NGE "Once more with Feeling" Alt fic

[Chris OFarrell]

This is the first chapter on a fic I had been working on...hell, around half to a decade ago now after having my mind destroyed by 'The End of Evangelion'.

The idea being basically that
Shinji decides in Third Impact to 'go back', but Lilith takes a different idea of what that means, probably inserts a steel rod into his back to make up for his complete lack of a spine, then sends him BACK into the past.
Where he decides to set about saving everyone from his father, from SELLE, from the Angels, has to figure out how to woo Askua, help Rei become herself, somehow get his mother back, probably screwing up at all of the above, you know, the usual...

I hacked out quite a bit, then never did anything with it. It stayed on that HDD, which I had long since taken out and forgotten about. I just got however, a USB external rack for an IDE hard drive and was going back over all these old HDD's I have, to see if there was anything cool I had lost on them and found this.

I was going to just dump it with my half a dozen other 'prototype' chapters for other fanfics which never really went anywhere after the first chapter, but I thought it might be interesting to get some feedback on them from people here.

Now bear in mind I've only given it a rather breif overview so this thing is going to be FILLED with errors in all probability. It was also written before I knew as much as I do now about NGE, so there may be glaring errors.

But I'd be interested if anyone has any feedback to offer about it, mostly because it was written in a somewhat different tone and style then I have done in any of my writing, at least to a certain extent.
If its a good idea, if its been 'done' zillions of times (I seriously have no clue about Anime FF, I stay away from it mostly), if anyone would like to see it continue (its still a secondary project for me)...

Anyway, all comments sought and welcome.

"Once More With Feeling"
A Neon Genesis Evangelion Fanfic.

Neon Genesis Evangelion is copyright to whoever the hell owns it, I am not seeking to make money from this, bla bla bla.
All original characters and the letter T are my copyright.
Weyoun the Dancing Borg remains the property of unscrupulous Genetic Engineering firms.

Prologue.

--Evangelion OST II, Track 03: Borderline Case--

Is this what death feels like?
The first coherent thought to come to Shinji Ikari’s mind in the last hour (or century or millennium for that matter) was strangely ambivalent, given the situation he found himself in.
It wasn’t so much that he didn’t care if he was alive or not, but more that he just didn’t know and was curious to find out.

Feeling returned to his limbs, he felt as if he was lying on an infinitely soft pillow. Somehow he knew he was naked, but it seemed an utter irrelevancy as he opened his eyes. The sky above him was a red, wavering night sky, almost as if he was submerged deep under the surface of an ocean. The moon hovered above him, far closer then he knew it should be, though when he blinked to clear his eyes, he found that the Earths only natural satellite had been replaced by a more familiar figure.

Rei Ayanami’s face hovered above his own, looking down at him with a curious expression as her hair fluttered, almost like it was caught in some current he couldn’t feel. The rational part of his mind, still in the grip of an inhuman calm noted that she was sitting on him and –in- him in a way that probably wasn’t quite right, but somehow felt utterly correct given everything that had happened since he had woken up today.

“Ayanami... where are we?”

“This is the sea of LCL... The primordial soup of life” she replied softly. “A world without AT Fields... without your own shape. An ambiguous world where it is impossible to tell where you end and other people start. A fragile world where you exist everywhere, and thus exist nowhere.”

Shinji allowed his thoughts to drift as he considered Rei’s words with a feeling of supreme detachment. Somehow he knew she was telling the truth, he could feel her, ever so gently holding his mind, his sense of self aloof from the siren call of what was now humanity, allowing him to think clearly, even as memories that were not his own burned into him from that mass of noise…

“Have I died?” he asked in a tone of mild curiosity, part of him not really caring about the answer.

“No” Rei allowed with the slightest shake of her head, setting her blue hair waving. “Everything has just been joined into one. This is the world you have been hoping for... your world”.

My world he thought to himself. This is what I wanted…what was it he had said again? Oh yes, ‘nobody wants me, everyone should just die’. That was what I had decided.

And his decision had been granted, the small rational part of his mind decided. Every person on Earth had died and been reborn into the primordial soup. No longer existing as individuals…but as everything…and nothing…nothing…nothing…

No barriers between him…between Rei sitting on top of him…and he knew if he relaxed into that siren song Rei was holding him apart from, he would have nothing between him and Askua, Mistao, Father…

So then, who was he?

If there was no difference between him and everyone else, who was Shinji Ikari? Who was Askua Langley Soruh? Who was Misato Kasiragi? Who was Gendo Ikari?

Was there any difference then, between humans at all?

Or was this the ultimate trap? By running, to get away from everyone, would he would he end up becoming one with everyone? To the point that he no longer existed?

“But... this isn't right. I don't think this is right” he said in confusion, that slowly solidified into an absolutely serine knowledge that this was all one, big, lie.

“If you wish once more for the existence of others, the barriers of the heart will separate everyone once more” Rei pointed out softly, studying his face intently, no longer disinterested. “And the fear of other people will begin again.”

“I know” Shinji admitted, slowly reaching up to gently touch her arms at the elbows. Understanding him, she in turn straightened up from where she had been leaning over him, her hands which had been somehow deep inside him, withdrawing to gently grip his own. Curiously, Shinji felt Rei’s own presence becoming distant from him at the same time, from where it had been cradling his mind almost lovingly, along with the background “noise” of humanity filtered through her mind. “But I wish it…I just wish…I could go back…I think now…I could find value in my life. I think it would be worth living…”

Rei inclined her head ever so slightly as she studied him…then she arched her back suddenly, closing her eyes as her hands held his tightly.

Somehow, through her mind, Shinji saw the enormous figure of Rei, of Lilith also, arching its back in pain or ecstasy, the slightest gasp escaping its mouth as its enormous white wings were joined, then intertwined an equally titanic spread of golden wings as a sound like Unit 01 roaring started to overlay everything. Sharing the Angels awareness for that brief time, Shinji’s mind shuddered back from that awesome being as incomprehensible forces were unleashed by his final decision in Third Impact, reaching out across infinity.
Stars, nebulas, Galaxies, all appeared to shudder to a halt as everything went dim, as if the universe itself was closing its eyes for one enormous sneeze-



Chapter 1.


“We’re sorry, due to the special state of emergency no lines are currently available. This is a recording”.

Shinji Ikari did not fall to the ground in shock only because his mind was still so hyper stimulated from the events of the last few hours (or years or millennia, he just didn’t know) that it took several seconds for where he was to become fully apparent in his mind.

Those few seconds passed.

Then he let the green handle from the payphone slip from his hand in shock, stumbling back and looking around.

No, this isn’t possible, it isn’t real it…it…

Shaking his head in a vain attempt to clear it, he forced himself to breathe normally, banishing the almost instinctive spike of panic he had felt rising with several steady breaths that got his facing heart back under control, before letting his senses slowly take in everything.
He was standing on the street of a village, which he remembered was on Japans Eastern Seaboard on the rail line to Tokyo 3. Dozens of cars lay abandoned along the length of the street, doors left open speaking to the haste in which they had been abandoned for the dubious safety of shelters.
Weighing even more heavily in the air was the complete lack of human sound. No cars moved around and the train station a couple of blocks away was utterly silent. No people moved with a purpose, no electronics sounded…there was nothing but the omnipresent buzzing of cicadas.

It was about this time some of his other senses finally started to report in and he glanced at his right hand, feeling the small, stiff, piece of cardboard that was grasped in it.
Unbelieving, yet at the same time absolutely certain he knew what he would find, he slowly lifted it up.

The card…was a picture of Major Misato Katsaragi...or rather Captain Misato Katsaragi.
In a rather revealing outfit…on a beach.
With the familiar scrawl of her handwriting across it, promising to pick him up today…and directing his attention to attributes probably not suitable for a 29 year old woman to flaunt to a 14 year old child.

And under the postcard, wrapped around his hand…which now started to shake, was a long string necklace, attached to a simple white cross.
A cross stained by a splash of blood.

Steadying himself with his left hand against the wall, he gripped the cross tightly as his head started to feel all too light, forcing himself to control his breathing carefully, his eyes looking around in confusion-

-and locking onto the ghostly figure of Rei Ayanami, standing in the middle of the street.

Time all but stopped as his attention locked in on her the rest of the world suddenly becoming irrelevant. The rational part of his mind pointed out that if he really had somehow traveled back in time as he was starting to suspect, then the presence staring at him was an impossibility.

Rei was at least sixty Kilometers away, lying crippled in a hospital bed, deep inside Central Dogma.

Yet…he could feel her.

It was a presence that was Rei, yet at the same time it was more then Rei, an echo of the same overwhelming power that had washed over him during the Third Impact as humanity had been forcibly transformed.
Rei, Lilith, Adam, Kaworu, the presence was all of them, yet it was none of them.
And he could feel the question they were asking.

Is this what you want?

He had said that he had wished he could go back.

He had gone back.
He didn’t know if he had wanted to go back here. Or if Rei had simply misunderstood when he had used the indefinite pronoun “back”…

This life he would live might not be pleasant.

But it was not a lie.

And it was now his to live.
Not to exist.
To live.

Thank you.

The ghostly apparition inclined its head slightly at his thought; the slightest smile twitching onto its face…then it vanished from the universe, as if it had never existed.


The absolute, universal silence Shinji had existed in for those heartbeats shattered with the loud CRACK of an explosion, followed by a shockwave that almost jolted his still somewhat unsteady legs from under him. The garage doors around him rocked and vibrated as the shockwave played over them, overhead power cables adding their own symphony of whistling as they were thrown back and forth by the blast of air.

Slowly, Shinji turned as a familiar hissing drone started to sound, rapidly increasing in volume. He had evidence enough to know where and when he was and what he would see when he turned…
But part of him just couldn’t accept this without looking.

At the far end of the village, a lush ridgeline blocked off the urban sprawl of this village from easy expansion, protecting a broad valley on its far side that was backstopped in the distance by yet another ridge, the long valley formed by the twin ridgelines leading down to Japans ‘new’ coastline several kilometers away. Drifting up the valley, a half squadron of AV-14C gunships backed into view, fanning out over the village in a rough semi circle.

Following them, came a titanic figure…one that caused a ball of ice to form in the pit of his stomach.

It was as tall as the ridgelines that flanked the valley, spindly yet moving with a deliberate and implacable stride as it moved into the urban areas and away from the coastline. Its ‘skin’ was a verdant green, covering its dangling arms and long legs, punctuated by white, bony looking structures over its shoulders and along its flanks, offset by a huge red sphere embedded in its chest. A beaklike ‘head’ sat on its shoulders, which appeared to look around curiously as it planted its feet into the edge of the village itself. A low rumble issued from the giant, as if it was mocking the attack craft arrayed against it.

And its name, Shinji knew, was Sachiel.

--Evangelion OST I, Track 03: Angel Attack--

Behind him with a snap-hiss, a VTOL fired a pair of heavy anti tank missiles at the now stationary Angel, the warheads skidding intelligently around a building in their way, to guide unerringly towards the giant, joined by another half a dozen smoke trails, all of which detonated against the target in an enormous explosion, the noise of which was drowned out by the thunder of the gunships engines as it roared over him towards the combat zone.

Shinji had been extensively trained in multiple combat techniques to use against Angels.
Hand to hand (without an Evangelion) was not one of them.

Shoving the postcard and necklace into his pocket, he spun on his feet and sprinted away from the combat zone, making it a good half block down the street before he heard the crash of the VTOL behind him. Looking down the street intently, he smiled for the first time since finding himself “here” as he saw a sleek blue car screaming down the road towards him. Waving towards it, he caught the driver’s attention, causing her to throw the sports car into a shrieking, speed killing 180 degree turn, coming to a complete stop bare meters away.

“Get in, sorry I’m late” Misato Katsaragi started to apologize with a sheepish looking grin, but Shinji was already moving and jumped inside the car, shouting “GO” as he slammed the door shut, twisting to look out the back window.

Misato didn’t hesitate as an irritated looking Angel suddenly leaped down from the sky on top of the shot down VTOL, detonating its unfired munitions and fuel tanks in a roaring explosion that sent shrapnel ripping into the location Misato had previously held, but had abandoned as she slalomed around abandoned vehicles with a light touch, skidding around corners into a series of cross streets as she worked her way back towards the highway, putting the dubious protection of several city blocks between them and the Angel.

“Nice timing” Shinji managed to get out as the car stopped rocking, releasing his death grip on the seat long enough to strap in, just in time for Misato threw her car around another corner and onto the onramp for the Tokyo 3 highway, the NERV officer just grinning at him before turning her attention (wisely) back to the road. Shinji took a last glance back at the battle as Misato roared up into the hills, his mind rocking back as the deeper implications of where he was started to kick in.
Should I pilot EVA again Shinji asked himself. I have a choice this time, I could just leave, walk away from all of this.

‘And then what?’ another part of his mind mockingly asked back. Shinji frowned slightly at the traitorous voice coming from inside his head.

Leave this city! Go back to my Uncles place-

‘And what will your Father do then?’ the voice pointed out.

…

‘He will force Rei to pilot Unit One. And she will probably die’.

…

‘Or the Angel will defeat Rei and initiate Third Impact’.

Adam isn’t even here! It can’t start Third Impact Shinji protested, idely wondering how he suddenly knew so much about Third Impact, but shoving that question aside for now.

‘It will find Adam and there will be nothing able to stop it with NERV destroyed, Mistao dead, Rei dead, Akagi dead, Father dead, Aboa dead, Maya dead-’

…

‘You know why you came back’ the other part of his mind said flatly. ‘You know what will happen if you do nothing. You wanted an opportunity to change things. You have that chance’.

How can I possibly change future Shinji retorted as he thought over the awesome forces arrayed against him.
The Angels.
Father.
SELLE….

‘Give a person a large enough lever and they can move the world’ the other part of his mind replied. ‘Unit One…can be that lever’.

It wasn’t much of an answer Shinji decided…but it was enough.

I will not run away. Not this time. Not ever.
I failed all of them once.
I won’t fail them again.



Sixty odd kilometers away from the forward edge of battle (and quite some distance ‘below ground’) another group of people were studying the Angel, though with a great deal less detachment and serine knowledge of what the future would bring.

“The target is still coming towards us, it’s still headed straight for Tokyo 3” Shigeru Aoba warned, the main screen making his comments abundantly clear as the ‘target’ appeared to tire of using its energy rams to play ‘tag’ with the gunships, starting to move again on a direct line for Tokyo 3 with a deceptively slow looking gait.

“The air defense force just doesn’t have the firepower to stop it!” a forward air controller on an AWACS high above the battlefield desperately added over the command channel as the savaged gunship squadrons withdrew to reform.

“Fire everything we’ve got!” one of a trio of khaki suited figures shouted from the back of the room into the command channel, in a voice filled with a mixture of rage and shock towards the target that continued to shrug off enough firepower to level a good sized down. “Mobilize everything from Atsugi and Iruma!”
“Don’t hold anything back!” a second figure put in. “Forget the God Damned budget; destroy that thing at any cost!” the officer demanded, a forgotten pencil held in his hand snapping into pieces as the rooms frustration mounted.

The officers watched in growing disbelief as a battery of general-purpose rocket launchers let loose salvos of huge surface to surface missiles which were about as effective as a fireworks display, followed by another wave of gunships to even less effect, and then in desperation had a conventionally armed ballistic missile from an orbiting B-83 bomber launched on a direct trajectory shot.
To the stunned disbelief of the military personnel watching, the target raised a hand as if to catch the incoming missile, shattering the rocket down its length before the warhead and unspent fuel detonated in a gigantic explosion. Buildings designed to resist high level Earthquakes were flattened for blocks, the Angels position obscured in a gigantic explosion…that cleared to show a completely unscratched target.

At this point, the fist of the left most officer crashed onto the desk he was sitting at in an understandable need to lash out violently at the insanity of the situation, sending an ash tray full of cigarette butts bouncing into the air from the force of the blow.

“It’s NOT POSSIBLE” he all but shouted. “That was a direct hit!”

“The tank battalion’s been wiped out!” the right most officer put in next as the rising causality listings updated on his secondary displays. “Guided missiles and artillery fire appear to have no effect!”

“Damnit” cursed the first officer again, choking back his rage enough to try and think clearly. “We’re hitting it with everything we’ve GOT and we’re not even touching it!”

Behind and to the side of the three officers, two men in uniforms of a vaguely paramilitary cut watched the UN Generals with exasperated expressions, like parents shaking their heads at children who stubbornly refused to believe that Santa Clause wasn’t real even when catching their parents in the act of wrapping their presents.

“Looks like an A.T. field” Vice Commander Kōzō Fuyutsuki commented in the detached tone of an academic, as if this was all just some stimulating intellectual enterprise and those were not real pilots and soldiers out there being swatted down like bugs by this terrible creature.

“Yes” agreed the second man sitting in front of him in an equally dispassionate tone, his head resting lighting on his hands as he watched impatiently, waiting for the inevitable conclusion to this entertaining -but pointless- saga. “Conventional weapons are no match for the Angels”.

Then right on time, one of the secure phones at the Generals desk buzzed. Gendo Ikari smirked slightly as the officer picked it up and acknowledged the orders. This promised to be mildly entertaining…

--Craig Armstrong – Escape--

“Don’t stop” Shinji suddenly said.
Misato had started to back off the accelerator –probably for the first time since Shinji had jumped into the car she had done such a thing-, getting ready to pull over at the top of the hill and take a quick look back towards the battle, when the Third Child had suddenly decided to speak up.
“Eh?” Misato asked in a distracted tone, still caught up in the adrenaline of their close escape.
“Keep. Driving” he repeated in a somewhat more urgent tone. “Trust me on this Captain Katsaragi” he continued, “It’s really really not a good place to stop…please just keep going”.

Misato frowned slightly at the look on the face of the Third Child, wondering how exactly he had known what she intended to do, but mentally shrugged and with an easy smile at him, shifted down a gear and hit the gas again.

He’s probably right to say we shouldn’t stop, she admitted to herself. Her job was to get him to NERV, not stop to gawk at the battle.
If the operations department need my input, well that’s what the satellite phone was for she decided, turning West towards Tokyo 3 and rocketing down the backside of a large hill that cut off their view of the firefight-

“Okay stop here” Shinji spoke up, with an odd look on his face as if he was trying to remember something.

“Hey listen you” she said with mock gravity, “you don’t side seat drive in my car, I am a perfectly safe driver to be with and I-”

“Really RIGHT NOW” Shinji repeated in that same urgent tone, looking over at her with a pleading look. Sighing, Misato hit the breaks and the car skidded to a halt over a couple hundred meters, coming to rest at the base of the hill, somehow without spinning out. Turning a friendly if exasperated look at her young charge, she was surprised to have him suddenly reach over and force her down into her seat, shouting ‘get DOWN-‘

And the sky turned white.

Squinting her eyes shut instinctively at the flash which could only be from an N2 detonation, Misato grabbed Shinji right back and forced him down with her as low inside the car as possible. A deep rumble grew exponentially louder as the enormous shockwave from the fusion weapon blasted the top of the ridgeline they had just skirted around, stripping trees of their leaves, which rained down the far side as the thunder faded.

The two people inside the car listening to the shockwave fading quickly realized they were still alive and released their mutual grips in embarrassment as they sat up, the hellish red light reflected off the clouds fading as the fireball from the nuclear device ascended towards heaven.

“I’m uh sorry about grabbing you like that Captain Katsaragi” Shinji hastily apologized as he reseated himself.

“Oh that’s fine” she smiled. “But don’t start getting any ideas from that photo I sent you” she exhorted, leaning across abruptly into his personal space with a serious expression on her face. “Don’t think that I intend to let you take advantage of me or anything like that!”

Flinching back in reflex with his face turning red, Shinji instinctively opened his mouth to apologize, paused, then closed it and laughed out loud, shaking his head and barely managing to get out “I’ll try to behave myself before breaking out into even heavier laughter. He didn’t have the first clue why he was laughing at first, until it hit him that he was just that happy to see Misato like this; carefree and laughing at life instead of (understandably) angry and bitter at it as she had been…towards the end.

Misato’s angry façade dropped instantly as he laughed, joining in and tussling his spiky black hair a bit before sitting back down in her seat and kicking the car into gear as the cloud of dust thrown up by the shockwave started to settle.
“It is a pleasure to meet you, Shinji Ikari” she declared, as she accelerated down the road.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you as well Captain Katsaragi” Shinji replied with a small smile, pushing aside the memory of her bleeding to death in his arms out of his mind as he fingered the cross in his pocket.

Not again, not this time. This time…this time it will be different. All of I will be different.
I WILL NOT RUN AWAY! NEVER AGAIN!

“Ah, Mistao is fine” Misato shrugged casually as she threw her car around a corner at ‘only’ twice the posted speed limit.

--Evangelion OST III, Track 04: Harbinger Of Tragedy--

Back at Tokyo Three however, quite a few people were not feeling quite so carefree.
“What’s the status of the target?” the first General demanded, staring at the multi story static filled screen as if daring it to give him bad news.
“We’re unable to confirm” a technician tersely replied from deep in the pit, working to try and bring remote systems back on line. “The EM pulse knocked everything out”.
“It MUST be dead” the second General broke in with greater insistence, as if by the force of his convictions his desired outcome would be made manifest.

Behind them, Gendo Ikari merely smiled behind the hands holding his head off his desk.

“External sensors…restored” Aoba declared several seconds later, the dead static filled screen switching to a wire frame sensor readout from the orbiting AWACS as Aoba managed to restore a direct linkup through the EM interference.
The image painted the terrain around the target zone in lines of green from an isometric angle. A hemispherical depression had been drawn in on this map, the detonation crater for the N2 mine…and in the middle of it, a line jumped up into the air, flashing wildly.
“Energy reading!” the sensor tech said in an alarmed voice. “At the epicenter!”
“It CAN’T BE!” the First General said in choked disbelief, all three leaping to their feet-
Just in time for a long range camera placed on a hilltop nearby to switch on, showing a long range zoom image of the explosion epicenter…and the Angel standing straight and tall in the middle of it.
“That…” the third General said heavily, sinking back into his chair, “was out last option”.
“No effect at all” the most senior General said in a level, if tired sounding voice as he spoke up for first time, appearing to all but deflate back into his seat.
“It’s a God damned Demon!” the first General snarled, hitting his poor unoffending table again, this time sending the cigarette butts flying off the edge.

