[X] "Christ, fuck that angel. Am I right, Shinji?"
-[X] After that, assure him (and ourselves) that Rei will be okay. Then, ask how he's feeling. if he looks guilty, tell him he did a great job out there, that it's thanks to him that Rei didn't get more hurt. It's just a tough job, and he did the best he could.
You sit across from him on Rei's other side and say what no doubt every single person on the operation today was thinking.
Shinji looks up, startled at your language. He apparently hadn't suspected his superior officer to be so flippant about these kinds of things. You wince, preparing for silence, but Shinji nods his head and says yeah. He goes back to watching Rei sleep, making a pained expression. He looks like he needs to go to the bathroom, he's so wound up.
You tell him an abbreviated version of what the medical staff told you about Rei and try to reassure him that Rei will be fine. You make a joke about how Rei is going to be cranky about her medical ban from playing mahjong, which Shinji weakly chuckles at. More seriously, you ask him to look out for her as she heals up. Shinji stammers. O-of course he will. It's his fault she got hurt anyway…
You tell him that it is not his fault Rei got hurt. It's the Angel's. Shinji probably saved Rei's life. He did a great job, even if it doesn't feel like it. You're proud of him. Shinji doesn't really respond to this, to your chagrin. He seems pretty torn up about his performance. He keeps saying he should have done some things better or he shouldn't have let Rei do all the vanguard fighting on her own (which you clarify is your call, not his). You'd rather he be mad at you than beating himself up over this.
You suspect that Rei might have a better chance of getting through to him, but she's unconscious and it's probably not a good idea to ask her to give him a pep talk through a brain injury. Plus, you can probably count the number of times you've ever heard Rei genuinely thank anyone on one hand. It's not that she's ungrateful, but these things don't come naturally to her.
You buy Shinji a soda from one of the machines (a tallboy for you, of course) and sit quietly with him and Rei for a while.
After around an hour, you tell Shinji it's time for the debriefing on this Angel. Shinji asks what a debriefing is. You explain that it's basically a review of the actions taken on a sortie. Shinji turns pale. He looks like he wishes he were dead. You reassure him that he'll be fine and lead him out of the room back to the operations room. You realize belatedly this is probably going to be the first time he's spoken to his father face-to-face since he arrived in Tokyo-3. Oh dear.
You and Shinji sit next to each other at a long table with the JSSDF generals, Gendo, Fuyutsuki, and some of the bridge techs. Gendo asks where Rei is. You tell him that she's currently in the medical wing with a concussion. Gendo frowns in apparent annoyance but doesn't say anything more. He seems to consciously avoid looking at Shinji. Shinji is just looking into his lap and hoping nobody realizes he exists.
Gendo opens by saying that he does not believe anyone earnestly here believes that this operation went well. The undercurrent here being that nobody should. He enumerates a list of issues. First off, the JSSDF formation was poorly configured and resulted in greater losses than was strictly necessary. There was no need for tanks and VTOLs to get that close to the Angel. He's noticed an increasing boldness in risk-taking among the JSSDF he does not like. He and one of the generals get into it for a bit. The previous operation went fine at close range. It was Rei's job to stop the Angel's momentum. She failed. It's her fault. Gendo dismisses the argument about the previous operation as irrelevant and belittles the general for relying on a single point of failure to protect his men's lives. Moreover, Unit-01's pilot was able to halt the Angel. NERV did its job. The general falls silent, clearly offended.
Gendo turns his attention to you next. The Angel managed to destroy two more armor plates and completely annihilate the seal. The Null Zone is dead. One of his pilots is badly injured, again. What do you have to say for yourself? You try to answer, but Gendo tramples over whatever response you were going to give. Your selection of a melee weapon for such a large target was your first mistake. Gendo does not know about anybody else here, but he would rather attempt to destroy an oncoming boulder with explosives rather than a sharpened stick. You grit your teeth. This is brutal.
Rei's weapon quickly proved ineffective against the Angel, but it took NERV far too long to switch strategies. Rei could not reach the Angel, but no effort was made to either get her the height she needed or switch to a weapon that can hurt the Angel from afar until well after such a need was apparent. The pilot of Unit-01 was effectively without cover once the Angel determined Rei was not a threat. Despite this, you continued to insist Rei act as a distraction, despite not being an effective one. When she was going to switch weapons, you asked her to distract the Angel. How did you see that playing out? What was she going to distract the Angel with? Had she not been impaled she wouldn't have anything. The JSSDF were allowed to retreat, when they could have been effective at dividing the Angel's attention. This gets a rise out of the generals.
