"Lookit this place, will ya?" The two men started sifting through the apartment, throwing aside various clothing and costumes. The place was stuffed to the brim with them, closets crammed to overflowing and long racks in every room, with every type and design and prop that you could possibly use to conceal yourself, plus a few extra. After a time, the men determined that the elaborate dress-up was just that, and indeed was not concealing what they had come to find. A waste of time, and probably a bad lead as well, but they couldn't afford to leave any stones unturned, right? The first one of the two, a slight and short fellow, had just put his hand on the door when he heard a sound in the hallway. Immediately, both men drew their guns and nodded to each other. They'd be ready. "DON'T MOVE!" --- Ryuu Kumon rubbed his hand on the wall, leaving a dark red streak behind. The Seele men hadn't found it here, that was sure. A cursory search had told him that they had no scrolls or scroll-like objects on them, nor anything they could have transcribed the contents with. It took longer to search the apartment himself. Never trust your adversary to do his job correctly, his mentor had said. Remember, everybody screws up, even the other guy. It took twenty minutes before he determined that there honestly hadn't been anything to find, aside from the huge stack of unopened and returned love letters. One went inside a pocket. A lead was a lead, after all. The rest, he soaked in kerosene, as well as the carpets and the costumes and the bodies. Shame, really, the young man thought. Some of those dresses were cute... --- Paradise Lost, part 19 Fan Fiction by Andy Kent All characters created Gainax or Rumiko Takahashi --- Ranma wasn't happy. It had not been a good day. It had started so well, too. He'd caught a train downtown, avoiding a car trip spent in close quarters with Tarou and Ryoga and his mother. It was his favorite kind of day, warm and clear and sunny. He'd taken a couple of extra minutes along the way just to enjoy the view. Then he arrived at NERV, and his good day went straight to hell. First, half a dozen unpleasant-looking and surly guys had taken turns asking him questions, about boring stuff like politics and his religious leanings and his marks in school. Satisfied, they'd given him a small card with a NERV stamp and his picture on it. The camera guy must have been trying really hard to catch him in mid-sneeze like that. After that, Dr. Akagi and her pet goon had spent another hour poking, prodding, and pouring hot and cold water over him. Then they stuck a couple of widgets in his hair and stuffed him in some kind of torpedo, and he was still there, after four hours of sitting in some kind of thick liquid and being told to "concentrate". /"Try harder, Ranma."/ He snorted. "Try what? You still haven't told me how to do this." The voice of Akagi's short (if cute) assistant came through the speakers. /"We, ah, never had to before. It always just sort of worked..."/ The whole thing was stupid. If they wanted him to pilot a giant robot, why weren't they putting him in a giant robot to start with? He was sure that he could figure it out, given a few minutes. /"Funny,"/ said Akagi, /"Ryoga never had a problem with synchronizing."/ Ranma gritted his teeth. No way was he going to get shown up by Ryoga, even at something as dumb as this. --- "Well, that's a little better, I suppose." Ritsuko leaned back in her chair, sipping at a fresh cup of coffee. Maya didn't agree. "Sixteen percent is better?" "Well, he was only at twelve before..." It was decidedly odd, she mused. Even dead cold and untrained, and with no software written around his 'mind', he should still be able to log twenty percent, maybe twenty-five. At this rate, he wouldn't prove suitable for a pilot at all. "I guess so, sempai." Maya turned back to the monitors, watching the young man strain with the effort of synchronization. --- /"Well, we thought that maybe he'd do better as, um, a she."/ Gendo nodded, one hand cocked to hold the handset to his ear. "Was it effective, Dr. Akagi?" /"Only partially. She... um, the subject is still having some problems synchronizing. If you want my opinion, we got a bad catch from the Marduk Institute. I'm not sure we can work around this, not well enough to get her... um, the subject combat-ready."/ If he'd wanted her opinion, he would have asked... but she did have a point. "There is external augmentation available. You'll have it in a day or two." /"External...? Never mind, you'll tell me later. Make sure you tell the Marduk people that we're not happy with them; I don't have the time for this."/ "You'll make time, Dr. Akagi. It's not like any Tom, Dick, or Harry could pilot the Evangelions." /"Understood."/ Ritsuko's tone, colder than usual, marked the end of the phone call before he heard the 'click' of the dead line. "Fuyutsuki, Ritsuko says that she's not happy with you." "Har har, commander." "We'll need Kaji's little toy after all, it seems. Have him retrieve it immediately." "Anything else?" "I want Kumon's report as soon as it's received." That was a lot more important at this point than new pilot training. He would trade an Eva, with pilot, for a report of success from Ryuu. 02, anyway. "Understood." --- Misato went down a mental checklist, checking off a finger with each item. Get Ranma cleared, done. Run Ranma through a synch test, done. Have Ranma fill out necessary paperwork, done. Next up... she needed to have him run through the standard physical combat evaluation... or maybe not. Supposedly, he was as good as Ryoga, and she didn't want to have him accidentally murder an instructor or anything. Gendo had called and told her to hold off on fitting her son with a plug suit. Probably, they were trying to whip up something that could survive multiple sex changes without sagging or something. That left just one item, she thought, as she walked into the ninth hangar. "Ranma, meet Unit 03. Unit 03, this is Ranma." "Jeez, mom... it can't hear you." Ranma scratched the back of his head in embarrassment. "Looks cool, though." Misato had to agree. 