's possible to make out the purple color of her hair, the outline of the labcoat, and the dark skin, although the face is still shadowed. No glasses gleam in the light, although the effect does give the woman a sort of indigo-colored halo.

"They aren't in the news yet because they haven't quite begun their assault. Most of our knowledge of the Angels is speculation, although we do have some hard data to work with - primarily what was provided during Second Impact, and with a few embryonic samples since. By all indications, they are tireless, highly adaptable, and will stop at nothing to break into Terminal Dogma and initiate Third Impact." The figure leans forward on the safety railing. "The most important thing about them, though, is that they are not bound by the laws of physics that most people hold as sacred, unshakeable truth. Their very size should be biologically impossible, yet they are estimated to be at least as large as the Evangelions, and are not only able to support such weight, but shrug off the attacks of every modern military combined while attacking on their own. And how?"

The elevator finally reaches the floor, and the lady steps forward into the light. "The answer is the AT Field. It is not a hard light projector, or anything else you've heard on Star Trek. The AT Field is probably the most complicated phenomenon ever discovered, but the shortest possible answer is that it is the fragment of reality that is defined by an individual being, both within the self and the selves of others. This area is bounded by an Ego Barrier - the place and time where you end and the rest of the universe begins. Every thinking creature has one, but we, as human beings, lack the wherewithal to extend our sense of self beyond our own minds and bodies. Angels have no such restriction, and combined with a nigh-limitless power supply they can use this to alter the world around them as they see fit. Stopping bullets and lasers in midair, defying gravity, and regenerating are all easily within the realm of possibility. Needless to say, anything capable of generating a powerful and stable AT Field can defeat virtually anything that can not."

"Aheh. Miss Kwon, allow me to introduce Dr. Sonal Mittal, the Science Team lead for NERV Headquarters. Dr. Mittal, this is Kwon Joo-Eun."

[Whiskeyjack]

Joo-Eun offers a small bow, mostly mesmerized by the purple, though she's frowning and slightly bristling at the idea that her theories are just some kind of name-dropped science-fiction game. But before she can react to that, something sticks in her head. "Third Impact?! You mean...another mete--...we-well, Maeve-seonbae said it wasn't a meteor strike, but...but nobody has actually said what it was! That's leaving a-a big piece out of the puzzle for me to understand! It was an extinction-level event, surely...on the level of a meteor or supervolcano at least, but clean...wi-without an ash cloud to blot out the sun. Wh-what's Terminal Dogma, and how would...something...breaking into some room end the world?"

Now she frowns, but she looks back at the foot of the Eva near the Doctor, not at her directly. "And...and I wasn't just talking about sci-fi show stuff, seonsang-nim! If you're talking about some...some nonelectrical force field made out of...solidified exertions of willpower...and t-that can stop an N2 mine. What...would be required to generate that force of will on a...a biological level from-I don't even know, you said it had a limitless power supply? And the Eva can generate that too from being plugged into the power grid?" Joo-Eun looks up at both Evas, thinking, and more than a little scared. She continues on, voice unsteady.

"Eva uses...the city reactors to generate the energy, yes? But...for a single being to-to generate that power natively, without a-any in-infrastructureI...th-that's...the power required for that...would have to be some kind of...of multiple fission system, but that's a lot of waste product...or, oh, the Angels are alive, yes? If it's alive, some kind of naturally-occurring fusion process, or..." she pauses, eyes growing wide. "Or-or...or, an organic...um, an or-organic S-Super Solenoid drive. I-if...if that theory actually w-works..." she adds quietly.

[Jade_Tarem]

Evangelion Hangar

Mittal is halfway to responding when Joo-Eun's last comment registers. "You... you know what a Super Solenoid reaction is?" In an eyeblink, Mittal is in Kwon's personal space, each hand grabbing an arm. "You care what a Super Solenoid drive is? You're only fourteen! You're ju..." She blinks. "Kwon! Kwon Joo-Eun! Your brother was part of the Katsuragi expedition, wasn't he. But..." She shakes her head and hauls Joo-Eun back to the table. "Augh. Let me apologize. There was no reason that you shouldn't have guessed at the more obvious answers first. I just get so tired of people who should know better trying to force the cutting edge of research into the limits of what they already know... this is why NERV doesn't let me talk to reporters any more." She clears her throat. "Yes, as nearly as we can tell, the Angels seem to be able to maintain an indefinite Super Solenoid reaction. This provides the energy necessary to maintain such a staggeringly powerful AT Field. We have teams here and at Area 51 working on creating a way to do that for the Evangelions, but both projects are years behind schedule, and we had to run literally hundreds of projects in parallel... it's a miracle that we actually have a functional set of Evangelions." She takes a deep breath. "I can't tell you what's in Terminal Dogma - only that we're sitting on top of it. And as for Second Impact... It was several things together, but primarily it was the sudden and forced inversion of the most powerful AT Field in history, and you should pray that we never see one that strong again."

[Whiskeyjack]

Joo-Eun lets our a startled squak as the doctor is suddenly on her, turning her head away and wincing, sure that this crazy woman is about to crack her across the face for daring to challenge her scientific authority.

Joo-Eun freezes, waiting for the blow that never comes to fall. She looks down as the doctor starts going on and on, and lets herself be pulled away.

"It's...under us. So...the Angels will be coming here to go down there a-and...do something bad...that would end the world like what happened in Antarctica? I-inversion...of absolute willpower?"

She blushes slightly. "I...I know about the S2 theory from-from a paper my brother was working on a-and...I want to know more a-about it. I-if it works, then maybe...h-his death wasn't in vain after all...and...and maybe h-he left a legacy l-like he always wanted...an unlimited energy solution that would end the oil and g-gas scramble, safer than n-nuclear and with no waste like geothermal, hydroelectric, hydrocarbon combustion...a legacy th-that could change th-the world...for the better...." she ends, sniffling slightly. "Th-that's what I thought I might be here for...to help the UN with t-that since I was trying t-to do more research on it...I thought I-I was going to do that...not pilot a-a battle robot against space monsters. When I saw the Eva design specs, I...I don't know, I thought t-they were extravehicular suits or-or something. Something to do with...well, not with fighting. B-but if that's what it takes to-to protect my family and my country a-and...give meaning to the deaths of the Expedition, t-then...then I..I guess that's what I have to do." She doesn't quite sound convinced. Or convincing.

[TheDarkDM]

Captain Palmer

A flicker of weary resignation crosses Palmer's face before his back straightens and he gives a brisk salute.

"Right away, Sub-Commander. Diana, if you'd be so kind?"

Pointing to a pair of crutches leaning against the wall, Palmer waits for Diana to hand them to him before swinging out of bed. His injured leg was naked from the bandage down, trousers cut away to enable the doctors' work, but the rest of his stained uniform was still in place. It would remain so until he went off duty.

"Lead on, sir."

Limping after the Sub-Commander on his crutches, Palmer looks back at Diana. He gives a rueful, familiar smile, the smile that says he's about to engage in activities beyond her security clearance.

"Dinner later?"

After her response, he's gone. Trailing after Yin, Palmer remains silent until they reach the secured terminal.

[Jade_Tarem]

NERV Medical Ward

"Absolutely." White waves when the reach the cutoff point. "Call me when you get off duty."

As the doors shut and they reach the tiny, private area with the secure lines, Cao takes a deep breath, looking uncomfortable in the full business suit he'd worn for the big press conference. "I apologize again for disturbing your rest, but you'll see why I did in a moment. I've had them holding for us..." He hands Palmer a phone, and picks up the one next to it.

And this takes us to the synchronization point with Rata. Two down, one to go.

Evangelion Hangar

"Yes, it is. And I'll see what I can do about getting you a lab clearance, assuming Bethany hasn't done that already." Mittal gives an unladylike snort. "If you want to work on Super Solenoid theory, I'm not going to stop you. In the meantime, though, you need to get back to your tour. No doubt McShane is done being hyper by now, so you need to catch up to her." She checks one of the computer monitors. "Ah, she's in the Command Deck, along with our resident banshee. And... Palmer has been released from medical on orders from the Sub-commander. Excellent." She straightens. "It's been nice meeting you, Miss Kwon."

[Whiskeyjack]

Joo-Eun bows politely. The woman, just moments ago seeming like a total shrew, has apparently done a full 180-degree reverse of personality. Joo-Eun decides to go with it. These people all seem very high-strung.

All because I knew about Super Solenoid? And it does work...but not for humanity...or rather it does not yet work for humanity...

"Thank you seonsang-nim, that...that would be...well, quite wonderful!" she exclaims. "I...thank you!" she says again, bowing deeply. "O-oh, yes, I suppose I should, um finish up the tour. Um...I hope I can start working on it soon!" She gives an apologetic bow to Johnson. "Where to next, Johnson-seonsang? O-oh, where did McShane-seonsong go off to? I...was very rude, she was being quite nice to be b-but...Rata King-ssi, um..." she trails off awkwardly.

[Whiskeyjack]

As she's about to be led away, a new, unpleasant, and terrifying thought creeps into Joo-Eun's mind, and her head snaps around suddenly to stare at Doctor Mittal, an edge of hysteria and confusion creeping into her voice. "Wait! just one second!" she pleads. "I...please just one more question, it's v-very important! I thought....I mean, if the...the public story was that Second Impact was a meteor, and if that were true then the...the notion of some extraterrestrial bacterium on the asteroid that...flourished in our biosphere to a point where it could challenge or-or erase our existence, or even some kind of organism entering a hyperevolutionary state when it landed on our planet to a point where in just a few years a single-celled organism evolve into a species as huge and complex as to necessitate s-something the size of Eva to fight it...I mean, that would be implausible but still make some kind of logical scientific sense based on the introduction vector," she nods slightly, working her way through the logical chain.

"But you said Second Impact occurred when a very powerful A.T. Field in Antarctica imploded..." she frowns slightly, looking away from the doctor.

"So...then...where did the Angels come from? L-like I said, if it was a-a meteor, the 'space monster' theory is...viable. Plausible. An-an easy explanation. B-but if there was no meteor...what, ah, caused them to appear...or to prepare to appear? And from where did they come? And why didn't they appear sooner, it's been fourteen years since...since...? And...and i-if they haven't appeared yet, how do you even know they exist and that they're coming?! Is all...all of this, the GeoFront and the city and..." she waves around at the hangar, "this just funded and built based on...um, at worst just speculation, which I-I doubt...or, at best an unproven hypothesis?!"

[Jade_Tarem]

Evangelion Hangar

Mittal turns back and raises an eyebrow. "Now that is something that you really aren't cleared to hear, and the answer will only depress you. I will say, though, that the Angels *are* coming, and soon. It's not a hypothesis, it's a fact so solid that the UN has spent three hundred billion dollars per year for the last ten years in preparation for it."

Before she adds anything else, a jeep pulls up into the hangar, and Maeve climbs out. "There you are! Oh man, I thought the captain was going to flay me after I lost track of you in the woods. Are you alright?"

[Whiskeyjack]

The answer shocks her a little, both the brevity and the matter-of-fact tone and the depressed undertones accompanying it. Joo-Eun just swallows and nods, considering the staggering cost and the implications of the information. It's a mercy when the jeep comes tearing up and Maeve hops out, and Joo-Eun quickly launches into a rambling segue.

"I...yeah-yes, Maeve-seonbae, I'm fine, I've, ah, just been meeting people. And I saw the Operations Director in the woods...the-the one with the hurt leg, and..." she looks around, "I've just been getting the VIP tour here," she adds with a tired and forced smile. "Ju-just meeting people and, um, learning what I'm here for and why and...they said I could keep doing my research so that's good..." she blushes, nudging the floor with her toe as the awkward silence falls.

"So, um, where do I go now?"

[Jade_Tarem]

Evangelion Hangar

"We're off to see the wizard! Or... the MAGI, to be more accurate. The next and last stop on the NERV whirlwind tour is the Command Deck." Maeve climbs into the APC as a pair of soldiers take the jeep, and waves to Dr. Mittal, who doesn't seem to notice, and Mr. Johnson, who waves back.

"After that, we'll give you a chance to rest." As the APC gets rolling, she laughs. "So now you've met Dr. Mittal. I'm surprised you were able to get so much reaction out of her. You must have really made an impression."

[Whiskeyjack]

"I think it's, ah, because of who my brother is. Erm. Was, she says quietly, looking out a viewport.

"The MAGI supercomputers, you mean? I've heard a lot about them...at least the public stuff. Um, w-why are we riding around in a military vehicle? Isn't...isn't this place secure?"

She pauses a moment. "Mittal-seonsang said that the A.T. Field is...made by living thinking beings. And that th-the Angels can do incredible things with theirs but...but our human Fields can't...do that kind of thing. But if Eva can generate an A.T. Field comparable to an Angel's, how does it do so if it's a robot? I mean...unliving, and she said life makes them. If it's all wireless connectivity, does...does Eva boost the human A.T. Field to become...more powerful, like an amplifier, or...does it somehow...generate its own inorganically and the pilot controls it? Ah, sorry for all the technical questions...it's not your field, is it?" she murmurs at the end.

[Jade_Tarem]

GeoFront - APC/Central Dogma

Maeve nods. "The GeoFront is indeed secure, but security on this scale is always an arms race. Today whoever took a shot at you fielded an honest-to-God Dragonfly-class VTOL against Captain Palmer and Pilot King, so we're being extra careful."

Before long, the APC pulls around in front of the massive pyramid of Central Dogma. "As for the AT Field, I have no idea how an Evangelion creates one, only that they did it somehow. I do know that the pilot has control over it." A short walk down a security corridor and a ride in the elevator at the end lead to the command deck, and a meeting already in progress.

The Command Deck is filling up again, despite the vacant seats for the Angel Analysis station and the Eva Monitoring position - spots that are not required to be filled when there's no trace of Angel activity in an area, with both Rata King and Dr. McShane already there. However, the multilayer pseudo-holograms are showing a collection of images, among them a pair of windows labeled CPTN. PALMER and S.C. YIN, with the image window taken up by a massive, red SOUND ONLY image.

Perkins, however, is conversing with a man in a long coat on the moving images.

"-and the other residence?"

"No, Palmer's is still intact. In fact, I think we've got that area locked down pretty well, and soon we'll know for sure."

"Alright, everyone's here." Perkins takes a look at the new arrivals. "Y' might want to start from the beginning, mate."

"Alright." The man on screen - a small label identifies him as "Agent Fowler" - turns to the smoking crater behind him and then back to the camera. "After disarming the chemical weapon at Katsuragi high, my team was dispatched to Miss Kwon's temporary residence, where... well... it was a bit late for disarming things."

Behind him, something in the burning building collapses, sending up an extra plume of smoke. "No members of the host family were home at the time, and we've moved them to protective custody after what happened to Blaine. Unfortunately, Rata King's small apartment was also ransacked -"

"No, it always looks like that." McShane cuts in.

"We know, doctor. That's how we know it was ransacked - there's nothing left." Fowler rubs some soot from his face. "We don't have a lead, since the fire service hasn't arrived yet. As you can see, everything is still burning-"

Mr. Yin's voice interrupts. "Ah, but we do have a lead, Agent Fowler. Thank you for your report. You can expect to hear from us again soon."

Fowler nods. "Anytime."

"In the meantime, we have two homeless pilots. Perkins, could you call up a list of secured local areas?"

"Aye, sir."

"I'm sorry to say this ladies, but if we can't find a suitably secured site for you to stay, you may have to stay on base for the foreseeable future."

Aaand... unfreeze! All of the player characters are now roughly in the same place at the same time.

[Whiskeyjack]

"Wh-what happened? Dragonfly...class? A-a VTOL attack?"

Joo-Eun enters the command deck in time to see the last fixtures of her host's house collapse. "Stay on base? O-oh...that's fine..." she trails off. For a moment all is silent as she studies the monitor, then an earsplitting shriek pierces the air. (Korean)"All my clothes!!!"

One might immediately assume that Joo-Eun's cry was that of a distraught child far from home, or a teen girl merely upset about losing her fashionable wardrobe. But for Joo-Eun, like most Korean girls, shopping represents one of the singular pleasures in life in a world with sixteen-hour study days, intense competitive pressure, and social strictures on female behavior.

So to know that the collection she's been amassing for the past, oh, eight years--some of which she can no longer wear but which she keeps for nostalgia, or potentially to cut up and use for other things later, or just to look at--is more than a little upsetting for her. Only part of her massive winter wardrobe was brought with her, the rest to be shipped later seasonally, as her entire wardrobe took up something like two closets and one full small room in their apartment. Knowing that in her host's house were gifts from father, mother, brothers, sister...friends, other relatives, father's friends, mother's friends, colleagues of her dead brother...things purchased on vacation and given by the occasional boy who actually fancied her for a short bit...she grits her teeth hard as the monitor keeps broadcasting, hot and furious tears welling up in her eyes.

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

Still covered in blood Rata stared dumbfounded at the image on the screen named "Agent Fowler". It wasn't the idea of something exploding that had Rata looking like that, but the fact that her apartment was on fire and more importantly so was all her things. Amongst the usual grievances of the situation such a loss of clothes, personal possessions, collections and so on was a literal garbage heap of useless crap she hoarded with an obsession so great that her apartment was more like a garbage jungle than a liveable environment. She was so attached to these piles that the only two other times that anything had happened to it, or was about to happen as was in the first case, they had to -- literally! -- find a dart gun and sedate her for the duration. It was likely, or at least it was considered likely, that a similar but distinct event would occur in the wake of that revelation. Rata knew that, and she was sure a few people were backing away or preparing to call the people with the dart gun.

It wasn't an incorrect assumption, but it wasn't going to be as bad as they expected.

"Who... why..." Her jaw waggled some more but no further sounds came out. In her mind her personal catalogue of every item in her apartment was flashing into painfully reality in her mind. Taking into account her memory you would understand her stress. With her perfect memory she was very, very aware of everything that was getting destroyed or had already been destroyed. She wanted to get as close to the image as possible and scream, ' I will mount those ****ers heads where my apartment used to be!' She didn't though, and as she realized that she wanted to say that and hadn't she felt that her conversation with McShane might have done some good. Of course she still intended to do something horrible to somebody, but she was going to do it to somebody who deserved it. "Where am I going to live... now..." A light of realization crosses her mind. "No! No, no, no! I am not living with Palmer! I'm not being stubborn here! We would literally kill each other within a week, tops. That can't be what anybody is thinking!"

[Jade_Tarem]

Central Dogma

"Not with him, perhaps, but his area is secure. Perhaps you'd be amenable to living with Miss Kwon? At least temporarily? And Miss Kwon, I know this is a lot to deal with, but do you have a preference?"

Both McShane and Maeve have almost the same reaction - a look of unpleasant surprise, followed by sudden comprehension, but neither says anything.

[Valgunn]

Pilit Rata

Rata looked at Kwon out of the corner of her eye as she refused to turn her face directly at her. Living with her would mean she'd need to apologize for being a massive... very bad word. She wasn't... well, she wasn't like everybody else here. Kwon is more like me, Rata thought as she continued to stare at the girl in that I'm-not-looking kind of way. "If she's fine with it then I am. It's not like I care where I get stuck. I made a home out of my old place, so I can make a home out of my new place too."

[Whiskeyjack]

Joo-Eun glances at Rata and looks away. "Umm...I would rather live in the GeoFront than anywhere else...ooh, unless th-there's good shopping," she adds quietly. "B-but, ah, if we are working together, should we live together? It sounds like a-a sitcom waiting to happen!"

She blushes a bit and goes on. "B-but if you think it-it's best, I'm okay with it...as long as I have my own room a-and bandwidth a-and, uh, things will stay relatively clean? Rata King-ssi seems like a, uh...a person who would, ah, like things to be a certain way and...I'm very similar, so..." she says, testing how far she can go. "A-at least in common rooms."

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

Rata's eye twitched as the almost irresistible urge to shout at Kwon rose up in her. "Stop stammering." Rata blurted out, and only just managing to bite down the rest of that particular tirade at the poor girl she stared back.

[Whiskeyjack]

Joo-Eun just blinks at Rata, something inside of her snapping as she thinks of one of her sister's temper tantrums about not getting to do some thing or another, or being mad about Father working so much, or some other dumb kid thing. "Stop criticizing me! I'm not happy about my h-home being blown up, especially since my host family was s-so nice to me even though they didn't understand me! I'm sorry it happened to yours! Just relax! Your stuff might've gotten blown up too but at least you're OK and you're used to this city and these people and all this!" she flails her arms around the command center. "So just relax!"

She frowns with an exasperated Korean utterance and looks sideways at Palmer. (Korean) "I cannot see how this will end well but I'll do it as an experiment. B-but I want an out."

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

"Relax!?" Rata squeaked as the tirand that had been building compressed to a single point somewhere in the ball of her fist. "I'm sorry!" She shouted at Kwon with a terrible fury that didn't at all match the content of her sentence. "I shouldn't have been an ass earlier!" The rather confusing angry shouts continued their bizarre turn as something very odd happened in Rata's brain. The truth of it was that the only way she could avoid leaping at Kwon like a Norse berserker was by focussing all her attention on doing something very embarrassing. This way her embarrassment overpowered the almost blinding anger she felt at being shouted at -- not that she didn't deserve it, but whether or not you deserved something has often little to do with your initial feelings about it. It wasn't the smartest thing she could have done, but she was new at not following her first instinct.

[Whiskeyjack]

Joo-Eun just stands there while Rata screams at her and listens, looking sideways at a computer monitor (and more covertly for an exit). Once she's dune, the Korean girl just mumbles, "Apology accepting, Rata King-ssi. And I'm sorry for my...outburst just now."

[TheDarkDM]

Captain Palmer

Watching the confrontation between Joo-Eun and Rata with a strange mixture of dawning horror and voyeuristic fascination, Palmer interrupted with a sentence that no living soul in NERV had ever thought to hear.

"Pilot King is right. However, I'd recommend that we assign her and Pilot Kwon permanent quarters within the Geofront. We have no way of knowing if any more cells of the attackers' organization remain in the city, and until we do I don't think it's a good idea to expose them any more than necessary. I'd also recommend increasing security at their school."

[Jade_Tarem]

Central Dogma

Maeve shakes her head. "Unfortunately, that's not quite correct."

