"Ranma, when your done putting on the Plug Suit, proceed the ETP 3." a some what familiar voice crackled to life from the Room's PA system.
Stepping outside the changing room, he immediately noticed the guards that had been hovering near him since he entered the installation returned to his side, but he paid them no mind. If this was the end result of his little foot in mouth disease earlier, then he figured he got off rather tame. He idly wished he had been more calm when he first got here, he doubted he would have said anything to get his pop's direct attention like this. The old bastard was probably some where staring at a wall thinking about everything he had said, and how much he actually knew. Well, good. Let him stew a little, it gave him time to think of what was gonna happen and what he could do to stop it.
Turning down the corridors, he let his body walk on auto pilot as his thoughts turned inward. Rei had been just about what he expected of the girl, quiet, withdrawn, almost a machine in her dealings with others. He had hoped he'd get more of a chance to talk to her after school, but the girl refused to say even a single word when he followed her to the base. It almost like she knew he was there, but didn't care enough to acknowledge his presence. Aggravating, but he supposed that was par for the albino.
A set of steel double doors opened up as he approached, giving way to a rather spacious large lab of sorts with buzzing computers, tactical read outs he couldn't make sense of, and of course Dr. Akagi and Maya. The guards stopped just outside the doors as the closed, no doubt going to wait there until he was done with whatever these people had planned for him.
"Sup doc." he waved, smiling cheerfully.
"Your in high spirits." Ritsuko didn't look up from her terminal. "Ranma, I'd like you to meet Ibuki Maya, she'll be assisting me with today's tests." she motioned to the short haired girl at another terminal.
"Already met." he grunted, "Heya Maya. How's the pocky?"
The aforementioned assistant looked up, a pocky stick hanging from her mouth as she suddenly froze. Her eyes widening just before her jaw dropped, the little sugar stick falling to the ground with a clatter.
He suddenly felt very nervous. "Uh, Maya?" he swung his arms around, trying to get her to stop staring, oblivious to the fact the Plug suit had been designed to mold perfectly with whomever was wearing one, absolutely nothing save the large bulge on his crotch hiding any of his muscular stature from view.
Ritsuko spared a glance at her assistance, a small frown coming to her lips as she looked up at the boy and visibly tensed.
"Uh.." he sweated, nervously trying to pull at his neck. "Somethin wrong?" He had the distinct impression he was a cow looking straight into a meat shredder, and he didn't want to know why.
"No.. no." Ritsuko recovered first, her voice a little shaky, but she covered that up well by noisily flipping through a few pages on a chart. Well, one thing was for sure, she understood just why Misato had been so tense around the boy lately! Even during his physical she hadn't had the chance to see him quite like this, those damn plug suits certainly didn't leave much to the imagination. Misato's reactions were understandable, especially in light of their little talk earlier. He certainly didn't have the body of a child, and if her friend's story about being picked up by the boy while he was naked was true, then it made all the more sense. Calming herself, she stepped up from around her terminal, face all business as she examined the suit. "Any problems with the suit?"
"Nah." he shrugged, wrapping his arms behind his head, unknowingly causing Maya to blush even brighter as she tried to sink into her chair. "Kinda tight around tha chest, but it ain't all bad."
The doctor nodded, examining him from head to toe before checking something off on her list, "Noted. The suit was designed primarily to interact with the sensors inside the Entry Plug, acting as another amplifier similar to the head pieces I explained to you earlier."
"That it?"
"Of course not." Ritusko pushed him toward the far end of the lab, much to Maya's relief. "It also gives us another set of sensors to monitor your vital statistics, initiate a heart pump if it's needed, and helps regulate your body temperature." she led him to a rather large circular area that was completely devoid of any equipment, almost like a sparring circle from way back when he was on the road with his real pop. "We have a series of tests concerning the durability and reliability of the suit to perform, followed up by a sync test, and then some weapons training in our Eva-Simulator. Captain Katsuragi has already been informed that this will take well into the night to finish, and she'll be here to pick you up when it's over."
"Ah.." he winced a little. "She don't gotta come get me, y'know, I'll.. uh.. be fine walkin home."
"Nonsense. We may be in the most defended city on this side of the planet, but even we can't protect assure it's hundred percent safe at night." she waved off his attempt to retort, "Don't worry."
He sighed, slumping a little. He didn't want to deal with Misato, whatever was bothering her was causing him no end of aggravation. For a moment he debated about asking Ritsuko what was wrong, but shoved that thought away. It was probably nothing, maybe she was still getting over that little surprise in the shower, and then his bedroom? He hoped so. "Alright, let's do this."
---
"Sync ratio?"
"56.9 percent!" Maya chirruped, "It's up a whole 18.6 percent from initial synchronization! The feeds from his plug suit have really helped the harmonics error from his first activation."
Ritsuko sighed a bit, leaning back in her chair. Ranma was proving to be quite the pilot, and if she didn't know better she could almost swear this was an entirely different boy then the one she met a few days ago. He wasn't nearly as insulting, or apathetic about things as he had been that first day. He had even taken to the tests seriously, giving her his direct attention even during the rather long boring explanations of the plug suit, how it functioned, and why it was pivotal it was as skin tight as it was. Though it didn't need to be that tight, she wasn't about to retract her explanation for the world. He was an impressive piece of eye candy for his age, and she suspected it would cause Misato no end of grief.
The doctor pressed the comms switch, "You're doing very good, Ranma. I want you to practice with the Machine Gun for now. Just center the target, and pull the switch. The computer will do the rest."
"Uh.. not that I don't mind, but leavin it ta a computer.. ain't that kinda.. stupid?" the pilot's voice came over the come, confusion evident.
