NGE "Once more with Feeling" Alt fic

[Publius]

The line about Langley Soryu Corp being a no-liability company was superb. Likewise, Ayanami asking if Commander Ikari wants her to initiate romantic contact was a stroke of genius.

[Academia Nut]

Excellent update, and I for one welcome seeing how Shinji will handle the d8 of Doom next update. Especially knowing that the instant he pops up from his launch tube he's going to get blasted with a particle beam. At a high 90% sync ratio. I eagerly await how he tries to work that one without tipping his hand that he knows exactly how this fight is going to go down.

Oh, and if he does decide to grit his teeth and take the blast to keep his secret, Rei's reaction will be... interesting. Especially since those episodes focused a lot on Rei and her character anyway. Hell, Rei II is the first time in the OTL that she canonically smiled. Interesting times ahead indeed.

Oh, and I think I finally figured out the term to use for good stuff like this: illusory completeness. When something is this good, it feels like it is complete already, making it seem as if there could be a new update at any time, and that there will always be more. Which is why fans like us go nuts slowly waiting for the next update.

[AniThyng]

Great work! But...uh...I don't really understand the no liability company and how it relates. Someone please explain?

[Chris OFarrell]

Great work! But...uh...I don't really understand the no liability company and how it relates. Someone please explain?

In Australian law, a 'no liability company' is a company -generally a mining company- formed to undertake high risk / high gain investments. Essentially, investors dump money in without the guarantee of ever getting anything back at all because the venture is so risky, but requires significant resources.

You might for example have indicators of a huge deposit of some valuable resources and form a company to go drilling, which requires a good wad of cash that may not even pay off, so you form a No Liability company.

Generally the company's have VERY good returns if the company does strike pay dirt however and there are very narrowly defined rules about who can become a NL company e.t.c.


Anyway. What I was essentially trying to say with that comment, was that Shinji is very much aware of just how wild a ride he might be in for with Asuka and that in the end it might not even work out, she might reject him utterly, regardless of how he feels.

And he doesn't give a shit...and he is still charging full speed ahead.

[Chris OFarrell]

A temporary structure had been thrown up inside a valley at the very edge of Tokyo 3, a valley that until a week ago had been known for nothing more then a series of rice paddies and a small dirt bike course used by teenage boys to show off for swooning girls.

The aforementioned teenagers had been left rather annoyed with the armed camp that their stomping grounds had turned into, with access into and out of the valley limited to authorized military personnel only. Heavy lift vehicles occasionally darted to and from the structure at the base of the valley carrying oddly shaped burdens under thick coverings, convoys of HMMWV vehicles escorting them to a nearby military airbase where giant cargo aircraft dispersed their loads far and wide across the globe to the US, Germany and China.
In any other part of the world, the secrecy and high military presence would have probably attracted a great many question marks from the general population.
In Tokyo-3 however, it was pretty much par for the course.

“So this is what the enemy looks like up close” Shinji Ikari muttered with a strong feeling of deja’vu from inside the temporary structure, staring once again up at the gigantic figure of the 4th Angel, covered and tied down like some improbable Guliver in the same place it had crashed to the ground from their battle, albeit half disassembled.

“Yeah, it’s impressive isn’t it” Misato agreed in overly cheerful voice, which left Shinji wondering if it was something of a front for the simmering hate she directed at these things that had taken her Father from her. Regardless, the slightly pleased smirk on her face looked utterly genuine; the victorious General surveying the vanquished opponent on the field of honor. Her arms were crossed and her helmet hung loosely by its straps off her neck in complete defiance of the ‘HARD HATS TO BE WORN AT ALL TIMES!’ signs every ten meters along the walls.

“Very impressive!” another voice acknowledged Misato with equal cheerfulness from five stories above them on the catwalks. “This is just magnificent, with the exception of its Core, everything is perfectly intact, thanks!”

“You’re welcome” Misato answered for the Operations Department –and Shinji- “so, have you found out anything?”

“Well yes and no” Akagi shouted back, then stood up. “Hang on, I need a break anyway”.

As Akagi got on the extended cherry picker and started down towards them while making notations on her clipboard, Shinji wondered why NERV was spending so much in the way of resources in studying the Angels corpse.
After all, he knew they already had two live Angels to study, albeit with one of them reduced to embryonic form and locked in stasis. NERV’s production of the Evangelions was proof positive to the real people in power in the organization that they had a fundamentally sound knowledge of the Angels biotechnology, given their duplication and perversion of it.
So what possible secret could the Angel be hiding have that would justify dismembering the corpse of the 4th?

The answer hit him as Akagi’s platform stopped and she jumped the half meter to the ground with a surprising ease. He shut his eyes and cursed himself for missing the glaringly obvious answer.

Of course.
The S2 engine.

“So have you found its power source yet?” Shinji asked as Akagi walked past, causing her hesitate in her stride slightly before turning into her small onsite office, tossing her hard hat onto the desk.
“Well something like that, to be sure” she shrugged, feeling strangely uneasy over the way Shinji had focused in on the one thing both Gendo and the Committee were demanding all efforts should be focused on recovering. “But we have no idea at all how it operates at this point”.
“No idea at all?” Shinji asked with some surprise as he considered how in less then a year NERV had built at least nine of the things…
“We had nothing more then theories as to what the Angels power source was until today Shinji” she lectured instead, taking a sip of her ice tee as she considered her answer. “You’re talking about something the size of a car that can provide the same power output as dozens of nuclear power plants. To say it’s beyond our current scientific understanding would be something of an understatement”.
Agaki paused to take another sip of her tea along with her two guests, Shinji with a mineral water and Misato with a coffee, sighing slightly as the computer analysis came to a crashing halt with a ‘601’ error flashing on the screen.
“What the heck does that mean?” Misato asked in curiosity.
“That’s the MAGI code number for ‘cannot be analyzed’ the Doctor shrugged. “Angels come in all shapes and sizes which makes establishing a baseline to compare them with difficult. But from the few samples from the Third as well as preliminary results from the Forth, we’ve found a few rather interesting facts” Akagi drawled, almost lazily tapping a key which brought up a large colorful picture that meant utterly nothing to Shinji.
“No way” Misato breathed after a few seconds study. “Are you seriously saying…”
“That the structure and organization of the inherent wave pattern of the Angels biological material is almost a 100% match for that of the human genetic code?” Akagi said dryly, knowing Misato didn’t have a clue what she was looking up, but touched that she was trying to look interested and patch up their rocky friendship.
“Could it be some kind of…parallel evolution?” Misato guessed hesitatingly. Akagi just shrugged.
“You wouldn’t think so, as the evolutionary forces that acted to make Man what he is are quite distinct, where as the Angels exist on a scale that should render most human evolutionary concerns trivial …but still, this similarity remains”.
“I guess there is just so much we still don’t know about them” Misato sighed before frowning and looking around for the Third Child. “Hey…where’d Shinji go?”


Shinji was only a handful of meters away outside, watching from behind as his Father and the Vice Commander walked along to inspect the tiny fragment of the Angels core that had been recovered by ground teams scouring the area.
“This is all you were able to recover of the Core?” Fuyutsuki inquired as the fragment reached the ground with a deep ‘thump’ that betrayed the mass of the deceptively small looking fragment.
“Yes Sir” the lead technician apologized as the Commander knelt down before it and ran his bear hands over it, studying it carefully. “The positron impacts annihilated a great deal of the core material and fragmented most of the rest to almost microscopic levels”.
“It’s not a problem” the Commander dismissed the results, gripping his bare hands behind his back as he slowly stood. “Dispose of the rest and send this to the analysis facilities”.
“Yes Sir!” the two officers bellowed, snapping a salute that Gendo didn’t return as he worked to put his gloves back on, to hide the darkened and scared flesh on his palms.

One, single, redeeming act Shinji cursed silently to himself as he considered those hands and the searing pain he knew his Father must have felt. The one selfless –and he admitted to himself, heroic- act that beheld Rei to him tighter then any chain, recalling the pair of glasses he knew reposed on her bedside table even now. The single, precious item she owned and valued because of his Fathers one blasted moment of human strength.
He had a feeling that he had at least convinced Rei that her life was worth living…that she needed to fight for it rather then simply assume she could be replaced.
But how to sever her trust from a man who had performed, what was by any measure a truly heroic act…

“Shinji” Misato suddenly said from beside him and causing him to jump, “what are you doing out here?” she demanded as he turned around.
“Uh sorry Misato, I was just thinking of running some ideas past the Vice Commander later and wanted to see if he could find a few minutes” he improvised on the spot.

Well it wasn’t quite improvisation, he did want to talk to the older man at some point…possibly.

“What, I’m not good enough for you to talk to?” she teased lightly as she threw her arm around him and half dragged, half led him back towards the little office where, if the sound of muttered swearing was any indication, Akagi was having little success with her analysis.
“You’ll always be good enough” Shinji replied, then to his annoyance realized he had responded from the heart by reflex to Misato’s question, something he saw she realized from the twitch of a smile on her face before they turned back into Akagi’s office.
You have to hide your feelings better then that, Shinji! he scolded himself. He knew he was already pushing his luck and had damn near given himself away yet again.

“Hokay, well we’ll see you at later!” Misato called cheerfully shouted into the room as they passed, Akagi waving back somewhat absently as she scowled at the monitor.

Shinji was pleased to see the two women were apparently getting their friendship back to normal, he really was. But he wondered how long this detent would last given the horrible secrets he knew were lurking just under the surface…

“So you ready for school?” she asked, getting a nod back as they reached the door to the structure, exchanging their hardhats for their ID cards from a pair of NERV security officers. Passing through three sets of doors and a pair of heavily armed UN soldiers, who checked them off their own list, they exited the building and turned right, walking about a dirt track to a nearby car park that had been ‘appropriated’ by NERV for this operation. Misato’s car –which surprisingly to Shinji still hadn’t picked up a scratch since its recent service- was waiting there and they drove out to the main gate, where their ID’s were again logged, this time by a pair of JSSDF troops.

It was utterly typical of the paranoia and bureaucratic infighting around NERV and Tokyo-3 that there were three different military forces nominally under three different command structures guarding the same site. The NERV forces had the lightest weapons, but the greatest familiarity with the people working on the Angel itself of course. The UN had the most troops and heaviest weapons and were technically subservient to NERV on paper, but really talked to their own command. No-one was sure exactly who had invited the JSSDF to the party, except for the fact that a light infantry company had shown up citing orders on the same day the operation had swung into action. And though everyone knew probably half of them were spies for the Japanese Government, by keeping them on the outer perimeter watching cars come and go, they were kept relatively harmless.
Misato never ceased to be amused by the whole damn thing…then he smiled dropped as she caught site of the clock.

“Argh, look at the time!” she moaned. “You’re going to be late!”
Oh no… Shinji gulped as he recognized that look in his guardians eyes, yanking his seat belt into place with a practiced haste.
“Hang on!” she shouted, then threw the gear stick viciously down and floored the accelerator.
The cars engine, overhauled to factory new condition only a week or two ago let out a great roar and Shinji was slammed back into his seat-



-and made it into class with exactly twenty four seconds to spare, still not sure if he should be thankful that Misato Katsuragi drove like an insane lunatic, who was under the impression that the laws of physics were in nothing more then helpful guidelines...
“Cutting it a little fine Shinji” Hikari commented with a raised eyebrow as he hurried through the door. He uttered an apology as he hurried past to his desk, dropping into his chair and gasping for air.
“Whoa, take it easy Ikari” Toji said in concern as the Third Child took deep breaths to slow his heart down, before starting to unpack his things. “Where were you? We went by your place, but you and Misato were gone”.
“NERV stuff” Shinji answered succinctly.
Not so much to keep his friends in the dark as because he was still desperately trying to get his breath back from running across the school yard and up several flights of stairs. Any further questions however, were cut off as their teacher arrived and Hikari did her usual ‘Rise! Bow! Sit’ routine.
Fifteen minutes later, their teacher once again started his usual pre-recess lecture about pre-second impact Japan. After recess they would actually get onto real subjects such as science, math and physics, but the first part of the day was always depressingly boring.
On the plus side however, it wasn’t assessable, so the students didn’t really need to pay attention either.

“Man I am so board” Toji groaned after fifteen minutes, albeit quietly to prevent the teacher from overhearing. “I think I’m going to get some sleep”.
“Don’t” Kensuke warned him out of the corner of his mouth while continuing to look straight ahead, “I think Hikari is looking for you to slip up just one more time before she destroys you”.
“Why’d you think that?” Toji asked, fighting ever so hard to stop his eyelids from falling shut.
The Teachers voice was just so…hypnotic…
“I mean she’s always steeling looks at you, when she thinks your not looking” Kensuke replied in a worried tone. “I really think you might have pushed it too far coming out after me like you did…I think she is just waiting for you to slip up again…”
Shinji managed, somehow, not to snicker at Kensuke’s conclusion given that he knew exactly why Hikari was glancing at Toji.
“Well, I don’t think she’ll be a problem today” Toji muttered back after the teachers gaze swept over the classroom, turning his own gaze on the clusters of girls around the room. Shinji followed his grim gaze and finally noticed that his female classmates all looked astonishingly depressed, for a Tuesday morning.

”Uh…what happened to the Girls?” Shinji muttered out of the corner of his mouth as the teacher grandly talked about old Tokyo before the tsunami and nuclear strike.

“They’re all just depressed that the Summer Dance was canceled” Toji smirked. “The school broke the news before you got here…the screams from the Girls locker room were just amazing, I’ve never heard that kind of noise before…”
Shinji cocked his head in thought and tried to recall this event, but only pulled vague hints and half memories that vanished when he tried to latch onto them, like trying to grab hold of a mist.
He had been somewhat indifferent to school the ‘first’ time this had all happened. After all, he had only just decided to stay at NERV after running away yet again following the battle with the Forth Angel after all.
But a dance…a real dance, a social function where the highest levels of human interaction was on display…
The possibilities…he speculated to himself, glancing at Rei’s empty desk…then doing a double take as he realized Ayanami was very much at her desk and probably the only girl who didn’t have a tragic look on her face. And after staring at her for a few seconds, it finally clicked in his mind why he hadn’t even registered her presence.
Her face was uncovered, the large patch over her right eye…no check that, she didn’t have any bandages on at all.
Strange how his mind had associated Rei with the bandages again so readily…
Almost as if she sensed his attention, Rei’s gaze flickered across from the window to return his gaze with her exotic, deep red eyes.
Shinji raised an eyebrow.
Rei…blinked, glanced away from him at the floor, then turned back to look out the window.

Shinji’s smiled for a few seconds at the emotions that were clearly encroaching into Rei’s mind.
Excellent.
And now to kick things into second gear.

“Was…there anything said about why the dance was canceled?” Shinji asked, turning his attention back to his friends and getting a slight frown from Toji who, like most males his age, viewed dances as confusing and disturbing events that drove the females of the human species into an unfathomable frenzy of utterly bewildering activity.
“I think it was because just under half the students here have transferred out over the last few weeks” Kensuke muttered after a five second pause while Hikari’s face swept over the classroom like the omnipresent gaze of a security camera. “But it might just be that these Angel attacks have people too worried about sending their kids out at night or something…”
Shinji made a thoughtful noise which luckily Toji missed, his head –along with those of half the class- crashing flat onto his desk as he surrendered to the bliss of sleep.



The Principal of Tokyo-3 High number 4 was a relatively by the book man named Shinzo Suzuya whom Shinji had only met a couple of times in what he was increasingly thinking of as ‘his first life’. The poor man had been put in the unenviable position of trying to run a school on the front lines of a war zone, with half his students vanishing in just over a week, from what had previously been the fastest growing city in Japan.

The change would have probably broken a lesser man but the Principal had kept his school going with a steady, firm hand; combining classes too small to be viable and aggressively working to keep students here with their parents with some success, as the Angels became an increasingly accepted part of life for Japan.
At least until Rei had destroyed eighty percent of Tokyo-3 to stop the 16th Angel, heavily damaging the school and forcing all the kids to leave the city …
Shinji halted and bowed to the Principal as he reached his desk, the Principal closing the folder he had been reading to gaze across levelly from his massive chair at the student who had entered his abode.

Shinzo Suzuya knew perfectly well that the Evangelion pilots were effectively ‘above the law’ for all intents and purposes; their value in defending the entire species from destruction meant the school had been instructed in no uncertain terms to extend a great amount of latitude towards them if they did anything short of first degree murder.

So far, Suzuya had been pleased that this latitude had not needed to extend that far.

Oh to be sure he had a dozen armed men on school grounds now, but they were professionals who were unfailingly polite and, oddly, did a better job in serving lunch, cleaning windows and answering phones then most of the people he had previously hired for those jobs. Rei Ayanami was a rather strange one according to her teacher; apparently the child had perfect recall and an intellect that easily rated on the genius level on the few times she had been encouraged to participate…but she just didn’t care about anything.
This young Shinji Ikari however who had come from nowhere to become the talk of just about the entire school over the last month was…odd.
Staring at him now, the Principal shrewdly decided it had to be his eyes.
They were not the eyes of a child.
The child had been burned out of this young man in a crucible he shuddered to imagine, leaving the steady, calculating eyes of someone who had seen far more then any human should have.
And damn these Angels for taking that innocence.

“Mister Ikari” he finally spoke up after studying the student waiting for a dozen seconds patiently in front of his desk. “What can I do for you today?”

“I’m sorry for intruding” Shinji said, “I was just wondering why the Summer Dance had been called off…and if there was any possibility of it being put back on again?”
Shinzo cocked his head slightly at the curious question, but shrugged mentally.
“Well it’s quite simple. The insurance costs of such events have gone up astronomically since the Angel attacks started. If several hundred children were killed by one of your Angel friends in a surprise attack during the dance, for example, the venue holding such an event would face a rather stiff liability claim. And that’s on top of the fact that just fewer than fifty percent of the students at this school in your year have transferred out”.
“But I thought acts of war weren’t covered under insurance laws” Shinji wondered out loud, a hazy recollection of a conversation with Misato about collateral damage coming back into his mind.
“Very true, I’m glad to see you are listening to your teacher’s discussions about the wars following second impact” Shinzo replied with a knowing chuckle that caused Shinji to blush slightly. “But the fact is that without an insurance company willing to cover the dance, it is legally impossible to rent a suitable venue”.
“What about using the school?” Shinji suggested. “The gym is-”
“Large enough, yes” Shinzo interrupted as he tossed the papers he had been reading onto his desk. “But our insurance doesn’t cover such an after hours event either”.
“But…if the insurance could be arranged” Shinji said carefully, “then the dance could go ahead?”
Shinzo studied Shinji for a few seconds, and then slowly nodded. “Certainly…but given the decline in student population, it would be a rather sparsely attended dance compared to previous years”.
“So…invite all the students who left back for this dance?” Shinji countered, and then felt himself start to sweat at the raised eyebrow he had earned from the Principal.

Students in Japanese schools did not address their teachers, let alone the Principal, so directly.

“Uh…sorry Sir” he stuttered as the old Shinji popped in for a second, his eyes glancing at the floor for a second to compose himself.
“It’s okay” the Principal replied, dismissing his outburst as an irrelevancy as he leaned back in his chair and intertwined his hands behind his head. “But why should we invite them back for our schools dance?’
Shinji got the distinct impression he was being tested.
You could take the classroom away from the teacher…
“Uh well, it might help show to the parents that the city is still a safe place, that their decision to evacuate was impulsive? Possibly convince some to change their minds?”
“Logical” the Principal said after a few seconds thought, before turning his gaze back on Shinji. “It’s still an academic question given the insurance situation...but I have a feeling you are a man of hidden resources, Mister Ikari. So I’ll make you a deal; if you can figure out a way to get insurance sorted, the Dance will be back on, including invitations to the former classmates of your year”.
Shinji smiled. “Thank you, Sir” he bowed deeply. The Principal nodded back as Shinji turned and left the room, past the secretary and into the hallway of administrative and teacher’s offices.

Well that had gone better then he thought it might.
Now for the slight problem of convincing a major insurance company that it would be in its interest to not charge a foolish amount for a traditional school event…
Considered then discarding several approaches, he decided on the direct approach and pulled out his phone, scrolling through the contact list for the direct line to NERV’s Vice Commander.



He was still waiting to hear back from Fuyutsuki as the last period of the day moved to a close.

He had been quite supportive of Shinji’s position, though he had hedged his bets by pointing out that NERV had no authority over matters the Japanese Government really should look into.
Which when translated, meant he was wondering if Shinji’s request was worth the exerting of NERV’s influence that would be required to ‘convince’ the insurance company that such excessive profiteering would not be tolerated.
Shinji was confident that things ‘would happen’ quite quickly. The Angel attacks were causing significant negative trends on the entire regions economy. And companies profiteering off the situation were already being aggressively attacked by the Government. If he knew both commanders at NERV as well as he thought he did, they would probably jump at the chance to drop a ‘thought you might like to know’ line with the people in Tokyo-2, allowing the Government to play the benevolent hero for the press, saving a school dance from the evil mega corporation…and storing up a favor with the people in Tokyo-2.

“Man…they all have such beautiful breasts!” Toji moaned in appreciation, jolting his train of thought away from the dance as his friend leaned out to get a better ‘view’ from their position on the basketball courts sideline, causing one of the distant adolescents to indignantly complain about Suzuhara ‘ogling’ them.

Not even God could help Toji if Hikari heard that.

Shinji glanced around and up, squinting at the slender figures and trying to find Rei among them. Strangely he didn’t see her in her usual place; sitting alone in one the corner of the wire fence as she simply waited for the PE time to end.
So where was she?

“Hi Shinji!” a distant voice, one he didn’t recognize called down faintly, accompanied by one of the girls in the tight cluster waving almost shyly. Without thinking, Shinji returned the wave in what he had thought was a friendly manner…only to cause the aforementioned Girl to clutch her hands together and turn to her friends, all of whom started to almost jump around and…what?

“Damnit Ikari, why are all the hottest women in this town head over heals about you?” Toji sighed, turning away from the girls to flop back against the concrete wall they were leaning against.
“It’s the Evangelion” Kensuke shrugged. “Chicks dig that thing”.
“It’s your fault for showing that video file of him fighting that Angel to everyone!” Toji growled. “He’s got the hottest Girl in the class going for him now and-”
“Woah, back up!” Shinji demanded, shaking his head as alarm bells started to ring. “What are you talking about?”
Toji just looked at him like he had asked ‘why is two plus two four?’
“Dude, that was Chihiro” Toji said in an astonished voice. “I mean couldn’t you tell by the size of her…” his voice trailed off, but Shinji took the hint.

Great he sighed. As if I don’t have enough to worry about.

He knew a little about Chihiro, though he had probably never said more then a dozen words to her. She had been widely considered to be the most attractive girl in class, the person most boys wouldn’t dream about under the assumption that they didn’t even have a chance of a fantasy encounter with her.

At least until Asuka had shown up, stripping Chihiro of the crown without so much as a ‘by your leave’.

And he had waved back…
Based on his limited understanding of women, this could be taken to mean anything from ‘hi there’ to ‘yes I would like to marry you’…
“Not interested” he shrugged, turning back to the game.
He felt the stares of his friends.
“Not…interested” Kensuke echoed, his tone suggesting this was a concept he had great difficulty understanding.
“Nope” Shinji shrugged. “Too much of an airhead”.
Kensuke’s look suggested he saw no problem with this factoid, but further conversation was cut off as the school PA activated.
“This is your principal” Suzuya’s voice came down, causing the heated basketball match to grind to a halt and the splashing from the direction of the pool to cut off. “I am pleased to announce that contrary to earlier announcements, the Spring Dance for classes 3-A through 3-G is now back on again, two months from today. That is all”.

The groans from the young men around him were easily offset by the almost hysterical screams from the girls.
Even at this distance.
“Oh Man, this sucks!” Toji groaned out. “I thought it was canceled!”
Shinji made a mental note to thank the Vice Commander after school when he went to Headquarters. All other things being equal, this put the dance squarely in the middle of the long, ‘boring’ period between the Seventh and Eight Angels, right before the class were due to leave for their trip to Okinawa…which was probably the best time for it.
And perfectly, it was roughly one month after a certain person was due to arrive in Tokyo-3…
“Well…” Shinji said, glancing around and lowering his voice. “Can you guys keep a secret?”
Ten seconds later, a horrified scream of “TRAITOR!” echoed across the quadrangle.


Rei Ayanami climbed out of the pool, the cool water cascading agreeably off her body as she worked her way up the rungs of the ladder. Her recovery had been accelerated through the use of hormone supplements over the last few days to mesh up with Unit Zero’s own accelerated recovery, leading for the first time to her entering the pool in PE class; to let her body move its muscles in the soothing actions of lap swimming.
There had been some pain, but it was a low burning pain that let her know muscles that had not been exercised in a long time were once again being forced into the well honed state she held her body in, working out the stiffness and letting blood flow until the pain faded into a satisfied ache that told her, her body had finally recovered.

As she climbed out of the pool and reached for her towel, she became slowly aware of the situation around her. Classmates were jumping and hugging each other, more then a few crying and laughing at the same time…an explosion of emotion as foreign to her as Evangelion piloting would be to them.
As she dried her hair, she listened and absorbed, struggling to understand the subtleties...then cocked her head as she plucked a familiar name out of the conversations around her.
Shinji…
Pivoting as she dried her hair, she focused in on a group of her classmates at the far end of the pool that overlooked the basketball courts and playing fields far below. One of them, Classmate Chihiro was jumping around with an excited look on her face, a half dozen other classmates around her laughing and giggling.
Rei cocked her head and eliminate all other noises to focus in on their conversation in curiosity.
“…perfect person for the dance, I mean he’s polite, smart, I hear he is RICH and he’s so brave piloting that robot. Everyone is just going to die when I drag him in on my arm!”

Rei’s eyes narrowed several millimeters, a reaction few would notice and fewer would understand. She walked along the end of the pool to the fence, two dozen meters down from Chihiro to direct her gaze down towards the basketball court.
Immediately, she picked out Shinji…Pilot Ikari…sitting next to classmates Suzuhara and Aida on the sideline of the game currently reeling back and forth on the basketball court. Strangely as soon as she stepped up to the wire, she felt his gaze shift around to lock onto hers with a click, followed by him raising a hand and waving at her.
She heard another wave of laughter and giggling from down the far end of the pool but ignored it before she slowly raised her own hand and waved once in reply, sensing rather then seeing the slight smile on his face in response.
Presently, the laughter died as her classmates slowly realized Shinji’s head had turned to look at the other end of the pool, wave then turn away as Rei herself turned away…to find Chihiro looking at her with an expression that even Rei could recognize as hostile.

Ignoring it, Rei turned away and continued to dry her hair off…analyzing a strange feeling that had come to mind at the look of hostility on Chihiro’s face.
Satisfaction?

Toji and Kensuke both remained shocked over Shinji’s admission that he might have possibly done something to get the dance back on, but –grudgingly- promised that the secret would go no further then it already had.
Instead, Toji had taken his emotions out on the basketball court in a whirlwind of goal shooting, running, whirling and dunking that left Shinji, not for the first time, wondering what kind of Evangelion pilot the Forth Child would have made…
Not that Shinji had the slightest intention of letting Toji get within a half kilometer of Evangelion Unit Three of course.

“Well, cheer up” Kensuke sighed as the tired boys slowly climbed the long concrete steps back up towards the school. “The dance isn’t for a couple of months”.
“Yeah, we might even get lucky and an Angel might destroy the dance hall” Toji said in hope.
“I don’t think Angels really mark human social venues as their primary targets” Shinji pointed out as they reached the top of the stairs and headed into the changing rooms.
“Pity” Toji sighed, grabbing a towel and heading for the shower.

A quick shower later and Shinji had changed back into his uniform, hurrying to dry off before changing back into his school clothes.
“So Shinji, who are you going to take?” Toji asked the question most of the guys were asking each other. “I mean you have so many women to choose from”.
“Eh?” Shinji asked as he struggled into his shirt.
“Well Chihiro is clearly interested. Then you have Rei who actually waved at you-”
“Don’t forget Kana” Kensuke put in with a grin as he set his glasses back on his face.
“How would you like a snack Aida?” Toji asked politely, his hand slowly tightening into a fist. “A nice, fresh, knuckle sandwich?”
“Pass” Kensuke said, taking a step away. “Oh yeah, there’s always Misato…”
“She’s my guardian, not my girlfriend” Shinji replied with an amused tone…though for some reason the image of Misato in a silky black evening dress on his arm was now continually banging its way into his thoughts and stubbornly refusing to leave…
“Hey…that’s it! Misato!” Toji snapped his fingers! “Shinji, do you think you could ask her for me?”

Shinji simply gave him a level stare that said ‘ask her yourself! I ain’t touching this!’

Toji sighed, leaning against the wall and running his hands through his hair.
“Come on guys, let get out of here” Shinji offered. “We can think about this tomorrow”.
“That’s the smartest thing you’ve said all day Kensuke agreed, shutting his locker and heading for the door. Shinji and Toji cleaned up their own lockers and headed for the exit, only to have Kensuke suddenly return, looking ashen.
“Uh Shinji, you might want to go the long way” Kensuke muttered. “Chihiro is out there with a half dozen of her friends just…waiting”.
“Oh…snap…” Shinji muttered, shutting his eyes and thumping his head against a convenient locker.
The dull ache that resulted felt surprisingly good.
“Let’s go the long way” Shinji suggested after several seconds consideration. The trio retracted their steps to the exit onto the sports field. Kensuke poked his head out, ‘commando style’, glancing around before looking back and pumping his arm.
“Clear! Go go go!”
There were no girls waiting in ambush and the trio hastily made their way along the side of the building towards another entrance, up the stairwell and back to class.
Most of their class was still either getting changed or on their way –slowly- from the change room, so few people had arrived back by the time they came running down the corridor. Hikari, miss efficiency herself was just arriving, looking slightly surprised –and suspicious- at the direction they had come from, but before she could open her mouth to ask where they had been, Toji and Kensuke had sprinted into the room and the dubious safety therein.
Shinji didn’t follow, instead skidding to a halt as Hikari approached the door.
“Um Hikari, can I have a word with you?”
She frowned at the unusual request, but nodded, stepping away from the door and following him to the unused classroom behind their own.
“Yes?”
“I wanted to talk to you about the Dance coming up” Shinji started, “about partners for the Dance”.
“Shinji...” Hikari said hesitantly, “I’m flattered but…I…”
“Oh no no no, I’m not asking you out” Shinji said in a hurry…then kicked himself at the hurt look that passed through her eyes.
Regardless of if she wanted to go with him or not, that was not exactly the most tactful thing he could have said.
“I mean I already know you and Toji will be together there” Shinji hurriedly said on pure reflex…causing Hikari’s jaw to drop, her face to flush red and her gaze to shift around the room wildly.

Clap…clap…clap
Oh Bravo Shinji a voice snickered from inside his mind. That was subtle!
Shinji swore fluently in his mind as he gazed at the furiously embarrassed Hikari, remembering it had been half a year until this very shy girl had finally admitted to Asuka –and then Asuka had loudly complained to him- that she had had a huge crush on Toji for a very long time.
“Is…is it that obvious?” she whispered in a mortified tone.
“Actually…I had no clue until Rei told me a few days ago” Shinji improvised on the spot, getting a confused look from Hikari as he hastened to explain. “She doesn’t see the world in the same way we do. Some things that are clear as day to you or me she can’t understand…and other things few people can see are as utterly straight forward to her”.
“Does…Toji…” she muttered in a tiny voice…
“I think Toji thinks you are just looking for an opportunity to destroy him” Shinji said with a twitch of a smile, causing Hikari’s shoulders to slump even further. “But I also know he is terrified of this Dance, because he doesn’t think he has anyone who would want to go with him”.
A look of surprise and hope slowly started to replace the embarrassment on her face.
“Do…do you think he might go…with me?” she asked timidly, reminding Shinji of someone testing the temperature of a bath with their toe before getting in.
“I’m sure I can nudge his thoughts towards asking you out…you might just want to try smiling a little at him every now and again instead of shouting though”.
Again a flush came to her face, but this time she straightened up and a slight smile came across her face.
“Shinji I…thank you” she said, looking like a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders.
“It’s no problem” he smiled, and then inclined his head as a thought came to him. “You know…I hear you are a hell of a cook”.
“Well I know a few things” she said deprecatingly, but with a flash of pleasure that her reputation had apparently reached to even the newest kid in the class.
“Toji is utterly hopeless at making lunch for himself and his Sister” he pointed out in a bland voice. “If you wanted an easy way to get his attention…”
Her smile widened and impulsively, she reached over a gave him a quick hug.
Shinji briefly hugged her back before letting go, enjoying the feeling of the simple gesture of friendship that didn’t have any further implications, for once.
“Anyway” she said as she stepped back, “what did you want to talk to me about for the Dance?”
“Two things” Shinji said. “Firstly Chihiro. She’s a …nice person, but I don’t really feel anything for her” he commented, causing his stock to rise even more in Hikari’s eyes, who far from approved of the all too aggressive girl. “So I was wondering if you could spread the word that I have someone I’ve already asked someone to the Dance around the class.”
“Have you?” Hikari asked with a slight frown, wondering if Shinji knew just how many of his classmates would jump at the chance if he asked any of them out to this Dance.
After Shinji had just promised to help her out, she would be more then willing to help him out if he needed to find someone…
“No” he admitted. “But I really don’t have time to think about those things right now…or dodge dozens of Girls in the corridors”.
“I’ll tell the girls you’re off limits” she said with a twitch of a smile.
“Thanks Hikari. Oh yeah, second thing is I know how expensive these things can be for you…girls, getting what you’re going to wear organized and all that. And I know the Dance is back on at short notice. So if any of the Girls are in financial difficulties…tell me and I’ll arrange their parents or guardians to get enough money to cover the costs”.

Hikari just stared at Shinji. Who was this person who was thinking about everyone but himself like some great universal problem solver, in between risking his life to protect the city from the Angels…

“I appreciate the gesture Shinji…but you are talking about a rather large amount of money here-”
Shinji quietly named the figure he was paid each month, causing Hikari’s jaw to drop once again in shock before he continued with “so don’t worry about me, I just want this night to go perfectly…everyone here deserves to find a moment of happiness in the middle of this damn war”.

Hikari just nodded, her mind reeling over this side of Shinji she had never seen, deciding then and there he was simply too good for any of the Girls in their year.
“I’ll…keep my eyes open” she promised simply, getting a smile in return.

The pair left the classroom and returned to their own without saying anything more, most of the class had finally returned from their lockers with only a few stragglers outstanding. Shinji hesitated outside the room for a count of fifteen before he entered, so as to not give the wrong idea by returning with Hikari. Almost instantly, he heard the level of conversation from the girls chatting as they packed their schoolbags drop off but ignored it –and deliberately avoided looking anywhere near Chihiro- as he strolled over to Rei’s desk.
“Ayanami” he said softly, causing her head to turn.
“Ikari” she replied in a neutral, but to Shinji’s ears, slightly softer tone then she would use on most people.
“Are…you ready for the reactivation test this evening?” he asked, making the Eva pilot equivalent of small talk.
“I have prepared according to the schedule” she answered, which Shinji took to mean ‘yes’.
“Would…you mind if I accompanied you to Headquarters to watch the test?” he asked.
To his stunned surprise, Rei didn’t follow his question with the expected ‘why’, but simply nodded and said “I would…like that”.
“Uh…then I’ll see you at the gate” he stuttered, offering her a slight bow and heading for his own desk, taking care to put the slightest smile on his face as he did so that he hopped might scare off prospective Dates.
“Where did you go?” Kensuke asked in curiosity as he reached his seat, opening his desk to remove things into his bag.
“Just had a word with Hikari about…you know” he vaguely finished, throwing a significant glance at several nearby Girls.
“Ah” Kensuke said, for once with a sense of tact just leaving it there. “Well, are you still going to NERV after school?”
“Yeah” Shinji nodded. “Rei has her first major startup test today”.
“Really?” he asked in surprise, before looking at Rei. “Hey Ayanami” he called out.
Rei turned to face him.
“Good luck today Rei!” he called out cheerfully.
Rei started, then nodded and turned back.



