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Advice and Trust [NGE]

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I don't think she's been shot, it's just feedback from the cloning tank getting totaled. Gendo's going to be SO pissed.

Why do I say that? Well, there's no mention of a dart sticking out of her body, and those are quite noticeable, and if was a genuine bullet...well...there'd be a lot more blood...
 
Strypgia said:
Her eyes rolled up and she slumped over in a heap.

"Rei? REI?!" Asuka shouted, eyes going wide.
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Strypgia said:
"Commander Ikari has already had his toys taken away…"
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Strypgia said:
Ritsuko was scrabbling at her lab coat's pocket, struggling with the flapping coat until she managed to pull out her pocket terminal. She quickly hit a few keys and the room was flooded with orange-red light.

Ritsuko's face went pale as she looked around. "Oh no…"
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*Waving fists at the heavens*

GOD-DAMNIT STRYP!!!!

WHY?!

WHYYYYYYYYYY?!
 
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Because, let's be fair, as long as the Reiquarium continues to exist Rei is ultimately expendable, and A&T!Ritsuko wasn't going to flip that switch, not least because Gendo would put a bullet in her.

Also, remember that the Reis are used for the Dummy Plug system (I actually wanted to bring this up sooner, but I sort of forgot), and I suspect these are the 'toys' the SEELE agent is talking about. No Reiquarium = no Dummy Plugs.


Remember, SEELE's endgame from EoE had them target the Pilots for elimination; as long as they could kill the Children, they could neutralise the threat of the Evas and NERV would be completely helpless (obviously this didn't work so well in the actual execution, but that's not relevant).

However, this plan wouldn't have worked if the Dummy Plug system was working, for obvious reasons. In canon, SEELE never needed to take any action here because Ritsuko snapped and conveniently took care of that particular problem for them. In A&T, on the other hand...
 
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Arcus2611 said:
Because, let's be fair, as long as the Reiquarium continues to exist Rei is ultimately expendable, and A&T!Ritsuko wasn't going to flip that switch, not least because Gendo would put a bullet in her.

Also, remember that the Reis are used for the Dummy Plug system (I actually wanted to bring this up sooner, but I sort of forgot), and I suspect these are the 'toys' the SEELE agent is talking about. No Reiquarium = no Dummy Plugs.
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I'm curious to see how Rei will react to the loss of her backup bodies. She might feel that no longer being "replaceable" constrains her actions; on the other hand, Gendo can no longer afford to try replacing her with her most recent backup as a control method.

The loss of the dummy plugs isn't exactly much of a loss, given that they weren't good for much more than a distraction against Zeruel. About the only useful thing I could have seen them doing with a dummy plug at this point is sending Unit-00 with dummy plug to take on Armisael, and blowing it up by remote control to take out the Angel once it infiltrates. And nobody at NERV actually knows what Armisael can do, so it would have taken a series of unlikely coincidences to pull that off.

So all SEELE has accomplished is that Gendo can no longer afford to either replace Rei or fire his pilots. If by "taken Gendo's toys away" they mean "cut even more of his puppet strings," sure, they've done that. But I don't think they'll find the results favorable to their interests in the end.
 
Matt R said:
The loss of the dummy plugs isn't exactly much of a loss, given that they weren't good for much more than a distraction against Zeruel.
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You have to remember, the dummy plugs didn't exactly have an impressive debut, but that was against Zeruel. Canonically the Children didn't do any better until Unit-01 sallied, and arguably performed worse. Of course they were going to get wrecked. A more useful datapoint is that Unit-01 under dummy plug control absolutely wrecked Bardiel's shit.

And well, an Eva under dummy plug control is still functionally invincible if it's only fighting regular military forces. And remember that the MP Series also use dummy plugs for control.

Besides, whether Dummy Plugs are inferior or superior to Pilots is completely irrelevant to SEELE's plans. They already have the MP Series for the worst case scenario. What they're doing here is hedging their bets. Now that the Dummy Plug system is offline, NERV is completely defenceless as long as they can neutralise all of the Pilots before they reach their Evas.