03 had been put together by the Americans, with their budget consciousness, and thus lacked the elaborate sensor suites of 00 or 02 or the fanciful horn of 01. What was left was a streamlined, anthropomorphic head unit. Combined with the plain matte black finish, it looked rather stylish, in a utilitarian-anonymous- death-machine sort of way. "So, when do I get to fight an Angel, huh?" "Not so fast..." Misato rolled her eyes. "We still have to train you to use it, you know. With any luck, we won't need you at all." Ranma shrugged. "You'll need me. After all, I am the best fighter you've got." "Not yet, you're not. And GET OFF that rail! Jeez! What the heck would you do if you fell off?" Misato grabbed a handful of her son's ponytail and hauled him back onto the catwalk. A sleepy Hyuuga wandered up behind the two, handed a file to Misato with a garbled "grafvel fazz", and yawned. "Sleep... I need sleep..." "Really?" Ranma cocked his head at the man. "You look like you could use a nap... hey, I know that look..." Hyuuga grabbed Ranma by the shoulders, eye to bloodshot eye. "She won't go away... I don't hate her, but she just won't go away..." "Huh?" Ranma and Hyuuga turned towards Misato, both echoing, "Don't ask," before the older man (older? Not much older. Still young...) released her son and continued to stagger along the gantry. --- Kaji nodded, and his team moved into action. Years ago, he'd stumbled across this temple, hidden high in the mountains of Hokkaido. He had been following a story, a rumor, half old wives' tale and half legend, of a powerful artifact. The warrior which gained possession of this item would become redoubtable in an instant, as his full potential for combat would be realized instantly. He'd found the artifact. And then he'd left it, barely escaping with his life as the chief monk found Kaji with his twin daughters. And here it was, after sixteen years. A bit of the old world lodged in the new. Eight men 'borrowed' from NERV's security division went with Kaji, forming a loose ring, as they ascended to the monastery. With any luck, nine men with guns would prove to be enough to overawe a bunch of isolated priests. Failing that, the implicit threat of retribution might produce some results. Failing that... well, he'd left a note for Misato on his nightstand. The courtyard of the temple was empty, completely deserted, with rakes and brooms discarded. Kaji motioned, and his men followed him towards the doors to the great hall, which had been left standing open. A few leaves blew across the ground at their feet. The inside of the hall held no further sign of life. Huge beams supported a roof tall enough to hold a circus, and wood panels alternated with traditional rice-paper for each wall. It smelled of... wood polish, Kaji thought. Church, without the candles or incense. The point man raised his hand, and the entire group froze as a wizened old man, holding a box tucked under one arm, strode in from the rear door of the hall. Before anyone went for a gun, he stopped, raised his free arm, and snapped his fingers once. Immediately, dozens of robed monks, all with shaven heads, crowded the hall. There was some confusion, as the monks rappelling from the ceiling crossed paths with those bursting through the wall panels, but in seconds they were organized in a loose circle around Kaji, all of them holding some kind of staff or polearm and brandishing it in what could be called a threatening manner. The first monk coughed. "Simple courtesy, gentlemen, would have you remove your shoes before entering the hall." Kaji looked around, noting the shattered state of the decorations, and the heavy work shoes worn by the monks, and smiled. "You did not come here today to soil our floors. Speak your request, and begone!" "You have the relic here." Kaji gestured to the box. "Even here, surely, you have heard of our nation's plight. It is essential for our defense that you surrender the relic. I assure you that it will be used properly." Most likely it wouldn't, at least not as it was intended to be used, but he couldn't say that. Monks, obviously half-crazed and bloodthirsty, suddenly broke out into smiles, and a few started sweating. Kaji's hand inched toward his pistol, although in a crowd like this it wouldn't be enough to save his life. He felt the sense of his men change, too, as they prepared for death. "You demand the relic?" The old monk glanced to his right, where a monk was approaching with what looked like a swiveling chair. With a curt shake of the head, the younger monk was dismissed, and the elder turned back to Kaji. "You assure me that it must be surrendered, for the good of the nation?" "Yes." Kaji caught one monk looking at him and flashing a thumbs-up gesture. Odd, that... "Then... I surrender the relic. Take it, and defend the nation." The tension drained out of the room like a pricked balloon. "What, that's it? You'll give it to us?" Kaji laughed to himself and stepped forward, accepting the box. "That was easy." "One of the things that life has taught me, my son," said the old man, his face crinkling into a smile, "is that there is a proper time to bow and say yes." Kaji bowed, and said "Yes." Halfway across the courtyard, on their way back to their transport, they heard what could have been rapid gunfire. Spinning around, dropping to the cobblestones, and finding various cover, the men looked back... to see the monks spraying each other and the hall with some kind of liquid, contained in long, thin bottles, and howling to each other at the top of their lungs. The older monk stood among the spray, his hands uplifted to the sky and his face rapturous. One of the agents scratched the