You retort that using the JSSDF as shields for the Evangelion pilots would likely result in most of the deployments' deaths and a heavy loss of materiel, as well as potentially further spreading the damage the Angel did to the city by giving it more targets to fire at on the ground. The Angel's strikes were not exactly surgical and could easily have resulted in damage to the area surrounding the battlefield. Moreover, the Angel employed chemical warfare and each southward shot it made was another chance for one of its toxic attacks to hit Lake Ashi. You know, where your drinking water comes from. Gendo says nothing but stares at you intensely in a manner that suggests that he does not care, and that you are stupid to.
Everyone in the room, even Fuyutsuki, who has been stoically standing by Gendo's side, looks uncomfortable. You say you are not going to send men to certain death to act as a shield for Rei and Shinji. Gendo replies to you as if he's speaking to a small, slow-witted child. What will you do, Captain, when it's the pilots' lives on the line? What will you do when you have to protect the only thing that can kill an Angel, and there is no other option? Think about that for a while.
You fall silent, unnerved. What…would you do? Would you hold true to these ideals if you had to choose between them and Rei or Shinji? You do not know, and the fact you do not know deeply unsettles you.
Gendo concludes by saying that he was unimpressed with Rei's reflexes and you should work harder to ensure she does not get hit by projectiles in the future. He says nothing at all to or about Shinji. Shinji looks like he's hoping the floor will swallow him up, so that's probably for the best.
Fuyutsuki clears his throat and discusses the state of affairs in Tokyo-3. Currently, its population remains in shelters while decontamination efforts are ongoing. They are currently not aware of the reason they've been left down there after the Angel attack concluded, and to the best of his knowledge assume the attack is still ongoing. They have been receiving regular communications from NERV's PR team to reassure them that the Angel attack is going fine. So far, there does not seem to be any sort of general panic going on. The boys in PR know their stuff. Fuyutsuki says this in a way that suggests he is more disgusted than impressed by this.
Cleanup operations are going well. The large crystals are removed from Lake Ashi and its environs, and much of the dust on the ground is in the process of being collected and contained. The surfaces of all exposed buildings are going to get a thorough cleaning. There is still the matter of soil contamination and possible contamination of ventilation systems in the city, however. The water supply also is likely contaminated, but it can be treated without too much hassle. The contamination, based on samples, is still within the legal limits for all the chemicals tested for, even without treatment. That is a great relief.
The soil contamination is another matter, however. Based on current estimates, the soil washing operation will take roughly one to two years to get the contamination levels within the target level if the cleanup operation is pushed hard. The operation will go sector by sector and try to cause as little fuss as possible (digging up all the exposed topsoil in a given area tends to cause a fuss). It's also rather inadvisable to go out in the rain for the short-to-mid-term future as the rainwater is likely to be contaminated with toxic dust. It probably isn't going to kill you, but it will probably cause a very nasty rash or upper respiratory inflammation. Oh, great.
Fuyutsuki then asks how we should break this news to the public.
[ ] Tell them about the full extent of the damage and possible health hazards the latest Angel attack poses. It's the moral thing to do.
[ ] Tell them there was a contamination incident and give them precautions, but seriously downplay the degree and extent of the environmental damage done. You don't want to incite a general panic or another exodus of the city. You're already probably going to lose people due to the infrastructural damage.
[ ] Do not tell them. Present cleanup operations as preventative and precautionary rather than as a reaction to an ongoing issue. Continue life in Tokyo-3 as normally as the constraints of the cleanup operation will allow you.
Fuyutsuki concludes that the operation resulted in 53 military casualties and 3 civilian deaths. Apparently some looky-loo reporters opted not to evacuate and tried to get footage of the Angel battle and inhaled a bunch of toxic gas. Their footage has been confiscated and was not broadcast. They are going to be classified as missing. Nobody in this room is to speak of this to anyone. You side-eye Shinji, who has his eyes squeezed shut and looks like he's going to be sick. Poor kid. The NERV technicians at the table do not look much better than him.
The meeting adjourns. One of the generals very sincerely thanks you for sticking up for his men in the meeting. You give him a noncommittal acknowledgement and excuse yourself. Shinji watches his father's back intently as Gendo leaves the room without another word. Fuyutsuki gives you both a thin smile and goes after him.
You feel exhausted. You and Shinji return to Rei's room for a bit before going home. Shinji collapses into his bed. You and Pen2 have a drinking party in the kitchen. This sucks.
