The alarm was a distant thing that slowly crept into Freya's inner conscious, waking her up. She shifted around under the covers for a moment, and as she came to, she reactively slammed her hand down on the clock, turning it off. The clock itself was special-designed to endure her abuse, and for the moment, it did... but so were the previous three.
There was a knock at Freya's door. Her room wasn't a room as much as it was a pod. A twin-sized bed made up the lesser half of the room, and there was about six feet of walking space from the bed to the door, with eight feet forming the width and height of the room. Compared to the quarters of a Navy ship or an army barracks, it was a Four Seasons suite, but she was not part of any military unit. Not one that officially existed... yet, anyways.
"Rise and shine, Freya!" the voice of Sif called through the door. "Don't make me come in there!"
"Nnhh..." Freya grunted and crawled out of her bed. She only wore a pair of underwear; their rooms, as well as the rest of the facility, were temperature controlled to be a constant, comfortable seventy degrees. Freya slid open the door to her pod. The pods of her three other "sisters" sat in a room in a 2x2 block. There was a door to their left that led out into a hallway, and across from that was another 2x2 block room where her "brothers" slept.
Freya's older sister Sif was across from her, already doing her morning stretches. Out of all eight of them, she was the most enthusiastic about it. She, too, was nearly naked, but that was to be expected for her. She had a great body with chiseled muscles and feminine curves and she took every opportunity to show it off.
"You're in a good mood this morning." Freya said as she began her regimen.
"I got hand picked for baseball team tryouts at school!" She grunted out each few words at a quick burst as she clutched onto some handlebars above them, hooked her legs over it and did reverse pull-ups. This wasn't part of their required morning exercise. "Of course I'm in a good mood!"
"Yeah, well... I'm happy for you, Sif."
"You'll come watch, right?" Once she did twenty reps, Sif grasped the handlebars with her hands and flipped down, landing on her feet.
"Of course. You're my sister." Freya replied, and the two shared a brief hug before heading to the shower with their sisters Sigyn and Var. The showers were gender-separate, the rooms adjacent from the doors into the hallway. Several tens of meters across from where the girls showered, their brothers Heimdall, Vali, Tyr and Loki did the same.
"Give me a name, Tyr." Loki said. "I'm going to keep asking until you give me a name."
Tyr, a white blonde boy with a thin, angular face and long hair drew his head back under the shower head and let out a long sigh.
"Freya." he finally answered.
"Figures! Just knew you'd pick one of the family!" Loki exclaimed, pumping his fist triumphantly. "So why Freya?"
"Well for starters, she's more mature than you. She's also smart, logical, beautiful..."
"Sigyn’s smart." Vali said.
"They're all beautiful." Loki added.
"And Var is logical." Heimdall chimed in.
"Only you know that." Loki retorted. "Var doesn't really talk to the rest of us."
"So we all choose incest... and we're okay with that?" Vali asked.
"Don't call it incest." Loki said. "That makes it sound nasty."
"You know some humans are into that kinda shit, right?"
"Doesn't matter. We're not related." Tyr said. "Not by blood, anyways."
"Besides, do you think a relationship with a human would ever work out for us?"
"Likely not. We're not meant for reproduction. We're EVA pilots. We're meant to save humanity from the forces of Heaven." Heimdall announced with dramatic gravitas.
"And for the moment, we have no EVAs, and our sync ratios are total crap." Tyr said. "If NERV doesn't figure out the solution, we should probably start looking to integrate with humanity."
There was a silent moment as the four boys finished washing up. Once they were done, they turned off the water and dried off with pure white towels. Back in their quarters, they got dressed in their NERV uniforms, which amounted to a gray jumpsuit with their ID tags clasped to their chests. Across their way, their sisters did the same.
"Think our sisters know... about our intentions?" Vali asked.
"Sif knows." Loki said.
"Var knows." Heimdall added.
"Huh. Well, I guess we should get on it, then, Tyr." he patted his older brother on the shoulder.
The eight of them met in the hallway and marched double file out into the main operations center of NERV. Dozens of the world's brightest engineers, technicians, mechanics and scientists were hustling all around them, operating on the most advanced and bleeding edge project humanity has ever created; the Evangelion Project. The EVAs were the face of the Evangelion Project and the main bulk of all the hype and research, and the key to humanity's salvation.
The history of the Evangelion Project was more than just public knowledge. Nearly everyone felt the impact leading to its creation; The Second Impact. In the year 2000, over fifteen years ago, a meteor struck Antarctica and destroyed the continent, causing the waters worldwide to rise and killing billions. The damage, as catastrophic as it was, was only the prologue to an even greater calamity. Giant eldritch creatures that came to be known as Angels. They possessed incredible strength and were virtually immune to all the military firepower on the planet. It finally took a nuclear weapon to destroy it. The collateral damage was astronomical, unseen since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but the Angel was stopped.
The eight children approached the Commander of NERV, a tall man in all black. He looked down at them over his dark glasses as they approached. He had an icy stare that pierced each of them, looking them over more like objects than people. The woman next to him, the chief engineer of the Evangelion Project, had softer eyes, but she still had the look about her of a woman who has seen a lot.
"Today, we are going to do another round of sync ratio testing." the commander announced suddenly. He was not a man for ritualistic introductions.
