Jordan made the noise a man makes when accepting that the universe has decided to kill him through bureaucratic scheduling rather than dramatic combat.
The relay platform's hum climbed into a sustained mechanical whine. A grey FGRA uniform emerged from the control booth carrying a clipboard, approaching Misato with the measured pace of someone who had done this exact walk three hundred times before.
She began the deployment checklist, confirming student IDs against the manifest while her assistant verified medical clearances through a tablet that kept pinging with status confirmations from the academy's health database.
Four minutes of administrative theater. Every name checked. Every authorization confirmed. The woman stopped on Hikaru's medical file, her frown deepening as she read whatever comment the academy nurse had buried in the system. Something technically cleared Hikaru for gate deployment while simultaneously screaming that this was a terrible idea.