Cao's voice emerges from speakers. "Yes. You see, Neither Miss Kwon's nor miss King's addresses were recorded outside of NERV databanks, and while someone could have followed them home, your trip to the elevated platform was not recorded at all - save as an addendum to Section 2 briefings."

There's a nasty pause while everyone chews on that. "That is highly disturbing, and we're left with no choice but a full security sweep. For now, Miss Lynch will set up suitable quarters within the GeoFront, away from the emergency pilot barracks. They will, of course, officially be bunking in the emergency pilot barracks. It's a simple diversion, but all the best diversions are. Perkins, you will delete the recording of this session when we are done, and purge it from the MAGI storage."

"Aye, sir."

"Alright. I'll leave that in your hands, then. I need to meet with the commander as soon as possible. Palmer! Get well soon. Pilots, my sincerest regrets for the loss of your property. NERV will replace as much as possible, although of course nothing can be done for items of sentimental value. We will ferret out this spy as quickly as possible."

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

"Absolutely darling." Rata droned as her eyes rolled in their sockets. "Peachy, even! It wasn't just a bunch of lunatics that tried to turn me into a daring new art installation across part of the city, but a bunch of lunatics with a lunatic buddy in Nerv." Rata's eyes were once again in their proper place and again were looking over Kwon. "And here I thought I filled Nerv's lunacy quota for London-2 all by myself. It's quite a blow to my pride." Rata's fist was still curled into a ball. Despite the jokes she was making at her own expense she was still monumentally angry and wanted very much to do something destructive, but... well, it didn't do for her to think about why she was keeping her temper in check for a change and instead concentrate on doing it.

[Whiskeyjack]

"Double...agent," Joo-Eun murmurs. With each passing moment this situation seems more and more like a pre-Impact American spy movie. "What, ah, what should we be doing?" she asks, motioning to herself and Rata.

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

"As we're told, sadly," she quickly answered. "If I thought I could convince anyone to so much as give me a gun I'd have already tried. The most I get trusted with is a shoe."

[Whiskeyjack]

"H-how about you show me your Eva and how it works?" Joo-Eun suggests, not sure of that's a faux pas. "If you're allowed I mean. I'd rather start learning about it than stand here...just...watching...or waiting...or whatever."

[Jade_Tarem]

Central Dogma

"Training would be a good use of your time." Cao says. "For now, stay alert and try to be discreet."

The SOUND ONLY window under his name disappears. Maeve nods. "We'll catch the mole soon enough, ladies. I'll get your new quarters set up, and we'll see about taking Miss Kwon in for a synch test. You have seen the plugsuits before, right?"

Unknown Location

The place was, temporarily, a dump. It was also a nigh-perfect recreation of Rata King's apartment, largely because it was a dump. The fact that it was filled with her old apartment's contents didn't hurt.

And therein rested the disappointment. "I don't think it's a code. I don't think it's an obfuscation technique either."

Two men, both dressed somberly but functionally, sifted and sorted through the possessions, but weren't having much luck. "Look, you've seen the accounting files. She didn't buy this stuff."

"Have we considered that maybe she's just a little klepto?" The first one asked.

"You think she stole all this? Who the hell steals three Pokemon cards and a Neo-Geo?"

"Hey, Charizard is a badass." The first man paused as the other looked at him. "Or so I heard."

"Too bad your group seems to have more in common with Team Rocket." A woman's voice came over speakerphone, highly distorted. "You had three objectives today, and accomplished none of them. Now NERV knows you're coming and is still fully prepared. That's negative progress. You know how I feel about negative progress."

"We've still got the mole. We'll take our next shot in no time."

"No, you won't. You're going to wait until after the first Angel attack. No matter how hard they try to avoid it, NERV's guard will relax somewhat at that point."

"Lady, we don't make those decisions-"

"Then tell someone who can. This isn't negotiable." The phone clicked off.

"Well, wasn't that just fantastic?" The first man snarked.

"Not as much fantastic as telling the boss is going to be." The second man sighed. "Remember when industrial espionage used to be fun?"

Later - NERV Commander's Office

You could see the whole GeoFront from here. The twinkling lights and linear motion, the changing shifts, the artificial starlight, all of it was visible through the curved, one-way polarized picture window.

The expansive view made the office seem much larger than it actually was. A single desk dominated the room - a desk packed with more electronics than some commercial airplanes - but it currently sat unused.

The important thing about this room was that a grand total of two people could open it. Not even the custodial staff or emergency services could get in, and the ventilation was reduced to heavily-trapped millimeter slits dozens of meters up the shafts. The room featured on no blueprints or maps. Officially, it didn't exist. There were no opportunities to bug the room, no possible method by which security could be compromised, simply by rescinding the connections to the outside and limiting them to that one desk.

And, of course, the view.

And those two people who could get in were in there now, and had been for some time. They had strategy to cover, plans to make, and security to adjust.

"...so we could try to run the security sweep as usual - like a quarantine."

"Very well. Who do we know is secure?"

Cao closed his eyes. He didn't need paper, pencils, or electronic assistance. Data was safest in their heads. "We can start with the two of us. Beyond that we have Palmer and Tern, although there are some groups that are extreme enough to be willingly shot at by a VTOL to accomplish their aims."

"No, they're secure. Either of them could have tossed King off the train and blamed the VTOL."

"True. That gives us Maeve Lynch, Mr. Fowler-"

"Lynch yes, Fowler no. The bombing of the house and apartment wasn't stopped. He saved the school, yes, but that doesn't really help us."

"Alright, Fowler's still in suspicion, then." Cao shook his head. "We have maybe a dozen others that are exonerated through having such a complete record of activities that there isn't enough time unaccounted for, in order for them to have betrayed us."

"We have hundreds of Section 2 agents, though."

"Not to mention that the bridge officers could have accessed the information."

"The Science Team could have too, but I don't think it's likely." Cross sighed. "This isn't going to work. Start with MAGI access logs - put our digital forensics boys on it - and work your way out from there. Get Palmer and the secure agents on board, if necessary. Transfer Unit 03 and its pilot to London-2. By convoy, if possible. In the meantime, we bait our own trap and wait."

"And, of course, save the world from Angels." Cao said, grinning.

"Of course." Cross said, completely serious (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNvB1kJMCMI). "If we're allowed to."


Preview (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CoWplXbeUw)

When an Angel shows up – figuratively – NERV and its pilots need all the help they can get. Unit 03 is called in from NERV-01, along with a new pilot, but the time crunch prevents a last second save – not to mention the fact that the convoy has problems of its own! It’s up to Joo-Eun and Rata to hold the line against an enemy that has a huge advantage. NERV has made their move: but are they in a position to win? It’s a badlands rumble and a kiloton brawl in The Maroczy Bind!

[Jade_Tarem]

Area 51 - NERV 02 Super Solenoid Research Center
Evangelion Hangar Add-On
Unit 03 Convoy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQWAcgefsQQ), Callsign: Pandora's Box
Minutes to Departure - 1:56 a.m.

"It's the ugliest truck I think I've ever seen," grunted Dr. Ramirez, as he took in the sight of the vehicle carrying the portable MAGI uplink, "Not counting the one we've got the Eva boxed up in."

"Still looks better than the Honda Element."

"True." Ramirez took a look at his temporary companion - the base's own Operations Director, Captain Tessa Walters. Dark skinned and rotund, she nonetheless moved, acted, and thought with an alacrity that baffled those around her.

"And you're not upset at losing an Eva? It's a lot of firepower."

Walters laughed. "I never had this Eva. The transfer to Area 51 was always temporary, this is just more temporary than I expected. If the Commander says we need to put Unit 03 in London, then that's what we need to do. I'm not gonna argue with her - that is one scary lady."

"That's true enough. I wish we could have had longer with it - Unit 03 was showing some real potential for S2 Mutation compatability. We're back to testing on Unit 00 until the Evas at Hamburg and Hong Kong are finished." A hot wind whipped through the hangar, blowing his lab coat back. "What happened to your Section 2 guard, anyway?"

"She's getting changed. They told her to look casual and relaxed but I'm not sure she knows what that means. I'd just like to know where William is."

London-2, Route between Knave Station and Katsuragi High
Early Morning (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3p5v7z-IN4)

One week after Pilot Kwon was brought to NERV HQ, things have... settled.

In fact, "settled" is a great word for it. The pilots have settled into a new routine, into a new home, and random items accumulate in that home in the same way that sediment accumulates on the sea floor. And there was much settling to be done.

Yet a routine has been reached. School, extracirriculars (for some reason, NERV insists that you participate in at least one), what's going to become weekly synch testing, and of course, the ever-glorious weekend in which to pursue hobbies or research, as the case may be.

Other things have become routine too. Section 2's agents are invisible, but their presence can still be noted if you pay attention - it's the way that items may move a bit, just a bit, when left unattended in an empty room. It's the way that people are no longer allowed to loiter within a 3 block radius of Katsuragi High. It's the occasional com chirp heard when everything is too quiet.

And for all that, the mole hasn't yet been revealed. Between that and the looming Angel Attack, everyone is a little tense.

But there are bright spots, albiet small ones. A small selection of knick nacks and mementos survived the fire that consumed Kwon's former host family's house, and these have just been returned. Kwon herself completed a synch test with a phenomenal first-time score and several unique uses for an AT Field, and Rata's testing has remained stable. All systems are go - all that's needed is the Angel.

But for now, this isn't the concern of the pilots. Later there will be more testing - they're slated to return to base today - but right now, they are late for school and the trains will depart on time, courtesy of the ever helpful MAGI system.

NERV HQ - Operations Director's Office

You could see the whole GeoFront from here.

Just kidding. Even command staff offices tended to be located in structurally stable and heavily armored security hallways. The view out the big window was the same hallway visible from the offices for each of the bridge officers and even the commander and subcommander. The Science and Engineering leads had rarely-used offices, but these were found very close to the Alpha Bays in the Laboratory wing.

Still, it was a nice office. While space in an underground facility was usually at a premium, the GeoFront was very much an exception. As a result, Palmer's office was actually comparable to most aboveground versions. And it was absolutely guaranteed to have the best networking and communications abilities. In fact, there were at least five completely different ways to access that office.

The current issue is the email that came up - a reminder about the big budget meeting coming up. Most of the junior officers were busy, and Commander Cross was declining to attend - a move that might look snobbish but actually showed a fair bit of trust in Palmer and the rest of the command staff.

Both Dr. Mittal and Dr. McShane would be there, though, as would the Bridge Officers, which would provide a new brace of headaches and entertainment.

Lieutenant Hawkins appears in the doorway. "Captain, Sub-commander Yin wanted me to let you know that his call to America is taking a lot longer than he thought. He's going to miss the budget meeting, but he says you've got the authority to manage the budget anyway."

[Whiskeyjack]

"In Korea or here, it's all the same. The school subjects are stupid, the kids are stupid, I could teach the class if they'd let me...the grown-ups manage everything and put a good face on seeming like they know what's going on, but none of them do...or if they do, they just know the surface, not the deeps. Doesn't matter if it's politics, science, or how kids are acting, it's all the same," Joo-Eun grumbles as she hurriedly puts the last few containers into the lunch boxes for Rata and herself.

Cooking traditional dishes for the two of them has become a pastime: British schools just aren't challenging compared to those at home (except maybe Eton, but Joo-Eun is stuck here in this prep school for the foreseeable future, not at university). And since she's been addicted to kimchi since she was old enough to gum a piece (like most Koreans), she's felt the need to keep her fix and broaden Rata's culinary horizons to boot.

The GeoFront has its wonders, but she's anxious to go out to London-2 and get shopping. The outings with girls she thought could hardly stand here stand in a bright and sparkling contrast to her interactions with Rata, and despite herself Joo-Eun has sent a few e-mails to old "friends" and even gotten a couple of responses, along with the inevitable requests for Skype-based algebra tutoring. And she's taken up tumbling again, a childhood pastime that she thinks might help with the kind of muscle tone she believes must be important for being a pilot.

Really the only reprieve from the dull routine comes from the Eva tests and the small amounts of research time she slips in. But even then she's been setting the latter aside for the former, seeing the basics of Super Solenoid theory in practice with the A.T. Field's marvels, limited though they might be due to the need for the umbilical cable. Something about the Eva seems so familiar, so comfortable, and it energizes her in a way she hasn't felt in years, since before the accident. She's slipped off into a reprieve when her phone starts blaring an alarm at her: the train will be departing very shortly.

Cursing under her breath, she grumbles, "Rata King-ssi is going to make me late again," before she chuckles a bit and puts an extra piece of spiced potato in Rata's box. Joo-Eun won't admit it, not even to herself quite yet, but some kind of bond is forming there. Deeper than camaraderie but distinct from sisterhood. More like a shared understanding of role melded with the necessity of getting along in close quarters for the sake of mutual sanity. If nothing else, their forced interaction has made Joo-Eun lower her guard around the volatile pilot, reducing her stuttering anxiety and frustrated askew glances. But now it's the Korean who's snapping irritated words under her breath and stamping her foot on the floor, waiting for Rata to hurry up and finish getting ready.

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

The aforementioned girl was sitting in her room -- the focal point of the wave of items that slowly swept through their home -- having a staring match with her uniform. "This has to be Palmer's doing," she growled for the third or fourth time that day as she tried to set the skirt on fire with her glare. The fact that she'd been wearing a skirt to school for the last year seemed a distant memory as she glared. In her tightly gripping hand her music player held up admirably under her casual abuse -- earphone lead tracing up to the one bud shoved in her right ear while the left dangled on its wire. It had to be tough or it wouldn't have survived the past week. The music that thrummed through the lone bud wasn't the sort of music appropriate for morning but the hard edge of it smoothed her own mood -- McShane and later Kwon were responsible for most of that smoothing as Rata struggled to keep the worst of her temper under control, but trying to get her to admit it would be impossible.

About five minutes later the victor was declared as Rata stumbled through the doorway. Rata's glare had broken for a moment and she'd seen the clock perched on her bedpost. "Late!" She shouted as she tried to hop forward and put a sock on at the same time. Her shout was muffled though because her other sock was clenched between her teeth. The skirt was -- thankfully -- on properly but her shirt buttons were all done wrong and her blazer was only on one arm. The music player was still blaring her music into her right ear through the bud while the player itself was slipped into her blazer pocket. "Grab the lunches!" Rata shouted again as she hopped with surprising skill toward her shoes as she finished putting on one sock and switch to the other. "Hurry! Faster! Speed!" Her string of adjectives clear now that her second sock was busily being put on her foot.

A loud thump accompanied Rata's eventual fall onto the floor but with commendable speed she went from being stunned to shoving her shoes on her feet. All this haste was inspired by the downright scary Commander Cross. At first -- over a year ago -- Rata had outright refused to go to school, then a skirt, and then to participate in an extracurricular activity. Each time Dame Cross had somehow gotten Rata to do it anyway and had left Rata a sense of terror at the thought of being late as a parting gift. It certainly didn't hurt that her only friends in all of London-2 went to her school and as a result school time represented a huge chunk of their time together. "Come on, genius." Rata called from the floor as she hammered her second shoe onto her foot. Practically naked to practically dressed in five minutes. Not her best time, but not her worst either.

[Aneurin]

William

Deep in the heart of Area 51's residential district there's a dead-end corridor, that no-one uses any more. All the rooms have long since been abandoned and sealed in favour of more accessible ones in the newer areas of the complex. It's doubtful that security even bothers to check the camera feeds from the area any more. The cleaners certainly don't bother with it, to judge by the layer of dust that's covered everything.

And yet someone has been here recently. The dust has been disturbed, and at the very end of the corridor it has been cleared away entirely. A few things have been added; there are a few sheets of paper lying around, with pencil drawings on them. Each and everyone is a face, or a person in action. Some of them are children, a couple teenagers. In one corner is a pile of tiny, tiny pieces of paper, as if someone has sytematically destroyed several sheets of paper. It's possible to make out tiny fragments of pencil drawings on them; part of an eye, or a smile. In the other corner is a pile of musty pillows and sheets, apparently scavenged from the abandoned rooms, has been arranged as a sort of makeshift bed. Under the pile, a few food cartons can be made out, and there are a few pencils and some blank sheets of paper.

Sitting cross-legged on the heap is a figure. It's male, with black hair that has a distinctive white streak in the fringe. It's hard to tell, but he's about 5'9 with one brown eye and one blue eye he also seems to be about fifteen years old, but something in his expression makes him seem older. It's impossible to tell this at a glance, of course, but while he was being brought up he was part of an important breakthrough in child development science; namely that randomly injecting children with experimental combat drugs isn't really good for them.

The figure - William, of course - is resting his head against the corridor's back wall and staring in to space. In his hands is a twist of selotape, containing a few strands of white hair, and has a loop of string coming from it, as if fashioned in to a makeshift necklace. The necklace seems to be... important, to judge by how hard he's clutching at it - like it's a life-preserver, and the only thing keeping him alive. He's wearing the clothes they gave him in Boston - t-shirt with some band he had never heard of's logo on the front, jeans and trainers.


He wasn't sure how long he'd been there. Or how long he'd been in Boston before. It felt like a lifetime. Two lifetimes. Since they'd come and taken Ella away, taken him away. Then sent him away with every threat they could think of to keep him quiet about Prometheus. Not that it mattered - not while they had Ella. He wasn't going to do something that might put her at risk.

This place they had him now, it reminded him too much of the facility they'd sent him to at the end of Prometheus. Where the NERV scientists tried to make new pilots with drugs and memories while they tried to work out how to make someone synchronise with an Evangelion and where thirteen of his comrades died screaming. Some of the memories they put in his head still hurt, even though he tried to screen them with the few good memories he had.

It'd taken a lot of effort to find this place - so far from his quarters in Area 51 - and to smuggle the food out of the canteen, and more still to acquire the pens and paper without anyone noticing. And what they don't know about they can't stop or take away. But at last he was here, he had a place to retreat to if things went wrong. A place to be alone and probably unobserved.


From the mobile phone they'd given him in Boston an alarm begins to beep. William slowly raises himself to his feet and tucks away the selotape-and-string locket back in to his t-shirt.

Time to go.

As he walks from the shade of the Area 51 underground complex in to the Nevada night, William pauses for a moment to stare across the desert that rings the NERV base. Time after time his life is uprooted, upended and transplanted somewhere fresh against his will.

"Let the ball roll," he says so softly his words are lost. Then he starts across the compound to where Tessa, Ramirez, Pandora and his future await.

[Whiskeyjack]

Joo-Eun just watches with a blank face as Rata fell out of her room in a pile, struggling to put on clothes and find her school supplies among the waves of clutter. For a few seconds Joo-Eun just stares, nibbling on a pocky. THis was better than television. Then she remembers the lateness and frowns.

Really, the whole spectacle reminds Joo-Eun a little bit of her little sister, except much less competent.

Joo-Eun looks over to her own room, where a semicircular levy had been fashioned out of baby gates, against which the tide of random items had broken. For now, the levy held, but Joo-Eun figured that this weekend would be a good one to actually organize all this stuff, because Rata surely was going to be bringing more home, almost like a kitten bringing her "kills" as a way of showing affection. The last time she had tried to pick up an interesting-looking object, Rata had nearly tackled her.

That was surely going to be a pleasant conversation, and Joo-Eun was glad that Palmer had given her the number for the veterinary staff - the ones with dart guns.

She sighs, grabs both their lunch boxes, and crosses to the door, checking her phone. "I wish it was an Eva day," she mutters as she locks the door on the way out.

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

Stepping out just behind Kwon and grabbing her kit bag from beside the door as she moved Rata slipped her other arm through her blazer. Then came her black with two red stripes tuque which she quickly onto her head, tucking her hair under it as she did. "Oh." Rata exclaimed as she fixed her kit bag onto her back. "In case I forget later I have stuff after school today, so don't wait up for me." Stretching her arms back up behind her head as she walked Rata realized her shirt wasn't buttoned right. Without shame or perhaps with an eye to embarrassing Kwon she began to fix it in transit. "What about you? Have you sorted out your after-school stuff yet?"

[Whiskeyjack]

As soon as they're out the door, Joo-Eun has headphones in her ears, the end plugged into a video game system. When she sees Rata talking, she unplugs her left ear, leaving the bud dangling; her eyes quickly return to the game as she inputs commands.

PATA-PATA-PATA-PON beats the drum from the dangling bud.

"After-school? Um, well...I was going to try and go to th-the hangar," she admits, sighing as she launches into a tirade. "People here don't even have a baduk...I mean a Go club! Not even the Asian students! It's so embarrassing, and chess...not even a challenge compared to Go, if any of you waeguk-saram were any good at either. I-I was thinking of trying to start one, b-but with...everything...I wouldn't want to start it and then...not be able to commit to it, you know? I'd feel bad to...to let people down. But, if I can't do anything at Headquarters, I thought about looking into some different cooking, like...like from your culture maybe, just to see how it turned out." She leaves it hanging in the air and turns back to her game, not really sure what culture Rata is from but not comfortable flat-out asking it.

After a few heartbeats, Joo-Eun's head snaps up, the sound of tinny noises from the game evidencing that she's lost the beat and her huge Combo with it. Still she doesn't register the game as her Patapon army is savaged by a giant spider-crab-thing, having turned to look at Rata with mouth agape.

"Wait, King-ssi, you have a club event? Uh...you? I-I mean...which one? I thought you just...ignored that requirement or something..."

After a few seconds, Joo-Eun looks back to her PSP and irritably switches it off, seeing her army decimated and routed. (Korean) "Probably a 'hoarders anonymous' meeting or something. Or it should be."

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

"One of these days I'm going to learn enough Korean to figure out what you're saying more than half the time." With quick and nimble hands she finishes first unbuttoning and then re-buttoning her shirt before carefully tucking it into her skirt. "But yeah... of course I do." A slight shiver runs up her spine as she fishes out her tie from her other pocket. "I belong to a local gymnastics club, and we've got stuff later on at the school gym." Flipping her collar up Rata wrapped the tie around her neck and began to wrap it into the only knot she knew how the make. "Why are you so surprised?" Her head pulling away from Kwon as she flipped her collar back down and over the tie. "Whatever," she dismissed with a wave of her hand and a roll of her eyes. "Be weird. If you want you can come along if you're bored. Me and Katie will be there so, I'unno, you won't die of boredom or whatever."