And their plan to have the JSDF kill the Pilots wasn't that bad of a plan. They would almost certainly have killed Shinji if not for Misato.
 
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I'm going with the Reiquarium. It's a little early relative to canon, but not hugely so, and the room fits the description.

I find myself wondering if the SEELE implications are a red herring, though. The Reiquarium is one of the very few things in Evangelion that may actually be beyond their reach. Even the three spies mentioned in this chapter don't necessarily have access to it.

Alternate theory: the Reiquarium is Gendo's work. Somehow (possibly a bug in Rei's quarters?) he has figured out that Rei is off her meds. He intends to reestablish control over her through fear, as he has done with Shinji and Kaji; rather than going through a loved one, though, he is removing her ability to be replaced. Ritsuko is still alive, so either Gendo doesn't suspect her involvement, or he also knows that Rei remembers how to build S2 engines (again, bugged quarters?), and believes he needs Ritsuko to implement building them. Or he just hasn't gotten around to finishing her off yet.
 
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Strypgia said:
"You are hope."
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"And you are the words 'I love you'."

"I am not her."
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Heh.

Rei suddenly looked like someone had just smashed the back of her head with a hammer. She clapped her mouth shut and swayed heavily in where she was seated on the roof. "I… do not feel… I feel very strange." She raised a shaking hand to her head. "Where… why do I feel…?"

Her eyes rolled up and she slumped over in a heap.

"Rei? REI?!" Asuka shouted, eyes going wide.
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Well, shit. "Why do I feel?" Hm. That shouldn't be a surprise to her anymore, should it?

Ritsuko was scrabbling at her lab coat's pocket, struggling with the flapping coat until she managed to pull out her pocket terminal. She quickly hit a few keys and the room was flooded with orange-red light.

Ritsuko's face went pale as she looked around. "Oh no…"
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Oh, double shit. No replacements anym...

...oh shit. And Armisael is still out there.

Matt R said:
Looks like the Reiquarium got hit. Hopefully what happened to Rei was just feedback from the death of the clones, and not her actually getting shot by a SEELE agent...
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Oh, I would have suspected poisoning, but yes, the suddenness of the reaction... And the "hands clapping over mouth" gesture is the same as when Yui rejected her in canon...

Turing Decidable said:
They hurt teh Rei.

Someone needs to hurt them back. :mad:
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You're learning fast, young Padawan.

Millennium said:
I'm going with the Reiquarium. It's a little early relative to canon, but not hugely so, and the room fits the description.
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Of course it's the Reiquarium. That's so obvious it IMO doesn't even need to be discussed.
 
Strypgia said:
it. The Call fading into the background, softer and weaker than he'd ever known it. Nearly hushed, vanquished and pushed away by something stronger. Better. Warmer.
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This seems to be a good thing, for both Kaworu and the others.

Strypgia said:
Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki examined the screen from his spot standing at Gendo's side. "Senior Technician Takeshi Kawamura, Lieutenant Natsumi Honda, and Assistant Programmer Kenichi Watanabe. More critical?" he asked.

"Kawamura works directly with Unit-01, Watanabe has MAGI access, and Honda… handled power supply and infrastructure. And all three abruptly vanished two days ago. Somehow they either picked up we'd zeroed in on them, or SEELE ordered them to… do something drastic," Kaji explained. "Between the three of them, I think they can access nearly any part of the Geofront, either by MAGI hacks or maintenance accessways."
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Uh oh. If they've gone to ground that thoroughly, they won't be found before doing something bad. And maybe not even then.

Strypgia said:
Rei suddenly looked like someone had just smashed the back of her head with a hammer. She clapped her mouth shut and swayed heavily in where she was seated on the roof. "I… do not feel… I feel very strange." She raised a shaking hand to her head. "Where… why do I feel…?"

Her eyes rolled up and she slumped over in a heap.
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...What. What the hell just happened?

Strypgia said:
Ritsuko was scrabbling at her lab coat's pocket, struggling with the flapping coat until she managed to pull out her pocket terminal. She quickly hit a few keys and the room was flooded with orange-red light.