back of his head. "Some kind of purification ceremony?" "Maybe. Let's go." Kaji motioned to the gate. --- Asuka kicked her feet, idly looking from her perch on the roof's railing, and sighed to herself. It hadn't been a good morning. She'd mentally assumed adult status years ago, after all. Sure, she was physically not yet grown, but that was a matter that time would resolve, and she'd certainly managed to get others to avoid treating her like the child she was not. She could certainly do without the physical indignities involved. Except, of course, that she couldn't, and there wasn't really much choice in the matter. Get older, or get dead, right? And Asuka had no intentions of getting dead. There was an Eva to pilot. Behind her, Tarou grunted as he finished his stretches. She had asked him why he did them, intending to tease him a bit over his... er... zealousness... and he responded with a mock-serious lecture on the necessity of proper preparation before strenuous exercise. After she faked falling asleep, he chuckled, letting her know that he recognized the self-parody as well as she did. Perhaps there were some beneficial side-effects to getting older, right? "Neh, Tarou," she asked. The older boy sat down, with his back against the rail, facing away from Asuka. "Yeah?" "What're you thinking about?" "Happosai." His voice roughened on the word, as if he was trying to use it to strike sparks. "I'll find him today." Asuka snorted in disapproval. "Why do you even bother with the pervert? Just change your name without him, okay? Who cares what people call you, anyway?" His... insecurity really got on her nerves. For somebody that was so confident in himself, this insistence on a little thing like a name was disturbing. It made him... less. Tarou's hair blew in the afternoon wind, causing small droplets of sweat to sparkle off in a way that was just different enough from the average shojo anime to avoid triggering Asuka's gag reflex. There wasn't anything romantic about the frustrated expression on his face, though. "That's not the point... it's not about the name." "You sure, Pantyhose?" "AARGH!" He banged a palm against his forehead. "Okay, it's about the name, but I can't win that way. I could go and change my name, right? If I'd never said anything, nobody around here would ever have known what I was called. Except him." "Yeah, so?" Asuka's shrug took him by surprise. "He's a dried-up idiot. Who cares what he thinks?" Tarou nodded. "I don't, really. Sure, he deserves to die, but I don't have this inner need to do it personally. But I'd know, right? I'd know that he really won, and I chickened out." "There is that, I guess. So why not do both? Just call yourself something else and THEN go beat the snot out of him." "I'd slack off." He rolled his eyes. "This way, it stays fresh in my mind, so I stay in top form." Yeah, like picking at a scab, Asuka thought. "You're an idiot, do you know that?" "Definitely. But it's me, you know? It wouldn't do any good being any other way. At least I'm not lying to myself, now." "So, what're you going to do when it's over?" Tarou blinked. "Over?" "Yeah, you know, when the old fart dies, or you beat him, or whatever. Over." Asuka narrowed her gaze. "You did have some kind of idea what you'd do afterwards, right?" "Um..." The next drop of sweat that fell out of Tarou's hair weighed half a pound and hit the roof with a wet 'splat' sound. "I'll probably try to take over the world. I'll need a challenge..." "Sounds like fun." "So, how about you?" Asuka nearly pitched backwards off the rail. "What about ME?" Tarou raised one hand and ticked off points as he went. "Well, you're a pilot, right? You fight Angels. Sooner or later, they'll either run out of Angels, or figure out a better way to fight them than in an Eva... or you'll just get killed, but in that case you don't have to worry. So, what then?" "Won't happen. How would we know if there weren't going to be any more? They'd keep us around, just in case. Besides, what else do you do with surplus Evangelions? So I'll always be a pilot." "Hrm... you could probably take over the world with a few Evangelions..." Asuka rolled her eyes expressively. "Oh, sure, go out there and take everybody on. I'll be laughing when they cut your power cord." "I didn't say it would work, just that it might work." Tarou chuckled. "So, you'll be a pilot no matter what, huh?" Asuka nodded. "I suppose so. You say you have to hunt down the pervert? Well, I have to pilot. It makes me what I am. For me, you know?" "I can accept that." Tarou raised his arms behind his head, stretching his shoulders. "You have to be what you have to be." A stray thought flitted through Asuka's mind. "So, if I have to be a pilot, and you have to fight the lech... what does that make Rei?" "A very nice person." "Excuse me?" "Hey, she doesn't call me Pantyhose, unlike a certain strudel girl that I know..." "Ha!" A third voice cut into the conversation. "Hmm? Strudel, huh? Flaky on the outside and warm in the middle... How sweet it is!" Asuka blinked, and noticed several things in a very short span of time. Her balance had shifted forward, bringing her dangerously close to the edge of the rail. She could smell something, part silk, part... age, she supposed. And a midget dressed in a thief's suit had perched in her lap and was attempting to nuzzle her chest. Instinct took the place of rational thought, and Asuka screamed as she pitched backwards to fall on the roof. "Kyaaaaa! Getitoffamegetitoffame aaaaaaa!" At the sound of "Kya", Tarou's head swiveled around, fast enough to sweep his bangs in front of his vision. After the moment's distraction, his eyes locked on to the shrunken form of Happosai, in the midst of his other favorite hobby, and Tarou clenched his fists. --- "YOUUUUU! I WILL KILL YOU!" Happosai looked up, idly wondering who would be cruel enough to interrupt an old man that was