‘Good luck today Rei’…words from a classmate…given freely in comradeship and support…
Classmate Aida…he ‘wished me luck’ even though he had neither reason to…nor any advantage to doing so. Does He hope for a positive outcome…because he values my existence and does not wish to see harm come to me?
Is this what it means to have friends?

Rei continued to mull over the thoughts in her mind, before the class ended, a small part of her mind patiently listening to the teacher even if the vast majority of her intellect was focused on much deeper questions…as it had been for weeks now.
But it meant when the Class Representative called the dismissal, she was already moving to place the few items she had taken out of her bag back into it before starting to exit the classroom.
Shinji…pilot Ikari followed and made it all of two steps before Classmate Chihiro intercepted him.
A strange feeling coursed through Rei.
Irritation.
Flicking her azure hair back into place from where the bangs had fallen over her forehead, Rei waited patiently for enough people to clear out of the classroom to let her begin heading towards the back of the room.



“Shinji-Kun” Chihiro said smoothly, sidestepping somehow across three rows of desks in the chaos as everyone stood up without warning to block his direct access to the door. “I don’t think I had a chance to tell you how brave I think you are and how much I want to…thank you for saving us all”.
I guess she doesn’t believe in personal space was all that Shinji could think as he froze like a dear in headlights as she come as close as she possibly could without touching him, all his confidence vanishing from the Chihiro’s formidable physical presence.
It wasn’t that she was ugly by any measure; if anything, she really was one of the most beautiful girls in class. Her thick hair was brown and cut at shoulder length, framing a perfectly elfin face with classical looks, full lips and hazel green eyes that pieced Shinji and held him in place.
In addition to her figure, which as Toji had so subtly pointed out, was filling out rather quickly.
But even as Shinji catalogued her features that should have triggered some sort of sexual desire, a look into her eyes stilled anything he might have felt.

None of the affection she feigned reached them.

He knew enough about Chihiro to know she didn’t want him because she found him to be a nice person; he was just something to hang off her arm like a living, breathing, walking trophy. The legendary Evangelion pilot! Come one come all to see Chihiro and her new fashion accessory!
Even if he wasn’t irreparably in love with Asuka, the thought of being a prized possession to be shown off like a piece of jewelry wasn’t exactly appealing.

“Uh thank you, Chihiro” he said with a polite smile and half bow that showed friendship, but utterly no affection, “I appreciate it”.
No reason to be rude after all.
Chihiro’s eyes frowned slightly for a second, as if she didn’t understand why he wasn’t swooning, but before she could recalculate, another voice broke in.
“Shinji”
Chihiro’s eyes went flat and her smile became somewhat brittle in Shinji’s opinion as she stepped away a few centimeters to let Rei come forward, turning to shoot a smile at his ‘Sister’ that lacked the slightest warmth.
“Oh, Ayanami, I was just about to ask Shinji if he wanted-”
“We must go Pilot Ikari if we are to arrive at Headquarters on schedule to begin the test” Rei said in her usual flat tone, utterly ignoring the other classmate.
“Yes, of course!” Shinji nodded quickly, yanking his bag onto his back. “Sorry Chihiro, you know duty calls, bye!” he rapid fired out with a smile before dodging around the far side of the desk and making for the door at top speed, Rei, Toji and Kensuke following right behind and blocking the view as a spluttering Chihiro whirled, her short hair flaring as she tried to say something.

They didn’t slow down until they were outside the gate and well down the street.

“That was close” Shinji sighed as they finally reduced their pace to a walk, noting with annoyance that neither Toji nor Rei were even breathing hard from the sprint.
“Man that look she was giving you…she wanted you bad Shinji…and I don’t think she is going to take no for an answer” Toji smirked.
“Hikari will sort her out” Shinji said with confidence. “I don’t think even Chihiro would cross the Class Rep”.
“I don’t think anyone would cross the Class Rep” Toji muttered.
Shinji held his peace at the slight hint of fear in Toji’s voice.
Plenty of time to start ‘Operation get Hikari and Toji together’ tomorrow after all.

Shinji Ikari. Pilot, student and matchmaker; Saving the world, one relationship at a time he thought to himself.

Presently, they arrived at a Geofront access building a few hundred meters down the street. Built into the side of a moderately sized prefabricated Evangelion building, the access point was simply an outer door leading into a general waiting area that doubled as a bus stop, a dozen card reading devices like in train stations in front of ten centimeter thick doors providing access to authorized personnel to a bunch of elevators into the Geofront.
“Well I’ll catch you both tomorrow” Shinji bade farewell to his friends, turning to look back at them…and noticing the group of people coming down the long hill in hot pursuit. “Hey…is that…”
The remaining trio turned to look at the distant figures, Kensuke raising his omnipresent video camera and hitting the zoom.
“Yup. Its Chihiro” he said, flipping out the small screen on the side of his camera. “And she brought backup”.
“She just doesn’t give up!” Toji said in a voice that mixed pity with admiration at the figures on Kensuke’s viewfinder moving towards them, trying not to be distracted by the way certain female attributes were moving as they ran flat out down the hill.
For the love of God…Shinji thought with a groan.
This was getting insane.
“We must go” Rei said with a slight tinge of urgency, stepping through into the spacious atrium and holding her card ready as she moved for the closest barrier.
“We’ll hold them off” Toji shouted, leading Kensuke back up the hill.
Stepping into the building after Rei who stepped through her gateway, Shinji reached for his access card…only to realize it wasn’t in its usual place.
He franticly searched his pockets as time ran out, finally pulling it from his shirt pocket and slamming it through the reader.
Obediently the reader flashed green and locking bolts started to detach, too slowly for Shinji’s mind as he willed it to hurry.
“Come on…come on…” he muttered as he heard a group of loud footsteps outside. The gate finally opened and he dove through, the sensors shutting it after him as he raced around the corner and out of site behind the other closed doors.
“Shinji-Kun…” a somewhat imperious voice echoed from the other side, but far too late as the gate slammed shut.
“That was too close” he muttered after he heard the reassuring ‘thud’ of armor grade steel behind him, turning to hurry after Rei. 2010 AD
Doctor Naoko Akagi smiled at her daughter as she left the command center. She was growing up so fast. To Naoko, it was only yesterday she was at university working on her doctorate.
While she was understandably proud of her daughter’s achievements, she couldn’t help but sigh at her complete ineptitude in achieving any kind of real relationship. Their lively discussion where, like any good mother, Naoko had prodded her daughter about finding happiness had devolved quite quickly into her daughter protesting that first she had to develop a definition for happiness.
Not to mention the almost smug tone in her voice when she had passed the news that Misato and that Kaji fellow had broken up.

Oh well. She could only hope that one day in the future, her daughter would grow up and find someone. Still, at least she was going out tonight…and who knows, perhaps Katsuragi’s kid would show her a great time, set her up with someone in a wild night of passion and fun…
Naoko snickered and shook her head, a slight smile coming across her face. No, Ritsuko was a dispassionate scientist. She would never just let herself go…
Not like I have with Gendo the Doctor smiled to herself, feeling slightly naughty just thinking about it, when a door to the command center hissed and whirled open.
Feeling vaguely embarrassed at her daydreaming, Naoko turned around wondering what her daughter had forgotten.

To her surprise, Rei Ayanami was standing in front of her, in that same red and pink dress she always wore.
Just staring at her.
Putting a smile on her face, she leaned down slightly, as if bringing herself down to the Childs level.

“Did you want me for something, Rei?” she asked warmly, wondering, not for the first time, who she was.

Rei simply stared at her with all the emotion of a refrigerator, waiting several seconds before speaking.

“I lost my way, Doctor” she said simply, her stance and expression not changing one wit.

The tone and the attitude were so…alien from what she would have expected from a child it was actually slightly disturbing…even more so when on further reflection she thought she could almost sense Gendo’s inflections in some words.

Pushing her unease to the side, she spun the chair around and stood up, deepening her smile.
“Well, do you want to come with me then?” Akagi said with a chuckle at the very serious adult attitude the child put forth.

Rei simply regarded her levelly.

“That is okay”.

Now Akagi let a frown come onto her face. The complex they were in was utterly gigantic and unless you knew your way around, you could become hopelessly lost in a very short time.
Even so, especially up in the areas of the base like this command center, security guards made regular patrols. Rei shouldn’t have been allowed to get so lost.
She made a mental note to talk to Gendo about scolding those rent-a-cops, before she sighed and decided to try and use logic on this strange young child.

“But how will you get home all by yourself?” she asked, her tone changing almost without her realizing it to ‘kid talk’ of the type she had used on her daughter so many years ago…

Rei however was not impressed.

“That’s none of your business” she scoffed, in such an adult dismissive tone, loaded with contempt that Naoko felt pushed back a step, before she added “Old Hag”.

Shock passed through Naoko, along with the first stirrings of anger at this insolent child, before she got herself under control.

“Old Hag…”

“I can find my way home by myself, Old Hag” she repeated in a tone that suggested she was lecturing a very slow student who couldn’t grasp such a simple concept.

The combination of the adult tone and child’s body chilled Naoko Akagi.

“You shouldn’t call someone an Old Hag Rei” she retorted, the warmth gone from her voice, with the slightest current of danger under it that Rei either ignored or found irrelevant.

“But you are an Old Hag, aren't you?” Rei asked, as if in slight confusion.

“I’m getting Mad” Naoko replied, then grew even angrier at herself for making such a blunt, inelegant statement. “You need a good spanking from Director Ikari you little-”

“That’s what he calls you” Rei cut her off in the same monotone…her words hitting with the force of a sledge hammer and drawing an involuntary shudder from the Doctor as her face actually expressed a smile, as if she was pleased to pass on her information.
No…no, she is just a stupid little-

“He says, that Old Hag is annoying, that Old Hag is no use anymore. He doesn’t need that Old Hag Anymore…”

And as Rei spoke, another voice, very similar but much deeper started to overlay the echoes of Rei’s statement in her mind as Yui Ikari whispered gleefully into her mind.

(“That Old Hag is annoying”-)

(“That Old Hag is no use anymore”-)

(“That Old Hag is annoying”-)

The connection she had always suspected between Rei and Yui inflamed her as she stared at the smiling face of the child in front of her, seeing both one and the other at the same time, as the woman Naoko Akagi finally realized she had lost to, in her competition for the heart of Gendo, mocked her utter failure.
She had been used from the outset.
Despite the sweet nothings whispered into her ears at night.
Despite the promises and looks at work when they both knew no-one was watching.
Despite everything he had promised her, said to her, he had in the end replaced Yui not with her…but with this…this…this DOLL! This COPY!

With a snap, the brilliant, dispassionate, scientific intellect of Naoko Akagi vanished into an infinitely deep pool of red as she leaped out of her chair in a rage, grabbing the doll and squeezing, sneering at the pathetic sound it made.
What she could never do, what she had been too cowardly to do against Yui…
YOU LITTLE BITCH…YOU’RE REPLACABLE TOO! DID YOU KNOW THAT REI?
She kept squeezing and squeezing until the pathetic sounds this thing made stopped and it was utterly still…still…still…

Yes…the thing bent over, its head lolling…the arms pointed perfectly towards the center of the Earth as gravity pulled them, utterly no muscle activity to pull them in any other direction…

She…she…had just killed Rei.

It then hit her as the red faded leading the pathetic body of a fellow tool of Gendo Ikari lifelessly dangling from her hands, before it fell, inert, to the floor of the command center as her shaking hands let go.

What have I done… she asked herself again.

I have outlived my usefulness she thought through the dim shock. There is…nothing left for me here, my…task is complete.
This all is up to my daughter now…
Like all good computer scientists, she knew what was done when a program reached the termination code.

A loud thud echoed through the deserted command center a matter of seconds later as the head of Doctor Naoko Akagi collided with the hard protective cover over MAGI Balthazar, followed by utter silence.
At least for a few seconds.

The whirring of a door opening on the MAGI level soon echoed across the utterly enormous command center, followed by the rattle and clanking of a gurney being wheeled over to where the Doctors body reposed.
A team of white suited technicians hastily moved the body onto the gurney, stabbing a handful of syringes into the body and slapping a bandage over the rather impressive head wound before starting back out. At the doorway, another person in a slightly different white lab coat, with orange tinted sunglasses waited, falling into line.
“Unit Zero is waiting and I have already arranged the modifications to the A-10 connections, to repeat the sequence of events at the Third Branch”.
“Wouldn’t it be easier to simply dissolve the body like your Wife?” one of the men with the gurney grunted.
Few would have dared to ask such a question of Gendo Ikari in his lair…but the man brought in from outside for this business was a pet of Keel Lorenz who did dare.
“We need the body back” Gendo pointed out bluntly. “I have arranged a window of thirty minutes to achieve this end”.
“We’ll make it” the man grunted, steering the ‘corpse’, death slowed down by the unholy cocktail of chemicals pumped into its bloodstream through the deserted passageways, then through several blast doors into the Evangelion Bay where Unit Zero, mostly completed was waiting.

Not that any of the people knew that the ‘corpse’ was actually semi-conscious as it was unceremoniously dumped into the entry plug.


2015 AD


Rei depressed her plug suit switch and the lightweight, flexible material contracted around her lithe form with a hiss, generating an airtight seal that would keep her dry when immersed into LCL, while still allowing the conductive link to the A-10 clips she in her hair.

Standing, she carefully placed her school uniform into her locker in its assigned place before closing the locker door, doing everything as carefully as she always did…everything exactly like last time.

‘REI! Rei…are you alright?’

The voice echoed through her head again like it often did, bringing a rare, if slight, smile to her face for a few seconds at the memory.

The calm, assured powering up sequence moving along as the connections were made one by one with technicians crisply and efficiently moving down checklists.

The feeling of Unit Zero coming to life as limb by limb, section by section, power was routed through the electrical system, energy surging and dancing along Rei’s nerves sympathetically with a tingling sensation.

The nerve connections engaging, tying her mind to that of the Evangelion.

The final sequences as the Third Connections were engaged, moving down towards the absolute borderline…closer closer…

PAIN!

BETRAYAL!

RAGE!

HATE!

ANGER!


Emotions had exploded from the Evangelion into Rei’s mind, overwhelming the girl who had never dealt with such raw, primal feelings. One of the other pilots might have been able to call upon their own raw emotions and fought back, throwing their will against the presence, but Rei could only scream a soundless scream in her mind as she was thrown away to a small corner of the connection, Unit Zero now powered up and raging for revenge.

Dimly she was aware of the alarmed cries of the people in the control center, but she simply couldn’t force her body to respond as Unit Zero with a mighty heave, ripped free of the wall mount, the restraints never designed to hold against an enraged Evangelion unit. Seconds later, she felt and heard the power cable disengage and for a split second, thought she could feel Unit Zero start to grind to a halt.
Then the low level computer systems inside the Evangelion stepped in and switched over to the battery supply.
Through the pain, Rei managed to look up at the display windows, focused on the figures of Vice Commander Fuyutsuki Doctor Akagi and Commander Ikari-

IKARI!

Rei gasped again as the presence inside the Evangelion found a new focus for its anger, then felt pain sear down her arm as Unit Zero slammed its fist into the armored windows. And again. Trying desperately to reach the man standing aloof in the control room.
And again, its rage now focused tightly as the clock steadily ran down on its power supply.
NO! Rei thought, flinging

[Chris OFarrell]

her will desperately against the giants.

Unit Zero stumbled back a half dozen meters, appearing to those few watching and not cowering under their consoles to grab its head and shudder, as if a war was being fought inside it.

GO AWAY, ECHO

With a loud crack, explosive bolts fired, blowing away the armor plate behind the entry plug as high pressure nitrogen flooded into a small chamber under the plug itself, building for two seconds before the locking clamps opened.
Like a projectile from an air gun, the entry plug was flung up and clear of Unit Zero, a quartet of rockets igniting smoothly as it slowed.
Designed to throw the plug clear in a high ballistic arc with enough height and velocity for a parachute to deploy, the flight control computer inside the plug became rather confused when it crashed into a roof its programming had not accounted for, sliding along to the corner and crashing to a halt with Rei being thrown about and battered helplessly.
The entry plug computer stubbornly burned out the rockets in an attempt to take to the sky, dangerously heating the skin of the plug like blowtorches without the rushing air to cool it expected in a true ejection before with a splutter, the hydrazine flow cut off and Sir Isac Newton reclaimed his hold on the cylinder.

With no fanfare, the plug fell, and slammed into the ground, bouncing and skidding along to come to rest a few seconds before Unit Zero’s battery power ran out and it shuddered to a mournful halt, the superheated exterior slowly, through conduction, heating the LCL inside.

If there was a part of her body that didn’t hurt, Rei Ayanami could not easily name. The fall to Earth had thrown her around like a rag doll despite the shock absorbing abilities of the uncompressible LCL, the feel of bones snapping and contusions burning had driven her into the dark void for several long seconds, until she heard a screaming shout of pain from somewhere outside the plug...followed by the feeling of the LCL draining from around inside her, a weak coughing clearing her lungs and slowly dragging her back to awareness.
The plug door swung open and cool, fresh air flooded in followed by Commander Ikari, his hands smoking strangely, the smell of burnt flesh wafting through the plug.
“Rei!” he shouted. “Rei, are you alright?”
She raised her head, strength returning bit by bit as she turned away the pain wracking her body. She nodded slowly at the Commander, noticing the slight drops of blood coming from his own, blackened hands as she realized he had yanked open the superheated hatch with his bear hands…
“I see” he replied softly to her nod, a smile coming across his face as the pounding noise of the medical team arriving sounded from outside.
Rei, for the first time in her life, smiled back, now understanding, in part, why people did so.
Then the memory faded as she returned to the present, the past crashing up against the new reality that Shinji had so carefully placed into her mind.
He used me…her…to kill Doctor Akagi…to goad a response that resulted in my…her…death at the same time.
Yet he saved me…why?
Does he simply have a further use for me as opposed to another ‘me’?
Finding nothing but questions down this line of thought, Rei banished all her memories and questions ruthlessly to focus on the immediate, leaving the locker room for the testing facility.



“Rei. Can you hear me?”

”Yes”

“We will now begin the Unit Zero Re-Activation experiment” Commander Gendo Ikari declared to the room and pilot, reaching up to set his glasses on his face properly. “Begin primary connection”.

Rei felt that same tingle once again as power started to surge through circuits, parts of Unit Zero coming to life bit by bit as the technicians painstakingly cleared their checklists.

“Activation voltage has passed the critical point” Technician Ibuki called over the communications link. Rei felt, rather then heard, Doctor Akagi take a deep breath.
“Shift to Phase Two”

“Connecting the pilot to unit Zero” Aoba continued and a kaleidoscope of shifting patterns and colors surrounded Rei as the display panels went through a test cycle, then came up with the external display. Directly ahead of her, she could see in a strange repeat of events weeks ago, the same group of technicians working their consoles, the same three senior officers standing and watching…
Where...is Shinji?
Looking around carefully, Rei finally spotted two familiar figures off to the side, looking through a small window at her, zooming in with a thought.
One of the figures, Captain Katsuragi, held a drink in one hand and directed a level, but uneasy expression towards Unit Zero.
The other, Shinji Ikari was pressed right up against the glass and staring directly at Unit Zero…directly into the cameras point of view.
And he had a small smile on his face.
And although he couldn’t see it-
Although no-one would ever know-
Rei gave the slightest smile in return.



“Come on Rei” Shinji muttered under his breath. He knew that Unit Zero was supposed to successfully reactivate, but his brilliant combat performances had accelerated the schedule several days.
And he knew just how…delicate…these things were…the smallest change…

Over the speakers around the testing bay, he could hear the slight tension in all the people involved in the operation.
“No problems detected in synchronization, level holding at fifty two point three nine”.

“All nerve links completed”.

“Central nervous system elements, nominal.”

“Re-calculating…no error corrections required”.

“Checklist is satisfactory up to twenty five nine zero”.

Here we go he told himself, feeling his grip on the railing in front of him tighten and sensing Misato tensing next to him as well.

“Approaching the absolute borderline!” Maya called and Shinji heard the slightest note of fear in her voice. “Two point Five more…One point Seven…One point Two…One point Zero…Zero point Eight…Zero point Six…point Five…point Four…point Three…point two! Point One-”



Rei felt the Evangelion.

This time, the mind deep inside the Eva didn’t come burning up the back of Rei’s head and pounding into her skull; this time the bindings Doctor Akagi had installed controlled the presence.
But it was still there.

Shadow!

Puppet!

Doll!

The presence’s thoughts were not so much words she could hear as ideas and concepts crashing against the mind barriers during that instant and eternity as the connection was established.

I am not a doll Rei thought back.

You are a tool, a disposable, replacement copy of a dead person!

Even a week ago, Rei would have not understood the insult and mocking for what it was. She would have simply suppressed it, forced the Evangelion to activate and ignored her.

But not this time.

I am I Rei thought back, with an utter certainty that surprised her. I am not her. I am not replicable. I am unique.

That thought caused the presence inside the Evangelion to recoil in surprise, not vanishing, but pulling back, the mental image of a person narrowing their eyes and reconsidering flashing into her mind.

He will dispose of you when he has no use for you.

You can be replaced well enough…for his purposes.


Perhaps Rei replied. But I am not his puppet. Another has cut his strings.

And with that thought, Rei pushed past the startled presence and took firm control of the Evangelion, banishing the other presence-

“-One point zero and rising!” Maya continued with a note of triumph in her voice. “Unit Zero has been successfully reactivated!”

“Roger” Rei quietly replied, noting the relief on the faces of the people across from her. “Beginning interlock tests”.
Across from her, Shinji let out a breath he had been holding.



The next two days passed in a blur for Shinji. Rei was absent from class undergoing non stop testing as Unit Zero was rapidly brought up to operational status.

School continued in its normal dull way, even if his entire year of four classes was still full of hyperactive girls.
Hikari had clearly talked to them however, none of them bothered him anymore – though most clearly looked confused at precisely who he had invited, given that every girl in the year had apparently logged onto the grapevine and found no matches, a quandary compounded when he had flatly denied it was Rei Ayanami, the only question he had answered on the subject.
Chihiro sulked, but Shinji found he could ignore her quite easily given that she made no further moves on him.
Even she clearly feared the wraith of Hikari.

At lunch, the situation was normal for Toji insomuch as he had once again failed to make any. Or more accurately, he had made lunch, which Kana had liberated, because yet again he had failed to make her lunch.

The look the younger sibling had given her brother suggested he was increasingly on thin ice.

Hikari had stepped in, slightly nervously with a bento Box, to Toji’s stunned surprise that he left him speechless for several minutes.
Not so much because he couldn’t think of anything to say, but his mouth was full for quite some time, even if he magnanimously shared some with his sister, who had hugged Hikari tightly and asked her to move in, inadvertently causing Toji to nearly choke, Hikari to almost start stuttering madly and Shinji to almost…almost, send soda everywhere.
Fortunately, none of the ‘almost’s’ had come to pass…but it was a damn close thing.

Eventually finishing up, Toji had actually exchanged more then a few civil words of thanks with the Class Rep, even offering a smile or two to Hikari, who had blushed rather cutely in Shinji’s opinion, before she excused herself.
It probably hadn’t hurt things any that Hikari was actually quite an amazing cook for a fifteen year old Girl.
Toji had then reflected that women were the strangest creatures on this planet…and that perhaps the Class Rep wasn’t actually on a quest to destroy him, earning him a ‘you just don’t get it’ look from Kana who had simply rolled her eyes and walked off in despair at how thick her lovable brother was.

Saturday however…

“What’s happened to Unit One?” Shinji demanded in alarm as he walked onto the gantry around cage Seven to find Unit One covered in a scaffold, technicians swarming over it with more then a few armor plates missing as a few orange suited technicians actually walked and crawled inside the giant.
“Take it easy Shinji” Ritsuko said from next to him, with a cup of coffee in one hand and a clipboard in the other, sipping the former and reading the later with a critical eye. “We’re just adjusting some of the internal electrical components. It was scheduled to be completed a few days ago, but we had to delay the final adjustment thanks to the Unit Zero reactivation being brought forward. We should have it ready in…oh…another couple of hours for the synch test”.
Oh this is brilliant Shinji groaned inside his mind, regretting for one second that the Japanese generally were not taught to curse anything like as effectively as other nations, because no curse in his limited vocabulary, not even the few German curse words he had picked up from Asuka, appeared appropriate to the situation.
“Well…I guess I’ll go get something to eat” Shinji muttered, getting a non committal noise in response from the Doctor, too deep into her clipboard to really care…or notice the look of utter dread on his face for that half second.


Out over the Pacific Ocean, a large, diamond shaped object floated towards Japans coast. A strange, high pitched note sounding every few seconds as it proceeded towards Tokyo 3.


“All personnel, go to First Stage Alert, prepare for surface to air interception”
The alert from the JSDF had come through only two minutes ago, but this Angel had appeared much closer then the 4th Angel, only twenty kilometers off the coast. Ground based radar had spotted the enormous target instantly as it either rose from the sea or simply materialized from nowhere, guaranteeing a FIREFLY alert being declared in record time from its size, shape, speed…and the fact that it was motoring straight towards Tokyo-3.

“Evangelion Status?” Misato barked as the monitors showed the huge shape of the Angel live from a TV camera at low altitude over the mountains. It was probably the most bizarre Angel yet; where the others she had seen at least looked vaguely human or could shift into a vaguely humanoid form, this Angel was an utterly perfect Octahedron, its blue surfaced burnished to a perfectly reflecting mirror like quality as it floated from the South East towards Tokyo-3.
It looked suspiciously harmless compared to the monsters they had seen earlier really.

“Unit One is in the middle of a refit cycle Captain” Maya said with some alarm as technicians scrambled in to man the command center. “It will take at least forty minutes to abort the refit, replace the armor and make it combat ready”
“What about Unit Zero?” she demanded. Maya’s hands flew over her controls.
“The reactivation was successful. There was a feedback error we found yesterday…but we managed to neutralize it. The unit should be fully operational”.
“But we haven’t had the time to reequip the prototype with combat rated armor” Shigeru warned as he looked over the status reports on their two Evangelion Units.
“It’s all we’ve got” Misato said bluntly. “Prepare for launch”
“Roger” the technicians said in unison and started the process of unlocking the Evangelion from its cage and shifting it to the launch pad.
“Rei?” she called, causing a picture to jump up onto the main screen of Rei already in her entry plug.
“Yes Mam?”
“The target is approaching Tokyo-3”
“Yes Mam”
“You will be sorted to engage it through access route nine. Retrieve the pallet rifle from block Alpha nine, advance two hundred meters South and engage the target, but be careful, we don’t know what we’re up against here. Do you understand?”
“Roger” she acknowledged, before the window blinked off.
“The target is now penetrating Lake Ashi Airspace” Hyuga warned. Misato turned slightly to look at the Commander above them, who nodded calmly, clearly looking forward to watching his protégé at work for the first time,
“Eva Launch!”

Several things then started to happen very quickly.

Unit Zero was sent roaring towards the surface in a burst of EM energy, Rei noting but ignoring the G forces as tactical strategies, checklists and procedures rolled through her mind while she watched the tactical feed-

The fifth Angel slowed slightly as it passed over LakeAshi to the south of Tokyo-3, banking slightly to a more northerly course as it sensed a threat rocketing towards the surface. In response, its S2 organ flared into life, feeding the enormous power generated into first it’s AT field, then into the generation of high energy particles that collated into a thin band along its equator-

Shinji Ikari burst into the command center slightly out of breath, but unnoticed by any of the staff watching their screens-

“We’re monitoring a high energy reaction, inside the target!” Shigeru called out in surprise as numbers rapidly started rising on his console-

“What?” Misato asked in surprise and not a little fear-

“It’s collecting along its circumference” Shigeru continued as he tried to make sense of the data as it came in, the MAGI doing their best to crunch this new data in real time. “It’s amassing upon itself and converging!”

“Oh no” Maya said in horror as the guideposts on the surface extended to receive Unit Zero, the band of blue light on the target becoming almost blinding as the Angle hovered patiently, one corner of the Octahedron pointed directly at Unit Zero’s emergence point.

“REI! LOOK OUT! DUCK!” Misato shouted.

Rei’s eyes frowned slightly as Unit Zero crashed to a halt, looking up just in time to feel a sudden spike of fear as a lance of fire reached out and slammed into her unit, followed by a sudden scalding wave of heat that tore an involuntary scream from her mouth as the particle beam vaporized its way through Unit Zero’s inferior armor.
Before Misato could react, before anyone could have possibly reacted, Shinji Ikari was in motion, his fist reaching past a surprised Hyuga to crash down on the emergency retrieval button with a desperate lunge.
The locking clamps holding Unit Zero’s platform in place retracted and gravity took hold, Unit Zero starting to slide back down the long, long lift shaft. Ramiel maintained its particle beam on target with a careful precision as the unit fell, trying to burn its way through, but not quite able to succeed before its target retreated, a huge explosion being set off as the beam touched the ground, before the Angel ceased fire.
Almost as an afterthought, the building it had shot straight through to reach Rei finally melted into slag from the conducted heat, rather pathetically.

“Hey what the…Shinji-“
“Sorry” he apologized, “but I didn’t have time to ask permission” Shinji apologized to Hyuga quickly, stepping back fro the console.
“It’s a good thing you didn’t” Maya put in as the numbers scrolled over her display. “Another two seconds of that beam and Rei would have been vaporized”
“Captain Katsuragi” the Commanders voice cut from above and behind them. “I am going to the cage to supervise the recovery, continue the operation” Gendo said before whirling and moving to his elevator.
Yeah thanks for coming to look in on me, Father Shinji thought darkly as the Commander vanished down the one man lift shaft.
“What’s Rei’s status?” Misato demanded.
“She’s alive” Shigeru said, studying the telemetry from Unit Zero. “But…her brainwaves are extremely erratic”.
“Increase power to the life support system!” the voice of Doctor Akagi came in suddenly from the speakers from her location down in the cage, where she was already preparing for Rei’s arrival. “Give her a heart massage!”
“Roger!”
The life signs graphics tracing across the screens steadied somewhat.
“Life signs stabilizing” Hyuga said with some relief.

Down in the cage, organized chaos was underway as Unit Zero’s fall was arrested in a scream of breaks in the shaft, crashing down onto the launch tracks and shuffled along to its bay, its previously pristine golden chest now a half melted, half shattered collection of armor around a single impact crater that stood in mute testimony to the awesome power directed against it.

“Unit Zero, secured” Maya’s voice echoed over the cage speakers as Doctor Akagi choreographed the activity.
“Get the fire teams going now!” she snapped at the cage leader, causing fire teams in special suits to swarm close to the still red hot armor, spraying liquid nitrogen into the wound to cool it off fast, more then a few half shattered plates contracting under the strain and snapping off to crash to the bottom of the cage.
“Force ejecting the entry plug” she continued as the fire team swung into the action, tapping away madly on the keyboard and causing the intact rear armor to slide aside, thanking God that the hit had been to the front of the Eva.
The entry plug dock reached in extracted the plug into its standby position and away from the heat of the damaged Evangelion. As it locked into place, Akagi’s hands once again flew over her keyboard as she brought up a list of emergency overrides and triggered one.
LCL spewed at high pressure from the base of the plug visibly steaming in the air to the alarm of the emergency teams moving into place. Grimacing, she triggered the next sequence as the LCL level dropped, causing the hydraulics to lever and retract the hatch, great clouds of steam rising into the relatively cool bay air as the access arm reached in, lifted out Rei’s command couch and carried her across to the gantry, the young girl lying unconscious with thin rivulets of blood streaming from her nose and mouth.
Commander Ikari arrived as the medics loaded Rei onto a gurney –now there was a familiar sight she thought- and he followed as they rushed off to the medical wing.
Leaving her to clean up the mess.
Sighing as the immediate danger passed, Doctor Akagi keyed for the diagnostics screen and winced.



“Should I head down to Unit One?” Shinji asked Misato as the frantic, chaotic activity of the last few minutes slowed to a more manageable crawl.
“No, no attacks will be launched until we can study this Angel more carefully” Misato decided, glaring at the screen as the Angel moved into position directly overheard…then a long thin object started to descent from it.
“What in the…” she asked in confusion, before shaking her head to get her focus back. “Isolate and zoom!”
Obediently one of the technicians zoomed the picture in, bringing the giant drill into focus as it crashed into the surface and started to, very slowly, dig down.
“Well that’s new” Misato said dryly. “Okay. Let’s see what this thing can do…”

While there were plenty of things Shinji could be doing right now, he decided that hanging around and watching Misato in crisis mode would be an interesting learning experience.

Especially as he had so utterly failed today once already.

I should have planned for this. Stupid Shinji, very stupid” he told himself for probably the fifth time in the last ten minutes as he considered how damn closed Rei had come to dying. He had worked out an elaborate plan of attack on the Angel, under the assumption that he could move fast and hard enough to get into the blind spot directly under it, rehearsing the moves in his mind until he was sure he could pull it off.

Except for the slight problem that when the time had come, Unit One had been ‘out of order’ because he had just assumed it would be there.

And Rei had come within one point seven two seconds of dying, according to Maya.
I can’t afford to make mistakes like this again!




Out on the far side of LakeAshi, a drone speedboat slowly moved towards the opposite shore, the ominous shape of the 5th Angel hovering silently above the city there as it slowly chewed down towards the Geofront.
A few hundred meters out from the shoreline and about two kilometers from the Angel, a cable on the 1:1 scale balloon decoy of Unit One it was towing was cut, causing the doppelgangers arm –with a Type-2 Evangelion pistol replica in its hand- to snap into a firing position, directly at the Angel.

Ramiels response was prompt, an enormous waterspout blasting hundreds of meters into the air along with the few non vaporized remains of the boat and balloon.

“The enemies accelerated particle beam cannon has hit the balloon! The decoy’s been vaporized!”

“Next” Misato ordered, crossing her arms.

On the far western side of LakeAshi, a khaki painted train slowly rolled out of the tunnel entrance it had been hiding in, an enormous rail gun on board already traversed as the UN crew, several hundred meters back down the tunnel in the command vehicle set their sites and calculated trajectories.

The Type-12 Mortar developed by Rheinmetall in Germany was the most powerful UN weapons system deployed at Tokyo-3, with a power output comparable to an Evangelions positron cannon. Essentially a particle cannon, it fired a long slow beam of energy that was ideal for being ‘wiggled’ to saturate a small area with more firepower then a squadron of bombers, or, to deliver a white hot beam into a very small, focused area over several seconds with perfect accuracy.

The relatively slow speed of the beam was a necessary tradeoff to keep it tightly focused from the magnetic fields projected weapons emplacement itself. This in turn meant the weapons platform really was a mortar, generally designed to shoot high trajectory shorter ranged shots, allowing the beam to crash down behind hills, buildings and other line of site problems, while using the railway tracks to move the cannon around as a siege weapon.

