lavanya_six | Abandoned Fic -- Fifth Time's the Charm (Reply)

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Misato slurped her fountain drink. The cup brandished golden arches. "You know, I could take us to someplace nicer."

"I'm a cheap date." Ritsuko sipped her water.

And you don't want to owe me too much. Misato glanced at the cash registers. The uniformed employees were busy taking orders. "You know, I travel a lot, and no matter where I go the McDonalds always tastes the same. It's creepy."

"Globalization," pontificated Ritsuko. "If there's one defining event to the 21st Century, it isn't terrorism or Islamic fundamentalism, it's globalization."

"Looking around this place I believe you. I'd say we'd all be Americans in the future if the dollar was still worth more than wet toilet paper."

"Maybe we'll just all be Westerners."

Misato shrugged. "I don't think things are that simple."

"They aren't," agreed Ritsuko. "The world is a complicated place. Anyone who pretends that globalization means were just going to drop all our borders and become one people is delusional. Hell if I know what's going to happen, but I doubt we'll all be bowing to the IMF or the UN anytime soon."

"Seriously," said Misato, "I work for the UN. It can't find its ass with two hands and a flashlight."

Ritsuko switched from English to Japanese. "So are we going to talk business or not?"

"Hai," smoothly replied Misato. "So before I do my song and dance, how open are you to working for us?"

"I'm open to the idea."

"How open?"

"I'm open to the idea."

Misato handed over the red folder. Ritsuko took it. "I thought I had to sign an NDA."

"I don't think you would sign it."

"Probably right," said the burgundy-haired woman, already distracted by contents of the folder. Several minutes passed as Ritsuko leafed through the pages within. Misato watched her. Neither woman touched their drinks.

"Huh," said Ritsuko at last, "you weren't lying. It's a Core-2. Or at least the parts that aren't redacted are."

"That's all I can show you without a signed contact, NDA or not."

"So you say."

"It's your choice." Misato leaned back in her seat. "But if you'd rather get by on your mother's coattails—"

Ritsuko snorted derisively. "My mother has no coattails to speak of, not anymore. She made a fool of herself with the MAGI Initiative. Nobody wants to return the phone calls of the daughter of the woman who single-handedly wasted billions of dollars on a pipe dream. I'd change my name if I thought it'd wash off the taint of that old hag." She banged her McDonald's branded bottle of water on the tabletop. "Sorry. The university denied my funding request last week. But I suppose you already knew about that, didn't you?"

"What about, I dunno, grants or loans?"

"I don't have the credit history for the kind of loans I'd need. And as for grants, my mother's poisoned that well too. No, I'm afraid I'm damaged goods." The burgundy-haired woman tossed away her cigarette stub and immediately lit up a fresh one. "Hell," she said, taking a long drag, "it's a wonder I've even been able to get published in academia."

"You were right that I knew all that," the dark-haired woman reached into her jacket, "but it doesn't change the fact that you'd be better off with us."

"What kind of money are we talking about?"

Misato handed forward the letter. "I've been authorized to offer you this sum as a down payment for your services. The second figure listed is your annual salary. The third is your lab's yearly budget."

She could barely contain her smile as Ritsuko read the impressive sum.

The scientist took a long drag before blowing out a cloud of thick grey smoke.

"No."

Misato blinked. "Uh, well, that's just our opening offer, we ca-"

"No," Ritsuko thrust the letter back towards Misato. "I'm not interested, sorry."

"Surely there must be something I can say to change your mind."

"Not really."

"Not even for the chance to do what your mother couldn't?"

"As tempting as that is… I think I've heard enough." She stood up. "Thanks for the drink, Miss Katsuragi."

=-=-=-=-4=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Later that day Misato found herself back in her hotel room, pacing the parameter with a secure sat phone in hand.

"I see," said Ikari. "And you don't feel that Ritsuko can be persuaded otherwise?"

"Unlikely, sir. She was pretty adamant."

"How unfortunate. Do you suppose she may have a competing offer from a rival firm?"

Has ARKA gotten to her?

"It's possible, sir. I didn't spot anything in my surveillance but the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence."

"True."

"However, from my admittedly limited interaction with Doctor Akagi, I'd say that it's more likely she's doing it out of spite of her mother. She seemed to know more about the MAGI than she was letting on."

"…will she be a problem?"

"Unless she's had a rival offer? No. Her mother's shadow is too long."

Ikari muted the other end. He was consulting with someone. It happened on occasion. Misato didn't know who shared his ear. When the line came back he said, "Continue your surveillance for now. We'll see if we can come up with a better offer for your lunch."

"There was someone, once. I thought we had something… but he was just using me. It got pretty ugly at the end." Like when the sonuvabitch blew up my car.

