Lesson 8: Youth means videogames
Froggie
That radiant kindness was nothing but cruel
Lesson 8: Youth means videogames
"They're late!"
"I heard you the first twenty times. Can you sit down and stop pacing around? You're making me tired just watching you. I can't concentrate."
Instead of sitting down, Saiba Momoi flopped down on the pink colored sofa next to her younger sister, instantly taking up two seats and forcing her twin to scoot further to the side. Saiba Midori's green eyes glared down at her twin sister's face, but the only reply she got was a brief, cheeky grin that quickly shifted to a whiny pout.
"The SCHALE app said they'd be here by eight, right? Can you check the status on our request again?"
Midori, instead, paused her game and leaned forward to grab one of the many magazines stacked on the floor next to the sofa and used the Kivotos Gaming Monthly to smack her older sister in the face.
"Ow! What was that for?!"
"Sit properly," was Midori's gritted reply in between button presses, "and, no, I'm not checking again. I already told you it says 'Accepted.' It said 'Accepted' the last fifteen times I checked too."
"But…"
"It's five past eight! You need to calm down or I'm gonna throw you out the window!"
The older-by-a-few-minutes strawberry-blonde grumbled but did not verbalize another protest, instead righting herself on the sofa seat and leaning forward to grab a discarded controller from the clubroom's floor.
"HERE COMES A NEW CHALLENGER!" the television announced excitedly.
Momoi held out the controller to her sister. "Here," she said, sounding only slightly petulant. "Gimme player one."
Midori grumbled under her breath, but handed over her controller and soon the small club room was filled with the sounds of Halo Fighter Zero 3.
The twins were evenly matched, but a winner was decided shortly.
"Do you really think this is going to work?" Midori asked her older sister after winning the first match.
The pink-garbed twin muttered something unintelligible before replying and Midori wasn't certain if the grumbling was due to her loss or the question she had posed. "We have to make it work. It's not like that evil demon has given us much of a choice, you know? We don't have much time."
Midori hemmed in reply and the next match started.
Several wins later, Midori spoke up again, her voice still tinged with uncertainty.
"You still haven't told me why we needed to bring SCHALE into this," the younger, green-garbed twin said with a worried downward glance. "If we're that short on time, we shouldn't be sitting around like this. The ruins aren't getting any closer while we wait."
The older twin flopped back on the opposite end of the couch, making a spluttering sound of impatience as she did and once again dropping her controller on the floor. Momoi seemed to melt into the seat, all energy leaving her limbs.
"SCHALE's just insurance," Momoi whined. "Veritas said that the ruins used to be controlled by the General Student Council so the President's own Federal Investigation Club should get us past any guards that might be there."
"And if they can't?" Midori asked, still sounding unconvinced.
"Then we run faster than the guards and hope we lose them in the ruins."
"Of all the half-brained ideas…" Midori rolled her eyes and sank into her seat.
"Hey! It's going to work! We're leaving as little as possible to chance, okay? There's no way this backfires on us!"
Midori only managed to sigh at her sister's unconcerned attitude before a knock on the door derailed the protest forming on her lips. Momoi went from boneless heap to motion so quickly that Midori could have almost sworn she had been waiting by the door the entire time. The older twin wrenched the door open so hard that the person on the other side almost rapped her on the head when they knocked again before stopping themselves.
"SCHALE! We've been waiting for you! We-EEEEH?!!"
Midori had already been standing to join her sister at the door, but Momoi's startled cry added a degree of urgency to her movement.
"Momoi, what's going o-" Midori's words caught in her throat as she regarded the person standing at the entrance to their clubroom.
The General Student Council was at the door.
"But we haven't even done anything yet!" Momoi wailed loudly and Midori resisted the urge to kick her twin in the shins.
"Eh? Ah! No, no," the girl at the door shook her head frantically, her long and wavy blonde hair following the sideways movement. She was tall for a student, towering over both Momoi and Midori, and the two stars on her pristine, white GSC uniform revealed her to be a fairly high-ranking officer. She sounded anxious and unsure when she spoke, and her green eyes shimmered with worry. "I was just helping guide SCHALE here. This is the Game Development Department, right?"