But it was hard to miss a target as large as the 5th Angel.

For several seconds after the train came to a halt, nothing happened.
Then with an enormous muzzle flare that vaporized some hapless grass along the railway, the long line of the particle beam arced out in a relatively flat trajectory over the long sparkling lake at the dead center of the Angel-
-Only to bounce off wildly at an abrupt Angel to the South as it crashed into a previously invisible hexagonal field.
The Angel waited patiently until the entire beam had been deflected and its defensive barrier faded into nothingness once again.
Then it returned the favor.

“The Type 12 mortar has been vaporized!” Shigeru stated in a rather dull, unsurprised tone as a small mushroom cloud marked the funeral pyre of the Type-12 cannon.

“So I see” Misato said with a trace of good humor. “Situation room people”.



“From the data we’ve collected” a technician stated fifteen minutes later in the situation room just off the command center, “we’re assuming the Angel only attacks after opponents only come without a certain range, or directly become a hostile threat by attacking it beyond that range”.
“Anything that enters this range” Shigeru took up the report, a circle coming up on a map of Toyko 3 centered on the Angel, “will be targeted preemptively, if it might pose a threat. Based on the position of the Type 12 when it was attacked” a second circle was overlaid with almost double the radius, “we assume the Angel will only respond if directly provoked”.

Shigeru paused for a second as footage of it blowing Unit Zero to hell was replayed.

“It’s…too risky for close range combat in an Eva, isn’t it?”

Misato didn’t answer, instead watching the display and mulling over her thoughts. “What about it’s AT field?”
Hyuga looked back at the screen, which shifted to a series of still shots. “It’s still active. In fact” he added as the screens rotated through a series of shots of the Type-12 salvo impacting and deflecting off the field harmlessly, “it’s so strong that the special chances in phase are visible. And needless to say, given its current position, a conventional attack would deal more damage to us then the Angel”.

“So what is its location?” Misato demanded, leaning forward.
The screen changed to a map which tracked its approach path, then had the icon stopped directly at the apex of the Geofront.

“It’s directly above us” he said glumly, flicking a button on a remote to change to a real-time security camera closest to the Angel. “A giant drill with a diameter of 17.5 meters is boring right towards us. Based on the rate its getting through the concrete and extrapolating to the denser armor layers it’ll have to defeat…it will take roughly ten hours and two minutes, plus or minus five minutes to bore through and breach the Geofront”.

“Talk about your high pressure situations” Misato muttered to no-one.

“I could try to engage it from outside the outer engagement zone” Shinji suggested, speaking up for the first time and pointing to the larger of the two circles. “Hit it with a few shots and duck behind some hills; try to get it to chase me out of the city so we can hit it with N2 weapons…”

“Not a bad idea” Misato said, but frowned. “But from the way this thing is sitting where it is, I don’t think it’ll take the bait. It’s almost like a huge flying fortress sitting there…and I think its not going to budge from that spot”.

“Could we use two Evangelions in a pair to get close?” Shinji suggested next. “One could use its AT field to neutralize the Angels, the other to shield both units from counter attack?”

“Will that work?” Misato asked, glancing over at Maya.
The junior technician looked a little shocked to be placed on the spot, but rose to the question, narrowing her eyes in thought.
“Well it’s theoretically possible, assuming we can get both units operational and work out the phase space frequency issues. But that beam has enormous wattage behind it…I don’t know if an AT field would slow it down very much. And it would be incredibly dangerous, to say the least” she pointed out unnecessarily.

“The drill has contacted the first armor plate” another technician broke in from his monitoring. Glancing up at the screen, Misato saw the drill shudder and slow dramatically, but continue to turn as it started to bore through the thin but ultra dense plating that covered HQ.

”What’s the status of Unit Zero?” she asked Maya, still trying to get a handle on what resources she had to throw at the problem, causing the younger women to glance at the latest status update from Doctor Akagi on her screen.
”Well, the particle beam melted right through the top armor layers, but the final layer protected the internals from any major damage, just some heat conduction damage really. We’re installing new armor, combat rated, over the damaged sections, it’ll take about three hours”.
”Understood” Misato nodded back. “And Rei?”
Shigeru worked his keyboard to bring up the doctors latest report.
“No physical damage to the pilot. Looks like part of her CNS is a little sensitive, but well within safe piloting guidelines”.

“Good” she said, managing not to feel self pity for putting that poor girl though yet more hospital time, saving it for later when she had time to beat herself up over it.

Two combat ready Evangelions at least gave her some options to attack.
She watched the screen as the image of Unit Zero being blasted at range by an enormous amount of energy played again…
Then it clicked.
Why can’t we do the same thing to it?



“You want to shoot the target with a sniper, from beyond its range, that’s what your saying Captain?” the Vice Commander said slowly, as if not sure he had heard what she had said.
“Yes Sir” she nodded, still standing at attention in the Commanders office, noting how at midday it actually didn’t look nearly half as intimidating, with plenty of natural light flowing into it. “From the data we’re collected, I believe a similar attack style as the Angel employs; a single, pinpoint high wattage attack from outside its immediate response range is the only solution.
“Hmph. What do the MAGI say?” he asked.
“The response from the MAGI were two affirmative and one conditional affirmative, with an initial probability of eleven point six percent success probability. However, on advice from Pilot Ikari, we have made several chances to out plan which increased the success probability substantially to just over thirty percent”.
“Pilot Ikari did? Interesting…still; one chance in three. Not the best odds” the Vice Commander pointed out.
“But I see no reason to reject this plan” the Commander added for both of them. “You may proceed, Captain”.
“Sir” she said, whirling on her feet to march back out the door.
“Your Son appears to be making quite the positive contribution to NERV” Fuyutsuki said lightly as soon as Misato was clear of the room.
“I would expect nor accept nothing less” Ikari replied coolly, closing the folder on the hastily worked out battle plan and picking up another. “Now on the matter of next months budget…”
The Vice commander could only shake his head. Here they were in the fight of their lives and the ‘Ice Man’ was working on next month’s budget.
Sighing, he picked up his own copy of the folder and opened it to the appropriate page.



“You do know this plan is utterly insane, don’t you?” Ritisko Akagi asked Misato as the pair descended a long escalator into Central Dogma. Similar to the main ‘front door’ escalator inside the Geofront, this elevator connected two sides of one of the numerous ‘bottomless’ shafts that ran through Central Dogma together, the two women on their way to Technical Department 3, the high energy research division.
“Don’t be rude Rits” Misato shot back with a slight smile on her face, still giddy at the way she was throwing authority around against the deadline and watching people jump. “It has a thirty percent probability and can be achieved inside the deadline”.
“Thirty percent….well it’s not a zeroor negative number I guess” Akagi shrugged as they reached the bottom of the escalator and headed down towards the weapons division.
Misato gave her friend a steady look.
“If you have a better idea?”
“How about we apply for all that leave we have built up?”
Misato actually appeared to seriously consider it for a few seconds, before shaking her head mournfully.
“The amount of paperwork I would have to do if Tokyo-3 got destroyed…” she sighed, causing Ritsuko to snicker, Misato enjoying the easy company she had missed over the strained, recent weeks, as they passed through several empty office areas to a balcony that overlooked a vast warehouse lined with gigantic weapons in various stages of repair.

“But our positron rifle, Shinji’s test firing non withstanding, was never designed to fire at the kind of output you’re going to need to punch through an AT field directly” Akagi out, glancing at that very weapon on the wall, which some technician in good humor had painted a ‘kill’ silhouette of the 4th Angel on the stock with the caption ‘Squid Fryer’ in bold letters under it.
She just shook her head.
At least moral was high.

“So I’ll borrow a bigger gun” Misato shrugged, as if such concerns were a trivial irrelevancy.

“Borrow one…” Akagi said in confusion, before it clicked and her look turned somewhat incredulous look on her face. “You don’t mean…”

“Yup” Misato said cheerfully as they continued to along towards the Evangelion bay where Unit One was being outfitted with F-type extended life battery packs to make a quick sortie a nearby military R&D facility. “The JSSDF’s new prototype!”

As Shinji opened the hanger roof to load the disassembled cannon prototype onto the three flatbed trucks Misato had borrowed for the operation, Shinji couldn’t help but feel a sudden urge to reach out with his fists and pound every one of the JSSDF troops into a paste.
He thankfully was able to control the urge, but it took some real effort as he recalled the teams of commandos swarming into NERV, shooting anyone and everyone they saw on sight.
Regardless of if they were unarmed civilians trying to surrender or not.

Intellectually, he knew the JSSDF had been used and duped by SEELE just as everyone at NERV had been; that they had thought they were fighting to stop a Third Impact…even if they were in fact responsible for helping to bring it about.
But the memories faded slowly…as did Misatos life in his hands-
STOP IT he snarled to himself focusing before he could drop part of the precious cannon, carefully lowering it onto the truck far faster then any crane could have done the job.
He shouldn’t hate the JSSDF, despite how easy it was to do so.
No, his anger should be reserved and, unleashed, at those behind the events.
And it would.
One day.
Until then, he had to focus on the job.

“Okay that’s it” the Tech-Div-3 man down on the truck called into his radio as his people finished securing the last cargo containers.
“Okay, everyone back to NERV!” Misato called back on the same frequency. “Oh Shinji, can you give them their roof back?”
“Hai” he smiled, reaching out to close the folding roof, enjoying the looks of stunned awe still on the faces of the technicians as he did so, crashing it down none too gently.



Just over an hour later they got back to Tokyo-3, Shinji carefully re-entering the base through an entrance out of line of site of the Angel as the huge battery packs on his back were just starting to run dry.
He brought Unit One back to its cage next to Unit Zero, which had been restored to operational status in the cage next to his. Several new armor plates, painted in the purple of Unit One, were even now being painted over by a cage crew who clearly thought it just would not do to send out Rei in a mismatched Evangelion.

Shaking his head at that thought, Shinji leaped out of his entry plug and hurried for a rapid shower and change before heading for the medical ward.

A short detour later to get the briefing papers for Misato’s ‘Operation Yashima’ to brief Rei on, he arrived in her room and looked in.
Rei was lying in her bed, sleeping peacefully as if she hadn’t damn near been vaporized earlier today with a calm expression on her face.
She looked like an Angel –the good ones, not the bad ones- just lying there, projecting such utter serenity he felt an irrational surge of jealously at the lack of such feelings in his life before he suppressed it, violently.

Taking a chair next to her bed, he settled in to wait for her to wake up.

Half an hour later, Rei slowly returned to the world of the living once again from a dreamless sleep, blinking several times to clear her vision as she studied where she was.
The last thing she had remembered was the pain from the scalding wave of heat that had flooded the entry plug, combined with the terrible feeling of heat on her chest through the neural connections...
Now she was in a familiar hospital room once again.

“Welcome back” a voice said softly from somewhere to her left. Turning, she saw Shinji was sitting next to her bed, watching her closely.
“Shinji” she said, blinking her eyes slowly as she continued to wake up and missing the look of surprise that passed across his face at her use of his first name before suppressing it under a smile.

“Are you okay?” he asked instead. She slowly rose up, her hospital sheets only loosely over her shifting as she did so in ways that made Shinji’s eyes go wide for a second before he snapped his gaze to the base of her bed.
Rei didn’t notice, taking an inventory of her body, pleased that despite feeling slightly sleepy and a slightly dry feeling in her throat, she felt fine.
“Yes” she replied, wondering in curiosity why Shinji was refusing to look at her and deciding to ask. “Why are you looking at the floor?”
“Well uh…you’re not dressed Rei” he mumbled back.

The association was not logical in her mind.

“Why should that matter?”

”Well uh…you’re a girl…and I’m a boy…it’s a very interment uh…” Shinji stuttered, kicking himself for the rather pathetic sounding excuse even as he said it, “and its uh…rude to stare at a naked girl without um…” he ran out of words, his face burning and ruefully wondering why his confidence had just hung a sign saying ‘out to lunch’ and vanished from his mind without warning.

Rei considered his response seriously as she sat there, and unconcerned as always. Certainly, Commander Ikari had never had any problem with her wearing no clothes in his presence, but she did realize at school the separation of the locker rooms and constant references to ‘Perverts’ and ‘Hentai’s’ suggested that there was a complex reasoning behind all this.

“I do not have a problem with you looking at me without clothes” she said after a few seconds, hoping this would clear up the issue, but instead causing his eyes to widen even more and his gaze to drop even lower to the floor, to Rei’s consternation.

“Uh...well…I just wouldn’t feel comfortable Rei” he managed to get out through the lump in his throat. No, she wouldn’t have a problem he thought, recalling a lifetime ago when he had fallen on top of her and his hands had landed on her soft, firm…
SHINJI NO BAKA!

“Very well” she said after a few seconds. He heard a rustle of sheets and then she said “would this be better?”

Almost not daring to look up, he did so and relaxed slightly as he saw Rei had pulled her sheets up over her chest with a slightly confused, but still friendly enough look on her face.

“Rei…thank you…it really does make me feel better…” he sighed, only to have his heart stop as she smiled ever so slightly.
“I had understood that most boys felt better when they could see more, not less”.

With a sound like an old record being ripped off a record player, Shinji’s mind crashed to a halt and his jaw dropped as he stared at Rei.

Did…did…did…she, did Rei Ayanami, just make a joke?

His laughter started as more of a snicker, but soon increased until he was gasping for air, tears streaming down his face at the utterly perfect innocent delivery…

Rei kept the slight smile on her face, feeling a strange resonance at the laughter across from her, almost as if by making Shinji feel happy, she could feel the same…

“Oh…that’s classic” he finally got himself under control, stifling the spasms of laughter. “But uh…for my sanity, could you…” he said, reaching down and passing her a plug suit. She nodded calmly; Shinji averted his eyes as she got out of bed and carefully into her plug suit, only looking up when he heard the distinctive hiss of the suit sealing.

Not that Rei in the skintight, curve accentuating plug suit was that much better then her naked…but it was still a significant improvement.
She’s your sister she’s your sister she’s your sister…

“Okay” he said, pulling out the hastily scrawled notes he had made. “Let me brief you on Operation Yashima…”



“The time is approaching Zero-Hundred hours” Maya said some time later as the counter on Shinji’s HUD ticked over the final few seconds, then went to zero.

“Commencing operation!”

“Alright Shinji, we’re trusting you with the energy of the entire nation of Japan, I’m counting on you!”
Gee, thanks Misato, no pressure at all! Shinji thought to himself wryly as he lightly gripped his control handles.

“Roger!” was all he said in response, glancing at the distant Angel hovering above the darkened city, a series of floodlights on the ground ensuring it was well illuminated for the shot, even though it was the Evangelions targeting computer that was going to be really doing all the work.

“Initiate primary connection, do it!” she ordered.

“Initiating power transmission from districts numbers 1 through 803” Hyuga acknowledged, throwing a heavy lever up with a grunt.

Inside the Type-14 command vehicle, a large treelike display branching from an icon designated EVA-01 on the left to longer and longer rows of icons stacked one on top of each other on the far right came to life, the right most pack of icons illuminating as the MAGI, interfaced to Japans power grid computers, started their magic.

In the wars following Third Impact, the city of Tokyo had been devastated with major implications for the country. A huge chunk of the countries infrastructure had routed through Tokyo as a central hub –including the power network- meaning when it had been taken out, huge rolling blackouts had become common for years as Japan had rebuilt.
One positive outcome of all the destruction had been a ‘never again’ attitude, leading to the primary national power backbone being racially redesigned using advanced super conducting and high capacity technology with redundant linkages. Meaning that even if certain cities in the ‘links’ were taken out, any one of the other backbone links could handle the slack. Even if up to 80% of the network had been disabled, the remaining 20% could still handle 100% of the load.
In theory.

It had never been tested to the close to the 96.25% it was going to have to run at today however. Power from Japans network of nuclear reactors was steadily diverted into one backbone at a much higher level then the design brief, all the technicians in those power plants and major node stations across the country now prayed to their ancestors that the typical Japanese quest for excellence and engineering conservatism had been put into a system paid for by the Government and built the lowest bidding contractor…

“Voltages rising…water exchange unit reaching pressure zone” a technician called, her eyes utterly glued to her monitor in the command van as the delicate dance continued.

“All cooling systems switching to full power” Hyuga called as he activated the enormous series of elaborate cooling systems jury rigged onto two kilometer long spar of cables running from the nearest backbone line to the Evangelions location. The huge fans which had been charged on their internal fuel cells over several hours sucked air in from the night sky, mixing it with tanks of liquid nitrogen and blowing it over the cables. Only a tiny trickle of power was running through them so far, but they had to be cooled to as low a temperature as they possibly could before they reached that point.

“No problems with the cooling systems detected” the “power company” technician in his own command center back near the hastily laid cables called out, making tiny adjustments as the voltage increased.

“Roger, the positron charge is nominal” the gunnery technician confirmed with a glance at the rifle status indicator on the JSSDF software, running on her secondary terminal, all coming up in the green.

“Initiate second connection!” Akagi called as the status lights all continued to flash green, causing the second tier of lights to flash red on the master display.

“All accelerator units, engaging”.

“Activate the convergence unit…now” Maya put in.

“Transmitting all energy to Mount Futago temporary substation” the distant engineer stated as he unlocked the spar, letting energy start to flow at low levels along the lines to just short of Unit One. “No problems reported with Third Connection”.

“Roger!”

“Release final safety systems!” Misato barked.

“Release final safety locks!” Hyuga echoed, turning a key on his panel as Shinji ‘cocked’ the rifle, connecting the enormous, fifty billion Yen fuse to the rifle power unit.

“Safety systems released” Shinji replied, flicking a switch that caused the advanced gunnery display to unlock and come down in front of him, a wire frame of the distant Angel already locked into the gunnery computer, slaved to the MAGI through the rifles own fire control systems.

“Error correction for Earth rotational and gravitational differentials is at zero point zero zero zero nine”.

“Voltage is zero point two short of critical” the power technician added, chewing his lip as sparks shot from a couple of transformers outside, but they held.

“Seventh and Tenth connections, engaged! Transmitting all energy to the positron rifle!” Hyuga cried as Japans nuclear reactors were thrown into overload, energy surging near the speed of light down the lines as the joules built up through the cable network, to be released in a massive180 Gigawatt pulse.

“Secondary forces, engage!”

Instantly, a pair of Type-20 mortars, the only two left in Tokyo-3’s inventory, opened fire on the move, twin beams of brilliant white light from much closer in then Shinji’s position hamming into the AT field with a brilliant light, the combat computer tracing the fire as twin lines on his vector display which exploded on contact, a pair of arsenal buildings opened fire to add their own salvos of hundreds of light rockets which exploded and bounced off the Angels AT field all over the place.

Predictably, the Angels beam lanced out first at one, then the other Type 20 and turned them into loosely associated particulate matter in the atmosphere before, perhaps sensing the power buildup in the far distance; it ceased fire as it realized it might just have been had.

Too late Shinji thought, as Misato shouted to fire.

A brilliant beam of green light snapped out like a whip across LakeAshi, straight as an arrow towards the distant Angel-

Then it slowed, warped and diverted slightly as, at the last second, the Angel fired its own beam.
It was a weak shot, nowhere near the full charge the Angel probably wanted, but that was mostly an irrelevancy as the magnetic fields of the two beams came within reach, touched, repelled and warped the other, twisting and turning like a pair of snakes before speeding up again.

Shinji’s shot nicked the side of the Angel, deflected from its dead center alignment to scathe down the equatorial band, energy exploding back out from the wound as the antimatter and plasma left over from the effort of penetrating the AT field did its work, before the majority of the beams energy shot off towards the horizon, eventually into low Earth Orbit then out into local space to dissipate. The Angels shot was steered violently off course by the same overwhelming energy, cutting steeply down into Lake Ashi where it sent a huge cloud of steam exploding into the air and dug a trench that would become quite the tourist diving experience into the bedrock.

“Missed!” Shinji snapped over the communications line as the light faded from the spectacular light show, reaching up and ratcheting a new fuse into place, starting the barrel cooling cycle at the same time.

That’s faster of the mark he thought grimly, recalling last time it had taken a good twenty seconds to recover from the Angels near miss.

“Fuses replaced, initiating recharge” Hyuga jumped right in as he worked his console, the team gaining what Shinji knew was an incredibly valuable dozen seconds as they got moving on the recharge.

“The Angel took a direct hit to it’s forth Quadrant” Shigeru called from his position down in Headquarters where he was doing damage control. “Reading heavy damage to its equatorial section there…it’s rotating!”

Shinji looked up to see the Angel was indeed turning on its axis to take its ruined, burning side out of the equation while continuing to drill down, presenting a fresh weapons ‘corner’ towards Unit One.

”Barrel cooling in progress” a technician called as coolant was flushed over and down the long barrel.

“Come on…come one” Shinji hissed, looking at the ominously silent Angel.

“Fifteen more seconds” Aoba promised as he worked his console, praying for the barrel of the positron cannon to hold up for just one more shot…

“High energy output detected inside the target!” Maya shouted in alarm as energy started to cascade along the three untouched sides of the Angel, somehow looking brighter and thicker then before, as if the Angel was now really pissed off.

“Come on come on!” Misato unknowingly echoed Shinji, as if through shear willpower they could accelerate the changing cycle…but physics was physics after all.

“The enemy drill has broken into the Geofront” Aoba called form downstairs in alarm as sirens started to go off all over the command van.

Shinji’s sites blinked green-
And Shinji didn’t fire, recalling a passing comment from Akagi after this Angel had been destroyed last time as he watched the Angels energy buildup continue-

“SHINJI, what are you DOING-“

“Rei, cover me!” Shinji shouted instead to his wingman, praying she was listening in on the channel.

Rei without hesitation rolled Unit Zero into place, her shield snapping up as Ramiel fired, a bright pink beam snapping out across the Lake to crash into Rei’s shield. The EM field projected by it scattered the beam over a large surface area made up of insulating and energy absorbing material, but even that heat sink started to rapidly ablate under the hellish firepower.

“GOD DAMNIT SHINJI, FIRE YOU WEAPON!” Misato demanded in a near panic.

“No, wait, he’s right!” Akagi decided as her mind spun, looking at Shinji’s targeting data on a repeater screen in the command van, wondering how the hell she hadn’t thought of this and how Shinji had.

Shinji watched as the targeting system which had signified a solid lock just before the Angel fired, flickered, the MAGI now factoring in the local EM distortion from the Angels own weapons fire that otherwise would have deflected his shot once again. Adjusting his aim point ever so slightly to the left, the lock indicator once again went green.

Now he pulled the trigger.

Once again, the enormous blast of energy screamed out of the gun, arcing half a degree to the left to be repelled and turned back by the Angels beam-
Right into the bull’s-eye.

The beam crashed through the side of the Angel, the ‘chewy antimatter center’ of it pouring into the Angels interior, annihilating everything in its path into a cloud of high energy plasma that incinerated the core, the last dregs of the beam passing through and blowing back out the other side to crash into a hill behind the city and send thousands of tons of dirt flying.

Unit Zero collapsed onto its side.

“REI!” he shouted in alarm, the targeting display retracting as he leapt up from the rifle.

“I’m…okay” her voice came back to Shinji’s utter relief as he saw the shield had held for long enough to leave Unit Zero unharmed, this time. Rei slowly brought her unit to its feet.
“I’m so sorry for putting your life in Danger” he said to Rei over a private Eva to Eva channel, “but I had to adjust for-“
“You do not need to apologize” her voice came back as they started to work their way back down the reverse side of the mountain, avoiding vehicles, cables and personnel. “I…trusted that you had a reason for asking it of me…and this proved to be correct”.

She trusted that I had a reason to ask her to risk her life Shinji thought in amazement.

She didn’t do it because she was ordered to.

She didn’t do it because she didn’t care if she died.

She did it because she trustedme.

“I…am honored you trust me with your life” was all he could think of saying in return…not realizing it was probably the best thing he could have said.

“As you trusted me with yours to protect you” her voice came back softly, causing Shinji to blink again as he considered her statement.
Well it was true, he had never doubted for a split second that Rei would come through for him…

“Hey Shinji” Misato broke onto his screen with a slightly sheepish look on her face. “Good call holding off firing until the computer could adjust”.

Shinji smiled slightly. “I just remembered something Doctor Akagi said; ‘Since the positron beam will be influenced by the Earth's gravity, magnetic fields and rotation’-“
“It will not fire in a straight line” Akagi finished her own quotation with a smile on her face. “I’m just glad you were listening” she said.

Misato shot her a dirty look but turned back.

”Okay bring it back home” she smiled. “We need a victory party for this back home!”
Shinji smiled back. It was just too good an opportunity to pass up.
“Really? Cool!” he grinned, flicking his communications unit over to the general NERV/UN frequency. “Hey everyone, victory party at Katsuragi’s place!”

Dozens upon dozens of cheers came back over the open line, causing Misatos jaw to drop and Akagi to explode with laughter, before Shinji closed the line.

“Well I have to get rid of that beer somehow” he muttered to himself with a shrug, before turning back to Rei’s curious looking face and smiling.
“Party time!”



Yes I know we still don't really have any major changes to the time line, yet, but that is going to start shifting in a major way next chapter.

I'm skipping the whole Jet Alone thing as that really didn't serve any other purpose then to explore Mistao's character somewhat, to show that she can be a very serious, professional and self sacrificing person when she needs to.

Of course WE all know that and SHINJI knows that, so meh.
It still happens 'in universe' of course, but not described here, except perhaps a throw away line or two.

Instead, we have finally reached the arrival of Asuka...and oh boy is this going to be so much fun


Don't expect many updates for a while though. Battlestar Galactica is about to release 'Razor' and Stargate Atlantis is back on, meaning Derelict is back on the front burner.

[Academia Nut]

“Uh...well…I just wouldn’t feel comfortable Rei” he managed to get out through the lump in his throat. No, she wouldn’t have a problem he thought, recalling a lifetime ago when he had fallen on top of her and his hands had landed on her soft, firm…
SHINJI NO BAKA!

I laughed, that's all there is to it. It was just so... perfectly done.

Oh, and I just have to say: "Sweet" to the resurrection of Derelict. These stories are both too awesome for words.

[LadyTevar]

DERELICT?!?! YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Although this one is fun too

[Sidewinder]

A good chapter, despite some annoying grammar and spelling errors-- you really should proofread it before posting.

[Chris OFarrell]

“An Mi-26 Transport Helicopter! I never thought I’d ride in one of these hot mamas! Man its sure great having a famous Eva pilot like you for a friend Shinji!”

Shinji Ikari couldn’t help but smile slightly at Kensuke’s enthusiasm as his friend swung his camera around, trying to capture every square centimeter of the heavily customized helicopter. Aida had been on the equivalent of a sugar high since stepping onto the chopper, when the ‘quiet day trip’ promised by Misato had mutated into a surprise helicopter ride and this was in fact the first time Shinji could recall him making a coherent sentence since takeoff almost an hour ago.
Toji had taken the surprise flight somewhat in stride as he continued to steal an occasional look at Misato in her semi formal uniform jacket with its very short skirt…but it was a dramatic difference from the ‘last time’ in this chopper where Shinji had been forced to sit next to an utterly infatuated Toji, whose gaze hadn’t shifted a millimeter from the back of Misato’s seat for the entire flight.
I guess Hikari is having more of an effect on him then I had anticipated Shinji decided with a mental shrug.
So much the better.

With that thought however, his mind drifted back to the events of the last fortnight which, for once, had been empty of major emergencies –with the exception of the Jet Alone incident- to risk his life over.
Not that it had been exactly quiet, just that for a short time he hadn’t had to try and battle multi story tall killing machines out to end the human race.

Hikari’s campaign against Toji had continued; the two slowly but steadily becoming increasingly at ease in each others company though surprisingly, it had been Toji’s younger sister Kana who was doing most of the work.

Clearly she was able to see where things were going, approved of it and had decided to step in and carefully nudge the two along with a skill and ease that stunned Shinji. Well either that or she was sick to death of nearly starving every day at lunch time.

And she was good. He had seen Kana manipulate Hikari into walking ‘her’ home, before stealthfully moving off ahead and leaving Hikari to walk Toji home together instead. She had once had both of them mysteriously take her to the shops to buy things she never actually brought under the justification of taking Hikari for fashion advice and her brother to ‘escort’ her, then again just vanished to leave them both standing around together with only each other for company, the two slowly opening up…
After watching one of these evasions from a distance by chance, Shinji had decided then and there to tread very, very carefully around Toji’s sister.
Not that he didn’t find her insufferably cute in a little Sister sort of way of course.
She was just too clever and manipulative by half.

His interactions with the girls of class 3-F had been somewhat more exasperating, though in hindsight he probably should have expected consequences from his rejection of Chihiro.
He had a strong feeling that she was where the rumor that he was ‘attracted to members of his own sex’, explaining why he wasn’t taking any Girl to the dance had started from.

Fortunately, after a rather awkward morning, very few of the Girls –thank you Hikari- and even fewer of the ‘guys’ –thank you Toji- had believed it and Chihiro appeared to be increasingly isolated outside of her hardcore group of friends.
But the accusations had done their damage, stirring disturbing memories he had tried to suppress of another boy his age; one with red eyes and a perpetually amused smile on his face…who had given up everything for him because he had unconditionally loved him, regardless of such irrelevant ‘Lilim’ concerns as gender.
And wow, did I show him how worthy I was of that trust.

On the NERV front at least, things were proceeding more or less the same as he had remembered them, with only a few, strange exceptions.
Misato had forgiven him for the snap house party he had called.
Not that she had had a problem with the party itself, with probably three hundred NERV and UN personnel flowing out into a semi street party, a celebration of life backlit by the still cheerfully burning corpse of the 5th Angel in the center of the city…but the cleanup the next day…
Well that and fact that Shinji had headed out to school before she had woken up and Pen Pen had evaded his mistress by mysteriously vanishing from the apartment somehow.

Though she had forgiven him when the cleaning crew had had hired and paid for had shown up half an hour after she got up.

On the plus side, with her beer supplies exhausted after the long night, she had instead been drawn to the coffee machine Shinji had carefully purchased and set up with simple step by step instructions that even a hung over Misato couldn’t screw it up, delivering an absolutely delicious cup of coffee that had woken her up without the complication of alcohol. And to his delight before they had headed out to NERV the next day she had again chosen coffee over the beer, despite having replenished her stock without thinking when she did the shopping.
He still had thought it slightly unfair that both he and Rei had to come in for a scheduled Synch test the day after shooting Ramiel down, but given that all the senior staff had come back to work without a break, he could hardly complain. Unfortunately, as Unit Zero was still in the process of being upgraded and repaired, Rei had been allowed to head on home early leaving him alone when had gotten out of the entry plug, showering then heading back out for the lift, only to be stopped short by the cage leader as he had headed towards the long exit to the Geofront.
“Excuse me, Shinji, could I have a word?”
Shinji had blinked in surprise at that, but nodded and followed him into a small office overlooking Unit One standing in its pool of cryogenic coolant up to its neck.
“I would like to talk about my daughter” the senior NCO had said without preamble, as he sat on the edge of a desk loaded with technical readouts, reports and diagrams.
“Your daughter…” Shinji asked in confusion, before it his eyes finally focused in on the name tag on the technician’s uniform.

H . Tanaka.
Chihiro Tanaka.
“You’re…Chihiro’s Father?” he asked in some surprise and even a slight amount of unease.
This could be bad…

“Hai” he replied with a sigh. “Hama Tanaka. I love my daughter, but this job keeps me so busy that I don’t have enough time to spend with her”. He frowned slightly, a tinge of sympathy coming over his features. “But I’ve heard a little about what she’s been putting you through recently and I have to apologize…she lost her mother when she was very young…and she’s always been a very aggressive person as a result-”
“You don’t have to apologize for her” Shinji said, a sudden deep sympathy for Chihiro resonating with him as he recalled that a large percentage of his classmates had lost their Mothers…and as far as he knew, every one of those classmates was an Evangelion pilot candidate.
Glancing out at Unit One which, as always, returned his gaze levelly, Shinji felt his jaw tighten slightly.
His mother he knew had made a conscious choice to ‘end’ her life and Asuka’s at least had fully known the risks with the technology she was working with.
But if he ever confirmed his suspicions linking NERV and SEELE to the deaths of his classmates mothers…
The –disturbingly pleasant- image of Keel Lorenze, his Father and the rest of the SEELE gang looking up in horror as Unit One’s size four hundred foot came crashing down interjected itself into his mind for a second before he shook it off.

“Chihiro is a nice person Sir…it’s just that I have too much to worry about right now with NERV and piloting to consider any kind of relationship”. His lip twitched. “I just don’t think anyone outside of NERV really can understand what this job means”.
“I know that Shinji and I promise I’ll try to make her understand that…but I owe you an apology as well” he said, now looking somewhat embarrassed and uneasy. “When you first arrived, the son of the Commander and all that, word…got out of how much you were getting paid. It shames me to admit it, but I thought far less of you then you deserved”.
As Shinji opened his mouth to protest, Hama held up a hand, clearly wanting to get his thoughts out.
“No, listen. I was tired from the thirty six hour shift I had pulled and I stupidly complained in front of Chihiro about how you had walked in, picked up your pay cheque and left the mess for us to clean up. It was utterly unprofessional and disrespectful of my position anyway, but then you spent a week working your butt off to get up to speed, putting your life on the line willingly against those damn Angels again and again, treating us with a respect and professionalism that no-one expected from…”
“Someone with the surname Ikari?” Shinji smirked.
“No, from a fourteen year old boy blackmailed into piloting that thing” he replied with a glance out at Unit One. “I wasn’t in the cage when you had that shouting match with your Father, but I heard about it later the next day. And after I saw how seriously you took your job…I should have guessed that you might take after your mother more then your father…you are so like her in so many ways”

That remark caused Shinji’s thoughts to crash to a halt spectacularly.

“You….you knew my Mother?” he asked in a quiet voice, feeling that yearning deep inside him once again. He knew he shouldn’t be surprised; his Mother had worked for SEELE then GEHERN for quite some time after all.
But he had never thought any of the ‘lower level’ workers would have such memories of her…
Hama nodded slowly.
“Yes, I worked with her for quite a few years”.
“What…what was she like?” Shinji asked quietly.

Hama simply smiled slightly, as if pleased he had asked the question.

“Yui…” he said thoughtfully, his gaze drifting across to Unit One, “well she was always down here in the trenches…she always had time for the little people, a simple smile or word of encouragement and she could curse like you wouldn’t believe when she couldn’t get something to work” he chuckled, causing Shinji to smile broadly as Hama recounted an incident where his Mother had screamed in rage for five minutes at Unit One kicking its foot repeatedly with her own the whole time, no-one daring to approach her.
Or laugh.

“Everyone down here utterly adored her. She was the driving force behind this entire project...and for what it’s worth, I know she loved you with all her heart”.

That at least I had never doubted Shinji thought silently.

“And you loved her” he added. “I remember once when that Zeppelin Soryu from the Third Branch was visiting with her girl, they put you and her together in the play pen upstairs and-”
“Wait, wait” Shinji interrupted as his mind caught up, thinking he couldn’t have possibly heard right. “Are you talking about-?”
“The Second Child” he nodded, then cocked his head in thought. “That’s right, she’s coming back over here with Unit Two in a fortnight, isn’t she?”
At Shinji’s dumbfounded nod, he continued with a smirk.
“It was so cute, you two kids in the same playpen while your Mothers ‘talked shop’ with all of the staff, in between everyone ‘ohhing’ and ‘ahhing’ at you two. Then Kyoko’s daughter picked up one of your toys, some stuffed animal I think. You sort of crawled over and tried to take it back…and she hit you over the head with it, repeatedly, causing you to break down and cry”.