Cont

A distant tunnel was coming into view now well along the winding road, one Shinji knew led to an outlying Car Train station, and in turn, down into the GeoFront.
Holding the cars satellite phone in one hand (which frightened him more then a little as it left her only a single hand to both steer AND change gears), Misato dialed up NERV HQ. A voice that sounded like Aboa came back over the speaker as Shinji cringed at every sloppy turn along the ridgeline road, thanking whatever deities that might be looking down on them today that there was no other traffic on the road.

“Yeah, so make sure you have a car train ready for us…an express of course…ya…okay, seya” she finished, before hanging up and turning to glance at her charge, who was looking out the window with a brooding expression on his face.

“So Shinji” she said “…how did you know to get us behind the hill when they dropped that N2 mine?”

Shinji kept his face level. Though Mistao’s tone sounded almost ‘airhead’ level curious, he knew her far too well to fall for it, the edge of curiosity in her voice others might miss quite clear to him

“I saw all the aircraft that were attacking that thing suddenly break off as we were turning the corner” he shrugged, picking an easy lie out of his memory. “I mean, the only reason I could think of why they would do that, would be to drop a really big bomb, right?”
“Right” she agreed with a nod, her tone sounding satisfied, if slightly surprised with his answer. “You know, you’re a pretty useful person to have around”.
”And you’re uh, a damn pretty person to have around” he replied with a smile, causing her face to flush slightly red for a second before she laughed it off, surprised to find she was actually somewhat touched by the kids comment.
“You are nothing like your father” Misato chuckled, speeding down into the darkened tunnel entrance…though Shinji noted this time she did so without pretending it was an exercise in downhill slalom practice.
Something for which he found himself profoundly grateful.

Three dozen kilometers behind the Third Child, a QV-22 Osprey slowly approached the stationary figure of the Angel in the still ‘hot’ blast zone. An unmanned drone version of the venerable V-22 transport, the QV-22 carried a full spectrum of sensors instead of troops; from basic visual, through most of the EM spectrum, even up to ultrasonic sonar, making it perhaps the most comprehensive remote sensor platform the UN Air Force boasted to date.

The data it collected was bounced up to the AWACS controlling it and from there to NERV central, where the triumvirate of Magi mainframes processed it. But most eyes were not on the incoming streams of information, but fixed firmly on the huge image projected in full color from the ultra high definition cameras on the twin bladed helicopter.

The Angel, everyone saw, had been damaged by the nuclear explosion. The ‘head’ of the thing looked like it had been snapped in half, and was apparently in the process of being broken down and absorbed back into the greater whole, while a brand new head grew at a terrifying rate. Parts of the skin that had looked blistered and burned from were smoothing out and healing even as they watched, despite the fact that the ground under it was still in a semi molten state.

“As we suspected, it’s regenerating itself” Fuyutsuki sighed. He would have been perfectly happy to simply see the Angel die from the UN’s attack, but Ikari was (at least to someone who knew him as well as he did), all but gloating over the complete failure of the UN’s most powerful weapon to do more then slow their enemy down for perhaps half an hour.

“Without that ability, it couldn’t operate without support units” Gendo agreed, his eyes focused on the view screen upon which the ‘new’ head the Angel had grown appeared to swivel towards the cameras point of view. The secondary displays registered an energy surge-
And with a flash of light, the screen went back to static.
“Quite impressive” Fuyutsuki sighed. “It can upgrade its operational perimeters”.
“And it’s also getting smarter” Gendo added in a darker tone as the visual link was switched to a ground drone camera near the blast zone.
“It should renew its attack any minute now” Fuyutsuki agreed uneasily, wondering what in the hell Ikari planned to do about it. It was all well and good for the UN line forces and the JSSDF to make a fool of themselves dealing with the Angel, all the better to give NERV credence as the single authority on these matters.

But given that they had no pilot fit to use their single operational Evangelion unit, Fuyutsuki had no idea what NERV coulddo about it either…but suspected he would find out soon enough, as Ikari was grudgingly granted full authority by the Generals, who took their leave for the surface helipad where their evac VTOL, clearly not wanting to be around when the Angel shook off the nuclear impact and came looking for them.


The ride to the Geofront was unremarkable for Shinji Ikari, insomuch as he had made the trip hundreds of times before. He held his peace as Misato blabbed on about NERV and his father, handed him a lightly classified welcome booklet and clearly started brooding on her own problems as he flipped through it.
He made sure to show and express awe when they entered the Geofront, which was tricky as he tried to control the shudder that passed over him as his mind overlaid a massive hole in the roof on the incredible vista, with nine white winged figures descending like vultures towards an impaled scarlet Evangelion unit…

“Hey, we’re here!” Misato suddenly said in a cheerful tone. Shinji looked up and blinked away his thoughts to realize they had arrived at the parking area for the senior staff while he had been ‘reading’, getting out of the car and stretching his legs as he grabbed his ID papers, following Misato into Central Dogma…where she instantly became utterly lost.

He of course, didn’t try to correct her.

While Misato struggled to work out if she was holding the map right side up or upside down, Shinji snuck the white cross out of his pocket and carefully shoved it deep into his backpack, inside a folded spare shirt. He thought for a second about finding a waste chute to throw the thing into, to ensure no chance of awkward questions being raised, but he just couldn’t thrown it away. Not after everything…
He would keep it.
To make sure he never forgot what running away cost him.

Finally they found an elevator in the Dogma Core and ascended, stopping a few floors up to let on Doctor Ritsko Akagi, who had thrown a lab coast over a swimming costume and clearly did not look happy to be here. Shinji guessed she had just come down from the EVA cages and the emergency preparations to get Unit One ready to launch and started to lay into Misato even before the doors had shut again.

Suddenly, he realized the Doctor had noticed him staring and turned to face him after finishing growling at Misato for wasting her time, clearly irritated that Misato was clearly not taking the implied threats even slightly seriously.

“So. Is this the boy?”

Before Mistao could respond, Shinji decided this time he would see about keeping the good Doctor a little off balance this time.

“This is ‘the boy’, yes” he replied with a slight trace of sarcasm in his voice, trying not to dwell on memories of how she had treated him and the rest of the EVA pilots. “And this is what the worlds leading scientists are wearing in the lab these days?”
Air whistled out through Misato’s nostrils as her face turned red in a desperate attempt to contain the laughter that was trying to force its way out. Ritsikos face flushed slightly as well, but almost unwillingly, a slight smile made its way onto her face as for the first time, she really studied his face.
“You are not quite what I was expecting, Shinji Ikari”.
“Then you were expecting my Father” he replied flatly, all good humor instantly gone from his face and voice, “which would be a mistake”.
The Doctor shut up at this point, instead exchanging a look with Misato.
Not at all what they were expecting the looks said.


Thankfully the rest of the trip through Central Dogma passed rapidly. A short stop into a locker room where Shinji was able to leave his bag while Misato and Doctor Akagi hurriedly changed into their uniforms, then a long trip up the side of the EVA cages, the two women arguing about the possibility of Unit-01 activating as Shinji continued to ‘read’ the NERV introduction manual. Finally they entered the dark ‘room’ that Shinji knew really was an umbilical bridge...
The light from the open door cut off, moving the room into pitch black and Shinji steadied himself.

The lights snapped on to full illumination.

And there was Evangelion Unit 01. Returning his stare calmly, directly in front of him.

A rush of memories flooded back into his mind as he looked over the purple helmet of the EVA with an almost detached calmness on his face that he didn’t feel inside.

Silence reigned for several seconds as Misato and Akagi watched him closely before they realized he wasn’t going to say anything.

“This is man’s ultimate fighting machine” Akagi declared, with a touch of pride in her voice that rang through the huge room. “The synthetic life form known as Evangelion. Unit One”.

Shinji’s expression didn’t change as he continued to study the purple face in front of him; its eyes appearing to return his level stare with its own…or her own.

“Built here in secret” Akagi continued her spiel, “it is mankind’s last hope”.

Shinji nodded slightly, making sure his expression was under tight control before raising his head.
“So” he said in a somewhat louder voice then was necessary to talk to the women beside him, before focusing his gaze on the silhouette of a man backed by lights far above him. “This is what you have been working on”.
“Correct” Gendo Ikari replied. “It’s been a while”.
To Shinji’s dark delight however, he could hear the slightest surprise and uncertainty in his Fathers cold voice, he knew his Father had wanted to surprise him by suddenly appearing at the most opportune moment, to intimidate him into a fearful cowering.

Not this time, Father…

“It would have been far longer, if not for the fact that my Uncle, your brother convinced me to give you one last chance” Shinji replied in a voice just as devoid of emotion, keeping his expression locked on his fathers. “So far, you are failing miserably if you intended this to be any kind of happy family reunion”.

Shinji sensed both of the women beside him cringe away from the frigid exchange, hugging themselves almost as if a cold wind had just swept into Central Dogma.

Gendo merely smirked slightly, surprised at the steel in his Son’s voice.
This promises to be more interesting then I anticipated he thought, breaking eye contact to glance at Captain Katsaragi.
“We’re moving out”
“Moving out?!” Mistao protested in an aghast voice, tearing her eyes from Shinji, who had returned to his study of Unit 01. “But Unit zero is still in cryo-stasis…” her voice suddenly broke off as she glanced at the silent Evangelion and her eyes went wide, turning to face Ritisiko. “WAIT a minute; you’re going to use UNIT ONE?”
“There’s no other way” Ritsiko said flatly.
“You’re serious” Misato softly replied after studying her friends face for a second and recognizing the expression on it.
The Doctor didn’t answer, turning instead to face Shinji, who had turned to look at her.
“Don’t tell me” he pre-empted her. “You want me to pilot this thing”.

Again Doctor Akagi blinked in surprise. Gendo had spoken little of his Son over the years, but from what she had heard and the brief skim reading she had done of his ‘Marduk Institute’ report, Shinji Ikari had been described as sorely lacking in self confidence, probably completely intimidated by his Father and more likely then not to simply follow instructions.
This boy however…

Her thoughtful study of the boy was however quickly cut short by Misato’s indignant protesting.

“All he has to do is just sit in the seat” Akagi interrupted in a calm voice. “We’re not expecting anything more then that”.

Shinji glanced back up as his Father, who looked back in control of himself again, glaring down at the trio.
Well time to throw him another curve ball Shinji thought.
“Do you really think I’m just going to step into the thing? The thing that killed my Mother?” he asked in a level, but suddenly extremely dangerous tone.

Gendos eyes, for probably less then a millisecond, flashed in shock behind his glasses as Shinji’s statement echoed around the EVA cage, orange suited technicians working to prepare the EVA for launch freezing in place as his statement reached them. Akagi’s face went as white as Shinji remembered Rei’s skin, while Misato simply looked confused for a second, before a dawning dread in her eyes started to build.

Shinji let the silence weight on everyone for several seconds before snorting slightly.

“Did you think I would, I could forget that day, Father?” he asked in the same low soft tone. “Do you think I could forget this thing?” he continued, gesturing at the inert EVA unit “and what it cost me?” Shinji felt his voice increasing in volume and pitch, but couldn’t help it as emotions he had held in check for so long rushed to the surface in an uncontrolled eruption. “You might not have given a damn that my Mother, your wife, lost her life thanks to this thing, but I DO”.

The last words, delivered with a great deal of volume, echoed through the deadly silence of the EVA cage, this time hanging in the air like a gunshot. Silently, Shinji cursed his explosion, but felt a curious weight lift off his shoulders, one he hadn’t realized he had been carrying all this time, letting him stand up just that much straighter.

“Battle Stations” a voice broke in on the heavy silence, one Shinji recognized as Maya Ibuki, almost certainly up in the control room. “Level One, prepare for Surface to Surface Combat”.

The various technicians around the room got back to work, hurriedly finding things to do as they tried to ignore the drama playing out in the middle of the huge room.

“Fine” Gendo said softly, though Shinji could hear the extreme control in his voice as he glared from his room and for a second felt a slight wave of remorse for his words. Shinji knew, deep down, just how dedicated his Father had been to his Mother. Almost everything he had done since that horrible day had been, at least in his twisted mind, for her after all.

Regardless of what it had cost anyone else around him.

But mostly, he could only remember how he had sacrificed Rei, Askua, Misato and God only knows how many other people at NERV, hell the whole human race once you got down to it, all to sooth his guilty conscience and inability to accept Yui’s own wishes.
Not this time Shinji thought as Gendo turned away.

“Fuyutsuki” Gendo snapped at thin air, finding a new target.
“Sir?”
“Wake up Rei” he said curtly.
“…Can we use her?”
“She’s not dead yet” Gendo replied, with a dark undertone in his voice.
“Understood” came the tight reply back.

You son of a bitch Shinji thought with a grinding of his teeth, knowing what was coming next.

Akagi and Misato, both clearly glad to exit the crossfire between Father and Son retreated to the edges of the bridge, the former starting to order technicians about, the later standing alone with her thoughts as she mulled over the incredible revelation that had just echoed around the EVA cage.

--Evangelion OST, Track 04: Rei I--

A soft ping announced the arrival of an elevator and Shinji’s anger drained away as he turned, looking past Doctor Akagi as a team of medical techs hurriedly wheeled out a gurney and carefully maneuvered it across the bridge towards him.

Time appeared to slow down as the bed approached, then stopped as it pulled level with him, and he looked Rei Ayanami in the face.
Her expression was utterly blank, just as he remembered, though twinges of pain caused her to grimace as the bed bounced over the not very smooth bridge. One eye was bandaged, as were here arms, with IV lines leading into her…
“Wait” Shinji said softly to the medics, who glanced at each other, but halted the bed carefully. Walking up next to the head of the bed as Rei weakly tried to sit up; he leaned in close and gently put a hand on her shoulder as she whimpered in agony.
“It’s okay Ayanami” he whispered softly to the Girl who had given him this chance. “Just…rest.”

Rei’s single uncovered eye finally focused on him, without comprehension, but she allowed him to guide her back to lie down, shuddering slightly even from that much effort. Looking past her, he straightened and found Misato looking very closely at him.
“Misato”.
“Yes Shinji?”
“Can you please see that gets back to the hospital for me?”
Misato glanced up towards the window where his Father laired and apparently getting an affirmative, she looked back and offered him a trusting smile.
“Of course Shinji-Kun” she said, walking forward.

Stepping away from the bed as the Medics started to head back the way they came -Misato following close behind- Shinji looked up with an unreadable expression at his Father.
“Alright. I’ll do it”.


With the familiar feeling of vertigo, Shinji felt the entry plug tilt forward, as the docking system locked the long cylinder into place at the base of Unit Ones neck. The freely rotating internal section remained level as the plug screwed its way deep into Unit 01, then with a deep thud, the armor plates behind him sealed up and over, entombing him.

There was the usual chatter on the communications lines as the control room prepared to synchronize, followed by the rush of LCL inside.
“Hey what? What in the-” he spluttered as the liquid rushed up, holding his breath as Ritisiko assured him it was all fine. He held his breath for a three second count before explosively expelling all the air from his lungs and deeply ‘breathing’ in the LCL.
When he had first started to pilot his EVA, he had always tried to slowly control himself as he breathed in the LCL into his lungs and had come close to throwing up each and every time. It had been Askua who suggested that he should try to breath it all in, in a single deep breath…and he had to admit, it made him less likely to throw up.

On the other hand…

“I think I’m going to be sick” Shinji muttered, his mind flashing back to a disturbing image of an enormous Sea of LCL that had somehow been burned into the depths of his mind…

“Stop complaining! You’re a boy you know” Misato’s voice cracked over the intercom, causing Shinji to smile wryly.

“Connecting secondary contacts” Maya said next and the rainbow cascade of color washed down the interior of the entry plug as the display screens initialized. The familiar, curious feeling that he was melting into something infinitely larger and more powerful then moved through him, followed by the screens activating to a perfect wraparound view of the area around Unit 01. Closing his eyes, he felt the tug of a connection from the EVA as the A-10 clips in his hair pulsed followed by the tingling sensation of the LCL charging.


“Bi-Directional circuits are open” Maya Ibuki commented a few hundred meters away in the main command centre as the personnel hurriedly rushed to get Unit 01 through an abbreviated launch checklist. Checking that step off her own list, she switched over to a pilots status window and started to flick through the various readouts.
“Synchronization ratio at…forty three point one percent” she blinked in astonishment. That someone who had never even SEEN an EVA could get such a high ratio on the first attempt was beyond any previous experience…but the MAGI didn’t lie.
“Amazing” Ritisko breathed over her shoulder as the waveforms on the screen merged into one line, before Maya switched over to a nerve connection window.
“Harmonics…appear to be normal. No abnormalities detected”.
“Hmmm” Ritisiko agreed in satisfaction. Glancing back at Mistao. “Let’s do it!”

Misato nodded, and then felt the ground heave under her as an explosion ripped through the city.

“It’s close” Commander Ikari muttered from his place at the top of the room, his face once again a blank slate as he gazed at the main screen, showing a huge cross shaped explosion tearing into the night sky above Tokyo 3. “It must sense our presence”.

Hurriedly, Mistao turned to Hugya and Aboa at the primary operational consoles in front of her.
“Begin launch sequence!”

“Begin launch sequence!” the Aboa repeated as another explosion rocked the base, rapidly firing out orders to move the Evangelion to launch position.

“Hit on the first armor plate confirmed!” Hugya declared as damage alarms sounded. “No penetration as yet”. On the screen, Satchiel, apparently irritated at his lack of progress started to stalk down from the hill from which he had been bombarding the town, firing one last blast in passing.

This blast hit one of Tokyo 3’s retracted skyscrapers dead on and blew straight down its unarmored length into the Geofront, an unholy inverted cross materializing over the subterranean cavern, causing the hulled building to freefall down and slam into the ground next to NERV HQ and shake the building to its foundations.
The operations personnel however continued the cycle without breaking stride.

“All restraints clear, internal batteries fully charged” Aboa finished up his checklist rapidly, giving a thumbs up across to Ibuki. Maya nodded in return and flicked her fingers across her keyboard.
“Roger. Moving EVA unit One to the launch pad” she stated, watching as the hydraulic lift started to raise the EVA towards the wall mounted launch catapults. Then as the charging status indicator for the magnetic induction system reached 100%, Maya armed the system, causing a series of blast doors through the launch path to snap open in sequence.
“Launch path clear, all systems green”.
“Evangelion, ready for launch” Akagi confirmed, nodding at Misato.

“Understood” Misato replied simply, before turning back to face Commander Ikari with a direct look, her mind still reeling over the revelations of a few minutes ago.

“Can we really do this?” she asked with an almost pleading tone in her voice at the thought of sending an untrained kid up to face the greatest enemy known to Man.

“Of course” Gendo replied, as if she had asked if he would be happy to pack a light supper after the battle. “Unless we defeat the Angels, humanity has no future”.

Not exactly sure if that was a good enough answer, Misato none the less turned back to face the main screen, keeping her thoughts to herself.

Fuyutsuki, standing beside the Commander however, leaned in close.
“Ikari. Are you absoloutly sure about this?” he asked.
Gendo didn’t reply, simply grinning at the screen and if he had been going to say anything, it was made accedemic as Misato stepped forward.

“EVA LAUNCH!”

With a flash of energy, energy discharged, magnetizing the track and launch carriage Unit 01 was attached to, sending the gargantuan purple figure roaring towards the surface in a blur of motion.

Inside the entry plug, the launch force kicked him with its usual crushing pressure until the acceleration tapered off, Shinji’s eyes squinting shut in reflex from the G forces as his mulled over what he remembered about this Angel.

Of course he hadn’t defeated the Angel himself, the thing had broken his arm then blown a hole in his head, causing the Unit…causing her to go berserk and tear the Angel to bits, piece by piece.

He supposed he could simply wait for that to happen…

And watch as Toji’s sister gets horrifically hurt…

Blood drained from Shinji’s face as everything that had led from this battle, like a ripple in a pond, crashed back into his awareness-

(“The Eva's re-activating!”)-
(Unit One screaming in rage as it smashed the beleaguered Angel through building after building)-
(“Sorry, his little sister was injured in the incident the other day”)-
(“You're Toji Suzuhara?”)
(“Getting his sister transferred to our hospital here at Headquarters
was the one condition he gave”)-
(“You still don't know?! The pilot of Unit 03 is”)-
(“Father, stop! Stop doing this!”)-
(“I begged him to stop”)-
(“The Fourth Child is…is…”)-
NO!

--Evangelion OST I, Track 18: The Beast--

Unit Ones eyes suddenly lit up with an unholy white blaze, seconds from the top of the lift shaft and only a few blocks away from the Third Angel, which was striding jauntily through Tokyo 3 like some gigantic late night shopper.

Deep in the control room, pandemonium erupted.

“My God, Shinji’s Synch ratio just spiked to ninety four point three two-”
“Unit One has disengaged final restraints manually-”
“AT Field generation detected-”

Hugya, Aboa and Maya’s voices overlapped simultaneously, followed by a simultaneous shout of “What?!” from Ritsiko, Misato and Fuyutsuki as Unit One reached the surface. Instead of crashing to a halt in the restraint lock as had been planned, mankind’s ultimate weapon leaped into the twilight, using the momentum from the lift to fly an arc, its cable unwinding furiously behind it as it flew in a blur up and across the street, then countless thousands of tons of cyborg crashed down onto its prey, the air around it burning with a familiar hexagonal strobing as it landed.

“Unit One’s AT field is in contact with the Angels” Maya hurriedly commented in triumph as a wavy pair of line graphs on her screen appeared to cancel out, a pair of numbers rapidly dropping to zero. “It’s neutralizing the phase space!”

