Time to move on here!

Reika

“Rei . . .Reika I am . . .” Dr. Akagi begins, looking decidedly uncomfortable with the turn this conversations taken. “I tried the best I could with Unit 00, but . . .”

Oh man, I didn’t mean to imply that the very Unit she’d brought up to something combat worthy had been deliberately left substandard! Hey, I know full well that up until the coming of the Third Child, Shinji Akari (my BROTEHR!), the only OTHER working EVA in the world had been over in Germany: EVA Unit 02 (Asuka’s EVA). >Inside NERV HQ back home there are hundreds of failed EVA Units and out in America and other places had been the blueprints of subsequently improved Units. I am just happy to say that MINE had been the first usable model!

The first EVA for the First Child! Hey, not like any of the other Children can lay claim to that, eh?

And I also mention to Akagi that there really wasn’t any way to have really have defeated that Angel I destroyed by sacrificing MY EVA (and myself in the process). Short of having gone into battle with an N2 device with the intention of detonating the cursed thing in it’s face (and the Commander had forbidden me EVER to carry one into battle without permission again), blowing up my EVA had only been the way to destroy the Angel.

Tabris and Lilith back me up on that one. In Lilith’s battle with her Angel where she had to blow up HER EVA to defeat it, she . .

. . .

Okay, lets just skip to the chase and stop strolling down memory lane.. Get to the point?

Bottom line, the other units couldn’t have done a darn thing against the Angel. They’d been that outmatched by it. I cannot think of any way with the weaponry that had been available to me (or anything SHORT of an N2 device) that could have defeated that monster….

Hm.

Well, there had been the Progressive knives but fighting a beast like THAT at knife fighting distance? I’d deployed with the plan at engaging the enemy at a distance so had not even a chance to drop my EVA’s rifle to draw my knife before it was all over me (and then burrowing INTO me after bypassing Unit 00’s AT field).

. . .

“Well, it could have worked except when Shinji stabbed the Angel you felt it,” Lilith muttered, halfway conceding the point. “Know that I felt it when my Shin . . . Nadia stabbed the Angel. The damn thing had assimilated us enough to feel it’s wounds. Try to stab the Angel yourself? It would have been akin to stabbing yourself. You’d pass out from the pain and then . . .”

Then we’d all have been in deep “dren” as Auntie Chiana would say.

I AM happy to say, however, that all this has helped Dr. Akagi to understand I do not blame her for what I did in order to defeat that Angel: blowing up my second body in the process. The fault does not lay with her or her staff for slacking, my EVA pretty much having been upgraded as much as possible. It did not lay with the Operations Director, Major Misato Katsuragi; she deployed all the assets she had at her fingertips as best she knew how (with the information available). I DO however blame Gendo Akari and his second in command for not sharing tactical data they had from reading their copies of the Dead Sea Scrolls of SEELE.

Then again, sharing such information (and revealing how they’d come by such information) would have interfered with their precious scenario!

. . .

Gee, can you tell that I still have some resentment about it all after all this?

Whatever the case here, I also see that the gagged and oddly dressed people who’d popped into this house are listening in, rapt. Some of it appears to puzzle them (like perhaps the part of me and Lilith dieing but being here in the flesh)? Apparently this view of the Angel War was entirely new to them, at a guess.

Wonder if the fear that the very Children--the only people in the entire world who’d been capable of piloting the only effective weapon systems against the Angelgs--are quiet mad? Well, I’m sure they’d be SO very pleased to note that there is more than a bit of truth to that. Each and every last Pilot had some kind of trauma in their lives which did not allow for normal mental development and THAT lack was what was needed to be able to interface with an EVA.

My, what a sad, sad world I and my sisters lived in here. Probably couldn’t even be able to make an EVA twitch, having been put to right…

Like we need those monsters any more and like I’d voluntarily Pilot those things! That part of my life is shed of me, thank YOU.

Hm.

I wonder if we’d done them (or us) any favors by revealing certain previously Top Secret (and then some) information. No, Rei had mentioned something about blowing the whole lid on things (to bring unwanted attention to what remained of the remaining NERV facilities and SEELE). The truth is out there and it better be told or there could be Hell to still pay.

If Rei doesn’t show up before we’re to leave I believe we’ll be leaving some data files on certain things and hope for the best… We need to lay low for now, and not draw attention. But…

Well, we shall come to that bridge when we come to it.

I just want to know just WHAT Rei’s doing right now and where she is! What’s keeping her?

And don’t think that I dread having to make that call soon back to the rest of the family back home to update them with this snafu!

“May I sssugest we try to contact our party leader again via communicator?” the G-man asks, clearly wondering about similar things as I had been.

Early on even before we all started this odd trek amongst the Iconian gateways he’d seen a mage’s worth in a stand up battle. Oh, a regular person with a machine gun and training is effective and deadly in his own right, but magery has . . . Well, it’s a bit more elegant and less clumsy than a hale of bullets. That and you can do a lot more with magery than kill (or incapacitate) a person.

. . .

Glancing over at our bound and gagged , unwelcome guests (a man who’s dressed rather shabbily) and a woman with the oddest coloration of hair (a shade of pink not found even in a lot of anime cartoons) I have to amend that. OUR brand of magic seems to be more useful than a person with a gun, but their’s seemed to fizzle out before it could even touch us.