Momoi nodded so rapidly and so eagerly that Midori feared she was going to give herself whiplash. The GSC girl put a hand to her chest and sighed in relief.
"Thank goodness. I'm not familiar with Millennium so I was afraid we'd gotten lost," the blonde said, sounding calmer. She smiled as she turned to face down the hall and call to someone out of sight. "Rei, it's over here!"
Both twins poked their head out from beyond the door's frame to see the person that was being spoken to, their cat-themed headsets making them seem uncannily like a pair of curious kittens. At first, the twins thought they were seeing things, that their eyes were playing tricks on them, but it wasn't long before they both realized what was before them.
Despite the many similarities that the pair shared as twins, after the initial surprise, their reactions differed wildly.
Momoi's eyes widened and then narrowed as her lips thinned; a disappointed expression resting on her face.
Midori's eyes widened and then widened further as her mouth hung open in shock; a fearful expression settling on her face. The strange student approaching moved with what Midori thought was an almost unearthly grace, she was so pale that the brightly lit corridor almost seemed to wash her out entirely, and the very air around her seemed to chill and prickle. Her uniform was old-fashioned and unrecognizable, and piercing red eyes smoldered out from a blank mask.
And she had no halo.
"A g-ghost?!"
"Don't be silly, Midori. Ghosts don't exist. It's just a student without a halo."
"A-are you hearing yourself speak right now? Eep!"
The ghostly girl had reached them, and Midori hid behind her sister with a squeak of fright, her knees shaking. The pretty blonde frowned briefly, but quickly schooled her face into a gentle smile as she clapped her hands together.
"So, about your request-"
"We just need someone to watch the clubroom for us while we run some errands," Momoi interrupted her without hesitation, speaking so quickly that her words almost blurred together. Midori forgot her fear momentarily to give her older sister a bewildered stare, but Momoi ignored her and started to pull her younger sister down the hall. "Thanks for this! We'll be back soon!" And then she ran, dragging her confused sister by the arm.
"W-wait!" Ayumu stammered, but the twins were gone in an instant. She sighed forlornly and looked at the younger girl standing beside her. "Why couldn't they just lock the door?"
Rei nodded silently in agreement.
"Well, this works out better for us, I think?" Ayumu mused aloud with a pensive expression. "You can wait here, and I can go join Rin for her meeting. What do you think?"
"Understood."
Ayumu valiantly resisted the urge to sigh, smiling patiently instead as she explained. "It wasn't an order, Rei. I was asking for your opinion."
The blue haired girl thought it over briefly before nodding.
"The request is not complicated. The plan is acceptable."
"Great!" Ayumu clapped, sounding pleased. "Then I'll drop by when Rin's meeting is finished! Don't wander off, okay?"
Rei didn't bother answering, instead stepping into the empty clubroom without looking back at Ayumu.
The room was small and cramped. The curtains were closed so that only a minimum of light seeped inside and most of the illumination within came from the still running television set. One wall had a shelving unit filled to bursting with vintage consoles, magazines, references books, and boxes of assorted wires, peripherals, and cartridges and discs. The other wall fared much the same, with a white board and cabinet completely covered in bright colored post-it notes among other assorted magazines, books, and whatever else. A locker and some potted plants in the corners completed the layout. Despite most everything being organized and labeled, there were so many odds and ends that it made the entire room feel incredibly claustrophobic and disorganized.
Rei carefully placed her schoolbag on the sofa by the entrance and began dutifully examining the contents of the room. NERV standard procedures dictated that she inspect an unfamiliar location for potential threats, locate entrances and exits, and plan an escape route. Commander Ikari had ordered that her first priority if threatened was to escape, then to defend herself, and, finally, if capture seemed imminent, 'termination'.
She wondered if the order was still applicable now that she could no longer be replaced.
