“How peculiar,” Rei Ayanami commented to herself.
“Indeed,” Rei agreed. “I am Rei Ayanami. Who are you?”
“I am also Rei Ayanami,” the Rei in the middle anounced, looking left and right. “As is she. Are you the Rei that live inside my mind?” she suggested doubtfully, looking for manifestations of wings, halos, and horns, though found none. Her duplicates were exact copies; two albino pale girls with uncombed hair in plain brown school uniforms.
“Unlikely,” Rei-α commented. “We all appear to be me. But,” she considered their placement, then pointed to the center her, “you would seem to be the original. This is probably due to Alien Mother being… an alien.”
“That is logical,” Rei-β agreed. “At least, it makes as much sense as anything.” She considered the phenomena carefully. “We appear to be separate individuals, but aware of each other on some level.”
“We are still connected; one soul in three bodies,” Rei-γ remarked thoughtfully, and inside their heads. Noting that they had heard her projected thoughts, she concluded aloud, “this is going to play havoc with attempting to live as ‘normal’ humans do.”
“True,” Rei-α agreed and summarised, “Earth Mother is not going to be pleased.”
“Contrawise,” Rei-β contradicted herselves. “This could prove to be most useful to my, Our, attempt at assimilation. I, We, can explore and observe more divided in this way.”
“Agreed, but We must ensure We are not discovered. Perhaps some form of disguise would be useful?” suggested Rei-γ hopefully.
The Rei collective considered this by looking over each other critically. “We are not easy to disguise,” Rei-γ concluded ruefully. “Nothing short of covering Our heads completely will conceal Our unique distinctiveness.” Why, she wondered, did that conjure an image of herselves masked and in skintight blue outfits in their shared minds. “Other than doing that, We must simply avoid being seen at the same time in future.”
“We have never paid much attention to Our appearance,” Rei-β remarked. “Yet now that We observe Ourselves, it is apparent that We should make greater attempt at blending in. Our hair is in disarray, Our clothes are drab, and Earth girls seem to care about these things.”
“I don’t know why, but perhaps We should explore the phenomena of teenaged fashion to better assimilate with Earthen Culture,” Rei-α suggested. “That will please Earth-Mother too.”
“One would think that concentrating on the invasion of the city would be a matter of the highest priority,” Rei-γ observed critically. “The forcefield We appear to be generating may not hold until the authorities can deal with the matter.”
“What other abilities can We manifest?” Rei-α wondered as the trio turned their attention to the events outside the bubble.
“Unknowable at present,” the Rei collective pondered as her three minds multitasked the problem. “Yet We seem to recall some notation to the effect… Yes, that suggests possibilities.”
As Miss Katsuragi slammed her vehicle’s brakes to the floor, Shinji witnessed three girls standing inside a pale blue bubble of light, surrounded by attackers. “We should seek cover!” Shinji suggested quickly, and hastily unbuckled himself to dive out of the car for the safety of a warzone.
“Hey! Kid! Come back here!” Misato protested as her charge escaped from her beloved deathtrap, er, car. “I won’t get paid if you get killed on the first day!”
Shinji wasn’t particularly worried about that, but he had no confidence in his kinetic power’s ability to protect himself from her driving. Besides, whatever was protecting the girls might not do so forever. He had the power to make a difference, and with great power comes great responsibility. The death of his dog, Benji, had taught him that.
Suddenly, as if on cue from his thoughts, the bubble collapsed inwards onto the three girls, and the their glowing shapes scattered. Ducking into the sports goods store, he considered how best to help them out while still hiding his identity. ‘Oh! Ski masks and tracksuits! What an amazingly handy coincidence!’
Soul-Γ raced away from her duplicates. She could feel their bodies also racing in other directions, but needed to concentrate on her body’s coordination. The disconection from the net left her feeling … incomplete… but survival was a matter of the highest priority.
As anticipated, their collective’s scattering provided a distraction that let them escape; one and all. It was perhaps a pity that more tuples were unavailable at present, but she instinctively felt that her numbers could only be increased with greater practice. Meanwhile, the triplication of herself would have to do the job. Besides, more bodies would also increase the chance that one would be caught, and the Rei were not yet sure what would happen to the whole if a part were injured.
One of the invaders was directly in front of her, and there was no room to change direction. She concentrated, shaping the forcefield around her hand into a blade of vibrating energy, then struck. She calmly noted that the attack sheered into the robotic minion’s armor plating. “Oh, it worked,” she noted with some surprise.
Unfortunately, cutting the robots was one thing, destroying them proved to be another.
Shinji leapt off a rooftop, ricocheted off the far wall, and missed the head of the robot he’d aimed at. “Okay, I need more practice at this,” he remarked inannely, feeling not a little motion sickness. “Ah… a little help here?” His face rictored as the robotic claw squeezed his arm.
The robotic trooper turned to face the new menace. It reached out to grab the white clad figure as he stumbled to his feet. Rei-γ frowned and raised her hand, sending a bolt of force into the thing’s boxy head, attracting its attention once more.
“These metal men appear to be well made,” she observed as the robot turned back to face her, stil clutching the boy”s arm in a bone crushing grib. “I lack sufficient force to break them easily.” It advanced methodically, suffering bolt sheering slashes from her force encased hands, sparking from electrical wounds, but remaining opperational. “This is not a good thing,” she concluded.
‘Great heroic entry,’ Shinji thought critically as he braced himself. ‘Now, let’s try something different…’ Raising his hand against the chest of robot holding him, he release a burst of kinetic energy.
“That appears to be sufficient force,” Rei-γ noted calmly as the robot’s torso split like a melon.
After the Rei collective regrouped, they soon figured that the best technique was for the duplicates to shield Shove while he threw the robots around. The girl’s force blades were highly accurate, but comparatively weak compared to his brute force approach. In short, the hit more often, he hit harder.
“I beleive We have destroyed all the robots sent to invade this area of the city,” Rei-α observed.
“However, they appear to have summoned reinforcements,” Rei-β concluded.
“They keep coming and coming,” a tired Shinji agreed.
“In increasing numbers,” Rei-γ added. “I calculate a thirty three point three three recuring percent chance that We will be overwhelmed in the next thirty minutes.”
“Where are they coming from, anyway?” Shinji wondered as a new wave marched around a corner.
“We do not know,” Rei-γ stated.
“Yet We have observed that they are quite capable of handling the ordinary citezenry.” Rei-β added.
“The authorities are only marginally better equiped,” Rei-α concluded.
“Comparatively speaking,” Rei-γ amended. “It appears we are best equiped to combat this menace.”
“Yet We have no experience,” Rei-β pointed out.
“Well, if we’re all there is,” Shinji avowed, “we’ll just have to do the best we can.”
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(Posted Thu, 31 May 2007 11:22)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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