Elliot was both hoping for and dreading physical effort; that her request is for talking brings no relief. His hands flex, fidgeting with air. Tries to center himself even though they're a collision of storms in the empty air between them, cut summer grass and stale cigarettes, anticipatory silent cities and chaoticly overflowing ones, escalators and ferris wheels, machinery sounds. It's hard to draw back what's his when he isn't totally sure.

"Uh," he blinks, owl-like, probably seeming slow (or maybe not, considering all Misato's experience with Shinji's pauses.) "Not great. Kind of like a family reunion with all these cousins you've never met before." An experience Elliot has, what, read about in books? It's how he feels, though: that he has a connection to these people, but also that they are a familiar networked whole, participating in something he can currently only be an outside witness to.