so obviously enjoying himself. After all, she was great. A bit young by his standards, but curved in all of the right places and with more bosom than any connoisseur could require. And, for once, she wasn't a violent maniac! Ah, life was truly grand. The shouting boy moved, and his face snapped into sharp relief in the mind's eye. Happosai grinned, releasing his friend and perching himself on the railing, smiling as the boy hurtled past him. Fast, this boy, fast enough to appear to move normally when the rest of the world had slowed to the speed of flowing molasses, but it wouldn't have been any fun otherwise. Girl watching could wait. A little while. After all, Happosai hardly suffered from a lack of beautiful company, and it certainly wasn't every day that he got a chance to torment his young ward Pantyhose. "You... It ends, Happosai. Today!" Tarou's anger flowed off of him, forming a sheen in the air that was easily detected by any ki sensitive, and as familiar to Happosai as Tarou's features. It wavered, today, burning a much deeper 'red' than normal. Obviously he had something else on his mind than his cute nickname. Two and two quickly added to four, and Happosai laughed. "Oh, is that how it is, Pantyhose? I didn't mean to horn in on your action, Pantyhose. You know I do everything I can to help you follow in my footsteps, Pantyhose." "STOP CALLING ME THAT!" Tarou leapt forward, aiming a kick at Happosai's face. It was faster than his earlier attack, but still easily avoided. The angle was bad, though, and Happosai felt a twinge of annoyance that he could no longer ogle the girl and taunt Pantyhose at the same time from his new position on the rail. The kick pulverized a concrete roof support, twisting the rail out over the city's street, and Tarou almost skidded off the roof himself. The aura had more flavor now. Embarrassment, frustration, hatred all flowed around his head and body. Happosai clucked to himself. The boy was good, as good as any of his other playthings, but he made mistakes! And Happosai was so good at forcing people to make mistakes. Tarou came up from his crouch, with his back to Happosai and his shoulders out of proper line. He had something, probably a loose chunk of debris, that he'd throw as a distraction. Happosai sensed the change in the ki, took a short step back, and readied himself to deflect the projectile. Tarou's shoulders twisted, and he whirled around... A length of the railing, loosened by Tarou's kick, tore free from its mountings and swung at Happosai's head. It was a surprise, yes, and definitely not in Pantyhose's normal repertoire, but Happosai easily shifted to a defensive position before the impact. The blow did no real damage, but did suffice to launch the aged martial artist like a well- hit home run. Happosai perched on an awning of the adjacent building and dusted his shirt off. Pantyhose was really up for this fight, it seemed. He wouldn't win - his lack of concentration was his problem, just as the easy availability of gorgeous women was Happosai's own - but he'd certainly be a lot of fun. One dried hand patted a shirt pocket, removing powdered concrete dust, and brushed across an old smoking pipe. Immediately, Happosai pulled out the pipe and held it to one eye, noting the stress crack in its exquisitely polished shaft. There must have been even more force behind that last blow than he'd thought. Now, why did Pantyhose have to do that? Happosai liked to own nice things, and it wasn't nearly as fun to find another pipe as it was to add to his private collection. The now-flawed pipe snapped in his grip, and Happosai reluctantly summoned some of his own energy. Now, he had to teach the boy a lesson in respect for his elders. It was for the boy's own good, of course, which sucked all of the fun right out of the idea. --- Tarou snorted, flinging the loose railing down into the street below. He could see Happosai's image distort, wavering between his Lilliputian self and his battle aura. The coot wasn't acting properly. He should have run, or at least taunted some more. Something had convinced Happosai that this fight, finally, was the real thing. Tarou smiled, and did not care. Reason told him to wait, to be conservative, to let Happosai wear himself down with his oh-so-scary posturing. It didn't matter. He wanted this fight, wanted... an end? A resolution. He wanted to -hurt- his tormentor. One long stride took him to the parapet, and he propelled himself between the buildings, aiming a kick at the center of the mass of energy. For an instant, the construct shifted, and then Tarou shot past, his foot so close - so close! - that he would have sworn that he had taken hairs out of the old man's moustache. Concrete turned to powder and fragments as Tarou's kick pulverized the wall, and he rebounded again, looking for a foothold to renew his attack. Happosai's face twisted into a scowl, and he gestured with his arm. Tarou could barely see the power move, and the impact took him full in the chest. He was lifted, tossed like a rag doll, and traveled three or four city blocks before he managed to orient himself in the air. Quickly, Tarou scanned the ground, looking for his adversary. Funny... it should be more difficult to hide a huge battle aura, he thought. The glint of the sun dimmed suddenly, and Tarou swiveled. From above! The pervert's attack struck, a blow of sheer spiritual power, with the force of a freight train. The world blurred, and then Tarou rose from a shattered crater in the concrete, one entire side screaming in pain. Too fast. He hadn't even had the time to register the impact. Now, Tarou sneered, at himself. Stupid. He'd been fighting like fem- boy, jumping around and letting his opponent have his way with him. He probably wouldn't win a direct man-to-man confrontation with the withered perv, not fairly. Why? He wasn't used to making a fool of himself... It wasn't