Sister Rei had mentioned something called the “High tech”. It’s an adverse effect that a certain level of technology has upon the “Harry Potter” (whoever that is) school of magery that is almost a karma-like reversal of fortune. That brand of magery (quiet unlike the Terra Prime version) had an adverse effect on mundane technology (say up to 21rst-- ala NGE--century technology). Now? Well, the tables are turned and the technology is “playing Hob” with their magic.

. . .

At least that’s what Rei had told us. She was to tell us in much more (sufficient) detail what all that exactly means, including that and this other “Harry Potter” stuff would be most welcome. There was just so MUCH we needed and wanted to know about magic. Not because it was fascinating (though it is), but what we do not know can definitely HURT us!

Who knows, maybe the next world we visited will have something magical we cannot just blow off like the garbage these two tied up people threw about.

With that in mind I jump slightly as we hear someone knocking on the front door.

A quick tricorder scan of those on the other side reveals that the readings show that at least ONE of the people outside had Rei’s life readings on it, but as per the plan we must be cautious.

Popping out of the thin air might not be the only tricks these fugitives from Halloween may possess.

Being the best protected (and the most to lose personally in this mad quest so of COURSE he stepped up with minimal prompting), the G-man is the one who answers the door (albeit with weapon drawn and at the ready).

Door opened, the G-man finds Rei Ayanami Quatermain standing serenely between two old men who look somewhat put off about something (albeit the younger of the two men had a slightly sardonic smile on his lips).

Why is Rei smiling so serenely? Well, for the same reason that there are not more people following her (at least initially) inside. Something special happened. Miraculous, even.

It also has something to do with why Snape is now (again) somewhat more at ease around Rei. Even looking happy about something? Yep, it is related in a fashion.

It also (again) has to do with the looks that the Auror is giving Rei here.

The Auror, after glancing first at the paled skinned woman before her (who’d for SOME reason had magically shifted her adventuring garb into a purple and blue kimono of all things), then over at the unnamed Auror who’d volunteered to go ahead of Fudge. Oh, and Rei’s still wearing her “Star Trek” gear.

Looks odd with that getup, but we already know kind of why she’s wearing it still, right?

Of course you do.

For safety sake. Rei’s group wasn’t the only one being overly cautious here. It was actually a sign, that and other little things to say that her “friends” here are cool. That and she’s not being coursed into leading them to their doorstop, as it were.

. . .

It’s already a given that Rei cannot be Imperioused, what with the gear’s effects on Harry Potter magery and such… the kimono just goes and covers the less “civilized” means the mages might try upon her person.

“I guess that answers the question about whether or not her companions are real or not,” Snape quips to his Auror companion. “And I dare say that they don’t lack for sheer audacity, either!”

Then things get a bit interesting when the group following Rei lays eyes upon the rest of Dr. Ritsuko Akagi and friends (especially Akagi). It took a few magical oaths on Rei’s part (you know, the kind that if you’re lying you’ll lose the ability to use magic) as well as some Unbreakable Oaths to vouch for the bunch. Nope, this Akagi and the other “People of Interest” wasn’t the ones the UN and world authorities were combing the globe for questioning.

Worked for those present and the UN liasons who'd eventually get informed of the event. THOSE particular magical oaths were binding enough to . . .confirm the actiosn taken being correct.

That clears up one headache in the making.

As for the other potential one?

The chaos events which had actually brought BACK both Lilly and James Potter from the grave as well as (mercifully and briefly) summoned . . . Godzilla to almost trample Hogswart flat had put to paid any doubts about the value of keeping Rei held up for psyche evaluation and such. She had mentioned in passing about something about . . .such things being prone to happen more and more the longer she dawdled here.

Best not keep her waiting and hope that her companions are real and that they (and that other group which was to follow) and put aside questions about Rei’s sanity because if much more stuff like that kept happening a lot of the Wizarding World was going to lose THEIR sanity!

Well . . .Snape was happy about Lilly being back. He had had feelings for her after all and being that she HAD been the actual brains of the Potter family (in Snape’s humble opinion), maybe she could keep the brat in line, now!

. . .

Er, been a trying day for the Ministry, folks. That and Fudge could tell a potential disaster in the winds…

Rei came here by obviously strange means, bearing strange gifts. Best let her leave. Besides, she HAD done so much in the course of things already so why NOT let her leave, unmolested. Her and her friends? Letting them leave wouldn’t harm anything, right? Well, maybe or maybe not but it sure as #@$%# was obvious that making ‘em stay would be a disaster!

After Rei passed all that had happened in a sitrep to her family back at NERV in a private (and somewhat grueling) message back home, Rei gathered her group up and LEFT via the first iconian gateway opening OUT of here.

SHE didn’t fee like pushing her luck any more than she already had , thank YOU!

“I do think that of them all perhaps Auntie Inquirer had the most pointed questions on why I did what I did there,” Rei sighed as they appeared elsewhere.

1. A place with two moons in the green sky, next to what looks to be a life size model of what the 1950s thought was to be the “House of Tomorrow”…

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