31_days Another day skipped.
I missed yesterday's deadline by mere minutes, so that fic will have to wait till "amnesty day". In the meantime, here is my latest offering.
Title: "Routine Questioning"
Day/Theme: Sept 13) a short history of nearly nothing
Series: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Character/Pairing: Random NERV Section 2 Men In Black, OFC
Rating: PG-13
Author's Note: Set toward the beginning of Episode 21. This addition to the ambitious NGE project pretty much came out whole the moment I thought of it, I just had to type it down. Note: the "Sumisu" is a double reference, both to "The Tenant of Room 404" by "BobBQ" on the Eva Geeks forum, as well as to Agent Smith in the "Matrix" series (I would get a "Matrix" reference in here somehow!)
Today was a maintenance day; Sabia had planned to work on a cross-reference between the logs she had made, trying to determine, from contextual clues, what the Angels might be communicating among themselves. But as she sat re-reading the files and jotting in her notebook, an IM window popped up on the screen of her terminal.
UsagiIbuki>Have you seen the Vice-Commander today?
She typed a reply:
SabiaVal>No, I haven't, and I'm working that cross-reference he asked me to do; I've dug up a few interesting things and I was going to discuss them with him.
At that moment, the IM window closed itself and the screen of the terminal went dark, except for a box of red type.
NETWORK CONNECTION TERMINATED
The door opened and three nondescript men in dark suits, their eyes concealed behind sunglasses, even here indoors, entered.
"Are you Miss Sabia Valiant?" the man in the middle asked her in English, with utterly no trace of an accent.
She looked from the black screen of her terminal to the three intruders. "Yes, that's me, but what is the meaning of this?" she asked.
"We need to ask you a few routine questions," the man in the middle, whom she mentally dubbed "Agent Sumisu", informed her. "If you could come with is, this won't take long. But we will need you to hand over your NERV ID card and your cellular phone, if you have one."
"All right, but what is this about?" she asked. She rummaged in her breast pocket for her card, taking it out, then found the cellphone Enniel had given her. The agent on the left took them from her.
"I'm sorry, but I cannot answer that here," "Agent Sumisu" replied. The two other agents moved as if they would take her by the shoulder, but she let them guide her out of the office without touching her. Two more agents entered from the hallway, clearly waiting for them to escort her out.
"Wait, what are they doing? I've only got a few files in there," she said.
"A simple routine search, Miss Valiant," replied "Agent Sumisu". They led her down a hallway and into an elevator she didn't remember seeing before, which took them deeper into the complex.
They emerged into a dark hallway lit only by a strip of red tubular lighting about shoulder high on her. They turned a corner, and Agent Sumisu swiped a card through a data reader on their left. A door opened in the darkness -- a section of the red lighting went dark -- and they escorted her into a high-ceilinged but small room with one chair, lit only by a glowing panel bearing the NERV symbol, high up on the wall.
The door closed behind her, leaving her alone, plunged in darkness. She seated herself on the chair, not having anything else to do.
What could have been ten minutes passed, when the door opened and "Agent Sumisu" entered alone.
"I hope you realize I'm an American citizen and I have the right to counsel," she said.
"That won't be necessary, and we only need your cooperation," the agent replied. "Miss Valiant, can you tell me the nature of your employment at NERV?"
"I'm translating some anomalous voices heard during some audio recordings made in the middle of Angel attacks," she said. "The voices have been speaking in various dialects of Enochian, and I am fluent in several forms of the language." God, that sounded like a canned answer, she thought.
"And who sent you here to conduct these translations?" the agent asked.
"I was sent here by Lorenz Kiel, head of SEELE, at the request of Commander Ikari and Vice-Commander Fuyutsuki," she replied.
"Who is overseeing your work?"
"I'm working somewhat independently, but I've answered to both the commanders and to Dr. Ritsuko Akagi when my assistance is needed, and I have had the assistance of Lieutenant Maya Ibuki as well as First Lieutenants Shigeru Aoba and Makoto Hyuga."