important. If Happosai didn't mind making a spectacle of things, though... why should he? Tarou nodded, set his mark, and shot straight for Happosai. "Ha! You aren't even coming close!" crowed Happosai, as he nimbly danced out of the path of the attack. Tarou ruthlessly suppressed the temptation to respond with the standard cliché line and settled for an evil chuckle as he crushed a nearby fire hydrant, the true target of his strike. Immediately, he was drenched in unpleasantly cool water. Bringing his oversized paws together, Tarou shouted, "All right! Let's go," and started in towards his foe. It wasn't precisely stupid, after all. Happosai never seemed to have a problem interpreting Tarou's various hoots, gronks, and bellows. --- Asuka gripped the remaining rail, trying to warp the metal in her hands. That... that... she was having problems formulating words for her rage at the old man. It wasn't the grope, exactly. Oh, he'd die for having the audacity to grope her, but the same penalty would be exacted from any man who made the same mistake. It wasn't shame. No, it was shame, but not of his act. Asuka was ashamed of her reaction, much more than any physical act could have caused. She was in control! She had to be in control! "Kyaa, huh? So, I'm just a silly girl who needs bailing out whenever some old pervert decided to stick his hand in the cookie jar, huh?" Asuka barely saw the action, a thirty-foot-tall dwarf battling a gigantic, tentacled, winged minotaur, through the red haze in her eyes. She raised her voice from a mutter, shouting, "I'll KILL you for that, you... you PERVERT! You hear that?! I'll kill you MYSELF!" --- Aoba idly pecked at his keyboard. "Umm... Captain... we've got a request to intervene from the Tokyo-3 police department." "What? You're joking me." Misato tapped her lip with one finger. "Do they think we're a riot squad?" "Apparently, there's some kind of giant monster battle going on downtown." Aoba chuckled. "Big bull with wings. Where do they get these things?" "There's no blue pattern, Captain." Hyuuga glanced over his console, checking that there was indeed no Angelic presence, and stretched, popping one of his shoulders. "Some interesting readings, though. Should I record them for Doctor Akagi?" "Bull... bull... yeah, go ahead, Hyuuga-kun. She might want to see them later." Misato scratched her head. Where had she heard of a bull with wings? It was right at the tip of her tongue... --- In the midst of a particularly hard-fought battle, breathing is often described as a metaphor, with the object of similarity a bellows. Certainly, heavy exertion can cause the human body to inhale and exhale with that kind of force and sound, if not precisely the volume. Tarou was breathing like the third shift at an overworked steel mill. They'd traveled three or four miles already. This wasn't surprising; flying minotaurs cover a lot of ground, as do giants, especially when they are busy trying to beat the snot out of each other. Small buildings had been trampled, cars thrown like so many rocks. The perv wasn't losing fast enough. Ten minutes, and he hadn't folded, still dodged around throwing aura every time he made an attack. It flickered like a not-quite-functioning projector, at times, and it wouldn't last too much longer. Neither would he, for that matter. It was hard to hit a huge furry engine of destruction and make it hurt, and Happosai had been doing so for several minutes now. In return, Tarou had tagged him once or twice, in a glancing sort of way. Maybe. Tarou wasn't fighting against Happosai. He could win; he'd beaten the perv before and could do so again... so long as he remained calm. Happosai wasn't just good, he was the best that Tarou had ever fought against, and the loss of concentration that came with anger was enough to shift the fight decisively in Happosai's favor. A mass of what would become bruises along Tarou's right side attested to that. Again, Tarou dive-bombed the perv, dropping his multiple-ton body straight at the flickering giant. It was an obvious attack, of course, and thus not his real attack. The flying debris could do damage, as could a strike of his tentacles (now tightly coiled against his back) as Happosai moved to evade. Just a little bit is all he needed. Just one shot... and why was the idiot smiling like that? At the last second, Happosai... shifted, literally moving faster than Tarou could comprehend, and vaulted over Tarou's forehead, using the horns as levers. Tarou bellowed, missed with every one of his eight tentacles, and spread his wings to brake himself... He didn't realize his mistake until after he plowed through the roof and dipped himself in the pool of water. Hot water. The bastard had tricked him into jumping into a public bath house. Tarou stood, water running off of his human form in a way that made one or two of the bath's occupants catch their breath (specifically, those one or two that led what can euphemistically be called an "alternate lifestyle"), and looked out the shattered remnants of the ceiling. No time to bang his head against his wall and bemoan his own stupidity. He could do that later. If he managed to get away from the perv. "Heh. Looks like little Pantyhose is all wet after all!" One giant hand eclipsed his view of the sky. He'd regret doing this later. Tarou didn't just want to beat Happosai, he wanted his name changed, and soon, and this kind of action wasn't going to speed things up any. It was a pretty low blow, in retrospect. It was something that Happy would have applauded, if he hadn't been on the receiving end of it. Tarou shrugged, and sighed, and whipped the pair of pantyhose from around his waist. "Come and get it, then!" he shouted, as he flung the undergarment into the sky. "HOTCHA!" Tarou jumped, immediately launching himself into a spinning flip, and grimaced. He wasn't going to get two chances at this, of course. If he