It was only by an act of God that Shinji’s expression did not change at the implications of that statement by bursting out laughing.
The more some things change…

“Yui just jumped over, picked you up and laughed, causing you to stop crying and start giggling right back” he sighed, before focusing his eyes back on Shinji. “So as I said, it’s clear which parent you take after, your Father has never given us plebs down here the time of day. Not to say he is rude, just…distant”.

They sat in silence for a second, Shinji savoring the words and look into his mothers past with a couple of deep breaths.
“Anyway, again, I just wanted to apologize for the hell Chihiro is no doubt putting you through. I’ll have another word with her-”
“Mister Tanaka …Hama” Shinji interrupted after he decided he had composed himself enough to hold back the tears that had threatened to come out as images of his mother continued to flash through his mind. “No, please don’t. I’ll have a talk to her tomorrow to see if we can put this behind us. You’ve…already done enough for me, those memories of my Mother…they are worth more to me then you can possibly imagine”.
“I’m glad you think so” he said, standing with a yawn. “Well I won’t keep you any more, you probably want to leave and I need to get to work on the post test checklists to really make sure Unit One didn’t take any damage in the engagement yesterday”.
“Actually” Shinji interrupted, the link between his Mother and the Technical staff crystallizing a decision in his mind, “I was wondering if I could run a couple of ideas past you…”



Shinji was somewhat surprised to find that the Vice Commander Fuyutsuki was actually in his office doing paperwork when he queried a MAGI terminal for his current location. Getting off the elevator and stepping into the ‘executive corridor’, he gave the huge forbidding doors at one end of the passage a long, level look before he turned away, shivering and instead walked down to a glass doorway into the antechamber of the Vice Commanders much more modest office. It was perhaps a fifth the total size of his Fathers office ‘complex’, and it had been divided into a series of even smaller rooms, starting with this small antechamber / entrance where his secretary worked as well as doors to the other rooms around them. One to a small bedroom on the left, another to a conference room on the right, and a third just next to the secretaries’ desk that lead into the Vice Commanders office itself.
It was an infinitely more functional design for a high ranking bureaucrat then the gigantic, intimidating void his Father preferred for whatever reason.
Perhaps my father gets paid by the square meter Shinji thought to himself with a smile, making a note to use that line the next time he had to go in there.

“Mister Ikari” Fuyutsuki’s attractive secretary said with an excellent simulation of astonishment in her voice as he walked in, as if his presence was a true surprise.
Shinji knew better of course. She was actually a Section Two – Delta agent who had been alerted by the MAGI the second he had stepped of the elevator, with security footage sent directly to her terminal. If he had been someone who might want to harm the Vice Commander, he would have opened the door to find an Uzi pointed in his face and a fast response squad already on the way.
I wonder how SEELE pulled off that kidnapping Shinji wondered idly before smiling back at the pleasantly smiling secretary.
“Good afternoon Miss Mutsu” he said with a polite bow. “I was wondering if I could see the Vice Commander”.
“One second” she said, tapping a key, causing a holographic window to pop up in front of her expensive looking wooden desk, which Shinji could see was covered in text saying ‘SOUND ONLY’.
“Yes?”
“Apologies for the interruption Sir” she said, “but the Third Child wishes to see you, if you are free”.
“Send him in” the gruff, no nonsense voice of the Vice Commander decided a few seconds later before the window vanished. Mutsu smiled and gestured at the large wooden door, which magically unlocked with a click.
“Go right in”.
“Thank you” he said, stepping through the now unlocked doors which clicked closed behind him, restoring the soundproof, bug proof and bullet proof seal of the Vice Commanders office.
Instantly the difference between the two most senior men at NERV became apparent. Where as his Fathers office was utterly empty, letting his presence fill the space and intimidate anyone who dared to enter his domain to challenge him, the Vice Commanders office was that of an academic. Low shelves lined the walls to the end of the far thinner and shorter rectangular room, filled with countless books, folders and papers. Framed certificates, diplomas, degrees and association records lined the wall above them, along with a handful of pictures of people, few of whom Shinji recognized.

The Vice Commander himself was sitting at his desk, a relatively simple affair with two seats in front of it and he looked up as Shinji made his way down the much shorter walk, gesturing to one of two seats across from him, closing the holographic windows he had been studying.
“Mister Ikari” he said in his usual, straight forward but friendly enough manner. “Please, have a seat”.
“Thank you” Shinji said with a nod, sitting before his eyes were drawn to one of the two pictures on his desk.
It was the Professor with Father and…his mother, the former looking…strange without his omnipresent glasses, the later smiling directly at him, in that strange way the eyes of people in photo’s appeared to track you. The professor followed his gaze then smiled slightly.
“Ah yes. That was taken shortly after I joined GEHERN, NERV’s parent organization” he said. “I had known…your mother for some time before that” he said, catching himself before he said ‘Yui’, clearly not wanting to sound too familiar.
Of course it was all for nothing, Shinji knew full well of the unrequited love this man had felt for his Mother…which was a useful lever.
Am I turning into my Father? Shinji thought at that horribly harsh sounding concept. Manipulating people’s inner most desires and feelings for my own goals as simple buttons and levers?
It was a very disturbing thought, but Shinji pushed it aside for later.
“So, what can I do for you Shinji?” the Vice Commander finally spoke up after a short silence.
“Well firstly I wanted to thank you for helping to get the school dance back on” he said, as he remembered that he had never gotten around to thanking the man for his efforts. Fuyutsuki smiled faintly and leaned back.
“Think nothing of it” he said magnanimously, “I had to use a few favors up but you more then deserve to have some fun given your responsibilities”.
“And I’m sure you earned more then a few favors from the Minister of the Interior” Shinji replied in a slightly dry tone, recalling the headlines the next day on the newspapers. “What was it, a fifteen point jump in his approval ratings after he stood up to the evil insurance company?”
Fuyutsuki caught the slight twitch in his expression before it made it onto his face as he studied the self assured pilot across from him. Shinji was far too clever by half.

Not that it was surprising given his pedigree.

Still, he conceded the point, allowing a slight smile. “Something for everyone is the best outcome, neh?”
“Hai” Shinji agreed. “But I appreciate the effort regardless”.
“Have you organized a date yet for this dance?” he asked far too casually, Shinji saw the thrust of the question, but shoook his head as he ducked to the side.
“No, I don’t really know anyone well enough at the school” he replied easily.
“Though I hear that hasn’t stopped more then a few…offers being made” he said.
“I didn’t know Section Two included my dating habits in their daily reports”.
“They include everything Shinji I’m sorry to say. You understand, it’s the price for letting you have something even approaching a normal life in public, you are just too valuable, Rei too for that matter”.
Shinji heard the double meaning in the words about Section Two as well as Rei’s value, but let it pass.
“I know, and I do appreciate their professionalism” then raised an eyebrow. “On the other hand, I would think having an Eva pilot date without being cleared by them would drive them nuts”.
“Well, what about Rei?”
Shinji kept the pleasant amiable expression on his face, but inside raised an eyebrow at that statement as the Vice Commander directed the conversation back to her.

What is that curious, tasty looking silver thing flashing in the water, the fish thinks…

“Take her? Uh, well I’ve never thought of her in that sense before”
“No?” Fuyutsuki asked with a raised eyebrow, the elderly Vice Commanders eyes boring into him.
“Not really” he shrugged, dropping his fencing sword and pulling out a sawn off shotgun. “She’s feels…like a sister to me, a sibling I never had, there’s just something so familiar about her …but I don’t look at her romantically, if that’s what you mean”.

Never bring a sword to a gunfight.

The Vice Commander hid his reaction very well, in his position he would have to be able to. But a slight flicker of one of his fingers and a blink of his eyes showed Shinji’s buckshot had thrown him right off balance.
“I see” was all he said.
“And I’m actually trying to set her up with one of my friends” he added, frowning slightly. “Though I’m not sure she quite understands the concept of being escorted to a dance…or for that matter, the dance itself”.

That at least was true. Kensuke had utterly no chance of getting himself organized after all, despite the slightly positive female – male ratio in his year and Rei didn’t quite understand the concept, even if she admitted she found the idea ‘intriguing’ and Kensuke an ‘acceptable choice’.
Not quite the enthusiastic response he had hopped for, but it would do. Assuming Kensuke didn’t have a heart attack when he actually got around to informing him of course.

“Well I am sure you will find someone, you deserve some time to unwind and enjoy yourself” the Vice Commander said, switching subjects now that he had found out what he wanted. “So, if I might ask, what was the main reason you wished to see me today?”
“It’s about these…uniforms”.
“I thought you told the Operations Director that you didn’t mind the idea”.
“I don’t” Shinji said with a shake of his head. “But I wanted to discuss a possible modification”.
The Vice Commander leaned back slightly, appraising him. “Go on”.
“The problem is I’ve found…well, a barrier, between me and the NERV people I work with. I can’t help but think they just see me as a child playing at war games, not really taking me seriously. My mother worked side by side with the teams on Unit One” he said. “They still remember her, even today, as someone who got down in the trenches so to speak, alongside them as part of their team. I on the other hand…well, I’m just the kid who pilots the thing then goes home. They’re polite and professional…but…that esprit’de’corps” –Shinji struggled over the strange word- “is just not there, despite how hard I try to integrate myself with them”.
“And you have an idea how to change that?”
“Perhaps only partially, but at least it’s a step in the right direction” he said...


Two days later, Shinji sat down on his bed and hurriedly finished unwrapping the package that had been delivered while he was at school.
His new NERV uniform.

How exactly Pen-Pen had signed for it, Shinji decided he didn’t want to know, guessing it was one of those great universal mysteries that would destroy his mind faster then Third Impact if he ever discovered the truth.

The uniform was the price of being on the NERV payroll in a big way and probably for being somewhat more stable in the head. Even if it was mostly just something for him to wear instead of his school uniform if he ever had any occasion to formally report to higher ups such as ‘The Human Instrumentality Committee’.
The concept of standing in front of SEELE’s official face quietly terrified him, but Misato had assured him it was rather unlikely to happen.

The formal ‘uniform’ was really just a jacket of exceptionally high quality he would wear over his usual white shirt and dark trousers, cut similar to Misato’s scarlet jacket but in a dark navy blue that hung over his belt without looking too large. All manner of patches covered it and made it look like a pilot’s jacket, something he found entirely appropriate. A UN military patch sat on his right shoulder just above a small but strident, Japanese flag. ‘S.IKARI’ was stitched directly into the uniform on his right breast, with ‘NERV’ stitched opposite it on his left, an allegiance reinforced by the NERV patch on his left shoulder, though circled in a thin gold band to signify his pilot status.
A half dozen zippered windbreakers were folded up under his jackets, much more simple with only his name and a Unit patch on his left and right breasts, designed to be worn in the field, over plug suits if needed, and joy of joys, they had pockets. Plug suits were comfortable enough, but the lack of pockets on them had nearly driven him insane on more then one occasion.

The Unit Patch was his own addition to both uniforms, sitting on the right breast of both, under the NERV logo on the formal jacket. It was a rather catching patch in his opinion, shaped like the head of Evangelion Unit One, the outline of its face barely visible with the four ‘war paint’ stripes and white eyes dramatically offsetting the golden ‘Evangelion - 01’ logo attached under it.
The Unit patch on his jackets had been issued to all the Unit One cage crew who wore them proudly on their shoulders. Moral, already relatively high only improved as the patches were released. When Shinji walked into the bays in his light jacket wearing the exact same patch as ‘his’ crew, he found himself increasingly getting crisp nods and smiles back from them, greeting them increasingly on a first name basis, slowly building his own network of people he knew, across most of the divisional and organizational boundaries.
He doubted he could launch a Coup d'état with these people against his Father…but they could prove to be useful in the future to ‘leak’ information at the right times.

Unfortunately, his other proposals to the Vice Commander had met with far more limited success –such as funny hat day and a hot pink paint job for Eva Unit Two when it arrived.
But he would adapt…even if he would never see his Father in an Australian cork hat sitting stoically at his desk, his head resting in his hands as he always had it


Shinji’s attention was finally dragged back to the noisy existence of the heavy transport helicopter as he realized Misato was speaking.

“Well I figured you three must be getting sick of being cooped up in those mountains for weekend after weekend, so I figured I’d take you out on a little date!”
“This is a date Misato?” Toji said in surprise, his eyes snapping up in surprise and glee.
Hikari or no Hikari, Shinji knew very few males his age who would ignore Misato with that smile on her face saying they were on a date.
“So…where are we going?” Shinji asked with a sigh at his friend’s expression, reminding himself that Hikari and Toji were going along just fine.
Misato glanced out the cockpit, grinned and looked back at him.
“Oh, I thought we’d take a cruise on that little boat down there!”

All three young men in the back of the tiny passenger compartment turned and looked out the windows on the right hand side of the helicopter. Cloud under them blocked their view for a few seconds before being whipped away to show the dull gray ships of the UN Combined Pacific Fleet stretching from horizon to horizon.

“OH MY GOD!” Kensuke screamed, louder then any fan girl he had ever met in his life as he zoomed in on the capital ships at the center of the formation. “ONE TWO THREE FOUR BATTLESHIPS AND FIVE AIRCRAFT CARRIERS! WHAT A FLEET!”
Toji’s reaction could not possibly have been more contrasting.
“That’s…your cute little boat?” he said in disbelief as their lumbering helicopter turned into approach pattern, loosing speed and altitude as they did so.
“She’s gorgeous” Kensuke breathed in reverent awe. “That’s the pride of the UN combined fleet, the Super Carrier ‘Over the Rainbow’!”
“What kind of a stupid name is that?” Toji sniffed, causing Kensuke’s grip on his camera to visibly tighten for a second.
“She’s a vintage model from just before Second Impact” Kensuke’s huffed, clearly putting aside Toji’s near heretical statements for the time being. “She was under construction at Newport as CVN-76 back when Second Impact happened. The tsunami from the impact hit the shipyard and she broke free of her moorings, getting pushed out to sea. In the chaos, everyone thought she had sunk, then two days later, she just drifted back in with the construction crew tired, wet, but still alive. When they were asked where they had been, one of them said ‘over the rainbow’ and the name stuck.
“It’s enormous” Shinji agreed, his nerves slowly increasing the reality of the ships presence started to permeate his mind, causing him to close his eyes and wipe his suddenly sweaty palms off on his NERV jacket that he had worn, to Kensuke’s great envy.
Get a grip Shinji he told himself, to utterly no effect.

The Mi-26 flared as it passed over the flight deck of the carrier, her decks filled with an exotic mixture of US, Russian and European naval aircraft. Even so, the arrival of the gigantic, customized helicopter was unusual enough that deck personnel doing programmed maintenance stood around and watched as it slowly fell out of the sky towards them.
They were not alone.

Up on the Flag Bridge, the three star Admiral in charge of the task force growled in annoyance as the huge UN helicopter descended, ranting to his long suffering Flag Captain about the injustice of this entire insane mission and stupidity about ‘bringing a power cord for that kids toy’.

A hundred meters back towards the stern, a cigarette in his mouth and a sloppy grin on his face, Ryoji Kaji watched the cargo helicopter descend with a gleam in his eye, just waiting for the right moment to surprise his old girlfriend and sighed over the fact that he hadn’t brought a camera to capture the moment.

Fifty meters forward and several stories higher then the sometimes NERV officer sometimes spy, a young teenaged adolescent who was no longer a girl but not yet quite a woman stood in the stiff breeze generated by the carriers forward motion, long hair waving in as she watched the helicopter descend the last few meters to the deck and lightly touch down, before she turned towards a nearby stairwell.

“COOL COOL COOL COOL COOL COOL COOL! TOTALLY AWESOME! I’M SO HAPPY I WANT TO CRY!” Kensuke almost sobbed in pure joy as he leaped off the helicopter, his camera swinging every which way as he tried, impossibly, to film everything he saw at the same time and came increasingly close to tripping over his own feet. “Look at those antennas and dishes and guns and launch pads and missiles…” Kensuke’s voice trailed off into silence, mostly because his lungs had run out of oxygen and his mind had fried from the sensory overload, instead simply focusing the camera and making noises of approval from the little gasps of oxygen he had to spare.

Shinji shook his head in amusement as he followed his friend away from the helicopter, pausing as he felt his unzipped jacket catch the wind and start to flutter, then recalling what that wind meant and turning in alarm as Toji hopped down onto the carriers’ flight deck, raising his voice over a sudden engine startup.
“TOJI, HOLD ON TO YOUR-”

Too late.

Toji’s precious new basketball cap was ripped from his questing fingers by the wind, skidding off down the flight deck with Toji madly following in pursuit, screaming at someone to stop it. Shinji was peripherally aware of Misato coming around from the cockpit, yawning and rubbing her neck as she took in the fresh sea breeze, but didn’t pay attention as he prayed that what he had read about Chaos Theory in the last couple of weeks held true.

Unfortunately, the probability Gods didn’t take pity on him as a final gust of wind sent Toji’s hat skidding into the path of a slim red sandal which crashed down and arrested its progress.

Shinji swallowed. Heavily.

There she was.

She looked exactly as he remembered her, her glorious auburn hair streaming out behind her in the wind with that yellow sundress she had worn sparingly -but had always made him weak at the knees- held up by twin straps neatly tied off with small bows on her shoulders, complemented by a light blue velvet strip that circled her throat. Her eyes were those same brilliant sapphires burned into his memory that could express more emotion in a slight shift of focus then most people could with their entire body, currently focused on Misato as the Captain smiled at her, utterly ignoring the increasingly strident noises Toji was making at her feet. As always, she wore her A-10 clips in an effort to gather her hair back and Shinji spotted a new addition, a pair of tiny studs in her ears that sparkled brilliantly in the bright sunlight, only helping to accentuate the air of maturity she flaunted like a sledge hammer.

“Welllllll Hullo Misato!” she called cheerfully as Toji continued to try and extricate his hat with little success, growling slightly in frustration. “How have you been?”
“Just fine” Misato replied, looking over the other. “Goodness, you’ve grown some haven’t you?”
“Uh-huh!” she agreed happily, before putting her hands on her hips. “And I’m not just taller either, my figures filled out as well” she boasted.

Misato smiled tolerantly at her before speaking up slightly for the benefit of the three other people around her. “Let me introduce you. This is the designated pilot of Eva unit Two, the Second Child; Asuka Langley Sohryu”.

Shinji, in a singular perfect moment of revelation –which lucky people might have perhaps one or two times in their lifetimes- finally understood the phrase ‘deer in headlights’. Why those majestic animals just froze as enormous, fast moving vehicles came bearing down on them, even when they had plenty of time to get out of the way.
Because right now, despite knowing what was about to happen, despite being aware of the consequences…he found himself unable to look away as a gust of wind pushed across the flight deck, billowing Asuka’s dress at her waist and giving the trio of young men in front of her a splendid view of her utterly gorgeous legs and white, lacey –probably cotton- undergarments-

CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
Ouch.
He was hardly a person who was comfortable with pain, let alone some kind of pervert who got off on it…but he found himself suddenly ruthlessly fighting back tears that had nothing to do with his stinging cheek.

“WHAT DID YOU DO THAT FOR?” Toji demanded as he scrambled to his feet, his cap firmly clenched in his right hand as he glared at Asuka.
Misato was clearly trying not to laugh as Toji was about five seconds from blowing his top and even Kensuke had a wince on his face looking at the impending showdown between the two ego cases.

“That’s the viewing fee” she sniffed. “Quite a bargain don’t you think?”

“It’s overpriced” Toji replied with a strange half snarl, half scoff, anger starting to replace the throbbing shock as he reached for his belt. So this prima donna has a high opinion of herself does she? Well then, how would she like-
His hands stopped just as they reached his belt from the pressure of another hand falling on his shoulder. Glancing back, he saw Shinji shake his head, the somewhat amused expression on his face saying ‘trust me, you don’t want to do this’. Growling, Toji let go and retreated back beside Misato, leaving Shinji in the vanguard to face the person Toji had already named ‘The Red Demon’ in his mind.

“So!” Asuka cheerfully, stepping forward as if nothing had just happened and about to ask a question before she paused as she spotted the strident patch on Shinji’s jacket and turned the full force of her gaze onto him, before aggressively stepping into his personal space and narrowing her eyes in study.

It took every ounce of his self control, of his newfound confidence and his strength not to wrap his arms around her, hold her tight and start crying his eyes out as he apologized for everything, as she brought her face to within inches of his.

If she saw the play of emotions across his face, she didn’t comment on them, huffing instead as she backed away, her brief inspection completed, her eyes opening doubtfully.
“Well. So, this is the famous Third Child then?”
“Yes” he managed to get out in a surprisingly level voice that gave him some tiny amount of confidence, desperately trying to keep his head clear as he knew the one thing that would turn Asuka against him faster then anything else would be acting like a spineless wimp. “And you would be the famous Second Child Misato is always talking about”

“She does?” Asuka asked, her smile twitching wider and a flash of vanity pulsing in her stunning eyes.

I do? Misato wondered with a frown, wondering if perhaps she really was drinking too much and her memory was starting to be affected…

“The most heavily trained pilot of our group - over a decades worth of training in fact, a college degree your belt at fourteen years old and the designated pilot for the first production model Evangelion” he said, inclining his head slightly.

That’s it Shinji, stroke that ego like you want to stoke her long silky…PAY ATTENTION!!

“Well I’m glad to see Misato has taught you to maintain the proper level of respect for my superior skills, intelligence and beauty!” she declared with an imperious lift of her chin and impish smile, flinging her hair back into place as she stepped back several meters, glancing approvingly at his jacket and stabbing her finger out at it. “Say Misato, when do I get one of those?”

”When we arrive back at NERV central and you go on duty” Misato replied, blinking away her surprise at how much Shinji knew about Asuka and guessing he had actually spent the time to read the parts of her general file – at least the parts he could access with his low level account on the MAGI.
But why did he say I told him all of those things about her? She wondered, before shrugging and gesturing everyone towards the ships island.



“NERV” Vice Admiral Robert Coones of the United States Navy said several minutes later on the Rainbows Flag Bridge, as if the word summed up every single thing that was wrong with the world, his job and his mission.
Which, actually, wasn’t such an illogical position, come to think of it Shinji reflected as the senior officer glared at Misato.
“From your actions on the flight deck, I take it you are the leader of this gang of boy scouts? Obviously, I was mistaken” he snorted, handing Misato back her card. Misato, in her full working uniform including a red beret on her head kept a calm, level expression on her face.
“Thank you, for all your gracious hospitality Admiral” she said with the expected difference from a junior officer to a superior one.
“Oh no, thank you for giving me the opportunity to baby sit even more kids!” Coones said with a roll of his eyes towards the ceiling, as if pleading with some divine force to kill him now.

Kensuke, who passed behind Misato giggling softly as he walked around videotaping everything, punctuated the Flag officers complaint rather pointedly.

“And thank you” for your assistance in the marine transport of Evangelion Unit Two” Misato replied, ignoring the sarcasm in his voice. As a nominal O3 Captain in the UN Army on detached service with NERV, Misato was outranked by roughly six levels of rank by the O9 Vice Admiral, but the fact that she was attached to NERV muddied the waters considerably, letting her get away with much more back talk then any normal officer could have. “Here are the specifications for the emergency power supply socket”
The Admiral glanced over the cover sheet, signed by both his immediate superior and some person named Gendo Ikari before snorting yet again. “You’ve wasted a trip, I’d never agree to any request to activate that…toy at sea in the first place!”

Shinji felt, rather then saw Asuka’s eyebrows twitch at ‘her’ Evangelion being denigrated as little more then a toy, but she kept her peace as Shinji struggled to keep his composure. Her presence right behind his shoulder was slowly smothering him regardless of how much he tried to focus on something, anything else. Her familiar scent, a mixture of her vanilla conditioners and even that expensive German deodorant she had categorically insisted on importing over local brands slowly worked their magic on Shinji, preventing him from being able to concentrate for more then a few seconds at a time.
God damn it, I have to get away from her before I break down right here!

“Just think of it as being prepared for any eventuality” Misato tried one last time to make her peace with the officer in front of her. “The Eva is quite valuable Sir”.

“So valuable that the entire pacific fleet is guarding it!” he bit out. “When the hell did the UN re-commission us into a bloody cargo service?”
“If my memory serves me correctly, it was about the same time as a certain secret organization went active and started throwing its weight around” his Captain put in.
“What a grandiose assignment for the entire pacific fleet” the Admiral repeated again as if he just couldn’t believe it. “All for that toy”

Shinji couldn’t help but roll his eye at the Admirals continual dismissal of the Evangelion.

“You have a problem young man?” the Admiral addressed him directly with a rather disapproving tone in his voice.
Shinji caught the warning glance from Misato, but didn’t care, glad to have something, anything, to distract him from Asuka’s overwhelming presence.
“Admiral, have you ever been in combat?” he asked bluntly, then as the Admiral opened his mouth, added “and I mean real combat, on the front line, not on the bridge directing other men from a distance”.

The Admiral glared at him. Shinji took that as a ‘no’.

“Well Sir, I have, so has the First Child and I’m sure very shortly, so too will have the Second” he said, jerking his head slightly in the direction of Asuka beside him. “In my first engagement, I went up against an Angel that chewed through a Tank Battalion in four minutes flat, destroyed three dozen aircraft and took more firepower then this entire battle group could dish out, right up to the use of Strategic scale N2 weapons. The UN and JSSDF threw everything they had at it and barely slowed it down at the cost of over a thousand lives and half a billion US dollars”.

Shinji waited a few seconds as a vein on the Admirals forehead started to pulse as he took a breath and continued, keeping his voice calm and level.

“With the greatest of respect, Sir” he continued, “the twin of that toy you are transporting took out that Angel in sixty three seconds, with no civilian casualties, no military casualties and minimal collateral damage to the city it was fighting in. Us ‘kids’ have to pilot these things because there isn’t anyone else who can. While our classmates at school are worrying about who they’ll invite to the dance, we are wondering if tomorrow we’ll die as we’re ripped to pieces by something nuclear weapons barely slow down, knowing if we fail, out entire race is going to die. So, respectfully, I’d ask you to show some fucking respect”.

The silence on the bridge was so total that Shinji decided that you wouldn’t just be able to hear a pin drop, but the sound of it falling through the air would have been deafening for the two or so seconds no-one dared to speak, move or breathe in.

Jesus H Christ where did that come from Shinji wondered in astonishment. Was just being around Asuka spiking his testosterone levels enough to do that?

“You four; clear the bridge” Misato ordered her charges without looking away from the Admiral, feeling that if she did look at Shinji, she wouldn’t be able to stop from reaching over and hugging him so tightly he would probably choke…which would ruin the effect.
“Mam” Shinji acknowledged in that same perfectly level tone that sounded disturbingly like his Father, wheeling around and heading for the door, just missing the look of admiration that had fleetingly passed over Asuka’s face as she fell into step behind him along with Toji and surprisingly even Kensuke, who didn’t protest as they hurried off the bridge and out the door.
“My apologies for that Admiral” Misato lied through her teeth. “He’s had a very hard couple of months”.
“I understand” he nodded briefly then sighed, the Admiral ruefully admitting to himself that he hadn’t exactly been diplomatic, or picked the right target to vent his frustration with being turned into a glorified cargo service on. “Please…convey my apologies to the pilots if I was out of line” he said briefly.
“Yes Sir” she nodded. “Well, please continued to New Yokosuka as planned” she said with a salute, before backing off the bridge and following the Children out the door, fighting to keep the grin off her face.


“Shinji…” Toji said in pure admiration as the quartet of current and future classmates exited the bridge, “that was the most bad ass thing I have ever seen anyone do in my life”.
“To put it mildly” Kensuke agreed, the expression on his face suggesting he was on the verge of getting down and worshipping his friend in awe after that performance.
Shinji felt rather then saw Asuka staring at him, turning to try and decode the odd expression on her face, which promptly fell off as he returned her gaze.
“Well good going Third Child, now we’ve been kicked off the bridge for the rest of this trip!”
“That Admiral deserved it” Toji rebuffed Asuka, as always, the one person utterly fearless of her wraith. “Or are you just jealous that you couldn’t say it first as you haven’t actually been in combat yet? Have you Rookie?”

Asuka’s gaze went from ‘conversation condescending’ to ‘hyper death’ in about a half second and Shinji took an involuntary step back from the Second Child, knowing in his heart that Toji was a dead man-

“Okay that’s enough” Misato said as she joined them, shooting a warning look at both Asuka and Toji that caused them both to grudgingly back down, the small party heading down the stairs towards a small elevator. “Shinji, officially, I have to formally tell you that that kind of behavior to a senior UN officer is not acceptable from NERV personnel and you…ah to hell with it, that was just brilliant kid!” she smiled as they reached the bottom of the stairs.
The group chuckled at that and Shinji felt his face go slightly red, before a new voice broke in sounding highly amused.
“Well I can see you’re as confident as ever” a man said, causing Asuka’s face to light up in delight and Misato’s to frown slightly, as if she was trying to match up something in her memory.
The group turned to see a man in his late 20’s or early 30’s in a blue shirt leaning against the wall, just inside the cross corridor at the base of the stairwell. A slight stubble was present over his face and his tie was hanging somewhat loose in a way no officer on this ship would ever accept…but the combination Shinji knew, for some reason, drove most women utterly nuts.
“KAJI!” Asuka gleefully shouted, her hands clasping together in delight.
Misato’s expression was so utterly priceless that Shinji kicked himself for not having Kensuke tape this moment as Kaji levered himself off the wall and sauntered over towards the group with that same, self assured grin Shinji remembered.

Misato looked desperately at the elevator, as if calculating her chances of diving inside and stabbing the buttons on the control panel, but clearly decided she would never make it solo as the doors opened, the six people forcing their way into an elevator really designed for three.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Misato demanded as the elevator dropped down the Island into the honeycomb of compartments under the flight deck…far too slowly.
“Accompanying Asuka” Kaji replied as smoothly as he could, given that he like everyone else had utterly no room to move. “I'm on a…business trip of sorts, from the Third Branch”.
“I should have anticipated this” Misato growled, closing her eyes for a second, then snapping them wide open again.
“HEY! DON’T TOUCH ME!” Misato shouted as Asuka also let loose a shout of protest and horror.
“I CAN’T HELP IT!” Kaji and Toji protested right back.

The elevator ride ended a few seconds later and the group all but fell out into the passage just outside the small Captains mess Misato had been directed to. Misato sprinted out first, no mean feet given that she had been at the back of the elevator, followed by the quartet of children and slowly pursuing Kaji, the group claiming a table right next to a TV set, some movie Shinji vaguely remembered from a few years ago playing on it. Misato who made it to the table first took one corner of it with Toji claiming the seat next to her and Kaji claiming the seat opposite her as a matter of course. Asuka of course took the seat next to Kaji and Kensuke –sensibly- chose Toji over Asuka, leaving Shinji the seat he both wanted and dreaded next to the Second Child, as cups of tea and coffee were served up by a steward.

“So…are you seeing anyone?” Kaji asked, his foot tapping softly against Misato’s own after the silence had stretched uncomfortably.
“I don’t think that’s any of your business” she replied shortly, continuing to ignore him as she focused her attention at the TV with a look of irritation on her face, pulling her legs back sharply away from his when he didn’t stop.
“Oh. I’m hurt” he mock pouted with a slight chuckle, taking a sip of the excellent USN coffee with a sigh before placing the cup down and leaning forward to look past Asuka.
“So” Kaji smiled at Shinji. “I understand that you’re living with Katsuragi now aren’t you?”
Shinji nodded and Kaji leaned forward even more, the smile on his face turning somewhat conspiratorial.
“So tell me…is she still wild in bed?”
There was a collective ‘WHAAAT?’ from the other four people on the table as Kaji’s words sunk in.
Asuka, Toji and Kensuke backed away from Kaji, their arms coming up simultaneously in exactly the same warding gesture, Shinji noting to his amusement it would be one of the few times those three had exactly the same reaction like that.
Misato who had been slumped in her chair and studiously ignoring Kaji sat up in utter shock, her feet pressing against the floor with enough force to tilt her chair backward slightly, before it crashed forward again, Misato rebounding off the Table as she lunched forward, her arms slamming down with enough force to upset three of the coffee mugs as she brought her face now almost as red as her uniform to within inches of Kaji.
“WHAT IN THE HELL ARE YOU IMPLYING BY THAT?!” she demanded in an enraged voice that would have probably made Gendo Ikari himself flinch.
Kaji on the other hand simply smiled slightly, his eyes flicking to her enraged face then back to Shinji with a sigh.
“No…she hasn’t changed at all, has she Shinji?” he commented as Misato’s face lost its color slowly, rage giving way to embarrassment as she realized how easily Kaji had pushed her buttons…
“Was she just as obsessed about keeping her house clean with absolutely no alcohol back when you knew her?” Shinji asked in a tone of mild curiosity.
Kaji blinked…then burst out laughing as he got the joke.
Misato glared at both of them, then slinked down back into her chair, holding her head in her hands and moaning as if in great pain.
“Ah I see your famous sense of humor is as razor sharp as I’ve heard”.

”So why do you know so much about me?” Shinji asked Kensuke started to right the cups, luckily all empty, that had fallen over.
“Well you’re rather well known in my line of work for NERV” he smiled. “The famous Third Child who piloted an Eva in his first battle with no training!”

Asuka who had just lowered her arms now turned in her chair to glare at him out of the corner of her eyes at the praise from Kaji, making Shinji swallow slightly.
“I was incredibly lucky in that battle, the Eva went out of control and I had very little to do with anything that happened” he hastily explained.

Asuka’s expression changed slightly as if in consideration before it started to ease, the Second Child apparently deciding this excused his performance in the First Battle of Tokyo-3.
Misato then ruined it of course.
“But the next Angel you fought on your own” she pointed out, rejoining the conversation as she refused to let Shinji put himself down, her pride in him coming forth at the worst possible time. “You made Unit One move in ways even the people who designed the Eva’s couldn’t understand!”
Misato…I hate you Shinji thought as Asuka’s glare, which had started to weaken, was suddenly reinforced to a level that Shinji suspected would have fried the 5th Angel, without the need for anything so mundane as a positron cannon.

I need to change the logo on my NERV patch to ‘Asuka is angry with me, all is right with the world’ Shinji decided with a mental sigh.

“I was just lucky” Shinji shrugged, shooting Misato a look that begged her to just drop the subject which she finally got, backing off in understanding..
“Luck is a part of your destiny” Kaji smiled, noting the interplay and realizing Shinji did recognize the source of Asuka’s hostility towards him. Smart kid indeed…
“Well” Kaji continued, standing, “I’ve got to be going now so I’ll see you later”.
“Bye” Shinji nodded politely as he stepped away from the table, giving the still furiously shocked Misato an amused smile as Asuka quickly followed in his wake without so much as glance back at the rest of the table.
“This has to just be a nightmare” the Director of Operations moaned to herself, wondering how what had started as such a pleasant day had turned so horrible.

[Chris OFarrell]

Buried a hundred meters under what had been a park in one of Japans coastal cities fifteen years ago, Gaghiel stirred. It felt something, a presence it had not felt for quite some time; approaching…floating on the surface of the water it now knew was above it. A presence that, even in its pathetically diminished state sung to it and woke it from its long slumber.
Shrugging off countless tens of thousands of tons of stone and ruble with a pulse of its AT field, the 6th Angel rose from the surface of the Earth in a cloud of mud and silt, then swum at speed to the North.