"And how would you describe your relationship with the commanders?"
"It's purely a professional relationship," she said.
"What about your relationship with Vice-Commander Fuyutsuki?"
"I'd call it professional but congenial; we're both academics to a certain degree, so we relate to each other that way."
"Would you call it a close relationship?"
"Close enough that he has addressed me by my first name a number of times, but I wouldn't quite call us friends." I'm saying too much, she realized.
"Are you intimate to any extent?"
"How would you define 'intimate'?" Let's try to redirect this...
The agent paused a bit, clearly not expecting her to answer his question with a question. "Just answer the question, Miss Valiant."
"I'd say we're intimate enough that he's offered a concerned ear when I had some family troubles weighing on my mind, but that's about as far as it went."
"Have you spent much time alone with him?"
"We've spoken to each other alone in my office and we've had a meal or two together, but I wouldn't say any of that lasted more than an hour or two at the most."
"Has he made you privvy to any sensitive information relating to the Human Instrumentality Project?"
"The... what?" she asked.
The agent eyed her, clearly not expecting this. "You are certain he has never made any reference to this project, during your... encounters?"
He weighted the word with a hint that there was something less than appropriate about her relationship with Fuyutsuki. A terse laugh escaped her lips before she could stop it. "Sir, any work that he and have discussed related to the translations I've been making. I've never heard of anything called Instrumentality, and our encounters have always been business-related. I'm not that close to him." But you wish you were.... a voice within her hinted.
The agent regarded her in silence. "Very well, Miss Valiant, that will be all for now."
With that, he left the cell, closing the door behind him and leaving her in the reddish-tinged gloom.
An hour or three hours could have passed before the two agents returned and escorted her back to her office. She entered to find the papers on her desk had been scattered. The drawers in the desk had been removed and set on the floor and the books on her shelf had been pulled out and laid open on any flat surface available.
"Those idiots," she muttered, setting to work, cleaning up the mess.
Title: "Routine Questioning"
Day/Theme: Sept 13) a short history of nearly nothing
Series: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Character/Pairing: Random NERV Section 2 Men In Black, OFC
Rating: PG-13
Author's Note: Set toward the beginning of Episode 21. This addition to the ambitious NGE project pretty much came out whole the moment I thought of it, I just had to type it down. Note: the "Sumisu" is a double reference, both to "The Tenant of Room 404" by "BobBQ" on the Eva Geeks forum, as well as to Agent Smith in the "Matrix" series (I would get a "Matrix" reference in here somehow!)
Today was a maintenance day; Sabia had planned to work on a cross-reference between the logs she had made, trying to determine, from contextual clues, what the Angels might be communicating among themselves. But as she sat re-reading the files and jotting in her notebook, an IM window popped up on the screen of her terminal.
UsagiIbuki>Have you seen the Vice-Commander today?
She typed a reply:
SabiaVal>No, I haven't, and I'm working that cross-reference he asked me to do; I've dug up a few interesting things and I was going to discuss them with him.
At that moment, the IM window closed itself and the screen of the terminal went dark, except for a box of red type.
NETWORK CONNECTION TERMINATED
The door opened and three nondescript men in dark suits, their eyes concealed behind sunglasses, even here indoors, entered.
"Are you Miss Sabia Valiant?" the man in the middle asked her in English, with utterly no trace of an accent.
She looked from the black screen of her terminal to the three intruders. "Yes, that's me, but what is the meaning of this?" she asked.
"We need to ask you a few routine questions," the man in the middle, whom she mentally dubbed "Agent Sumisu", informed her. "If you could come with is, this won't take long. But we will need you to hand over your NERV ID card and your cellular phone, if you have one."
"All right, but what is this about?" she asked. She rummaged in her breast pocket for her card, taking it out, then found the cellphone Enniel had given her. The agent on the left took them from her.