[Whiskeyjack]

"Oh, gymnastics? I did that when I was younger. Before...ah..." she pauses a moment. "Well, a...a while ago at least. Uh su-sure, I could check it out. I didn't know you were into that. I was thinking like...skeet-shooting club or bi...biathlon or something."

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

"Right..." Rata replied noncommittally. "Because of the Angels?" Rata turned her head softly to Kwon. Keeping an eye on her for her reaction. "Or are you really just interested in rifle sports for their own merits?" A hint of a smile crept onto her mouth. "If I'm wrong that's great. You can't let yourself get sucked in." Then Rata laughed and slapped her palm against her forehead. "Wow! I am so not in a position to say that! Coming from me that's got to mean less than nothing. It's the truth though. You've got a life outside all," Rata flails her left hand in the air as if it would somehow communicate the events they were caught up in. "This. That. Whatever." Her hand once again found her forehead. "Forget I said anything. I feel stupid mentioning it. I'm sure you'll love shooting skeet or whatever you end up doing." A few minutes passed as they continued to walk. "What were you playing anyway?"

[Whiskeyjack]

"Oh, I meant for you, with all you talk about shooting and stuff. I thought you might like that kind of thing. B-but I suppose it couldn't hurt for me to learn that stuff too, could it? For me, I-I guess I was thinking science or something, but it might be fun to get back into gymnastics. A life...outside?" she shrugs.

"I guess. B-but, well...I don't know if you know this, my older brother was pretty much on...on-site at Second Impact with the Katsuragi Expedition and I've been....I guess I've been trying to prove his theories right ever since I could make sense of them. They seem to know a bit about them here at NERV, it all deals with...well, in layman's terms, the ability to create an infinite energy source, and the Angels or whatever can apparently do so organically inside their bodies. So I want to help put my brother's theories into reality with our technology. That's why I spend so much time in the labs, aside from, well, I want to be a scientist when all this is...or rather, when I grow up. So maybe that means I should just do a science club, but, ah, my dad and-and the Captain think I should branch out a little. I have a tendency to...hyperfocus, like that two-week StarCraft jag I went on just to get at the top of the ladders. Pfft, it wasn't so bad, if I actually was worried about school exams maybe I'd have sweated it,." she adds.

Joo-Eun looks at her PSP. "Oh, it's called Patapon. It's...so you enter these songs with the buttons, and it gives commands to your army on the screen, and different button combinations enter different songs that do different things, like attack or defend or charge up power or whatever. And you're pretty much leading them through the world to get back to...their god, I guess, or their homeland. It's pretty addictive!"

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

"You were talking about for me? Hah. Now I feel even worse." Rata said after she paused for her shrug. After that she listens to Kwon dutifully as they made their way from their home inside the GeoFront to their school up in London-2. "I can see that!" Rata responded after Kwon finished talking. In her mind Rata was remarking on how much Kwon talked if she was given the opening and idly wondered if she'd have any space in her brain for school. "I've never been told much about the Angels but that makes sense. When I saw that snake thing..." Rata's arm twitched as the memories of the hyper-real experiences in the MAGI simulation flooded back in perfect clarity. The image of the simulated Angel rearing itself back up after withstanding a missile barrage flashed in her mind. "It really explains why everybody just accepted what that thing could do." Realizing Kwon probably hadn't been told about Nerv's most recent attempt to kill her -- or to generate good PR as Palmer had suggested -- Rata's eyes widened a little as the light bulb went off. "Did they tell you about the simulation? The one they ran the day you came to Nerv."

[Whiskeyjack]

"I..." she blushes slightly. "Well, the day that...everything...happened, um. A couple nights before I was...browsing through some files...and saw a scheduled Eva test. Not a synch test, something about...'full-sim, hot plug?' But it was old data, like a calendar, and it was from before the actual test, so I didn't really see anything interesting about that. I guess they did it in VR? What...was it like? They barely let me do more than sit in the plug and count backwards from 100!"

She turns a little redder. "Well...you seem like you've been here awhile, and have a lot more experience with Eva, so I'm kind of surprised they didn't tell you more. Everything I saw was, well, it's, ah, not like I really had permission to look at it. At the start at least," she adds hastily, "And it was more conjecture than anything, it didn't even mention half as much about the A.T. Field as Mittal-seonsang told me my first day. I haven't seen the video feed yet though, it's in my queue. I...wasn't sure what to expect or..." she frowns. "Or if I should really watch it at all, if it's, ah, scary or something."

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

Rubbing the side of her with her hand a feeling of conflict about what she should say builds inside Rata. "Yeah." Rata stalled as she tried to break the damn on the conflict in her head. "It was..." A single deep breath. "I don't know what it was. Science isn't my thing but I know what it felt like." Rata's eyes darted to her arm as the phantom pain returned. It was something she was thankful for because she knew if she started repeating the end of that fight in her head the phantom pain in her arm would start to seem like a vacation. "It felt real." Stalling again as her mind rebelled against telling about it Rata started up again after a few minutes of silence. "At first it was just like any other training simulation I'd run before. I broke through the AT field, kept my guard up, and tried to limit the Angels movements. Palmer pounded the thing with everything he had to hit it with and then..."

It was another pause but not out of reluctance but out of a lack. Rata simply didn't know how to describe what the Angel did out-of-hand. "It... it grew. One minute it was 'just' as big as my Eva, the next it was towering over me... and then I woke up screaming after it tore my arm off. I don't know what happened. One minute I was staring it down and the next my arm was gone." Rata's eyes were now downcast as if she were afraid that looking up would rob her of her courage to speak. Then she looked up. "You should watch the recording." Rata said before breaking into a sprint.

[Whiskeyjack]

Joo-Eun pales as she looks from Rata's face to her arm to her hand touching her arm and back again. "But you still have your..." she murmurs as Rata is off in a flash! "Hey---!" she has time to call before Rata's basically gone. (Korean) "Well that could have gone better..." she grumbles, looking around and resuming her power-walk towards the school.

"If Eva is wireless...why was she holding her arm like it was cut off, unless...she actually felt that..." The thought is quite unsettling and Joo-Eun checks to see how much time she has before her first class, hand slipping into her bag to feel the outline of the tablet Victoria gave her.

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

Devouring the distance between her and Katsuragi Comprehensive Rata was trying quite pointedly not to think. One reason was that she'd run off from Kwon and that by itself was embarrassing but it was also the final moments of the simulation she tried not to think about. Instead she latched on to an old game of hers she'd play with Section 2. It was called Tag and everyone in Section 2 was It. This may seem odd given her sensible nature inside her Eva -- until she lost her temper but that can be said about anybody -- but the one crucial fact was that her built-in instincts and over a decade in training didn't kick in outside of an entry plug. To put it simply when she wasn't in an Eva she was as insane and stupid as any fourteen-year-old girl with a mean streak. The goal of her game was to mess with Section 2 while going about her day otherwise interrupted, so to that end she began pounding her way through the world Nerv built while trying to avoid their eyes.

[Jade_Tarem]

Indeterminate London-2

"Here we go, she's doing it again." The agent's voice went over the secure channel, bored. "Did we ever get an answer on why? We know where she's going."

"Psych analysis indicates she experiences a personality clash with NERV employees in general and trauma-based hatred of Section 2, specifically. Offhand I'd say it was the whole kidnapping thing."

Section 2 had a lot of responsibilities. Unlike the R&D department, though, it had sufficient funding and personnel to handle them with some wiggle room to get creative for the primary objectives - the pilots.

As a result, Rata King's and, by now, Kwon Joo-Eun's facial features, gaits, voices, and even current hairstyles were processed on a third-generation MAGI subroutine that correlated information from a network of various sensors and monitoring devices that George Orwell's thought police might have found a bit oppressive.

But the system is not omniscient, nor are all sensors created equal, and a city is certainly not a static thing - it moves in cycles, things flow through and around it, it grows and even evolves as times change. All of which meant that while they could keep a solid record of any time Rata King took a step, spoke, or even sneezed - a rarity, as she had no allergies - they needed agents on site to make sure that things weren't happening to her, or that she wasn't happening to things, as the case occasionally may be.

"Any particular reason why we couldn't just have transferred her and her father here together?"

"Oho." Said the other unseen observer, while violating several traffic laws and personal standards of safety to keep her in view. "Do you want the chronological list or the alphabetical one?"

"That bad, huh?" The inquisitive agent grunted as she had to twist hard mid-stride.

"Oh, he's a genius, and no mistake. The problem is that he's also certifiably insane. You can tell because they certified him."

"I thought they were all insane in R&D."

"I'm not talking about the rumors of Dr. McShane's unhealthy love of large machinery, here -"

"Wait, the rumors were talking about actual large machinery? I always thought that was a euphamism for -"

"-as I was saying, that's not what we're talking about. Mittal has several neuroses, near-crippling paranoia about some... weird things, and some odd ideas about what people are supposed to be like. They say he doesn't recognize his daughter anymore. Treats King like his daughter now, and he raised her to be like she is today."

"A total brat."

"She's easy to keep a watch on compared to him. Watch it, there she goes again."

London-2, Hood Station

The agents keeping track of Joo-Eun, however, watched her stare at her tablet computer at the base of the stairs leading to her platform. Due to Rata's circuitous route, she's actually mostly caught up.

They did not have the right sensor placement to see what was on the screen, but it was a very strange thing indeed, for the tablet had powered itself on, and the screen message was a simple message in Korean, in a command line format that she'd never called up.

(Korean) GOOD MORNING KWON JOO-EUN

CAN YOU READ THIS MESSAGE? (Y/N)

NERV HQ, Phoenix Room

In a hidden underground city wrapped in an alien coccoon and 22 layers of the toughest armor imaginable, a pair of women waited in a room that was, despite the name, just a place to hold meetings and not, for instance, an excessively expensive platform housing equipment designed to research bringing the disintegrated dead back to life.

That room was in the science wing, where it belonged.

"So..." McShane began, speculatively.

"So what?" Mittal hated meetings on general principle, and this one in particular was going to give her at least one headache. The funding meetings always did.

"I heard you gave Kwon quite the introduction. We have her first test-drive scheduled for this weekend, don't we?" To Mittal's irritation, the engineer remained standing, leaning against the far wall and fanning herself with an ops folder.

She countered by crossing her arms and leaning back in her chair to look up at the other tech lead. "We do. With one hour in the entry plug we pulled more data from Kwon than fifteen hours of running interesting things through LCL. We're going to have to make another adjustment to the Dummy Plug proto-matrix, and I don't like the endurance results we're getting on the mechanical parts."

McShane pushed her glasses up from where they'd ridden down her nose. "Mmm. There is that. I know we specified optimum performance but NERV's contractors built these things without enough of an eye toward maintenance - we're going to have to spend extra just to keep them running or we'll have problems when things break down."

"Especially with a certain someone running the servos up to full power and shrieking 'She cannae take any more, Captain! I'm givin' her all she's got!' whenever Palmer asks about lifting capacity."

McShane flushed. "That... that only happened once." She tossed the folder down on the table, and Mittal opened it. "Why are we looking at sensor logs?"

"We're not. Not for the meeting, I mean, but I wanted you to have a look at them. There are some spikes of activity inland, on bands of radiation you don't see very often. They've got some odd cases in hospitals and finally what appears to have been an AT spike out there."

"Just one?"

"Just one, less than a fifth of what was seen in Antarctica during Second Impact." At this, McShane did sit. "I wanted a second opinion before forwarding this to Captain Palmer - we get AT spikes out in odd places during and around synch testing, sometimes, and they never amount to anything. I wouldn't have brought it up at all except that this about matches the estimated AT strength of the first predicted Angel."

Mittal smiled thinly. "Well, has anyone seen a giant monster out there?"

"No, but it might not hurt to keep looking."

The scientist brushed a strand of purple hair from her face and looked at the data again. The 'odd injuries' indicated that body parts and vital organs were starting to... dissolve. "No... it might not."

Area 51 - NERV 02 Super Solenoid Research Center
Evangelion Hangar Add-On
Unit 03 Convoy, Callsign: Pandora's Box

"There you are!" Walters shouts, as William emerges into the illumination provided by temporary stands of bright lights surrounding the convoy. "Did you see Zoe by any chance?"

"I'm here!" The shout rises over the din of so many running motors going at once. A quick turn reveals Zoe Redmond, who's idea of casual is apparently business casual. It was said she was stuffy enough to make August look like a joke. After an aside glance and snicker from Walters, the Director gives a wave and a number of doors slam shut, and if possible even more motors start.

The convoy was, to be sure, an impressive enough site. Given the recent attacks on NERV Personnel in London-2, air-hopping the Eva from one airfield to the next was considered too dangerous, and couldn't be done to cross the Atlantic in any event - there just weren't enough secured zones for the short-range Evangelion transport planes to land. Larger, more powerful and longer-range VTOL transports were being constructed, but wouldn't be ready for a while yet.

As a result, a land and sea route had been established. The sea route was straight through a secured UN shipping lane, and with the UN currently in possession of something like 98% of the world's naval power, securing it was relatively easy. In theory, securing a route across the United States' old interstate system should be equally straightforward, but NERV was taking no chances. As a result, the convoy consisted of several PAC4 missile racks and thier C3 truck, short range anti-aircraft cannons, and a mid-range air defense intercept system, all happily provided by surviving military contractors. It also consisted of an Evangelion carrier cage - horizontal for transport, but fully capable of standing the Unit upright for deployment - and two Mobile support stations, in case the unthinkable should happen and an Angel showed up and wanted to throw down. It goes without saying that another three trucks were included in the arrangment just to carry fuel for the rest of the convoy.

The cage was deceptively fast - the only other vehicle it brought to mind was the thing used to ferry around the old Space Shuttles, after all, and that machine had a maximum speed of a whopping 1 mph. The cage, however, could move much faster when needed, so while the trip to Boston would take some time, it wouldn't be the eternity the mission planners originally thought it would be.

Walters eyes William speculatively. "You ready to go, pilot? Got everything?"

London-2

"There you are! You're going to be late, Rata. Doesn't your evil governess hate that or something?" Katie laughs, waiting for you at the platform. "Is Joo-Eun joining us today?"

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

At the sight of her friend Rata's face broke into a smile. "Hey." She said in a voice so cheerful most Nerv personnel would be unashamedly worried. To Katie though it wasn't anything she had to worry about -- not that Rata miraculously became capable of handling her temper, but when you've got a good friend nearby things that seemed aggravating merely seemed annoying. "Kwon? I'unno... I sort'f, maybe... ditched her."

[Whiskeyjack]

Joo-Eun frowns slightly, looking around. She's somewhat knowledgeable about NERV'a electronic warfare capability--or at least knowledgeable as to the obsolete gestational phases of it glimpsed in old reports archived at lower security levels. Is this a remote chat client initiation? Or some latent programming picking up on her facial features through the little camera and loading a program installed specifically for her and her alone to find.

Remembering what Victoria had told her about NERV and the role of the pilots, she taps 'Y' with a quick and unassuming thumb stroke, resuming her walk to the train station albeit slower.

Victoria's name sticks in her head for a second before she is engulfed with curiosity about this message. For a moment her curiosity about the computer has made Joo-Eun forget that she was never able to find someone in NERV's intranet staff listing with the name 'Victoria' who would match that technician's age...

[Jade_Tarem]

London-2, Hood Station

"Oh, there she goes." Katie laughs as she spots Kwon absently board the correct train. "Looks like she ditched us! Serves you right for taking such a spastic path here."

On Joo-Eun's tablet, there's a pause, and then more words fill in.

EXCELLENT. NO DOUBT YOU SUSPECT THAT I AM A PART OF NERV, AND THIS ASSUMPTION IS COMPLETELY CORRECT. THIS COMMUNICATION, HOWEVER, IS PRIVATE, AS IS MY IDENTITY. PERHAPS YOU SHOULD CALL ME... ZERATUL? ZERATUL WILL DO. HOWEVER, WE WILL NEED TO CONTINUE THIS CONVERSATION LATER. RATA KING'S RANDOM WANDERING IS IN FACT PSUEDORANDOM, AND SHE WILL CATCH UP TO YOU... NOW.

"Hi Joo-Eun!" Katie shouts, somehow condensing the name to 'June.' She and Rata manage to make it on board the train. "We thought we were going to lose you there. How did you manage to get ahead of us?"

A second look at the tablet reveals that it is blank, and unpowered.

[Whiskeyjack]

(Korean)"Z-Zeratul...?" she murmurs as the tablet switches off. Joo-Eun looks up to see Rata and Katie appear on the train.

"I..." she pauses, a bit confused for a moment and, as always, irritated when one of the waeguk-saram mispronounces her name, as if it's really that hard to properly enunciate. She brushes it off, coming out of the world of her mental speculation. "Well, I mean, that is to say, you know King-ssi, she doesn't e-exactly run straight somewhere when she does that. I just...walked here, efficiently," she shrugs with a small smile, putting the tablet back into her bag.

"H-how are you this morning? I heard you were going to a...gymnastics club after class?"

[Aneurin]

William

As Walters addresses him, William salutes. "I'm ready, ma'am,"

At his side stands a suitcase that contains virtually all of his worldly belongings; the few changes of clothing provided to him in Boston so he would "fit in with the normal children", as one unkind member of staff had commented when they thought him out of hearing. Not that he cared what they thought.

His gaze slowly drifts over the convoy, and he studies the vehicles he spent years learning how to destroy; there was a C3 truck - a brief memory of being shown how to attatch a thermal charge under the rear axle to ignite the fuel lines flickers through his head.

William eventually settles his eyes on the Eva carrier that contained the Evangelion the engineering team called Pandora. His Evangelion. One of the three things in the world that meant anything to him.

He salutes again as Zoe arrives.

"When do I move out, ma'am?"

[TheDarkDM]

Captain Palmer

Putting down the sheaf of security reports he'd been reviewing, Palmer gives Lieutenant Hawkins a slight nod and a tired smile. Cracking his knuckles, he stood gingerly on his injured leg.

"And I imagine Mittal and McShane are already down their pulling their hair out? Seems I'd better get down there."

Taking hold of the cane leaning against his desk, Palmer passes a high, round table holding a beautiful granite chess set, sparing a glance to a game that seemed to be in progress already. His brow furrows, and he reaches out to move a piece before snapping his fingers and turning back towards the door. Taking a thick file from a rack hanging beside the window, he smooths his uniform in the reflection.

"Lieutenant, I'd like to speak with the Section 2 agents that were involved in the VTOL attack - please schedule a meeting for tomorrow. That will be all."

Palmer gives Hawkins a brisk salute before he exits the office, limping ever so slightly as he makes his way to the Phoenix Room. His coming prefaced by the ringing rap of his cane, Palmer's entrance surprised neither of the doctors waiting within.

"Good afternoon Doctor Mittal, Doctor McShane. Anything interesting going on in Science Division?"

[Jade_Tarem]

Area 51 - NERV 02 Super Solenoid Research Center
Evangelion Hangar Add-On
Unit 03 Convoy, Callsign: Pandora's Box

"Right now. I think you're riding with me up front. Once we're out of the base you can sleep, chat, whatever. It's going to be a long, boring drive. We hope."

After Dawn

And indeed it was, for several hours, as the convoy headed northeast, up into old Utah. The towns grew fewer and farther between (and emptier), the effects of Second Impact not yet carefully erased as they were in the big cities. Traffic, too, let up, and wasn't expected to become an issue again until St. Louis.

However, in the middle of the flattest part of the state, with hardly anyone around, a blip (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBlGyUctjkc) showed up on radar in all four C3 trucks.

"Be advised, director, large mass on radar, probably airborne. We'll warn him off."

The conversation continues to be shared with the director's vehicle, making it audible to William as well.

"Unidentified aircraft, this is a no-fly zone. Repeat, a no-fly zone under NA02 Authority. Alter heading to follow the transmitted route immediately. Acknowledge." Silence comes over the line as the object comes nearer.

"Unidentified aircraft, this is not a joke. Alter course now or we will kill you. Acknowledge."

The silence continues. The normally sweet and bouncy Walters leans forwared and thumbs her comm with a shrug. "Shoot it down."

The convoy fans out to either side of the road, and supports come down, rooting the launchers in place. Within seconds, several rockets are fired at the interloper - and all hell breaks loose.

A shrieking noise comes over the radio and the rader suddenly shows the blip moving impossibly fast. "What the hell? That's impossible acceleration for non-military craft, and it's huge!"

"Is it an Angel?"

"Negative." This voice came from the Eva cage - the one with the more specialized sensors. "AT Field strength is negligible. You're looking at something paramilitary, someone's black project."

The aforementioned project rockets by overhead, close to the ground. It looks like some kind of mechanical dinosaur, leg-like landing gear tucked up, massive tail outstretched to the rear and large wings studded with weapons out to the side. To top it off, a head-like protrusion extends from the front.

And the guns are blazing, two of the missile trucks explode in that pass, and then the thing lands on its lengthy, reverse-jointed legs, easily maintaining balance despite the violence of the maneuver.


"That... That's a T-RIDEN-T. They prototyped that damn thing? It's supposed to be vaporware!"

"I'd worry more about the fact that it's attacking us!" Zoe snarls from the passenger seat. "William, get suited up! That thing's enormous and our missile defenses won't last much longer!"

London-2, Hood Station

"Oh, absolutely! Are you joining us? We're always looking for new talent." Katie nods enthusiastically.

"They need all the help they can get, you see." A voice cuts through the car as the train rolls into motion. A look reveals David Berrick, Katie's off-again-on-again boyfriend and an off-again-on-again antagonist to Rata, owing to a dislike of general wierdness, which happens to be Rata's rank in any armed forces regardless of nationality.

"David! Be nice. Rata's really good at it."

"Had to happen sometime." He's cut off by a whack to the head. "Alright! Sorry. How've you two been?"

NERV HQ, Phoenix Room

Both women are ready as Palmer walks in. Given that the meeting is already behind and that the three of them are all that's required to really hold it in the first place, there's no reason to delay.

And both want whatever budget is coming in. And despite their brilliance and accomplishments in their respective fields, neither one could hold an orderly meeting if lives depended on it. "We've got the basic turret grid set up, and the missile racks, but you can get up to ten times the effect with a little retooling."

"If you're willing to live in the stone age until the Angels outclass guns completely..."