“No, its eroding it” Ritsiko corrected in a stunned voice as the Angel recovered from the ferocious all out attack and sudden loss of its Absolute Terror field, whipping its hands up to try and throw Unit One off with its phenomenal strength.

Shinji however, the focus of a tempest, but one of his control, wasn’t having any of that. The hands of Unit 01 moved in a blur, seizing the Angels long limbs by its wrists, then pulled them across its chest so each hand could grip BOTH limbs at once, all but ignoring its struggles as he squeezed…until with a crack and spurting of blue blood, limbs detached, leaving nothing but tiny stumps.


“We’ve done it” Fuyutsuki said simply to Gendo, who inclined his head in agreement.

Sachiel, despite the horrific pain it probably was feeling, probably wanted to dispute such a claim, leveraging up from its position flat on its back to direct its head at Unit 01 as Shinji disposed of the arms, firing a point blank blast at the Evangelions head, which soared up into the sky in yet another white/purple crucifix, causing Unit 01 to stumble back down the street several dozen meters.

As Sachiel heaved itself to its feet, Shinji growled, shaking off the sympathetic feeling of his face suddenly feeling like it was sunburned, his hands tightening up on the butterfly grips.

Unit Ones right hand flashed to its shoulder pauldron which opened just in time for the hand to yank out a solid looking rectangular object, the Progressive Knife coming joyously to life with a load roar.

Shinji had never been the best hand to hand trained EVA pilot at NERV. That honor had gone to Askua, who had always, by far, held the most complete EVA training of the pilots stationed at Tokyo 3. Although Shinji had scored some of his most memorable victories against Angels by ripping them to pieces, that had generally happened when Unit One was completely out of his control and he had always been more comfortable with the heavy artillery.

But he had picked up more then one trick from the Second Child during those long hours of training.

Ducking under the still staggering Angels line of fire, Shinji on pure instinct exploded up with a twin fingered knuckle jab into the Angels face that snapped the beak around. Then holding his blade reverse style like Askua had taught him, brought the Progressive knife in with the classic ‘Z-stroke’ across the face from left to right, back down to the Angels left chest-
Then stabbed it sideways into the core as hard as he could.

DIE his mind shrieked at the monster that had caused so much suffering. Just DIE!

The Angel withered violently as the progressive edge sliced through the sphere on its chest, bucking like a dying animal as Shinji pressed it the hilt, snarling incomprehensible mutterings until its gyrations suddenly slowed and it fell off the blade onto the ground, its skin appearing to suddenly break out in huge bubbles all over its body.

Giving the creature not even another seconds attention, Shinji leaped over it, its power cable detaching at a thought with a hiss as he sprinted to the end of the block where he could make out a terrified pair of familiar people in the shadow of an apartment block. His AT field spread wide behind him with a deep humming roar-

Then a final Crucifix lit the Tokyo 3 sky, this one visible for hundreds of kilometers.

The explosion slammed against the hexagonal barrier, but the Angels final revenge was thwarted as it held firm, the light fading to leave an impossibly perfect crater in the center of the street.
Then the blaze in Unit 01’s eyes faded and almost gently, it fell to its knees and powered down.

“The target…the target has been destroyed” Hugya said into the stunned silence of the operations centre as the rumble of the explosion overhead finally ceased, leaving everyone staring in open mouthed awe at the all but untouched Evangelion lying in the street.
“Stand down to second stage Alert” Misato ordered, hurrying forward to the microphone on Hugya’s console. “Scramble tactical recovery teams now, DO IT!”
“Roger” Maya and Aboa simultaneously acknowledged, contacting their respective personnel and ordering them to Unit Ones position as Misato reached the Microphone.
“Shinji, Shinji are you okay?”

Up in Unit One, Shinji slowly let out the ‘breath’ of LCL he had been holding, closing his eyes for a second as suddenly the rage that had powered him faded, leaving him shaken…and surprisingly, shaking.
“I’m…I’m here…what happened?” he replied, realizing that he didn’t need much effort at all to sound vague and confused.

“Its okay” Misato assured him over the comlink. “We’ll have you out of there in a couple of minutes…Shinji, Shinji you did great out there, its all over”.

No Misato Shinji thought as he leaned back to rest in his command chair, closing his eyes as he listened to the soothing hum of the entry plugs life support systems.
This has just begun.

It probably would have worried him to know his Father was thinking much the same of the Captain’s statement as he gave the main screen a smirk, before turning and walking out of the command center.

The Committee was no doubt waiting.

[Sidewinder]

Not a bad start, although you should check the spelling of the characters' names-- for example, Dr. Akagi's given name is "Ritsuko". Maybe you should read this.

If its a good idea, if its been 'done' zillions of times

I also tried to create a better Shinji, but in my opinion, Rorschach's Blot did the best job. (I advise you to read 'Chicks Dig Giant Robots'-- if it doesn't give you ideas, it should at least make you laugh out loud.)

[Ford Prefect]

I quite enjoyed that, but like Sidewinder, I'd watch out for spelling. It's spelt SEELE, for instance.

[Chris OFarrell]

I'm not that worried about the spelling in this chapter, even if I do decide to go on with this fic, I'd completely rewrite this chapter. It's not proofread in any sense of the word, I literally pulled it right off the ol' hard drive and posted it.

So I'd probably rewrite it heavily.

But I was just more interested in reactions to the general idea. After doing some idle searching the last couple of days I found tons of post 3I fics, tons of 'Shinji arrives at Tokyo 3 with a spine having been surgically transplanted into him' fics...

But I didn't really find any fics where Shinji goes back in time with both a somewhat intact Spine AND full knowledge of what is going to happen.

I was just curious to know if the character works as it is written, if I'm going too much in some ways e.t.c. more then issues with spelling mistakes and grammer (its horrible, I know).

So thanks.
Not that it appears there is exactly a huge demand for NGE fanfics here

[Sidewinder]

I was just curious to know if the character works as it is written, if I'm going too much in some ways e.t.c. more then issues with spelling mistakes and grammer (its horrible, I know).

I'm reserving judgment over whether or not it works until I see how Shinji interacts with his peers-- Toji, Kensuke, Asuka, and Rei. (Hopefully, this time he'll have the brains to DENY that he's a Giant Robot Pilot when his classmates ask the question.) I still found the first chapter entertaining, so it might be worth the effort to write more.

[Ford Prefect]

So far Chris, like Sidewinder I'll have to reserve judgement until he starts interacting with other people in a more personal manner. So far, he doesn't seem so bad though.

[Chris OFarrell]

Next chapter here...even if I think I've only got 2 readers. Oh well I'm writing this for my own enjoyment and improvement

Its got some little typos and so on through it and its not as polished as I'd work on for something like say, Derelict, but this story I'm mostly writing for kicks (and sort of because I'm waiting for Razor to air before I can finish the next chapter of Derelict....)

So here it is.






The first thought that came to Shinji Ikari’s mind, in that moment of twilight between sleep and consciousness was that everything had simply been a dream.

It was a perfectly justifiable reaction, he decided, after due thought.

The idea that he had been put in control of forces beyond the comprehension of human beings and essentially pressed a gigantic reset button on the universe was appealing in a lot of ways that would make sense for a dream.
But as he blinked his eyes and breathed in deeply, sitting up on the bed and taking in the room around him…a fact that his mind had been trying to tell him for several seconds finally imposed itself on his consciousness.

This is not my room.

Shinji felt a somewhat pleasant surprise that he wasn’t instantly reduced to a state of near panic over waking up in a room he couldn’t recall arriving in. He idly wondered if his mind had simply decided, after the psychic rock concert that had been Third Impact, that from now on, nothing so blasé as waking up in a strange room would ever worry him again, but decided it was more likely that a part of his mind did know he wasn’t in any danger and did know how he had gotten here.

Closing his eyes tightly, he thought back to the last thing he remembered which was…sitting in Unit Ones entry plug.

Ah. Now it was coming back.

The TacOps teams arriving to eject the entry plug and help him out, followed by heavy recovery units trundling downtown to grab Unit One and move it back to a launch building for recovery.

His overwhelming relief in catching a glimpse of a medical team with Toji and his sister in the distance, both of them looking shaken but untouched as they walked into an ambulance, Toji’s arm protectively around his sibling.

The standing ovation from Misato and quite a few of the senior NERV personnel as he had stepped out of an unmarked van deep inside the GeoFront (the Commander and Vice Commander noticeably absent from the crowd), his clothes still damp with LCL.

Heading back to the locker room with Misato and trying not to blush, but unable to help smiling back at the constant euphoric grins, cheers and thumbs up’s flashed to him by NERV personnel he walked past.

The wonderful, blisteringly hot shower to clear the LCL out of his hair, at the same time as it washed away the tension from his body for a time, letting his mind drift as images from the past (or was it his future now?) swirled around in the steam...

Getting out of the shower and into the one change of clothes in his bag, double and then triple checking the necklace-

Shinji’s eyes opened wide as his thought process crashed to a halt, swinging out of bed to crouch beside its head, digging under the cheap Government Issue mattress as his hands searched for- then found- a rolled up piece of clothing, which he opened carefully to revel a white cross, splashed with a dark red stain that looked almost black in the low light of the room.

Rocking back off the balls of his feet to sit on the edge of the bed, Shinji exhaled in a long sigh as he started to think. Misato’s necklace was increasingly becoming an anchor for his sanity; both letting him know that this really was happening…and acting as a constant, silent, rebuke to him of how much damage his inaction and self pity had caused. Letting his fingers idly trace their way around the edge before wrapping it back up, he stood up as he made a quick decision, grabbing his backpack from the floor and starting to rummage through it. He needed to keep this necklace, the one piece of physical proof he had of what was to come…but he needed to find some place safe to store it, before someone stumbled over it and started asking questions he couldn’t easily answer.

Quickly, he stripped out of his pajamas and changed into his remaining unspoiled clothes, slipping into his shoes (which had had thankfully remembered to remove before getting into the entry plug this time). He studied his reflection in a cheap mirror on the wall quickly; arranging his hair at least into a state of partial neatness before walking over to the single window in the room and opening a hole in the venetian blinds to peak through.

He quickly placed his position; he was in a room inside NERV’s main Pyramid headquarters, overlooking the inverted pyramid “pool” in front of the building, a fact confirmed with a glance at a ‘sky’ showing dozens of inverted buildings suspended far above him. He vaguely recalled that these rooms were set aside for NERV personnel who didn’t want to live upstairs in Tokyo Three -though it had turned out very few people really wanted to live a life underground- which in turn meant he was probably in a rather empty building.

At least for now.

Glancing at his watch to check the time –perfect, just after five in the morning- he walked back and gathered his wallet and the temporary NERV ID papers his Father had sent him, shoving them into the pockets of his pants.
He took far more care though as he wrapped the Necklace back into its handkerchief, easing it into his shirts breast pocket before pulling a light vest over his shirt to ward off the chill he expected to find on the surface.
He debated about taking his backpack with him, but ultimately decided against it. He wasn’t going to leave after all and if he wasmissed, the fact that he had left so much of his stuff behind in a cluttered state would probably help assure people he did intend to come back soon.
Walking to the door, he listened carefully for some time, straining to pick out any sound of human activity, but he couldn’t hear anything above the low humming of the air conditioning, so he eased it open a crack.

There was no section 2 agent standing outside, which was a good start.

He opened the door wider and stuck his head out to have a look up and down the corridor…and there was Misato; sprawled into a padded lounge chair about ten meters away, snoring with impressive volume.

A smile twitched onto his face as he realized she had stayed here to watch over him all night. He knew she had probably been up for hours longer then he had been, dealing with the aftermath of the Angels attack and he felt emotion well up inside him at the fact that instead of going home to a comfortable bed, she had come back here to watch over him.
A boy she had only just met.

Fighting to urge to walk over and hug her, he gently closed the door behind him and quietly walked down the corridor and around the corner, then through a set of doors to a staircase which led him deeper into central Dogma.

He didn’t hold any illusions that he could simply vanish out of NERV, he knew the MAGI kept tabs on everyone through the bases internal security cameras twenty four hours a day. But he also guessed that none of the senior staff who might actually care where he was would be awake, or if they were up, wouldn’t be thinking about him at five in the morning.
He wasn’t however, entirely correct.



Doctor Akagi sighed as she leaned back, lifting her glasses and rubbing her eyes to try and eliminate the ache that had been building steadily behind her eyes over the last half an hour.

She had managed to some sleep last night. Her scientific staff was not really needed in the post battle cleanup so she had sent them all home -they were going to have a very long day today- as she needed them on the top of their game. She herself had eventually followed her own advice, napping on a sofa bed in her office fitfully for a few hours at a time until she finally gave up and went back to work.
Albeit with a large dose of coffee.

The combat between the Third Angel and Unit One had been quite spectacular, but unlike Misato and most of the operations staff, she was far from surprised that it had been a victory for NERV. The plan developed by the Commander had in fact hinged around placing Shinji inside Unit One to provoke the unit -well more accurately the soul of his mother buried deep within it- to take steps when he was put into mortal danger.

Gendo and Fuyutsuki had smugly gone to talk to the Committee, both convinced their plan had gone perfectly. And her first impression had been one of agreement with them. The sudden spike in Shinji’s Synch ratio as Unit One had reached the surface, followed by it launching into a ferocious attack all spoke to Yui ‘taking steps’ to protect her Son and reaching out to his distress at some level…

But Ritsuko Akagi was, above all, a scientist. She hypothesized, made observations, revised her theories as needed based on them and then drew conclusions from her data.

And right now, there were several observations that worked away at the edges of her initial conclusions, nagging at her thoughts like her mother had, during her education.

First. Unit One had gone ‘berserk’ before it had been attacked.

Second. Unit One had activated its progressive knife and used it very effectively in close range combat, rather then simply ripping the target to pieces with its bare hands as she would have expected.

Third. The expected synchronization issues such as neural pulses flowing backwards from the EVA to the pilot, possible mental contamination issues and so on…had not materialized.

Of course, easy answers existed for any one of these questions.

The Unit had sensed the Angel and responded accordingly, nothing said the Angel had needed to make the first move. Unit Zero had gone berserk the instant the activation had cleared the absolute border line after all, without any external stimuli.

Further, nothing said the Unit would be unaware of its abilities or its inbuilt weapons…especially given that Yui had helped design the Unit.

And finally…well the third issue was harder to work out but it was only a possibility that the Neural Interface would have problems.
The fact that the Synch Ratio had skyrocketed, then the Unit had gone on an all out offensive, followed by the ratio had crashing back down once the target was eliminated was really all the proof she needed Akagi decided, twirling a pen in her fingers as the combat footage looped yet again. It’s not like Shinji had been trained in its use or…

Wait…

Her eyes narrowed slightly as she viewed the replayed combat from another Camera angle. Something about the way Unit One had torn into the Angel…

She let it loop again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

Probably five minutes passed before her mind finally made the connection in its sluggish state.

Keying the video replay to memory, she swung around to another computer at her desk and patched into the NERV Wide Area Intranet, requesting a secure link to the second branch in Germany, trying to wait patiently as the approval dance was performed and text scrolled down the monitor.

Connecting to 88.70.15.221…
Connection Established
Secure Terminal Shell V 6
Revision Beta 2014
Encryption Established.

Welcome Back Doctor Akagi.
It has been 63 days since your last connection.
The current system time is 10:32 PM local.

JOHANN%

Akagi raised her eyebrows as the prompt finally came up. While her Mother had -for whatever reason- named the Tokyo-3 prototype computers after the ‘three wise men’ in Christian mythology (a trend which had been continued in the US and at Japans nearby Matsushiro facilities), the Second Branch had named their computers “Ludwig”, “Johann” and “Richard” after famous German composers.
She didn’t see why they had decided to break the trend with the forth set of supercomputers, but as she didn’t understand why her Mother had chosen English names from Christian mythology for the originals either, she decided she didn’t really care either.

With a few keystrokes, she found the files she sought then transferred them across to her own database via the dedicated high capacity lines that linked all five of the MAGI systems.

Loading the files -footage of the Second Childs combat training- she quickly filtered down the archives to a half dozen recent examples; progressive knife training in hand to hand combat, then started to play them one by one, finding nothing of interest in the first few videos before she slowly straightened up in her chair.

She watched as Unit Two leaped into close range against a vaguely humanoid, EVA-like target, Askua’s confident taunting overlaying the sound feed. The Second Child danced around for a while, dodging the attacks of its enemy as it flailed at her, then she feinted and leapt in close, stunned the “Angel” with a quick jab to the head and in a blur of motion sliced its torso up before digging her knife deep into its core.

Stopping the playback, Ritsuko rewound twenty seconds and cut the speed by ten percent, then played the video again.

Then she rewound it and cut the speed by fifty percent.

Now in slow motion, Askua clobbered the ‘head’ of the target with a slow motion jab while bringing her knife up with her other hand with the blade reversed, slicing it across from left to right, down and to the left of its torso, then with her entire ‘bodyweight’ behind it she reversed the blade with a deft flick to a stabbing posture, brought it back across and into the core.

Well wasn’t that interesting?

From a strictly scientific point of view of course, with such a small sample size, there wasn’t anything of real factual interest here; it was just an interesting observation without any theories or conclusions to be made.
Yet.

Shutting down her laptop, she turned back to her main terminal and moved her thoughts to the back of her mind. She had more then enough work already without chasing down probable irrelevancies like this.



The Escalator appeared to reach to infinity.
But it really didn’t.

In actual fact it only went across a ground distance of roughly two hundred meters and a vertical distance of one hundred and fifty, though it was still enough to give anyone who suffered from vertigo nightmares, reaching from the ground of the Geofront up to a small landing in the side of the huge oval shaped hemisphere, a bank of elevators in turn then shuttling people straight up as the Geofront curved away into the distance.

It had taken him about half an hour to make the trip through Central Dogma. He congratulated himself for retaining enough sense to stop to look at the public maps at major ‘crossroads’, take a couple of wrong turns forcing him to double back and so on, deciding if someone did go looking for him using the surveillance records, it would probably look highly suspect if he found his way out of the Geofront without getting at least a LITTLE lost. All the while he forced himself to stay calm, increasingly expecting to come around a corner to find NERV security officers looking for him and taking him back to his room. Then when he managed to calm himself down, his mind started creating ever more wonderful scenarios; from Section 2 dragging him to see his Father and forcing him to confess everything, to him being conveniently ‘nudged’ down one of the bottomless shafts towards Terminal Dogma…

However, he reached the landing to the ‘public’ front door to NERV without incident and seeing scant few people for that matter; those on duty were probably still busy cleaning up the mess he and the Angel had made of parts of the city or deep in the EVA cages doing repair work, so he stepped unnoticed into a waiting Elevator, unable to stop looking around nervously as he pressed the button for the surface. The tiny box steadily climbed up the shaft with only the ticking of the level counters to keep him company, the Third Child growing increasingly sure that it would open at the surface to show security personnel ready to “escort” him back downstairs…
But rather anti climatically, the doors opened into a small NERV access building in downtown Tokyo Three without anyone in sight.

Getting out past the guards on duty at the NERV HQ access point was remarkably easy; understandably they were more concerned with stopping unauthorized people getting in to NERV HQ during an alert then people getting out. One guard did stop him just as he was about to leave, but a quick look at his temporary ID papers signed by Gendi Ikari himself quickly had the poor mans face going white, thrusting the papers back and insisting he should be on his way, opening the gates to let him out personally. As the door closed behind him and he stepped into the early morning twilight, he let the cool but not cold breeze drain his tension away as he soaked up the early morning twilight.

Alright he thought to himself. Now what?

Well he had to find somewhere safe to hide the necklace for a start. Somewhere no-one would look for it or find it…but somewhere it would be safe.

Turning and walking to put some distance between NERV and himself, he started to think about possible locations.

Somewhere near Mistato’s apartment? Convenient, but nowhere around there jumped out at as a good idea…and he would have a hard time explaining why he was there if caught.

Somewhere back down in the Geofront? Too closely watched.

Back at his Uncles? Too far away to get there and back, even assuming the trains were running…and he had a feeling if he did go back to his Uncles, he would never leave there again.
And he was through with running away.

None of his friends from School even knew him yet, so they couldn’t hide it for him…assuming they would still BE his friends this time.

That thought tore a sigh from his lips as he turned onto a main street, noting the early morning traffic, even after a gigantic battle, was starting to fill up the intersections.
The thought that he might not become friends with Toji and Kensuke was surprisingly painful, but the pain faded as he forcefully told himself that if that was the price he paid for keeping Toji’s sister safe and her brother the hell away from Unit Three, it was one he was more then willing to make.
And who knows he thought with a wry smile as he crossed an escalator bridge over the main road, perhaps we’ll still be great friends…but we can go straight to the friendship without Toji needing to bust my skull open this time.

His smile faded as he moved into heavier pedestrian traffic, realizing that he still didn’t have any solution to his problem. He needed to bury this evidence deep, somewhere that no-one, not SEELE, not his Father, would ever think to dig-

He stopped dead in his tracks at that thought, causing a hurrying middle aged business manager behind him to stumble into, then around him with a muttered curse. Looking around quickly, Shinji spotted a 24 hour convenience store just down the road and hurried in, selecting a few small items and standing in line, looking slightly out of place with the business suited executives holding their extra large coffees, but no-one appeared to give him so much as a second glance as he handed over some of the money his uncle had given him, then exited and quickly flagged over a taxi which he directed towards the Western edge of Tokyo 3.



Rei Ayanami was lying in bed.

It was something she had been doing a great deal of lately.

Whereas another patient would probably have gone mad from boredom in a matter of hours, Rei Ayanami simply existed, neither caring about nor wishing for a quick end to her situation.

It wasn’t so much that she was a person of patience; it was just that she did not know what it meant to enjoy life, thus she didn’t miss things like entertainment, social interaction or any of the other stimuli a human being might yearn for. There was a TV inactive in her room whose function she was aware of but considered irrelevant. Her Laptop computer was sitting on a table next to her bed but as she had no work related reason to use it, it remained powered down.

Her purpose was to pilot Unit Zero. This she knew.
She had been injured in an attempt to pilot Unit Zero. This she remembered.
She would recover. This she had been assured of.