missed, then... well, he didn't have much to lose, and Happosai would probably just go home with his prize. That would be even harder than the physical injuries, and not just because of the blow to his pride. After all, it was hard to claim that you weren't some kind of pervert when you were a young man purchasing extra-stretch pantyhose for his own use. An instant, a smile, and Tarou's foot connected with the tiny martial artist's face. The force of the blow, with as much spinning momentum as Tarou could generate without the use of cold water, jarred Tarou's spine and stopped him in midair, leaving him to fall back into the pool of hot water. Happosai wasn't so lucky. The contact comically distended his facial features, splattered what was left of his nose over what was left of his face, and sent him flying like a cannonball into a nearby apartment building. It was dirty, but boy, did it work. Tarou got out of the bath, 'borrowed' a towel and pair of pants from the dressing room, and set out towards what passed for home. He was smiling, and not just from the satisfaction of his victory. Some people thought that he was a pervert himself, for wearing a sash of pantyhose. He told people that it was a kind of badge of honor. He preferred thinking of it, in the privacy of his own mind, as an ironically appropriate ace in the hole. --- Rei padded between the bookshelves of the local library. Every so often, she would frown slightly and place another book in her school bag, and move on to another shelf. She agreed that Ryoga had had a good idea. Reading about concepts of ordinary living in manga was certainly easier than having him try to explain, when it was clear that he didn't have any idea how to put the most important concepts into words. Still, though, it wasn't working as well as Rei would have preferred. They were written with the assumption that the reader would already be familiar with life, from experience, and not everything was presented in a way that could be easily understood. It hadn't taken too much of a mental leap to realize, however, that nothing precluded the existence of a book that did indeed explain basic living in easy to understand terms. So, Rei had come to the library in search of what she thought as an instruction manual to life. No such luck, of course. Not even the online card catalog listed that one. Still, though, she'd found several books about this and that aspect of life that, when put together, might form an acceptable whole. Then again, considering that most of the people around her had what she considered a 'life' and still didn't know what they were doing much better than she did... well, all she really needed was a start. If people like Asuka and Ryoga could pick things up from experience, so could she. Not having read "A Simple Guide to the Interpretation of Facial Expressions and Body Language" yet, Rei didn't realize until much later the significance of the librarian's rapidly twitching eyebrow, as she checked the various books through the library computer. It certainly looked like it would take a lot of practice to master, however. --- Ritsuko walked into the small room, tucked away in the bowels of NERV headquarters, and gasped. Kaji leaned over the examining table, resting his arms on it in a way that told Ritsuko that he would have fallen over if not for the support. Something had happened, and as her first guess (encounter with an oversized, hostile, flying cuisinart, judging from the condition of his clothing) was unlikely, she assumed that the thing strapped to the table was responsible for his injuries. For a moment, incredulity wiped out any compassion she might have felt. "You must be joking. THIS is..." "Yeah, it's it. I suggest you get working. I don't know how long the straps are going to hold it..." On the table, secured with restraints that were guaranteed to hold any being short of an Evangelion, thrashed a set of clothing. A Chinese warrior's costume, to be specific. White blouse, boiled leather breastplate, black tights, ornaments here and there. Unoccupied. The clothes were moving by themselves. Ritsuko placed both of the small cases that she had been carrying on a nearby tray. The first was packed chock full of electronic equipment, sensors, microsubprocessors, medical feeds, and every other accouterment needed to transform this... thing into a workable plug suit. The other contained an ordinary sewing kit, and Ritsuko noticed Kaji's offhand smile at it as he sank gratefully into a waiting chair. "I didn't know you liked embroidery." "This thing wouldn't fit her without some alterations; I'm going to have to let it out here and gather it in there, so to speak." Ritsuko sniffed. "It's not like you to miss something like that." "Even I have my limits, Rit-chan." Ritsuko regarded the struggling wardrobe. "Look, if you don't calm down, I'm not going to get these stitches straight, and you'll look like hell. Understand?" The suit stopped moving. "Why didn't I think of that?" Kaji said, through a jaw dropped so low that it must have been dislocated in the fight. "I have never felt quite so silly in my life." Ritsuko rolled her eyes. "I'm talking to a costume, and it understands me." "Hey, it worked." She selected a spool of fine white thread, a needle, and a massed tangle of wiring. "Not yet, it hasn't." --- Happosai pulled himself out of the wreckage and looked around. The sun had shifted, now hanging off of the western horizon. It wasn't hard to see; the entire apartment had been gutted by fire, and his entrance had opened a large hole in the exterior wall. Nobody seemed to be home, of course. That little sneak! He rubbed a sore spot on his cheek and thought. Tarou didn't have any call to do what he did, did he? No, of course not. One moment you're out playing around, having some fun, maybe reminding a youngster or two why you're the ancient master and he's not, and then