With a small scowl, the albino girl suppressed those irrelevant thoughts and focused on her task instead. Finally satisfied with her initial examination, she focused on the one item she had yet to inspect: the shaking locker in the corner of the room.
The rattling intensified as she stood before the clearly occupied locker. Rei stared at the tall storage unit and a moment stretched into minutes and then several minutes before the shaking finally diminished in intensity.
"W-what are you doing?" a nervous voice floated from within the locker.
"Thinking."
"H-huh?" was the confused, stammering reply.
"…I am unsure whether to knock or open the locker."
"D-don't open it…" came the pitiful reply from the person inside.
Rei nodded, accepting the answer, but procedure still dictated that she had to confirm the person's intentions.
"Are you a threat?" she asked plainly.
"N-no…" the voice trailed off miserably. After a heartbeat, the person continued in a pleading tone, "P-please leave."
"I cannot," Rei replied curtly. Satisfied with her inspection, the girl grabbed one of the many magazines scattered around the small room, took a seat on the sofa, and started reading in silence.
The television and console, absent any input, had started replaying an introduction reel with flashy characters and catchy music. Every few minutes, the television excitedly announced, "Halo Fighter Zero 3!" before it restarted once again. If the noise bothered Rei, she gave no indication as she idly paged through her reading material. Noise also floated from the inside of the locker in the corner of the room, but it was less intense than it had been before.
"Um… What are you reading?" the locker girl asked eventually.
A page flipped.
"HIT Girls. It is a magazine about videogames."
A gasp.
"N-no! Not that one!" the voice called in panic. The locker rattled briefly once more and the door slowly creaked open. The girl that stepped out from within seemed to shrink in on herself as she got a better look at Rei. She was dressed in an oversized white jacket with gold and black accents and her bright red hair was kept out of her eyes by a simple braid, but that seemed to be the only concession she made for it as the rest of the unkempt red mess stuck out in every direction. Her halo was a dull golden color, and its shape reminded Rei of a power button used to turn on electronics. The girl's purple eyes stared at the room's floor and nervously darted here and there as she avoided making eye contact.
"G-give it b-back," the red-haired girl squeaked in fright. She stammered again as she continued, "P-p-please…"
Rei immediately closed the magazine and handed it back without protest. The action seemed to startle the redhead who hesitated before accepting the book with a grateful sigh. She clutched it close to her chest, almost as if she were afraid the magazine might slip out of her grasp. Her eyes still fixed on the floor; the girl spoke up again.
"Th-this one has… a bad review of our game," the girl explained in a sad tone. "You… didn't read it, did you?"
Rei shook her head. There had been no negative reviews up to the point where she had read.
"Thank goodness," the girl sighed in relief once more, and a small smile crossed her lips. Her momentary panic forgotten, the redhead seemed to realize she was standing in front of a stranger and a new panic replaced the old as she took a startled step back. "I… I- uh… um…"
The blue haired girl blinked but did not answer the girl's stammering. Eventually the redhead gathered her nerves, took a deep breath to control her breathing, and introduced herself.
"I-I'm Hanaoka Yuzu," the girl said in a small and trembling voice. "I'm the President of the Game Development Department."
"Ayanami Rei."
Yuzu nodded at the introduction, and then uncertainty crossed her features.
"Um… a-are you…"
"I am not sick," Rei interrupted tersely, and Yuzu flinched, taking another step back.
"Ah," Yuzu muttered at a loss for anything else to say. She stood there silently, fidgeting nervously, unsure of herself and wishing to hide in the locker again, wishing that Momoi and Midori were there, wishing that she hadn't stepped out for the stupid magazine, wishing that she weren't alone with the scary girl staring at her. The awkward silence stretched interminably until it was suddenly interrupted.
"Halo Fighter Zero 3!" the television announced excitedly.
"Um… Would you like to play?" Yuzu ventured shyly, not knowing what else to do.
"If I'm ordered to then I will."
Yuzu's face scrunched up in confusion at the strange answer. It wasn't a refusal, but it wasn't acceptance either. The halo-less girl had shunted the decision to Yuzu so the red-head shrugged and picked up a pair of controllers.