Ritsuko's face went pale as she looked around. "Oh no…"
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...
...
Well, fuck. Seele's certainly gone for the metaphorical throat. They may have miscalculated in their glee to harm Gendo though, because they likely didn't account for earning the limitless and terrible rage of a grief-struck 17th Angel. Y'know, only one of the most powerful Angels we see in the series. Still, this chapter didn't end pleasantly. Certainly a gut punch Strypgia. :sad:
 
Betatrack said:
I thought the Reiquarium was in Terminal Dogma, not connected to Ritsuko's lab.
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Spectral Waltz said:
Rits has two labs though right? One down near the reiquarium where the brain uploading is done, the other up near the MAGI terminals, the latter being the 'official' lab.
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Bingo. This is the deeper secret lab, down near Terminal Dogma. Thanks to it being shielded from MAGI surveillance, it has also become 'Ritsuko and Maya's Makeout Hiding Spot'.
aja318 said:
The only surprising bit is that they managed it so fast.
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SEELE judged it important enough to burn three deep cover moles. That's how they did this so relatively quickly, by sacrificing the assets.
Susano said:
Oh, double shit. No replacements anym...

...oh shit. And Armisael is still out there.
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Yeah, but the Reis in the Reiquarium don't have souls. Its destruction shouldn't affect Rei at all. That feedback is from something else, like Lilith or Unit-00.

Or Unit-01, which was made from Lilith's flesh and is the single most important toy Gendo got.
 
MHJoker said:
Yeah, but the Reis in the Reiquarium don't have souls. Its destruction shouldn't affect Rei at all.
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They don't have souls, but transferring Rei's soul isn't just about uploading brains. They do that too, of course, but if that were all it took, Gendo could have an army of Ree by now, and that fic has already been done elsewhere.

Personality and memories are probably handled through the Dummy System, or something very like it. The soul itself, though, likely requires a different sort of connection: something more direct, for the soul to travel along when the time comes. Even if the Rei clones don't have souls per se, Rei might have been able to feel their deaths, or at least some kind of severe distress, through that connection.
 
Arcus2611 said:
Because, let's be fair, as long as the Reiquarium continues to exist Rei is ultimately expendable, and A&T!Ritsuko wasn't going to flip that switch, not least because Gendo would put a bullet in her.
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I'm seeing the Gendo hate-boner again there. Rits destroyed the Reiquarium in Canon and all he did was sound disappointed, followed by hiring her to talk to the MAGI, and when she tried to pull something then he shot her, as well as act like he was in a silent movie.
 
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And of course, he did eventually kill her in EoE. Whatever his other faults, impatience is not one of them.

Also, Gendo almost never loses his composure. There was the incident where Rei got injured, but that one datapoint just stands out so starkly that you can't help but wonder if it was all faked.
 
With that in mind, Rit's desire to kiss Maya on Gendo's desk, instead of being shot, might go like:

Gendo: *Gendo pose*....I take it you won't be coming to my quarters Friday night.
 
WC-83 said:
With that in mind, Rit's desire to kiss Maya on Gendo's desk, instead of being shot, might go like:

Gendo: *Gendo pose*....I take it you won't be coming to my quarters Friday night.
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Gendo: "You could have just said you wanted to see other people, you know."
Ritsuko, post kiss: "You're taking this very well."
Gendo: "It's not like I have the moral high-ground here."
 
Strypgia said:
Bingo. This is the deeper secret lab, down near Terminal Dogma. Thanks to it being shielded from MAGI surveillance, it has also become 'Ritsuko and Maya's Makeout Hiding Spot'.
SEELE judged it important enough to burn three deep cover moles. That's how they did this so relatively quickly, by sacrificing the assets.
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Oh crap. Now they are going to force the Bastard King's hand.

Since Rei and Shinji are still vital to the scenario that means that Gendo is not going to risk them when Armisael arrives.

And since Asuka and Kaworu are disposable in his eyes…this is bad.
 
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