"How long is this going to take?" Sif asked. "I got tryouts this af-"
"As long as it takes." he interrupted. "We need at least one capable EVA pilot as soon as possible. You never know when the next Angel attack will occur, and when it does, we NEED to be prepared."
"It's been three years since the last attack." Tyr said. "Are we expecting another one soon?"
"We're always expecting an attack." the commander replied. "The three year gap, for all we know, is an anomaly. The gap between that and the first Angel attack was only two weeks. The next one could happen never just as likely as it could happen next month, next week, or even five minutes from now."
The second Angel attack went reasonably better than the first one, though the collateral damage was still immense. Another Angel appeared only a few hundred miles close to where the first one landed. This time, however, the world was more prepared, and the Angel was blasted with a giant railgun, destroying it with several well-placed shots. The device, however, was too unwieldy to use and operate at a moment's notice. They needed something more maneuverable with the same punch, preferably better. Thus began the Evangelion Project, the same research that led to the eight childrens' creation.
"Preparations for EVA 09 are almost complete." the commander continued. "Come Hell or high water, we're going to have a pilot in it by the end of the month. Report to the research lab immediately. Except for you, Freya. Go with Ritsuko." he nodded to the chief engineer standing next to him. "Your sync ratios have been consistently the highest. We're going to try you in the Eva 09 Entry Plug for today."
"Yes, sir." Freya said, nodding her head.
"Dismissed!" The seven other children left in unison while Freya went with Ritsuko to the elevator. She was one of the faces they became very familiar with around NERV. She was the lead researcher on the Angels and contributed to most of the construction done on the EVAs. She had a similar icy exterior to the operations commander, but she was at least more approachable for the eight children. Freya figured it must have been the woman's maternal instinct.
"This really won't take all day, right?" Freya asked as they rode the elevator down several floors. "I don't want Sif to miss her baseball tryouts."
"If she misses them, then it can't be helped." Ritsuko said. "You are all EVA pilot trainees first, and students second. But... if everything goes well today, I'll make sure you all get to attend the tryouts."
They reached the floor that contained, according to Freya's knowledge of the NERV HQ layout, the crew quarters, mess hall, lounge and equipment rooms. She followed Ritsuko down the hallway into the equipment room. The name was a very sterile and technical term for armory, as that's what it was. Most of the equipment was on loan from the US army; M8 Carbines, body armor, tactical gear, rocket launchers and even a bomb disposal unit. Should an Angel attack, NERV was equipped to be first responders, but everyone knew that these weapons had about as much effectiveness as a pellet gun on a rhinoceros.
"We need to get you suited up first." Ritsuko explained.
"A suit? We've never needed a suit for sync testing before."
"Not with the Dummy Plugs. Synchronizing to a MAGI simulation is a walk in the park compared to the kind of interference you'll experience when you enter the EVA cockpit." Ritsuko rummaged through some unlabelled boxes that lined the metal racks across the entire length of the wall. "You need a specialized suit that will block out interference and isolate your AT field for the system to synchronize... ugh, if I can find it, that is."
"Do you want me to help?" Freya asked.
"No no, it's fine. Somebody's head is going to roll, though, for not labelling or organizing these boxes better. Ah! Here it is!" Ritsuko pulled out of one of the boxes a large, bulky white jumpsuit with metal plates around certain areas like the chest, shoulders, and knees.
"That's the thing?" Freya asked.
"This... is a plugsuit." Ritsuko explained. "It looks a bit bulky now, but it's meant to conform to the shape of your body."
"So what you're saying is it fits like a glove?"
"Yes, that. Now go on, strip down."
Freya looked over at the open doorway for a moment, then walked to the other side of Ritsuko before removing her jumpsuit. She folded it up neatly with a few swift motions of her hands and set it down on a patch of empty table nearby.
"All of it." Ritsuko said, nodding at her underwear. "You need to be completely naked so the only thing in the plugsuit is you."
"Fine." Freya removed her underwear and hid it in the folds of her jumpsuit before snatching the plugsuit from Ritsuko. She turned it over in her hands several times. there were no zippers or folds anywhere on the outfit. It looked like the only way to put it on was through the collar. Putting on the plugsuit was very easy. It was very roomy, almost enough for two people. Seemed to be a rather inconvenient jumpsuit, if it was this big for her. Maybe they expected her to grow into it, but unless she put on 200 pounds in the next month, that wasn't happening.
"Okay, it's on." she said sarcastically, gesturing out with her hands.
"Hold out your hand." Ritsuko ordered. Freya did so, and Ritsuko grabbed her wrist and pressed a switch underneath the cuff that Freya didn't notice before. There was a quiet hissing sound as the entire outfit suddenly shrank and conformed to the contours of her body like a second skin. Probably a little too much.
"It's tight like a corset." Freya remarked, stretching out her limbs and testing flexibility to see if the plugsuit obstructed her mobility and how.
"You'll get used to it. It's also equipped with life monitoring sensors so we can keep track of your heart rate, blood pressure, perspiration rate, breathing, and so on."
Freya finished stretching and pacing around to test out the plugsuit.
"I think it's growing on me." She said.