"...all theoretical, they still do business with physics at the end of the day-"

"-for now, and could be focusing on improving something useful. We could easily supplement super-solenoid research-"

"-construction on retractable buildings is behind schedule, they're supposed to be done in a month, but Letter-type Eva equipment-"

"-more likely to produce a breakthrough in large-scale progressive-"

"-N2 shell capability is proven technology, we can-"

And so forth. The last point, though, they can agree on.

"And that's why you should approve my budget plan."

[Whiskeyjack]

"I-I suppose. I, uh, don't think there's much else going on ex...cept..." Joo-Eun pauses a moment, the Eva hangar coming to mind. "Well, um, nothing really today I...I guess. And my dad says I should be more active, so," she ends with a shrug.

She gives David a shy sideways look but doesn't do much more than bow politely to him and mumble a greeting, never looking directly at him. "What's this, uh, club like?"

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

A look of horror descended on Rata's face when she realized what her idle suggestion had turned into. "It's not your sort of thing!" She snapped as Kwon waffled as she tended to -- a fact Rata was happy about for a change. "We, er, do a lot of..." Mouthing flapping uselessly Rata tried to think of something Kwon wouldn't like to do. "..." Rata said dejectedly as she couldn't really remember anything she knew Kwon didn't like. She knew she hated clutter, and a few other little dislikes of course, but none of them were usable as a means to discourage her from joining the club. Typically Rata felt the need to kick David at this point because obviously it was his fault somehow and giving him a kick was Pavlovian -- or something. Right now though it was quite clearly either Katie's fault or Rata's, and Rata wasn't about to give her friend a kick in the shin so she was left wondering what she should do.

Then lightning struck. Not literally of course, but figuratively -- a little lightbulb in Rata's mind had just switched on, and she now knew how to discourage Kwon. "The outfit we have to wear is awful, see? You'd hate it. Leotards. Ugh." It had been Rata's first, enduring and only reason to avoid gymnastics since she began over a year ago. The idea that Kwon wouldn't mind wearing one didn't cross Rata's mind in the slightest. "They're pretty much the only reason David ever shows up though, so I guess if you're big on having him leer then you'd love it." And with that shot at David the small bundle of anger that was Rata felt more at ease with the world.

[Jade_Tarem]

London-2 Transit

"Oh yeah, like you've ever had anyone leering at you!" David snorts. "You probably just don't want the competition." Another whack shuts him up again. Katie bobs a bit as the train hits a turn, "Well, don't let us pressure you one way or another. There are lots of neat clubs. What sorts of things do you like, anyway? I can't remember talking about it since you transferred..."

[Whiskeyjack]

Joo-Eun blanches, eyes looking everywhere but at David. "A leotard?! I had nearly forgotten about...that! That's-that's worse than the pl-um...the plant lab suits. To deal with foreign plants. Yes." She turns scarlet, shocked at how easily she almost said 'plug suit.'

Thankful for the reprieve, she turns to Katie. "M-me? Uh, well I like...science and stuff. Back home I played a lot of baduk, I mean you call it 'Go' here, it's sort of like an-an Asian version of chess, kinda. I like computer stuff too...video games, you know, stuff like that and it's just too bad I didn't see anything about a shopping club!" Joo-Eun laughs nervously. "I haven't really had a chance to, um, check out shopping or-or anything since I got here," she adds quietly, brushing at a wrinkle on her skirt.

[Aneurin]

William

"William, get suited up! That thing's enormous and our missile defenses won't last much longer!"

The words are barely out of Zoe's mouth before he's unbuckling his seat belt and vaulting over the seat in to the back of the truck, already stripping his clothes off as he races to his plug suit, revealing a well-muscled body with more than a few old scars - some of them quite vicious.

As truck rocks with the blast of an missile rack exploding nearby, William's nearly thrown from his feet by the unexpected movement as he struggles in to his plug suit;

Why is this so hard to get in to in an emergency?

After some effort, the suit is on well enough for the retraction-fitting function to work, and the baggy folds of the suit shrink to fit William's lean figure. He moves quickly down the truck to the rear door, and crouches by it to fasten the A10 clips, before opening it a fraction to peer out at the dusty stretch of road separating his vehicle from the Eva cage.

When things look reasonably clear, he begins to run like his life depended on it. Because it quite probably does.

[Jade_Tarem]

London-2 Transit

"Well, the shopping club is called 'everyone' and they meet at the mall." Katie laughs. "I think we have a computer gaming club, though. They're always moaning about needing good players for StarShip or StarBoat or something. That and a bunch of other games." She pauses. "I don't think I've even heard of Go, and I'm rubbish at Chess. Have you tried those chessmaster programs?"

Actually waiting on Palmer at this point. I don't want to hold the budget meeting and the battle at the same time.

Bonneville Salt Flats, Eastbound I-80, Utah

William had been in an entry plug during an insertion before, but never one like this. Not only were there exploding trucks and large-scale gunfire everywhere, but due to the way the Eva was lying down, the plug was actually at a 45 degree angle relative to the ground, with the wrong end pointing down. Getting in was awkward, settling into the seat while LCL pumped in was even more awkward. Eventually, though, the cage snapped upright, and in the immortal words of Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, s*** got real (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTD8nWs4QjA).

The entry plug startup sequence is still set to default - the NERV motto, in English - owing to the brand new nature of the upgraded plug. The moment it goes on line, text goes rocketing past William front to back, in what gives the illusion of falling but is actually thousands of test suites being run by the plug and coming up green in a matter of seconds. A moment later, the visual feeds clear and show a rather barren Utah landscape in the early morning. The console jutting up from between William's legs lights up with the NERV and Eva designators.


NERV
Unit 03
Core: Sigma
Welcome, Pilot d'Orayne
All Systems Nominal
Ready for Deployment

Given its awkward position, essential data is not displayed on the console - it's just there in case the pilot, for whatever reason, needs a keyboard. The important information - status displays, ammunition trackers, the target acquisition status, radar, AT detection, and the all-important timer keeping track of the remaining power spring up on the viewscreens themselves. They were set to remain semi translucent normally and either go completely transparent or completely opaque depending on whether or not the pilot was trying to look at them or past them - and monitoring of the dialation and focus of the pilot's eyes allowed the plug to determine exactly that.

The timer is currently frozen at 5:00:00, but a small notation under it says OVERDRIVE, which is counterintuitively the default setting for Eva power consumption. It basically removes the limits imposed by power flow over the pilot's control of the Eva, which has the effect of draining batteries faster than the timer would normally tick down. The end result is that the Eva's operating time is closer to three minutes instead of five.

In short, time flies.

The big timer is frozen, but a second time appears next to it, showing an addtional 4:59:99, and a small note next to that shows that this is the hookup from Mobile Support Station 28. Practical testing had shown that the MSS wouldn't last much longer than an Eva battery, and the second timer is already running. All things told, William has about 9 minutes. Assuming the T-RIDEN-T didn't blast either support station, or either umbilical.

The control yokes come alive in William's hands. Captain Walters' clear voice - when your operational budget is 300 billion dollars annually your comm equipment does not "crackle" - sounds out through the LCL. "Eva Unit 03, Launch!"

And when she says "Launch," what she really means is "Roll for Initiative."

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

Despite her reluctance to kick David before Rata finds the last vestiges of her feminine pride welled up for a split second shin kick at his entirely unneeded comment -- coincidently it was also in synch with Katie's second thwack to his head. She also very nearly gave Kwon a solid kick when she nearly spilled about the plug suits. It wasn't that Rata cared about secrecy (mainly because that was Section 2's job, and the less said about what she thought about them the better) but she had failed to tell anybody, not even Katie, what she did when she missed school or vanished in the evening. If Rata could help it she was going to keep the secret until she died.

[Aneurin]

William

As the LCL cascades down from what's usually the bottom of the plug, it's all William can do to keep from choking as the yellow-ish liquid runs over him and sets waves rippling through the rising LCL around him. The coughing fits subside as the LCL - eventually - clears his mouth and nose, and he settles back back, eyes closed to blot out the nausea of the start-up sequences. He breathes deep and slowly for a count of five to allow the systems check to finish, before opening his eyes again.

The targetting array and distance estimators flicker across the display, outlining various parts of the cage with an array of circles, ovals, triangles, squares and more esoteric shapes each with a distance listed next to it in smaller numbers. William's eyes dart over dart over the numbers, check, double checking and triple checking the distances are listed correctly for each of the fixed distance points.

"Distance.. check. Targetting acquisition.. check. Amunition counter, timer, radar.. check. All systems green," he mutters to himself, refusing to trust the automated checks. This could be another test, to see what would happen in the event of a systems failure. Well, he wasn't going to be caught out like that.

I'm a Promethean, that means I'm faster, stronger, better than everyone else. If I'm not, what was the point of surviving?

Then the names and faces that didn't survive begin to well up in his mind, and his stomach clenches as he tries to blot them out. Before the thoughts can overwhelm him, he hears Captain Walters' voice: "Eva Unit 03, Launch!"

"Unit 03, launching,"

As his Evangelion surges upwards from the carrier, he has time for one last thought;

I'm going to live. For them. I'm going to win.

[Whiskeyjack]

Joo-Eun manages a small smile and makes a slight tsk noise. "You mean StarCraft? Um, I-I'd love to go shopping, I haven't really had the time and, um...I haven't really been comfortable going...by myself," she adds. "But I love shopping, I grew up in Seoul. It's...it's a huge cultural and fashion center in Asia, has been for decades. Actually, back before the Chinese unified Asia---pre-Impact, that is---Korea, you know, had been split and at war, North versus South, for about fifty years. The Western joke was that if the North ever invaded the South, they'd never get past Seoul...the merchants in the markets simply wouldn't let them through without buying something! It's not like that now, of course, and the Chinese cities are bigger and richer, but...Seoul is still a fashion and shopping capitol, so I definitely know how, um, to do that!"

She shakes her head. "I haven't tried the programs...there's nothing quite like facing a human opponent...even if it's over the internet."

[Jade_Tarem]

Grey Line Monorail/Katsuragi High

The rest of the trip, and the rest of the morning, pass uneventfully, but it isn't until lunch that a modicum of sweet freedom is regained. The lunch is, as usual, absolutely terrible for those poor unfortunate souls who must eat it. Kwon's cooking, however, has never been better.

But the real attraction can be found elsewhere. For Kwon, it comes in the form of a ping from her tablet, and the next message.

GOOD AFTERNOON, KWON JOO-EUN.

****

For Rata King, lunch provides a chance to deal with a growing, nauseating disorientation, a reflection of a forgotten nightmare. A trip to the restroom provides nothing in a very literal sense - a look into a mirror reveals, just for a moment, a total lack of a reflection for the blue-haired girl, the image fading back into view with a second look.

And then, in startlingly cliche fashion, the mirror cracks. The girl washing her hands next to Rata doesn't appear to notice, and leaves without comment.

In the fragmented and uneven sections of the mirror, something isn't right - a few of the shards show an oval mask, with a single, blank slit for an eye.

Bonneville Salt Flats, Eastbound I-80, Utah

The Evangelion surges (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAAjTI0ewio&feature=BFa) forward out of the cage as the locks fling themselves open, and William's chosen weapon springs out of the side of the cage and into Unit 03's waiting hand.

Since you won initiative, go ahead and take your turn. The battlefield has already been described, and you can start with any of your available weapons. The TRT is 60dm away.

[Aneurin]

William

He flexes his hand, and feels the Eva mimic his action, and a thin smiles spreads across his face. As the Evangelion-sized shoots up from the Eva cage, William barely pauses to grab it as he breaks in to a run - at a 45 degree angle to the convoy and the enemy. The ground trembles with each of the biomechanical monstrosity's strides.

Then the air distorts around Unit 03, showing a pattern of expanding hexagons for a moment, before normality returns leaving a now-reality-defying bioengineered fighting machine to duke it out with a giant dinosaur shaped robot using nothing but a giant spear. Unit 03 Pauses for a moment, and takes a fighting grip on the spear, and braces for the inevitable salvo of fire from T-Riden-T.

Half Action move to prevent misses obliterating the convoy - 8dm. Which should place me 4dm to the side of the convoy, and 4dm closer to the T-Riden-T.
Half Action spread Deflective Field.

Things to note: All attacks against Unit 03 are made at -10 thanks to Small Scale.

[Whiskeyjack]

Joo-Eun frowns as she pulls up the touchscreen keyboard, nibbling on a piece of kimchi as she types a response.

(Korean)+++Good afternoon. With whom do I have the pleasure of speaking? Is this still...Zeratul? Are you a person or a program? And...pardon mu bluntness, but why are you contacting me?+++

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

Rata looked into the blank mirror, her eyes squinting as she moved her head slightly to one side and then another, and found herself locked in strange fascination. Her head slid from side to side and her eyes focussed on the nothingness in the mirror. Her curiosity was only intensified when her reflection slowly began to return. She was so absorbed in her reflection that when the mirror cracked she was startled, and even jumped back a little. Quickly her head twisted to look at the girl washing her hands next to her, but she didn't take any notice of Rata or the mirror that had just broken all by itself. Rata's eyes followed the girl, but as soon as she left her gaze returned to the mirror. Now it held something else... a white, oval mask with a single blank slit where you'd imagine an eye should be. Entranced by the way the mask appeared in some fragments but not in others Rata's hand raised itself up and reached out toward one of the shards. Slowly and cautiously she reached out, and as gently as she could she touched her fingers on the shard.

[Jade_Tarem]

Bonneville Salt Flats, I-80 Eastbound, Utah

The T-RIDEN-T swivels mechanically at the "waist" and the heavy weapons under its chin spin up... and open fire on the Mobile Support Station.

Opening, Part 2: The Maroczy Bind (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7p1z_vl8Y0)
"No one has ever seen God."

- John 1:18

A few bullets lance out, but then a tremendous ratcheting noise is heard and smoke rises from the weapon - a clear mechanical failure. It also scoots back from Unit 03 - a sort of birdlike hop, only less graceful. Despite the artless nature of it, the machine does manage to retreat a fair distance.

The T-RIDEN-T has jammed its chin-mounted machine gun! It did, however, manage to scoot away from William and is now 62 dm away.

MSS 28 is still intact, and Unit 03 is still "racing," leaving William with 5 full rounds of power.

London 2, Katsuragi High - Cafeteria

The tablet responds quickly.

(KOREAN) THIS IS INDEED STILL ZERATUL. ANALYSIS PROVIDED A LIST OF OBVIOUS PSEUDONYMS THAT YOU MIGHT RESPOND TO POSITIVELY, AND THE NAME ZERATUL WAS CHOSEN RANDOMLY FROM THAT LIST. I HAVE CONTACTED YOU BECAUSE I WANTED TO SEE IF I COULD AND BECAUSE YOUR HISTORY OF ABUSING NERV'S SECURITY PROTOCOLS WOULD PROVIDE AN EXTRA LAYER OF INCREDULITY SHOULD THESE COMMUNICATIONS BE COMPROMISED, BUT PRIMARILY BECAUSE I WANTED TO.

There's a pause, and then more words pop up on the screen.

YOUR BROTHER'S WORK WAS EXTRAORDINARY. YOU CONTINUE IT AT THE UNIVERSITY, BUT YOUR RESEARCH WILL BE HAMPERED BY YOUR LACK OF A SECURITY CLEARANCE. BREACHING PROTOCOL IS A RISK, BUT ONE THAT I AM WILLING TO TAKE TO SEE YOUR WORK PROGRESS. DO YOU WISH FOR ASSISTANCE? (Y/N)

Katsuragi High - Restroom

A rogue gust from the building's ever-cranky heater wafts through the room as Rata touches the mirror. And as she does... nothing happens.

But only for a moment. A man's reflection steps into a blank shard in the mirror and a voice can be heard - a male one, belonging to Dr. Mudhar Mittal. While he shares Dr. Sonal Mittal's coloration and height, there's a subtle air of total assurance about him that his biological daughter will never have.

"It's not here. Not yet. But it's coming."

A look behind reveals nothing in the bathroom, but the shattered reflections don't fade. "You're going to need more tricks than missiles and screaming to beat him, I'm afraid. But you can do that - I made sure of it." He finally beams. "How are you, Rata? You've grown so much."

[Whiskeyjack]

Joo-Eun frowns, typing back in Korean, glad that this tablet has alternative alphabet keyboard software.

+++My brother's work? Do you mean...the Infinite Energy Hypothesis? Hm. If you're an employee of NERV why would you breach protocol for me to do this, aside from the fact that the research could help NERV as well?+++

Joo-Eun waits a moment, casting a glance around her, looking for Section 2 or any shady people or any people or anything before she presses the keyboard a few more times.

+++Will I accept your help? .............Yes.+++

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

Silence followed as Rata stared at the image of her father that had just stepped into one of the blank shards. Thought she was acknowledging it her mind was steadfast in its belief that this couldn't be real -- not that it believed the oval mask was any more real, but it was something already strange and allowances were made for it. "I'm," she paused. She wasn't fine, but she knew that people didn't ask how you were because they wanted to know. It was like saying 'hello'. It was just part of greeting somebody you haven't seen for a while. It was an open invitation to talk about yourself, but it wasn't one she'd seen anybody use. They always said: "Fine. I'm fine." And then they'd ask in return: "And how are you?" Which in the circumstances seemed strange to her mind.

[TheDarkDM]

Captain Palmer

Weathering the storm of suggestions from the two doctors, Palmer sat patiently until they finished on an identical note. Glancing down at the papers containing the uninspiring figures they had available at the moment, he raised his hand before they could continue.

"Thank you, doctors. While both your plans have obvious merit, any investment we make now will be about as useful as tissue paper with the funds we have available. As such, I'm withholding the bulk of our discretionary spending until we can focus on a project with clear, reachable goals..."

Palmer cracked a smile at the ludicrous notion that any NERV project could have clear or reachable goals.

"...as unlikely as such a thing is. Your departments will of course continue to receive their necessary budgets. No, while I've got you here..."

He reached into the folder by his hand, pulling out the incident report of the terrorist attack and the most recent Synch test results.

"Let's discuss how our newest recruit is fitting in, and how a hostile force managed to cripple communications inside our home base."

[Aneurin]

William

William stretches his limbs - no, not his limbs, the Eva's limbs - in to an all-out sprint towards the T-Riden-T. A glance at the timer confired his fears - that he had only a few minutes of operational time left before we was entirely helpless. He had to take care of the enemy before that happened. He - dammit, his Eva - had to be faster than any collection of armour and artillery. And more reliable, seeing as the thing had just jammed one of its guns.

He felt a little flutter inside his Eva's - no, his, he really had to be clear on the difference - chest, as he realised that the enemy was either very unlucky, or unskilled and had pushed its gun too hard. Either way, he had an advantage and he intended to use it - if he could catch it at least.

Trying to keep his own sensations and that of the Eva separate was... difficult. Especially when it felt so right to be in it, as if it were a part of him, rather than a separate entity. He knew it could cause problems, but for now it was almost exilerating - the sensation of strength and power far beyond anything he could achieve for himself. For once having the power to do something real, to maybe protect someone he cared about, protect-

He stopped that thought dead. No, not now. The enemy. That's all that matters. That's all that's left.

Already moving as fast as he can, William grits his teeth and tries even harder.

"I'll get you,"

Full Action Run - moving 32dam directly towards the TRT.

[Jade_Tarem]

Bonneville Salt Flats, I-80 Eastbound, Utah

Deep within the mechanisms of the T-RIDEN-T Land Cruiser Prototype, the pilot raised an eyebrow at the charging Eva. "Bad move, kid." With a flick of his thumb, he enabled one of the machine's many other weapon systems and quickly got a lock. "This is Raptor One, Fox One." He squeezed the trigger and then hauled back on the dual-yoke assembly, throwing the machine into reverse once again, grimacing as the gyros whirled the upper body to account for the backwards hop. From the sloping "back" of the cruiser, though, a missile with an impressive warhead and ECCM capability rocketed out at the Evangelion, closing the distance with incredible speed...

The T-RIDEN-T has backed up another 6dm, placing it 36 dm away from Unit 03. It has also fired a missile, which, as an AOE weapon, means that it hits unless you can dodge it... and at Agility bonus 4, you are indeed nimble enough to try to dodge it. Its breach rating is high enough to overcome your Deflection.

So yeah, I need a dodge test. Note that if you succeed, you can place yourself 4 dm closer to the T-RIDEN-T. Also note that your umbilical cable is getting severed either way.

Damage (raw): [roll0]

From the convoy, the second Mobile Support Station wheels around and hits maximum speed... driving in the wake of Unit 03.

Katsuragi High - Cafeteria

The tablet responds quickly. MY GOAL IS TO AID ALL OF HUMANITY, AND WHILE THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN INDISPENSABLE EMPLOYEE, MY JOB SECURITY IS VERY HIGH. IT IS GOOD THAT YOU HAVE ACCEPTED. IT WILL TAKE TIME TO GET THE MATERIALS TO YOU COVERTLY, BUT I WILL BEGIN AS SOON AS I CAN.

There's a pause. IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU WOULD LIKE TO TALK ABOUT?

Katsuragi High - Restroom

"Good... Good. Plans in motion, and all that. It will take time, of course, but then I told you that already." Indeed, it was among the last things Mittal had told Rata about in person. "How is the Evangelion treating you?"

NERV HQ - Phoenix Room

There's a momentary and awkward pause as the two scientists look at each other. McShane speaks first. "Well, they didn't, exactly. NERV's tactical and base communications were uninterrupted during the entire attack. We would have, for instance, been able to communicate with the Evangelions, had they been deployed, and we were able to communicate with the UN airfield."

Mittal nods. "The jamming devices were crude but powerful. That sort of jamming has traditionally been solved kinetically, since anyone using that technique makes themselves a huge target. Truthfully, someone wanting to, for instance, take over the city or even infiltrate NERV HQ under the cover of jamming like that would have a hard time doing it, since it's impossible to hide devices like that while they're in operation. In fact, plainclothes Section 2 agents recovered most of them. They're mostly UN manufacture with the serial numbers filed off."

"Which doesn't mean much." McShane paces back and forth at the far end of the room. "Enough UN bases and armories have been hit in Africa and South America to make acquiring these things from the black market possible for anyone with the money to spend on it. Have you talked to our resident prisoner or checked with the airfield that dispatched the dragonfly? Those may be better leads."