somebody takes your one weak point and drives a heel into it. Not sporting, really not fair at all! Of course, it'd be a funny thing if everybody fought fair. The move was dirty, sure, but very well executed. Happosai had practiced it himself on a younger Genma, using a box of Ho-Hos as bait. Happosai fancied that he was feeling something akin to grudging respect for the boy. If he kept up like this, he'd have to stop calling the kid Pantyhose. Besides, just calling him Panty would be even funnier. A board, dangling from the smashed and blackened wall, chose this particular moment to dislodge itself and crash to the floor. Happosai shrugged, and moved to dust off his hands before he realized that they weren't empty. In the left one was... the pair of pantyhose! Oh, now, that was a pleasant surprise. While ordinarily he preferred to harvest them himself (most preferably while they were actually in use, but alas, that was the most rare of opportunities) as opposed to being kicked in the face for them... ah, what the hell. Lingerie is lingerie. He balled it into a wad and shoved it into a pocket. The other hand was wrapped around a scroll. "Hrm..." he mused, trying to remember where he had picked up some new reading material. It obviously hadn't come from here; the parchment would never have survived the fire. Again, he shrugged and folded it away. --- Ranma dropped to the locker room's sole bench, toweling off his hair. That LCL stuff got everywhere and was a bear to wash out. He was sure that he hadn't quite scraped the last bit of the guck out of his ears. "What happened, Ranma?" Ryoga folded his plug suit and crammed it into a locker, not bothering to close the door. His voice was light, and more than a bit mocking, but he was still holding something back. Ranma shivered, despite the thick clouds of steam still coming from the shower. There wasn't anything to worry about. "I heard you fell down the first time you tried it, too." "Once, yeah, not three times. And you don't have any cord to trip over!" "Yeah, yeah, rub it in, why don't you." Ranma pulled a freshly- laundered Chinese shirt over his head. "I think the machine's buggy. It didn't move, well, right, y'know? It's kind of gangly." Ryoga nodded. "There's that." An idea sprang into form. "Hey, next time, why don't we switch? I bet I could get yours to work fine." "No way!" Ryoga dropped halfway into a combat stance before he caught himself. Wearing a sheepish grin, the lost boy mumbled, "Sorry about that... didn't mean to shout at you." "Whatever." Ranma decided that trying to get Ryoga to swap Eva with him wasn't a particularly good idea. He wasn't that defensive over anything short of Akane. As if that wasn't one more thing to worry about. Maybe he could cover it up if he cracked a joke... let's see... "Probably better if we don't. If you didn't have that cord, you'd get loose and they'd never find you!" Heh. The joke was lame, but Ryoga laughed at it as if it was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. Definitely a sign that something was wrong, then; even after all this time, he was still a little bit sensitive about his handicap. "Maybe, maybe. It'll get worked out. Ritsuko's smart, she knows what she's doing." Ranma wadded his plug suit into a ball and tossed it into a hamper. No problem with wrinkles, he reasoned. If anything was made of fantastic space-age fabric, that had to be it. "Here, I've got to head home. Gotta talk with Akane... something's bugging her." All the laughter died out of Ryoga's voice as he asked, "Is she okay?" "For the fifth time today, yes already. Maybe everything's just getting to her," Ranma said, knowing as he said it that it wasn't true. There had to be something specific on her mind to make her act... hell, he didn't know, less uncute. He didn't want less uncute anymore. "I'll take care of it." "If there's anything I can do..." "It's all right, man. Jeez! We've got to get you somebody else to worry about..." "Somebody else. Yeah," Ryoga said, showing a complete lack of enthusiasm. Recovering somewhat, he grinned. "Get out of here, you've tripped enough for one day." "Hai, hai..." Ranma called out, dripping sarcasm, as he headed for the door. "Mom says that she's got something that might help out. Think it'll work?" --- Gendo stared at the bag on his desk. It wasn't unusual in the least for him to see Rei between her classes and her synch tests. Neither was it unusual for her to spend time in his office during those times. It wasn't even unusual for her to spend the entire time with him without speaking a single word, or for him to do likewise. Sometimes, everything that needs to be said has been said already. She'd never had a load like this, though. That bag was stuffed full of books. They weren't schoolbooks, as he'd been quite explicit with the instructor that the pilots were not to be overburdened with unnecessary work, and the instructor had replied that he could easily just lecture about the Second Impact until his student's brains turned to mush. That was all right with Gendo; none of the pilots were the type inclined to high poetry or great leaps of thinking in the first place, and the boredom served as a rest break for the children. Also, it made the more unpleasant aspects of employment by NERV look better by comparison. That meant that Rei was doing outside reading, and that meant that something had gone horribly wrong. Rei never did outside reading. Heck, she wouldn't look at the street signs unless she needed them to navigate. She'd started with precious little curiosity and Gendo had done nothing to encourage it. Well, having something go horribly wrong seemed to be par for the course this week. Kumon had come up blank again, Ritsuko was in a snit about being pulled several ways at once with these special projects that kept popping up, Katsuragi's offspring couldn't pilot his way out of a paper bag from