Thus, she would pilot again when her body had mended. And at that time, she would be required to do something other then wait.

Today however Rei’s mind was unusually active. To most people, her face would appear to be its usual blank self, utterly devoid of anything resembling thought. However if one of the handful of people able to read Rei’s face with some degree of accuracy had chanced upon the young adolescent at this moment, they might have noticed the subtle, almost trivial expression on her face as Rei’s thoughts focused inward.

This boy she wondered to herself. He is…familiar but not familiar.

The strange look on his face she did not understand…as he had gently pushed her back down into her bed, causing the pain that had been searing through her body from her attempts to stand to fade away

He chose to pilot Unit One instead of letting me pilot it.

Am I therefore redundant? Is that my concern?

No, he cannot pilot both Unit One and Unit Zero. I will still be needed.

But why do I feel this feeling? He stopped me from piloting Unit One after he had been unwilling to do so, when he saw me. Why? Was this anger on his face? Was it sadness? Or was it compassion? I do not understand…

Rei could not deny she had felt…something pass between them; something she had never felt before in that fleeting instant their eyes had locked.
If she had been asked to put it into words, she would have said it had almost been as if this strange child had known her. Almost as if he somehow looked deep into her soul, then after this examination, he had decided to take up the duty he had initially denied…for her sake, not his…

Rei’s thoughts however, were cut short as the door to her small hospital room opened. Turning with only slight twinges of pain in her neck, she saw Commander Ikari enter, silhouetted by the bright light from outside as he strode to her and gripped the rail around her bed, offering a slight smile from behind his dark orange glasses.

“Rei” he said without preamble.

“Sir” she responded with just as little tone her in voice.

“Are you feeling better?”

It was strange for the Commander to inquire about her health. But given that the Angels had finally returned, he probably had understandable concerns about getting his pilots on duty quickly.

“My treatment continues on schedule” she replied. “I am expected to be cleared for piloting within thirty days and out of the hospital in fifteen”.

“Excellent” Gendo nodded, his attention appearing to trail off for a few seconds before he focused his attention back to her, his face back to its usual stoic self. “For now, at least, it appears our spare pilot is quite functional so there should be no need to risk your recovery profile again”.

“Understood” Rei replied…then hesitated slightly. “If I may ask…”

“Yes?”

“Who is he?”

Gendo’s jaw twitched ever so slightly at her question, clearly knowing exactly who the ‘he’ she was referring to was. It was not something most people would notice, but Rei was not ‘most people’.

“He is the Third Child” Gendo said succinctly, his tone indicating an end to the conversation. Rei simply nodded in acknowledgement and exchanged a few more questions and answers with the Commander before he took his leave, apparently satisfied.

Although Gendo didn’t know it, he had just made a mistake.

Rei now knew curiosity.
She now had something -besides waiting for her injuries to heal- to do.
She was going to find out about this Third Child…


The Taxi turned off the highway above Tokyo 3 and past an intricately carved wooden sign, tall and thin with Japanese characters running down its length. The side road was narrow but well maintained, climbing up over the last rise of a hill and gently down the far side towards a massive circular depression of brown ground. Shinji exited the vehicle as it reached the parking area at the end of the road, paying the driver from of his dwindling supply of Yen, then stepping back as the the driver deftly swung his vehicle around and scooted back up the road.

Leaving him alone overlooking Tokyo 3 Cemetery Number One.

Shinji slowly made his way down several flights of stairs lined by dozens of cherry blossoms on the reverse side of the hill, passing through a beautifully hand carved Torii gateway as he stepped down onto the brown soil of the ‘crater’. A chill froze his spine despite the rising sun on the horizon as he looked over the rows of mass graves, the ultimate result of the Second Impact instigated by SELLE.

Death. Not Rebirth. A monument to half of mankind in their insanity

Breathing deeply to steady his nerves as he walked with only the whisper of the wind keeping him company, he cut across and down a footpath to an inner row by memory, stopping in front one of the thousands of markers, falling gently to his knees in front of it, his mind reeling as he gazed upon the simple inscription.

[CENTER][CENTER]Ikari, Yui.[/CENTER]
[/CENTER]
[CENTER][CENTER]1977 - 2004[/CENTER]
[/CENTER]

Taking a deep breath, Shinji sat down at the foot of his Mothers ‘grave’, wincing slightly at the dampness of the Earth as he sat down, something almost but not quite a bleak smile coming onto his face as he looked around to make sure he was alone, but he saw no-one.
Cemeteries were probably not the most popular places to visit at dawn after a gigantic robot fight, for most people.

“I…I know now that you’re not dead” he started lamely, wincing at the awkwardness and his choice of words almost as soon as he said them. “I think...I know now you made a choice…to go inside Unit One” Shinij continued, his eyes flicking down to the ground in front of the simple marker, his expression mutating into something of a more genuine smile. “But if I went down and started talking to Unit One and calling it ‘Mother’… I think half of NERV would think I was crazy and want to lock me up…and the other half would know I wasn’t and also want to lock me up”.

Sighing, he crossed his legs and leaned forward as he talked, as much to himself as to the spirit of his Mother…wherever she was. He talked about everything that had happened, everything that had led him to where he was now. His desperation and panic to try and get any kind of response out of the catatonic Askua…his loathing over how he had used her in his depression…the mixture of utter terror and utter apathy as the JSSDF stormed NERV…the complete breakdown as Mistao, dying, had thrown him into the lift and sent him down…the overload of emotions as Third Impact had started…and finally the revelation that he was back where everything had started.

“It’s just…so much has happened…and so much is going to happen. I’m…scared” he admitted to the stone in a choked voice, fighting back the tears that threatened to come flooding out for a few seconds before he broke down and everything come pouring out.

How long he sat there, he didn’t know, the tempest of emotions, of regrets, of anger, of insanity that had built up in him for weeks finally came loose and poured out in a storm of crying, screaming and shouting in the early morning light.

Luckily, only a handful of birds, who were startled into the air by the noise, were around to hear the emotions pouring out of Shinji.
Oddly, it felt amazingly good to Shinji to loose control and let it all out in a symphony of emotions.

“I’m scared” he repeated probably half an hour later when he was in control of himself once again, wiping his eyes with his arm as he sniffled and tried to steady his breathing. “You chose to go inside Unit One…you gave up everything for the future…you had nothing but faith and believed that the future could be better”.

Breathing deeply, to steady himself further, Shinji gently brushed away the dirt from the name on the grave marker.

“But I’ve seen the future” he said, swallowing as fear welled up again inside him. “I know what’s coming…and I don’t think I’m strong enough to go through it a second time”.

“You don’t have to” a voice from behind him quietly interrupted.

Yelling in surprise and shock, Shinji tried to spin around, but succeeded only in falling flat on his back and hitting his head on the grave stone. Rubbing the back of his head to ease the pain, he squinted up from his position in the glare of dawn….and his jaw dropped.

“Ayanami?!” he spluttered in astonishment at young woman before him, her blue hair waving slightly in the early morning breeze as she watched him closely from behind her red eyes.

The girl standing before him with a small, but slightly amused looking smile –now that looked strange on that face- shook her head. “No Shinji. Rei is Rei…and I am I”.

After a half seconds thought, he realized there was only one possible answer.

“…Lilith?”


The figure in front of him inclined her head as if thinking about his question before shrugging and replying cryptically “in a manner of speaking”, walking closer to stand next to him.

Shinji fought the urge to edge away from her as she moved closer, images of an enormous white figure coming out of the clouds, transposing themselves on the face that gazed at him with those same crimson eyes now…

But for some reason, the fear he expected to rush into him didn’t come.

Instead, Shinji slowly stood, taking strength from the solid ground under his hands as he pushed himself to his knees, then stood to stand in front of the ‘girl’ in her school uniform watching him.
At which point, he couldn’t help but notice that while the rising sun at his back cast long, deep shadows from all the grave markers around him…she didn’t.

“I’m not really here” she said quickly with a slight smile as the observation passed through his mind. “And no, you are not loosing your grip on reality” she assured him.

“After everything that’s happened, I am not so sure” he replied somewhat sarcastically.

“Understandable” she nodded. “If it helps, think of me…as an echo of the events, a shadow without form, nothing more then a memory in your mind”.

“Well uh…you’re a rather…talkative memory…oh God, am I talking to myself now” he thought in despair…

“Technically, yes and no” ‘Lilith’ shrugged, stepping forward again, close enough to reach out her hand towards his face. Shinji flinched instinctively away, but stopped and held himself steady as she lightly ran his fingers across his face. To his surprise, despite her claims that she wasn’t actually here he felt her fingers.

I am going insane he decided mournfully.

His confusion must have shown on his face, because she moved to explain.
“I’m a part of you Shinji” she said, gently tracing the line of his face, as if she was fascinated by them. “You made a decision, days or lifetimes ago. That one choice, of hope, of the belief that humanity could go on in its present form, that people could find existence in a world of AT fields…that decision unmade the choices that had led into instrumentality”.

“Yes, and you sent me…back” he agreed.

“Lilith and Rei sent you back” she corrected him. “But you still achieved completion, if only for a second”.

“Or an eternity” Shinji softly rebutted

“Yes” she agreed, sounding pleased with his understanding. “And in that moment you touched the minds of countless people, before you separated again”. Now she brought her other hand up and gently raised his head to look directly into her eyes. “It took an extraordinary strength to break free and decide to return to life Shinji. Especially after everything you went through”.

“It wasn’t anything” he mumbled in reply, looking away from her eyes for a second before with a sharp pull, she yanked his attention back up.

“No it was something” she said, her tone now sharper. “In that moment, you acted purely out of your own self without any thought of what it might cost you, even if you didn’t consciously realize it. If you hadn’t, the powers at the core of instrumentality would never have changed the universe for you”.

Shinji swallowed slightly at the penetrating look being directed at him.

“I just don’t know” he admitted in a horse voice. “I won’t run away, I’ll stay and fight, die if I have to, but I just don’t know how I’m supposed to stop this…”

“Do you think that Rei, Yui, Lilith or Tabris would send you back to your death?” she laughed. “The necklace was only part of what they left you”.

“As a reminder of how I failed” Shinji whispered.

“As a symbol of what is worth fighting for” she corrected him with a narrowing of her eyes. “But you also absorbed a lot of information…I am…” she stopped to think with a distant look for a few seconds, before focusing back…“part of that. In the last seconds as creation itself unraveled, I was embedded into your mind. A fragment of Lilith if you will, for a short time, to help you stop Third Impact, to give you and the Lilim a chance to live”.

“But…why would Lilith want to help me?” he asked in complete exasperation. “She’s an Angel!”

“Not all Angels are created equal Shinji” she replied with a touch of…what? Disappointment? Sadness? Scolding? “Anymore then every human is a Hitler or Gendo Ikari…the sacrifice Tabris made for you I thought would show this”.

“Tabris?” Shinji asked in confusion, the name sounding like he should know it…but he didn’t. ‘Lilith’s’ smile turned slightly bittersweet as she withdrew her hands from his face.
“You know him as Kaworu Nagisa”

(“No No NO! It’s a lie! Kaworu CAN’T be an Angel”)-

(“You betrayed me! Just like my Father!”)-

(“I’ve been waiting for you Shinji”)-

(“This is the light of my Soul”)-

(“Why are you DOING this!?”)-

(“Now, please, destroy me”)-

(“I…don’t understand”)-

(“You are not the existence that should die”)-

The flood of memories rose again, staggering him back to his knees as he shut his eyes and fought back tears.
The feeling of such utter betrayal.
The utter confusion as the serene but emphatic Angel insisted he had to die.
The agony of indecision as Shinji had been forced to confront killing the one person who he thought might actually love him for who he was.

The sickening explosion of gore as the tiny figure in his hand exploded like wet clay in a human hand.

The horrors were banished though, by the feeling of a pair of slender arms connected to soft, gentle hands wrapping around his shoulders and holding him close, tugging him back to reality, making him aware of the pain shooting through his knees from the rocky surface he had crushed them onto and forcing him into a more comfortable position.

“Kaworu was an Angel” Rei’s voice said softly into his ear. He knew she was not Rei, she was not real, not physically there…but damnit she sounded like her, she smelt like her…she felt like her.
“He was born from Adam, but he made a choice, just like you did Shinji. He got to know humanity though you” she declared, her voice sharpening and causing Shinji to open his eyes, to find hers now very close and her expression emphatic. “He made a choice not to claim this world for his kind, at the price of yours; he decided your species was the one that deserved to live, to inherent the future”.

“But what does this have to do with you?” he asked to redirect the conversation away from the painful memories.

“Lilith…” she explained after a pause as she examined him closely, “was the source of humanity Shinji” the…avatar explained, “just as Adam was the source of the Angels”.

“So…we’re your…Liliths…children?” Shinji asked with a disbelieving expression. Yup, the Universe had just twisted another 90 degrees, they were at a full 180 now…

“It’s an over simplification…but accurate enough, at least as you can understand it I suppose” she shruged. “And she wants her children to survive, to inherent the future. So that’s why I was here” she said, before gently releasing him and standing up.

“Wait, what do you mean ‘was’ here” he asked in alarm as she looked at him with a somewhat sad expression now on her face.

“Shinji” she pointed out with a somewhat amused tone in her voice, “I…don’t exist; I’m a fragment, an echo that held onto you like a reflection in the water. Take away that water and I don’t exist. You have questions, but you picked up the answers to them, they lie inside you”. She paused for a second and slowly started to walk away from him, deeper into the cemetery, but her face remained locked on his.

“You decided on your own merits to reject instrumentality. You fought yesterday on your own, to protect Rei and Toji. You stood up to your father, you confronted your fears”. Turning away from him, she walked past him towards the centre of the cemetery and into the rising sun, Shinji wincing from the light and looking away as his eyes blinked in pain, the after image of her making It appear that the figure of Rei had just become as iridescently white as he remembered Lilith being.
“You’ll do fine Shinji. Be well”.

Raising a hand to block out the glare of the sun, Shinji wasn’t exactly surprised to see the phantom had vanished.

But her words remained.

Well he thought to himself.

Save the world, save his friends, save his race.
Sure, no problem he thought, surprised suddenly that after the short talk with someone who may or may not have even been here…he actually felt confidence in himself, the rising sun perfectly reflecting his mood as he finally buried Misato’s cross inside several layers of tough but small plastic bags, in a shallow depression at the front of the ‘grave’.

It wasn’t that he was no longer scared to death…but as the images of Misato, Askua, Rei, Toji, Kensuke, Hikari, of everyone he knew passed him, he realized he finally had the answer he had been seeking since arriving in Tokyo 3 the first time.
It hadn’t been enough for him, in the past, to have something worth dying for.
Instead, he had finally realized that he had something…someone…many someone’s, all of whom were worth living for.
Fighting for.

Is that the answer, Mother? Shinji wondered to himself for a few seconds, before deciding her answer would certainly be in the affirmative. He ran his hand gently across the top of her marker in farewell then turned away, heading back up the hill. Leaving the cemetery, he turned down the road and started to talk down towards Tokyo 3 and a nearby Bus depot, checking his watch and wincing.

Seven fifty…Misato was probably up by now and that probably meant-



“WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN HE IS GONE?” Captain Misato Katsuragi all but screamed into her phone.

Her victim, a poor level two communications technician would later be famous for his claim that Katsuragi hadn’t needed or used anything as primitive as a phone to contact the operations centre; that in fact she had made herself known from halfway across central Dogma with nothing but the power of her enraged voice.

It would, unfortunately, become a rather common story from a rather large number of people as the year progressed.

“Captain this is Hyuga” the more senior officer took over the communications line, to the utter relief of the junior technical staffer. “The Third Child exited Headquarters roughly two hours ago from surface access J-227” he said, bringing the final security image on the MAGI’s trace up on his screen, which quickly changed to ‘TARGET LOST’ in large flashing letters, the best CASPER could probably come to an apology.
“Didn’t anyone think to stop him?” she demanded, moderating her voice heavily out of difference to the fact that she had to work with the junior officer, as she stomped her way towards the command centre.
“He wasn’t under arrest” Makoto pointed out over the line, bringing Misato up short as she rode the small one person lift shaft up to the command centre. “And at the time all senior personnel were either off duty or busy with post battle operations”.
It was at least an exquisitely tactful way of pointing out that Shinji had snuck out, from in front of her, while she was sleeping on the job.

“Well yeah, I guess” she said out loud, causing the trio of senior lieutenants to jump, startled as she stepped off the drop lift and flipped her phone shut, letting out a sigh. “Okay, let’s look at this. He left most of his things in his room, so we can probably safely assume he isn’t actually going to leave the city…but he’s our only functioning EVA pilot and we have no way of contacting him…we can’t risk him just vanishing on us like this”. She mulled the problem over for a few seconds, and then nodded slowly.
“Have the MAGI check surveillance footage from the train station and bus depots to see if they can spot him. Then send an alert to all the Section 2 personnel in the city to try and find him. If they do, tell them to keep an eye on him, DON’T approach him. Just let us know; I’ll go get him myself. The last thing we need is for a bunch of black suits to scare the boy half to death”.
“Roger” Maya, Makoto and Shigeru said in unison –she still didn’t get how they did that- getting to work with a smooth efficiency that did them credit.

Misato on the other hand couldn’t help but feel guilty over her orders. Part of her was angry with Shinji leaving without telling anyone, but that part was overshadowed by a deep and abiding sadness for the kid and everything he had gone through. She had tried to press Ritsuko for more information about Shinji’s mother and the events he had alluded to yesterday, only to be shrugged off with promises of ‘later’ every time…which she grudgingly admitted was a fair enough excuse given the chaos happening before during and after the battle.

But you had better believe there will be a later she thought grimly as she grabbed a fresh cup of coffee in a (mostly) clean mug. That such a secret about Unit One, Shinji and the Commander had been kept from her was utterly flabbergasting. Judging from the reaction of both the Commander and Ritsuko, they hadn’t expected him to shove it in their faces either, in fact she doubted they expected he had remembered.

That he had flatly refused to pilot the Evangelion wasn’t exactly surprising in this light but she had felt an odd…what? An almost materialistic pride in Shinji, when he had taken up the gauntlet his father had thrown down? When Rei had been brought in and he stopped her from trying to stand up? At the look of very real anger she had seen flash in Shinji’s eyes when he looked up at his Father after sitting Rei back down? That he had cared so much about someone he had never met to effectively offer his life in her place?

She decided Ritsuko had been right in the elevator yesterday.
He was nothing like his Father.

“I’ve found him!” Shigeru Aboba cried out suddenly, breaking through her thoughts like a siren and snapping her attention back as the technician opened a holographic window to his left from a security camera, framing Shinji in motion with bright orange labels saying ‘LIVE’, ‘Subject: 3RD C’, ‘SC-02293C’ doing their best to block the image itself.

“Where is he?” she demanded, jumping forward to lean over his chair at the image.

“On the surface” Shigeru replied as he worked his console. “It looks like he is heading right back to Junction 227” he said, tracing the camera around to follow the Third Child as he walked down the street towards a Geofront access point. Misato sighed in relief.

“Thank God for that” she muttered. “When he gets in the lift, send it right to sublevel sixteen” she ordered, turning and pulling her slightly crumpled uniform into a semblance of neatness. “I’m going down to meet him”.

“Yes Mam” Shigeru said, waiting carefully until she was out of earshot before muttering “I wish she would come to welcome mepersonally when I arrive at work” under his breath.
“I don’t think you would want the kind of welcome Shinji is going to get” Hyuga muttered back in an equally sotto voice.



It didn’t really surprise Shinji when the lift continued down past the landing he had selected the lift to stop at, the circular floor counter placidly continuing to click over steadily as he descended towards the surface level of the Geofront, then down into the huge Central Dogma complex.

Well that answers the question of if they know I’ve returned he thought wryly. The only remaining question was who would be waiting to greet him…

Eventually the lift stopped and with the soft ring of a bell, the doors opened…revealing Mistao Katsaragi, looking slightly out of breath –and slightly irritated- before him.

“Well hello you” she said dryly, causing Shinji to suppress the cocky grin he wanted to give her. He recognized her tone and expression as one of slight exasperation underlain with very real concern, so he offered her an apologetic smile instead.

“Uh hello Mistao” he stuttered as he stepped out of the lift, slightly surprised slightly that she still reduced him to a stuttering child with that look.

“Did you even think to tell anyone where you were going?” she demanded.

Shinji thought about simply apologizing by default, but decided the opportunity was too good to pass up.

“Well uh I was going to tell you, but you looked so intimidating as you snored on that-”

“Hey I do NOT snore!” she replied hotly, then flushed as she realized from his smile that she had been had. “Pah” she sighed, grabbing him in a hug that mashed his face right into her chest as she mussed his hair, “I’m sorry, you just worried me”.


“Yup” Hyuga said in a deadpanned tone as the trio of technicians watched the security footage of the Operations Director and Third Child reuniting, the former crushing the later against her chest in a way that would have probably qualified the security footage for a parental advisory rating. “He’s clearly terrified”.

“Perverts” Maya muttered from her station on the far side of the level.


It was about when Shinji was deciding that suffocating to death between Misato’s rather formidable female assets wasn’t a bad way to die that she released him, feeling his face flush from the lack of oxygen as she did so.
Either that or his embarrassment.

“I’m sorry” he said completely automatically, suppressing the wince that almost followed as he once again apologized without thinking, although…he had to admit at least this time he really did mean it.

“It’s okay” she sighed with a smile. “Just try not to give me a heart attack like that again” she said, throwing an arm around his shoulder and half leading, half dragging him back into Central Dogma.

It took them about ten minutes to reach his room and they talked easily along the way about all kinds of things. When asked where he had gone, Shinji replied honestly that he had gone to pay his respects to his Mothers grave on an early morning walk. Misato appeared to hesitate slightly at the answer, as if she had wanted to ask another question –and he could guess which one- but the Captain had enough tact to just smile and leave it.

