Shinji Ikari Raising Project

[Dartz]

Catgirls added to my story plan. They're on an inbound transport.

Thanks. I've got space for it.

Maybe it might be a good idea to host some sort of small get together. A welcome to the universe party.... when he's feeling up to it. Although, the arse end of space is really not the best place for it.

Frigga was huge.

Shinji was beginning to realise that It easily eclipsed the Geofront in scale, judging by journey times. He was riding pillion behind Kotono, hanging on to a petrol-engined streetbike - a small single cylinder Yamaha 650 - thumping and barking through empty tunnel after empty tunnel, before finally reaching an elevator large enough to park a bus.

It seemed abandoned. This whole construction seemed utterly abandoned, close to derelict. It was Rei’s apartment on a grand scale. Or the old tunnels deep under the Geofront. The railing on the lift car had once been painted yellow.... but the paint had been chipped off in parts long enough for the steel underneath to tarnish brown.

A gaunt, lonely place with only the woman in front of him for company. Numbers spraypainted on the rock walls of the shaft told him how long he had to climb before reaching the surface.

“How many people live here?” he asked.

“Nine,” Kotono’s voice crackled in his ear above the wind-roar.

A comm-link in a motorcycle helmet. He felt like a fighter pilot with it on.

“Nine!” he blurted.

“Yup,” she confirmed. “Though three are students. Six of us live here permanently.”

“That must get lonely,” Shinji said, quietly.

“It does sometimes,” she admitted, not sounded at all bothered. “But we have customers coming in for Survival Shot, and some of them stay for a bit,”

The implication was clear.

“So how did all this get here?”

Out in an asteroid belt. Without anyone ever hearing about it. And it’d been there for what seemed like decades.

He felt the woman in front of him take a deep breath.

“Okay, the short history of 77 Frigga.” she began. “This place began as a mine over a decade ago, run by the New Birmingham company. It was one of the first of it’s kind, and it got really big, really quick. The mining town that grew up here eventually had over five hundred residents. Our apartment was once a family sized one."

“How come I never heard of it?”

Something that big in space should’ve been Big News. A settlement that big would’ve been a major story. A symbol of the rebuild. Hope for the future.

Something that would be swamped by people begging to be involved.

“You wouldn’t have,” Kotono assured him. “It went bankrupt about six years ago and was left abandoned for another three, before we moved in. There’s a martial arts school, and the Survival Shot combat simulation centre now.... using these old tunnels. People stay overnight in the old apartments if they want.”

“So. How did I get here?”

“You woke up here,” Kotono answered.

And that was all the answer he was going to get. She was hiding something from him. She smiled. She was nice. She was intentionally keeping things ambiguous.

The thought of calling her on it terrified him to the core.

------

Kotono: “It’s a lot like democracy. Okay, so you’ve no idea who you want to vote for.... but I bet you know who you don’t want to vote for. So vote against that guy. With life.... so long as you know what you don’t want to do, try something other than that. If you like it, you win... if you don’t you’ve just found something else you know you don’t want to do, and you’re one-step closer to your goal.”

“It works for a lot of things in life. Food, restaraunts, jobs, love....”
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?