the way he'd performed in the test exercise this afternoon, and the other pilot candidate demolished several otherwise perfectly useable buildings in some kind of social dispute. There were days that tempted him to pack it all in and let Seele do what it wished. Humanity really did deserve what it had coming. All of those were problems that he couldn't do much about, or had done what he could, or was in the process of addressing. Rei's bag was sitting on the table. He could take a quick look at the contents and put them away before she got back. If he was careful, she'd never know he had seen it, not that she would take exception. Did his ordinary, meddling curiosity warrant intruding upon her right to privacy? Gendo snorted, coming very close to cracking a smile. Sure, give him a tough one, why don't they? He reached for the bag. --- Ryoga stretched and yawned. A night's sleep had done wonders for his attitude. The birds sang, the breeze was light and smelled of flowers, and perhaps the world wasn't such a dark and lonely place after all. Then, of course, the events of the last two years hit him, and everything darkened. Just a bit. It was a burden he was used to carrying, after all. And things weren't as bad as they'd been. Right. It was too bad that the morning hadn't had the same effect on the rest of his... "friends" wouldn't quite be the right word, but damned if he knew any better. Tarou was stiff, sullen, and not talking to anybody. Rei had buried her nose in a book as soon as she returned home from a late test and hadn't budged since. Misato had been gone, ostensibly to tend Kaji's injuries (and how the heck had something beat the crap out of him like that while he was working in a storeroom?), but Ryoga suspected that she was more likely to lick his wounds than her own. Unfortunately for him, he'd voiced that opinion, turning what had started off as one of Asuka's worse days into something that he wouldn't forget for years. Forget it. Ryoga had an itch in his feet, one that he got whenever he settled down for too long. It wasn't exactly a recurring condition, but what hey. He needed to get out and smell the fresh air. Tarou had other ideas. "Forget it. I'm not going. Ask Rei." "Rei's busy." "I'm busy." Ryoga raised one eyebrow. "You haven't moved from that couch for an hour." "Get off my case, pig-boy." Tarou rose from the couch and loped down the hall, yawning behind one hand. "Think I'll see how Asuka's..." He was cut off by a muffled as a pillow flew through the cracked door to Asuka's room and impacted on Tarou's face. Following the pillow was a shout that was completely meaningless in any language that Tarou had ever heard but still was instantly recognizable as something akin to "shut the door, idiot!", which Tarou did. The Chinese boy turned. "Here, I need to be alone with my thoughts. Let's go." "If I'm with you..." "Precisely." Tarou jerked a thumb at the door. "It's too stuffy in here." "Yeah." --- An unhappy Ranma emerged from the locker room. Misato thought that he... she'd be a bit more enthusiastic, although it made sense if she wasn't. Nothing for damping one's ardor like dumping a bucket of freezing cold water over somebody's head. "What is this thing?" Ranma plucked at the limp fabric of the odd suit. "Feels... funny." "Of course it feels funny. Ritsuko says that it's a new model plug suit." "New model?" Ranma snorted. "Looks like it's a few hundred years old. And couldn't they have made it a -guy's- suit? This is humiliating." Misato had been wondering about that herself. In fact, now that she recalled, Ritsuko had used the particular tone in their conversations about the subject that said, "I'm not telling you everything there is to know or indeed everything you're going to need to know, and it will probably come back to bite us both in the ass," a tone that hadn't been used much since college days. "And what's with Ryoga's pop? He having a seizure or something?" "Forget it." "But his eyebrow keeps going up and down... it's like a hummingbird! I'm sure it could be used in a martial arts technique..." "I said forget it. We probably don't want to know." --- Gendo wasn't angry. He wasn't furious. Both of those emotions he could channel away, store up for some future time when they'd be useful, or take out on unsuspecting subordinates in dozens of different and enjoyable ways. Instead, he felt bewildered. The whole situation had gotten out of hand! He should have watched her better, told her a few more things perhaps. Some affection, maybe. He just hoped to high heaven (for what it was worth) that she had his son in mind, disgusting imagery set aside. After all, the only two other plausible alternatives were even worse, with one exponentially more likely and the other exponentially more dangerous. For her, for the project, for Gendo's sanity. He sat in his chair, numbly letting 03's synchronization recalibration flow over and past his conscious mind. At least things had taken care of themselves in that respect. Kaji and Ritsuko had both come through and with any luck (or at least the kind of luck that he hadn't been having lately), there would soon be four useable pilots instead of merely three. As if he cared about that at this stage. Indulging himself, that's what he was doing, Gendo thought. Although he felt he had a right to wallow for a bit. It wasn't every day that one found a copy of "Where's Waldo" in his fourteen-year-old daughter's books, you know. Not to mention the rest of them, but that was the worst of the lot. Somewhere, in the background, they finished the final checks for the activation of 03. Gendo nearly smiled. With the way that his week was going, this would have to go off flawlessly for things to almost balance out. Which they wouldn't, naturally. Bad things were not only bound to happen, they were mandated... --- End of part 19 Questions, comments, and whatnot go to akent@pdq.net