He in turn inquired about the EVA program in general, getting mostly accurate, if minimal answers in return, ‘found out’ about the existence of Askua and Rei when he inquired over his designation as the Third Child, then used the opportunity to move the subject to Rei.

“So…what happened to her?” he asked as they waited before a sub basement elevator door, directly under the top of the pyramid.
“She had an accident in her EVA” Misato replied honestly. “It…went out of control; she was injured before it shut down”.
”And she was willing, in that state, to go into Unit One” he said, shaking his head in near disbelief and not a small amount of utter hate for the man who, with his one redeeming act of rescuing her, had made Rei utterly beholden to him.
“She didn’t really have any choice” Mistato replied with a somewhat sad smile. “If you hadn’t agreed to go, she would have been our last hope…and she would have given it everything she had”.
Shinji knew, much better then Misato, just how horribly true that statement was. Rei wouldn’t give a damn if her life was thrown away under the assumption that she could be replaced. Now that was a notion he had to disprove to her, and disprove soon if he was going to get her away from his Father, but he was at a loss about how to do that.
“Can I see her?” he asked impulsively as the elevator arrived and they started to ascend. Misato shot him a surprised, but pleased look at the request.
“I’ll have to clear it with Doctor Akagi” she hedged, “but I don’t think it will be a problem” Misato nodded. “I think she would like that”.

The door opened and they made their way back to his room in silence to let him pack up, Misato explained that they were going for some quick debriefings over the battle, followed by a tour of the complex. Quietly humming to himself as he shoved his few possessions into his bag, he saw Mistaso out of the corner of his eye walk in from the doorway after a few seconds, before sitting cross legged on the head of his bed, leaning back against the wall.

If she knew how many times I had dreamed of her coming into my room and doing exactly that Shinji thought to himself, she’d probably throw me out the window right now…

“Shinji” she said in a tone that snapped his attention back to her face, an unreasoning horror that he had just said his thoughts out loud passing across him, until he calmed down in realizing saw she just looked intent…not embarrassed.
“I have to ask” she said with an odd look in her eyes, “what…was it like yesterday?”
Shinji inclined his head slightly as he considered his answer. He knew anything he said would probably get back to Doctor Akagi in an hour or so, then back to his father by lunchtime even if Misato wasn’t spying for them. He knew she just couldn’t help gossiping to her oldest friend.
Still, if anyone here deserved an answer…she did.
“Terrifying” he said quietly, glancing away from her probing eyes as he thought back. “Scared to death that I was going to die, but even more scared that if I didn’t do it, Father would just send Rei out to die in my place”.
This was true enough. He had been terrified.
If not so much of his Father, then of what would happen to Rei, Toji and his Sister if he failed…
“You were very brave” Misato said quietly with such absolute sincerity in her voice that it almost caused his eyes to start watering again and he had to wait for a good twenty seconds with his face averted to recover himself.
“I didn’t have time to think about anything” he finally replied, putting on slightly wry smile to hide the depth of his feelings. Just after you gave the order to launch…” his voice trailed off as he wondered what he was going to say, before pressing on, “I just kept thinking that…I was only a few seconds away from dying”.
Well it wasn’t exactly a lie Shinji justified, it was more or less what he had felt the first time around, remembering he had held onto the butterfly grips hard enough to imprint the groves on the control sticks into the palms of his hands…
“Then…it was almost like…” he let his voice trail off.
“Yes?” she said in a suddenly interested tone...
“For a split second…I almost thought I heard my Mother” he said in an embarrassed tone. “Then I don’t really remember anything until I got out of the Eva…I’m sorry” he shrugged apologetically. “
“Don’t say that” she retorted sharply. “Shinji, you were braver then you had any right to be last night; a child your age putting your life on the line without any training, to save another person from horrible pain, despite…what you remembered about Unit One…” she said, offering an invitation to talk about it, but not pressing him.
“Uh…thank you Misato-San” he mumbled out, looking up to meet her gaze. “I’m…not really ready to talk about it” he apologized. “But I’d like to…some day”.
“I understand” she smiled, holding out his backpack, letting him shove the last of his items in. “Lets get going”.



They were quite arguably the most powerful men to ever exist in the history of human civilization.

Six men. Sitting around a table, a selected public face for twelve men, although everyone who knew of this group knew only one man in both groups really mattered. Four of them were highlighted by splashes of color that struck them as far too festive for the serious nature of the meetings they performed; Blue, Yellow, Red and Green, sitting two by two. Anchoring the far ends of the table, the final two men existed in plain white light, each studying the other with poker faces that would have probably had them banned from Las Vegas if, they had ever had the inclination to visit it. After all, when you got down to it, all these men were gamblers.
Albeit playing for stakes grossly higher then mere money or power.

The Human Instrumentality Committee.
SEELE’s public face.

“So” Red said into the silence. “The Angels have returned. It is…rather sudden”.

“It’s exactly the same as fifteen years ago” Yellow replied with a snort, leaning forward to glance around the table. “It’s the way of natural disasters, they come without any warning”.

We have had plenty of warning you fool Gendo Ikari thought silently, keeping his expression carefully free of the contempt he felt for the committee member. These old men were alarmed that what had been predicted to come to pass HAD come to pass.
The stupidity of it astounded him.
They reached for the future greedily, and then hesitated when they beheld their greatest goal and the means to reach it, shying away from what needed to be done.

It was why they would fail
And he wouldn’t.

“We could easily say this was fortunate” Red reflected in a thoughtful tone. On the positive side, our huge investments would not appear to be such a waste after all”.

“You can’t be sure about that yet” Blue cut in with a scoff in his voice. “There is a great deal to be done thus far, if it doesn’t pay off then its still a waste”.

“Correct” Yellow nodded smoothly. “And now that news of the Angels has become public knowledge, we must move quickly to control it. If certain truths become public knowledge, all hope for humanity will die…alongside us”. That thought caused an uncomfortable shifting around for several of the people in the room, earning yet more of Ikari’s contempt. That at this late stage in the game they still worried about their own lives and reputations was just pathetic…

“You may rest assured that it’s already been taken care of” Gendo replied smoothly and easily, calming their fears like a parent tried to convince their children that there were no monsters under their beds. “A mixture of partial truth to the public and NERV’s effectiveness to the UN will keep the population in line”.

“Assuming you can claim effectiveness, Ikari” Green entered the conversation with a snort, picking up a preliminary report in front of him. “I have to wonder if both NERV and EVA were used effectively”. Flipping over the front page, he started to read in a tone of exasperation. “First the repair costs to Unit Zero, now the repair costs to Tokyo 3 and Unit One. You could bankrupt a small country for these figures!”
“Nether the less, the operation was successful” Gendo pointed out in a flat tone. “The repair costs to Unit One are minimal; the unit only suffered superficial damage at the hands of the Angel. Further, Tokyo 3 was designed as a fortress; damage was and is expected in an engagement scenario”.
He paused to let the words sink in before adding “And our total projected expenditure in this engagement was well over an order of magnitude less then the utterly ineffective UN response, even ignoring the civilian damage they caused”.

“Be that as it may” Yellow stepped in as Green shut up, clearly not willing to lock horns over this issue, “we understand you gave that…toy to your son”.
“Correct. He was the only one able to pilot it. And he did so quite effectively”.
Red barked out a sarcastic laugh. “Is that pride I hear in your voice Ikari?”
Nonplussed, Gendo’s eyes flickered to his critic.
“No, simply a statement of fact. His piloting succeeded in terminating the Angel within sixty two seconds at a minimum of cost and collateral damage, in stark comparison to the UN failure. NERV has been battle proven as the only credible agency to deal with the Angel threat”.
“Regardless of the Angels reappearance” Blue put back in, “our main priority and focus must be the Human Instrumentality Project”.
“Yes” Yellow nodded emphatically. “In these desperate times, even more so with the return of the Angels, that project is ultimately our only hope”.
“In any case” the person outlined in white opposite Ikari spoke up for the first time, “we cannot excuse any delays in that project's schedule, even because of the Angels return”.
“No delay is anticipated” Gendo replied smoothly. The man grunted in acknowledgement.
“Well, we will examine increasing the budget to compensate for the Angels attacks, and acceleration of Evangelion deployment”.
“Now” Green nodded to the chairman, “the rest of this meeting concerns only the committee”.
“Your presence here was…appreciated, Ikari” Yellow said with an utter lack of sincerity, and then the four colored personnel vanished leaving only the two men silhouetted in white.

“Ikari” Keel Lorenz said in a somewhat softer, but infinitely more final tone. “There is no turning back”.
“I know” Gendo nodded slightly. Keel vanished.

“Mankind has no time left” he said to the empty room, before he stood and exited the side room, returning to his office.

“Well?” Fuyutsuki asked as he returned to his desk in the cavernous office.
“As we suspected” Gendo snorted. “The old men finally come up against an expected consequence of their actions and become uncomfortable with their scenarios”.
“Unsurprising” Fuyutsuki shrugged, sitting himself down at a chair in front of Gendo’s desk as the Commander sat himself back down. “Still we have a long way to go”.
“Indeed”. Gendo nodded, then changed tracks. “How is the cleanup proceeding?”

“Doctor Akagi assures me that Unit One will be combat ready within three hours if needed, but full repairs will take until the end of the day. The cleanup continues, all relevant Government ministries are coordinating with Section 4. “Contamination was minimal, as predicted, the only remains left by the Angel after its self destruction were adhered to Unit One. Oh and she thought you might find this interesting he said, picking up a short transcript and passing it over. Gendo read it without comment before looking up.
“Your opinion?”
“Shinji has no reason to lie. And his statements clearly corroborate out scenario”.
“Agreed” Gendo said, discarding Akagi’s report on a conversation she had had with the Operations Director as the intercom buzzed.
“Yes”
”Sir, the Operations Director is here to see you” the Section 2 agent doing double duty as his secretary said. “She has the Third Child with her”.

Fuyutsuki raised an eyebrow at this unexpected event, but Gendo didn’t react, simply pressing the intercom and saying “very well”.

Shinji blanked his face to a carefully neutral expression as the security officer stood and walked to the wooden door that was spoken of in tones of quiet dread through NERV Central. He swiped his card down a card reader next to it and with a muted thud, the lock on the door disengaged, letting him ease it open and gesture the Third Child through. Shinji glanced over at Mistao who gave him an encouraging smile, then he took a deep breath and entered the room where the commander worked.

No, not worked, laired, like a spider at the center of a web Shinji thought darkly as he pass through the door into another world.

[Chris OFarrell]

Most first time visitors paused upon entering the gigantic office of NERV’s Supreme Commander. The long, vaguely rectangular room was built into the side of the HQ overlooking the Geofront, five centimeter thick floor-to-ceiling windows providing a spectacular panoramic view of the artificial cavern. A strangely intricate drawing on the ceiling dominated the cavernously empty room, with his Father’s desk at the far end, the light from the windows behind him silhouetting him rather effectively as little more then a human shape.

It was a grand attempt at intimidation, every possible home field advantage given to the most intimidating man in NERV and Shinji was honest enough to admit he felt the flush of adrenaline and terror pass through his system as he maintained his steady strides down the room.
It was kept at bay however by reminding himself that he held far more cards this time around…even as he warned himself not to get cocky and underestimate these two people, or push too hard.

After what seamed like minutes of walking but was only twenty seconds, he stopped in front of the desk. His Father sat behind it, resting his head on his white gloved hands as he coolly watched his son approach. Vice Commander Fuyutsuki sitting on the far right of Gendo’s desk also studied him, albeit with a much more open expression and much less in the way of hostility. The older man had always been an enigma to Shinji; loyal to his father and demanding the best of the people under him, but fair and flexible with something of a human side.

Coming to a halt, he studied his father up close for ‘the first time’. At this close range and as his eyes finished adjusting and compensating for the bright light from outside, the sunglasses his Father wore were not sufficient to hide his eyes from view, which dramatically cut down the intimidation factor…but left him open to the utter disdain being projected from them.
Keeping his breathing steady, he drew strength from the memory of Lilith and the knowledge of what he was doing as he retuned his fathers stare.

“I’m guessing you’ve never heard of Ikea” he commented idly with a raised eyebrow, causing Fuyutsuki to cough slightly in astonishment at the shear balls of making such a comment, and his Father to blink in confusion, if only once.
A small victory, but a victory none the less.

“Why are you here?” Gendo asked, in a voice frosty enough to change global weather patterns.

“To discuss the terms of my piloting that thing for you” Shinji replied blandly, crossing his arms and forcing himself to relax his stance.

“Indeed?” Gendo inquired with a hint of sardonic amusement.

“Yes” he nodded. “Given that you are asking me to put my life on the line, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to define certain conditions under which I am going to do this for you”.

“And if I don’t agree?” Gendo said, now with a degree of cold amusement in his tone. Shinji shrugged.
“Then I will leave and go back to my Uncles”.

“You are a child” Gendo replied scornfully. “I can revoke his guardianship and return it to myself-”

”Which would make me rather disinclined to pilot the Evangelion for you” Shinji pointed out calmly, ignoring his heart as it started to hammer faster. “You could probably try to force me, but I really wouldn’t recommend putting me in that situation in charge of the most powerful weapons system known to mankind”. Neither of htem reacted to his not so subtle threat, so he pressed on. “Meet my conditions, and I’ll follow your orders. I’ll pilot it for you and try to forget the fact that we have utterly no concern for each other and keep things on a professional level”.

Fuyutsuki stared in amazement at the young man standing across from his father. To say Gendo had been utterly dismissive of his Son would probably have been an understatement on the order of saying a nuclear detonation caused a slight heat wave, transferring what little affection he had for Shinji over to Rei.
But this Shinji was nothing like the Shinji he had hinted at…the dry wit, the uncompromising, level stare, the utterly confident projection…

It was almost like Yui had come back to life in her Son.

“You are not indispensable” Gendo retorted in that same dismissive tone. “If you will not pilot the Evangelion, Rei will do so instead”.

The threat was effective, even though Shinji had been expecting it the second he had stepped into his Fathers office. Unsubtle, it still hit him with the force of one of Sachiels battering rams and for a split second, he wanted to apologize with a deep bow and run away, fast…
On the other hand, he knew if he folded, he would be placing Rei in far greater danger as a button his Father could press and get a guaranteed response from him.

“You know, on some level I should be surprised that you would threaten to have a fourteen year old Girl sent to her death if I didn’t do exactly what you said…but I’m not”.

“Now Shinji, that’s not what he-”

“Oh of course it is” Shinji spat out at the Vice Commander, letting some of his anger into his voice. “You don’t have any need to defend this man in front of me. Yesterday he paraded Rei out as the consequence of me defying him, putting her through hell just to blackmail me into Unit One. Every one of us knows she wouldn’t have lasted five seconds in combat, but he didn’t give a damn”.

Fuyutsuki didn’t exactly cower from his response, but he did shut up, which was enough, letting Shinji turn back to face his Father.

“And given that you were so desperate enough for a pilot to ask me to come, rather then transferring the Second, whom I understand has been training for this her entire life, I am willing to bet that even with Rei active, there is no viable replacement for me”.

Silence yet again greeted his observation from both officers, which Shinji took strength from, resisting the urge to start clenching his fists. I can’t let them show how nervous I’m getting he told himself, trying to calm down and moderate his voice.
“You are asking a fourteen year old child to put his life on the line, going into combat against things that tear through divisions of crack troops. I don’t think my requests are very unreasonable…given the resources flowing through this place”.

Gendo frowned ever so slightly in irritation at having the same argument he had just put to the committee thrown back in his face.
“And those would be?” Gendo asked with a sigh, not so much exasperated as impatient.
“Firstly, a monthly stipend, tax free, of oh…two million Yen should be sufficient” he said, getting raised eyebrows in return from both Commanders. “Second, It’s safe to say that I will need to make arrangements to live separately” Shinji said, glancing back at his father. “I think minimizing our contact outside of work would be for the best”.
“Is that all?” Gendo asked as if board.
“For the moment” Shinji shrugged. “I’ll let you know if I come up with anything else in the future. Oh suffice to say, the same financial compensation will be extended to the First and Second”.
“The First has need of such resources” Gendo said dismissively.
“Why?” Shinji challenged, taking a step closer. “She is a human being with a life ahead of her. Even if at this point in time she does not need such resources, there is every reason to think she might in the future”.
Gendo and Fuyutsuki exchanged a look and Shinji had to work to keep the grin off his face. Oh he knew why Rei didn’t need a bank, but they didn’t know he knew…and they couldn’t tell him why.

And frankly, six million Yen a month was quite literally a drop in the Pacific Ocean to the resources NERV and SEELE had to throw around…especially given that the two officers in front of him only expected human civilization to last perhaps another year before Third Impact.

“And in exchange?” Gendo inquired, still with that slightly mocking edge.
“I’ll pilot the Evangelion” Shinji said carefully. “I will not run away, I will follow your orders and I will try to act civil and professional to you at all times in public, to not undermine your authority…and try to forget what happened to my Mother”.
“Acceptable” Gendo said after a moments pause. “Vice Commander handle the rest of this for me. That will be all, Pilot Ikari” he said, dismissively, already turning back to his terminal.

“Yes Sir” Fuyutsuki acknowledged for both of them, getting up and gesturing towards the door. “Come along then Shinji”.
The two men left the office in silence, the door closing with a thump and leaving Gendo alone. He paused to look almost appraisingly at the entrance for a few seconds, then lifted his phone and pressed a speed dial button, getting a woman’s voice on the other end after the second ring.

“It’s me. Prepare a full training and harmonics test schedule for the Third Child. He will become the designated pilot for Unit One, with Rei as the backup when she recovers, at least until Unit Zero is reactivated”.
Hanging up, Gendo got back to work, his Son already forgotten.



Misato stood up as the door to the Commanders office opened, Shinji exiting along with the Vice Commander.
“Sir” she nodded coming to something like parade rest.
“Captain” he inclined his head in return. “I’ll return pilot Ikari to your hands…in fact why don’t we skip the rest of the debriefing today, I think he has been through enough…and we’ve answered most of our questions” he offered, wondering if Misato had known Ritsiko had gone straight to Gendo with her comments about Shinji’s experience inside Unit One.
“Yes Sir” she agreed, if with slight confusion on her face. The pilot and the Commander exchanged their own nod, then the elder man moved off, down the executive level corridor towards his own office.
“So” Misato said, getting into motion towards the elevators, Shinji beside her. “What was all that about?”
“Oh, um…well, my Father and I just needed to set some ground rules if this was going to work” he said. “Mostly it was all just getting to hammer out the fact that we’re not going to live together”.
“You’re not?” Misato asked in surprise as they entered the lift, but hiding her pleasure that Shinji had decided to stay with NERV, then she frowned as the implications of what he had just said set in.
“Hang on, wait, where are you going to live?”
Shinji just shrugged with a somewhat indifferent look on his face. “I’m not sure; I think the Vice Commander is going to work out some room down here for me…or something”.
The lift ‘pinged and opened onto a Central Dogma passageway, this time unlike earlier in the morning, NERV personnel were around, generally moving with a purpose but still stopping to acknowledge the operations director with a nod or brief getting, unsurprisingly most didn’t know who he was as yet and he felt a twinge of envy over that fact. He snorted silently, wondering if that was Askua’s influence.
Wait…
That wasn’t envy.
“Uh Misato, is there a bathroom around here somewhere?’
“Hmm?” she replied, clearly somewhere else, before she blinked at his question. “Oh uh yeah, right over here” she said, stepping into a side corridor and pointing to a door halfway down. “I’ll be waiting right here”
“Thank you” he said politely with a nod before hastily heading down towards it.
Watching him hurry away alone, with just that one backpack filled with his few valued possessions, something clicked in the Captains mind and she reached a quick and easy decision, bringing out her phone and searching for the entry labeled NERV-VC-Fuyutsuki.



Shinji entered the Bathroom, which looked utterly identical to any of the other bathrooms he had visited throughout NERV and noticed to his relief that it was empty of any personnel who might want to pat him on the back or shake his hand or something. It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate the sentiment, it was just that he couldn’t afford the delay. Quickly, but not hastily, he made his way into one of the cubicles, closed the door behind him and proceeded to throw up for a good thirty seconds.

By the end of it, he was shivering almost uncontrollably, before he flushed and left to wash his mouth out, trying to steady his shaking hands.
No, it wasn’t just his hands that were shaking, it was most of his body and annoyingly, it didn’t want to stop doing so.

The effort it had taken to stand up to his father and that icy gaze…that look that felt like it was flaying through every defense he put up…

But I did it a small voice of triumph declared inside him, easing the tremors slowly and letting him stand taller.
But I did it.
I did it…

The money he had extorted out of his Father, only because he had wanted to imply a motive for his piloting of the Eva his Father would understand –greed- rather then any other motives his Father might look at to apply leverage with.

Not to mention it couldn’t hurt to have access to some limited financial resources that he might need some time in the future…

Finally the shaking stopped and he finished washing the bitter taste out of his mouth and throat, washed his hands and exited, feeling quite a bit better.
Misato was on her phone, a pleased expression on his face as she hung up, then spotted him and waved him over.
“Good news” she declared.
“Oh?”
“You’re my new roommate!”
“Who decided that?” he asked, fighting to keep the smile off his face as those three words washed away the final effects of meeting with his Father. Living with Misato was a hell of a wild ride, but he wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.
“Well I can’t have you living by yourself” she said with a shrug, “and I’ve got this big apartment, so it makes sense…and uh, I just got appointed your legal guardian…your Father…”
“Didn’t want the responsibility?” Shinji replied with a shrug, the echo of his abandonment now a powerless memory. “That’s okay, he hasn’t been my guardian for years now anyway…and I think you’ll do just fine”.
“Great!” she said, grabbing his arm and pulling him off balance as she started down towards the car park. “Well we’ll have to have a party tonight, then get all your stuff shipped here from your Uncles!” she declared, Misatos mind clearly already hard at work preparing for a celebration at night…despite the fact it was barely nine thirty in the morning. “I’ll cook you a huge welcome home meal!”
“Oh…great” Shinji managed to get out before swallowing. Oh God in heaven, not again, I can’t go through that…food…again…
Terror starting to surface again, Misato cheerfully dragged Shinji off towards oblivion.

