2022-11-06: A New Mask

• Log: 2022-11-06: A New Mask
• Cast: Celebro, Hass
• Where: Tsutsujidai
• Date: U.C. 0096 11 06
• Summary: Celebro tries out a new look.

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Shinya Kaburagi was known. That much had become clear. His ID had been missing since the NERV aliens had intruded upon his work. Kaburagi's superior, under the effects of his control, had revealed inquiries, even if Kaburagi himself had yet to see either again.

It was time to go. And he knew where the most interesting chaos in the solar system was going on, right now. The bomb at JOSH-A had been a fun surprise - auric weaponry was always such fun! - but it still just didn't quite capture his interest. Not yet, at any rate.

That was why booted feet left the tunnels of Tokyo, and lurched out into the open in Tsutsujidai. The center of the current chaos. Still dressed in a Monster Research Laboratory hazmat suit, complete with gas mask, complete with rubber gloves...he'd kept Kaburagi with him. That access...he could use it once or twice more, perhaps, if he was lucky. The uniform was valuable even if the meat it concealed mostly served as a display piece by now.

Already he could feel it. With that empty, passionless stare, his gaze pierced toward the looming kaiju on the horizon like spears.

"Poison Smoke Monster," he muttered, and his lips curled up, half his face rolling into a too-wide grin while the other stayed limp. "Kiete karekareta...so that's her trick."

He'd need to reside, to study the phenomenon.

He turned, this sack of meat called Shinya Kaburagi lurching out of the public roads and down a narrow alley, lined with shuttered shops.

At the other end of the alley was a high schooler, still dressed in uniform. A disposable facemask obscured her mouth and nose, and a powder-blue blanket was draped from her shoulders. Besides an occasional annoyed glance up toward this shop or that, her attention was largely focused on her phone, tap-tapping out text messages instead of looking out in front of her.

Finally, about ten steps later than she really should have, she looked up, and *forward*.

Luckily for the thing within Shinya Kaburagi, she didn't yelp or scream in surprise, and instead merely gave a startled gasp at the sight of the suited figure. Her sleepy eyes, wide open, looked this way, then that, before relaxing along with her shoulders.

"Uh... hi. Should I turn around?" she asked, sounding fairly calm, pointing a thumb behind her. She craned her neck, rising up onto tiptoes to see around him. Some sort of chemical spill, maybe?

He took one more step. His face strange, an unsettling mixture of overpowering boredom and piercing interest. Despite his face showing no emotion or particular focus, his eyes locked on the girl like she were the only thing in the world.

"No," he said. "You'll do fine just there."

Then something LEAPT out of him. It was a blur, a blazing-fast spear that flew directly from his body and into and through that mask. She screamed, but it came out as a gurgle. She struggled, arms latching onto the wide wings of SOMETHING as she whipped and whirled to try and get the strength and force to hurl it away.

These things had been tried by greater than this one, and failed then, too. She shoved herself away and nearly threw herself into a wall as the thing slipped entirely inside her throat.

And she stopped.

Several long seconds passed. Behind, a dull THUD as Shinya Kaburagi collapsed in a heap behind her.

She reached for her skirt pocket, finding the mask she knew would be there, and quietly hooked it up over her ears.

Eyes that should be sleepy looked at her reflection with an unnerving, total focus.

One of her eyes bulged a little, the eye going first blood red, and then glowing outright.

"Kiete karekareta," the body of Hass breathed.