"Have you played before?"
"No."
"I'll t-teach you, ok?"
The Game Development Department President found Rei to be an incredibly quick study, picking up the concepts she explained extremely quickly. The blue haired girl did not repeat a mistake twice, and once she learned how to perform a special attack, she would not miss the input again. It was almost like fighting a machine. Her capacity to memorize and exploit patterns kept Yuzu constantly having to change her approach to each match although, like a machine opponent, Rei tended to fall into rigid patterns herself. The blue haired girl scowled as the game announced she had lost again, and she stared at the controller with an intensity that frightened Yuzu slightly.
"Again."
"Uh… um… You're doing really well," Yuzu encouraged her opponent timidly, looking down at her own controller. "I've never seen a beginner pick it up so fast. Um… maybe a charge character would be good for you. I feel like a defensive style might suit you."
"Charge?" Rei asked in a tone devoid of any actual curiosity.
Yuzu nodded and explained dutifully, and the next match began after Rei chose a new character.
"Again."
Time passed.
"Again."
Time passed heedlessly as the zany characters on the screen flew from one side to the other exchanging colorful blasts, punches, kicks, and bullets, and shouting strange attack names that Rei could not make sense of. In a similar fashion, a feeling she could not understand welled up inside her as she came within a pixel distance of victory, and it once again escaped her grasp.
"Again."
"M-maybe we should stop," Yuzu said hesitantly as she glanced at a clock on the far wall. Hours, practically the entire day, had passed by in the blink of an eye. "It's getting late and, um… we haven't eaten anything… And, um…" She trailed off, unsure of what else to say.
Rei sent a small frown at the controller once again and seemed about to say something before the door burst open, loudly hitting the wall, and bouncing slightly. Two very bedraggled twins stepped inside, uniforms which had previously been immaculate now covered in dirt and dust and grime.
"Oh! Yuzu! You were here! And SCHALE too! We're back! You're not gonna believe what we saw!"
"Momoi," Yuzu said, sounding briefly relieved before her voice turned anxious and curious. "Who's that?"
Momoi was carrying an unknown, sleeping girl wearing Midori's jacket on her back.
"We found her in the ruins," Midori explained for her sister, sounding exhausted. "Momoi insisted we bring her back."
"She looked lonely!" Momoi protested in a whiny tone. "I couldn't just leave her like that! She wouldn't turn on no matter what I did!"
"She's a robot?" Yuzu asked, her voice awed and a little fearful.
"We think so!" Momoi explained in a chipper tone as she stepped into the room and placed the sleeping girl on the sofa next to Rei. "She was hooked up to all these strange machines in a weirdo room in the ruins. Doesn't she look so human, though?"
Blue eyes blinked open the instant the girl was laid down, and she emitted a strange, mechanical sound as she sat upright, startling everyone in the room aside from Rei. Startled breaths became shocked gasps as a random assortment of light blue squares and rectangles took shape and floated behind the black-haired girl's head.
"She has a halo?!" Midori squealed in astonishment.
"Dormant state deactivated. Initiating. Initiating. Success. Status update. Status unknown. Initiate wide area search."
"I've never seen a robot that looks just like us! Cool!" Momoi squealed in excitement.
"Wide area search completed. Seed of Life detected. Initiating retrieval."
And the strange, robotic girl lunged at Rei.
---
Lesson 8: End
What did we learn today, class?
Yes, that's correct!
Ghosts, much like Zombies, don't exist.
Join us again next time for Lesson 9: What we found there was… We'll have: An exciting flashback, creepy ruins, and the start of an important journey for two very similar girls.
Don't be late!
---
AN: Oct 15, 2023. Did my best to get this chapter out early because my schedule is still in chaos. Next chapter will be on Oct 29 with a possibility of delay into Nov 5. This chapter changed a lot as I was writing it, but I think things worked out for the better this way since I really wanted to include Yuzu early and I'm happy I managed to include her in a way that was satisfactory to me. Hopefully it also works for you. See you next chapter! --Kero
"They're late!"