[Sidewinder]

Good chapters. Shinji seems to be developing quite well.

“Sir” she nodded coming to something like parade rest.

A minor error here: military service members come to ATTENTION when a superior officer appears, NOT parade rest unless the superior officer specifically orders them to come to parade rest.

[LadyTevar]

Ok... I've watched very few of the NGE episodes (the first 10?), but enough to follow what you're doing here. To me, this is 10x better than the original, simply because you are giving Shinji a real chance to be a true hero.

Show me more.

[Academia Nut]

Yup, that's definitely a solid steel spine jammed up Shinji's ass. But I also like how you also make a point of him having to consciously keep from auto-apologizing for everything. Didn't make the character transition from becoming too big. Plus, he did have a twinkling of a spine in the actual series before the whole Unit Three disaster.

Oh, and while I only actually found this story today, I wanted to note that there are probably a lot of people who read this story but just don't chime up. While its probably different for you, I know that as a socially insecure person I find every comment in my stories helps, so I figure I owe it to the fic authors I like to show my appreciation. So good job Chris, I don't know whether I want more of this or Derelict, just that I know either would be awesome.

[Redleader34]

This story is well written, and a nice re-creation of the Shinki character. The extortion is a nice touch, and the plot gives him the advantage of limited "plot armor" so to say. Very good job

[Publius]

The story concept is certainly an interesting one (a "year that never was" is easily one of the most creative post-Third Impact ideas). The transition in Ikari's behavior is not so abrupt as to be unbelievable, especially with the strain he experiences when changing his manner toward his father.

There are some minor spelling errors ("Asuka" misspelt as "Askua," "sheer" misspelt as "shear") but for the most part the technical composition is good. You have done a good job with this.

[Darth Yoshi]

Like everyone else has already said, this is definitely interesting. One nitpick though.

That he had flatly refused to pilot the Evangelion wasn’t exactly surprising in this light but she had felt an odd…what? An almost materialistic pride in Shinji, when he had taken up the gauntlet his father had thrown down? When Rei had been brought in and he stopped her from trying to stand up? At the look of very real anger she had seen flash in Shinji’s eyes when he looked up at his Father after sitting Rei back down? That he had cared so much about someone he had never met to effectively offer his life in her place?

Perhaps you meant maternal?

[Chris OFarrell]

Chapter the Third. "Rei I"


The Angel strode through Tokyo 3.

The small but dense city, home to just over a million people looked all but deserted at high noon as the ‘messenger of God’ walked along its reinforced streets, a state of affairs that would be rather absurd in any other modern city. Unfortunately for the population of this city however, thisscenario would occur with somewhat depressing frequency over the next year, leading to a slow drain of the civilian population…even as more UN troops and personnel were stationed to the front line in humanities war.

The Angel suddenly halted in its stroll as it reached a cross street without warning or apparent reason, turning slightly as if listing to something only it could hear before shifting around completely to face a relatively non descript building a half kilometer downrange with great interest. Seconds later, a mournful siren started screaming into the still midday air; announcing to any human stupid enough to be on the surface during an Angel attack that if they were still in the area, they had roughly ten seconds to be somewhere else as a quartet of rods shot up the corners of said building with an almightily crashingsound. Mere moments later, the front of the building folded down to reveal that the ‘building’ was in fact an empty shell, but an empty shell containing the equal and opposite to the terror stalking the streets of Tokyo 3.

An Evangelion.

The Angel however was perfectly game for the implied challenge that was presented with its adversary surfacing, the ‘eyes’ on its head flashing a brilliant white as they unleashed a burst of unholy energy towards the vaguely human shaped figure.

Shinji however was already in motion, Unit One flowing out of the launch building and around the corner to his left in a blur of motion that shattered trees, burst a water main open and finally crunched a telephone booth under his foot, but effectively got him clear before the energy burst blew the EVA-Lift into loosely associated debris. His target temporarily blocked from view, Shinji detached his suddenly severed umbilical cable with a thought, sprinting down the street to skid into a right hand turn at the first intersection, heaving Unit One into a dead run up a street parallel to the Angels.

“It’s moving in pursuit Shinji” Misato’s voice said from speakers throughout the cockpit, a tiny ‘Gods view’ map clicking open in front of him which Shinji spared a millisecond to glance at. It was a simple but effective layout of the streets he was running through, centered on a green circle that represented his location with a large red square moving in pursuit down the street he had left ten seconds ago. Following him wasn’t exactly difficult given the footprints Shinji was pounding into the pavement, but it was either too stupid enough to try to backtrack and cut him off, or perhaps it was enjoying the chase, somehow knowing that his battery power was only good for -Shinji spared a glance at the digital clock to his right– four minutes and twenty seconds.
“Got it” he replied to Misato before skidding to a halt by digging his heals into the reinforced road surface, wincing as asphalt sprayed up under his feet before he slowed enough to duck into yet another cross street offset ninety degrees as the Angel finally came around the intersection behind him in pursuit.

“Unlock three-sixteen North!” Shinji ordered. The voice recognition software in his entry plug translated his order into rather more useful digital information in a split second, causing a building face a dozen meters away to unfold and reveal an Evangelion scale 105 Millimeter Autorifle. Retrieving it and allowing its targeting systems to integrate with the Eva, he flicked his HUD mode to SHOOT, then spun around and took a second to steady himself.
“Distance to target?”
“Closing at one point four…one point three…one point two” Maya responded over the command channel, counting down the distance to the Angel as it closed with a deceptively slow gait.
Of course, when you realized each ‘step’ moved the Angel about fifty meters, it became apparent it really wasn’t THAT slow.
When it reached eight hundred meters, Shinji hugged the rifle tightly, ‘exhaled’ a lungful of LCL and leaped back into the street, his AT field exploding downrange and seeking the Angels as he brought his rifle up. A circle flew across his ‘SuperCockpit’ display as the aim point of his weapon moved, centering neatly on the distant target, followed a split second later by a floating triangular drift indicator, signaling a good target lock

He squeezed the trigger.

A burst of armor piercing shells ripped downrange, exploding in a spectacular but useless display against a familiar hexagonal wall of light.
Damn, its still too far Shinji swore; the Angel wasn’t yet close enough for the phase spaces to neutralize.
Stepping out of the cloud of smoke that had obscured it, the Angel retaliated with a blast of energy, which in turn shattered against Shinji’s own field, which he had brought back to a more normal range.

Standoff.

Well at least until my batteries run out Shinji thought grimly, watching as the timer dropped to under three minutes.
Clearly irritated at the situation, the Angel started to stomp forward towards the close combat range it would be more effective at. Calmly, Shinji held his ground as the rangefinder numbers dropped, dropping…then at three hundred meters, he forced his AT field out again.
This time an explosion of orange light took place roughly two hundred meters away as the two barriers collided and strobed violently. He did nothing but grit his teeth for an agonizing five seconds as the phase spaces equalized as the Angel stopped, as if in confusion, at the explosion of rainbow light in front of it.
Big mistake.
Shinji opened fire again letting loose a long burst with a confident grin more suited to the face of the Second Child then his own, but not giving a damn as he leaned in against the recoil. This time the shells tore into the torso of the Angel easily, sending chunks of what looked disturbingly like bone and flesh coated in deep blue blood splattering into nearby buildings as the depleted uranium penetrators tore in.
Of course the problem with neutralizing its AT field was that it works both ways Shinji knew.
The Angel stumbled back a step as a significant amount of its chest turned into a cratered wasteland, before it swung back into line with snap of motion, its core flushing a bright red.

Yeah, it was not happy about that he thought, stamping his Eva’s foot down.

A miniature EM catapult buried under the street fired in response to Unit Ones foot, causing a fifteen meter thick and sixty meter tall metal plate of ultra dense steel and ceramics to rocket skyward and cut of his view of the Angel just as its head flashed. A half second or so later, the air turned red from the light of the explosion and the centre of the shield bowed in heavily as it absorbed the particle blasts fury. Shinji ducked neatly to the side of the slowly collapsing plate, vaugly hearing Misato urgently break in about ‘looking high’ as he moved into the clear. Squinting up into the bright midday sun for an agonizingly long split second before the image filters kicked in and compensated for the glare, he saw the Angel had in fact taken flight, hopping up in a short arc to bring itself down on Unit One’s position and brain it. But Shinji’s training, beaten into him by Misato, Agaki –and not a little of Askua- over many many months, held true; his weapon had followed his gaze.
The elegant arc turned into an unsophisticated crash as the tracers shot up into Angels exposed core, cracking it and sending the Angel spinning out of the sky to land on its back in a cloud of dust. Five quick steps to close up the distance and Shinji once again leveled his weapon, this time holding the trigger down as his weapon chewed through the core, sending ruby crystal flying in chunks the size of small cars as he ran his entire magazine of electronically fired projectiles dry. With a loud shriek the Angels back arched, Shinji jumped back with all his might-
And the target exploded, a purple column of fire reaching for the sky as his battery clock changed to the red of 00:59:99.
Alas poor Sachiel, we barely knew yee Shinji thought, before the cityscape vanished in a flash of rainbow light, to be replaced by the blinding white light of one of NERV’s simulation rooms. Unit One stood in the centre of the rather sterile room, a half dozen umbilical cables connecting it to the MAGI which had been running the tests.
A communications window titled CONTROL popped up on the display, with a cheerful Misato grinning at him, provoking an unconscious smile in return from Shinji at the carefree, happy look he had so terribly missed…
“Outstanding work Shinji” she said. “You’re really a natural for this you know”.
“I’ll say” Akagi agreed, a new window with the Doctor opening up next to Misato, though the Doctor was really still looking at her console, glancing up occasionally to look at him. “Your synchronization ratio has been holding steady at ninety four since the start of the week, both in synch tests and combat simulations, it’s utterly unprecedented”.

Shinji responded with a somewhat bashful look on his face and a shrug. He had never been that comfortable with praise over his piloting ability. Partially because he always got embarrassed when praise was directed at him and partially because it was followed -inevitably- by Askuas physical and verbal abuse as she lashed out at the number one threat to her ‘best pilot’ status.

On the other hand, some astonishment on NERV’s end was understandable. Shinji had decided at his first synchronization tests not to hide his true level of ability, mostly because it would just be too easy for him to let it slip. Misato he knew didn’t really care howhe had gotten such ability, she was just glad to have such a capable pilot (not to mention decent cook and financially independent house mate) under her command. He didn’t know no really care what his Father had made of his surprising talent. Strangely though, the Vice Commander had appeared to be more friendly then he remembered, asking questions about his life since he had last seen him which Shinji tried to politely answer, before he –indirectly- tried to apologize and justify his Fathers lack of the most basic form of human emotion, blaming stress, pressure and guilt.
Shinji had –barely- managed to hold back some choice words during that conversation.

Maya and the rest of the technicians were astonished at his ‘natural’ ability, but simply accepted it as a fortuitous bit of luck given that the Angels had returned, working hard with him to get him up to speed.
Ritsuko on the other hand…well…it was more like his abilities, statistically unlike anything she had seen in the other two Evangelion pilots, mocked her understanding of technology she had worked on her entire life.
It wasn’t so much that she suspected him, Shinji thought, as she was exasperated by him and obsessively trying to dissect what made him tick. On the other hand, both of the Evangelions at Tokyo 3 had their idiosyncrasies as Shinji knew, so he had to wonder if he might be just imagining things.

As loath as he was to sympathize with his Father in anything, Shinji was slowly starting to understand how paranoia could rapidly become habit forming…

This time at least, Akagi just looked up from her console with a smile. “Okay that’s fine Shinji, you can return now”.
“Roger” he yawned. At Maya’s command, the computer umbilical connections detached to be reeled back up into the ceiling and the unit was locked back into its cradle, then slid along heavy railway tracks to the nearby Eva cages. It took a good several minutes as Shinji waited impatiently, but eventually Unit One jolted into place, the secondary and primary restraints were locked back in and the entry plug was ejected.
At last able to get up and out as the plug split open, Shinji gratefully accepted a thick towel from an orange suited technician waiting on the catwalk, vigorously working to clean his hair of the coppery tasting amber fluid. The skin and airtight plug suit kept most of his body perfectly dry while piloting Eva, but he always had to work to get the last little trace of the LCL out of his face and hair every time he left the unit, accepting it but not liking the necessity of ‘breathing’ it in.

Even more so now that he knew exactly what LCL was.

“Thank you” Shinji smiled with a polite bow to the grizzled worker who had handed him the towel, causing the man thirty years Shinji’s senior to bow deeply in return with his own smile, before he and his companion entered the entry plug to start their post power down maintenance checklists.
It was more then a little disturbing to Shinji how such a small expression of gratitude could get such a response. True, he had been making a real effort this time to interact with the NERV personnel around him, showing interest and genuine emotion to everyone from the lowest worker right to the operations staff as proof of just how seriously he was taking his impressive pay packet and responsibilities.
But the flipside of that was that everyone treated him with a kind of awed respect that was a little awkward at times.
Especially after his ‘first attempts’ to pilot Unit One.

Shinji had, truly, done his very best to start off completely inept in the Evangelion.
In fact, he had taken a perverse joy in his first simulated combat exercise, completely missing the simulated target and leveling half of downtown Tokyo 3 with his missile launcher on Autofire, before ‘tripping’ into a Surface to Surface artillery battery and blowing Unit One into a crippled mess from the explosion of over two hundred high yield shells going off simultaneously
The looks on Misato and Ritsukos faces after that exercise had almost caused him to burst out laughing.
Then again, he had managed to convince Misato –once she had calmed down over the fact that he now earned more money then she did- that he felt he needed to earn the privileges he had so carefully exhorted from his Father, that they couldn’t risk him not having a minimal level of effective combat ability before letting him get back to a ‘normal’ life. To that end, he had been able to put off school for a week. Instead, from nine to five each day, he had been undergoing full scale combat training, stunning the operations staff with just how quickly he had become proficient in blowing crap up.

Jumping lightly off the side of the docking cage to the main access walkway as pink coolant started to pour in at the bottom of the cage, Shinji strode to the nearby lift and ascended several levels, still working to get the LCL out of his hair as the lift doors opened on the small command centre from which the test had been monitored.

“Ah! Yo, Godzilla, get over here” Misato demanded out as he entered the room, waving him over to where she, Doctor Akagi and Lieutenant Ibuki were finishing up their simulation work.
‘Godzilla’ was a nickname Mistao had stuck on him after destroying half of Toyko 3 in his first exercise, to the simultaneous amusement and horror of everyone in the control room.
It was a fitting title Shinij thought, still smiling inwardly at the memory.
“You’re three for three Shinji; you really have some nice moves, you know” Akagi spoke up from behind her glasses, looking down her clipboard as she studied raw columns of numbers that were utter gibberish to anyone but her and her staff..

“Yeah that’s what she said last night” Shinji smiled back with a jerk of his head towards Misato.

The poor Captain damn near sent the coffee she had been sipping back out over the very expensive equipment around her; an expression of shock and utter stunned amazement crashing onto her face as Shinji’s casually offered comment echoed across the room.
Maya Ibuki’s jaw dropped and she simply stared in astonishment at the rapidly redlining face of the Operations Director, before snapping her attention away to some random console, her own face starting to blush quite quickly. Doctor Akagi’s eyes also snapped up at Shinji’s declaration, but her expression mutated into one slight amusement instead at the look on her old friends face, while technicians working to shut down their consoles around the room studiously pretended they hadn’t heard a thing…but a sudden increase in the amount of snickering from their vicinity strongly suggested their expressions of utter disinterest may have been sadly misleading.

“What the hell is THAT supposed to mean?!” Misato demanded as she chocked back her last sip of coffee and slammed the –mostly- empty glass onto the top of a nearby console, glaring across at her charge who somehow managed to keep an utterly nonchalant look on his face.
“You know, when we were playing that video game last night?”
A delightfully sheepish expression came across Misato’s face to replace the anger as it melted away, her gaze darting across the other people in the room as if daring anyone to say anything.
The technicians, like most NERV staff, were highly educated people, best in their fields.
Meaning they were smart enough to avoid eye contact with the Captain at all costs. Doctor Akagi on the other hand simply smiled with a twitch of her face and shook her head. “You know…I think you two are just a perfect match for each other. I’ll see you Monday afternoon Shinji”
“Yes Mam” he nodded. Agaki gave a final look at the still furiously crimson Misato, shook her head with a smile and headed out, the red faced Maya following right on her heals.
“Well come on” Misato growled, albeit with a touch of good humor, leading Shinji out in the other direction and onto a moving travel way that moved them across the expanse of central Dogma.
“So…are you still okay to stop by and see Rei?” Misato finally said after a few minutes of silence, bringing Shinji’s still amused thought patterns to a screeching halt as he realized they were not heading for the locker rooms, but in fact away from the Eva cages, deeper into the facility.
“What, now? Today?” Shinji asked, with no small amount of surprise in his voice. Doctor Akagi had been frustratingly keeping him away from Rei the whole of the week, saying her condition was too serious to allow “casual visitors”
Yes…and I am sure she was just fine to pilot an Evangelion into combat, Doctor he muttered to himself.
Shinji couldn’t help but think of Akagi in a rather negative light concerning Rei’s safety; the image of Rei’s ‘sisters’, laughing like children as they dissolved at her insane whim, the room turning red as the lights in the tanks of LCL were swamped by clouds of blood …
“Hai” Misato smiled, utterly oblivious to the thoughts crashing around Shinji’s mind like loose objects inside an entry plug during battle. “Ritsuko says she’s almost ready to be released, she’ll be back at school in a few days”.
“Good to hear” Shinji said with utter sincerity. I have so much to teach her…and so little time.



Rei Ayanami turned her head slightly, bringing her single uncovered eye into focus on the door to her small but functional room.
Although she didn’t realize it, it was in fact the first conscious movement she had made in several hours.
It confused her slightly that she didn’t know why she had done this, until a few seconds later she heard faint footsteps coming to a halt outside her door.

Ah. This would probably be the nurse coming in for her late afternoon check, or possibly Doctor Akagi herself, given that it was the end of the week.
The door opened.
It was not Doctor Akagi.
Rei’s interest level rose as the Third Child walked in, alone and unannounced, dressed in a blue and white plug suit. He stopped just inside the door and looked over at her, with an expression Rei couldn’t easily decipher, especially with him silhouetted by the light from the corridor behind him.

“Is…is it okay if I come in?”
Rei blinked. No-one had ever asked her if they could come in to the room or not.
“Yes” she replied after a few seconds of thought.
She lost track of the Third Child as the door closed behind him, cutting off the light from the passage behind him, until he stepped out of the darkness and into the soft circle of light around her bed.
“Hello…Ayanami” Shinji said softly as he stopped at the side her bed, finding a convenient, tall chair against the wall which he pulled across next to her bed.
“The Third Child” she said in a soft voice, her single scarlet eye studying him calmly as he settled in next to her.
Shinji nodded. Rei looked quite a bit stronger then she had a week ago, when he had ‘first’ met her. The bandages she was still swathed in were no longer soaked with blood, and her skin was once again the almost luminescent white he recalled rather then the colorless grey she had been when his Father had ordered her into Unit One…
Even just the memory of those events, the knowledge burned into his mind of the endless years of pain and suffering his Father had coldly inflicted on this unique, beautiful young woman lying before him…

Predictably, Rei noticed when his right hand tightened into a first.

“Is something wrong?” she asked softly, her single uncovered eye flicking to look at his hand for a brief second before her gaze shifted back. Shinji smiled with an expression that conveyed both amusement and embarrassment as he unclenched his hand and let the feelings fade away into nothing.
One day Father, there will be a reckoning for all the lives you have destroyed. One day…
“Not really” he said with a slow shake of his head. “I was just thinking about…the fist time I saw you”.
Rei said nothing, simply continuing to stare at him.
“You…know who my Father is, don’t you?”
She nodded.
“When I saw him, standing up there in the Evangelion cage…I was ready to walk out of this place and not look back” Shinji began, shifting in his seat slightly as he thought back to that day, Rei looking at him with the faintest expression of curiosity on her face. “He had not said two words to me in the past seven years …then I received a letter from him, with one word on it. ‘Come’”. Shinji’s expression twitched at the memory of the terror he had felt when receiving that letter, only the insistence of his Uncle to at least give his Father a chance getting him on the train to Tokyo 3…
“Well, he had ‘found a use for me’ after all, told me I had to pilot Unit One. Not that he cared in the slightest for me as a person…or thought I would make him proud or anything like that…I was just as a thing to him, a tool to be used”.
Shinji noticed Rei’s expression changed in the most subtle way few people would recognize, but she didn’t interrupt him as he continued to talk.
“I told him…I told him, I wouldn’t do it” Shinji continued, leaning back into his chair, glancing thoughtfully into the darkness beyond Rei’s bed. “And…I didn’t think there was anything that could have changed my mind, not after I remembered what that…thing…had done to my Mother”.

Rei continued to study him without comment as Shinji reflected back on that day for probably the millionth time in the last week.
The silence between them endured for a good two minutes before Rei broke it.

“Why did you decide to pilot?” she asked finally. Shinji returned his gaze to Rei as she asked the question he had been waiting for.
Oh well, here goes nothing he thought.
“Because you would have been forced to pilot it in my place…and you would have died” he said.
Rei blinked.
“You chose to pilot Unit One to…protect…me” she replied slowly, as if though while understood the words coming out of his mouth, she was having a hard time grasping the idea behind them…
“I still do” Shinji replied.
“Then…when I am capable of piloting Unit Zero, you will leave?” she surmised.
“No” Shinji said with a shake of his head.
“I…do not understand” she admitted.
“I can’t leave you to face the Angels on your own” he replied slowly. “I won’t abandon you like my Father abandons anyone who isn’t…useful to him” he continued, noting the flash in her uncovered eye at his comments about the Commander, but ignoring it. “I’ll remain by your side through this war…until we finish it. One way, or the other”.

