Shinji grimaced as the command came over the comm line, his fingers dancing over the cockpit consol of his new mecha with a familiarity that was wholly at odds with his actual piloting experience.
It wasn't that he didn't like his new robot.
He did.
Really.
Heck, the absence of the bio-feedback system alone was enough to make it preferable to the old Unit-01, at least in his mind. It was just that the tests that the techs were currently running himself and the other two pilots through were just so boring. He had just gotten a brand new robot! One that didn't suck! And what did they have him doing?
Playing with blocks.
Sighing, Shinji manipulated the oversized mecha into dropping the large brightly colored peg into the equally large brightly colored ring at its feet, the slight buzz of conversation transmitting over the comm line from the control room as he did so.
It was irritating. For the first time, he was finally starting to enjoy piloting, and the fact that they had him doing such basic exercises when he knew he could coax so much more out of the system was more than a little frustrating. He was actually beginning to understand how Asuka must of felt whenever Dr. Akagi ordered one of her countless synch tests.
"Al- no- p- ba-"
"..."
"Pay attention, baka!" Asuka's voice suddenly snapped over the comm line. "Hmph! Maybe if you didn't slack off so much, you'd already have finished like me and Wondergirl!"
Shinji sighed, blushing in embarassment, then flushing further as the recent memory of his two female co-pilots emerging from their locker room in their new plugsuits resurfaced in his mind. He had realized, upon seeing his own 'plugsuit', that the female version had likely been modified as well, but he hadn't quite expected them to be so... well... skimpy.
His own plugsuit was considerably more modest, even more so than his original, if not by much. The black jumpsuit that extended from his chest to his calves was still skintight, but it was the bright red body armor that covered his upper chest and matching red boots and gloves that really drew the eye. The contrasting colors gave the entire outfit a somewhat military look, while the breastplate design of the body armor lent it a decidedly medieval air, making him look like some sort of futuristic knight. Personally, he thought he looked rather good in it, a belief that was apparently seconded by the First Child, who had actually smiled at him upon seeing it. Asuka's reaction to his new look had been somewhat more problematic. She had just stared at him for a long moment before flushing a deep crimson and quickly excusing herself, moving somewhat shakily toward her Unit-02.
"All right, now pick up the peg and balance it on end."
Keying in the necessary commands, Shinji frowned slightly as his Godanner picked up the same peg from before and attempted, badly, to balance it on end. It took him three tries before the peg finally stopped wobbling enough not to tip over.
"The fine motor control still seems to be a bit off," he reported back to the control center.
"Yeah," the voice on the other end replied, "It looks like the system is still lagging. Probably has to do with those black boxes we found in the operating program. It's strange, you know, the way that thing's acting, I could almost swear it had some sort of partial AI. I'll have to have Akagi take a look at it when she gets back from wherever the hell she ran off to. Alright, I think that's enough for today. We're just going to run some simulations on the combination system, so you can probably go ahead and change back now. Stick around NERV though, the brass'll probably still want to talk to you."
Nodding to himself and killing the com signal, Shinji made sure that the line was terminated before slumping over and groaning miserably.
Why couldn't they take a giant robot at face value?
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(Posted Thu, 21 Oct 2004 12:01)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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