"I heard you the first twenty times. Can you sit down and stop pacing around? You're making me tired just watching you. I can't concentrate."
Instead of sitting down, Saiba Momoi flopped down on the pink colored sofa next to her younger sister, instantly taking up two seats and forcing her twin to scoot further to the side. Saiba Midori's green eyes glared down at her twin sister's face, but the only reply she got was a brief, cheeky grin that quickly shifted to a whiny pout.
"The SCHALE app said they'd be here by eight, right? Can you check the status on our request again?"
Midori, instead, paused her game and leaned forward to grab one of the many magazines stacked on the floor next to the sofa and used the Kivotos Gaming Monthly to smack her older sister in the face.
"Ow! What was that for?!"
"Sit properly," was Midori's gritted reply in between button presses, "and, no, I'm not checking again. I already told you it says 'Accepted.' It said 'Accepted' the last fifteen times I checked too."
"But…"
"It's five past eight! You need to calm down or I'm gonna throw you out the window!"
The older-by-a-few-minutes strawberry-blonde grumbled but did not verbalize another protest, instead righting herself on the sofa seat and leaning forward to grab a discarded controller from the clubroom's floor.
"HERE COMES A NEW CHALLENGER!" the television announced excitedly.
Momoi held out the controller to her sister. "Here," she said, sounding only slightly petulant. "Gimme player one."
Midori grumbled under her breath, but handed over her controller and soon the small club room was filled with the sounds of Halo Fighter Zero 3.
The twins were evenly matched, but a winner was decided shortly.
"Do you really think this is going to work?" Midori asked her older sister after winning the first match.
The pink-garbed twin muttered something unintelligible before replying and Midori wasn't certain if the grumbling was due to her loss or the question she had posed. "We have to make it work. It's not like that evil demon has given us much of a choice, you know? We don't have much time."
Midori hemmed in reply and the next match started.
Several wins later, Midori spoke up again, her voice still tinged with uncertainty.
"You still haven't told me why we needed to bring SCHALE into this," the younger, green-garbed twin said with a worried downward glance. "If we're that short on time, we shouldn't be sitting around like this. The ruins aren't getting any closer while we wait."
The older twin flopped back on the opposite end of the couch, making a spluttering sound of impatience as she did and once again dropping her controller on the floor. Momoi seemed to melt into the seat, all energy leaving her limbs.
"SCHALE's just insurance," Momoi whined. "Veritas said that the ruins used to be controlled by the General Student Council so the President's own Federal Investigation Club should get us past any guards that might be there."
"And if they can't?" Midori asked, still sounding unconvinced.
"Then we run faster than the guards and hope we lose them in the ruins."
"Of all the half-brained ideas…" Midori rolled her eyes and sank into her seat.
"Hey! It's going to work! We're leaving as little as possible to chance, okay? There's no way this backfires on us!"
Midori only managed to sigh at her sister's unconcerned attitude before a knock on the door derailed the protest forming on her lips. Momoi went from boneless heap to motion so quickly that Midori could have almost sworn she had been waiting by the door the entire time. The older twin wrenched the door open so hard that the person on the other side almost rapped her on the head when they knocked again before stopping themselves.
"SCHALE! We've been waiting for you! We-EEEEH?!!"
Midori had already been standing to join her sister at the door, but Momoi's startled cry added a degree of urgency to her movement.
"Momoi, what's going o-" Midori's words caught in her throat as she regarded the person standing at the entrance to their clubroom.
The General Student Council was at the door.
"But we haven't even done anything yet!" Momoi wailed loudly and Midori resisted the urge to kick her twin in the shins.
"Eh? Ah! No, no," the girl at the door shook her head frantically, her long and wavy blonde hair following the sideways movement. She was tall for a student, towering over both Momoi and Midori, and the two stars on her pristine, white GSC uniform revealed her to be a fairly high-ranking officer. She sounded anxious and unsure when she spoke, and her green eyes shimmered with worry. "I was just helping guide SCHALE here. This is the Game Development Department, right?"