Rei tilted her head slightly on the pillow. “Why?” she asked again.
Shinji looked up and met her gaze, the mask he had held over his feelings ever since he had ‘come back’ dropping for the second time, as he let himself show how deeply he cared about this young woman who had given him this chance…
“Because you are a unique person, worth protecting” he said simply, locking her gaze and letting the emotions he had kept tightly controlled, the depth of his feelings for this person who didn’t know him in the slightest…for his friend, all come out.

Rei’s eyes focused on those of the Third Child as he looked down at her. Once again, she felt that strange, familiar feeling as she looked into his gaze, finding herself unable -or perhaps unwilling- to break away, as he appeared unable to look away from her.

Perhaps, she thought to herself in the silence of her mind, it is because so long as I look into his eyes…I can believe what he says to be the truth.
It was a…comfortable feeling she decided. Even if she knew, deep down, that she could be replaced by the Commander as easily as one could replaced a broken tool or an old computer...

Then he blinked, and looked away, breaking the hypnotic spell and causing Rei in turn to look away and blush ever so slightly, but pleased as the silence that followed, using the break in their conversation to savor the strange emotions that had flown through her, committing them to memory.
It had not been, she decided, an unpleasant experience.
“Ayanami…may…may I visit you again?” he asked after several moments. Rei turned back, noting that he was blushing far more then she was and had directed his gaze at the foot of her bed.
“That…would be…agreeable” she decided after a short time. Shinji nodded and stood, walking slowly away, before he stopped and glanced back at the edge of the circle of light.
“Don’t ever let anyone tell you that your life is not worth living Rei” he said softly, standing. “Not I, not my Father…not even you”. Offering her an almost shy parting smile, the Third Child turned away, his footsteps receding until the door opened and then shut with a whir and hiss.
My life…is worth living…
Rei thought over that curious statement.
Long into the night.



“WOOOOOOOOOOOHHHAAAYEEEEAHHHH! Now THAT’S the way to end the week, life just doesn’t get any better then THIS!” Captain Misato Katsaragi declared to Shinji, apartment 3-31 and probably every human being within 29.5 meters, slamming an empty can of beer down onto the table with enough force to partially crumple it.

In the kitchen, Shinji grinned to himself.

For the longest time when living with his Guardian, he had become increasingly convinced that Misato might be mildly schizophrenic. On one hand, there was this party animal who was becoming a legend throughout Tokyo 3’s NERV community as a women who could –according to the rumors- drink more alcohol in less time then even the most optimistic MAGI projection stated a human could possibly live through. A women whose energy, exuberance and zest for life could never be conquered, brimming with the youthful energy of a 20 year old even if she was only just shy of 30 years old.

On the other hand, there was ‘professional Misato’ who could put aside her thoughts and send children into mortal combat, freely risking their lives against the good of mankind…or charge down special forces troops with nothing more then a sidearm, then happily blow their brains out after disarming them of their weapons.
The truth he had slowly learned was that Mistao was a person who, quite simply, was driven to push any facet of her character to extremes.

In her vendetta against the Angels, she had dedicated her entire life to an organization dedicated to destroying them.
In trying to find out the truth about NERV after Kaji’s death, she had put aside just about everything and everyone else in her life, for better or worse, regardless of the consequences.

In her decision to become his legal guardian, she had perhaps not been the…ideal motherly role model...but in the end she had sacrificed her own life for his without so much as a second thought.

And when partying down, no human on Earth could chug a beer faster then Misato Katsaragi. He would stake every Yen he had exhorted from his father on that fact.

“Come on Shinji I’m starving!” Misato pleaded from the living room as Shinji vigorously stirred the soup and double checked the noodles he was working on. While he couldn’t claim to match the cooking skills of Hikari Horaki, he had become quite proficient at feeding for himself as neither of his alternatives of risking food poisoning or starving to death had really appealed to him. Getting Misato to leave all the cooking to him had been his first major goal after moving into the apartment, a task made rather easy given that on the second night, he had cooked her favorite meal flawlessly, without any prompting.

“Coming!” he yelled back as he shut down the stove, removing the Raman components from the heat before mixing out generous proportions into a pair of bowls. Carefully lifting them, he eased out of the kitchen, past Pen Pen who was happily wolfing down the lightly seasoned Tuna Shinji had cooked for him earlier and into the living room.
Misato was kneeling at the table in the living room, licking her lips in pleasure at the orders wafting in from the kitchen. She had changed out of her rather severe NERV uniform and into the yellow shirt and denim shorts she typically wore around the house when not expecting company, her hair pulled back into an equally casual pony tail that made her look ten years younger…
On the other hand, perhaps it was the carefree –and tipsy- smile on her face. Amazing how easily she shifted into the ‘big sister’ Misato from the ‘Operations Director’ Misato…
“Ohhhh that smells wonderful” she breathed as Shinji carefully placed her portion down followed by his own. Smiling, she cracked open a second beer with practiced ease as she hunted around the table for, and found, some kind of high yield chilly additive which she liberally sprinkled into her meal before moving it towards his own bowl. “Do you want-”
“No!” Shinji yelped in alarm, pulling his own helping out of the danger zone. Misato just stuck her tongue out and placed the additive back onto the table.
“Don’t be such a baby Shinji” she laughed, grabbing her chopsticks and stirring the thick ‘sludge’ of her sauce into the soup. “This stuff makes it taste great!”
Yeah and Second Impact was just a slight weather pattern shift Shinji thought, recalling when Misato, in a fit of laziness, had fed Pen Pen some of her own ‘special’ Raman mix after forgetting his dinner.
He had always wondered after that day what a Penguin saw, while having an acid trip…

“So you’ve got a whole weekend off!” she declared in between shoveling food into her mouth. “Wha…what’re gona do?”

“Well first we’ve got to get your car in for repairs” he declared. “I’ve already paid for the service and it should-”
“WHA?” she demanded in surprise, slamming her new beer down as she came dangerously close to choking on the noodles she had been slurping. “When did THIS happen?”
“Well its only three days until the end of the month” Shinji smiled sheepishly, “and the Vice Commander was kind enough to pay me today as if I had been here the whole month, which ends on Tuesday…is that okay?” he asked with a slight hint of uncertainty…
“I…it’s…bah!” she gave up, reaching over to give him a hug. “That’s so sweet!”
“It’s uh the least I can do, given that you got it scuffed up saving my life” he pointed out as she leaned back, her smile even broader then it had been. “And then I have to go and visit Rei some time tomorrow”.
“Visit her again?” she asked, her grin impossibly becoming even broader. “Ahhh I see; little Shinji has fallen in looove”
“No no it’s not like that!” Shini spluttered, his composure evaporating in an instant at the comment from his guardian, who all but giggled at his burning face.
“Oh I think it is like that! You and Rei make such a perfect couple, I should have Ritisiko order matching plug suits and –wah!” Misatos teasing was cut off as the cushion Shinji had sent flying at her impacted a glancing blow on her face, spinning off to the side.
“Welllll, looks like I struck a nerve” she grinned, then her face fell slightly as she saw the expression on his face. “Sorry Shinji-kun, I didn’t mean to-”
“No no its alright Misato” he replied with a reassuring smile. “It’s just that…she’s all alone in that room all day…I don’t think anyone comes to visit her”.
“I think the Commander goes in to see her every day” Misato reflected thoughtfully.
“Apart from him” Shinji growled, his voice dropping an octave at the mention of his Father.
“Hmm. It would be nice of you to go and see her” Misato smiled. What a kid she thought, then erased that thought with a mental shake of her head. No, he stopped being a kid the second he stepped into Unit One to protect Rei, her opinion of Shinji rising yet another notch as he started on his own food. “You might want to take her some flowers” she suggested, “brighten up the room…some roses?” she grinned.

(“Red…the color I hate…the color of blood”-)

“No I was thinking of daisies, something to brighten up the room a little for her…its…rather depressing in its current state”.
“Well it makes sense, you’re both pilots after all” Misato said, the ‘Operations Manager’ appearing for a second, “so you should get to know each other outside of work if possible”. The operations manager then vanished and the ‘guardian’ reappeared. “And…I don’t know if she really has any friends. It would be nice if you could get her to open up a little”.
“I’ll drink to that” he nodded, then reached for a spare beer can to complete his promise, only to have Misato’s first come crashing down between his hand and its goal.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” she demanded, “You’re fourteen!”
“Oh fine” Shinji grumbled. Not that he wanted to really drink beer, but Misato was oh so cute when she insisted only she had the right to destroy her liver in this house.
“Anyway, then I need to go and get some things for school, then I should grab some food for the week…so is there anything you really want this week?”



Much, much later in the evening when Misato had collapsed into her bed from a mixture of exhaustion and a six-pack, though Shinji guessed those drinks had had only a minor effect on a women who could down half a bottle of vodka and not go into a coma, Shinji stepped out of the shower with a towel wrapped around his waist, sighing in pleasure at the tired ache through his body.
It was a good feeling he decided, the kind that let you know you could expect a long, peaceful sleep, having achieved real, measurable progress. Sighing contently, he dried off and changed into a t-shirt and shorts before brushing his teeth, switching off the light and walking down the dark corridor to his ‘lovely suite’…then stopping as his gaze fell on the open door to the empty room, just down from his own.

God he missed Asuka.

It was almost funny in a way. How many times he had begged someone –anyone- to get her out of this house. Everything had been so peaceful, mostly, before she had moved in. Predictable.
Happy.
Sane.
Then the Second Child had arrived, bringing with her conflict, friction and more then a few painful contusions to his head as she continually let him know exactly what she thought of him as an Eva Pilot, a man and a human
.
All of it a giant lie to shield the four year old girl desperately hiding deep behind the moats, minefields and electrified fences she had placed around her heart.
The heart of the person…of the woman he could finally admit to himself he might well have fallen in love with.
And then abandoned to die at the hands of SEELE.

But now…now he had the greatest chance a person could ever dream of; to start over and make it right.
But it would be four months until she arrived from Germany. Four months without her molten fire, without her passion and even her smug confidence in the eventual victory of humanity over the Angels…

What are you, stupid? Asuka will be along when she gets along and you have far too much to do to start moping around like the old Baka Shinji! Get into bed Third Child and get some rest; you have work to do tomorrow!”

The thought that exploded onto his consciousness -from nowhere- sounded so exactly like Asuka that Shinji glanced around the hallway in a half panic as he wondered, against all logic, if the Second Child had somehow managed to pull off a personal appearance to taunt him as Lilith had done.
No, the room was just as dark and empty as it had been a second ago…but deciding not to tempt fate, just in case, he stepped through the door to his room, shut it behind him, went to bed and fell to sleep. Fast.



Skyfall was one of the most exclusive ‘hot spots’ in Japan.

A multi story complex situated in one of Tokyo-3’s ‘real’ skyscrapers –that is, one not filled with state of the art military hardware- it was comprised of a bistro / buffet on its highest level followed by a casual coffee shop / lounge, a multi story night club and finally three different high class formal restaurants, catering to three differing menus and food types from all around the world.

The staff were, without exception, friendly, utterly professional and utterly appropriate. From the casual, easy going hospitality staff in the night club to the perfectly smooth silver service of one of the 5 star restaurants, the average visitor tipped heavily in favor of the utterly phenomenal service provided and was privately considered one of the major draw cards of the place.
Of course, the attraction of Skyfall may also have had something to do with the view, being the only entertainment complex in the basement of a building to hang 800 meters above ground level.

Doctor Ritsuko Akagi had long since grown tired of the novelty of the view. She came for the service and for a quiet place to think. While the majority of patronage of Skyfall was made up of NERV personnel, few came here for a simple coffee given that NERV was replete with caffeinated beverage dispensers at a much cheaper price. But on the weekends when she wasn’t due in at work for any major events, the Doctor liked to sit alone for an hour or so in the morning, by the huge floor to ceiling windows and look over the morning light playing in the Geofront –with a rather expensive Italian coffee- and simply enjoy an hour or so of peace and quiet.

Well at least such went her theory.

“Hi Ritsuko!” an all too cheerful voice called out from behind her, breaking into her silent contemplation. Ritsuko turned to face Misato Katsaragi as she all but bounded into the lounge towards her, a somewhat implacable look on her face as she approached.
Well I couldn’t put this off forever she sighed, putting her cup of coffee down as the Director of Operations flopped into a thickly padded lounge chair beside her without so much as a ‘by your leave’.
“I used to like weekends” Misato pouted after a few seconds of silence, a sigh on her face as she idly watched a train in the distance ascending towards the surface. “Now its just work work work. I never knew an Angel attack could cause paperwork to multiply like it does…if it wasn’t for the help of the MAGI, I think I’d happily jump right out this window right now”.
“Hmm” Ritsuko said in a non committal tone, leaning back. “Still, it’s unusual to see you up so early on a Saturday…I take from the lack of a hang over you didn’t take Shinji clubbing last night?”
Misato shot her a somewhat amused glare as she turned away from the view.
“Funny. But he is actually the person I wanted to talk to you about”.
“I don’t suppose I could convince you that you might not want to know about this?” Ritsuko asked with a raised eyebrow, running a hand through her bright blond hair. “Secrets are great weights carried on your shoulders Misato…a never ending pressure that can’t be taken away, no matter how much you might desperately want to be rid of it later”.
“And how much weight do you carry, Rits?” Misato quietly asked after a few seconds consideration. Ritsuko appeared to consider the question meeting her gaze for the first time, striking Misato for a fraction of a second by just how…tired she looked, before with a blink, the visage was somehow replaced by her friends’ usual wry smile.
“Enough to know you’ll not be satisfied until you get an answer” she said dryly, picking up the coffee for a quick sip to marshal her thoughts.
“It all happened back oh…it must have been eleven years ago now” she started. Ritsuko hadn’t been there herself, but her Mothers letters had filled in the details for her…including details that had never made it into any official report filed with either GEHIRN or SEELE. “Unit One was used for the first, full power synchronization test of the neural interface technology”.
“With Shinji’s mother as the pilot” Misato hazarded a guess. Ritsuko nodded.
“Yes…it was the first time the team had gone this far. Unit Zero, the prototype, was still being used as something of a test bed for the fundamental technology, allowing us to perfect it, and then build it into Unit One for advanced testing. Yui had brought Shinji in to watch this first full powered test, so ‘show him’ the future she was building”.
“But something went wrong” Misato said with a hint of impatience, clearly not caring one wit about the history or purpose of the Evangelions.

And for that, Ritsuko Akagi could only envy her, nodding slowly.

“When Yui started to Synchronize, we hadn’t developed a lot of the protective systems we’ve since included, that protect the pilots mind from being drawn too deep into the connection. When the third level connection was initiated...” she trailed off, glancing away in thought.
“Yes?” Misato prodded after the moment dragged uncomfortably. Ritsuko wrestled with the novel concept of telling the whole truth to her oldest friend, before sanity returned and she refocused her attention with a sigh.
“When the connection was initiated, Yui’s synch ratio shot right past one hundred in seconds”.
“I guess the talent runs in that family runs on the mother’s side” Misato muttered.
Akagi smiled thinly.
“It had nothing to do with talent, Misato, and everything to do with the Evangelion. You see, without the protective barriers we’ve since built, the Evangelion, for lack of a better word, kept ‘pulling’ at her mind. Once you reach a Synch level of one hundred, you’re effectively perfectly melding your mind with the Evangelions” Ritsuko lectured, as if talking to a junior member of her science staff. “The further you go over that limit, the greater the risk of mental contamination. Shinji’s mother reached a level of over four hundred in fifteen seconds, her mind couldn’t handle the stress and her ego borderline collapsed. Her body was reduced to a primordial soup in short; she ceased to exist”.

Misato didn’t know what chilled her more. The story itself of how Shinji had been watching from some control room as his mother dissolved before his eyes, or the utterly clam and detached way her friend recited the story.
Then a sudden connection flared into her mind and her eyes widened.
“And the same thing happened to Asuka’s mother” Misato breathed in astonishment and amazement as the connection ‘clicked’ in her head, how in the hell had they let it happen again…

The blond across from her raised an eyebrow, then nodded. “The Third Branch took the data from the failed synchronization test and used it to refine their theories and designs. Unit Two was far less complete then Units Zero and One, but they had completed what they needed to run a full scale test and-”.
“And they just let her get in that thing, after what happened to Shinji’s Mother?!” Misato spluttered out loud with real anger in her voice. Akagi narrowed her eyes and glanced towards the nearest people in the lounge as a warning. Section 2 swept Skyfall randomly on a day by day basis for bugs, but that wouldn’t stop people nearby from overhearing things they shouldn’t. Ritsuko took a long sip of her coffee as she waited for Misato to regain her composure, before continuing her narrative.
“They didn’t just ‘let’ her get in” Ritsuko replied calmly. “Kyoko Zeppelin Soryu was a brilliant scientist, she was confident that they had developed an enhanced system to stop what happened to Yui from happening again, while keeping the possibility of a one to one ratio...but it was only partially successful. She didn’t have her mind…completely destroyed like Yui, but…”

Misato didn’t need the rest of the details. She had read all the reports of the insanity of Asuka’s mother several times during her sojourn with the Third Branch.

“Anyway” Ritsuko continued, draining the last of her coffee, “from both events we were able to design a system that makes it extremely unlikely that these kinds of events will be repeated, but the downside is that it becomes increasingly hard for pilots to push their synchronization ratios towards the one hundred level, hence the constant need for Synch tests, and why Shinji’s ability is so surprising”.
“And who precisely tested the new, final system?” The Doctor shrugged.
“Rei did, after years of lower level testing”.
“So Rei is expandable as well now, is she?” Misato scoffed.
Of course she is Ritsuko said in the silence of her mind.
“Of course she isn’t” Ritsuko replied to Misato. “Remember, I was your age at this point, I wasn’t even working for GEHIRN then”
“I see” the Captain said with a nod, the anger still there, but fading. She couldn’t blame her friend for these events, as much as she wanted to lash out at someone.
She hadn’t even been there after all.
“So when Shinji said that he thought-”
“-he sensed his mother?” Ritsuko finished the thought with a slight smile to hide the fear in her heart.
If Shinji –or Asuka- ever find out the truth about the Evangelions…
“Its pure wistfulness on his part” the Doctor lied through her teeth. “Dangerous if he takes it too far…but for now, harmless, just…keep an eye on him”. Standing up, Ritsuko stretched and smoothed out her lab coat. “I will see you later Captain” Ritsuko said with a slight smile before she got up and walked towards the elevator.
Misato let her go, her cheerful morning mood already slightly soured.
Rits was right she sighed. This weight sucks
Shinji hummed to himself as he exited the lift deep inside Central Dogma. Even on a weekend, NERV did not come close to shutting down especially now that the clock was running against the Angels, but as a pilot, he had always been left strictly alone on the weekends and had rarely found any need to venture into NERV as a result. Well short of an Angel attacking anyway. At least the damn things generally attacked during business hours.
So he had more then a few surprised looks shot his way by NERV personnel as he strode through the titanic complex, dressed casually in some new clothes he had brought earlier this morning after Misato had dropped her car off at the repair shop.
It meant he wasn’t exactly incognito when he walked around the base in jeans and a T-Shirt…if a 14 year old boy walking around a highly classified military base could be said be fit in. Especially carrying a huge bouquet of bright yellow flowers and humming to himself.

He found his way to the hospital easily enough, and then frowned when he saw the door to Rei’s room was open, slowing down to halt well short of it as he considered this sudden snag, milling over the possibilities.
She could have been released or moved or simply be out of her room.
She might have a hospital visitor, a nurse or Doctor, no real problem there.
Or it was possible she may have another personal visitor…and the thought of the most probable person to fill that role almost made him start shivering.
As quietly as he could, he eased closer to the room, his ears straining to pick up even the faintest sound…
“So, you understand?” Shinji’s blood turned to ice in sympathy with the cold, blunt statement that carried ever so faintly into the corridor.

That voice he would never forget.

“Yes Sir” Rei’s calm, soft voice came back.
“Good. You will return to your apartment by tomorrow and resume your school functions as necessary. We may need to accelerate your recovery profile, as well as Unit Zero’s reactivation now that the Angels have returned. There is an acceptable risk of further damage, but we must be prepared”.
“Yes Sir” Rei calmly agreed again, causing a spark of anger to ignite and start to eat away at the paralyzing fear that had frozen his feet to the floor. Who in the hell was his Father to talk so casually about inflicting such suffering onto a human being-
”Shinji?” a voice broke into his thoughts without warning.

If not for the fact that just hearing his Fathers voice had locked every single muscle on his body into place, something he considered an improvement from turning and running until he collapsed, Shinji probably would have jumped through the roof right then and there.
Instead, he closed his eyes and counted to three, then turned to face a surprised looking Vice Commander, taking a deep breath as he forced something approaching a smile onto his face at the elderly mans presence, his brown NERV uniform as impeccable as always.
“Vice Commander” Shinji acknowledged the man with a slight, but respectful bow.
Not that he exactly had much in the way of respect for his Fathers most loyal backer and confidant.
“I have to admit my surprise to seeing you down here this morning” the elderly man commented, crossing his arms as he came to a stop.
“I uh wanted to bring these to...pilot Ayanami” Shinji caught himself before calling Rei by her first name, trying to force the stutter out of his voice, pausing a half second to regain his composure before plunging on. “We had a long talk yesterday, about the Evangelions, NERV, combat tactics, piloting…” he said letting his voice trail off vaguely, feeling his nervousness rising as the conversation continued behind him. “Her room was so…sterile, I wanted to brighten it up a little” Shinji said with a slight smile.
A furrow mutated into a slight frown of Fuyutsuki’s face at this admission.
“Well I can’t see the harm in that…” the Vice Commander said slowly. “It’s a smart idea to establish a good working relationship with your fellow pilot, but I don’t think your Father would…appreciate…any confusing entanglements-”
“Oh, nothing like that, Sir” Shinji said quickly, finding a dark amusement in the Vice Commanders uncomfortable look at the idea of him and Rei forming any kind of ‘entanglement’.
Though he could completely understand why the junior Commander might find the idea disturbing given the ‘genetic similarity’ between his and Rei’s genomes…
“Good” Fuyutsuki said briskly, and then his eyes flickered behind him and focused on someone else. “Well if you’ll excuse me” and not waiting for a response, he hurried down the corridor.
Setting his face, Shinji turned to follow him with his gaze, watching the back of his Father recede steadily at a brisk pace, soon joined by Fuyutsuki, the two most powerful men in NERV turning a corner to vanish in seconds.
Shinji didn’t know if he should be pleased or disappointed that his Father had not even acknowledged his presence.