"I'm sorry, but I cannot answer that here," "Agent Sumisu" replied. The two other agents moved as if they would take her by the shoulder, but she let them guide her out of the office without touching her. Two more agents entered from the hallway, clearly waiting for them to escort her out.
"Wait, what are they doing? I've only got a few files in there," she said.
"A simple routine search, Miss Valiant," replied "Agent Sumisu". They led her down a hallway and into an elevator she didn't remember seeing before, which took them deeper into the complex.
They emerged into a dark hallway lit only by a strip of red tubular lighting about shoulder high on her. They turned a corner, and Agent Sumisu swiped a card through a data reader on their left. A door opened in the darkness -- a section of the red lighting went dark -- and they escorted her into a high-ceilinged but small room with one chair, lit only by a glowing panel bearing the NERV symbol, high up on the wall.
The door closed behind her, leaving her alone, plunged in darkness. She seated herself on the chair, not having anything else to do.
What could have been ten minutes passed, when the door opened and "Agent Sumisu" entered alone.
"I hope you realize I'm an American citizen and I have the right to counsel," she said.
"That won't be necessary, and we only need your cooperation," the agent replied. "Miss Valiant, can you tell me the nature of your employment at NERV?"
"I'm translating some anomalous voices heard during some audio recordings made in the middle of Angel attacks," she said. "The voices have been speaking in various dialects of Enochian, and I am fluent in several forms of the language." God, that sounded like a canned answer, she thought.
"And who sent you here to conduct these translations?" the agent asked.
"I was sent here by Lorenz Kiel, head of SEELE, at the request of Commander Ikari and Vice-Commander Fuyutsuki," she replied.
"Who is overseeing your work?"
"I'm working somewhat independently, but I've answered to both the commanders and to Dr. Ritsuko Akagi when my assistance is needed, and I have had the assistance of Lieutenant Maya Ibuki as well as First Lieutenants Shigeru Aoba and Makoto Hyuga."
"And how would you describe your relationship with the commanders?"
"It's purely a professional relationship," she said.
"What about your relationship with Vice-Commander Fuyutsuki?"
"I'd call it professional but congenial; we're both academics to a certain degree, so we relate to each other that way."
"Would you call it a close relationship?"
"Close enough that he has addressed me by my first name a number of times, but I wouldn't quite call us friends." I'm saying too much, she realized.
"Are you intimate to any extent?"
"How would you define 'intimate'?" Let's try to redirect this...
The agent paused a bit, clearly not expecting her to answer his question with a question. "Just answer the question, Miss Valiant."
"I'd say we're intimate enough that he's offered a concerned ear when I had some family troubles weighing on my mind, but that's about as far as it went."
"Have you spent much time alone with him?"
"We've spoken to each other alone in my office and we've had a meal or two together, but I wouldn't say any of that lasted more than an hour or two at the most."
"Has he made you privvy to any sensitive information relating to the Human Instrumentality Project?"
"The... what?" she asked.
The agent eyed her, clearly not expecting this. "You are certain he has never made any reference to this project, during your... encounters?"
He weighted the word with a hint that there was something less than appropriate about her relationship with Fuyutsuki. A terse laugh escaped her lips before she could stop it. "Sir, any work that he and have discussed related to the translations I've been making. I've never heard of anything called Instrumentality, and our encounters have always been business-related. I'm not that close to him." But you wish you were.... a voice within her hinted.
The agent regarded her in silence. "Very well, Miss Valiant, that will be all for now."
With that, he left the cell, closing the door behind him and leaving her in the reddish-tinged gloom.
An hour or three hours could have passed before the two agents returned and escorted her back to her office. She entered to find the papers on her desk had been scattered. The drawers in the desk had been removed and set on the floor and the books on her shelf had been pulled out and laid open on any flat surface available.
"Those idiots," she muttered, setting to work, cleaning up the mess.