"See, you're getting used to it already. Oh, don't forget these." Ritsuko held up what looked like a headband with two weird-looking triangular clips around the temples. "This will further enhance your synchronization with the EVA."
"Okay, why haven't I seen any of this before?" Freya asked, taking the band and setting it down on her head. The thin band disappeared underneath her layers of hair, though the clips stuck out slightly, making her look like some goofy prototype robot. "We should have been using this stuff a long time ago to max out our sync ratios."
"Again, because we're testing in ideal conditions. In a real scenario, there will almost never be ideal conditions. Hell, most of the time you might not even have enough time to put on the suit, so we're looking to see if you can get to a sync ratio of at least 50% without all the equipment."
Fifty percent. It seemed like a mountain to climb in a month. Freya had the highest sync ratio out of the eight children at forty percent, but even that tended to vary from day to day, and it took a lot of concentration to up her average to where it was now.
"Alright, let's go get this over with." Freya said. She and Ritsuko left the armory, Ritsuko carrying her jumpsuit in her arms, and they headed back up in the elevator to the hangar where EVA 09 was stored. The room was gigantic, several hundred feet in every direction. Steel platforms, cranes and rails that they moved around on occupied the space around the fabled giant mecha in the center. It was submerged up to its chest in water, which made it considerably easier to construct.
Freya's mouth hung open when she saw it. The EVA was humanoid in shape, with bright orange and purple color patterns. The armor it wore was sleek and shiny like a sports car, yet it also had a robust look to it like it could shrug off a bunker buster bomb. Flanking either side of its head were two tall pylons that rose off the shoulders.
"Holy sh- how much did it cost to build this thing?" Freya asked.
"You don't want to know." Ritsuko replied.
"And you're going to have me pilot this?"
"Anyone who is able to pilot it; you, Heimdall, Vali or anyone else who can get a Sync ratio over 50%."
"Alright, then. I'm here; let's get started."
Ritsuko led Freya down a catwalk that led up to the side of the EVA's chest. There was a compartment just before its arm roughly a meter in diameter. Ritsuko turned the lever on it and pulled hard. The foot-thick hatch swung open, and inside, some few feet down, was the cockpit. Freya climbed down and sat in the seat, which was pretty comfortable for being so spartan a chamber. What she didn't understand, however, was how she was supposed to see anything in this claustrophobic hole.
"Ummm... there's no viewscre-" she began to say, but Ritsuko already shut the hatch behind her. Nice, even lighting came from an unknown location, so Freya was able to see around her. The layout was similar to the dummy plugs she and her siblings used for the Magi simulations. The arm rests ended in two joysticks and a few buttons along their length, which would be the only analogue she could actually interact with. From what she understood about the EVAs based on all the manuals, lessons and experience in VR training, control was almost entirely a mental process, with a few exceptions made for certain auxiliary functions. Otherwise the control system would be too convoluted for a human to comprehend or effectively manage. That's why the sync ratio was so important, and by extension why the system couldn't be automated; despite the Magi, the human brain was too complicated a thing to recreate, and the EVAs needed to be agile enough to keep up with an Angel. Hence the need for a human pilot, and hence the reason for her existence.
"Hope you're ready in there," a voice said over an invisible speaker. It was one of the familiar voices from the control room; one of many that she learned to obey, and one whose owner she never met in person.
"I am, I am." Freya replied, sitting down in the chair and taking the controls. As she did, a gurgling sound echoed inside the chamber, and a watery goo, yellow like honey, filled the capsule. She stared straight forward, trying her best to ignore the rising fluid and the smell of blood that accompanied it, even as it covered her mouth and she was completely submerged in it.
There were no seatbelts in the cockpit. Instead, the liquid that was filling the entry plug, known as LCL (Link Connecting Liquid), acted as a shock absorber. It was also oxygenated and enabled the user to breathe normally once an electrical current was run through it. For a moment, Freya felt like a specimen preserved in formaldehyde before the LCL phase shifted from the reaction and the yellow-orange tint cleared up around her. The bulkhead in front of her reacted with the LCL and turned transparent. It was like a large window was opened in front of her, revealing the outside world. Seconds later, Freya had a strange out of body experience as her mind connected to the EVA through means she couldn't begin to understand even with her superior intellect. The viewscreen was more than a window now; it was her eyes, and her limbs felt heavy, and her hands and fingers thick."
"How are we doing?" Ritsuko asked over the speaker in response to her exclamation.
"Fine, just... fine." Freya said. "This feels weird. Like I'm... bigger. Like I'm inside my own head."
"The EVA's body should feel like your own." Ritsuko explained. "The higher the sync ratio, the more you will be at one with the machine. The human body is linked with its brain at an average of 77.6%. 50% sync ratio is a paltry amount by comparison, but it should be enough to allow you to control the EVA without any major problems... in theory."
"...77.6%, really?" Freya asked.
"Focus, Freya."
"Alright alright."
"We're going to test your response time, now. Are you ready?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Alright, raise your left arm."
Freya did as she was told, lifting her arm up. In the viewscreen outside, the EVA's arm raised as well. Such a simple act proved to be surprisingly difficult; it was like a twenty pound weight was strapped to her arm.
"I feel a lot of resistance!" Freya grunted as she strained against the invisible force.
