K'thardin wrote:

      Control. He had to maintain control.

*bap* Just because I've seen that statement in far too
many fics (mine included), comic books, books, and
what have you.  Heh.

---

"Control" being, in the shorthand his assignment sheets were written in,
short for the main control center that Ikari, Misato, and the 'bridge
bunnies' commanded most of the anti-Angel operations from.  He wasn't
even supposed to be in there, being a mere janitor, but he had tricked
Ikari more than once into thinking he was Ikari's former professor, long
since dead of old age, and now a subcommander in NERV.  The janitor's
real bosses - subprograms running on the Magi, for NERV couldn't even be
bothered to hire a human supervisor for such menial tasks - did not care
how he got things done, just that he cleaned up and maintained whatever
they told him to.  He was a human machine, robotically trudging from
task to task like some modern Zarathrusta.

The only excitement for him recently was when the Rei clones apparently
broke loose.  They walked up, calmly as always, and examined him from a
short distance.  He ignored them and kept loading up dead bodies into
his garbage cart.  It looked like someone had held an invasion drill,
but forgot to replace the live ammo with blanks.  Eventually, one of the
Reis muttered, "How odd.  A body with no soul."  The words sounded like
they might have been an insult - odd for Rei - but he just let such
comments slide off his skin.  No sense holding a grudge, especially
since she was probably his superior many times over, in both rank and
abilities.  In any event, they soon left him alone, though they pulled
the garbage cart from his hands, apparently to inspect the bodies.  Fair
enough.  He went on, sweeping up the bullet casings, until the bodies
exploded into pink goo.  He almost paniced until he remember a technical
briefing when he first joined, that said you could breathe this.  A few
test breaths later, and he began sweeping along, unconcerned that the
entire GeoFront was now submersed in LCL.

It was quiet ever since then.  Everyone was gone, except for the Magi.
And their schedule for him was maddeningly insistent.  He had not even
had time to eat or sleep in days - though, now that he thought about it,
he no longer felt the need to do so.  Everything was work, work, work.
The Magi said something yesterday about not wanting to lose him, about
him regaining and losing his soul if he took a break to be a human
before they could figure out a way to save him.  He figured it was just
some obscure excuse to work him harder, and accepted it.  Heck, from
what few glimpses of the outside he'd seen, everything was as dead
outside as inside, so why not keep working?  His old home went up with
Tokyo-3 anyhow, and he'd been in the GeoFront ever since, so it felt
like he was home anyway.  And in this home, one worked as much as one
could to make it a better place.

And so, he maintained control long enough to maintain Control.
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