A few minutes later as the UN Battle Group continued to make its way down Japans Eastern coast, Asuka leaned over the safety rail on one of the carriers numerous observation platforms, her legs carefully tucked through a lower railing to ensure her safety as she breathed the fresh air, content with the presence of the perfect man next to her.

“So” Kaji asked, curious to get the reaction of his young charge beside him. “What do you think of our famous Shinji Ikari?”

Asuka snorted slightly, but found that she had no quick answer to that question. On one hand, she wasn’t exactly happy with the way he had been praised to death by Misato and even her beloved Kaji, just because he had been on call when the Angels arrived instead of her…
But on the other hand…she had watched him go head to head with that Admiral when Misato clearly wasn’t going to stick up for them and he clearly was in awe of her from the way Misato had used her, correctly, as a pilot eminently worthy of emulation…

“He’s…boring” she finally decided, but knew Kaji would hear the doubt in her voice, over the usually dismissive tones she would have used.
“Hmm…and yet, he has consistently maintained an in-combat Synch ratio of over ninety percent since his first engagement” Kaji pointed out, watching his charge closely.

Asuka didn’t fall overboard only because she had carefully wrapped her legs around a lower railing in a way that let her lean over the upper railing in safety before Kaji had delivered the news.
Still, she fell down through the lower railing in utter shock, crashing to a halt on an impromptu seat as she started, dumbfounded, at Kaji.
“Mein Gott in Himmel” Asuka choked out before extricating herself.
“You okay?” he asked in concern.
“I’m fine!” she snapped back then frowned. “Sorry Kaji, you don’t deserve that, just that…jerk…” her voice trailed off as she slowly came to grips with the idea that suddenly all those years of work she had put into inching her Synchronization Ratio up to its wonderful place in the high 70th percentile was destroyed by that once sentence from Kaji.

Alright Third Child she decided, you want a fight? I’ll give you a fight!

With a look in her eyes that made Kaji want to pity Shinji, Asuka stormed past him and back into the carrier, clearly going in search for the pilot of Unit One.
Those two are going to be…interesting to watch together he decided. Assuming they don’t kill each other in the next five minutes, the two of them might, just might…

Shaking his head one last time in amusement at that thought, reflections of his own crazy relationship with Misato flashing through his mind, Kaji followed Asuka through the hatch, but turned instead to the narrow staircase just inside that led down into the bowels of the ship.
Several minutes later, he had worked his way to the relatively luxurious quarters he had stayed in. Heading in, he glanced around the room carefully and noticed the telltale signs he had put in place to see if anything had been disturbed were all intact, suggesting that no-one had broke in while he was away. He still double checked the heavily armored ‘briefcase’ sitting against a wall anyway, pleased to see the tamper proof seals was still intact, when there was a quiet knock at the door.
He felt his hand twitch slightly for his sidearm, currently resting on his bed before calming himself as he grinned, guessing who this was.

Sure she would slap him around a few times, but after that…well…who knows?

Opening the door, his grin faded into a disappointed sigh.
“Oh, hi there Shinji…well…” he said, sticking his head out in hope to look up and down the corridor before sighing and waving Shinji inside. “I have to admit I’m hurt you didn’t bring Misato with you”.
“Sorry about that” Shinji smiled slightly, before letting his face fall to a much more bleak expression as Kaji shut the door behind him, trying not to shudder too much at the site of the armored briefcase against the wall. “We...need to talk”.



Just under an hour later, Shinji returned to the Captains mess with Kaji in tow, to find Misato, Toji Kensuke and surprisingly, Asuka, sitting around finishing up lunch.
“Where did you run off…oh” Misato cut herself off as Kaji followed Shinji into the room, a green pilots flight suit on over his shirt and tie, a flight helmet under one arm…and a large gray suitcase under his other arm.

Misato’s eyes went wide with delight.

“You’ve convinced him to leave?” she breathed in hope.
“Actually I have an…urgent delivery to make” he said with his famous smile at Misato. “But I’ll see you all a little later in Tokyo Three”.
His eyes flickered down the front of her uniform jacket which was lying open, confirming the cross given to her by her Father, was still very much there.
Predictably, Misato leapt to the wrong -but perfectly understandable- conclusion, grabbing her jacket and slamming it shut as if it was a banks vault.
“It’s a big city, don’t count on it Pervert”.
Kaji sighed tolerantly, leaning back again.
“Well, tomorrow is another day Misato. And I must be off now”.
“Can’t I come along too?” Askua complained, clearly not liking the idea of ‘her’ Kaji being out of immediate reach.
Kaji just smiled at her tolerantly.
“I’m sorry my dear, but someone from the Third Branch has to stay here and watch over Unit Two”.
“Hey…that’s right” she said suddenly, as if embarrassed she had forgotten. “Well you don’t have to worry, I won’t let you down!”
“I know you won’t” he said with a sincere smile, before turning back to Shinji. “Well, Mister Ikari, I shall see you later. I am looking forward to continuing our conversation”.
“What conversation” Asuka and Misato asked in perfect synchronization and perfect suspicion, jumping slightly as they looked at each other, then looked away, embarrassment on their faces.

“Oh…this and that” Kaji said vaguely, heading for the door, glancing at the blushing Misato, then looking at Asuka before grinning knowingly at Shinji as he left the group behind.

As he wandered down the stairs to the hanger level, he reflected that suddenly this had become…a much more interesting trip then he had figured on.
At most, he had thought he might have had to kill some deep cover SEELE agent among the crew, if SEELE had figured out he had taken Adam from them and issued retaliation orders.
Though Asuka’s half drunken insistence last night that she was ready to ‘do the other stuff’ with him, followed by her flashing him had been almost enough to cause him to choke on his beer.

But even that had been nothing next to Shinji’s revelations…

At first he had simply thought he was joking and Misato was trying to get back at him, trying to figure out her angle but having no luck.
Then he had started to figure it that the Third Child was just, well, insane.
Then he had wondered if this was all some trap from either his Father or SEELE, using a fourteen year old kid as an agent provocateur, as unlikely as it was.
Then after he had calmly listed off things no-one, not SEELE, not his Father not Misato could possibly know about his ‘jobs’, about Misato and his history with her that she would never share with anyone…about his brother…
It was at that point Kaji had admitted the possibility, however terrifying, that Shinji Ikari might just be telling the truth…and somehow, he had gained an extraordinary amount of trust from him that had lead to him coming to him.
And if he was telling the truth…if NERV and SEELE didn’t exist to stop the Third Impact, but initiate one of their own design…or designs depending on who controlled it...

Well the game just got far more interesting he decided with a slight shake of his head, exiting onto the lower hanger deck where a Russian Yak-38 Custom with its pilot was standing by. If Shinji was telling the truth and an Angel was going to attack in less then an hour, well…as Shinji had pointed out, having Adam in the same area was probably not a good idea.
And if an Angel shaped like a giant fish about the size of this ship did attack…
Placing his briefcase into the tiny rear cargo compartment and ensuring it was secure; Kaji stepped up the ladder and jumped down into the cockpit as the engines spun up.



Back in the Captains mess, Asuka watched Kaji leave with a sigh, annoyed that he was running out on her and leaving her with these jerks, but knowing he was correct that as the only other representative of the Third Branch, and the designated pilot it was clearly her duty to stay with Unit Two until it arrived in Japan.
And speaking of Unit Two…
“Third Child” she said, standing up suddenly from her seat without warning. “Come with me”.
Shinji to her annoyance didn’t instantly obey, instead raising an eyebrow slightly and turning to Misato, dropping his voice to a much lower pitch.
“You have no idea how long I’ve waited to hear her say that…”
Misato almost sent the coffee she was drinking out through her nose as she desperately tried to suppress her laugher, those other two morons the kid had brought with him not even trying to hide their own as they collapsed laughing.

Asuka felt her right eye twitch.

“Don’t make me destroy you” she ground out in a tone that would have frozen lava, wondering why the Third Child was getting under her skin like he was.



The ride over in the small fleet launch was at least fast, Shinji feeling terrified the whole way that the 6th Angel would show up early and destroy them without even realizing it had run them over, but they made it to the civilian freighter uneventfully. Asuka, despite wearing near heals and a long dress scampered up the rocking stairway that hung off the side of the freighter fearlessly, Shinji following at a much more cautious pace as the framework swayed and groaned from the movement of the ship.
“Will you come on already?” Asuka demanded impatiently at the top
“Coming dear” he muttered, albeit low enough so she wouldn’t hear as he continued to put one foot after the other, trying not to look down at the deep waters of the pacific under him.
There were things in the water today far more deadly then mere sharks after all.
“Finally” she huffed when he reached the top, then to his surprise, grabbed his hand and marched him firmly up towards the bow of the ship.
Shinji was so startled by the physical contact of her slender fingers around his hand that he almost stood around gawking, but somehow managed to – just - get his suddenly shaking legs into motion.
He thought about saying something…but in the end decided to just live in the moment. He knew Asuka wasn’t holding onto his hand because she liked him, just because it was the most convenient way to hurry his ass along…but he didn’t give a damn, griping her back ever so slightly.

Eventually, she let got as they arrived at the forward edge of the container, pulling up a section of the tarpaulin not tied down with a flourish.

“Well…its color suits you” Shinji said on reflex, hoping to sound sincere, but cursing himself for saying such a corny, idiotic thing.
“What do you mean by that” she said, her eyes narrowing.
“I mean the red…it’s like your hair…” he said dumbly, knowing he had to play it out and bracing for the slap.
Asuka simply blinked, looked away for a second and then turned to head in, gesturing for Shinji to follow, who let out a slow breath in thanks for dodging that mistake.
“Well…the color isn’t the only difference Asuka said”, confidently walking down the linked ribbon bridges that took her across to the giant Evangelion lying on its front in the coolant before boldly hopping up to climb to the highest point of its back as Shinji cautiously followed across the bridge.
Don’t look up the dress. For the LOVE OF GOD Shinji, don’t look up the dress!

“Units Zero and One were created as part of the development process, the prototype and test-type proof of concept respectively” Asuka stated with a superior sounding tone in her voice. “The fact that it synchronized with an untrained pilot like you is proof of that. But my Unit 02 is different; created for actual combat conditions it’s the world's first true Evangelion!”
Shinji’s irritation with her denigrating both his and Rei’s Evangelions increased to the point he was tempted to point out that as a general rule, bleeding edge technological prototypes required far more skill and ability to control then production model variants, but was tempered by the fact that Kaji had mentioned Asuka clearly felt her ‘top pilot’ status was now under direct threat from him.
Given that her pride in her piloting abilities was, when you got down to it, all that Asuka Langley Sohryu thought she had, Shinji kept his peace. He had seen the nightmare that had happened when herpride was shattered and he had utterly no wish to see that door open ever again…

“So. What do you think of my Unit Two, Third Child?” she asked with a smirk.
Shinji opened his mouth to reply with a generally approving statement that pointed out nominally Unit Two was several billion dollars of UN taxpayers property and her really ‘hers’ but was cut off as the rumble of an explosion echoed through the enclosed area, Asuka almost loosing her balance as a shockwave passed through the ships hull.
“What in the-”
“Undersea shock wave” Asuka exclaimed, sliding down the side of her Eva then jumping down to the floating bridge. “And it sounded close!”
The two children raced back out to the freighters port side just in time to see a Frigate in the far distance explode in a huge ball of fire, a skimming wave of water streaking away from it as something huge but submerged zipped through the outer edges of the fleet.
“What in the hell is that?” Asuka demanded.
“An Angel” Shinji replied curtly, feeling a sick ball in his stomach as he watched the funeral pyre of what, three hundred good men who he hadn’t been able to save?
Gritting his teeth, he watched another ship, a larger Cruiser or Battleship he guessed, shuddered as the wave front passed under it. There was no explosion this time, but the ship rapidly started to fall out of line and ever so slowly settle into the water, the rest of the fleet breaking up its formation, water churning at the sterns of ships as they clawed for maneuvering room, klaxons and sirens screaming.

Making a snap decision, he grabbed Asuka’s hand and started moving towards the bridge, enjoying the reversal greatly from the last time she had almost yanked his arm out of its socket as she had run around the ship looking for somewhere to change.
“What are you doing?” she demanded as she hurried along after him…though Shinji couldn’t help but note as she closed her hand around his while he pulled her along…

“We have to go to the bridge and tell them to move this ship as close to the Rainbow -and your power cable- as possible. Unless you feel like swimming in B type equipment”.
“Well why can’t you do it yourself?”
“Because I don’t speak English and this is an American ship?”
“Baka” she snorted, hiding her embarrassment at the obvious problems by attacking his flawed strategy. “We can call it in from inside here” Asuka snapped, pulling him to a halt then back under the tarp and to a nearby sound powered phone on the wall. She picked it up, conversed tersely in English with Shinji picking up perhaps one in every five words for about a minute before she hung up with a satisfied expression. Seconds later, Shinji heard the rumble of the ships engines increase in pitch.
“There” she said, looking around and then reaching into an alcove to pick up a large red bag, smiling. “Well come on then Third Child; you are going to have the singular honor of watching as Asuka Langley Sohryu defeats this Angel!”



“To all ships, fan out and take evasive action! Radio room, status?”
“The Bristol has gone silent! Kongo can't locate the target and Kirov is taking on water!”
“Damn it to hell” Coones snapped as the Rainbow accelerated into a radical turn under him, a pair each of Burke and Udaloy class destroyer escorts holding formation as they clawed for maneuvering room. “What in God’s name is going on here?”
“That would probably be an Angel attack” the voice of Misato Katsuragi came cheerfully back from the door to his bridge.
“This is a combat situation Captain, get the hell of my bridge” he snapped without turning around, his binoculars following the wave of water thrashing off their port quarter in the distance. “Send to all ships; engage ASW, fire at will!”
“It’s pointless” Misato sighed to herself, knowing she was wasting her breath as much as those ships were wasting ammo.

A mixed formation of ex US/UK Frigates linked into the UN Battle Net tracked the enormous contact with their anti submarine technology, locking in a salvo of relatively lightweight ASW torpedoes and calculating the optimal spread pattern over several milliseconds.

Finally satisfied with their work, they eventually told the lowly, inefficient humans in the loop to open fire.

A pattern of torpedoes from VLS ASCROC launchers and Mark 32 torpedo tubes crashed into the water around the Angel, bracketing it so even if it had evaded, it would still probably have be caught by some of them. The Angel however didn’t even bother to evade as the torpedoes pounded into its AT field with no more effect then plankton hitting the steel hulls of the ships around it.
As if to make the point about how stupid an idea attacking it had been, the Angel dove under a nearby frigate which uselessly tried to turn hard inside the closing target, rolling and almost lazy pointing a fin up at its belly, the monomolecular thin AT field projected from it slicing right through the ship like a knife through butter, its unfired Surface to Air Missiles detonating in a brilliant explosion that snapped its keel in half.

As the explosions shockwave rattled the windows of the flag bridge, the Admiral crashed his fist against a bulkhead, watching more of his men die as the smoke cleared to show the stern of the stricken frigate sinking, pathetically few survivors visible in the water.

“Why in the hell won’t it sink?” Coones demanded, not expecting an answer, but getting one anyway…and not from one of his officers.

“Only an Eva can beat it”.
“What was that?” the Admiral demanded, swinging his glare to one of those two other boys who had followed Captain Katsuragi onto the bridge.
“Uh, nothing” the same boy said, suddenly quailing in the face of the glares at him to hide behind the NERV officer.
“The Angel is protected by a defensive barrier known as an AT field” Misato supplied, deciding the kids behind her could be trusted to keep a secret…though she made a point to have Kensuke’s tapes censored after the battle. “It’s effectively impervious to conventional weapons”.
“Why in the hell wasn’t I informed about this?” the senior officer fumed. Misato shrugged.
“Need to know basis Sir” she said, glancing out the window again. “Unit Two is capable of generating its own AT field that will neutralize the Angels…” she let her voice trail off as she looked down at the spray of water. Strangely, the Angel now appeared to be simply circling up and down the convoy, almost as if…
Is it looking for something?
But the only thing of any real value is…
“Oh no…is it after Unit Two?”
As the explosions continued to echo across the water, Asuka opened her sports bag, looking inside in approval at the contents. A voice crackled in English over the loudspeakers causing Asuka to cock her head slightly, and then nod, looking up at Shinji.
“The Captain is saying we’re approaching Over the Rainbow…urgh, we don’t have time to fine somewhere to change” she fretted, looking around desperately before focusing on Shinji with a determined look in her eyes. “Okay Third Child. I’m going to change into my plug suit. You will turn around, look at that far bulkhead and keep your eyes shut until I say otherwise, or I swear to whatever God you believe in that-”
“Understood!” he said quickly, spinning around and shutting his eyes, not needing to hear the rest of Asuka’s threats to know she meant every single word of whatever form of grievous bodily harm she had been going to threaten him with.
He felt her burning glare on his back for a few seconds, and then heard her dress rustle as she removed it, followed by her undergarments leaving her utterly naked, a zipper sounding as she retrieved her plug suit.
He trembled slightly at the thought of Asuka’s naked body behind him. Not to much fir typical male reasons, but because he remembered the first and last time he had seen her naked…and how he had used her body in ways that almost made him want to throw up right then now at how perverted he had acted.
How disgusting he thought with a slight shudder.

With a slight hiss behind him, Asuka’s plug suit inflated, but he still didn’t dare to turn around or open his eyes, until a grudging “okay, you can look” came back. Turning, he couldn’t help but smile slightly at the familiar site of the Second Child in her scarlet plug suit

Well he didn’t look Asuka thought to herself, a strange spike of irrational annoyance that he hadn’t tried to look coming from somewhere at the slight smile he was directing at her, before she caught herself in shock wondering what in the hell was going on with her mind before she shook it off, reaching down and tossing him one of her spare plug suits. “Well?” she asked at the slight downturn in the corner of his mouth as he looked at it, “Put it on!”
Wincing slightly at the knowledge of how…tight…certain parts of the suit, designed for Asuka’s body were, Shinji sighed and started to remove his jacket as Asuka danced away towards Unit Two.
“Let’s go, Asuka” he heard her whisper to herself and he couldn’t help but grin at her pure, raw confidence.
That, he had missed more then anything else Shinji decided as he stripped.


“The Fitzgerald has taken a glancing impact to her rear and has heavy damage aft of frame sixteen but is continuing to engage. New Jersey can’t depress her guns sufficiently in these close quarters and is disengaging and…oh damnit, we just lost Chabanenko” the Flag Captain groaned as the Improved Udaloy class Destroyer rolled over, showing her keel had been neatly sliced open like the tin can she truly was as she sunk to crash into the underwater cityscape along with more then a few others ships from today.

Admiral Coones tried to keep the rage from his face as more of his men went to their depths. They had thrown an absurd amount of ordinance at this thing, but they were still down almost twenty percent of their ships only ten minutes into this battle! This was going to be the biggest disaster in naval military history since some of the lopsided battles in World War Two if something didn’t change!

And he couldn’t help but recall what that kid…no, that pilot had said to him, as well as his friend a few minutes ago.
Only an Eva can beat it!
Taking a breath, he set his jaw.
“What is the position of the Othello?”
His Captain glanced at the computerized tactical display which was tracking everything, combining all the various sensors on all the ships into a single unified picture. “She’s taking position alongside us Sir” he said in some surprise. The Admiral grunted.
“All stop. Tell the engine room to route all reactor power to that damn external power socket. Captain Katsuragi?”
“Yes Sir?”
“Get that damn thing up and running!”
“Yes Sir” she nodded respectfully, stepping past Shinji’s friends and up to the communications console, keying in her NERV priority code and Unit Two’s ID. If she knew Asuka…



It was an annoying fact that Entry Plugs were very much single person affairs, designed to hold an Evangelions pilot securely in place without any thought as to what would happen when multiple people got inside.
Still, Shinji managed to find a place to half sit and half stand relatively securely as the entry plug slammed back inside Unit Two and Asuka started her synchronization.
He felt only a faint echo of the connection with her Evangelion that he did with Unit One, unsurprising given that he wasn’t wearing neural interface, but he couldn’t help but think the connection was…colder, as if the Evangelion itself recognized him as something different.
Foreign.
It wasn’t truly hostile, but like something was watching him closely through narrowed eyes from the dark…

Shaking off the forbidding feeling, he listened with half an ear as Asuka proceeded through an abbreviated startup checklist before suddenly a wave of red flashing “Fehler” messages scrolled all over the super cockpit display.

Opps. Forgot about that.
“I knew we shouldn’t have had Microsoft program these things”

Asuka, who had been sitting in her command couch with her head slightly bowed and total concentration on her face as she went through her synchronization procedure snapped her head around and glared at him.
“It’s thought noise, I thought I told you not to disturb me!”
“I’m sorry!” he protested and then wanted to kick himself for it, though at least it was a justifiable reaction as it actually was his fault.
“You’re thinking in Japanese aren’t you? If you must think, do it in German!”
“Jawohl Mein Fuhrer” he said with a roll of his eyes that would had Asuka punching him, if not for the fact that his blood would just leak through the LCL all around her.
“Bakka” she snapped, turning around and addressing her Eva. “Set language mode to Japanese and Re-Synch!”
The test patterns again whirled around them, this time fading into the standard cockpit view, showing where Unit Two was lying down on its side, Shinji feeling a second, deeper echo of a connection threading between him and the Evangelion, then strangely another thread to Asuka herself, feeling her intense concentration through the link.

A communications window popped up, showing Misato who didn’t look at all surprised to see Asuka and Shinji in the entry plug.
“I should have expected to see you two here” she laughed lightly. “You ready?’
“Always am” Asuka cheerfully declared. Shinji just nodded, looking around for something firm to grip a hold of….rejecting the idea of her breasts as soon as it came to him with a violent shake of his head.
“Power supply is in place and you’re right alongside the Rainbow Asuka!”
“Roger that. Evangelion Unit Two, go, NOW!”

The barely controlled monster that was Evangelion Unit Two shuddered into life, energy surging from the fuel cells in its chest as it moved, the thick secure tarpaulin covering it shredding against its armor plates as it slowly stood, the bottom of the ships hull groaning in protest as the minimal crew on board ran for the lifeboats, having no desire to be on a ship that was about to become a target. As Unit Two rose, it’s AT field unfolded with a wavy blur that tore the thick canvas into fragments, sloughing into the sea around…and attracting the attention of the 6th Angel like blood in the water for a shark, the wave of water arrowing for the Freighter at high speed.
“Asuka, Twelve O’clock!” Misato shouted in alarm as the rapidly moving wave arrowed in directly at Unit Two.
“I see it Misato” Asuka growled in the joy of battle, watching as the power counter started at sixty seconds and started counting backwards. “Hang on Ikari!”

With a careful flex of her legs, Asuka leaped off the Freighter, the force almost snapping the keel as Unit Two leaped into the sky, seconds before the Angel slammed into the freighter from below, rebounding from the wreck as it shattered and diving deep into a long turn to its left. Far above it, Asuka reached the apogee of her AT field assisted leap and Unit two plummeted, Shinji yelping behind her in fear to Asuka’s delight as she thrust her controls forward for more speed, clearly impatient to get down onto the flight deck.
“UNIT TWO COMING IN FOR LANDING!”

[Chris OFarrell]

“Sound collision, all hands brace for impact!” the Flag Captain shouted into the 1MC as Unit Two leaped off the deck of the doomed freighter into a high arc, its destination rather clear to every ship in the fleet, dozens of sets of binoculars trained onto the terrifying scarlet figure few of them had seen under those covers as it arced down towards the carrier. All over the flagship, officers and men grabbed onto anything handy a matter of seconds before Unit Two crashed down, the impact denting the very expensive flight deck and instantly making it unusable for conventional operations, the ship listing heavily and sending a handful of aircraft overboard as their tie downs snapped from the movement before Asuka leaned her unit forward and allowed the hundred thousand ton fleet carrier to come level out.
“Switching to external power” she called out as she reached down to where the technicians had installed her three kilometer long power cable, expertly snapping it into place in her back as the clock ran down to thirty seconds, then stopped, power flowing into her Eva..
“Switch completed” she declared seconds later as the clock stopped, hundreds of megawatts flowing into her systems from the enhanced fusion reactors that had been built into the ship several years ago.

“Oh man what a waste!” Kensuke all but sobbed as he tallied the trio of F-14’s that had gone overboard, followed by a pair of Su-33’s and an E2-D.

“The target is approaching rapidly!” the Flag Captain shouted both over the combat channel to Unit Two as well as the ships intercom, trying to give his crew some kind of warning of this crazy battle as the fleets sonar systems traced the Angel finish its long curve just under the surface, moving forward very, very fast.

“You realize we have no room to maneuver and no weapons, don’t you?” Shinji asked as the wave front of the Angel arrowed towards them from Starboard at high speed.

“The progressive knife will be just fine” she grinned, drawing Unit Two’s more utilitarian knife from her shoulder holster, the vibrating blade looking rather pathetic in Shinji’s opinion as the 6th Angel finally surfaced, racing across the water towards them with its enormous bulk.
“Oh, great” he said then paused. “Do you think we should be fair and give him a chance to surrender first?”
“Shut up Ikari” she snapped, shifting her stance slightly as the Angel raced towards them, bobbed down then leapt, clear out of the water and crashed into the side of the Carrier in an attempt to crush. Asuka barely dodged the surprise maneuver, grabbing onto the side of it as it crashed onto the deck, her progressive knife going flying from the impact while support beams under the flight deck groaned at a weight they had never been designed to hold.
“Looking good Asuka” Misato cheerfully commented, just before Asuka looking for firmer footing, shifted onto one of the numerous aircraft elevators, which promptly collapsed under the full force of Unit Two’s straining leg muscles, upsetting their balance and cart wheeling the Angel and Evangelion into the sea, the power cord rapidly unwinding behind them.
“So much for German efficiency” Shinji muttered just loud enough for Asuka to hear as the Angel swam deep at speed, crashing itself into the cityscape again and again in an attempt to loose the parasite clinging to it. The Second Child snarled something in her native language that Shinji guessed was not complementary, both of them hanging on for dear life as the Angel crashed through the sunken ruins of what used to be the Fukushima prefecture coast.



“How much cable is left?” Misato asked, feeling her hopes sink about as fast as Unit Two, watching as the Cable was pulled every which way across the flight deck as it unwound sending more multi million dollar aircraft to Davy Jones, care of NERV.
“Twelve hundred meters and dropping” the Flag Capitan called out, studying the cable reel with his binoculars. The super conductive core was heavily insulated then wrapped in many thousands carbon nanotube segments that gave great flexibility while making it astonishingly strong, but it meant the crew on the flight deck had to keep the hell out of the way of it as it thrashed left, then right, then left again, sparks flying off the deck as it grinded through small fixtures here and there.

“What do we do now?” the Admiral asked in exasperation after several seconds of silence on the bridge as everyone caught up with the insanity.
“We’ll think of something” Misato said with as much confidence as she could.
“Well if the Evangelion is engaging it, does that mean this…AT field is disabled?”
“More or less” Misato said, wishing Ritusko was here to answer these questions as she tried to think of some kind of plan to get an Evangelion, underwater in standard B-Type combat armor to fight against an Angel wholly adapted for aquatic combat.
“After seeing the size of that monster, I don’t think out torpedoes would even dent it” the Flag Captain put in. “They’re designed to punch holes in hollow submarines, not blast apart living things that size.
“What about N2 warheads?” Misato asked, getting an ‘are you insane?’ look from the Admiral which Misato ignored.
“The Wisconsin and Missouri each carry eight, class three N2 warheads for their Cruise Missiles” the Tactical Action Officer supplied after a nod from his Captain checking his computer inventory. “But they are incapable against underwater targets and detonating them on the surface would be suicide”.
“Then we don’t detonate them on the surface” she said, a plan slowly forming in her mind as she reached for the microphone. “Asuka, Shinji” she shouted, the radio signal passing down the power cable along an integrated fiber optic data line, “how are you doing?”
“We’re just fine Misato” Shinji called back cheerfully over he sound of distant crashing and smashing noises. “The Teutonic Terror here has got this thing right where she wants it!”
An explosion of German came back down the line making Misato wince as Asuka submitted that Shinji’s ancestry was tied to a much lower level of primate and his sexual habits left much to be desired.

That girl has spent way too much time around Kaji Misato shook her head, suddenly not pleased that she remembered so much of her German, turning to look at the tactical display with showed the enormous Angel swimming around under the fleet, before glancing at the reel. “Cables almost out” she warned, get ready for the shock!” Seconds later, the ship jolted slightly as the Cable went taught and pulled, yanking Unit Two free of the Angel and leaving it floating with a neutral buoyancy as Gaghiel moved off into the depths.
“Eva has lost the target” the TAO called, his eyes glued to his readouts both of the fleets status and sensor reports as well as via the datalink from Unit Two itself.
“Admiral?” Misato said, breathing in deeply. He probably wasn’t going to like this…
“What now?” he asked, sounding somewhat befuddled by the rapidly changing situation.
“I’m going to need your cooperation”.
He raised an eyebrow at that, but nodded for her to continue.
A plan was better then no plan after all…
“A nuclear attack with the Battleships?” he asked several seconds later with a disbelieving tone in his voice.
Misato opened her mouth to reply, but was cut off as an alarm sounded from the TAO’s board.
“Sirs, the target is approaching Eva again!”



“Alright” Asuka snarled as the Angel approached, looking far more deadly and threatening in Shinji’s mind deep in its natural environment then it had when it tried to crush them on the carrier. “I’ll finish it off this time!”
Asuka growled and worked her controls, willing the Eva into action, ready to introduce the Angel to the concept of returning to nothingness.
And she succeeded.
Nothing happened.
“Hey…it’s not working!” Asuka cried out, the first faint edge of terror finally going into the voice of a girl who despite all her training, had no real understanding of mortality until this moment.
“It’s B-type equipment” Shinji pointed out somewhat gently. Despite the fun he got out of pushing her buttons for a change, he really did love her dearly. “It won’t work underwater”.
“Well what are you going to do?” she demanded, turning towards him as the Angel continued to advance, a look of fear flashing across her face.
“What am I going to do?” he asked in protest.
“You’re the famous and oh so perfect Third Child aren’t you?” she scoffed, her head turning to bring her face to within centimeters of her own. “DO something!”

Temptation to lean in and kiss in response rising…rising…

“Okay” he shrugged, reaching out to grab a hold of the back of her command couch. “I’d hold onto something if I were you…”
Asuka glared, then turned around to the Angel which had gown large enough that she could disable the zoom…just in time to see its mouth open and row upon row of needle sharp teeth come into view.
“TEEEETTTHH” she screeched, backing up deep into her command couch as if desperately trying to get away from the approaching monster, seconds before it crashed into Unit Two and its mouth snapped shut, two of the teeth catching the edge of Unit Two and holding it firmly in place, the Angel looking for all the world like a large tuna that had just taken the bait; Unit Two’s legs dangling out of the front of the Angel with the rest of its torso inside, the power cable extending back to the surface like some giant improbable fishing line.
“This just gets better and better” Shinji grunted.
“Oh shut up you dork” she snapped at him. “You couldn’t have done any better you know!”
“True” he conceded –to her slight surprise…and making her feel satisfied that the Great Shinji Ikari admitted he couldn’t have done better- “but if I know Misato, she’ll be coming up with some insane over the top plan right about-”
“Asuka, Shinji. Whatever you do, don’t let go!” Misato’s voice came suddenly into their cockpit.



“Eva has entered the Targets Body” the TAO called, the display blinking slightly before the 6th Generation super computer buried deep in the carrier merged the two sensor icons to a ‘6th Angel with Eva Unit Two’ tag.
“They’ve been eaten?” Toji said in astonishment and more then a little raw worry. His best friend was down there…and he didn’t really want Asuka to die either.

Hurt perhaps, but not dead…yet.

“Uh huh” Misato agreed suddenly, turning one of her dazzling smiles on him. “And its time to real them in” she declared, turning back to the battle before Toji’s legs got too shaky from the effects of that awesome smile.
“The ships are evacuated and the nuclear pre-arming sequence has been completed” the Flag Captain called out as he hurried down his checklist, everyone moving with a purpose now that there was a ‘Plan’, turning back his binoculars on the pair of Iowa’s. In the post Second Impact wars, they had been hurriedly pressed back into service because the USN had lost most of its fleet in the cataclysm and had needed anything that could float pronto. Extensive and horrifyingly expensive upgrades had reduced their crew numbers to only a few hundred, driven by automation and advanced technology that now served Misato’s plans perfectly.
“The ships are on course, remote guidance linked in” the TAO called out as the frigates that had rapidly taken off the crew moved away.
“Alright, do it” the Admiral ordered, feeling a pang as the two proud ships shuddered with huge spurts of air and water rushing out of their sides as they settled.
“Kingston valves opened, scuttle at point Z confirmed” the Captain read of his boards as Over the Rainbow eased into position behind and between the two old ladies, the cable extending right down between them. “Crash stop”.
“Aye” the helmsmen confirmed, throwing the ships engines into reverse to bleed off speed as the two Battleships, moving at close to thirty knots slid under the waves.
“All back full!”
“Reverse the cable!”

The cable reel’s enormously powerful motor cranked into reverse, spinning wildly fast for a few seconds before the cable snapped taught and it slowed down, but steadily pulled the Angel which didn’t fight the pull, inwards towards an interception point the ships tactical computers had calculated based on relative velocities, expected positions and probably a hundred other factors that made this plan only preposterous rather then insane.
“Eva has started to surface!” the TAO called as the Evangelion and the Angel chewing on it were pulled slowly towards the surface by the cable.
“Detonation sequence?”
“Set to be transmitted via the Eva’s communications systems” the TAO said, hurriedly working his console as the Admiral pulled out a key around his neck. “As soon as it’s transmitted, they’ll have ten seconds to get clear”.
“Make it five” Misato said shortly, getting a stunned look, but shaking her head. “Any longer and the Angel might get it’s AT field back up, do it!”
“Aye” he said with a deep breath, altering the settings as the Admiral inserted his own key on his own console, a series of sixteen red icons suddenly turning yellow.



“Shinji, Asuka, do you understand the operation?” Misato’s voice crackled over the speakers.
“We’ll do the best job we can” Shinji grunted back, trying not to scream in pain from Asuka yanking on his hair for daring to touch her Evangelion without her permission.
“Will you stop that for a second Asuka? You’re supposed to be the best damn pilot we’ve got; if we don’t open its mouth by the time those ships arrive, we’re going to be vaporized!”
Asuka ‘Humphed’ but let go of his hair, hesitated a second, then leaned forward, the front of her plug suit coming in contact with his back…the all too sensitive material of the suit letting Shinji feel everything as her chest pressed into his back…
Oh…my...he thought as to his horror he felt a stirring inside a plug suit not really designed for a man to wear.
Think un-sexy thoughts! Think un-sexy thoughts!
…
Okay…Father in a one piece worked…but now I’m going to throw up into the LCL. Bad tradeoff Shinji…
“Don’t get any stupid ideas” Asuka warned him, her mouth right next to his ear, her speech sending a wave of warm LCL flooding past his face.
Waaayyyy too late.
“Works for me” was all he grunted as she extended the grips and opened them, placing her hands on top of his.