"Your sync ratio is at 32%." Ritsuko said. "Are you concentrating on the task at hand?"
"As much as I can!" Freya said. "Trying to think of myself as a giant robot that is supposed to destroy terrors from space. This is what I always do when I'm thrown in the pod."
"We'll just continue onward, then. Move your individual fingers, one at a time."
Freya did so, first clenching her hand into a fist and extending each finger out one at a time. Just like with her arm, each movement was a struggle to make. The weight analogy was perhaps an inaccurate comparison; it was more like a general resistance, like she didn't have full control over her body. If it was going to be this difficult to move a finger, how was she expected to fight an Angel?
"You can begin any time, Freya." Ritsuko said, a hint of impatience in her voice.
"What? But I just did as you said..." Freya looked at the EVA's hand. It was still closed. But her hand was open. There was a desync.
What happened next was complete chaos. Freya's hand, or the EVA's hand, it was difficult to tell for her, started twitching violently like it was possessed. The fingers spasmed and spontaneously erupted into gore as they moved in ways the human body was not designed to. Freya screamed as unimaginable pain erupted in her body and moved to clutch her hand or what remained of it, but her body refused to move. She tried to force it, and the muscles going up her arm also exploded in a chain reaction.
"WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?!" Ritsuko shouted, though not at anyone specifically. The entire observation window was smeared with a thick splash of blood that obscured the view of the hangar. The intercom to Freya emitted horrifying screams of pain and terror.
"Sync ratio is dropping down to below 20%!" one of the engineers replied. "They're still connected, but the desync is cascading! The EVA is rejecting Freya!"
"Dammit, abort the test! Eject the Entry Plug!"
"The disengage system is not responding! Freya's trapped in there!"
The floor rumbled with a deep, feral roar. The hair on the back of Ritsuko's neck stood on end.
"Activate the restraining bolts, NOW!" she ordered, though even as she said it, she pushed aside the engineer in front of her and mashed the keyboard with commands. Inside the hanger, arms shot out of the walls from every angle and bound the EVA by its neck, wrists, ankles, chest, forearms and shoulders. The Evangelions were still a very mysterious and fickle construction, and almost had a mind of their own. With mechanical restraints that sedated their "brains" and left them in a comatose state, the pilot should be able to act as the brain instead and control the EVA like a puppet on strings. The problem was trying to find the right brain that could synchronize with the EVA, and when there was a catastrophic failure like right now, there ran the risk of the creature inside the EVA awakening and retaliating, and the collateral damage it could cause can only be described as catastrophic. As important as it was to evacuate everyone out of the facility, it was absolutely vital that the EVA didn't go berserk, and if they couldn't control it, to sink the entire facility into the underground ocean of magma that ran underneath the Geofront.
Ritsuko brought up the chamber release system and prepared to confirm the self destruct if the EVA started to break out of the restraints. The synchronization continued to drop, and the EVA continued to let out bellows of sheer agony and horror at its own abominant existence.
"Come on, Freya." Ritsuko muttered. "Gain control of the creature." Even though Freya and the other seven children were created as merely tools to pilot the EVA, they were still human beings and children on top of that, and Ritsuko wasn't about to let them die, especially if Freya was the most promising of the candidates.
* * *
The EVAs deafening roars couldn't be felt or heard inside the Entry Plug apart from the noise from the intercom. Not that Freya was in any state to pay attention to anything except the pain in her arm. It felt like her arm blew up from the inside, but to her surprise, it was still there, firmly attached to her body. The viewscreen was covered in red, obscuring her vision outside, and the control room was in a state of panic over the intercom.
Freya simply lay there like a discarded doll, unable to move on her own accord. Her body was numb all over, and no longer felt like her own; she was unable to move even her eyes. She might die in the next few minutes, but she didn't feel panic or fear over it. More frustration than anything else, and regret that she couldn't die close to her brothers and sisters, the only people in the world she actually cared about.
Blood red sunlight filled her eyes. Freya looked up, shocked briefly that she was able to. The red smear cleared away from the viewscreen to reveal a vista, one that has haunted her all her life. Freya looked upon a barren landscape, desolate and littered with rubble mangled corpses. Alien carrion birds flew overhead, crowing gleefully over their eternal feast. Off in the horizon, there was a giant monument, white and alien in design, taller than any human construct that towered over the desolation like the standard of a conquering army.
Freya stood up and stepped forward, past the viewscreen and out of the EVA. The pain in her arm was nonexistent. It was a haunting image that was seared into her memory. Over time, she learned to concentrate and repress the image. The stress and pain from the desync must have brought it back to the surface.
This memory, this vision, was the first memory she ever had. Minutes before she was born, before she could conceivably have a memory, Freya was struck with this vision, a terrible one and a possible omen of what will happen if she and her siblings failed. They didn't share this memory with her, and the NERV staff were either horrified by it or they dismissed it as just a bad dream. Freya knew the difference, though; dreams were neither this detailed nor recurring. Whether it was a warning or a foreshadowing of possible events or perhaps even the future itself, the last chapter of humanity was beyond Freya's understanding.
"I can't let this be the future." she whispered to herself. "I won't let this be the future! DO YOU HEAR ME?!" she shouted into the crimson void. "I WON'T LET THIS BE THE FUTURE!"
