Aozaki Aoko [634-635] (Patreon)

Chapter 634: The Angel's Secret

Aoko bringing a young girl home on her very first day of work displeased Alice quite a bit, but she didn't embarrass Aoko by exposing her history in front of Ibuki Maya.

As a local old-timer of New Tokyo-3, Maya took her temporary guide role very seriously. All along the way she led Aoko by the shortest, cheapest routes to the supermarket with the biggest discounts that day—like a human navigation app.

Naturally, Aoko didn't let her new assistant's efforts go to waste. She pulled out all the stops in the apartment kitchen, using ingredients from the supermarket to cook an exceptionally lavish meal. Her culinary skill was so phenomenal that Maya, watching from the side, was left utterly speechless.

Alice initially wanted to help too, but once she realized that helping Aoko actually slowed Aoko down, she quietly gave up. It seemed Alice truly had no talent when it came to cooking.

When Maya first entered Aoko's apartment, what she saw was Alice in loungewear, keeping the place impeccably tidy. At the very least, the items from the luggage they'd brought had already been neatly put away. The entire room was spotless.

Ibuki Maya assumed Dr. Aozaki's roommate was a housekeeping ace (in reality, it was all done by magic), but now it seemed she was actually a kitchen klutz. Guess looks can be deceiving.

As a first-time visitor to Aoko's place, Ibuki Maya found the experience quite pleasant. But for some reason she felt the relationship between Aoko and her roommate, Miss Alice, was odd… Was her radar acting up again?

—Split line—

After seeing Maya off, Aoko took Alice back to the Land of Sapphire Flowers. Touko was lounging on the sofa reading, and looked like she had been back for a while.

"First day went well?" Touko snapped her book shut with a slap, tossed it aside, and it slotted perfectly into a small shelf nearby.

"Yup," Aoko said. "It was pretty easy, but things happened suddenly. I didn't expect Naoko Akagi to commit suicide that quickly… I figured we'd be waiting longer."

"The timing of this kind of event is uncertain across cycles, right?" Touko thought for a moment. "It's a bit like parallel worlds—as long as causality stays the same, earlier or later both work."

"How about your side?" Alice took a sip of the black tea Sella handed her and asked, "Still researching the Third Angel?"

"You could say that, but lately we've started modifying the Angel's body," Touko said with interest as she pulled out her tablet and showed Aoko and Alice several classified images. "Through studying its body, we discovered a rather important trait—"

"Stripped off most of the flesh?" Aoko raised an eyebrow at the bloody scene in the photos.

"Exactly!" Touko snapped her fingers. "Our team found that an Angel's output power correlates strongly with how much flesh remains on its skeleton. So, to safely control the Angel, we started from the spine, removed large amounts of flesh, and installed restraint devices mid-vertebra."

"Is there a chance the Third Angel can be made into an EVA?" Alice asked.

"Sadly, no," Touko shook her head. "In the Third Angel's genetic code, only the portion belonging to itself can be deciphered by us… the rest is all encrypted."

"What does that mean?" Aoko frowned, puzzled by Touko's intel.

"It means every Angel possesses the genetic codes of other Angels as well, but we can't crack them yet," Touko replied meaningfully.

"That's… not what I expected. A kind of surprise, in a way?" Aoko mused. "My first thing after joining NERV HQ was to go to Terminal Dogma to see Lilith. But how to put it—the Mother of Life on Earth was no different from before. A bit disappointing."

"I get you," Touko waved a hand. "There's so much new in this cycle, but when it comes to the most important part, it's the same as before. You get that wrong goods delivered disappointment, right?"

"You really get it, Touko!" Aoko smiled. "Anything else noteworthy?"

"Let me think… there's one more discovery—don't know if it counts as new intel." Touko operated the tablet and paused on a document. "See this?"

"Supersolenoid structure?" Aoko browsed while asking. "You've begun in-depth research on the Angel's core?"

"Right," Touko snapped her fingers. "But not only that—look here!"

She showed a specific page and cross-referenced it with a core scan report.

"See it?" Touko asked.

"This… looks very similar," even Alice, an outsider, noticed something off.

"Bingo!" Touko said. "I don't know how it was in past cycles, but in this one, there's no essential difference between the core and the Angel's flesh. At the microscopic level, both have supersolenoid structures!"

A supersolenoid—based on a DNA-level superconducting coil—has massive energy storage and release properties. For Angels and EVAs to run on infinite energy, this antenna that can draw energy from the Anti-Universe is essential.

"That means… whether core or flesh, in essence they're both the materialization of soul," Aoko said.

"Right, but to different degrees," Touko replied. "Destroying the core can still collapse the Angel as a whole, but shaving off lots of flesh just lowers its output power—consistent with what I mentioned earlier."

"Angels really are perfect weapons…" Touko admired the images in the report. "I've only seen this one Angel so far, yet I've glimpsed so much precious knowledge… Lugh-whatever, compared to an Angel, is just a pitiful puppy."

"Pfft, that's a bit harsh on Lugh Beowulf, isn't it…?" Aoko couldn't help but laugh.

"Hmph!" Touko shot her a look and kept flipping the report.

"Besides flesh and core, something else to watch is the Angel's skeleton," Touko continued. "While their power is crucial, what carries most of their ability formats is actually the spine."

"What do you mean?"