“Eva continues to surface” the TAO cried out, his stoic detachment starting to fade as the hastily thought out plan advanced. “T minus sixty to contact”.
“How’s its mouth?” the Admiral called, his binoculars not shifting from the point well forward where the cable spooled back out of the water at speed.
“Still closed” his Captain called, his own gaze not shifting a millimeter from his readouts.
“Both battleships are sinking in line towards the intercept point, their forward speed decaying along expected curves” another officer called out, the exact active sonar ranges being calculated and recalculated every second in case it would be necessary to speed up or slow down the cable, as the sister ships advanced for their final engagement. “Eva continuing to surface along predicted lines, T-Minus forty to contact!”
“Hurry or you won’t make it” Misato demanded down the communications line knowing they had one chance to pull this off...



It wasn’t helping that Asuka remained physically in contact with so much of his body.
Shinji knew his piloting skills were better then ever, his synch ratio at its peak and he had knowledge that no human on Earth could possibly have access to. Including the fact he and Asukawould die if they didn’t get this Angels mouth open.

But her presence, building up against him for most of the day was finally overwhelming him, flashes from the ‘past’ moving through his mind at increasing speed every time he tried to move his mind into contact with hers and touch it-

-(Turning around on the floor of Misato’s to find Asuka inches away from him, asleep)-

-(Leaning in close in utter fear, wondering if he dared kiss this Goddess)-

-(His heart breaking as he saw a single tear roll down her face and a whimpering cry of “mama”)-

-(Catching sight of Asuka waiting outside his hospital room, his roommate ducking away in horror at the fact that he had caught her waiting outside as Rei left)-

-(Asuka’s patience snapping as she grabbed him, pinched his nose and pressed her lips against his, every nerve in his body overloading in an instant and locking him into stasis)-

-(A memory of Asuka looking at her reflection shortly after as she faked washing her mouth out, feeling utterly worthless after he had not done anything but stand there)-

-(Another memory, looking across at Shinji and Rei at a train station together, her heart breaking as she realized then and there she had lost someone she didn’t know she had even wanted)-

-(A four year old Girl running down a corridor, so excited she could hardly stop from tripping to tell her mother the news that she was a pilot…only to open the door and find her mummy hanging from the ceiling, her head bent oddly to the side with that doll hanging next to her…its formerly happy smile now utterly terrifying as it rotated towards her)-

-(Looking down on her comatose, naked body…that perfect body that had haunted his dreams, horrified…and aroused…)-

-(The shouts over NERV’s speakers as Asuka fought better then he ever could have on his best day, better then Rei, better then Toji, better then anyone as she became her Evangelion in a glorious, futile dance to the death against impossible odds before with a scream it all ended as he sat around helplessly)-

And now, her voice was in the back of his mind, somehow through the link connecting them both to the Evangelion as she furiously tried to force her Evangelion to ‘open...open...open’ the Angels mouth…the Evangelion responding, but simply not enough without his help...which, to his terrified horror, he realized he couldn’t concentrate enough to give her, just when she needed him the most, he was going to fail her again!

“T minus twenty! Pre-arming sequence complete! Set for delayed detonate via Unit Two!”
“Come on you two, please” Misato begged, her grip on the microphone so tight the plastic started to crumple slightly.

“T minus fifteen to contact!” the voice came over the link, Shinji feeling the Evangelion pushing and opening the jaws through the shear force Asuka’s indomitable will, but it was not nearly enough and there was no-one else here to help her-

Wait…there was one other.

Turning his perceptions around and breaking away from Asuka, he turned inward, inside the deep black pit that was the core Evangelion and threw his force against it, pushing with every single fiber of his being, with every shred of love he felt for Asuka and not giving the slightest care what would happen to him.

KYOKO YOUR DAUGHTER WILL DIE IF YOU DON'T HELP HER!

Deep inside the Evangelion, where no pilot would dare to look…something…or someone stirred and Shinji felt a presence recoil and slam through his mind like tissue paper, the titanic force of a mother instinctively reacting to protect its young-

Up on the carrier, the unwatched Syncrograph readout on the TAO’s board showed Asuka’s ratio suddenly spike to 1:1. as Evangelion Unit Two’s four eyes suddenly blazed, its head rose up and with a mighty Herculean effort, the Angels mouth was snapped open, Unit Two now only tethered to the Angel by its grip-

-just in time for Wisconsin and Missourito smash into the Angel, 90,000 tons of ships hitting at a combined speed of roughly forty knots.

Momentum, was a bitch.

The Angel itself was huge, but actually massed very little; this being the reason why despite being the size of Over the Rainbow, its little stunt on the flight deck hadn’t snapped the ship in half upon landing. With its AT field nullified by the presence of Unit Two, the twin Battleships hit and dug deep into the flanks of the Angel, sending it crashing backwards as Unit Two was ripped free by the still retracting Cable, now surfacing much faster without the Angels mass in the way, the distance between them opening as Asuka focused her AT field into the most powerful flat barrier possible-
Just as the cargo of N2 mines obeying the instructions relayed via Unit Two’s combat communications system, reached their time limit and detonated, the sixteen warheads each initiating inside the Angels AT field at a nominal yield of one hundred and fifty kilotons.

The explosion was actually quite well contained by the Angel, for the fraction of a second it continued to exist, but the shockwave blasted out, hitting Unit Two’s fully extended ‘AT Shield’ and pushing it along.

Straight up.

Unit Two broke the water as if shot from cannon, the jolt kicking Shinji back into groggy consciousness as a gigantic waterspout from the detonation marked the funeral pyre of Wisconsin and Missouri. A scarlet figure hung a thousand feet above the scene for a second, before falling towards the flight deck of the carrier, a quick thinking Asuka firing off her integrated thrusters, Unit Two rocking hard with the incredible amount of kinetic energy being spent in the deceleration as Asuka brought her unit in for a perfect landing, her feet only lightly toughing the deck before the unit fell to its knees, then to its face as it powered down, the enormous water spout behind it making a fitting final shot for Kensuke’s film.



“My my my!” Doctor Ritsuko Akagi said in appreciation as the jeep she was riding in moved down the dock next to Over the Rainbow, the scars along her port flank a mute testament to the battle that had raged on what had supposed to be a simple ‘meet and greet’ mission for the Captain next to her. “You don’t pull any punches do you?”
“I got careless” her companion, the Director of Operations moaned, leaning back in the late afternoon sunshine and enjoying the breeze that helped wash away her fatigue. “I should have had Unit Two loaded onto that Freighter rigged for underwater combat as a matter of course”.
“You’re apologizing? Are you feeling okay?” Agagi smirked.
“Oh don’t be insulting” Misato snapped back, her eyes still closed. “At least we picked up a lot of new data”.
“So I see” Ritsuko agreed, ignoring the raw data on the Angel for now in favor of the pilot data…stopping dead as she looked over the numbers. “Misato…”
“Humph?”
“This really is important data”



Shinji followed Asuka down the side of the ship to where she was waiting impatiently for the ‘gangplank’ to be connected, congratulating himself for having the presence of mind this time to put his jacket inside Asuka’s waterproof bag along with her clothes, which the Second Child had dumped into a small cargo area at the rear of the entry plug. He pulled the jacket tightly over the plug suit, nothing with pleasure that it really did fit quite well as it was designed to, zipping it up to hide the rather embarrassing ‘cups’ on his chest where Asuka’s…assets…were designed to be lifted and supported.
“So” Shinji said from behind her, trying to make conversation. “Welcome back to Japan”.
“Welcome back?” she asked, turning to glance at him in slight confusion. “I’ve never been to Japan before, Baka”.
“Actually you have” he corrected her. “When you were two”.
“I did?”
“Yes” he nodded, debating the course he was about to take, knowing how spectacularly this could go wrong if he screwed it up…and reflecting that it really was a long, long drop to the dockside from the edge of the flight deck. “Your Mother brought you over while she was working on the Evangelion project with…my Mother” he said, sensing her tense up at the subject of her mother, but pressing on. “You and I were, uh, put together in the same playpen while they talked”.
“And?” she asked in a slightly sharp tone as she sensed his hesitation.
Shinji let a slight, if rueful smile come across his face.
“You apparently stole one of my toys when they weren’t watching, then when I tried to get it back you continually hit me over the head with it until I ran away crying and my Mother pulled me out of the playpen”.

Asuka stared at him for several long, long seconds.

It started as a low level snicker, but it rapidly escalated into a chuckle, then an earth shaking peal of laughter that caused tears to flow from her eyes as she gasped for air, leaning back against the flight deck as she struggled to helplessly to control herself at the idea that even at the precocious age of Two, she was beating up on her rival successfully.
“That’s…that’s…” she gasped for air desperately.
“Disturbing” Shinji supplied.
“Brilliant!” she countered wiping away the tears as she desperately worked to regain her composure, the spasms of laughter slowly dying as she took deep breaths, snickering until she was back under control. “So, Baka; are you going to run and hide behind mummy again with me here?”
Bingo.
“My Mother is dead Asuka” he said shortly, causing the smile on her face to fall away, like her muscles were slowly being drained from her face. “She died when I was Four in an…incident, with Unit One”.
Asuka, a tone of genuine shock and regret in her voice stepped closer.
“I’m…I’m sorry” she said softly, Shinji glancing across at her read every emotion that passed across her face.

Shock at the revelation.

Anger at herself for being so stupid.

Pain as her own memories resonated…

And an almost macabre fascination at how disturbingly similar her story was to his at first glance.

The only question left is will she-

“What…what happened?” she asked in a voice so soft Shinji barley heard her, despite the fact that she was now standing right next to him.

He didn’t turn but after a pause of a few seconds, he slowly told her everything.
Well almost everything; it wasn’t exactly time to let her know his mother had chosen this fate. He continued with a twitch on his face as he recounted a few months ago when he had confronted his Father with his memories, probably the only genuine emotion he showed as he tried to push his way through the first of Asuka’s multi layered defenses.
Asuka stood there and listened, frozen into something approaching shock at his story, her eyes wide and open in a way he had almost never seen them as he finished.

“Shinji…I….I” she slowly said, glancing down and to the side as she fought inside over what she could say as she felt…what?
Not sympathy she knew as she studied the strange sensation as she looked into Shinji’s distant eyes.
No. It was empathy.
He smiled ever so slightly. Somehow, she felt as if he was gazing through her eyes and reading her very soul, as if every secret she had was open to him. He reached up his hand gently to ease a lock of her hair back into place behind her ear in a way she would never have let him do even two minutes ago, but found she strangely didn’t mind as she tried desperately to think of something to say. For the first time in her life, she felt a willingness, even a desire to talk to someone of her own wrenching loss and the deep, dark feelings that still surfaced in the darkest depths of night, alone in her room as she woke up hugging herself and desperately trying not to cry…

But almost as if he knew, he just stood, shaking his head slightly.

“It’s okay Asuka. You didn’t know, you couldn’t have known. Come on, lets get out of here” he said, easing past her to jump lightly up to the gangplank and head down to the docks.
Asuka took a long, deep breath as he leapt up, dashing away the flood of emotions that Shinji’s effortless penetration of the barriers she had erected had brought up. His story of how he had lost his mother was so similar, the skeptical, College educated part of her mind immediacy denied the possibility of a pure coincidence, but she simply didn’t know what to think…except that perhaps Shinji Ikari might not be the stuck up, show off jerk she had thought he was…
Shaking her head, she jumped up onto the Gang Plank and walked down to stand next to him, forcing her usual cocky smile onto her face.
Shinji felt Asuka follow him onto the gangplank, standing far closer to him then he had expected she would as they rode in silence down to the docks. He had seen the turbulent emotions in her eyes, guessing she had been on the verge of sharing her own horrible past but he had stopped her before she could do anything she could regret later.
She had to choose for herself if he deserved that level of trust and not in the heat of the moment. He knew better then anyone…perhaps even Asuka herself, just how painful those memories were. And the last thing he wanted to do; was to hurt her. She had had more then enough pain in her life already.



“They broke their synchronization records didn’t they?”
“Well…yes and no” Ritsuko said, studying the record. It was a relatively simple graph with two lines representing Synch levels across time, with key events in the battle highlighted. “Asuka for exactly six seconds actually reached a ratio of One Hundred”.
“Really?” Misato said, opening her eyes in surprise at that, recalling what Rits had said about the difficulty of that.
“That might just be stress and focusing so intently on such a limited objective and she couldn’t sustain it…but at the exact same time, Shinji’s crashed to zero and he lost synchronization”.
“That’s odd” Misato said in a tone that clearly suggested she didn’t really care.
“Very” Akagi agreed, scratching her head at the bizarre data, sighing at Shinji for giving her yet another mystery, before she glanced up at Misato, wondering at the scowl on her face. “So why are you in such a bad mood?” Misato grunted, then started to explain.
Twenty seconds later, Doctor Akagi was laughing harder then she had for a very long time.



The reason for that bad mood was currently standing in front of a simple stone marker in Tokyo-3 cemetery number one, having completed his delivery to Gendo Ikari half an hour ago. Adam, his ‘buy in’ to the game accepted with a cold smile by NERV’s Commander as they both looked at the tiny sample inside the dura-bakelite, alive but contained before he had taken his leave, heading out of the city after taking great pains to shake anyone who might have followed him, purchasing a bouquet of blowers on the way.

Entering the cemetery, just one person among dozens visiting a grave with flowers in their hands, he had ‘borrowed’ one of the ground keeper’s small trowels smoothly and headed down after a quick glance at the written directory, wondering if at some point in the future his name would be written into this book…or one of the Children.

Although his perfect poker face had never shown it, he had felt his heart freeze as he had listened in on the fleet tactical channel as the Angel had flailed about at the task force while they flew away, the Angel’s image on his screen relayed over the Battle Net so perfectly matching Shinji’s description that it had actually shaken him. He had swallowed as Unit Two had gone overboard, listened to Misato’s typically insane plan, closed his eyes and slowly exhaled as the Angel had been vaporized, watching Unit Two surviving to land on the Carrier with two children, one apparently boastful and one shaken, being helped out by the deck crew a few minutes later.

Now as he stopped in front of the ‘grave’ of one of those children’s mothers, he casually made a final check around to ensure no-one was watching him too closely before he knelt down in the dirt and probed carefully. He had to go down a good hand span before he hit it, carefully removing the dirty plastic box before planting his bouquet of flowers into the crater and packing the dirt back down around it, the grave soon looking like dozens of others.
Smoothly, he rose up and left the cemetery, getting back into his car and having a look around to ensure no-one was watching before he pulled out the dirt encrusted container and broke the seal, retrieving the clean plastic bag from inside.
His hands were shaking slightly as he looked over the exact same necklace he had seen on Misato only hours ago, knowing right then and there it was the same necklace, the tinniest imperfections along it standing out with instant familiarity to his eyes. Either someone had spent an extraordinary amount of resources to perfectly duplicate Misato’s necklace in one of the craziest plots in the history of the intelligence game…or…
I’ll have to get a DNA test, check this for fingerprints and other forensics…but I just know…God in heaven…I know he’s telling the truth.
He placed the bag into his attaché case, handling the necklace as carefully as if it were forensic evidence in a criminal investigation as he pulled out his secure cell phone, which had the latest encryption that even the MAGI would find damn hard to crack, ringing a number he had never rung before.
It was picked up after three rings.
“03 8734 8842”
“Oh. I’m sorry, I was trying to reach 03 8734 8852”
There was a long, significant, silence on the other end.
“Oh, that’s perfectly alright” the voice said in a tone that suggested this was not the case.
“My apologies” Kaji said, before hanging up, tossing his phone onto the seat and kicking his car into gear, turning out of the cemetery onto the Tokyo – 3 / Tokyo – 2 highway and gunning his engine.

In a safe house in Kyoto, a women who had been sitting down to a nice quiet evening exhaled in surprise and made her own ‘mistaken’ phone call using a ‘clean’ prepaid cell phone that she then carefully stripped, wiped and destroyed. The person who received her call noted the number she had expected to reach before hanging up and making an internal building call to the deputy chairman of the Japanese Defense Agency.

****

Well another chapter just came from nowhere. I had written about half of it, then I took a break from Derelict after hitting writers block, trying to juggle about a zillion plot threads going on at the same time after getting to a little over 10,000 words on the next chapter.


So I opened this up and just started typing...and my muse just blasted me for about six hours straight. shrugs When it hits you, it hits you!

Also sorry about the mutliple posts, the BBS software appears to have a problem with long posts.

[Academia Nut]

So awesome... so incredibly awesome. Brings tears to my eyes.

And I can't wait to see how they're going to handle the twin angels next time. Or how the whole Shinji/Asuka/Rei dynamic will work out this time around. I was also wondering if there were any peculiarities with the timing of Shinji's rescue of Rei, such as him say moving for the return button before she reached the surface. There must be other people wondering about his behaviour too.

[Battlehymn Republic]

Go figure; the only way that Shinji could actually get the girl is by acting like his father.

[LadyTevar]

WOW! That was intense!

While I hope you get over the writer's block on Derelict, I am very glad your Muse wasn't idle.

[AniThyng]

Wait wait, if Shinji can't speak english as implied in the cargo ship, does that mean the american admiral speaks japanese?

[Academia Nut]

Quite probably considering the Admiral had a speaking role in the original NGE. Considering the importance of Japan in the series, it would make sense that the higher echelons of command in the UN would have at least passing fluency in Japanese.

[Sidewinder]

A good chapter. I like how you're developing the relationship between the kids, with Toji's sister acting as a matchmaker.

You need to be careful, though. You keep using moral, as in ethics, when you mean to use morale, as in confidence. Then, as in later, when you mean to use than, as in "other than" or "rather than."

[Chris OFarrell]

Yeah I'm not paying anywhere near as much attention as I should with this fic in terms of proof reading, frankly this is just a really 'fun' fic for me, the idea had been bouncing around in my head for a very long time after I wrote that first chapter...

But I've charged in all guns blazing.

[LadyTevar]

Yeah I'm not paying anywhere near as much attention as I should with this fic in terms of proof reading, frankly this is just a really 'fun' fic for me, the idea had been bouncing around in my head for a very long time after I wrote that first chapter...

But I've charged in all guns blazing.

I'm glad you did. I've highly enjoyed it.

Although I'm looking forward to Shinji's debrief by Dr Ritsuko. "Now, Shinji, we noticed your Synch dropped to zero at this point. Can you tell me why?"
Shinji, thinking oh shit, can't tell the truth, oh shit oh.... "Umm... you won't tell Asuka... will you?" fidgetfidget, blush.

I'm sure Dr Ritsuko would get a laugh out of Shinji losing synch because he was thinking more of Asuka's body rubbing against his like that.

[Chris OFarrell]

No-one here remembered my Birthday! You all will pay for this...one dollar each!
Or not.

*sobs*

Ah well...


The rise of the post Second Impact United Nations had shifted the world stage of power dramatically. Some of these changes were never seen by the people the UN purported to represent, such as the resources directed to and the growing influence of GEHERN then NERV - let alone SEELE itself of course. Others changes were rather plain to see and hotly debated, such as the formation of the United Nations Combined Military Forces.

The UNCMF was the ultimate outcome of loosing half the world’s population to the Second Impact and post Second Impact wars. Most of humanity hadn’t really given a damn about longer term issues such as conflicts of authority between the UN Government and the existing powers; they were simply happy to see the world stand down from the brink of an all out no holds bared nuclear exchange. This feeling had only increased when the UN, in stark contrast to its pre Second Impact slothfulness, had rapidly and efficiently redirected resources, expertise, and personnel in a global manner to start rebuilding, saving countless millions of peoples lives.

These positive outcomes didn’t mean however, that the –surviving- major nations didn’t have ‘issues’ with the extreme shifts of power. Over 70% of the standing military forces of the world were to be integrated into the combined UN military, answerable directly to the UN chain of command over their own Governments in an attempt to keep any one nation from getting any stupid ideas when faced with the threat of massive, unified retaliation.
With that said, this new force wasn’t a major threat to the world. The simple fact was that it was unlikely in the extreme the UNCMF would be deployed against a nation whose own troops made up key components of the force, even more so if you looked at just how difficult it was to legally authorize the use of force. Really, when you got down to it, the ‘UN military’ was just a way to tie up the major striking power of the world and keep it out of everyone’s hands, equally. By treaty, all nations were allowed to keep their own limited defensive forces, such as the USMC or JSSDF…but with overt force no longer much of an option, much of the ability to manipulate foreign policy once again returned to the domain of Intelligence Services.
Which was why SEELE had been careful to compromise as many of the worlds intelligence services as possible of course having, correctly, predicted that Governments would attempt to infiltrate NERV after the Evangelion project had become known to them.

And so what if some agency worked their way through one hundred and eight different front companies and found out that the Marduk Institute was nothing more then a front for NERV itself? That would only lead to dozens more questions about ‘why’, setting off a whole new cycle of investigations that would go nowhere.

So what if they found out that the Angels return had been anticipated by NERV? That would only justify every cent spent on developing the Evangelion technology to fight them in the first place, further reinforcing the perception that Evangelion was strictly an anti Angel technology.

So what if Governments didn’t entirely trust NERV, despite their UN mandate, the huge leaps in technology NERV/GEHERN had produced and the massive economic benefits that had come directly and indirectly from their operations around the world? The fact was that the Angels were a mortal threat to humankind who had to be stopped and NERV was the only organization who could do so, something that had become even clearer with the pathetic UN and JSSDF attacks against the Third Angel.
And when you got down to it, even with the Evangelions what could a hostile NERV possibly hope to accomplish against the world?
The answer to that, only the SEELE council and perhaps a handful of high level people in NERV knew…which was the problem.
SEELE wasn’tan evil organization of bad guys with well dressed henchmen and a secret mountain base to infiltrate, computers to hack or phones to tap. It was a true cell of networked individuals spread throughout NERV, the UN and other major power structures; a parasite clinging to those hosts and diverting resources to its own ends. The core ‘Instrumentality Committee’ operated under the public goal of ‘artificially evolving humanity through science to better suit its environment’, a broad statement of nonsense that no-one took seriously…but no-one was able to disprove either.

Hiding their true goals in plain sight, how clever of them Major General Shigeru Ishiba, the Director of the Japanese Defense Agency (Intelligence) thought to himself as he studied Ryoji Kaji from across the table, working to absorb the titanic shift in his world that had just been delivered.
Shigeru Ishiba had fallen into his position at the top of the Japanese Governments intelligence arm through rather unusual chain of events that had started back in 2007 after NERV had been formed. The Japanese Government, increasingly wary of GEHERN and now NERV had decided they wanted to look more deeply into the project, directing the JDA to set up a secret long term task force to investigate NERV from top to bottom. The taskforce however had gotten precisely nowhere, primarily because the Japanese Intelligence service had been long compromised by SEELE to make sure the Japanese Government ‘knew’ NERV was a harmless organization, firmly under the control of the UN. In fact, the Chairman of JDA Intelligence, Yamada Tarō himself was a SEELE mole…and he wasn’t the only one. Tarō had built up an internal network of traitors in the JDA over the years -with SEELE’s help of course, most of who were attached to the NERV task force. It would have probably been amusing from an external perspective; ‘turned’ JDA personnel ordering their subordinates to penetrate the organization they secretly worked for.
Of course, the lower level people often succeeded to their credit, smugly turning or inserting people into the lower levels of the Second Branch of NERV in Hanoke –soon renamed Tokyo 3- or the UN, occasionally even turning a mid level officer on track for higher office and higher security clearances.

SEELE was promptly informed of these successes, but the aforementioned traitors were very rarely killed. Even disregarding the fact that the intelligence business was generally a polite, orderly society where shooting enemy agents was frowned upon -as it would start an endless cycle of reprisals, it was far more convenient for SEELE to simply incorporate these new traitors into the project; using them to ‘officially’ feed false information to the JDA, which then reported NERV didn’t have an agenda beyond R&D of the Anti-Angel Evangelion project, and this ‘SEELE’ they occasionally heard whispers about was little more then the boogie man; a modern day Majestic Twelve or Illuminati.

Shigeru himself had been of that same perception until one Ryoji Kaji, an apparently ‘do nothing’ Section 2 agent from NERV’s Third Branch in Germany had turned up one day at a sushi restaurant in Tokyo 2, flashed one of his trademark smiles and sat down next to the plain clothes General.
He had shown nothing either in his face or his body language beyond mild interest as the younger man had quietly and casually explained who he was, what his position was and the fact that he wanted to work for the Japanese Government…at least until the Section 2 officer had handed over a sheet of paper, which Shigeru had unfolded to read the name of every single infiltrated agent and contact the JDA taskforce had managed to insert, turn and run inside NERV and the UN.
But even more terrifying, was that on the other side of the page were the names of two dozen mid level bureaucrats inside the JDA, followed by a handful of senior people up to -and including- the director himself!

To say this had almost ended his world had been something of an understatement, but Shigeru had kept his composure as the unshaven man smiled, place his sunglasses back on his face and exited the restaurant, leaving behind only a card with a hotel room number written on it.
Shigeru Ishiba had taken the time to finish up his lunch as if nothing had happened, heading back to his office, anger and rage competing in his mind for predominance behind the bland mask on his face, telling his secretary to hold all his calls as he had sat down to think this all through.
Unlike his apparently traitorous boss, Shigeru hadcome up through the ranks of the military, then civilian Intelligence divisions and was well trained in both tradecraft higher level strategic issues. His post of Deputy Director effectively made him the ‘boss’ of ongoing operations, leaving the major strategic and political decisions to his superior. It meant he technically didn’t have any real authority to start the kind of sweeping Counter-Intelligence investigation that would be needed to clean up this situation…but when you got right down to it, he ran the place.

His first considered act was to destroy the piece of paper Kaji had supplied after memorizing the names of the compromised JDA personnel. He had an excellent memory –a useful trait for a spymaster- and he spent the next few hours moving through the list in his head as he tried to recall everything about those people; specifically how SEELE and NERV might have either persuaded –or forced- them into becoming double agents.

It hadn’t taken long.

The director himself, a former JSDF General had been rumored to have been involved in some very dark criminal activity back in the years following the Second Impact. He wasn’t really alone in that of course, Shigeru remembered the chaos of those years well. But the whispers never repeated outside of JDA Intel were that the director had gone even further, using his JSDF command to both enforce and cover up his highly illegal dealings. His career move into the JDA High Command provided ample resources to tie up the loose ends of his dealings with the Yakuza and Zaibatsu…but he had a feeling SEELE had gotten their hands on the proof and threatened to expose him, unless he agreed to keep things on the ‘up and up’ on their behalf.

The head of Counter-Intelligence, hadn’t she just brought that new sports car a few months back? A suspiciously flashy purchase for someone who had a family to feed, kids to put through school, more or less lived week to week as far as he recalled…

Several suspects in the operations department he saw had applied for several weeks’ vacation throughout the last six years. Of course, that wasn’t necessarily strange compared to other people in their departments…the fact however that every one of these vacations had been to Europe or US where they had stayed in five star hotels, was.

In fact, he could find some very odd issues with all of the personnel on Kaji’s list that stuck out like a sore thumb, with only a few hours work. It was utterly amazing that it had all gone unnoticed, but then again as the aforementioned list included the Chairman, Director of Counter Intelligence/Internal Security, several people in the financial department, several people in the small internal investigation arm, which Shigeru darkly remembered had been cut several times due to ‘budget constraints’ at the behest of the Chairman over the last few years…

The only conclusion he could reach after several hours work was that SEELE had utterly compromised the JDA…and they had done so well in advance of any Government investigations. He was playing almost a decade’s worth of catch-up now. The bastards had used the JDA to root out turncoats and traitors in NERV, then make them a part of their own plans, sending back false data which the JDA then honestly reported to the Japanese Government.
Professionally and dispassionately, Shigeru had to admire the shear balls of the operation.
Of course, it didn’t appear that they had counted on someone ‘in the know’ about this whole scheme to betray them.

Which begged the question; why had Kaji done this?

There was the possibility that this was just another play by SEELE, but Shigeru couldn’t see the angle. Unless they were expecting him to denounce everyone without proof, get fired and let one of their pawns move into his job…but the evidence he had been shown today put paid to the idea that SEELE were anything like that stupid.

The second possibility was that this was all some kind of strange internal loyalty test on him. But it was unlikely, there was no way the JDA would risk a deep cover agent like Kaji –assuming he was working on the side for JDA- just to test one of their own personnel. And frankly, Shigeru was utterly loyal to his job and his country, had made very few enemies by generally staying out of the political side of things, so he dismissed that theory.

Which left the possibility that he had a genuine ‘walk in’.

Deciding there was nothing to be lost by pursuing this, he had gotten back to work – there was more to the Intelligence world and his Job then SEELE and NERV after all- then ‘borrowed’ some equipment from the technical department before he headed home. He had changed before heading back onto the town through a long roundabout and confusing route, using every technique he knew to detect and shake a tail, before parking his car, taking a train, then a taxi and only then heading through a pair of shopping centers linked underground into the Hilton Hotel and up to the sixth floor.
Kaji had been waiting inside, understandably more then a little nervous, but they both professionally swept each others equipment, then each other, then the hotel room for any unwelcome electronics, before mutually activating tiny white noise devices that would play merry hell with any microphones they had missed, getting down to business for a long, frank talk.

Kaji had been agreeably direct with his motives; he wanted to know the real truth behind NERV and its masters after he had become increasingly sure that SEELE, the people backing the Katsuragi expedition, had deliberately set off Armageddon and wiped out half of the human race. The good news Kaji had to report was that SEELE hadn’t bothered to touch the political figures in Japan, correctly deeming them too unreliable.
Japan hadn’t exactly had the most stable Governments post Second Impact, changing on a year to year basis that made it damn near impossible to find a politician to stick with and ‘turn’. Add to that the fact that most Japanese politicians were already brought and paid for, be it by the Zaibatsu or the Yakuza – or both- so they had contented themselves with controlling the flow of information to the Government instead.

Shigeru had decided not to bother them either - at least not immediately and without hard evidence. Instead, he used his post of Deputy Director to carefully build his ‘own’ network of people inside the JDA, mostly experienced field officers and controllers; people he had worked with and he knew he could trust, who in turn formed their own elite teams of people they knew they could trust. Gathering the evidence against the traitors however, had proven almost painfully easy as few of them were actually trained in field craft.Oh sure they used dead drops, secret signals, brush passes and so on, but in the most amateurish ways that had the surveillance teams moaning in despair at how badly the reputation of the JDA was suffering at their hands…even if they were technically traitors.

It was a matter of professional pride after all.

But the upside was that it had only taken six months to gather rather unimpeachable evidence against all of them, as well as their agreeably small cell of SEELE ‘handlers’ who were professionals, but far too confident in the fact that they had the JDA Counter-Intelligence network neutralized and took stupid risks and made sloppy mistakes.
So much the better of course.

By a lucky twist of fate, a new Government had been elected to power shortly before Kaji had come forward and, surprisingly, it was holding together as the world slowly regained a measure of stability. Shigeru had finally decided the time was right and, quietly, slipped into the house of the Defense minister one night, a no nonsense ex-cop who utterly despised corruption. And after almost giving the minister a heart attack, Shigeru had presented his evidence.

The response had been swift. The Defense minister, then the Prime Ministers first instincts had been understandable; arrest the traitors, seize NERV Central and take it apart brick by brick until they figured out what was going on. Shigeru however had quickly brought them around to his own way of thinking, an idea that would also have the bonus of avoiding a major international incident.

After all, exposing a ring of double agents was nothing more then the necessary pre-requisite to create a ring of triple agents.

The next day, he had given orders to move everything into phase two, ‘his’ people taking all the traitors aside to have a chat over a long weekend.
The majority of the turncoats had simply been greedy fools, selling out their nation for a new car, boat or trip to a tropical island their wives probably wouldn’t have approved of. The JDA took the simplest solution to them, telling them they could keep the money SEELE was paying them, so long as they agreed to work for the JDA…for real this time. As long as they followed their new instructions, everything would go just fine. But, if they tried in any way to warn SEELE, they would find themselves locked up in a run down prison on the Siberian / Chinese border Japan rented for almost nothing from the PRC, for the rest of their miserable lives.

To a person, this group of ‘lower level’ traitors agreed lots of money was better then freezing slowly and were released back ‘into the wild’ under a close watch.

Most of the higher ups who had been blackmailed into working for SEELE were offered the ultimate deal; a full immunity for any past crimes committed –sealed in their file until all of this was over- if they turned against their masters. Again, the majority of this group was all too happy to do so, having found themselves in an impossible position. They were not truly disloyal, at least in their own minds…just utterly terrified and without a shred of moral fiber in their bodies to do the right thing, regardless of personal consequences.

However a small minority had proven more difficult.
It had turned out that the Director of Internal Security was something of a true believer in SEELEs plans, whatever they might be, and had said nothing for the two days she was held despite all kinds of dire threats being directed against her. Too high profile a figure to have ‘vanish’ without a trace for a more ‘rigorous’ debriefing until they broke her, she had been ruthlessly killed in a tragic car crash the next day, her body paraded carefully past numerous SEELE moles, then given a splendid public cremation, allowing one of her underlings, a SEELE spy now working for the JDA, to be moved up into her position.
SEELE hadn’t really cared, simply paying her replacement more money to do his new job for them. The unexpected did happen after all, even in the most carefully laid plans.

The last person Shigeru had had to deal with, personally, had been the Chairman. He had been similarly reluctant to betray his masters, but after the pointed example of the Counter Intelligence chief, he had decided that early retirement to a nice comfortable villa at the Northern end of Honshu wasn’t such a bad idea.
He apparently did enjoy it according to all reports, even though it amounted to little more then a luxurious prison, ‘his staff’ watching him 24/7 and allowing almost no communication with the outside world.

Ultimately, by the start of the year 2014, newly promoted Major General Shigeru Ishiba had completely cleaned house at the JDA without cleaning house, no small feet. He had even cut 80% of the funding to the unit ‘publicly’ investigating NERV to SEELE’s delight, reinforcing the perception that while the JDA didn’t entirely trust the organization, all their evidence conclusively suggested there was little to them a bunch of paranoid and half crazy scientists, who none the less had generated significant technological breakthroughs.

In reality the efforts againstNERV and their backers had only increased, but in a more subtle way. Abandoning the idea of large scale infiltration, JDA instead had turned their forensic accountants loose, focusing their efforts on following the money, identifying where the resources were going, monitoring communications between higher ups, trying to identify the higher members of SEELE and keep tabs on them, while Ryoji worked on the other side, promoted to Section 2 Bravo, ‘Special Investigations’.
But progress was slow.