* * *
The NERV staff was preparing to evacuate while Ritsuko prepared to drop the facility into the mantle when the roaring ceased. They all took pause halfway to the gondola, wondering whether to stay or continue to flee the facility. The intercom to the EVA was still functioning, but Freya was silent on the other end; she even stopped screaming. Ritsuko's eye darted up to the EVA's status on the main monitor. It appeared green, and the sync ratio was steadily rising.
"Twenty percent, thirty... fifty seven percent sync ratio?" Ritsuko read off the monitor. "Freya, what's going on in there? Please respond!"
"...I'm... alright." Freya replied weakly from the other side. "I'm in control now."
"I can see that. Good work, Freya." Ritsuko said. The crew around her gave a round of applause as they returned to their stations. "Hang on tight, we're going to get you out of there."
"We're done already?" she asked.
"I think that's enough testing for today. You hit our goal, plus we can't do an accurate calibration without the EVA's left arm. We'll pick this back up in about a week. In the meantime, rest and try to remember how you were able to control the EVA."
* * *
After she was extracted from the Entry Plug, Freya went to the showers to wash off the LCL and remove the smell of blood. Even after she left the EVA, Freya's left arm still felt sore and weird from feeling like it was blasted clean off her body. The Magi simulations, though it emulated the pain feedback of the EVA, was limited to a much lesser threshold than the real thing so they could learn to endure it. She didn't imagine just how painful it would be, but at least it was only pain.
After all was said and done, there was plenty of time to kill while she waited for her siblings to finish their sync ratio training. She returned to her quarters, where she perused through a few books NERV granted them access to, but she was more interested in attending Sif's baseball tryouts today, and couldn't focus on the text in front of her.
There was a knock at the door. She looked up to see Misato, the operations director of NERV, step into the room. She managed tactical systems related to the Evangelions and Angels, as well as affairs related to the pilots.
"Hey there, Freya." she said, walking over and sitting down in a chair opposite of Freya. "So I heard that you managed to pass the sync test. Congratulations."
"Uhh, umm, thanks." Freya stuttered. She was not used to compliments or gratitude. The NERV staff were usually on edge and impatient, understandably so, even Ritsuko and Misato herself, who were the warmest and most open to the children. They had an important job, and their failure would mean the death of all of humanity, and unless there was a breakthrough in Evangelion research and development, all of their efforts hinged on the success of the children figuring out how to synchronize with the EVAs. Tensions could not possibly be higher.
"I've been instructed that whoever manages to successfully control the EVA is to be relocated to a residential block in the city."
"What? Why am I being moved?"
"We're moving forward with the idea that you'll become EVA 09's pilot, and as a result, you're going to be made a public figure. It'll help boost the public's morale and secure us better funding."
"Alright, but why does that mean I have to move out into the city?"
"Because once it's made public that the EVA has a pilot, everyone's going to want to know everything about you. The arrangements have already been made for you to appear as a normal girl who was born with the ability to pilot the EVA, and discovered in a random population screening."
"Why all the deceit? What's going on?"
"If it's discovered that you and your family are manufactured humans, it could put NERV and the entire Evangelion Project in an untenable situation." Misato looked off to the side, wondering how to best describe the situation to Freya. "There are people out there who don't like the idea of manufactured humans. It's a moral and ethical gray area for many, and that doesn't even get into the question about if humanity should even be meddling in God's domain."
God. A most nebulous entity whose existence was questionable at best. Humans attributed him to creating the universe and everything in it, along with the laws of nature and even morality itself. And for reasons Freya couldn't begin to comprehend, he demanded worship from all of humanity under pain of eternal, unspeakable torture while remaining so elusive as to invite doubt and skepticism while supposedly punishing said thoughts. If he cared so much about taboos, human morality and worship, he could easily appear before them and end the debates once and for all.
"Humans are a worrisome bunch." Freya replied. "Alright, then. If that's what you want to do, I'll go along with it."
"Good. Then pack your things. We can move you in right now."
Freya didn't have many worldly possessions aside from a small wardrobe of casual clothes and a few books. Packing up did not take long for her. She took a look around the room one last time; it was a little sad to know that she was leaving this place she considered her home, away from her brothers and sisters. Hopefully NERV staff would allow her to visit them regularly; they were the most important thing in the world to her, and they were so close as to be completely inseparable.
Once she was finished folding her belongings into a duffel bag, Freya threw it over her shoulder and followed Misato out of the room and to the gondola leading to the surface. The first sight to greet them when they left the facility was the inverse skyline of Tokyo-3 nearly a mile directly above them, a city created from the ruins of Tokyo-2 when it was destroyed in the first Angel attack, and doubled as the life support and stronghold for the NERV Command Center. The highest part of the command center was a black pyramid that neighbored the corner of an inverted white pyramid that acted as a reservoir of water that supplied the base.
The NERV Command Center was housed inside a giant sphere known as the Geofront, an unnatural formation underground that had over the years been filled up with water and earth until only a fraction of the top remained empty. That being said, it was a cavernous fraction that gave one a sense of vertigo if they stared at the skyline for too long. The Command Center was situated in a trench in the dead center of the exposed Geofront. On the hill above them was a residential district where most of the NERV staff lived, accompanied by a minority of civilians, and presumably it was where Freya would stay.