Ritsuko took a hard drag. "Yeah," she croaked, "it sucks, doesn't it?"

"The worst part is I see him at work every so often."

"Oh, office romance?"

"At the time. Now he works for a rival firm."

"Pet?"

"Hmm?"

Misato pointed to the water bowl in the corner. "Pet?"

Ritsuko took the kettle off the stove. "I used to have a dog. A Labrador named Dirac. He ran away. Story of my life."

"Really? You strike me as more of a cat person."

"Fuck cats," she huffed, brushing aside a pile of papers from the kitchen counter. "They piss over everything. I hate them." She took out two mugs and set them down. "Sugar? Milk?"

"Two lumps," said Misato.

At the table, amid a cluster of networked laptops and cables, the two women sat down for their coffee. Ritsuko's quiet, collected appearance was at odds with the disorganized fray surrounding her.

Yui Ikari. That's a flashback. Hadn't she written that one paper back in, what? '98? '99?

"Ikari… Ikari… damn it, where is it? I know it's here somewhere."

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"Katsuragi!" The strange man grinned. "You're a little early."

"Hyuga," she tightened her grip on his neck for emphasis, "you either talk or you die."

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Far away, in a lab hidden deep under Hakone, two figures stood poised over a familiar titanium suitcase.

"We finally have one," said Yui, running a lone finger along the rim of the suitcase. "And it only took SEELE eight years of bumbling."

"What's the world coming to?" mused Gendo. Reaching around his neck he retrieved a thin chain hidden under his collar. Attached to the chain was a key.

"It's hard to believe that Instrumentality comes down to so small a thing." Yui took the key offered by her husband. "ARKA is insane."

"They've chosen to write their own destiny; an admirable goal."

"The Scrolls aren't a suicide pact, Gendo, but they are our only viable framework. To attempt to circumvent them is to invite death for all mankind." Yui turned the key. There was a sharp click, followed by the hiss of complex internal mechanisms within the suitcase unlocking. "Besides, at least we're not being selfish about it."

Yui opened the case, revealing the dura-bakelite encased contents of Misato Katsuragi's delivery. To the untrained eye the dark shape might have been thought of as a human fetus, though it contained deformities that no normal child would possess. Most people, however, would be more concerned with why the fetus was inside a smooth red crystalline sphere.

The Ikaris regarded the specimen with utter contempt.

"So this is ARKA's blasphemy," spat Yui.

"Yes," said Gendo, "this is Matariel."

# # # TO BE CONTINUED

Sydney, Australia

"We both know you work for someone, Miss Anno. There are no spectators in this great game of ours. So who is it – our friends in Hakone or our friends in Las Vegas?"

Misato, tilting her head to the left to keep the blood seeping from her head wound out of her eyes, said, "M-mister, I don't know what's going on! I was just trying to the find the bathroom!"

"I'm only going to ask one more time." The man politely cocked the gun in his hand. "GEHIRN or ARKA?"

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Misato Katsuragi: Agent of GEHIRN

Chapter 02: The Three Wise Men

Written by Lavanya Six

(please don't sue)

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Hakone, Japan

(48 Hours Ago)

<children, Shinji and Rei, playing>

"It's hard to remember sometimes… that she isn't human."

"I know." Yui studied the children at play with scientific detachment. "I wish I hadn't let you name her Rei. It complicates matters if we let ourselves think of her as our daughter." Yui took Gendo's hand in her own. "We're close, dear. Soon we'll have everything we need."

Gendo smiled.

The couple shared a quiet moment. Then it was back to business. "When does your man arrive, Yui?"

"They're coming in this morning, just before dawn. Katsuragi requested a special welcome for the good doctor."

"I'll arrange it."

-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=--==-=-=-=-=-

"What the hell is that?!"

"It's an X-6 VTOL transport, designed and built by Nippon Heavy Industry Solidarity. They're a subsidiary of the Marduk Institute."

Ritsuko couldn't take her eyes off the strange aircraft. "VTOL?"

"Vertical Take-Off and Landings. It doesn't need a runway."

"My God," said Ritsuko, "whoever patented that thing must be making a mint."

"Not really." She explained, "The Marduk bought out Nippon Heavy Industry Solidarity after it went bankrupt. These VTOLs were their big gamble for a lucrative defense contract with the Americans but they lost out to Boeing. I guess the US didn't want to risk billions on an unproven technology."

"But why buy out the company? Why sink all that money into something that'll never give you a decent return?"

"No idea."

Ritsuko frowned.

"It's not my area," she clarified.

"Oh. So it doesn't involve exotic locales, gunfights, and apartments blowing up?"

"Wow, Ritsu!" exclaimed Misato. "You really are a genius!"