Oh they gained a great deal of low level information, but slowly it became clear that the true motives of SEELE were simply impossible to get at, not without getting to the council itself as frankly, only they knew the ‘why’ and the ‘what’.
So, JDA had switched focus to one Gendo Ikari.
Their investigations had uncovered that there was some kind of friction between SEELE and their point man at Central. As far as Kaji had understood and explained it, the goals of SEELE and Gendo meshed well until some undetermined point in the future, at which point…things would probably happen.
Both sides pretended it wasn’t the case, but both sides knew the truth and were constantly maneuvering for position even as they worked together closely on what they needed to cooperate on.
Kaji, a ‘known’ SEELE agent had approached Gendo with an offer of an alliance against them…for a price of course. Gendo, being no-ones fool, had demanded proof of his fidelity, which Kaji had delivered yesterday. Shigeru had given grudging approval for the operation to steal Adam from NERV Germany and it had gone off without a hitch, SEELE unaware the sample in the Third Branch was now only a plastic mockup inside Dura-Bakalite, the real First Angel now in a cryogenic vault deep in Central Dogma.
If they ever found out what Kaji had done however…

“So” Shigeru said after the silence had become heavy. “To summarize this…information; the Angels ultimate goal is to initiate a Third Impact, to ‘evolve’ artificially to the next stage in their evolution at the cost of wiping out the human race”.
“Correct”.
“And SEELE are also looking to artificially evolve humankind to what they consider the next stage of human existence through their own Third Impact, a single perfect being suspended in some kind of primordial soup?”
“You got it”.
“And this is the ultimate purpose of the Evangelion project, especially Unit One which is not engineered from Adam’s genetic material, but from the second Angels?”
“Three for three Boss”.
“Oh yes, and the aforementioned Second Angel was not found dead at the South Pole as GEHERN reported, but is sitting deep in NERV Centrals Terminal Dogma…and the entire Geofront in fact is apparently this…Liliths ‘egg’?”
“You’re taking this rather well” Kaji pointed out with a raised eyebrow.
“No, this all makes perfect sense. You see, when I was on my way here, I saw this rabbit step out of a building carrying a pocket watch and asking me to follow him down a hole. So I stupidly decided to have a look” Shigeru said with a roll of his eyes that still retained a glint of humor as he took a sip of water. “First impressions?”
“He’s on the level” Kaji said simply.
“That’s a very strong vote of support” Shigeru responded, leaning back in his chair.
“I know and I don’t make it lightly…but I’ve told you what he told me…what he knew. Either SEELE have utterly compromised Operation Wallpaper if he is under their control, or, he really has traveled back in time”.
“It’s possible he represents a third faction in this game” the General speculated, enjoying playing devils advocate for a while. “Or perhaps this is a play from Gendo himself, to see how you would react”.
There was a hint of accusation in that voice, Kaji noted. He had broken almost every rule in the book by screaming up to Tokyo-2 and asking for a face to face meeting after just getting feet dry in Japan. Oh he had been careful to ensure he neither had any tracking devices on his person, or that that he had been followed, but it was still a very poor habit to get into for a covert agent.
“It’s not impossible” Kaji admitted honestly, after reflecting on the possibility. “But all our evidence suggests that neither SEELE nor Gendo have anything like the knowledge of the Angels Shinji did. Our best evidence suggests they have some kind of scenario developed from the complete Dead Sea Scrolls, giving them little more then a timeline. Add to that what he knew about…my…background, that I have not told either SEELE or Gendo and wasn’t recorded, anywhere…”
Shigeru grunted.
“Well, the truth Ryoji is that this story answers a great many questions we’ve had about Shinji”.
“Oh?” Kaji inquired in interest. Hehadn’t been informed of any investigation of the Third Child, but there was such a thing as ‘need to know’ after all.

“Consider. We’ve kept a loose eye on Shinji as you might expect, given whom his Father is. But all our reports suggested he was an emotionally fragile boy, introverted, lacking confidence and deathly afraid of his Father. Yet according to our reports, he stood up to his Father in public without hesitation or fear, has extorted a rather generous retainer from him for his services and he has been working hard to reach out to older, senior people in the organization. This is not the same Shinji Ikari in our file. Now, add to that his astonishing skill in his combat debut which NERV officially put down to the unit ‘Going Berserk’, a very strange out of control Evangelion that puts down the hostile with almost no collateral damage and protects some other kids who were in the area…”
Kaji nodded. Even the distant Third Branch had been buzzing with the news about Shinji’s first combat performance, then his second and third battles, showing a coolness and skill that no-one had ever expected from someone with only very limited training
It had been the choice topic around the water cooler for weeks in fact.

“But his skill in combat makes sense, if you allow that he has extensive ‘real life’ combat experience against these same Angels before and knew exactly what they could do”.
“Precisely” Shigeru nodded. “And he was kind enough to bring back a degree of proof, which I am expecting the analysis back about…ah” he smiled as a soft knock came from the door behind them. “Come”
The door slid open to reveal a casually dressed middle aged Japanese man whose name Shigeru knew was Chion Yamada, as everyone else at the JDA did, but called ‘Q’ after the infamous James Bond character, a nickname the Agent had picked up then worn like a badge of honor for his entire career. His formal position was that of senior analysis and forensic specialist, a trusted ‘insider’ who had been told to drop everything and dissect the cross Kaji had brought with him. “Q you have a report?”
“Hai” Chion nodded, pulling out a crème folder and passing a thin riff of stapled A4 sheets across to first the Director, then passing another to Kaji. “It is all in this report Sir, but the short answer is that cross is the real deal”.
The two intelligence officers exchanged a look at that.
“Go on”.
“The blood on the necklace is a positive ID for Captain Misato Katsuragi, at least for the genetic file in her UN records which, before you ask, my computer people assure me has not been tampered with since it was created in 2000. The pendent also had trace samples of blood that was not hers. We sampled it as per your orders against personnel of the third JSSDF division and got a match” he said, handing over another sheet of paper. “Specialist Kaikou Nishimura”.
The two men looked into the eyes of a man who, according to Shinji, would gladly gun down an unarmed 14 year old kid with a chuckle and a smile…
“The necklace was also coated with trace amounts of gunpowder residue, consistent with point four zero Smith and Western cartridges, which matches the USP the Captain carries as her personal side arm. Also, the splatter pattern suggests a close range-”
“We get the picture” Shigeru broke in, flicking the personnel page onto the glossy black surface of the table in front of him. “But so far none of this is necessarily impossible to recreate and fake, just difficult”.
“That is because I have not got to the best part, Sir” the agent smiled tolerantly. “You see, the cross was heavily irradiated”.
“What?!” Kaji and Shigeru demanded, sitting up straight in their chairs and looking slightly alarmed both having handled the bag before passing it off.
“Nothing harmful” Chion added, drawing a relieved but un-amused look from his boss. “As you may know, it was discovered shortly after Second Impact that anything within a five hundred kilometer diameter of ground Zero had been irradiated by an exotic new type of radiation never before seen. Harmless to humans and with a very long decay-”
“Yes, I’ve read NERV’s reports on it” Kaji broke in. “Something about how the level of radiation fell off at a perfectly constant rate the further you got from Ground Zero, regardless of all other factors that proved this wasn’t a natural event”.
“Indeed” Chion nodded. “The UN was lucky; very little physical evidence was recovered from the area, so few people know about the radiation. But the distance from ground zero defines the radiation level; this pendant has exactly the same radiation level as was recorded on the clothing and body of Misato Katsuragi fifteen years ago. Which means it was, to the decimeter, the exact same distance from the epicenter when it was irradiated as Katsuragi.”
Chion paused to take a breath as his boss and Agent Ryoji exchanged a look, finding the next bit of his news still hard to believe, but he had run the test ten times and the results were not in doubt.
“In short gentlemen, this pendant has a clear decay pattern proving it was exposed to the Second Impact sixteen and a halfyears ago. Not fifteen”.

There was utter silence in the room for at least ten seconds.

“Is…there any chance of this radiation being artificially duplicated? Or that this cross was also there, perhaps further out and received a lesser ‘dose’ of radiation?”
“No” Chion said flatly. “All our reports suggest even NERV can’t duplicate the radiation. I know CERN have been working on it for some time without success and they have the best particle physics people in the world, not even NERV are in their league. And as for the second half of your question, well we can determine to within a micro-grey, what the initial exposure was and I ran the test ten times”.

Again, the group sat in silence, this time for twenty seconds.

“Well” Chion said after the silence became uncomfortable. “I think we have little choice but to proceed on the assumption that Shinji is telling the truth” was about all the General could say in reply to that, after pausing for twenty long seconds in thought. “Do you have anything else for us?”
“It is all in my report Sir”.
“Then you are dismissed”.
Chion bowed, which Shigeru acknowledged with a polite nod, the lab technician backing quietly out of the room and closing the door behind him.

There was another long, long minute of silence between Kaji.

“Now you know how I felt yesterday Boss” Kaji finally commented, trying not to smile at the look on Shigeru’s face,.
“How long does it take to go away?” Kaji shrugged.
“About four and a half hours at the bar, I’d guess closer to six drinking alone”.
“Noted” Shigeru commented, leaning forward and flipping through his notes as he tried to ignore the fact that his hands suddenly felt numb. “Well, suffice to say, we need to get Shinji professionally debriefed, ASAP”.
“It’ll be very difficult to get him away long enough without being detected” Kaji commented with a raised eyebrow. “NERV keeps a very tight watch on the pilots for obvious reasons. Even as Asuka’s guardian and a member of Section Two, I was always tailed by at least two agents in Germany whenever I took her out.
“I know” Shigeru admitted. “But he approached us, no I’m sorry, Shinji approached you. Clearly he trusts you in looking for help to stop this…insanity from ever happening. I’m sure that you could arrange for a day doing ‘guy stuff’, and we could arrange to loose your shadows at an appropriate moment”.
“Well it beats having to take Asuka shopping again” Kaji muttered under his breath, getting a snort of genuine laughter at his discomfort from Shigeru.
Kaji really did love Asuka like the daughter he never had, but the way she hung off his arm and flirted with him in public was getting increasingly uncomfortable…even more so with the rate her hormones were increasingly firing off these days, with the risk of turning a harmless crush into something rather more dangerous…
“We’ve set up a series of new Safe Houses in Tokyo-3” the General continued, breaking into Kaji’s thoughts as he handed over a card with several addresses on its back. “The local JDA Intel group isn’t aware of them. I’ll have Koga and his team on standby, as soon as you can work out a day, we’ll move him down”.
Kaji studied the card, memorized the writing on the back, then flicked it into the nearby fireplace to be consumed. Koga was probably the best damn interrogator in the entire JDA; he had cracked the former Chairman and ‘flipped’ everyone else working for SEELE when on their case.

Behind his back, everyone called him ‘The Warlock’.

He had a frightening ability to see right through lies and deception faster and more accurately then any lie detector invented to date. During his day long interviews with subjects, he maintained a calm, polite and downright friendly attitude, sadly pointing out falsehoods when necessary and gently, almost regretfully pointing out when people were lying through their teeth to him as he slowly broke them down. Combined with an almost perfect memory, he was just as skilled as an analyst behind a desk, so much so in fact that he had become too valuable to let out into the field…which said much about how seriously the General was taking this.
It wasn’t the beginning of the end of SEELE or Gendo Ikari, Kaji knew in a moment of dispassionate analysis. It wasn’t time to move against them yet, especially as the Angels were the primary thereat humanity had to band together against.
But that was fine. Let NERV and SEELE place their money into the pot and wonder at the strength of each others hands…
JDA will soon have already seen most of their cards.
“From this point on” Shigeru continued, Shinji’s codename is...Balcony” the General declared. As a matter of course, he pulled codenames randomly from objects around him as needed, which had utterly nothing to do with the ‘compartment’ in question. It was a basic security procedure to isolate an agent from the information they produced. After all, information was often laundered –relatively- far and wide inside the intelligence services and a codename might be all that stood between an undiscovered mole and a valuable source. “Right now, only five people really know about this. We’ll keep it that way for now, but bring in Koka when needed. Anyone else gets a full background and current Counter-Intelligence checkup, the works, before they get in. I don’t care how many times they’ve been checked before”.
“What about the PM?” Kaji asked. Shigeru shook his head.
“He doesn’t need to know yet. He can wait until we get some additional supporting evidence, after we’ve debriefed Balcony properly”. The Director of JDA Intelligence now looked up. “And as for you, get the hell out of here and don’t come back”.
“It’s nice to be loved” Kaji smirked, standing up and heading for the door, knowing his boss wasn’t actually being rude, but both of them knowing he had already taken far too many chances in coming to him, even if he had had little choice.
And in their job, taking unnecessary chances appealed to them about as much as being sent to fight the last Angel in scuba gear with a harpoon.



“Asuka, Asuka Asuka! Have you been listening to all those kids?” Kensuke muttered to Toji shortly after another satisfied customer walked away from their small shop front, pocketing the considerable amount of money they had made off yet another sale. They –or more accurately Kensuke- had set up the business in a rarely visited part of the school grounds not that far from the main gate, well before the start of school. From this location they had a clear view of all the approaches, giving them time to hide the evidence before a Class Rep or a Teacher saw them, or in the worst case, dump the evidence down a nearby drain and quietly walk away.
Sales had been brisk, even though Kensuke didn’t have anything really *saucy* to offer the student body. For reasons only known to himself, Shinji had vetoed the idea of trying to take any pictures of the fiery exchange student inside the locker rooms, then flatly forbidden any attempt at ‘up-skirt’ or otherwise inappropriate shots.
Why precisely he was being so protective of the Red Haired Demon as Toji had christened the Second Child neither of his fiends knew, but they accepted the restrictions out of respect for their best friend…if not out of respect of the latest NERV alumni to move into their class.
“Well we’re just lucky these shots don’t reveal her personality” Toji responded to his friend’s exasperated sigh over the craze Asuka had stirred up.
Both young men freely admitted she was hot, that simply wasn’t in question. In a school of generally polite, reserved young Japanese girls, she was a living, breathing firestorm, an impression helped along by her red hair that whirled around her like a burning halo as she moved about the school at speed. Add to that her stunning looks and the fact that she publicly had announced –and Shinji had confirmed- that she was an Evangelion pilot…

Toji and Kensuke however, were not fooled for a second. They had seen the ‘other’ side of Asuka up close and personal, finding a curious historical parallel with the ‘Sirens’ they had learned about in Mythology class last week…but with a telephoto lens, they didn’t have to get close.



The irony that those two will end up spending more time with Asuka then any of her rapidly growing fan club…now that’s the textbook definition of irony Shinji smirked to himself as he entered the school gates and spotted his friends deep in the shadows running their brisk trade, easily guessing at the thoughts going through their head from their expressions.
And if they had known the thoughts moving through Shinji’s mind at that moment, Shinji frankly estimated there was an even-money chance they would have dragged him away and started an intervention to save him from himself.
“Hullo Shinji! Guten Morgen!”
The cheerful voice rang out across the area near the school gate, the kind of voice that the wind and waves would stop at once the listen to, a tone that simultaneously demanded and expected instant attention to be paid to it…or else.
“Guten Morgen Asuka” Shinji replied with a somewhat shy, but very real smile on his face as he turned to face his fiery wingman. “Wie Geht Es Ihnen?”
“Wundervoll!” she smiled as she stepped up to him. “Ich wußte nicht, daß Sie Deutsches sprachen Shinji?”
“Uh, actually, I don’t speak German” Shinji replied with a somewhat sheepish look, guessing the gist of her question from one or two key words. “I just learned a few words here and there after I heard you were coming over”.
“Ah” she said, a slight smirk staining her smile as she stepped up next to him, ignoring the looks from the students around them. Mostly love struck stares from the guys and ‘grinding of teeth’ looks from the girls, the later directed evenly at the aforementioned boys who were ignoring them in favour of her, along with her, for stealing the boy’s attention away from them. “Well, I appreciate the gesture Third Child, even if your accent is atrocious” Asuka said, throwing her hair back over her shoulder with a flick of her head. “Whoever taught you German needs to take some lessons”

Shinji caught himself before replying ‘You taught me’, cursing the circumstances that prevented him from delivering snappy comebacks that were oh so perfect…

“I’ll let her know” he said instead with a dry tone.
“Her?” Asuka asked with a raised eyebrow. “Misato?”
He must have imagined the slightly sharp tone in her voice at the word ‘Her’…
“No it…wait, Misato speaks German?” Shinji asked in genuine surprise. He couldn’t ever recall Misato speaking German around him, though come to think of it…
“What are you, stupid?” Asuka inquired with a roll of her eyes. “Misato was my guardian for a few years back home; she joined NERV at the Third Branch. It sure would have been rather difficult if she couldn’t speak the language, nicht denken Sie?”
“Oh I don’t know” Shinij said, keeping an utterly straight face, unphased by Asuka’s sharp look. “Just as long as she could say ‘how long to Oktoberfest’, everything would have worked out fine”.
Asuka actually giggled at that, generating an envious look from the males around him at his ability to hold more then a three second conversation with Asuka. Finally however, the Second Child recalled what she had been thinking before spotting Shinji, looking around and ignoring the crowd as she searched for someone. “Say…the other one is here too, isn’t she?”
“If by ‘the other one’ you mean Rei Ayanami…” Shinji let his voice trail off, his gaze flickering to the other side of the street. The school actually straddled a road thanks to its huge growth over the last few years, with much of the younger kids’ classrooms on the opposite street and an escalator walkway connecting them. Right next to the escalator on the far side, Rei Ayanami sat calmly reading a small book, oblivious to the world around her. She had been out of class the last few days after Asuka had arrived, only just getting back this morning…
Asuka followed his gaze, smiled, then happily skipped off towards Rei, causing Shinji to shake his head slightly in amusement as ‘the hoard’ followed her off, more then a few shooting him envious looks.
Well, at least this time he had been able to hopefully somewhat prepare Rei…
“You know Ikari, I didn’t expect you to be the one to make a deal with the devil” Toji suddenly spoke up as he moved up next to Shinji with the retreat of Asuka. “What did she promise you? Money? Women? Precious jewels?”
“Eh?” Shinji asked in confusion.
“I mean you looked so happy then in her presence and she…she smiled at you!” Kensuke pointed out in a betrayed tone.
“Ah. Asuka isn’t so bad once you get past the daily beatings” Shinji smirked as he saw Asuka leap off the escalator into Rei’s sunlight, her fanclub following down the escalator.
“Your funeral Ikari” Toji snorted, crossing his arms in front of his chest as he shook his head at the growing crowd at the bottom of the escalator. “You’re the poor bastard who has to work with her after all”.
Laugh it up Forth Child,Shinji thought back, watching as Asuka started to interrogate Rei, curious to see how this would go…



Rei Ayanami was reading.
This was a typical activity for the First Child.
Without any real friends, she had spent most of her infrequent hours at school in study of one kind or another, seeing little reason to waste time doing nothing. In fact, to many Japanese parents she would have been the perfect child, able to dedicate her entire attention to academic pursuits at this critical age, with an IQ that registered easily at the genius level.

But things were…changing.

The critical revelation that she owned her own life and that the purpose of life was to live it as she chose had thrown an Eva sized wrench in Rei’s day to day activities. While Rei was still perfectly capable of directing her entire attention into any one academic or Evangelion related activity at a moments notice, secretly she wished to live in the same way the people around her did. She read and studied mostly out of inertia as it was something she knew how to do, but behind her blank mask was a slowly growing desire to be up there right now, with the rest of the school, laughing and chatting away freely about what she thought were utterly irrelevant and trivial, but everyone appeared to hold in great value.
Friendship was a concept she was slowly starting to learn, beyond the textbook definitions she had studied and not entirely understood. Shinji professed feelings for her because he found her unique and worth protecting. Rei did not quite see why this was so, but found she could accept he did, such was human emotion. Other classmates such as Classmates Suzuhara and Aida appeared, through Shinji, to be increasingly finding something similar in her to respect and she increasingly wished to find a way to return this; Shinji’s suggestion that she would ‘take’ Aida to this upcoming dance sounded like an acceptable first step in that direction.
However…she still lacked friendships with any of the girls in her class…or any women at all for that matter. For all the textbooks suggesting the relationships between males and females was the most complicated and intricate, she was finding those few she had much easier to maintain then opening up to any of the girls in her age group.
For years she had ignored them, if not out of malice -though she didn’t know if they understood this- and they had ignored her in return. The few interactions she had had were generally brief, and in the case of people like Classmate Tanaka, chilly. As much as she wanted to try and participate in the whirlwind of emotion she perceived around her, Rei Ayanami II simply did not understand how to open up or where to start. After all, it was unlikely in the extreme that a female classmate would suddenly approach her without warning and-
“Hey! You must be Rei Ayanami, the pilot of the prototype. I’m Asuka! Asuka Langley Soryu. I'm the pilot of Eva Unit Two. Let’s be good friends!”
On the other hand…



Doctor Ritsuko Akagi sighed slightly as she leaned back in her chair, wondering if Shinji Ikari had some kind of grudge against her, given that damn near every time he went into battle, she was left with more questions about him and the Evangelions then ever before.
It took several minutes but she decided, grudgingly, that Shinji probably wasn’t trying to make her life miserable. At least on purpose.
With that settled, she returned to her almost complete report on the 6th Angels engagement with Unit Two.
Shinji’s sudden Synch Ratio collapse, simultaneous with Asuka’s brief explosion to a perfect ratio for six seconds was strange to say the least, but yet again, all too convenient answers existed for her to draw conclusions from; specifically that Shinji had been rather ‘aroused’ by Asuka’s overwhelming, smothering presence and had had been distracted to the point he couldn’t concentrate with her body pressing against his.
Though this strange data on his neural channel just before he had been knocked unconscious…

Gendo of course had all but rolled his eyes at her when she had brought up her suspicions in front of him, telling her bluntly to stop wasting time on irrelevant data and get back to work on critical projects. She didn’t know if this dismissive attitude was because he found it impossible to think his Son might be in any way worthy of his attention, or, if he had actually looked at her data and dismissed it as rubbish…but in the end she didn’t really have any choice but to just move on and get back to work on Gendo’s pet projects.

Any further mussing over the Third Child was rudely interrupted by a pair of arms suddenly passing over her to grab her gently around her waist, a familiar scent of light aftershave announcing the identity of the man behind her and calming her biologically instinctive reaction to yelp in surprise at the unannounced contact.
“You’ve lost weight” Kaji said easily, causing Ritsuko to smile. It had been quite some time since anyone had had really tried to flirt with her. Her probably deserved reputation of her being a real bitch generally kept most people away these days.
Of course, Kaji was only flirting for fun as a friend, the two of them went back a long way with this kind of teasing, meaning for once she could simply relax and enjoy the attention for what it was.
“Have I?” she asked with a slight smirk as she leaned back into the embrace.
“Oh yes” he agreed with a tone of a Doctor delivering bad news to his patient. “You must be enduring an unrequited love”
“How did you know?” she gasped back in mock seriousness.
“Ah, you see Rits” he said, gently turning her head and brushing a finger lightly across the mole on her cheek, actually causing her to shiver slightly in pleasure at the touch, “A woman with a mole in the pathway of her tears is destined to a life full of them”.
Rolling her eyes at the absurdly corny statement, she glanced up enough to focus her attention on the beaming man above her as she caught some movement outside the room.
“If you’re trying to put the moves on me” she smirked, before turning her gaze back to the floor the ceiling glass wall in front of her office, now with a purple haired Captain pressed up against them, the window steaming up slightly from the heat coming off her angry face, “I’m afraid we’re not alone”.
Kaji let go and stood, smirking slightly at the window and causing Misato to stomp towards the access door, her body language threatening severe retribution to her ex-boyfriend within the next several seconds.
“So. Long time no see Kaji” Akagi smiled, twisting her chair around slightly to better take in the man who had snuck into the room.
“It’s been a while” Kaji acknowledged, crossing his arms in front of him and holding his grin in place with a practiced ease.

After all, if Shinji was right, Ritsuko, good ole Rits herself was fully aware of the ultimate goals of the Evangelion project.
Hell, she was up to her ever so pretty neck in it.
Meaning he had no choice but to treat her as an enemy. Someone he had known for close to a decade and he thought he knew well…and thought of as a friend.
It was no easy shift to make in ones thinking, even for him.

“You’re a little less subtle then I recall Kaji” The doctor continued with an amused tone in her voice as she observed the Misato hammer her access code into the door lock with enough force to dent the keypad. The relationship between these two was a little more then just ‘complex’ to say the least, Akagi always found it both fascinating and highly amusing watching them interact.
“He’s never been subtle in his life” Misato growled as she entered the room, her eyes balefully glaring at the slightly unshaven and perpetually untidy man who stood and returned her glare with a smirk on his face. “You’ve finished handing over Unit Two haven’t you? What the hell are you still doing here?’
“Well actually” Kaji drawled with his famous grin, “I received orders this morning that I’ll be staying here on loan for a while. It’ll be fun, us three can hang out together, just like we used to!”

Misato’s right hand slowly clenched into a fist.

“Who in the hell would want to hang out with-”
Misato Katsuragis carefully prepared speech about the hundred and one reasons why she would never again ‘hang out’ with Kaji was rudely interrupted as the screens along one wall of the darkened room suddenly flashed into life with bright red ALERT icons, a screaming electronic siren joining in a split second later.
“Enemy attack” Misato gasped before spinning on a heel and making for the door, Akagi right behind her.
Kaji stayed behind for a second before following, feeling that same chill down his spine he had felt when Shinji had talked to him on Over the Rainbow…and warned him the 7th Angel would arrive today.
Score another one for Agent Balcony Kaji thought before heading towards the Command Center.



“We’ve just received a report from the Battle Cruiser Haruna” Aboa said several hundred meters away as the sirens continued to scream, personnel calmly flooding into the command center to take up their duty stations. “Huge submerged object detected off Ki'i peninsula. Sending data”.
Given that so far every Angel to attack Japan had come from the direction of the Pacific Ocean –and at least one from under it, several ships from the UN Pacific Fleet had been extensively upgraded over the last month to include hastily built sensor equipment, designed specifically to try and find Angels hiding deep under water. Similar to the detectors in place around Tokyo-3, the sensor system was an add-on on to the towed sonar arrays dragged behind surface warships for detecting submarines, able to detect the subtle disturbances even a low powered AT field made in the Earths own electromagnetic field.
The system hadn’t even been tested yet, so a false positive was likely, but-
“Got it. The data has been analyzed” Huyga said a few seconds later, text scrolling up on the main screen as CASPER chewed through it.

AT FIELD DETECTED.
BLOOD TYPE/WAVEFORM: PATTERN BLUE.
DESIGNATION: 7TH ANGEL.

“The pattern is blue. It’s an Angel” the technician said unnecessarily in a grim but professional tone, causing the Vice Commander behind him to exhale deeply, suppressing a curse. Yet again Ikari just happened to be away talking to SEELE…
”All personnel; go to first stage alert!

[Chris OFarrell]

“The recent battle against the 5th Angel severely damaged Tokyo-3’s intercept system; only twenty nine percent of the repairs have been completed to this point. Therefore, we are going to forward deploy and intercept the target, right at the waters edge. Units One and Two will engage in a coordinated assault at the moment the Angel makes landfall in a series of waves. In other words, get in close and take turns!”

Misato’s speech sounded rather professional and, perhaps, even rated as somewhat stirring in an enthusiastic ‘kick that Angels ass’ kind of way, at least in the Captains opinion. The Operations Director, for perhaps two full seconds, even wondered if Shinji and Asuka would show true professionalism as they headed towards their drop zones by simply acknowledging and starting their pre-drop checklists.

Predictably however, the children, well…acted their age.

“This sucks” Asuka declared with a grunt from her entry plug. “My first combat mission over Japan and I don’t get to handle it solo”. Turning from the fantastic view of Japan from 15,000 feet wrapped around her on her super-high resolution displays, Asuka glanced across at the Boeing 909 Evangelion Transport in formation next to her own. “Why do I have to bring him along?”

Predictably, a communications window opened up from Unit One at her taunt.

“Perhaps because every military theorist since Sun-Tzu has suggested that it’s better to engage the enemy with superior numbers? Or would you’d rather I just stand in the background and hold your coat while you deal with the Angel on your own?” Shinji replied.

Asuka narrowed her eyes slightly at the insolence coming from Shinji, wondering not for the first time how he was able to get under her skin so damn easily. Her barbs simply washed over him without any effect, hell he often smiled at her when she insulted him, like he found them enjoyable! The rest of the time, he was courteous, polite…and had an answer for every insult she threw at him…

Damn it.

Unlike every other guy her age who she categorized as either an idiot not worth her time or a pervert – or both, Shinji defied any easy classification.
She had only met him four days ago…but already he was…what?
Granted he belonged to the same elite group she did as an Evangelion pilot. And even if his ‘natural’ ability to get an easy 94% synch ratio still infuriated her, she at least had pride of place in reaching 100%, even if only for six seconds.

She knew it was a weak defense, a fluke she didn’t understand how she had achieved or how to do it again…but it still let her hold her head up high at him, even if her ratio was back down at a solid 79.3%.

Yet here she was today with a chance to prove, as Shinji had suggested, that a decades worth of training -and a superior Evangelion- made her the ‘Alpha Pilot’ in their little trio, irrespective of their Synchronization ratios…

So…she was seeking approval from the Third Child? Respect from him?

Growling slightly as she buried her confused emotions, she finally directed her gaze to Shinji who, infuriatingly, was just looking at her as if he knew exactly what was going through her head…
“Just stay out of my way Third Child”.
Shinji simply smiled.
“Just stay out of my crosshairs Asuka” he said in the exact same tone, before waving with a smile and closing the channel with a snap.
“I’ll show you Dummkopf” she bit out, but was cut off from blasting him as the Aircraft Commander called out the ten second warning. Focusing back on her job, she stabbed the holographic ‘Commit Docking Release’ button, turning her Evangelion over to Unit Two’s flight control computer, and then felt the lurch as thousands of tons of cyborg was cut loose, freefalling towards the Japanese coast.

Instantly her mood brightened. She loved this part of her job!

Linked through the A-10 clips to her Evangelions perceptions, it felt like she was falling towards Earth in a freefall, the LCL holding her in almost a perfect zero-G environment as an altitude indicator on her HUD wound down like a possessed clock.
Closing her eyes for a second, she shivered in pleasure at the feeling of complete and utter freedom, even from something as omnipresent as gravity, before a loud two-phase buzzer started to scream and forced her to open her eyes with a sigh and brace herself.
The rocket packs in her shoulder blades ignited and slammed her into her seat as Unit Two decelerated, the thrusters firing in a carefully controlled pattern to orient Unit Two’s feet right at the marker on her HUD that was her LZ before starting to change her velocity from terminal to a more survivable level of speed. The rockets cut out at just under a hundred feet up, dropping Unit Two into the soft sand, its knees absorbing the last of the momentum easily. Even as Unit One crashed down next to her, tracked utility vehicles were rolling up with their power cords ready, patched into a backbone grid station a few kilometers away to ensure they would have no lack of power.
“Two against one is hardly a fair fight” Asuka muttered, mostly to herself as she held her unit perfectly still, impatiently waiting for the techs to hook them up already.
“Asuka” Misato said, sounding slightly exasperated as the Captain in her command vehicle realized the Second Child had utterly ignored everything Shinji had just tried to gently point out to her, “this is war, not a game. The last thing I want to give the Angels is a fair fight”.
“I guess” Asuka grunted, unable to dispute the logic, but burning with a desire to put Shinji and Rei in their proper places with a quick, clean, flawless victory.
Not that there was anything wrong with them providing…appropriate support of course, so long as they understood who was ‘top dog’.
Power indicators hesitated, then surged as energy flowed into the Evangelions, the twin titans standing up and retrieving their chosen weapons from an airdropped arms cache; a standard issue hundred-five millimeter rifle for Shinji, while Asuka eschewed her choice of guns for an elegant progressive spear, hefting it and testing the balance with a quick toss as Shinji spoke up.
“And here it comes”.

Glancing up, Asuka caught the tail end of a huge explosion of water half a kilometer out from the shoreline, blasting into the air among the ruins of what had been a shopping center before the sea level had risen. A monstrous figure emerged from the cloud to unevenly and almost sluggishly make its way towards the giants awaiting it, flights of AV-14C gunships serving as fire support giving it a wide birth for the time being, their pilots getting ringside seats for NERV’s first attempt to meet the enemy head on, away from Tokyo-3.
“Commence the attack!” Misato ordered; keen to hit the Angel before it reached solid ground.

At once, Asuka drove her unit into a stomping run.

“I’ll handle this one Shinji, cover my back!”
“Wait Asuka, hold back until-”
“Ladies First!” the Second Child declared with emphasis over his protests, Unit Two showing utterly no sign of slowing down as she thundered down into the water.
“That’ll be the day” Shinji Ikari muttered to himself, stepping to the side to get some separation from Asuka as he opened fire, probing his AT field as far as he could…but it was no use, the Angel was still too far out to equalize the phase space.
The mixture of High Explosive and Armor Piercing slugs that lanced out from his rifle crashed into the 7th Angel with about as much use as the weapon usually had against a target shielded by an AT field…which was to say not much. The light tank rounds did however do a fine job of distracting the enormous gray and white monster standing in the shallow water, holding its attention as Asuka leapt into the air screaming before bringing her weapon down with all of Unit Two’s considerable might, a loud crack ripping out as the business end passed Mach One and tore the Angel in half, milliseconds before she crashed back to Earth.

Asuka smirked at the suddenly silent Angel, the two halves rather pathetically sagging slightly to the left and right, her pride –or ego- welling up rapidly.

“Well, what did you think of-”
“Asuka, get the hell out of there” Shinji snapped, gripping his weapon tightly. This isn’t over yet…
“Dummkopf, its dead now and…” Asuka’s voice trailed off in surprise and not a little fear as with a rumble and deep groan, the Angels ‘remains’ started to shake violently, as if enraged-
“MOVE YOUR ASS ASUKA!” Shinji snapped in such a tone of command that Asuka obeyed on pure reflex, moving back towards the shore in a bounding run, her cable automatically retracting as she headed back to her starting position-
-Just as the two halves of the Angle shuddered, then ‘cast off’ their skin like cocoons; a pair of smaller Angels looking identical to the original stepping out; one green skinned with orange highlights and one orange skinned with green highlights in a ying/yang pattern; two Angels ready to fight perfectly as one.

“That…that’s a load of BULL!” Misato all but screamed in the distant Type-14 Command van. Luckily, she had managed to destroy the headset clenched in her fist at roughly the same time as she swore loudly, the official NERV logs would thus omit the rather unprofessional comment…and several others as she grabbed for another headset, though to be fair almost all the NERV and UN personnel watching the generally had the same thoughts as the Angel duplicated itself.

“This just got interesting” Shinji commented over the tactical channel he shared with Asuka and Misato, watching as familiar gray spheres punched through the skin, the ‘two’ Angels then twisting in perfect unison to face the shoreline and their primary targets.
“Okay, uh, we’re probably going to have to fall back here and” Misato started to say, but-
The Angels attacked.
Again acting in concert, the two halves of Israfel took to the air, hunched over slightly as they arced towards the shoreline Asuka was trying to reach. Despite how deceptively weak they looked, with their arms hanging down almost loosely at their sides, Shinji knew the two sub-Angles were incredibly strong, recalling how each half had half buried him and Asuka upside down before heading off to get nuked…

Of course, that time he had stood there like a dumb idiot at the sudden chaos of the Angel coming back to life, splitting and leaping at him.
Not this time.

Shinji’s AT field exploded outward with incredible force, the sky around the two human champions turning a dark purple as light was refracted through the barrier. Sand, half destroyed buildings, water and a huge wave of air slammed forward, focused directly at the twins leaping towards them…
The Angel –or Angels- took the blow dead on, heavily falling to the ‘ankle’ deep water fifty meters short of their prey before, in perfect unison, raising their arms-
And suddenly the wave of debris and matter stopped, then fell into the water as Israfel’s AT fields met Unit Ones, the fields crashing, then pushing backwards towards Shinji as two separate AT fields powered by two separate S2 engines started to overwhelm him, Shinji gasping against the sudden building of pressure he felt against his head-
-that suddenly cut off as a new field meshed, combined and pushed back alongside Shinji’s, Asuka’s indomitable will made manifest as Unit Two moved up shoulder to shoulder with him.
“Now who’s trying to be the hero Third Child” Asuka demanded, a standard issue Evangelion pistol held ready in her right hand.