"I hardly think so." she answered dryly, "The computers on board the Evangelion are highly sophisticated targeting systems, far above what you'd find most militaries use today. It's perfectly capable of quick hair targeting with rapid succession firing." Great, he was one of those types who preferred the hands on approach to everything. She had dealt with quite a few of those purists in her time, and they always left her with a bad taste in her mouth.
"I don't mean it like that." he sighed, "I mean, y'know, it ain't like these Angel things are gonna stand around like dorks and wait for me ta shoot em down. Can't I move around abit, try ta get use to firin at movin targets?"
Ritusko stopped, considering that. It was certainly true the Angel's wouldn't be docile in their attacks, and obviously they would move around and try to dodge as much as they possibly could. "I see your point. Try to keep the acrobatics to a bare minimal, the halo-chamber isn't very large."
"Gotcha." she could practically hear him smirking through the comm. Depressing the switch, she leaned back in her chair and eyed the monitors spewing statistics from his interaction with the program. He certainly seemed to know a considerable amount about enemy tactics, she half expected a boy his 'age' to just do as he was told in this regard. Frowning, she pulled spared Maya a glance, "Maya, prepare the Melee program, I'll tell you when to initiate."
Maya nodded, fingers swimming over the computer console. "Done."
The monitor show Unit One ducking down to one knee, leaning across a building and firing rapid bursts from his machine gun, the bullets tearing through the land scape but otherwise only grazing the Angel. Ritsuko quickly brought up his change-to-hit ratio with how he was currently performing, the dismal 2 percent noted as she returned her attention to the monitor. This Time Unit One ran to the side, lunging forward into a sideways flip as his gun let out a torrent of focused fire, much of the area surrounding the Halo-Angel being torn up, the Angel's arm itself getting blown off from the action.
"Fascinating." she grinned as his ratio went up to 22 percent, "Maya, bring up his neural kinetics, set to record and give me an evaluation."
Doing as she was told, Maya brought up another display comprised of the Third Child's brain. "What the.. this can't be right!" she shook her head in disbelief, typing furiously on her keyboard.
Ratio jumped to 54 percent as Unit One jumped up in a flip, descending straight towards the target while firing it's weapon.
"I can't explain it doctor! His neural kinetics are operating off the scale." she pointed at the left lobe, "His learning centers are displaying hyper activity, and.." she spared another screen a look, "The targeting computer's unable to get a lock on the target, he's firing with out it."
"Effective ratio of destruction is holding steady at 77 percent." Ritsuko nodded with a smirk. He may be a security threat, and practically an unknown in the grand scheme of things, but some one who could manipulate the Eva into such an effective killing machine with out the benefit of a targeting computer was a god send in her eyes. Now, to test his adaptation. "Initiate the Melee program."
The screen displaying the Halo-training suddenly showed an Angel appear next to Unit One, lunging forward. The Eva performed an over head flip, gun blazing and annihilating the Angel before he even landed. This time, two Angels appeared on either side of the Eva, both lunging forward with deadly intent. With out skipping a beat, the Eva launched upwards in a double spin kick that nailed both, flinging their bodies into the halo-city where they crashed haphazardly, before vanishing entirely.
Ritsuko smiled, satisfied with what she was seeing. "The boy's a natural."
"And how." Maya nodded, dumbly.
---
Misato was in relatively good spirits. After a rather tense day at work she had gone home, relaxed with a few beers and pretty much enjoyed having the house for once in the last little while. She had been rather tense around the boy, but that was more from certain factors that had been bugging her ever since he had come to live with her. His age, his looks, the fact Ritsuko was all for it, and her own traitorous body responding to his own whenever she saw him with his shirt off had left her feeling tense and rather unguarded. Still, with beer as her defense, she was sure tonight she'd get a perfectly restful night's sleep and everything could go back to the way it was before such lewd thoughts had entered her mind in the first place.
"Gentlemen." she nodded at the two security guards standing at attention next to the Evangelion Training Platform.
"Captain." the intoned in sync.
"I dunno, doc, she's cute an all, but dontcha think it's too soon for that?"
Misato froze just as she had pushed the door open a small bit. What was that?
"She's just stubborn." Ritsuko's voice carried on, "Just grab her and make mad passionate love to get her over her nervousness."
Maya's meep of "Sempai." wasn't even heard as she stormed into the room.
"What's going on here!" she steamed nearly screamed in rage.
Ranma blinked, eyeing the red faced Misato. "Uh.. hey Misato." he turned back to Maya, "What do ya think Maya?" he nodded to the computer console, where the three of them were rather engrossed in a Dating simulator, "Should I?"
"Uh.. umm.. if sempai thinks so." she offered up, meekly.
"Okay." he typed in the response. Not surprisingly the girl on the screen frowned at him, which was quickly followed by a glare, before she reared back and slapped the screen. "Doh! See! I toldcha it wouldn't work!"
Ritsuko sniffed, disdainfully, "This game is rigged." she spared the captain a look, the woman seemed to just be standing there with a look of shocked wonder on her face. "About time you showed up." she eyed her watch, "And only two hours late."
Ranma stretched out, setting the keyboard aside. "Ah.. better late then never, right?" he stood up from his seat, the eyes of three women locking onto his skin tight Plug suit as he headed for the exit. "Lemme get changed Misato, then we can go."
Ritusko watched his taunt little ass leave the room, sighing as the doors closed, "If only I had known.." she gave Misato a grin, "And to think, you have him all to your little greedy self."
Maya deigned not to get involved in this conversation. It just wasn't good for her mental health.
Misato twitched. Who knew plug suits could be that tight?! "Shut up." she snapped.
---
They still had to look forward too..
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(Posted Sat, 08 Jan 2005 09:18)
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