"Even if we strip away all flesh and the core, we can still power the Angel's spine and deploy an AT Field."

Chapter 635: A Heavy Blow Against the Love-Brained

Aoko froze, then immediately recalled the NHG battleships from memories of her previous life—commonly called Starships, the Guardians of Mortal Vessels.

All starships were remodeled from parts of the ADAMS, and Units 09–12 were the so-called masters of the starfarers.

Their entire structures were actually made from replicated core material. That's why Unit-09 could keep moving even after being decapitated: a highly soul-materialized lifeform can easily change its own structure.

And Units 09–12 were called ADAMS' organs by Mari.

The four ADAMS who triggered the Second Impact in this cycle were all chopped apart: the bones made into Guardian-of-Mortality starships, the flesh and cores into EVAs—waste not, want not, in a sense.

With a sufficient power source, you can use modified ADAMS bones and a perpetual power unit to make an NHG warship. These conclusions derive from the research Touko is currently involved in.

The AT Field may actually be the least important function embedded in a Guardian's bones. Their true role is likely to be keys that open the Gate of Guf—a passage to the Anti-Universe.

Among the many EVAs, aside from the True God Unit-06, only the awakened Unit-01 and its counterpart Unit-13 have the ability to open the door and trigger an Impact. Besides opening the door, these three units can freely enter and exit the Anti-Universe domain.

Among the rest, the only special one is Unit-08, the pink unit piloted later by Mari. In subsequent battles it fused by devouring Units 09–12, entered the Anti-Universe with a four-halo form, and rescued Shinji—positively deus ex machina.

The reason is unknown. Maybe that's why Fuyutsuki said the Guardians cannot pass through the door?

"The ability to open the door and the ability to pass through it are split…" Aoko murmured.

"What door?" Touko blinked. "The Gate of Guf?"

"Yeah," Aoko said. "Angels aren't the same as ADAMS, but I suspect your research results have inspired SEELE."

"Doesn't matter," Touko shrugged. "We intended to nudge SEELE from behind anyway. No point keeping the findings secret, is there?"

"True," Aoko ruffled her hair. "But I habitually think from the story protagonist's perspective…"

"Heh. Too bad you're holding the villain's script most of the time."

"Quit it!" Aoko slapped Touko's thigh, drawing a soft yelp.

"Let's leave it there for now," Aoko stood and stretched. "We've got no intel that SEELE's gone to the South Pole to recover ADAMS, so the most classified materials we can get are Lilith and the Third Angel."

"…Those alone will keep me busy for ages!" Touko rubbed her thigh, annoyed. "If ADAMS got shipped to Bethany Base now, I'd have to give up sleeping!"

"You don't need sleep, do you?" Alice quipped.

"Sleep is the ultimate luxury," Touko held up a finger. "No matter how obsessed I get with work, I'm not giving it up!"

First time seeing you so principled, Aoko thought, impressed. "Alright, since you're working so hard, I'll make you another special dinner tonight," Aoko soothed. "Alice and I already ate, but I'm not about to slight our MVP."

"I want eel rice!" Touko shot her hand up. "And okonomiyaki, tempura… deal?"

"Alright, alright, I'll make them—don't rush~"

—Split line—

After eating and sleeping well, everyone returned to their posts. Aoko formally began upgrading the MAGI system.

The work was a bit like flashing firmware, but on a different level of difficulty. She needed to reconstruct and upgrade the entire system while keeping MAGI's kernel running continuously and losing zero data—akin to a hot update.

That's impossible for a regular monolithic computer, but MAGI consists of three fully bio-mimetic machines, which gave Aoko room to maneuver. She would temporarily stop one of the three to update it, and overclock the other two for a short time to ensure NERV's daily operations didn't halt.

As Aoko's assistant, Ibuki Maya was highly competent, quickly learning how to deploy Aoko's DeepThought large model and providing a lot of support.

During this, Akagi Ritsuko came by once, saying she'd detected abnormally high temperatures on MELCHIOR-1 and BALTHASAR-2 and was worried Aoko had caused an incident. When she arrived and saw the "hot" upgrade for real, she breathed a sigh of relief.

The one Aoko had paused was CASPER-3—the fully bio-mimetic computer housing Naoko Akagi's woman persona.

In Aoko's view, Naoko's biggest failure was her impulsive, willful side as a woman—mixing love-brain tendencies into decisions about humanity's survival. Does she think she's lived too long?

So Aoko planned to hit back hard, injecting the DeepThought large model into the logic of the CASPER-3's persona.

Of course she didn't tell Ritsuko that. She only said she'd mount her DeepThought model on MAGI; the three fully bio-mimetic computers with Akagi Ritsuko's personas would remain in charge.

And Aoko wasn't entirely lying. In upgrading MAGI, she told about two-thirds of the truth. The remaining third—consider it a corrective punch to the personality of that lousy mother, Naoko.

Supercomputers are supercomputers: Aoko progressed quickly. In about three days, she finished deploying DeepThought and conducted the first boot test.

Ritsuko, who came to verify and inspect, froze at the refreshed UI. "Even with Dr. Aozaki's deep neural network onboard, the user experience doesn't seem much different?"

"That depends on the amount of data we feed it," Aoko explained. "A hallmark of deep nets is: the more they're used and the more data they get, the stronger they become."