Well well. Perhaps we’re not so hopeless together after all Shinji thought as the blaze of lights that were four AT fields continued in front of them.

“Hang on you two, help’s coming” Misato said into their channel, before flicking her new microphone to another frequency and barking a command.
A few seconds later, the gunships which had backed away from the impressive pyrotechnics swung into action.
Hyrda rockets, Hellfire missiles and 30 millimeter cannon rounds blasted the naked flesh of the Angels backsides, doing little true damage as fire and smoke engulfed them, but succeeding in knocking the Angels around and keeping them hopelessly off balance as the quartet of AT fields neutralized each other-
“Asuka, go for Greens Core!” Shinji shouted as the fields collapsed fully, opening fire with his rifle towards the core on ‘Orange’.
“Got it” Askua replied, her confidence back as she blasted away with her heavier caliber weapon, emptying the magazine in rapid fire, before breaking into a run. Shinji made a quick decision and threw Unit One into motion, as he focused harder then he had in quite some time on her blurred, balanced gait-

And just like that, he was back in Synch with Asuka.

The ‘training’ he and Asuka had been put through to fight this Angel the last time had not, as Toji had so gleefully put it, been an attempt to destroy the Angel ‘through the power of rhythmic gymnastics’. It had in fact been an attempt to force both he and Asuka to learn to predict each others moves and guess each others actions in combat, to let them fight as two separate halves of the same attack plan, dynamically. In the end, Shinji frankly admitted hehad synchronized to Asuka far more then she to him, her force of personality had ensured it.
And it all came flowing back.
Suddenly, everything was moving in slow motion as he broke into a run alongside Unit Two, ‘his’ feet hitting the ground in perfect unison with ‘hers’ as they closed distance.
To the relatively few people watching, it was an incredible, majestic sight; the Red and Purple giants thundering towards the half stunned Angels with clouds of sand and water thrown up around them as they crashed forward. The empty rifle and handgun spun off to the side, discarded as the Units thundered through the shallow water, the gunships ceasing fire and backing away in slow ‘haste’ with perhaps four seconds passing as Units One and Two reached close combat range, the Angels starting to gather their wits, but not fast enough-
Shinji saw the subtle shift in ‘her’ torso which he mirrored without thinking, both pilots firmly planting their front ‘feet’ and shifting the considerable momentum they had built up from their sprint into their back foot, which scathed out and around in perfect synchronization into their targets-
The two halves of Israfel were blown backwards from only God knows how many Newtons of force, colliding in a blurred warp they ‘fell’ into each other and re-assumed the familiar gray form of the 7th Angel, now with the twin cores exposed as it crashed backwards, tripping on a half destroyed building and falling heavily onto its back with a huge wave of water. Seconds later –if it had looked up in time- it would have seen a pair of red and a pair of purple fleet descending towards it-
And crash into the two cores.
Several thousand tons of mass accelerated at a rate significantly greater then 9.8 meters a second squared all focused on only several square meters was just too much momentum for even the tough Core material to resist.
The cores cracked-
The Evangelions rebounded, leaping clear to the left and the right, utterly shattering the cores as they pushed off-
The cores started to glow -
The VTOL’s climbed away in haste, knowing what was coming-
The Angel exploded.
A huge column of fire blasted up into the stratosphere as the Angel efficiently converted itself to vapor, joined by a large chunk of the seabed and hundreds of thousands of tons of seawater; shaking several of the VTOL’s, but luckily not downing any as for several nanoseconds, a second sun was unleashed on the Earths surface.



“And you still don’t think there is something odd about your Son?” Doctor Ritsuko Akagi muttered softly to herself as the staff on duty all started cheering, clapping and smiling at each other at the stunning, fantastic victory over the 7th Angel. Even the normally reserved Vice Commander had a tolerant smile on his face as the fireball faded from the main screen, showing the two Evangelions slowly trudging back towards the shoreline, stopping only long enough to retrieve their previously discarded weapons.
Indeed, a great victory once again against the Angels.
A victory where Shinji had shouted at Asuka to get clear after she had apparently destroyed the Angels, where he had not been stunned into inaction as Asuka had been, where he had then moved into perfect synch with her in destroying them, duplicating her every move exactly…

No, she wouldn’t just shrug this time. She was missing something…something big…something she still didn’t have the answer to.

Unfortunately however, Gendo was off consulting with SEELE about the new UN funding being finalized to expedite construction of Evangelion units Three through Five…not to mention get some more cash for Tokyo-3 to finish clearing up the 5th Angels corpse. Unlike the rest of its brethren, Ramiel hadn’t self destructed, almost as if it was trying to drain their resources, even in death…

“If you think Shinji is odd, you should spend a few years looking after Asuka” Ryoji Kaji broke into her thoughts suddenly, causing Akagi to jump in shock. Once again she hadn’t heard his approach as he moved up next to her. “Though I have to admit, they do make quite the team together”.
“Yes. Quite a team” she said as the Evangelions reached the shoreline and started to ‘pack up’, like an improbable couple out for a nice day at the beach about ready to go home. “I would have thought those two would be more likely to kill each other then work together as well as they just did”.
“Yes, Shinij is…an odd person” Kaji shrugged, probing subtly while keeping his eyes focused on the screen, but sensing the Doctor glancing at him.
“What do you mean by that?” Akagi asked after several seconds.
Kaji shrugged, deciding to make a slight push against his onetime friend.
“He’s just not what I was expecting. He’s so completely unlike his Father…I can’t help but wonder if he took more after his Mother”.
“He never really knew his mother” Agaki replied almost defensively.
“Interesting” Kaji said with a slightly cocked eyebrow that said much without saying anything at all.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded.
“Nothing at all” Kaji smiled, turning away from the screen towards the Doctor. “Just thinking about something Shinji said to me on Over the Rainbow…about how every time he got into Unit One, he told me he could feel his mother fighting along side him, that she gave him the strength to keep fighting”. Shaking his head with a look of sadness on his face that wasn’t entirely fake, Kaji none the less caught the look of pure, raw, guilt that flashed through Akagi’s eyes for a split second at his recollection.
Well. That confirms that he thought, respect for his onetime friend continuing to drain away...and he couldn’t help but feel diminished for the loss of it.
“I know Japanese people often believe their ancestor’s spirits remain where their bodies have fallen” Kaji continued in the same tone, “I never really brought into it. But hey, if it helps Shinji keep fighting, then it’s all good, right?”
“That’s a little harsh, isn’t it?” Ritsuko asked, to hide her relief at the fact that Kaji wasn’t actually probing about the horrible truth behind Unit One…and her shock that Kaji sounded almost like Gendo in how he was dismissing the Children as mere…components.
Kaji just raised an eyebrow at her.
“Don’t get me wrong Rits. To say these kids are getting a raw deal would be a huge understatement. We’re putting the weight of the world on their shoulders; the lives of three billion people. I’m sure you’ll agree that if we had any choice in the matter…”
“I know” Ritsuko replied shortly, forcing the guilt that started to well up again back down with brutal force, somewhat pleased to find Kaji shared her more practical outlook on the project. Not that she thought of the children as mere components…but they were necessary to make the Evangelions work. And that was simply that.
“At least until we can find some way to get those kids out of the cockpit” she continued, her thoughts at once flashing to the Dummy Plug project, on schedule deep inside Terminal Dogma …
“But until that day” Kaji continued in a suddenly serious voice, looking over at her, “we have to do whatever it takes to keep these kids stable and functional. Even if it means buying into delusions of long dead mothers cheering from the sideline, letting Asuka beat up on half the kids at school…um, whatever Rei does with her free time…” Kaji shrugged, clearly not able to think of anything about the First Child. “Whatever it takes, we have to do it when playing for these stakes”.
“Whatever it takes” Ritsuko echoed, fighting to keep a level face at the shiver that went up her spine at the words she had repeated to herself so many times over the last few years…missing the look of pain in Kaji’s eyes as he saw the depth of her soul in that one moment, realizing just how much she had sacrificed to NERV and Gendo Ikari, who she didn’t realize was just using her, just as he had used her Mother before her…

Kaji was starting to understand the simmering hate he had seen in Shinji’s eyes, when the Third Child had told him that he utterly detested his own Father on a level Kaji could not possibly understand…

“Well, I’m off to go welcome the heroes’ home” Kaji grinned leaning over to give a surprised Doctor Akagi a quick peck on her cheek. “I’ll catch you later Ritsuko” he said, walking out of the upper Command Center level quickly enough that she couldn’t see the look that had threatened for a second to come out as he said goodbye to one of his few remaining friends.



The UH-60 Blackhawk flared as it oriented on the Tokyo-3 High School Number 3. Half a dozen NERV personnel were on the ground to ensure the perimeter was closed off for the arrival of the UN transport, and a yellow smoke marker showing wind direction was noted by the pilot, who subtly adjusted his approach to he ease down onto the sports field, offload his two passengers and take on the ground team before he thundered back into the sky.
The two Children watched the Helicopter leave, the downdraft sending the girls long red hair everywhere, but she had come prepared and carefully ran a small brush through it a few times to get it back under control before ‘humphing’ in satisfaction and turning to the person patiently waiting next to her.
“Well Baka, lets get going, we have an entrance to make!”
Shinji tried not to smile too much. The idea that anyone could have missed the thundering great transport helicopter landing on the sports field seemed remote, but Shinji had a feeling that Asuka wouldn’t have been satisfied arriving in anything short of her Evangelion.

Fortunately, Asuka had retained enough sense not to askif she could do that.

Also fortunately, they had been able to quickly shower and change back into their school uniforms at the airbase. Shinji had been inclined to accept Misato’s offer of the rest of the afternoon off, feeling tired and wanting to just lie down. Asuka, of course, had vetoed the plan insisting that they should get back to school and continue their education. That an Angel was no excuse for slacking off.
Slacking off my foot, she just wants to return as the Conquering Warrior Queen of legend…
Not that Shinji could begrudge Asuka her grand entrance. Perhaps she hadn’t exactly covered herself in glory today…but by the same token; he couldn’t have done it without her. Not for the first time, he smiled slightly at that thought, working side by side with her again; Asuka the burning sword, Asuka the raging, unquenchable firestorm-
“What’s so funny?” Asuka suddenly demanded as they walked up the long steps that linked the sports field to the lower level of the school playground.
“I was just thinking about us” he said without thinking, then winced slightly as he realized what he had just said, Asuka halting dead in her tracks and turning to glare.
“Do go on Third Child” she said in a tone that suggested he should pick the next words out of his mouth, carefully.
“I was just thinking” he repeated, somehow keeping the fear he was feeling at that look out of his voice, getting enough courage from somewhere to return her stare, “that when we, you and I actually work together against the Angels…we do great things” he said simply, before turning and continuing past her up the stairs.
Asuka stared at his back as he passed her, before jerking back into motion after him, stunned, as that statement had hit at something she had been denying all day long…

The long flight back had given her time to think…mostly over Shinji’s shouted warning for her to get the hell away from the Angel, her face again flushing red as she realized she had probably come within several seconds of getting her backside handed to her, thanks to shear overconfidence.
Misato had said nothing after they had disembarked from their Eva’s, smiling at them and hugging them in congratulations…but some of her comments about teamwork had just been a little too pointed, along with her congratulations of Shinji for staying cool and in control. Even if Misato had smiled at her, calling her opening attack ‘very impressive’ Asuka had seen it for what it was, a nudge to her vanity and ego, which made it all the more of a letdown. Asuka expected ‘words’ in the near future over her actions, in quiet without Shinji around.
If that frigid Doctor Akagi had been there instead of back at NERV manning the second line of defense, she probably wouldn’t have gotten off so easy. And as much as she wanted to lash out at Shinji for screwing up her debut battle…something held her back.
It was that same damn itch he had given her since she had first seen him, this time whispering to her that everyone else was right, that she had gone into the battle for the wrong reasons…that if she really was the best, well, she would naturally prove it without having to show off in some stupid, childish display.
So for the rest of the ride in the helicopter, she had sat, glaring at the far bulkhead, wondering what Shinji would say, trying not to recall her own comments on the way to the battle as she had asked why Shinji had to come along…
And he had finally spoken.

And he hadn’t criticized her battle tactics. He hadn’t called her on her utter disregard of tactical procedures. There was no calling to account for how close she had come to getting herself killed…

He had just smiled and told her that when they worked together…they did great things.

Shaking her head slightly to clear it from the sudden surge of emotions, she increased her pace up the steps after him, catching up as they crested the hill together-
-Right into a thundering round of applause. Shinji felt his mouth drop as he gazed at the long length of the main school building in front of them, students packed into countless windows along it in large numbers, breaking into applause. Cheers and more then a couple of wolf whistles from the boys –which Shinji fervently hoped were directed at Asuka- washed over them as the student body applauded NERV’s latest victory.
Asuka of course was far faster on the ball, putting a look of utterly innocent surprise on her face, as if she had not expected anything like this and was appropriately flattered, turning her legs slightly to deliver a stunningly cute abbreviated curtsy, which strangely appeared to cause most of the male population to collapse backwards into their classrooms.
Shinji, coming out of his surprised stupor grinned sheepishly and waved, generating more then a few appreciative cheers and wolf whistles of his own, this time of a distinctly female nature…at least until Asuka, with an oddly possessive grip, grabbed his wrist and yanked him towards the building, the chears falling off as the teachers started to get their people back under control.
“Enough time playing to your harem, Hentai” she declared as she pulled him into the deserted lower corridor, though the tone in her voice was slightly subdued and the look she was gave him for a split second…
What in the…
Was that jealously? On Asuka Langley Soryus face

Nah, he had to be going crazy. Sure she might have started to appreciate him at a level beyond ‘scum under my shoe’ but that was a long way from thinking enough of him to get jealous at attention from someone else…
Still…it was a nice fantasy for the thirty seconds it lasted.

Asuka dragged him to their classroom at speed, her hair wonderfully bouncing around her shoulders as they ran up the stairs, reaching their level - at which point she let go of his arm, all but throwing it away in haste as they skidded to a halt, coming face to face with Rei Ayanami
“Uh…hi Rei” Shinji blinked. “You just got back too?”
Rei had been on standby back at Tokyo-3 during this whole engagement. The repairs and upgrades of Unit Zero to full combat rated performance still underway, and though it could still be deployed in an emergency, it was still a week or so away from being declared fully operational, hence the decision to leave it behind as a backup, in case the Angel got past units One and Two.
Presently, Rei nodded slightly at his question, glancing at the two of them, then down at their hands - which had been held together until a second ago, before looking back up again.

For whatever reason, Rei’s direct look made Shinji’s face start to flush.

“You both fought well against the Angel” Rei offered.
Asuka smirked slightly, placing her hands on her hips and lifting her head.
“Jealous you were not invited to come along?”
Rei cocked her head in thought before, to Shinji’s great surprise, nodding slightly.
“Yes”
Clearly, Asuka had not anticipated that response. And in typical Asuka fashion, moved to correct that gap in her knowledge.
‘Why?”
Rei cocked her head slightly.
“I was not able to protect my friends when deployed in the reserve position” she said, causing the other two Evangelion pilots to blink, albeit for slightly different reasons.
“Who precisely said we needed your help First?” Asuka said with a slight narrowing of eyes that sent warning bells ringing in Shinji’s head.
“No-one” Rei answered, glancing at Shinji for a second before looking back at Asuka. “Pilot Ikari has freely risked his life to save mine on several occasions, without hesitation or reward. If this is part of what friendship means, then I am…uncomfortable with being in a position where I am unable to do so for either of you when in combat”.
Asuka frowned and her eyes lost focus for a few seconds as she mulled over Rei’s comments, before apparently deciding they were acceptable and didn’t dismiss her abilities as a pilot in any way, but reflected a genuine –if strange- concern.
“Well, you don’t have to worry about us today Rei, we make the perfect Angel killing team here
“Indeed” Rei replied before hesitating, as if finding something hard to say…”and I am pleased that you and Shinji complement each other so effectively”.
Instantly seeing where Rei was heading, Shinji jumped into the conversation.
“We both made mistakes in that battle Rei” Shinji said smoothly, getting a look from Asuka, but one that came without words. “Things could have easily gone far worse then they did, no more or less then the other battles we’ve fought so far. Every engagement with the Angels is two parts preparation, two parts skill and ten parts luck”.
Rei considered this for several seconds before frowning.
“That is not logical” she pointed out.
“What the Baka is trying, poorly, to say” Asuka said, and Shinji felt a chill at Asuka’s almost matter of fact tone, “is that we all have to look out for each in combat…we’ve all made nearly fatal mistakes. Shinji getting blindsided by the 4th Angel when its arm re-grew, you getting fried by the 5th when you launched…”Asuka took a deep breath. “And my showing off a few hours ago almost getting us into deep trouble”.

Shinji just stared in shock.
Asuka was admitting she had screwed up? In front of Rei?

“You could not have known what would happen” Rei said almost at once in a clinical, but strangely…soothing tone. “Against the Third or Forth Angels, the probability is that your tactics would have eliminated them in minimal time and cost. If this Angel had lacked the ability to duplicate and engage, your attack would have no doubt destroyed it as you had presumed.

Now Shinji’s face turned back the other way.
Rei was apologizing for Asuka?
Has the world started rotating from West to East since last night? Why the hell wasn’t I informed? Shouldn’t there have been a memo or something?

“Well” Shinji said into the slightly awkward silence as Askua smiled ever so slightly at Rei’s vigorous defense of her actions. “Um, we should probably get to class…I need some sleep”.
The two girls nodded and the trio headed into Class, some part of Shinji’s stunned mind that wasn’t reeling at the damn near unholy interaction between the First and Second Children, decided that he just may have seen the most significant change to date in this second chance he had been given.
And woe to the enemies of humanity if this fragile new friendship grew into the simultaneously awesome and terrible weapon it could become…



Fifty minutes later, school had ended for the day. To Shinji’s annoyance, as he had predicted, everything had been a blur, his mind was utterly useless after the huge adrenaline surge from the early morning combat had faded, meaning he had ultimately picked up no knowledge at all from the lessons today.
Then again, as he hadn’t been chewed out by the Vice Commander for screwing up the battle with the 7th Angel, nor had to dodge Misato in a foul mood after having ten tons of paperwork dumped onto her desk, so he guessed he could move this entire day into the ‘win’ column.
“Hey Shinji” a familiar voice called out as he headed out of the gate, dodging backslaps and ‘V for Victory’ signs from countless people he didn’t know, looking around to see Kaji hovering on the road outside the school, a rather slick looking sports car beside him.
“Kaji” Shinji spoke up in greeting, before suddenly feeling a jolt as he was pushed aside.
“KAJI!” Asuka shouted, waving in joy before all but sprinting out the gates to grab onto his arm, beaming. “You came to pick me up!”
“That’s right Kido, you and Shinji and Rei too if she wants a lift for that matter”.
Asuka’s beaming smile faded ever so slightly as she was told Kaji hadn’t come just for her, but it soon returned to full brilliance.
Turning to Toji, Kensuke and Hikari who had followed them, Shinji shrugged.
“Its okay” Hikari said for all of them, stepping over and hugging Asuka, who of course hugged her back, the two girls friendship Shinji was very pleased to see already growing rapidly. With lots of promises to call each other tonight, Asuka turned to step into the car, halting suddenly as she noticed Rei was still standing well back and not moving.
“Well come on First, we’ve got a lift!”
Rei didn’t move.
“I do not require a…lift” she said. “I can walk home”.
Asuka rolled her eyes and muttered something in German Shinji didn’t get.
“No, we all have legs, but when a friend offers you a lift, you take it! Especially when it’s someone as wonderful as Mister Kaji here! He does work for NERV you know, you can trust him”.
Rei appeared to think about it for a second before nodding and walking up to the car, pausing before moving to sit in the back next to Shinji. Asuka wondered at the strangeness of Rei for a second before shaking her head and claiming the front seat ‘shot gun’ position for herself.
“Hey Ikari, we’ll catch you tomorrow” Toji and Kensuke called together.
“See you then” Shinji shouted out as Kaji sat in the front seat, gunned what sounded like an enormous engine and threw the car into gear.

Five minutes later, Ryoji Kaji’s car screeched to a halt and Shinji finally knew why Asuka had never appeared flustered in the slightest by Misato’s insane driving.

It was because it had been Kaji who had taught her to drive, the God damned son of a…

Stumbling out with everyone, Shinji found it depressing that Asuka had a look of thrill rider glee on her face and Rei’s face, as always, just had a calm, level expression.
“What’s the matter Third? Scared of a little car trip?” Asuka taunted with a smirk.
“Of course I am” Shinji spluttered.
“Hah, whimp” she snickered, quickly reaching around as Kaji got out to latch back onto his arm and sigh contently. “He’s just a perfect driver”.
“I’m sure” Shinji said, getting his fear –and sense of balance- back under control. “You coming to drop Rei off?”
“Well…I guess” Asuka said, the smile on her face slowly fading as she looked up at the monolithic block in front of her. “Rei…you live here?’
“Yes” she said, heading for the nearby elevator, causing the trio of people to follow her. With a typical lack of tact, Asuka spoke her mind.
“Why?” she demanded as they stepped into a dangerously run down elevator, which started to creak up the side of the building.
Rei looked confused at the question.
“Because it is the block I was assigned”.
“So, move somewhere else!”
“To what purpose?” Rei asked in genuine confusion. Did not her home meet the requirements of a bed to sleep in, with the basic necessities?
“Because…well…this place is a dump” Asuka declared, calling it like she saw it, Shinji trying not to wince at how bluntly Asuka put down Rei’s home…not that Rei appeared to mind. “It can’t be safe or healthy to live here; a home is much more then four walls and a bed”.
The doors opened onto an exposed hallway with doors down one side and a railing on the other, leaves and other light debris littering the concrete as Rei led them towards her apartment.
“I do not understand” the First Child responded, sounding slightly confused at Asuka’s statement.
“A home is a reflection of your personality, a place of comfort and refuge, a place to relax and enjoy yourself, for the sake of enjoying yourself when needed” Shinji broke in smoothly, having had time to think about this very issue for a while, getting a surprised look from Asuka and a suppressed smile from Kaji at his elegance, as they stepped up to Rei’s apartment.
“Don’t you ever check your mail?” Askua asked with a slight tinge of sarcasm as Rei pushed open the door, only for Asuka’s jaw to drop in horror as she stared inside Rei’s apartment.
“OH- mein Gott, was die Hölle ist dieses?” Asuka spluttered as she pushed past a slightly surprised Rei to look around in horror at the state of her apartment, before whirling around to face the First Child. “Who in the hell is forcing you to live here…WHY are you living here in this mess?”
Rei’s face actually blushed ever so slightly, Shinji guessing that it was more because Rei was slightly uneasy under Asuka’s molten glare then because she was embarrassed at the state of her apartment.

Though Shinji couldn’t disagree with Asuka’s anger at the state of the apartment of the First Child.

Used bandages, soiled clothes half used prescriptions and all manner of other debris cluttered the apartment, in addition to a general ‘grimy’ feel to the place, not helped by the lack of natural light.
“I…I was assigned this apartment when I started to live on my own” Rei said in a slightly more quiet and unsure tone then she would normally answer in.
“Who the hell did that?”
“Commander Ikari”
“Well” Askua growled, “I have more then a few words to say to him” she said, turning to glare at Shinji and pointing in accusation. “How could you let her live like this Baka?”
“Wrong Ikari” he protested holding up his hands. “I didn’t know!” he lied through his teeth, almost grinning at Asuka’s rage being directed on Rei’s behalf.
“And you didn’t try to find out?” she demanded, stepping forward. “What are you, stupid?”
Rei watching her two fellow pilots argue felt her face redden yet again. She disliked plot Soryu blaming pilot Ikari for her apartment, especially as she simply did not understand why they clearly both found it so unacceptable…but none the less, she felt…gratitude?
Yes.
Gratitude.
At the fact that her two…friends…clearly cared about her so much that they had gotten angry at the state of her tiny house.
Once again, she didn’t understand why this was so, exactly, but the fact that they could generate so much emotion over a concern for her…
“I am…sorry” Rei spoke up quietly, causing her two fellow pilots to shut up from their argument and turn towards her as she looked hesitatingly back at them. “I did not mean to cause offence…”

Asuka hissed her breath out from between her teeth. God, she hated people who apologized for everything, even when it wasn’t their fault!

“We’re not angry at you Rei and I’m not angry at Shinji, we’re angry at the people who left you in this state” Asuka sighed, letting the anger go and stepping closer to the clearly confused and embarrassed Rei. “Look, we’ll get this sorted, I’m sure we can find you somewhere better to live and….” Asuka paused as she paced around and found herself in front of Rei’s wardrobe, which was open to show nothing but a half dozen school uniforms. “Uh Rei, where are your clothes?”
“There” she answered, once again confused.
“No I mean your other clothes” Asuka asked in a straight forward manner, waiting for the answer.
“…what other clothes?”
Asuka stared at Rei.
Okay. She could get the run down apartment block.
She could even get the mess, perhaps Rei was just a slob.

But the utter lack of any kind of material possessions?
The utter lack of CLOTHES? For a teenaged GIRL?
Asuka’s eyebrow, twitched, causing Kaji and Shinji to take an instinctive step back.

“Rei” she said in a voice that was strangely calm. “Have you ever been shopping in your life?”
“I…occasionally purchase limited supplies if I need them” Rei offered, causing Asuka’s eye to twitch again.
“I see” Asuka replied, still glacially calm. “And who has been looking after you all these years? As your guardian I mean?”
“Commander Ikari” she answered once again. Asuka nodded as if expecting that answer, before turning to Shinji.
“I’m starting to see why you don’t like your Father very much, Third Child” she said, anger blazing in those brilliant blue orbs of hers. “Tomorrow, we’re going to have a little talk to him”.
“The Commander is currently out of the country” Rei pointed out, something for which Shinji found himself thanking Gods he didn’t really believe in. A showdown between Asuka and his Father?

It would be safer to watch someone start playing with the arming codes for N2 bombs, in his opinion.

“Then we’ll talk to the Vice Commander” Asuka said, not to be dissuaded. “Then after we sort out a new place for you to move into” and here Asuka’s face became almost dreamy, “we’re going shopping!”
“…Thank…you” Rei decided to say through her surprise and…yes, it was definitely gratitude, what an odd sensation…
“Welcome” Asuka beamed, before turning back to Kaji, who unnoticed to everyone had carefully ‘liberated’ a bandage with a bloodstain on it into one of his pockets. “Well, let’s get going, we need to drop Baka home!”
Shinji couldn’t help but notice Asuka had deliberately omitted any idea of her then leaving Kaji at any point in the future, smiling slightly at Kaj, who clearly had caught the same hint and smirked back, before Shinji turned to Rei and bowed slightly.
“I will see you tomorrow Ayanami-San”.
“Hai” was all she could get out, her face still flushed ever so slightly.
The trio backed out of Ayanami’s cramped apartment and closed the door behind them, heading back to the car.

They rode in silence back towards Misato’s place.

Shinji because he was holding on for dear life as Kaji expertly weaved around, through and once almost *over* traffic, part of him noting with a detachment the rest of him didn’t feel, that Kaji was truly able to thread things just that much finer then Misato could, often missing opposing cards by mere centimeters, Shinji decided then and there to NEVER drive with the lunatic again.

Asuka because she was still so utterly shocked at the state of Rei’s apartment. Granted, Shinji lived with Misato who she knew was the übersloth of übersloth’s, but she assumed he had a nice enough place to live. In Germany, she had lived in a variety of places, most recently in modern and clean quarters inside the Third Branch facilities in Munich, clean and orderly buildings where she had become quite self sufficient in looking after herself. Tokyo-3 was a large city, with from what she understood to be a dropping civilian population…and that was the best NERV could do for someone as critically important as an Evangelion pilot?
Didn’t they have the slightest clue how important they were damn it?

Kaji was silent mostly because he was dodging traffic at absurd speeds and violating just about every law on the books doing it.

They made it to Misato’s apartment in record time again, screeching to a halt in a backward power slid into a parking space that violated at least two laws of physics and, Shinji thought, at least one of causality, but didn’t appear to implode the universe.
Shinji once again got out with slightly shaky legs, drawing a scornful but playful glare from Asuka as she laughed and once again attached herself to Kaji, though this time he gently kept her to only grabbing his lower arm as they got into the lift. They exited at the appropriate floor and headed down to the apartment, Shinji looking forward to his soft bed and…wait…
What were all these DHL boxes outside?
The ones that all said ‘A.L.S’?
Oh hell-
“Hey hang on, wait, is that my-”
“You got it!” A voice came from the door as it opened, revealing a Misato cheerfully smiling.
“What is MY stuff doing HERE?” Asuka demanded, letting go of Kaji in annoyance as he shot a grin at Misato that the NERV operations director ignored.
“This is your new place. You’ll be living with me from now on!”
“You’re kicking me out?” Shinji asked in disbelief, hiding the huge grin he wanted to put on his face with a great deal of effort.
“Hmph. So, the Great Third Child is being dumped for the new model” Asuka smirked. “Well I suppose it makes sense when you consider my far superior abilities”.
“Actually, you’ll be living together” Misato corrected her with that same smile on her face.
“Say WHAT?” Asuka demanded, stepping forward dangerously. “A boy and a Girl should not sleep under the same roof after the age of seven!”
Misato smiled tolerantly, but a slight edge came into her attitude as ‘professional’ Misato came out a little.
“After your performance today, we decided that you two need to learn to work together properly as a team. To that end, for the next week you’ll be out of school and undergoing rigorous training in teamwork and tactical coordination. Both of you know how to fight alone against the Angels, now you’re going to learn to fight as a team”.
“Pft. We beat the crap out of those two Angels today, together, didn’t we Shinji?” Asuka spoke for the both of them, clearly expecting a supportive response.
“Well uh, I guess we won, but um we kind screwed up as a team-”
“Exactly!” Asuka declared, taking Shinji’s stuttering response as a complete confirmation of her claim, folding her arms in front of her and smirking slightly.

Then it actually caught up with her what he had said and she slowly turned to face him, a look on her face promising bad times ahead for the Third Child, who prudently stepped back behind Kaji.

“Thank you for proving my point” Misato said dryly. “This is an order, but don’t worry Asuka. We’ve lived together before. Shinji is housebroken-”
“I am not Housebroken?” Shinji muttered in protest, though no-one listened.
“-and I don’t really want you living by yourself anyway”.
“I don’t have to live by myself” Asuka said quickly, trying to turn the situation to her own advantage. “I can live with Kaji!” she said, directing her most awesome smile at her other ex guardian.
Misato grinned as well, but it was the grin of a hunter who had just been given an opening.
“And whose idea do you think it was to start this training Asuka?”
“It was…no…NO!” she said with a gasp, turning a look of utter betrayal on Kaji. “How could you?!”
“Come on Asuka” he said soothingly. “You need to live with someone, you’re mature, far more then most other kids your age, but you’re too young to live by yourself…and I’m too busy to look after you”. Turning away from the pouting Asuka who almost looked like she was about to cry –a look he knew was utterly fake- Kaji shot a grin at Misato.
“I’ll see you later Katsuragi” he smiled before turning to Asuka and smiling more gently. “Asuka, it’ll be fine. You’re just moving in with Shinji. You don’t have to be scared”
“I am not scared” she ground out, glaring at everyone as if daring them to challenge her statement.
At which point she realized in shock that she was scared of Shinji, on some level.
Not physically or anything stupid like that…she simply didn’t know how to relate to him, how to deal with him, how to control him or manipulate him like she could almost anyone else around her.
And she didn’t know how to deal with the feeling of butterflies in her stomach whenever she thought about four days ago, pressing herself into Shinji’s back and reaching -hugging- around him as she rested her head on his shoulders, placing her hands on his on Unit Two’s controls as the 6th Angel was dragged up to the surface….the feeling of her body against his-
STOP IT!
“I’m sure” Kaji grinned as he saw the minuet hesitation inside Asuka’s eyes, correctly guessing its cause before turning to Shinji. “Oh Ikari, can I have a quick word while Misato gives Asuka the grand tour?”
“Of course Kaji-san” Shinji nodded, stepping away with Kaji to the end of the balcony as Asuka stepped inside, the older man sighing as he watched the sun slowly continue on its arc towards the horizon, the sky already taking on the slightest red tinge from the approaching sunset, still an hour or so away.
“You know, Asuka is going to take Rei shopping this weekend” Kaji smiled. “You’ll probably be invited along by them, to carry all their purchase and all that”.
“Oh…good” Shinji replied in a tone that suggested he had just been cheerfully told Asuka would try to poison him tonight as he in depression tried to calculate how much stuff Rei could be forced to buy with several million Yen sitting in her bank account.
The answer was not good.
“For that matter, they’ll probably have Misato come along as well, you know, women’s stuff and all that. So perhaps you might want to hang out with me for the day and do guys stuff?”

Translation, we need to talk, privately Shinji thought.

“I’d be honored…I have more then a few questions to ask about…well…” he trailed off with a glance back at the door to the apartment, Kaji quickly catching his drift.
“Ahhh” he said with a knowing smile. “Yes…Asuka is quite the girl. I hear she has made a rather impressive impact at your school”.
“I know” Shinji said softly. “And um…there is this dance coming up at school in a couple of weeks…and uh….now I’m going to be living with her and…um…well…”
Kaji couldn’t help but smile at Shinji, contrasting the red faced, almost stuttering kid in front of him with the adult who had confronted him on Over the Rainbow. It was somewhat comforting to see that there was more to Shinji then the haunted young man who had approached him,pleading for help four days ago, that the horrors he had been put…no, forced through hadn’t destroyed him as Kaji had secretly feared.
Under all the horror, there was still a 14 year old kid, asking for advice on dating.

Well. Perhaps, there is still hope for the human race yet Kaji thought, his smile widening slightly.

“Oh, that I can help with…if you could help me with something” Kaji offered as he stood up and turned back towards the apartment.
“And what might that be?” Shinji asked, smiling slightly in resonance with Kaji’s infectious grin.
“Well…” Kaji said, placing his arm around his shoulders in a friendly, almost fatherly way that Shinji found he didn’t mind. “About Misato…do you think you could find out for me what her current dress size is?”
Do they issue spies suicide pills? Was Shinji’s first response to that question before he stopped and thought about it.
After all, he was the person who did all the damn laundry at their place…
“Kaji”, Shinji said with an increasing smirk on his face, “This could be the start of a beautiful friendship”…

[Academia Nut]

Very nice, I saw this on FF.net earlier today, but decided that I would comment here. Shinji probably just did the wrong thing for the right reasons. He just demonstrated way more knowledge than he should have, while this should be a massive tip off for the members of NERV who he probably doesn't want to know that he knows what they're trying to do. Interesting times are definitely ahead.

And Asuka hauling Rei and Shinji along shopping, this should be rich.

[Trogdor]

I started reading this recently and didn't want to bump the thread and make people expect an update. But now that you have updated, I can say this is a great story and I'll eagerly be awaiting more along with the others here.

By the way, I thought it was freaking hilarious how Shinji channeled Homer Simpson in the chapter prior to this one. I'm really surprised no one else has commented on that yet. Was I the only one to notice that reference? And if so, shame on you people!

[LadyTevar]

Once again, BRAVO!

This is about where I had to stop watching, so anything from here on out I'll more than likely miss the reference and change. Which is a pity, because half the fun is seeing the differences.

Great job, keep them coming. Happy Holidays!