Momoi nodded so rapidly and so eagerly that Midori feared she was going to give herself whiplash. The GSC girl put a hand to her chest and sighed in relief.
"Thank goodness. I'm not familiar with Millennium so I was afraid we'd gotten lost," the blonde said, sounding calmer. She smiled as she turned to face down the hall and call to someone out of sight. "Rei, it's over here!"
Both twins poked their head out from beyond the door's frame to see the person that was being spoken to, their cat-themed headsets making them seem uncannily like a pair of curious kittens. At first, the twins thought they were seeing things, that their eyes were playing tricks on them, but it wasn't long before they both realized what was before them.
Despite the many similarities that the pair shared as twins, after the initial surprise, their reactions differed wildly.
Momoi's eyes widened and then narrowed as her lips thinned; a disappointed expression resting on her face.
Midori's eyes widened and then widened further as her mouth hung open in shock; a fearful expression settling on her face. The strange student approaching moved with what Midori thought was an almost unearthly grace, she was so pale that the brightly lit corridor almost seemed to wash her out entirely, and the very air around her seemed to chill and prickle. Her uniform was old-fashioned and unrecognizable, and piercing red eyes smoldered out from a blank mask.
And she had no halo.
"A g-ghost?!"
"Don't be silly, Midori. Ghosts don't exist. It's just a student without a halo."
"A-are you hearing yourself speak right now? Eep!"
The ghostly girl had reached them, and Midori hid behind her sister with a squeak of fright, her knees shaking. The pretty blonde frowned briefly, but quickly schooled her face into a gentle smile as she clapped her hands together.
"So, about your request-"
"We just need someone to watch the clubroom for us while we run some errands," Momoi interrupted her without hesitation, speaking so quickly that her words almost blurred together. Midori forgot her fear momentarily to give her older sister a bewildered stare, but Momoi ignored her and started to pull her younger sister down the hall. "Thanks for this! We'll be back soon!" And then she ran, dragging her confused sister by the arm.
"W-wait!" Ayumu stammered, but the twins were gone in an instant. She sighed forlornly and looked at the younger girl standing beside her. "Why couldn't they just lock the door?"
Rei nodded silently in agreement.
"Well, this works out better for us, I think?" Ayumu mused aloud with a pensive expression. "You can wait here, and I can go join Rin for her meeting. What do you think?"
"Understood."
Ayumu valiantly resisted the urge to sigh, smiling patiently instead as she explained. "It wasn't an order, Rei. I was asking for your opinion."
The blue haired girl thought it over briefly before nodding.
"The request is not complicated. The plan is acceptable."
"Great!" Ayumu clapped, sounding pleased. "Then I'll drop by when Rin's meeting is finished! Don't wander off, okay?"
Rei didn't bother answering, instead stepping into the empty clubroom without looking back at Ayumu.
The room was small and cramped. The curtains were closed so that only a minimum of light seeped inside and most of the illumination within came from the still running television set. One wall had a shelving unit filled to bursting with vintage consoles, magazines, references books, and boxes of assorted wires, peripherals, and cartridges and discs. The other wall fared much the same, with a white board and cabinet completely covered in bright colored post-it notes among other assorted magazines, books, and whatever else. A locker and some potted plants in the corners completed the layout. Despite most everything being organized and labeled, there were so many odds and ends that it made the entire room feel incredibly claustrophobic and disorganized.
Rei carefully placed her schoolbag on the sofa by the entrance and began dutifully examining the contents of the room. NERV standard procedures dictated that she inspect an unfamiliar location for potential threats, locate entrances and exits, and plan an escape route. Commander Ikari had ordered that her first priority if threatened was to escape, then to defend herself, and, finally, if capture seemed imminent, 'termination'.
She wondered if the order was still applicable now that she could no longer be replaced.
With a small scowl, the albino girl suppressed those irrelevant thoughts and focused on her task instead. Finally satisfied with her initial examination, she focused on the one item she had yet to inspect: the shaking locker in the corner of the room.