Both she and Misato piled into the latter's car, a Lotus Exige GT3. It was a remarkably expensive, high-end car that made Freya wonder how she even got the money to afford it, but considering the amount of resources that went into building NERV, Tokyo-3, Freya and her siblings, the Magi Supercomputer and the Evangelion on top of the staff that ran everything, it was probably a drop in the bucket compared to all that, and Misato likely had money to burn.
Sitting on the passenger seat when Freya climbed inside was a manilla folder plastered with the NERV logo, and underneath that read "EVA Pilot Profile".
"What's this?" Freya asked, putting the duffel bag at her feet and setting the notebook on her lap.
"That's your public identity." Misato explained as she got in as well. "If you're going to keep up the facade of being a normal human, you'll need to memorize every last scrap of information in there. It's not too different from the profile we made for your school records; just a bit more expanded on."
"Parents died in first Angel attack, orphaned, raised in St. Peter's School for Refugee Children- WAH!" Freya exclaimed as Misato started the car and tore out of the parking lot. Remarkably, despite being underground, trees and other greenery blanketed the landscape for as far as the eye can see, no doubt nourished by the artificial lake and aquifers that accumulated in the Geofront over countless years. The cavern was illuminated by a series of thick windows surrounding Tokyo-3 that allowed natural sunlight to pour in, allowing the trees to grow and to emulate the open air outside.
At dangerous speeds, Misato drove up the winding road to the residential district on the hill overlooking the trench. The Lotus' powerful engine roared like a king of beasts, the sound a little intimidating to Freya. She knelt forward with her arms tucked around her knees, trying to not pay attention to the foliage and concrete walls zipping past in the corner of her eye. Misato drove like a bat out of Hell, pulling tight turns at breakneck speeds that shouldn't allow it, and though it felt like they might spin out at any time, she was always in control, like it would not do anything she didn't want it to.
Within minutes, they were at the top of the hill and pulling into the parking lot of one of the apartment blocks. When the car came to a stop, Freya quickly clambered out. She didn't think she could be so happy to be on solid, inert ground again.
"Alright, I'm not getting into any car you drive from now on!" she exclaimed. "That was terrifying!"
"Come on, it wasn't that fast." Misato deflected. "If I didn't have such a valuable NERV asset in the car with me, I could have broken a few speed records... and laws."
"That's a good point, what would NERV say if they found out you did that?"
"They're not going to find out, because I'm not going to tell them, and neither are you."
"Hmph, be glad that I don't." Freya muttered, though she knew in her heart that she wouldn't tell anyone, and that the subject would never come up again. Misato led her into the apartment block, a series of uniform structures without much style to them; a stark contrast to the geometric, modern design of the NERV pyramid that she could see in the trench from the walkway. Her apartment was on the opposite end from the parking lot, along the edge of the hill.
"12... 13... ah, here we are! Apartment number SD-14!" Misato fished a key out of her purse and unlocked and opened the door. Freya stepped inside and made a quick sweep of the room. It was a studio apartment, and a rather spacious one. The main room was larger than the dimensions of her quarters; not the pod she slept in, but the entire room her family's pods were housed in! Opposite from the front door was a kitchen, and to the right was a doorway leading into the bedroom, and from there the bathroom. The left wall of the apartment was a full length wall of reinforced glass with a door that led out to a small balcony overlooking the Geofront. The entire place was already well furnished, like something out of a catalogue or model home.
"This place is big!" Freya said.
"Bigger than your old chambers at NERV, yeah." Misato said. "This is closer to what humans live in. Families as big as yours would live in something a lot bigger than this."
"I feel like I could lose myself in this place. Why do humans need so much space?"
"It's just how we are."
"And what about my siblings? What if they become official pilots as well?"
"The neighboring apartments in this part of the block have been reserved for them should that happen."
"WHEN that happens." Freya insisted. "They'll become pilots, I'm sure of it!"
"Yes, of course. WHEN they become EVA pilots."
Freya tossed her bag on the couch and slipped the NERV folder into the drawer on the end table next to it. It was reading she'd catch up on later, and she knew it would be foolish to leave it where someone might find it, even in the privacy of her new home.
"Is that everything?" Freya asked.
"Should be. Oh that's right, Sif has baseball tryouts today, doesn't she?" Freya nodded her head. "Well here's hoping she gets drafted."
"Are you gonna come watch?"
"I'd love to, but I still have a lot of work to do back at NERV. You could tell me all about it, though, when we next meet."
"I will."
"Do you want me to drive you down to the school? It's on the way back to NERV."
"No. Way. In. Hell." Freya emphasized. "The first time was more than enough for me. I can hoof it from here."
"Hmph, alright." Both of them stepped outside, and Misato closed and locked the apartment door before handing the key over to Freya. She turned to leave when she got a call on her cell phone.
"Hello?" she answered, turning her attention away from Freya. "Yeah... he's here already?! No, I was just dropping Freya off at her new home. Uh-huh. Alright, I'll get there as soon as possible." Misato promptly hung up and stuffed the phone back into her purse.
