Shinji just nodded his face a mixture of resignation and guilt. He had already been asked this same question or a variation of it many times this morning.
"That was so cool!" Kensuke went on enthusiastically, "We all knew already about Evangelion what with half the town working for NERV in one way or another, but nobody expected anything like that. At first you went all ponderous and calm but once you had lulled it into a false sense of security you really let go and totally demolished it."
Shinji winced. The angel had not been the only thing that had been demolished, the ponderous movements had not been faked and Shinji had not really let go. The Eva had just gone Berserk by itself. At least Shinji hoped that it had mostly been the Eva.
"Everybody expected Ayanami to be the pilot at first. They must have trained you in secret. I guess there were a few surprised people at NERV when you showed up to be the pilot of Evangelion-Unit-01."
"Very surprised." Shinji affirmed. He had been one of them.
"And I can't believe that NERV managed to keep the flight-mode secret. There must be hundreds of people who work with NERV and the Evangelion and nobody ever let anything slip about flight capabilities or variable geometry configurations." Kensuke expressed his amazement encouraged by Shinji's reply.
"Very few people knew about the flight mode before yesterday," Shinji told him.
As far as Shinji knew it had come as a surprise to everyone at Nerv that the Evangelion could transform. Captain Katsuragi had certainly not known about it beforehand. His father and Rei had been the only ones not to show any surprise, but Shinji suspected that Gendô would pretend that everything was going exactly as planned if the sea turned to blood tomorrow. Rei might simply have been to full of medication at the time. Shinji looked forward to getting to know her when she was normal and not doped into apathy. She had seemed like a nice girl.
"I think I recognized the form. It looked a lot like an old F-15 to me, but it must have been a completely new design. The old F-15 Eagle was not supposed to go much faster than Mach 2.5 and you must have done several times that speed. At one point it even looked like you just teleported from one point to another." Seeing that Shinji was not going to give any classified technical details, Kensuke changed the topic to safer areas. "You know when I first saw the Eva I thought it looked really ugly, with those towers on the shoulders, the delta wings and the weird paint scheme. Purple/black/grey is really strange especially with the orange cockpit, but when you turned it into a jet it really looked rather cool and dangerous. I have heard that Ayanami's robot is the same model but with a blue/grey paint-scheme. Have you seen it? Do you know if there are any other robots?"
"That is classified information," Rei told him saving Shinji from having to admit that he had no idea whatsoever about any other Evangelion.
Shinji had not seen her coming, but he was glad that she was there and wondered what she might want.
"Oh Rei," Kensuke whined, "you never tell us anything and now that I almost had Shinji here ready to spill something you have to shut him up, too. I don't understand the secrecy anyway. I know 'loose lips explode mecha' and everything, but if all the angels are like the one Shinji defeated I doubt they could spy on us without anybody noticing them. Even if they could somehow shrink to human size they would not really fit in."
"Not all enemies are the same. There could be spies hiding everywhere," Rei lectured.
She looked around as if to make the point that there could be enemies spying on them right now. Shinji thought that the way she eyed the nearly empty school parking lot really was overdoing it. As far as he could tell all the cars were empty and there was nobody there.
The pain-meds must not have completely worn of yet, or the paranoia could as easily have been the result of to much exposure to Gendô. Shinji did not care. Rei might have acted robotic and paranoid, but it was a cute kind of emotionless paranoia.
Rei was now turning to him.
"Pilot Ikari," she began, "we have been put on alert. A Pattern-Red has been detected with course to this area. We are to intercept him before he reaches they city. Our Evangelion-Units are being send up through access-tube-17 and should arrive just about... Now!"
Shinji's followed her outstretched arm and with her last word the building opposite the school that she was pointing at began to fold into itself. With a curiously familiar sound-effect it turned and reshaped into a gigantic elevator exit. With a wosh the doors opened and two large humanoid figures were revealed.
The giant robots looked indeed identical except for their paint-jobs.
"Time is of essence." Rei declared.
"I guess I have to go now," Shinji told a gaping Kensuke before turning to follow Rei.
At the edge of the roof of the school building they stopped. Rei waited for him motioning with her arms. Shinji pushed up his sleeves. One could almost have thought that he had done this many times before, but it came just naturally after having it shown to him once.
In unison they both brought the metallic armbands on their wrist together and shouting out: "Masterforce!"
In the blink of an eye they were clothed in their skintight plugsuits and then as if the distance to the giant robots across the street was nothing they jumped forward vaulting into the orange cockpits that had opened obligingly. Rei did a somersault.
Once they were inside the cockpits snapped shut and the robots' eyes began to glow with an unholy light that announced that the two no longer were soulless machines, if indeed they ever had been.
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(Posted Tue, 25 Jan 2005 22:07)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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