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

"It... it's fine too." Rata's hand hovered between her and the mirror. Getting over the unbelievable wasn't the easy part, but it was easier than talking to your father and that's for certain -- even an imaginary father is somehow still scary. "What's not here? What is coming?" Rata asked, but as she stared as the bone mask reflecting in the mirror she felt she had her answer somehow -- or maybe that was just a forced connection through their association with the mirror. "What is that?"

[Jade_Tarem]

Katsuragi High - Restroom

"That is many things. A visitor, an enemy, a child, and NERV's debut performance. In short, it's an Angel. You know that, and it isn't what you really want to ask, is it?" The image in the fragment crosses its arms expectantly. The mask just stares, unfazed.

[Whiskeyjack]

+++I...see. What materials are you talking about, Zeratul-ssi? Everything I've done has been computer modeling. Even my brother...and Dr. Katsuragi...were still in the pre-prototype stages when Impact happened, making sure all the math lined up. Surely you know that!+++

She frowns at the screen and types some more, feeling like she should really trust this layer of the onion. +++They hadn't tried to construct a Super Solenoid yet - from how it looks, they simply couldn't, not safely at least, and they weren't going to try it until they could optimize the safety parameters. Infinite energy sounds nice, unless it's unleashed after all. Chernobyl and Three Mile Island put a lot of the world off of fission for the better part of half a century. A reaction that could theoretically continue infinitely, that would be a lot worse if it got out of control. So...what 'materials' do you mean? Do you actually want me to try and build it...and you think I can when Mittal-seonsang has looked into it and can't do it yet?+++

Feeling slightly uncomfortable, Joo-Eun casts a glance around for Rata and is somewhat surprised not to see her. Usually Rata just ate in silence or talked inappropriately loudly with Katie or one of the other waeguk-saram girls in their year. Or terrorized the occasional boy or two. And she dragged out every second of free-from-class time. Surely she couldn't be waiting for it to resume? In the absence of Rata, Joo-Eun looked around for her friends or her things, anything to give a clue where she went.

After a moment she turns back to the tablet. +++Other things...um...how did I do with all those tests? I'd really like to go back to the hangar today...oh! You can see me right now, can't you? You saw me earlier when you warned me that King-ssi was coming up to me. If you can see me or us now, can you tell me where she is? This absence doesn't really fit with her general algorithm.+++

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

"Forcas." Rata never liked her dreams. They were strange, or at least she thought so but that may have been because she could always remember them -- like she remembered everything else -- vividly. "Invisible." Rata felt a sudden need to turn her head and stare at the empty space behind her, but she knew that even if she did she wouldn't see anything whether her fears were right or wrong. "What question? Is it 'how do you fight what you can't see?', because I'll admit that I don't know that one."

[Jade_Tarem]

Katsuragi High - Cafeteria

The tablet takes longer to respond to that one. RATA KING ENTERED THE GIRLS RESTROOM IMMEDIATELY AFTER CLASS AND HAS NOT YET EMERGED. THE RESTROOM IS NOT MONITORED.

YOUR BROTHER AND THE KATSURAGI EXPEDITION WERE IN THE PROCESS OF ANALYZING AN EXISTING INFINITE ENERGY REACTION WHEN SECOND IMPACT OCCURRED. AS YOU SURMISE, DISRUPTION OF THE CONTAINMENT OF THAT REACTION WAS THE PRIMARY CONTRIBUTING FACTOR OF THE CATASTROPHIC DAMAGE KNOWN TO YOU AS SECOND IMPACT.

AS A JUNIOR LABORATORY ASSISTANT, YOU WOULD NOT BE EXPECTED TO INITIATE A SUPER SOLENOID REACTION. THE MATERIALS IN QUESTION ARE THE CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS AND RECORDS OF THE KATSURAGI EXPEDITION.

Katsuragi High - Restroom

Mittal laughs. "I would expect that you fight what you can't see using other senses, but very few things can hide so well that they can never be seen. But no, that isn't what I was talking about. If you don't know it either, then you may not be ready to ask. Just know that I'll be here until you do." With that, Mittal steps out of the reflected mirror shard. And then, just like that, the mirror is just a mirror. It isn't even cracked.

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

"No!" Rata cried out, but already the fiction had walked away and she was alone again. Anger, familiar and comfortable, welled up inside her and it took no small measure of self-control not to crack the mirror herself, but in the end she settled for slamming her fist against the basin. "I'm going to rip its face off." She stated to herself as she lowered her head and looked at her throbbing fist. Already ideas were forming about things she could do. Foremost in her mind was the loss of her arm during the simulation. She needed a different way of carrying a weapon -- a flash of inspiration struck as she rose her head and looked at her face, and looked at her teeth. "If they thought I was nuts in the simulation... I'm going to prove I'm a gods damned genius." She said to herself.

[Whiskeyjack]

"Since the end of class...?" Joo-Eun frowns. Rata hadnt even eaten yet? That was stranger than knowing how under surveillance they really were.

+++Since the end of class? Hm. Is-is she ok? In a general sense? We're going to have to I guess fight alongside each other and...well not like I know the first thing about it but I want to be sure I can depend on her skill...! Oh! Can you show me the simulated fight she had? She said I should view it.+++

Joo-Eun nods at the S2 information. +++And what do you expect me to do with the notes? Can you tell me what exactly the thing was that initiated Inpact and what...what they did to it to make its AT Field collapse? Does it have something to do with the thing underneath us that Mittal-seonsang said we have to protect?+++

[Aneurin]

William

He saw the missile launch, but he was too slow to respond. Raw speed does not seem to equal maneouverability, but he still tries as he pushes the Eva to its utmost in an attempt to side-step the explosive. Unit 03's muscles scream as they're wrenched by the too-slow sideways lunge.

No, no, no, no, no-

The missile streaks harmlessly past his shoulder to blow a new crater in the Arizona landscape somewhere out his his sight. Understandably, his extreme reaction to it seems a little foolish in hindsight.

...oh.

Suddenly a cold dread assails William; he's being watched, his performance monitored. Any more screw-ups, and he's in a lot of trouble. With a snarl, he presses on with the Eva, setting a brutal pace in an urgent attempt to catch the T-Riden-T.

Unit 03 eats up the landscape with each stride, while the plug is filled with the sound of heavy breathing and a faint pinging from the timer every time it clicks down another ten seconds.

Another Run for 32dm.

[Jade_Tarem]

Bonneville Salt Flats, I-80 Eastbound, Utah

"Uh oh," The pilot blinked as the missile went streaking away. The hell? He quickly recalibrated and braced for his next shot, noting halfway through the maneuver that the attack would catch him in the blast unless he did something cute. Gotta try it.

The basic mission outline was simple - attack, fight the Evangelion until it ran out of power or until the T-RIDEN-T took serious damage, and leave. This process would continue until NERV ran out of ways to keep the Evangelion running, or until the hulking Eva unit took enough damage to keep it down.

And then, as they say, Step 3 was to profit.

Of course, there was a fair bit of risk to this plan. That was the nature of the game when your goal was to take down the most advanced fighting machine known to man with the other most advanced fighting machine, and the "AT Field" that his superiors kept harping about introduced yet another unknown quantity. On the other hand, the T-RIDEN-T was self-deployed and better armored, with even more on-board weaponry. The Evangelion would need more than hocus-pocus to come out on top.

Don't lose your 'nerv,' Jeff. The pilot grinned at the thought. Fire and take the blast, in three, two, one.... Another missile roared out, this one nearly at point blank range. "Raptor One, Fox Two."

Katsuragi High, Cafeteria

(KOREAN) I CAN AND WILL SHOW YOU THE SIMULATION IN ITS ENTIRETY AS SOON AS YOU CHOOSE TO VIEW IT, ALTHOUGH YOU MAY WISH TO WAIT UNTIL YOU HAVE EIGHT MINUTES AVAILABLE AND SOME PRIVACY. THE DATA ABOUT SECOND IMPACT WILL TAKE MORE TIME TO GATHER, BUT YOU WILL KNOW OF THIS IN DUE COURSE AS WELL.

AS PREVIOUSLY STATED, THE RESTROOMS ARE NOT MONITORED. YOU, HOWEVER, ARE LEGALLY AND PHYSICALLY CAPABLE OF ACCESSING THE AREA.

As the interface is purely text, reading tone can be difficult. However, it is entirely possible that the tablet is delivering something that might be called "snark."

Katsuragi High, Restroom

Belatedly, it dawns on Rata that another girl has entered the restroom. She gives the pilot an odd look before saying, "It may be too late for that," and heading for the toilet.

[Whiskeyjack]

Joo-Eun quickly types: +++Thank you, Zeratul-ssi, I look forward to talking more with you in the future, but for now, I need to go find King-ssi. Which restroom did she go in?+++

Once Zeratul answers, she flips over to the tablet's settings menu and quickly installs a numeric password onto it, then powers it down, packs it into her bag, and goes looking for Rata King.

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

Rata's head swivelled toward the girl like an active gun turret. "What?" Was her retort as she glowered, unsure of what she meant but she was fairly certain it wasn't anything good -- it was a fair assumption.

[Aneurin]

William

The second missile barely phases William, as Unit Three jinks around it without slowing - and in fact manages to use the movement to gain a better footing and throw itself at the T-Riden-T with the spear flickering out in an array of savage blows. Unfortunately the attacks are somewhat more predictable than William had intended, but they were impressively vicious nontheless.

Inside the plug, the pilot is grinning savagely. Too long helpless, too long being used. Well, he's still being used, but there's finally a problem he can solve. Even more therapeutic is the fact that the problem can be solved by smashing it into tiny, tiny pieces.

"Three minutes?" William mutters to himself, as he glances at the incorrect timer and does the math. "I can do this. I can. I'm not going to be stopped now,"

Unit Three draws back its gargantuan spear for a thrust designed to completely impale the T-Riden-T, and brings it down as the pilot lets out a shout that tries to account for ten years of helpless, hopeless fury.

[Jade_Tarem]

Bonneville Salt Flats, I-80 Eastbound, Utah

The pilot snarled as the second missile went flying past the target. The Evangelion unit is clumsy, they said. The control network is tied to some kid, they said. As the spear flashed out at him, the pilot reached out to his right and cranked the manipulator around, grabbing the spear and stopping it.

***

For nearly half a minute, that tableau held, the machine holding fast. In William's entry plug, time seemed to shoot past impossibly fast, but a shift allowed the Evangelion some better leverage.

***

Things were going fine as far as the T-RIDEN-T was concerned, but something was going on with the Evangelion... the unit was setting its stance and... trying harder? That was insane, machines couldn't "give 110%," but the Eva certainly seemed to.

But that was alright, because the manipulators could grip with some absurd amount of PSI that he couldn't remember off the top of his head, and the servos in the arms could handle -

*BEEP*

- could handle -

*BEEP*

Irritably, he spared a glance at his console. It was extremely informative. CRITICAL FAILURE IN R2 SERVO.

"No." He said, calmly, as though chiding a small child.

MECHANICAL FAILURE IMMINENT, DESIST ACTIVITY.

"No no no..." The pilot said, somewhat more urgently.

A horrific shriek of the kind that only metal under extreme stress can produce filled the cockpit, accompanied by the cheery noise of gears the size of minivans being stripped, and the angry noises made by the pilot himself. "No no no no nononono FUUUUUUU-"

And then the resistance in the arm gave out all at once. Unit 03, overbalanced, continued forward with its entire weight and strength still pushing the spear forward - a vulnerability that the T-RIDEN-T could have taken advantage of had the spear not still been pointed directly at the machine's body.

A new tearing and crunching noise filled the air as the spear plunged through delicate electronics and less delicate armored plating and machinery - the spear wasn't picky, really. The pilot noted his diagnostics going red, which was bad, and then going dark, which was worse.

The spear finally ground to a halt, the tip just visible inside the cockpit itself. The pilot snarled again, wiped sweat out of his eyes, and acted quickly - his parameters were clear, he was to retreat if the T-RIDEN-T took this much damage. The pilot grabbed the still functioning controls, and tore the T-RIDEN-T off the spear point, using the machine's good arm to swat the tip aside before another strike. "This is Raptor One, disengaging." Then he indulged in the most time honored of strategies...

***

Unit 03's monitors dim as brilliant light bursts from under the machine - the T-RIDEN-T lifts off the ground, back and up, and rotates even as its legs tuck back up and away and the tail extends again. Then, with another burst from the thrusters, it rockets away, trailing a dark stream of smoke and occasionally sparking.

William's speaker's burst to life as a SOUND ONLY window appears. "Do not pursue, pilot d'Orayne. Return to the Evangelion cage. We aren't safe here. And good work."

Katsuragi High, Restroom

The girl doesn't respond, but soon another person is in the doorway - a very concerned Kwon Joo-Eun.

You two are once again in the same scene. Angel coming soon. (Waiting on DM)

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

Rata repeated herself at Kwon, but then added an elegant 'whatever' before pushing past her. "Tell the teacher I'm ill and heading home. Tell Katie too, and tell her I'm sorry but I'm missing practice tonight." Rata told her as she pushed -- it wasn't technically a lie, and certainly not if what she'd just seen wasn't some special surprise her father left her tucked away behind a forgotten strand of DNA. Forcas, invisible. The two thoughts mixed in with a dozen others. Rata knew, somewhere deep inside her she knew, she needed to talk to somebody, but she couldn't talk to just anybody. There were three people -- as she figured -- that she could talk to and they were Palmer, McShane, and the prettier Mittal. Palmer was out for being a tool, and McShane was almost as crazy as Rata was so she was out too. Stomping down the corridors of the school she hated her brain for not coming up with a fourth option.

[Whiskeyjack]

"W-wait!" Joo-Eun shouts after her, moving to catch up. "W-what happened? You don't look ill! Do...I...it wasn't my food, was it?! No, that's impossible...what's the matter? And why can't you just text Katie yourself?! Was someone in there hassling you? Did you forget something at home? Is it, um...th-that...time..." she can't even bring herself to finish that sentence, shaking her head.

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

"I don't have a phone; it's too easy to track." The rest she left hanging in the air for a moment. "So unless you stop following me she wont know, and that would be rude. Not that I care about rudeness in general," Rata added as she turned a corner. "But she's my best friend so I take the effort when I can. Or make somebody else do it. Like now!"

[Aneurin]

William

There's a feeling of intense elation as the arm of the robot in front of him finally gives way, which almost instantly turns to alarm as Unit 03 begins to tumble forwards - all it's efforts had gone in to brute force, and not a thought given to balance. Fortunately, what could have been an awkward, if not fatal, mistake proved to William's advantage, as not only did the full force of the spear blow smashes into the T-Riden-T, but is hammered in further as the weight of an Evangelion lands on top of the spear blow. However, before it completely overbalances, Unit 03 finds itself being jerked back in to a standing position as the T-Riden-T fires it's thrusters so close and so hard that their heat scorches Unit 03's armour - presumably an accidental kindness by the T-Riden-T's pilot..

William can only watch as the robot breaks off and takes to the sky where he can't hope to pursue. He'd heard talk of the A-Type equipment that would have allowed him to pursue, but that there were power supply problems that rendered it virtually useless. He almost grits his teeth in frustration.

If I could just get close to that thing, I could finish it.


For a moment, he contemplates making a spear throw - Unit 03 even half raises the spear. Unfortunately, with the T-Riden-T moving so fast, it's too much of a risk. Loss of an Evangelion weapon probably wouldn't sit well with either Captain Walters or whoever took over the next phase of transport - or his new Operations Director in... wherever they were sending him now. He probably should have asked, now that he thinks of it.

Lowering the spear to a less aggressive stance, William begins to systematically purge non-essential power outputs until it's running on little more than life support and basic motor functions. A glance at the rapidly descending timer suggests that a reduction in power consumption is a wise course of action until he can meet up with the support station. Becoming stranded in the middle of a desert without the facilities to properly recover an Evangelion from the field just didn't seem like a worthwhile use of his, or anyone else's, time - not to mention being very damaging to his credibility as a pilot.


From the outside, the most noticable change - in fact the only real observable change - to Unit 03 is the glow of the eyes dulls to almost nothing. Until it starts moving, that is. Each step is heavy and clumsy compared to its earlier fluid grace, and its actions are ponderously slow. It takes a lot longer than it would at full operating capacity for the Evangelion to meet up with the mobile support station, although when it does William re-enables enough systems that the Eva can at least manage a decent walking speed as he makes his way back to the cage.

[Whiskeyjack]

"But..." Joo-Eun begins as Rata takes off again, and she sighs. (Korean) "Fine, idiot, never mind me trying to help or f-for being worried, b-but...." she sighs again. (Korean) "I don't think this is the kind of thing I'm supposed to just...not...tell anyone about."

She types a quick apologetic text to Katie, saying she just ran into Rata King feeling sick in the bathroom and that King-ssi was heading home and oh, so very sorry, but she said she'd be missing the club today and Joo-Eun felt just awful having Rata be home alone and sick so she might have to miss too...

That sent, she finds a secluded spot and dials Captain Palmer on her cell phone. Inevitably she gets his voicemail. (Korean) "G-good morning Palmer-seonbae. Um, It's Kwon Joo-Eun. I wanted to let you know that, um, Rata King-ssi has left school claiming illness b-but I don't think she's sick. I don't really know w-what's up but I'm a little worried but I-I'm not sure if I should miss school to find out? Let me know please thank youuuuuuuu," she hangs up.

[Jade_Tarem]

Moving on...

It takes a full three hours for the convoy to come down from alert, and for backup missile batteries to arrive. This time, however, they're kept at high alert, and it's unlikely that they'll issue a warning again, other than the general grounding order that's preceding the convoy itself. Hopefully, all of the radars and nav sensors of civilian aircraft in the area are in good condition. Otherwise, jokes about DELTA meaning "Don't Expect Luggage To Arrive" will become tragically unironic. William is allowed to sleep off his combat exertions, or not, as he prefers, but the facilities don't exist to clean him with anything more thorough than a towel.

That said, the convoy rolls into the area near Cheyenne Mountain without a hitch. The complex has been expanded - or rather, surrounded - since Second Impact, as NORAD was one of the few areas that managed to remain intact and operational in the face of the Yellowstone Fault going nuts.

Since then, a shanty town of all the area survivors has been created, which isn't as bad as it sounds. Or rather, it isn't as bad as some other shanty towns. A few wind-turbine power generators have been rigged up, and electricity seems fairly ubiquitous. Everything else, though, is the kind of primitive that the US government has steadfastly pretended doesn't exist for the last decade.

And it is here that the convoy chooses to stop.

There, engineers and techs from the Eva cage hop out and immediately head for one of the turbines while soldiers and Section 2 agents fan out.

Zoe looks back. "We're making a stop here, William. You awake?" She says, softly.

London-2

Holding for Palmer to respond to Kwon, such as it is.

Rata's path is once again monitored by Section 2 agents in their secret identities as London-2's worst drivers. However, her path through the city brings her back to NERV HQ well into the afternoon. Repeated requests to see Mittal eventually bear fruit just for sheer novelty value. And at last, Rata is met by Dr. Sonal Mittal.

She is, of course, still in her lab coat. "What?" She asks, flatly.

[TheDarkDM]

Captain Palmer

Palmer frowns at the doctors' response. He'd hoped they'd be able to shed more light on the attack, but at the back of his mind he supposed he'd known what needed to be done. A soft sight escapes him as he returns the documents to the dossier and stands with a brisk salute.

"Thank you doctors. If you need me, I'll be in the detention block."

Turning on his heel, he stride out of the room at a brisk pace, pulling a comm unit from his jacket pocket.

"Lieutenant Hawkins, I'll be in the detention block for the remainder of the day. I want a full report from the hostile Dragonfly's point of origin on my desk by 18:00. Palmer out."

Boarding the tram that would take him to the detention block, Palmer pauses to slip on a pair of gloves, the standard issue for ceremonial purposes. Pulling them tightly against his hands, he closes his eyes, breathing slowly as the hum of the car surrounds him. It is a peaceful moment, before the squeal of brakes and tug of deceleration, but it is not a pleasant one - when his eyes open, Palmer has become a different man.

The Detention Block

The man had been kept in complete isolation for more than a week. His meals arrived though a creaking drawer he'd seen once before they'd killed the lights, but he'd managed to eat most of them without spilling something on the concrete floor. It was cold in that concrete coffin, and cramped, so cramped he couldn't even lie down properly - the pain in his back showed no signs of decreasing. Even sleep was no reprieve, as every few hours he was awakened by a blaring keening. Prior to Second Impact, the United Nations might have considered such conditions torture, but the man had tried to kill the last, best hope for the survival of the human race. Legally, he was no better than a rabid dog.

Palmer watches through the infrared cameras as the guards enter the cell, throwing a burlap sack over the man's head before dragging him to the interrogation room. He screams something muffled, but they don't respond, they are too well trained. The man only sees the faintest glimpse of them before he's thrown into the new room, far larger than his cell, but as blindingly dark as a grave. He screams at them, demanding all the usual things, before the flare of floodlights silences him with a pitiable cry. The room is white, blindingly white - better to reflect the lights - and Palmer knows the man has been stricken temporarily blind. He activates the water himself, watching dispassionately as the ragged, naked body of the man is thrown against the concrete walls by a torrent of freezing water. Then comes the intercom, booming though the interrogation room with the fury of an old god.

"Why did you attack the children?"

Later

Leaving the interrogation booth, Palmer finally checks his phone. Seeing a voice-mail from Joo-Eun, listening in silence, his eyes narrowed before calling in to Section 2.

"Security, this is Palmer. Confirm you have the location of Pilot King?"

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata

Now she was face-to-face with Sonal it didn't seem such a great idea to come see her, or so went the thoughts in Rata's head. It was too late to stop without looking stupid so the only thing she could do was attack -- metaphorically speaking. "The Angels." She started. "Who comes up with their names? Is there a list? Do you know the names on that list?" Three simple questions she had thought up just as the set up for the fourth. "Is the first Angel called Forcas?" Rata's eyes pierced Sonal's own with determination. It might have seemed a strange list of questions without those eyes, but with them they seemed to take on a strange and exotic importance.