"NERV stuff?" Freya asked as Misato broke off into a run back to her car.
"Yep! Sorry, but I gotta run!" she jumped back into the car and within seconds its engine roared to life. Outside the car, it was even louder and more terrifying. "Let me know how it turns out!" she called out over the noise.
"I will!" Freya responded, though she was unsure if Misato could hear her. The older woman slammed the door shut and went in reverse at full speed before J-turning and flooring it around the corner and down the hill. Maybe it was just the change in perspective, but it looked like Misato was being even more reckless than before. One had to wonder why she drove like a maniac, and in such an expensive sports car, no less.
* * *
Misato returned to the Command Center in record time. She took the gondola down and headed to the Commander's office. Gendo Ikari, the Commander of NERV, was inside, talking to a man she recognized as Milos Romav, the chief weapons officer of GEIST. GEIST was a counterpart to NERV originating from Eastern Europe. Ever since the Angel attacks, multiple organizations like NERV sprouted up in an attempt to combat the threat. Within a few years, most of the competition - the less serious factions and groups looking to make a quick cash grab off the freshly scared countries and people - were quickly culled off until only a handful were left. Competition for funding, as well as progress or lack thereof shut down the rest until only GEIST and NERV remained.
GEIST survived the years because of their almost exclusive funding from the Eastern European Alliance, composed primarily of Russia, Ukraine and Finland along with half a dozen other countries. They demanded to have their own organization like NERV that would protect them first, despite the fact that both Angels attacked Japan and showed no interest in anywhere else.
"We're only asking that we pool our resources together." Milos said to Gendo. "It would be in both our best interests."
"What do you have that we could want?" Gendo asked. "We can't just hand over the organic materials to construct an EVA to you. That's an exceedingly rare material."
"Am I interrupting?" Misato asked.
"No, you arrived just in time." Gendo replied. "This is Milos Romav from GEIST, as you already know. Apparently relations between then and the Eastern European Alliance have become tenuous as of late. They're seeking outside assistance."
"An exaggeration." Milos said. "GEIST and the Alliance simply have different opinions on how to combat the Angel threat. They believe that the Alliance should look after itself first and everyone second, but this has also clouded their judgement and they refuse help from anyone, even the UN. We at GEIST, however, believe that if our failures should be shared, so to should our successes. We're willing to strike a deal; an exchange of technologies that interest each other."
"Isn't that going behind the Alliance's back?" Misato asked. "What will happen if they find out?"
"They won't. We've taken great care in covering our tracks."
"When I came in, I overheard you trying to barter for organic material. Whatever happened to the Jet Alone Project?"
"Technical setbacks, unfortunately. Creating a bipedal robot entirely from mechanical parts is difficult when it has to have fine motor and balancing skills, particularly in the feet. Our best attempts allow it to take the first few steps before falling over."
That was knowledge that Misato and NERV by extension already knew. Putting legs on a mobile platform was highly impractical because of all the subtle coordination that went into making an organic creature walk. The simple act of walking is a process of falling forward in a controlled manner. Muscles in the feet shift and contract constantly to compensate for balance, and the legs had to be in complete synchronization with each other to avoid actually falling down. While this was easy to do with the organic material NERV used for the EVAs, conventional mechanics were still in their infancy and nowhere near mobile or practical enough to fight on par with an Angel. Though GEIST had no other alternative, as only NERV had access to the necessary organic material, apparently they had to learn this reality the hard way.
"We don't need much; just enough to supplement the feet and hands. In exchange, we can provide information that we've discovered about the Angels and their weaknesses."
"Weaknesses?" Misato asked, suddenly intrigued.
"We compiled the data from the two Angel attacks into our GYPSY supercomputer and discovered a key weakness." He grinned when he saw the clawing interest in Misato's eyes. Gendo watched silently and stoically from his desk. "If you're willing to part with some EVA material, I can offer you what we've discovered."
"How do we know the information is good?" Misato asked.
"How do WE know you won't just send us two thousand kilograms of ground beef?" Milos replied. "We just need to have faith in each other."
Misato looked to Gendo, unsure of what to say. She could see the cogs turning behind the reflection shining off his glasses. He was trying to think of a way he wouldn't have to give up such a valuable asset in exchange for the information. It was just the nature of being the Commander; he wasn't above underhanded tactics if he felt it would benefit NERV.
"Let me speak to Commander Ikari alone." she said.
"Very well. I'll anticipate your final decision outside." Milos saw himself outside, and Misato approached Gendo's desk and reduced her voice to a hushed tone.
"You think we should take the chance?" she asked. "Anything about the Angels is worth a few kilotons of EVA material, wouldn't you say? I mean, we can always grow more."
"EVA-09 was damaged earlier today. That much EVA material would set back its restoration by another two weeks. That's two weeks Freya won't be able to refine her synchronization with it, and we're in crunch time right now."
"If what he says is true, and they really have found a weakness, then we might not even need the EVAs. We were able to stop the second EVA with unconventional weapons; we might be able to do the same against the third. As director of operations, I say it's worth the risk."
Gendo lowered his head slightly, enough so that his eyes could be seen underneath his glasses.
"Alright, then. I trust your judgement on this. Don't let my gesture of good faith go to waste."