The rattling intensified as she stood before the clearly occupied locker. Rei stared at the tall storage unit and a moment stretched into minutes and then several minutes before the shaking finally diminished in intensity.
"W-what are you doing?" a nervous voice floated from within the locker.
"Thinking."
"H-huh?" was the confused, stammering reply.
"…I am unsure whether to knock or open the locker."
"D-don't open it…" came the pitiful reply from the person inside.
Rei nodded, accepting the answer, but procedure still dictated that she had to confirm the person's intentions.
"Are you a threat?" she asked plainly.
"N-no…" the voice trailed off miserably. After a heartbeat, the person continued in a pleading tone, "P-please leave."
"I cannot," Rei replied curtly. Satisfied with her inspection, the girl grabbed one of the many magazines scattered around the small room, took a seat on the sofa, and started reading in silence.
The television and console, absent any input, had started replaying an introduction reel with flashy characters and catchy music. Every few minutes, the television excitedly announced, "Halo Fighter Zero 3!" before it restarted once again. If the noise bothered Rei, she gave no indication as she idly paged through her reading material. Noise also floated from the inside of the locker in the corner of the room, but it was less intense than it had been before.
"Um… What are you reading?" the locker girl asked eventually.
A page flipped.
"HIT Girls. It is a magazine about videogames."
A gasp.
"N-no! Not that one!" the voice called in panic. The locker rattled briefly once more and the door slowly creaked open. The girl that stepped out from within seemed to shrink in on herself as she got a better look at Rei. She was dressed in an oversized white jacket with gold and black accents and her bright red hair was kept out of her eyes by a simple braid, but that seemed to be the only concession she made for it as the rest of the unkempt red mess stuck out in every direction. Her halo was a dull golden color, and its shape reminded Rei of a power button used to turn on electronics. The girl's purple eyes stared at the room's floor and nervously darted here and there as she avoided making eye contact.
"G-give it b-back," the red-haired girl squeaked in fright. She stammered again as she continued, "P-p-please…"
Rei immediately closed the magazine and handed it back without protest. The action seemed to startle the redhead who hesitated before accepting the book with a grateful sigh. She clutched it close to her chest, almost as if she were afraid the magazine might slip out of her grasp. Her eyes still fixed on the floor; the girl spoke up again.
"Th-this one has… a bad review of our game," the girl explained in a sad tone. "You… didn't read it, did you?"
Rei shook her head. There had been no negative reviews up to the point where she had read.
"Thank goodness," the girl sighed in relief once more, and a small smile crossed her lips. Her momentary panic forgotten, the redhead seemed to realize she was standing in front of a stranger and a new panic replaced the old as she took a startled step back. "I… I- uh… um…"
The blue haired girl blinked but did not answer the girl's stammering. Eventually the redhead gathered her nerves, took a deep breath to control her breathing, and introduced herself.
"I-I'm Hanaoka Yuzu," the girl said in a small and trembling voice. "I'm the President of the Game Development Department."
"Ayanami Rei."
Yuzu nodded at the introduction, and then uncertainty crossed her features.
"Um… a-are you…"
"I am not sick," Rei interrupted tersely, and Yuzu flinched, taking another step back.
"Ah," Yuzu muttered at a loss for anything else to say. She stood there silently, fidgeting nervously, unsure of herself and wishing to hide in the locker again, wishing that Momoi and Midori were there, wishing that she hadn't stepped out for the stupid magazine, wishing that she weren't alone with the scary girl staring at her. The awkward silence stretched interminably until it was suddenly interrupted.
"Halo Fighter Zero 3!" the television announced excitedly.
"Um… Would you like to play?" Yuzu ventured shyly, not knowing what else to do.
"If I'm ordered to then I will."
Yuzu's face scrunched up in confusion at the strange answer. It wasn't a refusal, but it wasn't acceptance either. The halo-less girl had shunted the decision to Yuzu so the red-head shrugged and picked up a pair of controllers.