[Aneurin]

William

Blood. That's what it smelt of. What he smelt of. Even the towel around his neck smelt of it now. Every time he was in the plug, he could smell it. It tainted everything.

The unchanging landscape offers no escape from the memories. Nothing to focus on. Just the smell of blood. The memories of blood, from-

No. Not that. Not again.

It had been hard to pull out of the months of decline after leaving Prometheus. Even now, he's still less than he was. Too much change, too fast. It'll take time to recover, to make up the lost ground. But he owes it to them, all of them who didn't make it out. Surviving is all he can do.

Still, as the landscape crawls past, his thoughts continue to follow darker and darker paths, until he can no longer see the landscape; doesn't even notice the convoy's arrival in the shanty town until Zoe calls to him a second time.

"I'm awake," he says slowly, as he takes in the sights - the strange, hap-hazard layout of the town and the rough contruction is unlike anything he's seen before. "Where are we?" he adds; the first sign of interest he's taken in the journey all day. Or, to be perfectly honest, the first sign of interest he's shown in anything since arriving in Boston.

[Jade_Tarem]

Cheyenne Mountain

"Crystal Palace." Zoe says. "Also known as NORAD." She pops the door of the car and gets out to open William's before continuing. "And now home to everyone too unlucky to die in Second Impact and too poor to travel somewhere better. And now they're going to have a day-long power shortage while we recharge Unit 03 and MSS 28. Dealing with these people is going to be so much fun."

As if to punctuate her sentence, every light in the camp dims and starts to flicker, emphasizing the growing darkness - if the blazing lights around the NORAD entry didn't do that already. Zoe smiled thinly. "We need to get you to London-2 as soon as we can. It might actually be safer there. Can I get you anything? Obviously options are limited, but I know we brought some food and water..."

Alternating NERV HQ Labs/Southern UK Countryside

"This is L805, transmitting flight plan now." Jim Rivers smiled easily at his bride to be. He'd just picked up the flight certifications that allowed him to take her on this trip. It was a beautiful day out, you could see for miles in every direction. There wasn't even anything on Radar now, they were far enough away from London-2.

***

Mittal starts to brush off Rata's question - the pilot can practically see the older woman form the words 'You got me out here for this?' in her mind - but the Scientist stops and actually considers it. Like Rata, she had a perfect memory, but it could take a moment to retrieve old information.

"There might be a list, but it's unlikely." Mittal says. "The MAGI actually determine the name after a preliminary scan of their abilities and antics, and then translate it into slightly inaccurate westernized Hebrew as a code word." She pauses for a moment, and then continues. "They are numbered by the order in which they reach adulthood. Currently, only two extraterrestrial beings have reached adulthood, and you aren't authorized to know their names."

***

His fiance took another picture as he brought the helicopter under the 200 meter mark - out this far from anyone else, no one would mind. The picture was another great shot of the healing scenery. Nothing around for miles.

***

"But another angel was found, and even named. That Angel was Ahkraziel. It was found off the coast of Sicily, still an embryo, and it was analyzed, digitized, and disposed of before it grew to the point where we couldn't contain it. Or so I heard - I hadn't joined the organization at that point. Had it matured, it would have been number 3. As it is, the first Angel that you actually fight will be the Third Angel. And it doesn't have a name yet."

***

That picture was going right into the scrapbook, to be sure. Why-

A fiendish cracking sound heralded the snapping of the main rotors, and moments later the bubble of glass at the front of the craft shattered. The now-useless aircraft entered a flat spin as it rebounded off of nothing. Jim felt ill, but he knew the discomfort would only last for another 150 meters...

...and he never did see what he'd run into.

London-2, NERV HQ, Section 2 Offices - Later that afternoon

Maeve was busy before she got the call from Hawkins, and she remained busy afterward. Which was fine, because she nearly had this.

She'd started her investigation with the MAGI sensor analysis of how much the Dragonfly VTOL had massed, based on the way it had moved and maneuvered. This was important, because it would tell her how much fuel it had left in it when it showed up to begin with, and that would tell her how far it had flown.

That number, accounting for error, had given her a range that contained several air bases, but only a few of these had Dragonfly-model VTOLs. In fact, only Gawain Airbase, a few kilometers north of London-2, had anything like that.

The next step had been a call to Gawain, and then wading through a veritable sea of red tape until she could talk to someone who not only had the information and authority to talk to her but also could be convinced that "Is your Dragonfly missing?" wasn't some new version of "Is your refrigerator running?"

This had yielded some reluctant yet useful answers - yes, a Dragonfly had indeed been hijacked by an unknown pair of men, who had taken the flight-suits and gear from two of the base's own pilots by force. However, they were still trying to work out how they got onto the base or indeed got the Dragonfly to lift off, as both sets of security required accurate biometric data including both fingerprints and a retinal scan. Also the cameras had refused to record anything that day.

This, in turn, had led her to NERV's own Digital Forensics staff, who had informed her that there were only three ways to compromise a system's defenses that thoroughly - a "Zero-Day Exploit" (meaning a weakness in the security that a hacker knows, but no one else does), A system admin getting careless enough to leave passwords lying around, and hardware tampering - whoever manufactures the boards can, of coarse, install whatever back doors they want, provided they have the skill to do so.

That left her with three culprits - two, when the DF staff had checked the various accounts for the base and found that no such commands had been given by anyone with the actual authority to do so. The mysterious hacker - or hacker team, as the case may be, and the government facility that had made the boards.

Which meant that this was going to mean a lot more than busting some tech with too much clearance and too little sense. At the very least, a major corporation or government division was after them. At worst, well... she was sure there was a way it could get worse. She reached for the phone to call Palmer - the more information he had, the better a job of interrogation he could do...

And that's when the alarms went off.

London-2

No sooner has Palmer voiced his question when London-2's alarms (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVz6lEe6s9g&feature=related) went off. Modeled after the old air-raid sirens, they were highly effective at telling people that, fantastic weather be damned, this would be an excellent time to not be outside or in a structure not classified as a "bunker." The alarm penetrated every street, every alley, the harbors, the beaches, and everywhere else that Winston Churchill had once indicated that the British should be prepared to fight for. This was competing in volume with an even and soothing Scottish voice telling everyone something to the effect of "remain calm as you run for your life to the nearest secure area." Flights were canceled, trains were all pulled underground and the rails retracted, and the 7 million inhabitants of London-2 looked at each other and agreed that maybe they would be alright with paying higher taxes if it got the retractable buildings finished sooner.

Inside NERV HQ, it was as though someone had kicked an anthill. Kwon had just finished watching the footage of Rata's simulation, and in retrospect probably shouldn't have done so right before having to fight an Angel herself. Plugsuits were thrust at Joo-Eun and Rata - neither was asked any awkward questions - followed by A10 neural clips. Armed guards swirled about the pilots, ready to open fire if anyone so much as sneezed in the pilots' general direction.

For outside London-2, the earlier AT spike had solidified into an AT Field, and the world's first fully grown Child of Adam had awakened (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmbzzEjzyaY&list=PLAECC636AE1877628&index=31).

NERV HQ, Command Bridge

For a fraction of a second, the unreality of the moment comes crashing down. The world had been preparing for this for the last 15 years, knowing that after all of that the Angels still had the edge in odds. By the time Palmer arrives, though, a tense professionalism has reasserted itself, and conventional forces were already deploying.

For it's part, the Angel was... quite a sight. Unlike Ahkraziel, it was vaguely humanoid in form - emphasis on the "vaguely." For one thing, it floated itself along just over the ground - that is to say, a good five meters or so - despite the presence of what appeared to be working legs. The legs were small compared to the body and arms, though.

The arms were another story - the left one was, like the legs, slightly shrunk down with regards to the body, but the right one was enormous, bulky, and ended in something that was definitely not a hand. It was highly flexible, and ended in what appeared to be a steel-hard ball the size of an Evangelion's head. By all appearances, it looked like a grafted-on flail with a longer connecting chain made of greenish-blue flesh. The Aqua-Puke Green color seemed to be the dominant color of the creature, with few other distinguishing marks, save two.

The first was that the waist narrowed to an impossibly thin circumference, with a pair of bony belts wrapped around that point. The second was the creature's... face. It was a white, plain mask, with a single hole shaped like a visor.

A MAGI alert is flashing at the bottom of the pseudo-hologram.

AT PATTERN BLUE
THIRD ANGEL: FORCAS
ANALYSIS IN PROGRESS

The whole thing is roughly the size of an Evangelion. It's huge, it's impossibly proportioned, it has a knight's mask for a face, it's hell bent on destroying the world, and it's coming your way.

Battle!

The Third Angel had been detected Near the Base of Operations!

There is no time to choose a battleground - you're fighting in London-2. Base of Operations Rules apply - in all other aspects this is a Developed Area. Rata King and Kwon Joo-Eun must scramble to get to the Evas.

However, Forcas is not up in your business just yet. You may deploy Tank Mobs and VTOL mobs at full strength, knowing which direction the Angel is coming from (the Angel's Angle? :smalltongue:). That direction is North by Northwest, almost exactly. What's more, Forcas must pass through a Defense Line. However well DM dukes it out will determine how high the pilots' proverbial pants are when the Angel does reach the base.

Roll for initiative, DM.

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata, NERV HQ Labs - Earlier

Rata listened to Sonal intently as she explained how the Angels were named. It wasn't something she was that interested in but with the shock her little episode in the toilets she was inclined to listen anyway. It was all quite simple, or at least that's how Sonal described it for her. Rata wasn't sure but she guessed that it wasn't simple for her benefit and it was actually just that simple. "Alright." Rata said at the end, and then as an afterthought added a polite thank you to the end. "I have got one more question..." All the right pieces of all the long speeches Kwon had made over the past week seemed to fit into place for this next question -- she also hoped to get a reaction from Sonal other than an answer, but it wasn't the goal to Rata's mind. "Is it possible that something with an S2 engine could turn itself invisible?"

Pilot Rata, NERV HQ Eva Cages - Right Now

Rata had been putting on plug suits for almost a year in London-2. She had even used them back home with her father but the purpose was still the same: tests and experiments both on her, on others and on equipment. It was with casual ease she slipped hers on and made her way to the cage containing Unit 04. There was nothing different in the routine but there was something different even if she wasn't acknowledging it yet -- this wasn't a simulation or a test or an experiment. With her ass on the bare metal of the catwalk that led to her Eva she watched as the people around her worked while she studiously didn't acknowledge yet another thing.

[Whiskeyjack]

The day had been going so well! Joo-Eun thought with exasperation.

After Rata's sudden exit, Joo-Eun had just decided to go along with her schedule. She had left that voicemail with Palmer, gone to her next couple classes, and was heading back to school for club having just picked up a hot tea and some cookies...crumpets...crisps...whatever the waeguk-saram called these things. She was just about to try Palmer again to see if she needed to do anything for Rata, when the world audibly exploded around her.

And then she was in a bad American action film.

Section 2 had materialized from everywhere and nowhere: a member of the janitorial staff here, a businessman exiting the coffee shop right behind her. She swore that one of them leaped out of a public trashcan. Then they were ushering her very insistently into a rather small-looking car and torn off in a manner that would have made Maeve proud.

After the first few seconds of realizing no, she was not in fact kidnapped wore off, the questions began. And one of the agents had just given her a quizzical stare. "It's...it's the alarm. When the alarm goes off, we grab you."

"Grab me and g-go where?!"

The woman had shrugged. She couldn't have been more than nineteen. "To HQ. Then, assuming this is a real alarm, and there's no reason not to since the MAGI don't trigger it citywide for drills, then it's your thing."

"M-my thing?!"

The woman had just shrugged again and stayed silent, and a cold, hard pit formed in Joo-Eun's stomach.

Then in a flash, or so it seemed, they were in HQ. The same black-white-orange suit from her earlier tests was thrust at Joo-Eun, and the techs looked at her expectantly, as if to say "hurry up and strip." She had fled into a bathroom with the young-ish Section 2 agent on her tail (just to make sure she didn't try to run, hide, escape, or follow any other rational human instinct when confronted with the possibility of death in battle against space monsters that could blow up Antarctica just with their willpower.

In the moment of struggling into the loose plug-suit, the memories of the past few hours and days flood her mind. Joo-Eun presses the wrist-button inside the floppy suit, winces as it snaps tight against her skin, exposing every curve--or lack thereof--to the world, and she blushes hard, fumbling one of the A10 clips and dropping it, catching it before it hit the floor. She sets them into her hair, takes a deep breath and crosses to the sinks. A bit of cold water splashed onto her face, and she looks wet, but still worried. But there's nothing else to be done as she's ushered out of the bathroom and down to the cages where Rata's Unit 04 and her own...her own? Unit 08 stand waiting. There's something different about them to Joo-Eun's eye today. They've always looked strange, of course, and they're both varying degrees of hunchbacked when their docking restraints are loosened, but today they seem even moreso. As if leaning forward. As if trying to push free rather than just hanging unpowered in the cages. As if eager. These things she ponders as she crosses to the Entry Plug gantry, for the first time not thinking about everyone staring at her in this tight outfit.

(Korean)"Papa...you're still alive. A-and...Mama and Dong-Min...I'll-I'll always remember you, what you did, what you wanted to do, what you wanted for me. So...I have to come back from this...you have to bring me back, Unit-08. I can't...I have to finish his work. I have to come back. I have to come back."

She keeps murmuring this as she gingerly steps into the Entry Plug, pausing briefly to say to the Eva, (Korean) "So sorry, may I come in?" and sitting, awkward and blushing at the controls, waiting for the hatch to seal.

[Jade_Tarem]

NERV HQ, Earlier

Mittal raises an eyebrow. "The S2 reaction just provides energy. But, with that kind of power... and a very specific AT Field Pattern, yes, it should be possible. We can't tune Eva AT Fields to that pattern, if that's what you're asking. Not yet, anyway."

London-2, Command Center

As the tanks and VTOLs swarm into position, Forcas reaches out - not with the big flail-hand, but with the shrunken claw on the left. There, it grabs the air, or seems to, and pulls it around itself.

And just like that, it's gone.

The three bridge operators stare at the screen for a moment, and then they deliver the exact same swear word in three languages before jumping back to work.

"Contact lost with the Angel!"

"Our forces are not picking up anything. No AT Field, no visual, no radar, no infrared. All instruments say the target has vanished."

Forcas has spread a Stealth Field and full power. Current location is unknown, but probably somewhere in the defensive line. It is now Palmer's turn. After that, one round will have passed.

Evangelion Hangar

It doesn't take long for the technicians to get the Entry Plugs sealed and into the Evangelions. And then the fun begins.

The dark, muddled-orange walls inside suddenly brighten before going pitch black. Text scrolls by, noting one successful test after another, and then MAGI notations about connections going online. In the neutral buoyancy of the LCL, it's hard to tell that the pilots are sinking, but they are, each to their own depth.

And then the screens are clear, mostly, showing the inside of the Hangar as the cage restraints are removed, leaving only the lift restraints as each Evangelion is placed up against one of the launch rails. Diagnostics spring to life before fading away, and finally the ammunition, status, and power displays come to life on either side of the HUD.

On the consoles rising from between the pilots' legs, text can be read.


NERV
Unit 04
Core: Rho
Welcome, Pilot King
All Systems Nominal
Ready for Deployment


NERV
Unit 08
Core: Omega
Welcome, Pilot Kwon
All Systems Nominal
Ready for Deployment

A very British voice comes across - clearly, because 300 billion dollars a year doesn't get spent on Radio Shack technology - "Communications check. Testing. Can you hear me, pilots? Good. Everything is reading green here. At the command from the Operations Director, we're going to launch you. You may feel a bit of bang."

[Whiskeyjack]

Joo-Eun's heart thuds against the insulated plastic of the plug suit, reverberates in the LCL, into her ears, into her lungs. She reaches out, hands tightening on the 'joysticks' - little more than tools for mental focus. Joo-Eun has read enough on the Evas to know, generally, the nature of the wireless connection, the LCL acting not only as a liquid medium for blood oxygenation but also for bioelectical impulses too weak to transmit properly though air, even modified by the A10 plugs. For some reason she remembers seeing a number of blueprints for different plugs, different types of suits, all designed to cause the pilot and Eva to interact in a somewhat different monitor...

The feeds go through and suddenly she's looking down, down, down. A brief flash of vertigo washes over Joo-Eun, strange since she's never been afraid of heights. But she knows something about Unit-08 is designed to emphasize this as a positive feature, something about how its myriad of armored lenses interact with her own senses, some way that the Eva, taller than Rata's Unit-04, uses a few more meters of height to boost the range of its A.T. capabilities. Even with her intellect, Joo-Eun didn't work on this project from the beginning, so she's still trying to understand much of the terminology and physics of, well, things that laugh at physics like A.T. Fields. And it's a little embarrassing that a waeguk-saram grown-up like Mittal knows more about her brother's work than she does, in a way.

Eyes flash to other readouts. Left wing holster, loaded with short blade, progressive-type. The weapon canister containing her standard-issue pallet rifle will arrive at the surface with her, and the ammunition feed opaques itself when she glances at it, turning translucent as she looks away.

Guns or knives, guns or knives, this is crazy, she thinks. I'm not a soldier...

And her mind flashes back to something a few days ago. Something Mittal-seonsang had said to her. How, yes, pilots without extensive military training were probably uncomfortable with standard-issue weapons, though they needed to get over that as fast as possible. But until then, the A.T. Field was the best tool she had at her disposal, and at some point, might be the only force in Creation that could oppose the attacks and defenses of an Angel. Oh, she had gone on and on about how McShane's best hyperprogressive designs and positron rifles looked spiffy on news outlets and lunchboxes but that there was nothing more effective at bringing down an Angel than the very power it defined itself with...at least in theory, of course.

Synchronization Ratio...Core Depth...A.T. Field inactive...inactive...inactive...?!

She bites her lower lip hard. Every survival instinct screams for her to force the field online now and keep it up at maximum until the Angel was dead. But doing so would probably fry the launcher circuits, possibly even damage the railing and the cage and the entire hangar, not to mention the people in it, and aside from people being really mad, that would cost a lot of money to fix, to boot.

So Joo-Eun sits there, right hand having moved to left wrist to pinch a couple charms between her fingers, eyes counting down the seconds to launch, because when she hit the ground she had to bring that field up, had to, or it might be all over just like that.

Somewhere behind the British woman and the update feeds and her throbbing pulse and the soft whimpers she's trying to keep in, with moderate success...behind all that she hears the opening bars of the Arirang...

[TheDarkDM]

Captain Palmer

Palmer pulls off a pair of white gloves as he enters the Command Center, tucking them securely in a jacket pocket. Straightening his uniform, he took a moment to examine the monster they'd prepared to fight for so long. Taking stock of the crew's initial response, he nods to Lieutenant Hitzig.

"Lieutenant, order Units 04 and 08 to launch. Have ground forces prepare to fire on my mark."

As the Lieutenant carries out the order, Palmer turns to Lieutenant Hawkins.

"Lieutenant Hawkins, I want the MAGI report as soon as it's processed. Let's remain calm, people - we've been training for-"

Then the Angel disappears.

Blinking rapidly, Palmer's eyes dance over the null readouts on their sensors, filtering out the storm of chatter that had erupted through the Command Center.

"Hitzig, I want a line of shells at the Angel's chest altitude, five hundred meter spread. We might not be able to see it, but with luck it will still stop a shell. All VTOL Wings and Turret Batteries are to hold fire unless we have a confirmed detonation - if we hit something, they are to open fire on that location. Lieutenant Moon, how are our girls looking?"

[Whiskeyjack]

"V-vanish? It...so it's like a, hrm, no, Dark Templar is a bad analogy, they're permanently stealthed. Like a Wraith fighter, but how long can it sustain it?" Joo-Eun murmurs to herself, not even thinking that her words are being broadcast into the CIC...then she just looks straight ahead and her eyes widen, and for a moment, Unit-08 tenses against its locks in reaction to her excitement. Then she shouts into the communications feed. "Captain Palmer!" And she's suddenly aware that she's yelling to probably everyone in HQ, and forces herself to act more...controlled, though it's obvious she's still a ball of nervous energy. "Um...y-you know, Unit-08 has a, uh, heavily enhanced sensor suite. It's got like...eight or nine different emissions-tracking vectors built in and routed to the big eye, if not more! A-and...I have this idea...about the A.T. Field...a-and how different Fields of comparable strength might interact and resonate with each other and stuff...it's all very complex and I'm sure this isn't the time for me to go into the technical details as I understand them, but the downside is that I-I haven't been able to test this theory yet obviously...err. What I mean is...I...I think I can find the Angel! No, I-I know I can find it!"

[Aneurin]

William

He shakes his head at Zoe's question without really looking away from the ramshackle buildings and the crowd who have gathered to watch. As he steps down and stretches, he begins to look from side to side.

NORAD is a little piece of hell on Earth. Overcrowding, poor sanitation, hovels that barely qualify as buildings and an erratic and unsafe electricity grid. As the lights go out, the place even takes on a sinister appearance. To a normal person, the place would be supremely unattractive; much like the refugees that live there.

To William, though, it's the most interesting place he's ever seen. Boston, with it's teeming, well-fed, well-dressed masses was some degree of terrifying, from someone who's only known the same two hundred people his entire life. It was also dull. The people uninteresting, untouched by hardship, misery or loss. The few places that might have been interesting were strictly off limits - the ghettos, dark alleys and bad districts were considered too dangerous for an Evangelion pilot. Area 51 just reminded him too much of Prometheus for him to ever feel at ease.

He doesn't know what it is about this place, or these people, that's so interesting, but there's an ovewhelming urge to know more about them. To explore this teeming hive of humanity. He knows his request will probably be refused, but he has to ask.

As Zoe turns away, he speaks up; "Can I look around?"

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata, NERV HQ Labs - Earlier

"Not for an Eva." Rata said absently. "I guess I must have just eaten something weird..." An image of some of the downright strange things Kwon made for them both crossed her mind, at once she pined for the days she could just order takeaway every night. "Though I can't remember ever hearing the name before but I guess that's how dreams are." It was more to herself than to Sonal or anyone but it was said aloud all the same. "I'm sorry I disturbed you." Rata said over her shoulder as she turned around and began to head out.