* * *
The climate inside the Geofront was perpetually temperate, due to its location underground and relative isolation from the climate outside. The sunlight shone on Freya, but she didn't feel the radiation on her skin because of the many protective, reinforced windows. With her superior stamina, Freya trekked down the hill and several miles to the school without breaking a sweat. She could see most of the Geofront from up here. The black pyramid of the NERV Command Center stuck out from the greenery. The school was off to the southeast; she wouldn't have to pass the Command Center to get to it.
School District 1, as it was known as, was a K-12 school of roughly five hundred, mostly populated by children of the NERV staff. Even then, they were unaware of the true nature of the manufactured children. Freya wondered how they would react if they ever found out. Children tended to be petty creatures that would bully others for slight aesthetic abnormalities. At the same time, they were also apathetic or unaware about most details; they placed their own value on things. Unfortunately that whimsical nature was lost as they grew up into humorless, stern-faced adults. Only a few, like Misato, managed to hold onto a shred of the whimsy that made them interesting as human beings.
Freya got to the school right as the first wave of audiences for the baseball tryouts were arriving. A few players were out on the field warming up. The stands were sparsely populated with audience members, most of whom were likely there for moral support for participating friends and family, if Freya's own experience was anything to go by.
She sat down on the far left end of the stands and watched as the crowd thickened over the next twenty minutes. There were a few familiar faces from her classroom in the crowd, though none of them noticed her. With five minutes to go before the tryouts began, Freya spotted her siblings round the corner and approach the stands.
"Hey, over here!" she called out, standing up and flagging them down. Heimdall was the first to approach, pulling Freya into a big bear hug and lifting her off the ground. "AHH!"
"Well what's this I hear about you becoming an EVA pilot?!" he exclaimed, twirling her around a bit before setting her down. "First time inside the EVA and you manage to control the damn thing!"
"Just barely." Freya said. "Though it wasn't easy. It took a real shock to my system to get me to find the will and reckless abandon to control it."
"What was it like inside the EVA?" Vali asked as he and the rest of their family, sans Sif, sat down.
"It was... weird, and surreal. I felt like I was inside my own body. More than how my consciousness is inside this vessel. It was like wearing a thick shell around my body, and at the same time, I felt larger, and my limbs more powerful."
"What about the AT Field thing?" Tyr asked.
"We didn't test that today. Shortly before I managed to control the EVA, there was an... incident, and the test had to be called off early."
"Did that have anything to do with our own test shutting down?" Heimdall asked.
"What do you mean?"
"We were... what, twenty minutes into our own sync ratio test? The Magi said something about an alert and cancelled the test. We were stuck in complete darkness inside the Dummy Plugs for ten minutes before it came back on and ordered us to continue and acted like nothing happened."
"Huh. And no one clued you in on what happened?"
"That's right. So what DID happen in your encounter with the EVA?"
"...I don't know. There's something about the EVAs that they aren't telling us, and I don't think even they know. Which must be why they're not telling us."
They let the conversation die there. NERV kept a lot of secrets from everyone, including their own staff, it seemed, and there was no point in talking about it at this point. Besides, Freya didn't want to worry them about what really happened while she was in the EVA.
The children cheered the loudest in their section of the stands when Sif stepped up to the plate. Her swings were not as powerful as the other players. Freya saw her in the batting cages before, and she swung a lot harder than that. After the third swing, she realized what she was doing, based on the ball's trajectories. She wasn't using all of her strength, but rather focusing more energy on directing the ball in very specific spots. Sif had a lot of control over the fly balls' trajectories, and grounders were launched through blind spots where they would shoot past the basemen and shortstop. Freya wondered if the coaches and scouts noticed that.
The children let out another barrage of cheers and applause after she took her seat. They were much less interested in the other players who came up next, though Loki and Tyr continued to watch with sincerity, muttering to one another about their form and strength.
After the tryouts had ended and Sif returned from the locker room, she joined the seven of them at the front gate to the school.
"That was a clever game, Sif." Freya complimented.
"Amazing play, Sif. I was watching the whole time." Loki added.
"Thanks, everyone." Sif said. "Though you shouldn't be congratulating just me. Freya's become an EVA pilot now."
There were murmurs of agreement around the group, and a few of them clapped their hands on her shoulders.
"Actually... there was something I need to tell you all, but I didn't want to sour Sif's victory so soon."
"It's not a problem, what's up?" Sif asked. After making sure the coast was clear and there were no eavesdroppers nearby, Freya explained to them how she was moved to the apartment on the hill a part of NERV's PR move. When she finished her explanation, there was a moment of solemn silence between all of them. Finally Heimdall was the one to speak up.
"Well we'll still see each other." he said. "And nothing's going to stop us from visiting you."
"Yeah, you just live in a different place now." Sigyn added. "It's no biggie."
"Thanks for understanding, guys, though it's going to be a bit lonely spending my evenings without you all." Freya said. The eight of them began to walk back to NERV together.
"A-are you crying?" Loki asked, tilting his head to look at her face.
"...a little, yeah." she replied admittedly, wiping the tears from her eyes.
"It's alright. You're among family." Tyr said, wrapping an arm around her. "We stand strong together, and nothing's going to come between us."