Doctor Akagi groaned at the impromptu nickname. "Ugh. Don't call me that.

Ritsuko gestured with her half-empty champagne glass. "MAGI Melchior, MAGI Balthazar, and MAGI Casper. The personality transplants in each of them are based on different aspects of me – Melchior is me as scientist, Balthazar is me as woman, and Casper is me as a daughter. These three aspects of my mind are now and forever in tension with one another within the MAGI."

"Sounds depressing."

"No, Misato," Ritsuko explained, her voice filled with just a smidge of condescension, "it's what makes the MAGI more than just ones and zeros."

"Six billion people in the world and I can't find the one blue-haired albino!" Misato kicked the wall. "FUCK!!"

"Misato!"

The raven-haired woman looked like crap. She had several small on her face and was missing one of her incisors. A stream of blood was flowing from her nose, which thankfully wasn't broken. Her right arm, which hung listlessly at her side, was capped by a bloodied fist sprinkled with bits of broken glass. Her black GEHIRN uniform shirt was splattered with red and little globs of pink. Ritsuko fought a wave of rising nausea.

"Sorry," she slurred, her tongue trying to find new bearings, "I'm a little late."

Ritsuko gaped.

"I dislocated my shoulder." Misato leveled a commanding gaze at her. "You're going to help me fix it. Then we're getting the hell out of here."

"R-right."

"You BITCH! You used me!"

"No, everything I told you was true! I wanted you to find your father's killers!"

"Only so you could find the Giant and blow it up!"

"I TRUSTED YOU! I RESPECTED YOU!"

Misato, her breathing normal again, spoke slowly, enunciating each word. "I think you go to sleep at night thinking you're a good person, a moral person. I think you get up and act the role of a mother, a wife, no different from a lot of other women." Misato shook her head. "But you are different, Yui. Most homemakers don't cook up plans to butcher three billion people in the name of some frozen god."

"Misato, this isn't you. You're not a murderer! You have compassion! You h-"

"Compassion?!" Misato whipped her pistol across Yui's face. "FUCK YOU! Where was your goddamned compassion when you sent my father and his team to their deaths?! Hell, you were going to kill ME!"

"ARKA killed them, not us!"

"You were planning the same thing! But at least they didn't plan to murder half the planet for an encore!"

"You don't understand! ADAM, Lilith, the Eva… it's for the future! For the legacy of all mankind! For the children!"

"I think I've heard enough, Doctor Ikari." Misato brought up her handgun and shoved it against the bottom of Yui's jaw. The aim of the barrel tip was pointed at the older woman's brain. "Goodbye."

"MY SON! PLEASE, OH GOD, SHINJI! THINK OF SHINJI! PLEASE!! DON'T LET HIM GROW UP WITHOUT HIS MOTHER!!"

"It's tough being an orphan, but he'll get by. I did."

"SHIN-"

Misato pulled the trigger.

Even after the echo faded from her ears the former agent of GEHIRN stood still for a long time. It was one thing to kill someone you needed to kill. It was another thing entirely when that someone was your friend. Yui Ikari had lied to her, manipulated her, used her for her own ends… but it broke Misato's heart to see the fresh corpse at her feet.

The bloody splatter of gore and brain matter on the wall was easier to take in. She stared at that instead.

(These next two scenes were going to be final two in the whole story.)

"Rei, I'll protect you. When you grow up you can be whoever you want to be, do whatever you want to do. You're free, Rei." Misato led the girl down the gravel driveway to their new home. "And you'll be loved every day of your life."

"I will?"

Misato smiled. "I promise."

----------------------=-

Lorenz knelled down, bringing himself eyelevel with the boy. "Your parents were good people, Shinji. Never forget that."

The boy nodded haltingly.

"They died working for a great cause, the salvation of all mankind – Instrumentality. But… maybe… it doesn't have to end with them. Do you want them to have died for nothing?"

After a moment, the tearful boy shook his head.

"Neither do I, Shinji." Keel sighed. "I'm afraid it's probably too late for this old man to see the work through to the end now. But that doesn't mean that all is lost. I can see in you such potential, my boy." He dabbed away some of Shinji's tears with a silk handkerchief. "You know, your mother used to have a saying: if one has the will to live, anywhere can be heaven." The old man gave the little boy's shoulders a firm squeeze, drawing up his attention. "Do you have the will, Shinji? The will to bring heaven anywhere and everywhere? For the sake of your mother and your father?"

Shinji sniffled. "Y-y-y-yes."

"Good." He stood up and led Shinji out of the graveyard by hand. The old man and the young boy hobbled along at a slow pace. "My boy, we are going to do such things together as the world has never seen. And when we're through you'll be with your parents again in a new heaven."

"I will?"

Keel smiled. "I promise."