Pilot Rata, Unit 04 - Right Now

Once again inside Unit 04 Rata felt that same feeling of power she always felt. It was more than that though, it was somehow more comfortable here in the LCL of the plug than anywhere she could remember -- and she could remember them all. Rata tuned out Commander Cross, Captain Palmer and pilot Kwon as she sat there in the LCL and lost herself in the feeling. 'This is where I should be.' She thought to herself. 'All the silly, unimportant things just fade away when I'm in here and I can concentrate on what really matters.' The image of her father and the bone white mask of Forcas passed through her mind, instantly she could see herself crushing that mask as her father looked on with pride. "Come on!" She finally yelled with impatience as she realized she still hadn't been launched yet. "You've got a hundred pounds of death waiting for the firing pin! Do it already!" Her teeth clenched and her body hunched toward the front of her plug she was smiling like a crazy person -- or smiling like a genius. "Pull the trigger!"

[Jade_Tarem]

Evangelion Hangar... briefly

Whatever Palmer's response is to Joo-Euns claims, it will have to wait. That same voice from earlier, reverberating with the sound of someone leaning too close to a microphone, says, "Preparing to Launch. Linear rails to surface firing now. Mind the gap." A few techs give her a strange look. "Sorry, I've always wanted to say th-"

And then everything goes quiet, as the Evangelions are propelled upwards at just shy of the speed of sound, banging along through 45 degree angle turns without appreciably slowing down. The pilots inside get to feel the crushing weight of the acceleration hit like a hammer blow, and then slowly have the blackness around the edges of vision fade as blood makes its way back into their brains.

And then the rail slows - slightly - and then slams to a halt. Rata and Joo-Eun are now a fair distance away from each other, and each of them is far back from the defense line.

I'll let the players decide amongst themselves which launch port goes to who. Personally, I'd put Rata at the North one, but that's just me.

Command Bridge/Defense Line Perimeter, L Segment

The tanks line up their shots and fire. Sure enough, one of the shots vanishes.

"Location confirmed. VTOLs moving."

As we discussed, you can send in the VTOLs now, DM.

High above, Victoria Cross and Cao Yin have slipped into the room, but they remain silent, observing.

Leo Hitzig has helpfully added a blinking blue dot to the map. "We won't be able to use this technique in the city. Once the angel can circle around we'd just be firing shells randomly in an urban area..."

"And everyone was so enthused about the clear day today. Maybe NERV should invest in weather control. Unit 04, Unit 08, you are clear to deploy." Suiting action to words, Moon releases the final restraints keeping the Evangelions locked into the launch ports.

"Sensors still reading nothing."

Cheyenne Mountain

Zoe frowns at the suggestion, but giving in to the temptation to stretch her legs, nods. "Alright. But I'm staying with you." She scans the area. "Where exactly did you want to go?"

Truth be told, there aren't that many places to go. There's mostly featureless, craggy stone outside of the camp with some pitiful attempts at irrigation. In the camp, the area seems to be divided into Things that Stink and Everything Else, although there is a sort of organization to the mess. The gate, of course, can be looked at - there are even guards on duty, but the massive concrete portal is shut. And of course, Nerv has roped off the wind-powered generators.

There are 4 major areas you can take a look at, if you want.

The Gate
The Town
The "Sewer"
The Turbines

If you want, you can just pick one in the OOC and I'll write some more tomorrow, or if you're looking for a more specific kind of interaction you can write an IC post.

[Whiskeyjack]

Joo-Eun winces hard as the acceleration hits her, and she bites her lip, remembering just how much she hates rollercoasters.

As she slams into place on the surface and the docking restraints come loose, Unit-08 leans forward in a hunchback stance, nearly toppling forward as Joo-Eun forces herself to be calm and focus just on staying upright.

Then the panic hits her: some proximity to an Angel, with little to no defenses except the A.T. Field, but her mind's blanked on how to actually bring it up! "A.T. Field, field field...how do I...? Ah, there..." she murmurs, feeling something...almost click into place inside her head effortlessly and she feels silly for over-thinking it, then the air shimmers like oil spreading on water for a half-second before it fades into the quantum background of the universe.

Of course Joo-Eun is self-conscious about forgetting how to spread the field, completely ignoring or ignorant to the fact that she's just set a new record in how quickly a deployed Eva has actually brought its A.T. Field to nearly maximum capacity.

She keeps the Eva still, fighting the returned feeling of vertigo and actually having it lean against its deployment cage slightly with one arm as she cants the hear around, adjusting to how it moves when fully deployed and how to toggle through the various sensor modes. A thought strikes her that she's no longer Rata and Unit-04. "King-ssi, where exactly are you?" she asks, hoping that they're connected through the comms.

Free Action to Quick Spread Deflective Field at ATP 4.

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata, Unit 04

"On what level?" Rata quipped over the crystal clear comms as she smirked at the view of the city from Unit 04. Almost idly their hands reach out and grab the (very) longsword that had been recently lightened as it popped up next to her like a meerkat. "And stop overthinking things!" She added as an afterthought. Neutralizing an AT field was a task Rata was very well suited for as the act called for as much force as you could muster which she managed quite well with her 'forceful' personality. It did lead to her applying the same stratagem to Eva/Angel combat as a whole though which while it had so far proved effective it wasn't popular. "North. By the river." She finally added as she spread her AT field at last.

[Whiskeyjack]

"I'll-I'll come to you. I think the...A-Angel was spotted in that direction? I'm picking up tank fire..."

Joo-Eun looks around, a handy compass becoming opaque in her view and she slowly adjusts the Eva to look in that direction, its plethora of lenses beginning to mark emissions invisible to the human eye on the massive HUD around her. The first to pop up is the moniker A.T. FIELD with a range and relative elevation counter, and Joo-Eun's heart skips a beat before tiny letters underneath the designator appear: I.F.F. CONFIRMED: NERV/EVANGELION UNIT-04. She breathes a sigh of temporary relief. "I think I...yeah, the sensors have your location. O-On my way."

As an afterthought, Unit-08 awkwardly claims its pallet rifle from the supply cache that launched with the Eva. Joo-Eun, having no real-world experience with guns, holds it loosely in the Eva's right arm and then just concentrates on walking, one step in front of the other. The giant begins forward, one shaky step, then another, then the steps become more stable and Joo-Eun even takes Unit-08 up to a jog...a slow jog, for an Eva at least.

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata, Unit 04

"Doctor Mittal..." The words bubbled out of her and almost immediately she wished she could shove them back down her throat. Snapping her attention away from the sour doctor it focussed on Kwon. She wanted to shout something at her, maybe tell her to stop moving or anything that meant she was somehow wrong. The problem with it was that moving toward her was for now the right thing to do. The closer she is to me the less likely she'll need to fight that thing, Rata thought to herself. Instead she focussed again on the sour doctor with courage she didn't actually have. A flash of memory crossed her mind and her voice became charged with excitement. "Doctor! It's AT field! Remember?!" The sour doctor had told Rata that becoming invisible would require a very specific AT field pattern, if they could lock on to its AT field it could be as invisible as it liked because they'd still find it!

[Whiskeyjack]

"King-ssi, do you have a visual of...of the Angel...or a visual of it being shot at?"

By this point, Joo-Eun is confident enough to bring the Eva up to a loping run, taking occasional vaults over areas that really look like an Eva-size foot print would mess up the decoration scheme, and having stopped a couple times to switch to a new umbilical. With each passing moment, moving the gigantic machine seems easier and easier. In a way it's a little disconcerting, but Joo-Eun chocks it up to being her age: where some adults might need to look at a tech manual to hook up a DVD player, Joo-Eun and most children have a sort of instinct to it, having been immersed in technology since birth. To Joo-Eun it's a little bit like that Gundam simulator in Japan, except all the controls are in her head. Of course, Unit-08's feedback filtering is blocking out the tactile impact of foot against ground, of breeze against skin, of sunlight and humidity.

"L-like I was talking to Palmer-seonbae about earlier. I have...an idea of how I might be able to find it even if Unit-08's sensors can't keep a hold on it! How familiar are you with tracking IMCP packet flow echoes over a standard TCP/IP connection?"

[Jade_Tarem]

Colorado, Cheyenne Mountain, The Town

After notifying the rest of the convoy about the trip, Zoe trots after William.

Wandering into "the town" earns you a few odd looks, most of them hostile. Despite this, the two agents of NERV are pointedly ignored, although glares become more frequent as the electricity continues to waver sporadically.

For the most part, the people around you seem to be making an attempt at Normal Life - or at least Normal Life as it applies to people who aren't William. You see kitchens, homes, and what appear to be little classrooms and workshops that are primarily assembled out of camping gear or easily moved supplies. Larger objects, like furniture and walls, appear to be mostly made of scrap or taken from crates marked SURPLUS or GOODWILL.

Eventually, you come to a dead end, where a man with radiation burns on his face seems to be cooking... something. He turns to look at you, and with a voice straight from the movie 'Deliverance' asks you, "Is there somethin' I can help you with?"

Probably Colorado, ???

Heavy machinery whirred and growled, sparks flew, and that annoying beeping noise cranes make when they back up filled the air. It could be heard for miles, but there was no one within those miles to overhear. Two figures stood, hard hats and safety glasses firmly affixed, watching the machines and people work on the enormous and badly damaged T-RIDEN-T.

"All I know is what I saw." Jeff Hendricks explained. Again. "The Evangelion shifted its stance and the arms got bigger. It looked more like a human putting extra 'oomph' into its push than a machine shifting gears. And that's when the arm gave out. Can you fix it?"

"The arm? Oh yes, that will be fixed in a couple of hours. The failure was in the main R2 servo-motor secondary gearbox - we have a million of those things and they're quickly interchangeable." His companion, a blonde lady with more than a little trace of French in her accent, waved airily before becoming more serious. "The body? Not so much. That spear went straight through the armor, the ammo feeds, and the right-hand cockpit controls, and all the sensor lines on the right side. We can slap another hunk of armor on there, no problem, but we don't have the time or the facilities here to fix the rest of it."

"Can you fix any of it?"

"Pick one."

The pilot looked at his machine, and a plan came to mind...

London-2, Defense Line

So much effort to buy a little time, just a little...

The tanks fired, shots progressing in a linear arc to find the angel - a kinetic radar that took its toll on anything on the other end of the arcs of those shots that missed. VTOLs fired a salvo, only to find that their weapons were simply not up to the task of damaging the Angel unassisted.

So they switched tactics. Hundreds upon hundreds of missiles and turret shells were fired in a pattern suggested by the MAGI to direct the Angel. It wasn't wholly successful - Forcas could not be moved away from the city - but the zigzag path that it floated in consumed additional time, time that the Evangelion pilots used to prepare, time that the MAGI units used to complete their analysis, and time that any stragglers in the city could use to try to find shelter.

But eventually, Forcas was there, and time was up...

Base of Operations, Command Deck

"MAGI Analysis complete! Both Evangelion Units will be required to completely neutralize the AT Field, but it is possible."

"Yes!" Mittal suddenly shoots up from her station, her chair rolling backwards and banging off the safety railing again. "Sorry. We've locked down the specific AT Pattern being used to make the Angel invisible. That's... that's a huge breakthrough. If we survive." She sits back down.

[Aneurin]

William

Rather than reply straight away, William just starts to wander towards the houses. After a few moments, he says "This way,"

As he wanders aimlessly through the streets, William's gaze is everywhere; at the people, the buildings, all the scenes of life he's never seen. A life he has never, and will never, have. The families, the friendships, even the homes. He watches with earnest interest the people cook, eat, and talk. How they gather and watch street entertainers, take part in sideshows and shop at the markets. Not to mention the schools.

And as he watches, he thinks back. Tries to remember something, anything, like this. Anything at all. There's a vague shadow of a recollection. A room, children, and someone talking. Hot food and... nothing. It wasn't the Prometheus dorms, but somewhere else; softer, kinder. Somewhere better.

At length, his musing is interrupted by the alley he's turned in to. A few closed doors line the wall, and there's a smell of cooking. As his stomach growls, he briefly wonders if that's what brought him here - the smell. Then the man at the heart of the smell speaks.

Lots in his own thoughts, it's a long moment before William replies.

"Why are you here?" he asks, as he studies the radiation burns. He sounds... well, rather confused.

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata, Unit 04

There was no more time for words as far as Rata was concerned. She had heard that together they could bring down its AT field and she knew its general location from the missile and turret fire that stitched its path into the ground. Raising their hand and once again trusting their armour and their armour she punched through the air with her own AT field at Forcas. "Neutralizing AT field!" Ripples in the fabric of reality emanated from the contact point as the force of their personalities crashed against that of Forcas. It was, as far as they knew, equivalent of a headbutt but rather than their physical forms colliding it was their AT fields grinding against each other. It was worse than that though as they twisted the flat of their mental headbutt into a spear that pressured what remained of Forcas' AT field. "Palmer!" Rata called out to the OD as their minds ground themselves against Forcas and then as an afterthought. "Kwon!"

Neutralize for everything I've got and maintaining with a half-action so all the ATP I've spent count as ATS against Forcas for the purposes of Breach.

[Jade_Tarem]

London-2, Base of Operations

Just as in the simulation, Unit 04 claws away at the Angel's AT Field - unlike the simulation, it doesn't breach it completely. With the horrific creature still invisible, represented only by a MAGI marker, it's impossible to tell what the response will be.

Except on Joo-Eun's monitor. Here, lines of ultraviolet in colors that don't even have names swirl about, giving a shimmering, approximate outline of the Angel. Forcas's head twists strangely, staring at Unit 04 malevolently.

Colorado, Cheyenne Mountain, The Town

The man snorts and goes back to what he was doing. A moment later, he answers, "Is there somewhere else I'm supposed to be?"

[Whiskeyjack]

Where but a moment before there was only the shell-spattered city outskirts, something flickers in Joo-Eun's vision on an impossible wavelength: a floating hole in quantum space, all EM spectrums reflecting and refracting around the rough shape of the Angel and its tightly-drawn A.T. Field. Joo-Eun immediately thinks of the Protoss, of course, since they optimize with invisible units. To the player, their own units are quite visible but swathed in a blue cloak denoting their buff. To opponents, however, they are the opposite: truly invisible if stationary, and even if moving little more than a blurring of the background, remaining non-targetable unless a spotter unit happens to sweep and expose them. And today, Joo-Eun knows that she is that spotter, even as she takes a ragged breath knowing that she is the only one who can do this job, thanks in no small part to Unit-08's amazing sensor suite, which is sending out about 15 different emission types and logging about the same number either reflected or output by the area.

"I...I can see it. Unit-08 can see it and...and so can I! Or...it's more like I can see where it isn't...I think. Whatever. Are you getting this feed? These colors, indescribable!...o-oh! King-ssi, it's...looking right at you! I...what should I do?" this last bit escaping as a strangled murmur.

Joo-Eun pauses, considering the few A.T. Field full-plug tests she's experienced. Though the techs and engineers had been pretty impressed with her inherent control over the A.T. Field, Dr. Mittal had been borderline flabbergasted and unable to hide it. Joo-Eun just thinks back to the last day of testing, when she had been able to manifest several strange and unique Field patterns. Several options flash through her mind--flinging a pure bolt of offensive willpower or raising a defensive displacement screen--but thoughts keep going back to Rata King, essentially blinded in relation to the Angel compared to the relative clarity with which Joo-Eun sees it. And that sets her mind on the matter: here she is, hanging back and analyzing, while Rata King is effectively closing with the Angel to tear out its throat, whether she can see it or not. And that fact sets Joo-Eun's mind to a singular task: give Rata King every tool she can possibly use to do her job.

Joo-Eun pulls up Unit-08 on Conway Street, 30 dam south of the Angel Forcas's position, watching Rata King charge towards it and seeing her batter its A.T. Field with her own, to some effect, but noting that its Field is still active, rendering many attacks against it meaningless--including those of the tanks and VTOLs, with the secondary effect that the Angel is also still invisible. But when next Joo-Eun speaks, her voice is clear, with no hesitation, even though it still carries an edge of worry and fear. "Unit-04, Unit-08 is in support position. Range confirmed. Neutralizing enemy A.T. Field!"

And Joo-Eun unleashes the full force of her A.T. Field against that of the invisible space monster. Where Rata's Neutralization was a blunt maul to the face, Joo-Eun's is different, more precise and focused as befitting the mind and personality of Unit-08's pilot. Instead, it's more like thin, dancing lines of imperceptible force and infinite sharpness, striking like the tip of a hundred rapiers across the Angel's Field. A death by a thousand cuts rather than blunt force trauma to the head, probing for weaknesses and pushing through cracks that at first glance seem too tiny to pierce, but which easily fall beneath the sustained assault.

Joo-Eun will stop 30 dam from the Angel. Half action to Neutralize with 6 ATP.

[Jade_Tarem]

London-2, Base of Operations

As Joo-Eun makes her move, the Angel's AT Field strength drops sharply - so sharply that shots fired in its direction no longer ricochet. But the Angel is no longer docile. In one move, it rushes right at Unit 04, still gliding silently, but as it moves the top portion of it rotates, right at the point of the two thin discs bisecting it at the waist. In the span of a heartbeat it builds up to a dangerous speed, whipping the heavy arm around.

In response, Rata brings Unit 04's weapon up expertly, intercepting the strike just behind the massive weight on the end. And in a perfect world, this would stop the strike or deflect it past Unit 04. Unfortunately, the arm actually lengthens right before the interception, whipping around and striking Unit 04 in the left arm.

The hit is incredible, rocking the massive Eva as hairline fractures spread across the limb, a reddish fluid leaking out from the cracks.

Forcas packs a hell of a punch. And now you've learned that the Angel's attack has the Flexible quality, and cannot be parried.

Unit 04's left arm took 16 points of damage after AP was applied, pushing it 5 points into the Critical Damage territory. The arm is useless for...

[roll0]

...rounds, and the armor is reduced by 1. Unit 04 is stunned next round.

Also, this exceeds Rata's feedback barrier, and now Rata is the proud recipient of 1 insanity point and 1 level of fatigue.

[TheDarkDM]

Captain Palmer

The alarm klaxons begin to sound as the Angel's attack bypasses Rata's defenses, crippling her Eva. On the command deck, Palmer's eyes dance over the flood of bio-metric data coming in from the entry plugs, eyes narrowing at the spike of adrenaline from Kwon. Reaching up to his earpiece, he speaks in a calm tone.

"Ms. Kwon, maintain your sensor feed - you're the only thing that can detect the angel in this state. We need you to give Ms. King time to recover, so I need you to draw the Angel's attention away from Unit-04. Ms. King, please give us a status report."

Taking his hand off the headset, Palmer turns to the science division partition of the Command Deck.

"Dr. Mittal, if you could give me a progress report on finding a way around the stealth field, please."

Without waiting for an answer, he turns again, looking over the tactical display on the main holographic projector.

"Ground units, prepare to fire when the Angel disengages from Unit-04. Tank battalion, prepare to deploy Plotonium Shells."

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata, Unit 04

All that's heard from Rata in the immediate aftermath of the earth-shattering blow is a gut-wrenching roar of pain. It wasn't her arm, she was aware of it as a fact but she was aware of it the way she was aware of whales, so while the roar died down to a small whimper it didn't matter to her whose arm was crippled because all she could feel in her arm was fire. While her left arm went slack apart from the occasional muscle spasm as her body naturally tried to protect itself from further pain and injury her right arm -- and her two legs -- pressed even harder against the seat inside her entry plug. As the whimper began to fall off and the image in the small window that Rata appeared in for the Command Deck stopped looking so pained and pathetic there came a growl. "I'll ****ing rip your face off you bastard!" Rata roared through clenched teeth as her little image in the window became the manic visage most people expected of her. Unit 04 was still reeling through and despite her best efforts she couldn't yet feel herself filling the fantastic emptiness she slipped into when she was inserted into the Eva. She didn't know it but even while her nervous system was still connected to the machine her mind had momentarily retreated but it would soon return.

[Whiskeyjack]

"I...yes, right, Unit-08 will maintain sensor lock. So you don't see these colors?" Joo-Eun sound somewhat disappointed to hear that. "And I think I can get its attention...b-but..." Joo-Eun takes a hard swallow, looking down at the controls and giving one a minute tweak. "It'll take an immense amount of A.T. Field energy for me to do anything effective, a-and given my experience, aside from the A.T. Field the only thing I can do to draw its attention is to run up there and slam my head into it. I...just cut the Angel's own Field down completely I think? B-but...well...what I have in mind should just shear right through its Field, at...at least for a nanosecond, which is all th-the time it needs to do what it has to do, long enough to pass through and strike but not long enough to keep it down..." she takes a deep breath and steadies herself. "What I mean is the amount of power needed to essentially lob a ball of zero-point energy m-means I can't maintain A.T. Field suppression on any effective level...the Angel will probably be immune to shelling and missile until I-I can Neutralize its defenses again. As...as you know, it will take a few seconds for my own A.T. Field to recharge after I focus it offensively...but uh...it should get the enemy away from King-ssi, or at least make it look at me for a second..."

She manages a small smile. "At least I think that's what will happen, I only, uh, 'came up' with that Field application about four days ago, and the simulation only worked 77.62417% of the time..."

[TheDarkDM]

Captain Palmer

Palmer turns away from the display of Rata's entry plug to speak to Kwon.

"That is a negative on an AT based attack, Ms. Kwon. I'm familiar with your simulations, but until Ms. King has recovered it is unlikely we will inflict sufficient damage to disable the Angel. Use your firearm to attract its attention and allow Ms. King the time she needs to regain control."

Turning back to the screen of the injured girl, Palmer frowns.

"Lieutenant Moon, give me an ETA on Unit-04's return to operational capacity."

[Jade_Tarem]

NERV HQ, Command Bridge

Moon winces again. "Pilot King is awake. Eva resuming functionality, Synch ratio still fluctuating..."

BTW, Rata took a point of insanity, and that means synch disruption. Go ahead and roll for it.

Dr. Mittal leans back, still typing furiously, although to what end is anyone's guess. "A way around it? Get creative! Throw debris into the air, lure it over water... there's not going to be a technical miracle in the next ten minutes."

Lieutenant Hitzig, without turning or moving, clearly announces, "Tank battalions report Polonium shells armed. Awaiting fire order."