"Have you played before?"
"No."
"I'll t-teach you, ok?"
The Game Development Department President found Rei to be an incredibly quick study, picking up the concepts she explained extremely quickly. The blue haired girl did not repeat a mistake twice, and once she learned how to perform a special attack, she would not miss the input again. It was almost like fighting a machine. Her capacity to memorize and exploit patterns kept Yuzu constantly having to change her approach to each match although, like a machine opponent, Rei tended to fall into rigid patterns herself. The blue haired girl scowled as the game announced she had lost again, and she stared at the controller with an intensity that frightened Yuzu slightly.
"Again."
"Uh… um… You're doing really well," Yuzu encouraged her opponent timidly, looking down at her own controller. "I've never seen a beginner pick it up so fast. Um… maybe a charge character would be good for you. I feel like a defensive style might suit you."
"Charge?" Rei asked in a tone devoid of any actual curiosity.
Yuzu nodded and explained dutifully, and the next match began after Rei chose a new character.
"Again."
Time passed.
"Again."
Time passed heedlessly as the zany characters on the screen flew from one side to the other exchanging colorful blasts, punches, kicks, and bullets, and shouting strange attack names that Rei could not make sense of. In a similar fashion, a feeling she could not understand welled up inside her as she came within a pixel distance of victory, and it once again escaped her grasp.
"Again."
"M-maybe we should stop," Yuzu said hesitantly as she glanced at a clock on the far wall. Hours, practically the entire day, had passed by in the blink of an eye. "It's getting late and, um… we haven't eaten anything… And, um…" She trailed off, unsure of what else to say.
Rei sent a small frown at the controller once again and seemed about to say something before the door burst open, loudly hitting the wall, and bouncing slightly. Two very bedraggled twins stepped inside, uniforms which had previously been immaculate now covered in dirt and dust and grime.
"Oh! Yuzu! You were here! And SCHALE too! We're back! You're not gonna believe what we saw!"
"Momoi," Yuzu said, sounding briefly relieved before her voice turned anxious and curious. "Who's that?"
Momoi was carrying an unknown, sleeping girl wearing Midori's jacket on her back.
"We found her in the ruins," Midori explained for her sister, sounding exhausted. "Momoi insisted we bring her back."
"She looked lonely!" Momoi protested in a whiny tone. "I couldn't just leave her like that! She wouldn't turn on no matter what I did!"
"She's a robot?" Yuzu asked, her voice awed and a little fearful.
"We think so!" Momoi explained in a chipper tone as she stepped into the room and placed the sleeping girl on the sofa next to Rei. "She was hooked up to all these strange machines in a weirdo room in the ruins. Doesn't she look so human, though?"
Blue eyes blinked open the instant the girl was laid down, and she emitted a strange, mechanical sound as she sat upright, startling everyone in the room aside from Rei. Startled breaths became shocked gasps as a random assortment of light blue squares and rectangles took shape and floated behind the black-haired girl's head.
"She has a halo?!" Midori squealed in astonishment.
"Dormant state deactivated. Initiating. Initiating. Success. Status update. Status unknown. Initiate wide area search."
"I've never seen a robot that looks just like us! Cool!" Momoi squealed in excitement.
"Wide area search completed. Seed of Life detected. Initiating retrieval."
And the strange, robotic girl lunged at Rei.
---
Lesson 8: End
What did we learn today, class?
Yes, that's correct!
Ghosts, much like Zombies, don't exist.
Join us again next time for Lesson 9: What we found there was… We'll have: An exciting flashback, creepy ruins, and the start of an important journey for two very similar girls.
Don't be late!
---
AN: Oct 15, 2023. Did my best to get this chapter out early because my schedule is still in chaos. Next chapter will be on Oct 29 with a possibility of delay into Nov 5. This chapter changed a lot as I was writing it, but I think things worked out for the better this way since I really wanted to include Yuzu early and I'm happy I managed to include her in a way that was satisfactory to me. Hopefully it also works for you. See you next chapter! --Kero