[Whiskeyjack]

(Korean) "The gun...it's not going to respond to the gun, assuming I don't hit King-ssi...firing a pallet rifle in a city...I'm going to knock over the interstate..." she grumbles quietly.

"If I have to get this thing off King-ssi...I have to make it really want to move at me and not just bash her head in. B...but if I miss with the A.T. strike, it'll...uh...probably tear Unit-04 apart..."

Will the tanks still be able to get through? Will I accidentally hit Rata-ssi? Will I destroy the city...what will happen...argh. Her hands clench on the controls. I have to try at least and...I have to give the tanks a chance to pull it off of her too!

In an awkward motion, Joo-Eun shoulders the pallet rifle, her decision made for her. She draws a bead on the target and squeezes the trigger, trusting to the Eva's sensors to improve an aim honed only with video games. "Enemy shield Neutralized. O-opening fire."

A three-round burst of fully-automatic battleship-cannon rounds rips from the pallet rifle towards the Angel. For its part, the Eva is barely shaken by the recoil, even as it lowers its rifle to perceive the Angel's response.

Free action to maintain Neutralize.

Full Action full-auto fire vs BS 69 (Base 34 + 5 Plug + 20 Full Auto + 10 range): [roll0]

[Jade_Tarem]

Round 2, Forcas

The shells rip through the Angel's leg, causing serious damage and producing an unearthly shriek. Blood spatters the surrounding buildings, flooding the streets and washing away small vehicles. Alas, this doesn't seem to disrupt Forcas' invisibility.

However, as far as getting the Angel's attention goes, it is 1000% successful.

Abandoning its attack on the stunned Rata, the creature rushes directly at Joo-Eun...

Forcas doesn't have enough charge move to make it all the way to Joo Eun. However, it is on the way...

[TheDarkDM]

Captain Palmer

Seeing the Angel disengage from Unit-04, Palmer calls in to the conventional forces.

"Ground units, open fire! I repeat, fire at will!"

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata, Unit 04

With a growl Rata's mind expanded out to fill the wonderful, welcoming void she could feel around her. "Getting away from isn't so easy!" They were once again moving together and with their mangled arm raising itself despite its terrible injury they focussed their A.T. Field again and repeated the crushing blow from before. The terrible blow that Forcas had inflicted worked against it now as Rata and Unit 04 achieve an even higher synchronicity than they ever had before. "Kwon!" Rata shouted at her fellow pilot and the plug responded by providing her with a small window to the pilots face. "Don't just stand there! Run!" Her warning provided she continued as if there was nobody else in the world but Rata, Unit 04 and Forcas. "Neutralizing A.T. Field!" Rata declared as their power waxed.

Neutralizing for 7!

[Whiskeyjack]

"I...I hit it? I hit it! With all shots!" Joo-Eun exclaims, watching the bullets smash into the Angel, the computers tracking trajectories and impact points, further serving to map and pinpoint the Angel's location as tanks and VTOLs open fire as well, their shots aided by Joo-Eun's precise burst. At this point Joo-Eun is just relieved she didn't hit Rata or any important infrastructure.

She hears the scream of the Angel and feels a bit bad for it, seeing visible blood erupt and spray around her shots as they impact.

Then the proximity alarm starts to beep with increasing intensity; the Angel surges forward with seemingly impossible speed for its size, shape, and physical orientation. "Incoming hostile unit. Range: 35 decameters and closing. T-minus 60 seconds to impact," says a calm, clinical woman with a British accent, which only adds to Joo-Eun's horror.

"I-it. It's coming! Its coming right at me get it away get it away!!" Joo-Eun shrieks hysterically, images of Unit-04's shattered arm in her mind shifting to a horrific conjured mental picture of Unit-08 with its head bashed in.

[Aneurin]

William

William just looks blank for a few moments, then his mouth shapes several words silently. After a sturggle, he finally says; "Where would you like to be?"

[Whiskeyjack]

The world seems smaller around Joo-Eun, her strangely-angled viewpoint now seeming to look down and up simultaneously on the glowing awful giant monster, which only she could see, all the more terrible because she knows her Eva's head could just explode seemingly without reason if watched by any onlookers. The Angel looms in all viewports, seemingly cutting off all means of escape...but Joo-Eun remembers Gymnastics Club and a trick she learned in jiu-jutsu when she was very little, about how to get away from a big adult stranger who cornered you so you can run away. Joo-Eun just hopes she remembers it well enough, she hasn't practiced it since she first got a can of mace.

Unit-08 shifts its stance slightly, placing weight on its right leg, shifted behind it, as if it's going to make a dash forward past the Angel. Joo-Eun holds that pose for a second before flinging herself back and to the side off of the right side of the foot and heel, crashing into a sideways dive that should take her out of the Angel's reach--if executed properly, of course.

And...it almost does. Almost. But Joo-Eun feels that she didn't angle her dive properly or that the Angel's threat radius is too big...

Joo-Eun moves 3 yards away from the Angel, to the right of it.

[Whiskeyjack]

Even as she falls to the side, waiting for the inevitable counterstroke, Joo-Eun squeezes off a rifle shot in the Angel's general direction. Miraculously, it hits, even if it is just a flesh wound. To the head, at least.

Ballistic Skill vs TN 69: [roll0]
Damage: [roll1] Penetration 0

And Joo-Eun stopped maintaining Neutralize.

[Whiskeyjack]

"No...no! Nonononono!!! Get away from me!" Joo-Eun shrieks, slightly unbalanced from the failed tumble and the perceived recoil from the rifle: simply imagined as the Eva's frame absorbed the shock effortlessly.

Joo-Eun just stares at the highlighted Angel as it swings its maul. As the hammerstroke falls, Unit-08 stands clumsily near the Angel, rifle fired from the hip, just watching and trying to maintain balance.

The living hammer swings, looking for all purposes like it will club Joo-Eun's left arm to bits just as it broke Rata King's. Joo-Eun lets out a ragged breath and screams, this time a scream of anger and not terror. In response to the strike, Unit-08 casually draws its left arm back at the elbow, thrusting forward a hand to meet the blow. That hand half-clenching into a fist in the air.

And spreading around the fist and between its fingers, a growing octogon, expanding ten full decameters across, intersecting lines of red and blue which bend against the inhuman hammering onslaught....

Reaction: Barrier fueled with 6 ATP, manifesting 1 dam in front of Joo-Eun, between her and Forcas. Effective ATS 12 Deflective Field, 10 dam across, and the Angel's ATS is not added to its Breach.

[Jade_Tarem]

London-2, Base of Operations, Ground Zero

As Forcas begins its move, Palmer's instructions incite the VTOLs to fire as fast as they can. The polonium rounds from the tanks miss, some of the missiles miss, but most manage to find the mark anyway. What damage is done is impossible to discern, but some more blood spatters about - although not as much as before.

Even with Rata in pursuit, the Angel reaches Unit 08, barely flinching as the Pallet Gun's rounds bounce off its mask. It follows the clumsy escape attempt, and twists again, whipping the flail-hand in several full circles before bringing it around and down.

Joo-Eun's arm snaps out, and the impossible octagon appears and takes the full force of the hit. The blow is still tremendous, and in defiance of physics force somehow spatters out, shattering the road, the Underground beneath the road, and every window for hundreds of meters in every direction. Unit 08 is unhurt, save for the marred paint job incurred by pilot Kwon's failed attempt to make a massive war machine tumble like a 14 year old gymnast.

Unfortunately, the angel isn't done. In fact, the flail rotation speeds up and the horrific being 'skips' off the sides of the nearby buildings like a demonic spinning top, bouncing around and past the barrier for another strike - and momentarily splitting into 3 or 4 distinct images even in Unit 08's advanced equipment, which snap back into focus as it brings the hammer down again.

This time, it doesn't miss. The flail comes crashing down even as Unit 08 rolls away, smashing into the left leg in a gruesomely symmetrical response to Joo-Eun's earlier attack. The impact's boom is overtaken by a loud and sickening snapping noise that rings out through the streets. The armor on the leg crumples in, even as the leg is driven into the ground and buildings topple from the tremors.

Inside the plug, nerve feedback reaches the pilot and hissing bubbles erupt from Joo-Eun's left thigh and knee. The MAGI's medical monitors report that the leg isn't actually broken, but Unit 08 says otherwise...

Unit 08 has been hit. After Toughness and Armor were applied, the Left Leg has been reduced to 0 wounds and is now 3 points into the critical range. This is not sufficient damage to overcome the Feedback Threshold, but it does stun the Eva for one round, and Unit 08's movement speed is halved for...

[roll0]

...rounds.

London-2, NERV HQ, Command Bridge

Orderly chaos ensues on the bridge, voices competing for space and volume.

"VTOL wings moving in pursuit, that Angel is fast. Tanks are having trouble keeping up and are still swapping ammo from the polonium barrage..."

"Pilot King's Synch Ratio has stabilized at 70, the MAGI say she can neutralize the enemy's deflection on her own, now..."

"Forcas's mobility is not tied to his legs in any way. The limbs appear to be vestigial or else serve a different purpose entirely..."

"...damage reported in transit tunnels throughout the south part of the city, nonessential personnel already evacuated..."

"...Unit 08 is hit! Heavy damage to left leg, likely mobility decrease. The pilot appears to be in distress..."

"...slight shift in the Angel's core, cause unknown..."

The monitors tell their own stories, of course. The different connections between the pilots and the Evangelions snap as they take more damage. Fail safes kick in - or don't - when necessary. A chart of each Evangelion shows the known and likely paths of damage. All of this would be important later, for now, Palmer can see one thing clearly on the main monitor: sneaky or not, the Angel was turning this fight into a bloodbath, eschewing defensive moves or careful planning for maximizing damage. And from the looks of it, Rata was more than happy to play along...

For clarity, even the north parts of the base of operation are still "the south part of London-2."

Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, the Town

"Anywhere?" The man says, peeling... something. "Most of these folks weren't born homeless, they were made this way by Second Impact. They come from all over," he says, gesturing non-specifically, "but they can't afford to move out. Lost everything. Didn't matter if it was insured or whatever. Then we got stuffed out here, and became a side project for the boys and girls at NORAD..."

The Convoy

"Yes, could you connect me to the NORAD base commander, please?" Walter had finally managed to navigate the seemingly interminable automated menu to talk to that most mythical of government telephone conversationalists - the 'real person.' While she was fairly confident that NERV could get their precious power and get out before things got too ugly - these people were not happy about the shortage - she was hoping for some extra support from the base, just in case.

And then the response came back. It wasn't what she was expecting. "What do you mean, closed down?" A pause while the other side explained. "Yes, I know the armed forces are technically commanded by the UN now, but..." Another pause. "Seattle-4? Why would they move missile defenses to Seattle-4?" Yet another pause. "Oh, I guess that makes sense. But the base is online. I can see it right here. The lights are on. There are soldiers. The radars are spinning..."

NORAD Command Center

"Ah, sir, you may want to see this..."

Commander Forrest looked at the video feed of the nearby town. The lights were flickering, but that was nothing new - the convoy now parked on his front lawn, however, was. "NERV? They really do put their logo on everything, don't they?" He smiled. It wasn't a pleasant expression. "Call the hangar. I don't care what Michelle says, get the T-RI... hold on. Is that the pilot?" He pointed at what appeared to be a teenager, hanging out with a well-dressed lady in the settlement. "Well, that changes things. Just send our boys out there. Come to think of it, send Hernandez's whole company out there. We'll just scoop 'em all up right now."

The Town

"...which worked out great until they packed up and left. We had just enough time to despair before they came back, not a word spoken about any of it. Strange." He grinned. "So now it's my turn to ask a question. If a bunch of soldiers came out from the base looking for you, what would you do?"

Zoe tenses and suddenly drags William sideways, diving into a pile of what appears to be dirty clothing, wedged between two shacks...

The Convoy

Walters hung up. She started to order the convoy to move, but the sudden dispatch of soldiers from the base - the base which she had never called - and the conspicuous absence of William and Zoe told her it would be too late...

It is now Palmer's turn, followed by Rata's. It is also William's turn by default. :smallbiggrin:

[Aneurin]

William

Someone is trying to kill me.

It's a comforting thought. Certainly more comfortable than hiding in a pile of stinking laundry. It wasn't the worst thing he'd even done; in fact it was barely more than an irritation. But it still isn't all that pleasant.

Now, think. Hadn't there been a simulation about a scenario like this? Cut off and surrounded. However, then he'd been armed. How had they gotten through it? The streets had proven near-suicidal, with the enemy having better knowledge of the terrain and the numbers to control movement and block of lines of advance and retreat. And these soldiers would have real bullets, rather than rubber ones.

So. No way to walk along the streets. What else is there?

His gazes tracks slowly up the wall to the roofs and he starts to smile.

"You're armed," he says to Zoe without looking at her. It's not a question. "Do you have a spare?"

[Valgunn]

Pilot Rata, Unit 04

"Kwon!" The ground underneath Unit 04 buckled under its weight and as the great machine broke into a run it seemed to ripple like water. "I told you!" In mirror image of her actions in the simulation the great Eva again dropped on its haunches as it reached the mid-way point between its starting location and Forcas. "Getting away from me isn't that easy!" Rata cried as once again she and Unit 04 hurled themselves through the air with ungodly grace, sword held high in ready position to spear Forcas to the ground once they collided with the beast.

[roll0]

[roll1]
[roll2]

[TheDarkDM]

Captain Palmer

Watching the flashing lights erupting through the Command Deck, Palmers mind races. Conventional forces were too risky with both Evas so close and utilizing their AT field for suppression, and both of his main combatants were injured. They needed something - some way around that thing's invisibility.

"Ground forces, maintain pursuit of the Angel but do not engage until I give the all clear. Dr. Mittal! I need the water pressure in all the hydrant mains pumped as high as you can give me - make it rain."

[Jade_Tarem]

London-2, Base of Operations, Ground Zero

Unit 04's charge is stopped cold by another swing of the Angel's flail hand. The impact strikes the Eva's chest directly and brings the sword up short. Armor flies free and sparks fly, but the underlying mechanisms appear mostly intact.

Assuming calculations are correct this time, Unit 04 should be at 2/14 wounds remaining on the body location.

Joo-Eun's sensors and senses clear, at least a little. Astonishingly, Unit 08 is still on its feet, broken leg and all - and the Angel's back is to Joo-Eun.

Base of Operations, Command Bridge

Dr. Mittal left McShane to do the data analysis - the other woman was concerned by a fault she'd just detected in Rata's entry plug that was preventing the activation of the reactive armor - and ignored her. The other bridge officers shouted back and forth with Palmer, and she ignored them too. She wanted to see what effect the program she'd just executed would have. NERV had created a number of programs for specific events, and the possibility that they'd have to override all the fire suppression systems in an area had come up during planning. So it was (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eKvb2f-FP8) that they already had a tool for this...

MAGI>Sci>MittalSo> ./NOAH x-AngelPos y-AngelPos
Building pressure...
pressure build done.
Fire suppression system critical. Override? > Y
Override Code: 40d!40n
Authorizing...
Override accepted by all subystems
Est. time to breach: 5
4
3
2
1

Ground Zero

All around the devastated area, fire hydrants explode skyward, sprinklers pop out of the sidewalks, sprays come shooting down from overhead, fired all the way across the city by powerful pumps in the harbor. Even the fire suppression systems in the surrounding buildings activate, neutral, dusty gasses and more sprays of water entering the air.

And as the area mists up, the outline of the Angel finally appears - whenever the angel moves, the eddies in the mist are clearly visible as the fine spray enters the AT Field and vanishes. While slightly more bloated than the original Forcas image, the MAGI still manage to draw up some accurate targeting information.

Forcas is now no longer treated as being shrouded in darkness. London-2 takes 2 points of collateral damage from massive flooding and the damage to all that stuff that just exploded.

Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, the Convoy

Walters grimly waved down (www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICkrC6kBtu8) NERV's guards. While they could probably have held off the disgruntled citizens in the town, they couldn't take on the base.

Normally, she was supposed to avoid capture by any means. The problem was that she was also supposed to protect NERV's proprietary data - which was now impossible. She could, with the right number punched into her cellphone, blow up the convoy or any individual thing in it - except Unit 03, which would weather the blast the way a human would withstand a stiff breeze. The destruct function had been to prevent someone from carjacking the command SUV in a dense city. The idea that an entire military base would come after them had never entered the mission planning.

It would from now on, though.

So now she had a large number of complications. She had to keep any data from being transmitted anywhere else. She had to ensure that her current adversaries didn't keep any of the physical hardware or data they had so far. She also had to, at the very least, keep William alive and in NERV's custody.

Well, she could deal with the first issue, anyway.

Hastily, while the soldiers were still driving from the base gates out to the convoy, she called the missile battery operators. She needed them to set up a little surprise. As for the rest, well, William and Zoe were still loose. She'd have a bear of a time explaining this to anyone, but NERV's entire combat strategy was based on the premise that one unit absolutely could outclass an entire army if you invested enough research and money into him. She'd read the files sent her way on Project Prometheus and its various sub-divisions, and she knew what that boy was capable of. The question was, did the fine folks now occupying NORAD know?

Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, the Town

Zoe doesn't even nod, and merely holds out a second gun that she retrieved from somewhere. "Get changed." She says. She gives William a look, and elaborates. "They're going to be looking for the well-dressed and clean people."

As the pair dive into the pile, looking for suitable attire, a group of armed soldiers walk up, dressed in what appears to be the duty uniform of the base - brown and black "digital"-style camo, with matching short-sleeved shirts and pants. While sharp looking, the uniforms don't belong to any armed service that William recognizes. The soldiers also appear to be wearing some basic body armor, and the submachine guns they carry look real enough.

"Sir, have you seen a pair of visitors pass through here? A nicely dressed woman and a boy that looks like he's in his mid-teens?"

The cook gave the soldier an irritating grin. "Well sir, we don't get a lot of visitors out here. Let me think. Yes, I think I saw them. Why, are they in trouble?"

"Not at all, sir, but the base commander is concerned for their safety."

"Oh, I think they'll be alright..."

While it's clear that the man - for no obvious reason - is stalling, the troops are looking impatient. It would be a good time for action...

At this point, you're in free-range mode as far as actions are concerned. You can assume that you find something suitable to disguise yourself with and change into it, and at that point you can do whatever you like, so long as it's within the rules - everything from surrender to combat to infiltration.

[Aneurin]

William

He grunts as he takes the sidearm, checks the slide, the safety and then chambers a round before tucking it in to his belt. As he starts to change in to a shirt and trousers that are pretty much identical to what the locals are wearing, he gets a surprise.

The man is stalling for them. That's... interesting. As soon as the soldiers were on their way, he'd dismissed the man from consideration. He hadn't fired on them, so clearly wasn't a hostile, but he had no reason to support them either. That was something that hadn't been a part of the simulations. There hadn't been by-standers in them; anyone who spoke to you was involved in the situation - usually to your detriment. Either this was a quirk of the real world, or something strange was going in.


As he pulls a cap down to disguise the distinctive white streak in his hair, he listens to the man and thinks furiously.

The disguises won't hold here. If we move, they'll see us and take a closer look. Trying to climb to the roof... he looks up at the buildings to either side. ...implausible. Staying here, impossible. First place they'll look. Opening fire is suicide and will draw attention from other units in the area.

That doesn't leave many options, given the possibility of surrender never crossed William's mind. His eyes track up the wall again, to an open window and a plan comes to mind. He flashes a series of complex hand gestures at Zoe, then realises a heart-beat later that he is probably the only person left alive who knows the code. He wriggles across and presses his mouth to Zoe's ear as he breathes;

"Go in through the window. Come out the door, pretend you live there. Make a fuss to cover me as I go down the street. When they're gone, I'll come back here,"

[Whiskeyjack]

Joo-Eun's disbelieving glee and relief when the first blow is effortlessly repelled, the force refracted by her Barrier, turns to horror as Forcas enters its high-speed spin, dancing around and bypassing the A.T.-generated shield and slamming its maul down into Unit-08's leg. More horrifying is how it completely defies analysis and observation even by the Eva's state-of-the-art sensors, reminding her of its truly alien nature. Even in the entry plug, Joo-Eun hears the wet crack, the hiss of pressure loss, the grinding rumble as the concrete beneath the foot gives way from the force of the blow.

The entry plug blares a Critical Damage warning and for half a second Joo-Eun can dispassionately analyze the computer's messages about foundational frame fractures, loss of hydraulic fluid pressure, connectivity failure, and armor efficacy loss.

Then pain blossoms through her, a hot lance splintering into a million needles in her knee and thigh, lapping like a tongue of fire up her leg and into her spine. She screams, eyes wide and transfixed by the surging bubbles erupting from her broken leg.

"My leg! I-it broke my leg!" she shrieks as her brain is slammed with a wave of endorphins and adrenaline, body reacting to the violent shock. "N-no, I can't...not like that!"

She feels the Eva shudder around her, its synthetic muscle bundles tensing as it reacts to her physical reaction, as its computers and damage-control systems work to assess and mitigate the damage and locomotion reduction in the leg, which has been partially slammed into the concrete.

But all Joo-Eun can do is clutch her thigh and grit her teeth til she feels like they'll shatter in her jaw, tears mixing with the LCL. All she can think about is the train accident, her mother's body partially mangled, the woman who loved to dance and run and hike rendered bedridden and virtually immobile for years until she finally just could not hold on anymore.

And Joo-Eun screams again in fear and rage and frustration, not even noticing that the Eva is clutching its leg just as she is. (Korean)"K-Kisama...! I won't let you get away with this...I won't let you do that to me...no, to us! I won't, and neither will Unit-08!" she hisses.

Interrupted electrial feeds tap redundant reserve conduits. Local computers compensate for the loss of pressure and stability by shifting weight to the other leg, and the damaged leg is gently and subconsciously extricated from the packed dirt and shattered cement around it. The great machine, standing bent and unresponsive for a full minute as its pilot rides the rollercoaster in and out of shock, begins to straighten and tense for battle once again.

[TheDarkDM]

Captain Palmer

As he watches the fire suppression systems throughout the city finally outline their attacker, Captain Palmer allows himself a smile.

Got you, bastard.

Turning to examine the holographic displays of their conventional forces, Palmer nods slightly.

"All ground forces, you have a fire at will. Repeat, fire at will. Maintain fire for as long as you have a solid target."