Shaking his head once, he stepped up to the doorway, reaching to knock and stopping in some surprise at the brightly lit room.
Rei was out of her bed, adjusted the bandages on her arm in silence. From the way she was standing, Shinji guessed her back had been to the door from, but he wasn’t very surprised to see her gaze locked onto him, as if she had been tracking him prior to coming around the doorway.
“Good…good morning Ayanami” he said.
“Pilot Ikari” she acknowledged his presence.
“May…I come in?” he asked hesitantly, an irrational thought that his Father had instructed her to sever all contact with him flashing across his mind.
“Yes” she nodded, finishing her adjustments and relaxing her arm into the sling with a slight sigh before turning to face him fully. “You may”.
Shinji stepped inside, noting the room had been cleaned out of the equipment here yesterday. In fact now that he thought about it, even the bedding was gone, which meant-
“You’ve been released?” he guessed in some surprise. Rei nodded and Shinji finally noticed she was dressed in her school uniform.
“Yes. I will be leaving now” Rei said, leaning over with a slight wince to reach for a plastic bag full of medical supplies.
Shinji was in motion almost before he realized it, hurrying over to steady Rei as she gasped, if only slightly, in pain, guiding her back to a standing position before he reached down and hefted the bag himself.
“I, uh, can carry this for you” he muttered nervously as he straightened up, finding himself suddenly at point blank range to his fellow Eva plot…and that single crimson eye that could see right through him. Rei nodded, then her eye flickered to the flowers in his other hand.
“Oh uh…I brought these for you…to brighten up this room a little” he said, a feeling of embarrassment increasing steadily as Rei continued to direct her level stare at him.
“I am no longer in this room” she finally pointed out.

Was that disappointment in her voice? No, he must be imagining it.

“Well yes…but we can put them inside your house, instead” he replied.
Rei angled her head slightly as if considering it, then nodded. “That would be acceptable” she decided, heading for the door without any further words, Shinji following.

They got more then one double take from NERV personnel as made their way through the base. Rei characteristically either didn’t notice the attention or was simply ignoring in. Shinji on the other hand couldn’t help but laugh silently at the astounded expressions on their faces.
He had to admit, Rei Ayanami being followed by a boy her own age with flowers was probably not something many of them had seen before. Makoto Hyuga getting off the elevator they had been waiting for walked exactly five steps before stopping dead and slowly turning around.

The look on his face as the doors closed was priceless.

It was sixty seconds into the endless elevator trip to the surface before the rather pleasant silence Shinji was enjoying was broken.
“Why did you come today?” she asked finally, though she didn’t turn from her contemplation of the elevator doors.
“Because I wanted to see you” he shrugged.
“Why?” she asked again at the non answer.
“You…looked lonely yesterday”.
Rei finally turned around at that statement, curiosity in her expression.
“Loneliness” she echoed.
Shinji nodded. “You hate being alone, don't you?” he guessed from a memory that may or may not have been Rei’s, buried deep in his mind. “To be one among many, but not accepted by the many”. Rei’s expression didn’t change, but somehow Shinji felt a shift in her, that he had gained her full attention.
“I do not understand” she replied, almost by rout.
“It’s like…” Shinji struggled to put his feelings into words… “If you refuse to get close to others, you can never be betrayed by them. Never be hurt by them”.
“Yes” she agreed with a nod.
“But to do so is to reject any possibility of understanding love, friendship, companionship…” he let his voice trail off. “And without these things, you will forever be lonely, you will never be able to forget this when you see other people together. Unless you can understand that your life has a purpose that makes people think this way towards you”.
“Unless you can accept that you are worth something…to someone” Rei stated, causing Shinji to smile, nodding at her.
“Do you…find value in me?” Rei asked.
“Yes” he replied without the slightest hesitation.
“Why?” she asked yet again.
He answered her question with one of his own. “Why do you pilot your Eva?”
Rei considered her answer.
“Because I am bonded to it”.
“Bonded?”
“It is a bond…to all people” she explained.
“You pilot to protect people, from the Angels”.
“Yes”
“Regardless of the risk to yourself”.
Rei shrugged ever so slightly.
“If I die, I can be replaced”.
“DON’T say that!”
Rei was more then a little startled at the sudden emotional outburst from Pilot Ikari at the dismissive statement she found relatively unambiguous, but he calmed down, stepping slightly closer with an earnest look on his face, resisting the urge to gently brush her face.
“Rei, you cannot be replaced. You are a unique individual”.

Rei simply stared at him. Shinji knew she wasn’t being rude, exactly, but as he wasn’t supposed to know about the ‘spare copies’ of her body, she couldn’t explain the denial in her eyes…so Shinji decided to push.

“Let me ask you Rei. If you died today and a replacement pilot arrived, would she be identical to you?”
Silence.
Shinji pressed on earnestly, feeling the opportunity slipping away and grabbing at it like a drowning man reached for a rope.
“Would she have every memory of yours exactly the same?” he challenged the silent pilot across from him. “Would she have every scar? Every mark on her skin? Every hair the same as yours? Would she think in exactly the same way?”

Rei’s thoughts turned inwards at this strange concept being put to her.

Honesty forced her to asses the concepts presented by Shinji. When she had…replaced, her previous ‘sister’, she had recalled many of her memories.
But they were hazy recollections of a past that was not hers.
She looked similar to her.
But there were clear and distinct differences between them.
I…am I she thought to herself, then repeated it again.
I am I.
I am I
Not her.
Perhaps twenty seconds had past before her head moved millimeters to focus back on Shinji.
“No” she replied honestly…and she found the realization troubling.

The door opened as the elevator finally reached the surface, allowing them to exit the building in silence.
There was a car waiting, a standard issue black sedan with NERV written in big, unsubtle, bold lettering and a standard issue big burly black suited guy with sun glasses who opened the door for Rei.
She strapped herself in with his help, then he passed over her medication, which she placed on the seat next to him, as her driver got back inside.
“Well…uh, I guess these are for you” he said shyly, passing over the flowers which she took, with only slight hesitation. “I guess…I’ll see you at school soon”.
“Yes...” she agreed, with a strange expression, holding the flowers gently with her free hand.
The cars engine started and Shinji stepped away, closing the door, then with a hum of its electric engine it pulled away for the nearby car train station.
“Thank you” Rei said softly in the back seat.
She was alone…but suddenly; she realized she didn’t feel quite so lonely.



Second Impact had definitely been one of the more cataclysmic events in the recorded history of the human species. Fully half the world’s population had been wiped out by the enormous forces unleashed both in Antarctica and in the aftermath as humanity suddenly found its comfortable inertia rudely interrupted, lashing out at each other over the suddenly scarce resources they had assumed would always be there.

The UN, formerly a simple world forum with delusions of power was, in half a decade turned into a powerful body with delusions that it was a world forum, as SEELE moved the pieces on its chess board patiently, taking control behind the scenes to divert the resources they needed to GEHIRN and then NERV and the Human Instrumentality Project. Yet for all their influence, there were some things that even they could not change.

Such as the fact that the vast majority of humans still loathed Mondays.
And Shinji too was not looking forward to today either.
Around him, dozens of students continued to pour into the grounds, mostly laughing and shouting greetings as they discussed what they had done over the long weekend they had been gifted thanks to the Angel attack, discussing the latest gossip over about the latest romance.
And not more then a few that talked about ‘this friend’ or ‘that classmate’ who had been evacuated from Tokyo 3 by their parents.

Sighing as the bell rang its musical tone and the students all started to move indoors with haste, Shinji fell in and made his way to classroom on autopilot, seeing so many of the familiar faces before stopping at the door.
He decided then and there it would probably better not to let everyone know he was an Evangelion pilot this time around.

It would be nice to just get treated as a normal kid, for once…

[Chris OFarrell]

The classroom was almost full, with only Shinji and a few Stragglers left to arrive as he reached the door, most people still standing around and gossiping freely .Only about a third were sitting at their desks, despite the fact that the bell had rung which wasn’t exactly unusual for a Monday, with everyone still trying to catch up with each other.
One exception was, of course, Hikari Horaki, who was sitting at her usual seat right next to the door, clearly mentally counting down the remaining seconds until she unleashed the firepower of her infamous glower to get everyone into their seats.

Shinji took a deep breath and stepped through the door.

“Uh excuse me…” he said as he stopped just inside, causing Hikari and the gaggle of girls around her to look up. One whispered something into another’s ear causing a fit of giggling to start and Shinji had to work to keep his face from burning up.
“Yes?” Hikari asked pleasantly after scowling her friends into something approaching silence.
“Uh my name is Shinji Ikiri, I’m-”
“Oh right!” she said in sudden recognition. “You’re the new transfer student!” she declared, standing up with a smile. “It’s good to have someone transferring in rather then out for a change” she sighed, shaking her head slightly. “Well there is a spare desk over here and if-”
“IT’S HIM! HE’S THE PILOT OF THAT ROBOT!”

Every conversation, every laugh, every noise in the classroom stopped as if a switch had been thrown and every pair of eyes turned to glance first at him, then Toji Suzuhara who had leapt to his feet at the back of the room, pointing directly at him with a look of shock on his face.

Well that was a nice fifteen seconds being treated as a normal kid Shinji sighed to himself as every person in the classroom charged forward at one.
“Really, Oh, wow!”-
“Cool!”-
“How were you chosen-”
“Were there any tests-”
“Weren't you scared-”
“What was it like when-“
“What's the cockpit look like-”
“That is SO cool-”
“Does it have any big guns-”
“Can it, like, transform-”
“What’s its name-”
Shinji tried to start stuttering out some answers, but was saved by a surprisingly strong pair of hands which yanked him out of the pack as Hikari pulled him clear then turned on the class with a glare that would have had Asuka beaming in pride of her friend.
“All of you, BACK TO YOUR SEATS! NOW!" she ordered, causing even the most excited fanboy –that position being currently filled by Kensuke who did remain in his seat but was furiously typing away- to back off and return to their desks, all of them still talking to each other in excitement and glancing at him. Toji Shinji noticed, was not looking at him at all, but staring at his desk with a stunned expression on his face as if his shouted revelation had taken all his energy.
Luckily, the Teacher chose that moment to enter, putting paid to any further conversations. Shinji very carefully stayed out of the various chat rooms the students frequented during the long boring lesson, thinking about the next Angel attack, which was due just over a week from today from memory, steeling occasional glances at an empty desk by the window.

Finally, the recess bell rung and the students all got up. Some went running for the door, no doubt to set the schools rumor mill into hyperdrive, others turned towards him. Shinji opened his mouth to beg for some space, when a voice sounded from right behind him.
“Hey, new Kid”.
Wincing slightly at the tone, Shinji took a deep breath and turned around to see Toji standing right behind him, his fists balled at his side with Kensuke right behind him, looking like…well… Kensuke normally did when he found out anything about the Evangelion program.
“Uh yes?” Shinji said, trying but not entirely able to keep the slight quiver out of his voice.
Toji stared at him for several long seconds…then his head came crashing down.
Shinji winced in reflex, his mind already bracing for the stinging ache of the fist he knew was coming…then frowned and cleared his eyes when he realized several seconds later that no such fist had impacted.
Toji was bowing to him.
“You saved the life of my Sister-”
“-and yourself” Kensuke pointed out with a smirk, receiving a sideways glare in return.
“-and myself” Toji admitted, before pressing on, “when you stopped that things explosion from killing us both. We both owe you a debt of honor for this!” he declared loudly, before snapping back into a ramrod straight posture.
Shinji’s mind flew in little concentric circles for a good five seconds as he tried to think of something to say, before he took a deep breath and stood up.
“It’s okay, really! I’m just glad I saw both of you in time”
A new burst of background noise erupted as Shinji admitted who he was, causing more people to run for the door and update the rumor mill.
“Uh can we go somewhere to talk?”
Toji nodded in agreement and quickly led Shinji out from the buildings, to a portion of the school yard relatively void of people, most of them from much younger years.
“Look, you don’t owe me anything” Shinji said calmly but firmly as soon as they stopped walking, sitting down on a convenient bench. “I chose to pilot to Evangelion to protect people from the Angel, you and your sister among them”.
“Uh I guess” Toji said, with an uncomfortable look on his face. “I just owe you a big one…I mean…”
“I could use a friend or two…I…I don’t really know anyone around here” Shinji asked in a small voice, desperately hoping that-
“All right! Sure! We can be great friends Shinji!” Kensuke nodded enthusiastically.
Toji’s somewhat formal face finally broke, and he smiled with a nod, causing Shinji to offer a smile, a genuine real smile from the core of his being in return.
“TOOJIII” a young and indignant female voice suddenly cut in, a pointed finger stabbing into Suzuhara’s back in a blur of motion, with enough force to almost topple him from the column he had been leaning against.

Kana Suzuhara was one of very few people who could push her elder brother around without any fear of retribution. It had in fact been this young girl who had –verbally- beaten her brother silly after she had found out Toji had slugged the pilot of the Robot that had saved her life, guilt tripping him so professionally that Toji had come to Shinji a matter of days later to beg him to punch him in the face, that being the only way to assuage the guilt Kana had slammed him with.
He knew despite appearances grounds that Toji utterly adored his younger sister as much as she looked up to her older brother and something deep inside Shinji was moved to utter joy to see her walking around like a girl her age should be walking about

Instead of in the hospital learning to walk again.

“Aweee come on Kana” Toji protested at the glare from the younger sibling, looking helplessly for support from Kensuke. “Dad and Grandad have been too busy to go to the store, I didn’t have time last night to make…”

The glare from his sister remained constant.

“Look I’ll buy you some lunch today, don’t worry!” Toji promised.
Kana sighed and dropped the anger with a smile.
“Okay. But this is the last time!” she pouted cutely.
“I swear, I swear!” Toji said with a somewhat silly bow, getting a snicker, then a smile in return. Clearly his sister couldn’t stay mad at him.
“Now that’s a housebroken man” Kensuke declared with a laugh of his own, albeit from a range safely beyond Toji’s fists. The jocks head turned malevolently at the comment, but paused as his gaze passed over Shinji, a slight smile coming across it. “Kana, I think there is someone here you might want to meet” Toji beamed, directing his sisters curious gaze to Shinji. She stared at him for a few seconds before her eyes suddenly widened and she jumped across to grab the surprised Third Child in a tight hug, kissing him quickly on his cheek.
“You’re the one who saved use from that thing!” she said in a choked up voice, hugging him tightly. “ThankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouTHANKYOU!” she declared, the befuddled Shinji’s eyes pleading for help from the two other men, both of whom were grinning at his flushing features. Swallowing, he slowly brought his arms up and gently hugged her back.
“Its okay…its okay…” he said softly, before gently prying her arms loose and getting some distance. “I’m just glad you and your brother are fine”.
“Who said he was fine? He’s a dumb Jock after all” she retorted with a shake of her hair.

Shinji stared at her for a few seconds…then burst out laughing, joined by Kana, then Kensuke and finally even Toji himself.

No he decided, this time around isn’t half bad after all.

[Sidewinder]

Good chapters. I like how Shinji and Rei's character is developing. Keep up the good work.

[LadyTevar]

YES! 10x Better!
I am glad you decided to reveal Shinji to the school.

[Vehrec]

Just so long as we remember that this is pretty much the happy season. Once it starts to fall apart. . . well it all goes doesn't it? Nice to see that Rei has reached the logical conclusion. Her death might not be the death of 'Rei', but at the same time, it would be as they put it in Sandman "A Point of View" that is lost forever. Not much else to say, except that you are doing a wonderful job.

[Academia Nut]

Yeah! More! I wish I could write this sort of thing as good as you Chris, I can only get into the minds of characters that I create myself, and that's probably due to a bit of author projection, but I digress.

Anyway Vehrec, things only really start to fall apart around oooh... about Episode 18 we'll say, when Toji gets picked to be the pilot of Unit 03 and is subsequently possessed. This is the absolute latest for Shinji's new show of spine to have major plot related consequences, as this version will not stand around while his friends get their asses handed to him and he will not allow Gendo to use the dummy plug to rip apart Unit 03. Even if something goes horrifically wrong, Shinji now knows the cost of running away, which was the problem most of the time after that episode. He'll probably be able to moderate some of Asuka's psychological problems so that it doesn't take her fighting the mass produced EVAs to snap her out of her funk. And if Asuka is around, then the fight where Rei II gets blown up might not end up that way, and right now she is certainly less likely to go kamikaze like that what with Shinji telling her that she is unique and valuable. And then, when SEELE is attacking, he won't mope around and do nothing while everyone is dying around him, he'll act. Finally, unless Chris throws us a massive curveball, worst case scenario has Shinji rejecting Instrumentality from the get-go instead of waiting until after everyone is red goo to decide its not for him.

Or at least, that's my take on it. The fun of course, is getting there and seeing the butterfly effect in action, as perceived by the fine author. We, like Shinji, already know what will happen, especially with regards to relatively context insensitive events like the arrival of the Angels, we just don't know how things will ultimately unfold. Especially considering that most of the worst shit is Shinji's fault for not acting in the first place.

[Redleader34]

Ok, this is great. Good Job, nice re-imanging of shinji, and with his full knowldge of this series, it is great. Its a good job.

[Chris OFarrell]

“Yo Ikari, wake up!”

Shinji snapped out of the doze he had fallen into during one of the inevitable lectures about second impact. To his surprise, between blinks, the classroom had changed; most of the students were standing and heading for the door in a massive tangle of people, the few remaining either snoring away without a car in the world, or packing up.

“It’s recess already?” Shinji asked in surprise as his mind returned to the here and now from a strange daydream where Misato screamed at him, demanding that he get out of bed and make her breakfast, while repeatedly hitting him over the head with a wiffle bat shaped like a progressive knife…
Man, his mind was really screwed up today…but he could easily guess why.

Company was coming to lunch.

“Yeah, it’s no biggie, you didn’t miss anything” Toji replied to his question, shrugging and leaning back to thump his feet down on the back of the desk in front of him. “Just Sensei going on and on and on about Second Impact”.

“Yeah, why do we have to hear the same thing about Second Impact, day in and day out” Kensuke asked the universe in protest, swinging his camera out the window to zoom in on some especially good looking girls as they exited the building. “I could recite every fact about the whole thing in my sleep”.

Well, you could recite the publicly sanitized version Shinji thought to himself, keeping his expression neutral as he stood, glancing at his watch.

Fifteen minutes.

“You coming?” Toji demanded of Kensuke as he crashed his own chair forward and stood.

“Are you kidding” Kensuke retorted, leaning half out the window as if trying to zoom just that much closer down at a group of girls from the year ahead of them. “This is the best seat in the house!”

“Pah, you chase after them” Toji said with a roll of his eyes, before his face went dreamy. “Misato is the only one for me…” he sighed, causing Shinji to almost roll his eyes.
That hadn’t changed at least, his two friends damn near drooling all over the floor when they had walked him home yesterday to meet NERV’s operations director for the first time, dressed in only her casual ‘short’ shots, top and giddy smile that had indicated she was probably already slightly tipsy.

“Eh, you’ve got no chance; Shinji has her wrapped around his finger” Kensuke bemoaned, his attention still focused on the yard – at least until one of Shinji’s books collided with his head. “Ugh! I take it back!”

“I’ll catch you later” Shinji smirked, stepping out of the room with Toji behind him.

“Man I am so hungry” Toji sighed, “I need something to eat, fast!”

“You always need something to eat” Shinji retorted as they walked down the corridor.
“Hey, I’m a growing man, mister scrawny!” Toji protested…then his expression mutated into one somewhat more sheepish. “And besides, uh, Kana took my lunch this morning when I didn’t make hers”.
Snickering back with a shake of his head at Toji’s complete ineptitude at being able to feed either himself or his sister, Shinji searched the faces moving around the crowded corridor, ignoring the majority that stared at him with a mixture of curiosity and mild awe in his effort to find one in particular. “Say…did you see where Ayanami went?”

“Rei?” Toji asked in some surprise, blinking at the odd question. The mysterious girl had come back to school yesterday after a long absence. No-one knew where she had vanished to, only that she was now covered in bandages and appeared as disinclined as ever to talk about anything.
At least if you didn’t know what to look for.
To Shinji’s hidden delight however while Rei had sat looking out the window all day yesterday as per normal, she had not done so with her ‘standard issue’ blank expression, but with a look of confusion and deep thought stuck on her face.
Very few people would be able to tell the difference, but to Shinji, it stood out as clearly as Unit One in a lineup next to his uncle’s garden gnomes.
He had rarely seen Rei with that expression on her face, certainly at least not for many many months into the ‘future’ after she had started to ever so slowly open up to him, bringing back a memory from his previous school.
‘When you have learned enough to question everything you know to be true, then you will begin to understand you have learned nothing’.
The Zen quote had been carved into the head of the classroom at his old school, he had walked past it for years and never given it a second thought, until he had forced Rei to look at the truth of her existence and challenge the assumptions she had built her life on.
Since then, they hadn’t exchanged a word; she was apparently not inclined to start any conversations with him, and he respected that she needed room to think.

Except for the fact that today of course, they had work to do.

“Oh wait, there she is, down there” Toji said suddenly, snapping Shinji’s train of thought back to the present as he gestured down a cross corridor of classrooms. Indeed, the blue hair and sling ensured Rei stuck out like a sore thumb but more then that, it was the bubble of space around her in the crowded passage that made it easy to find her, the other students almost subconsciously giving her a much more generous personal space then they may have afforded another person.
“I have to go and talk with her for a few minutes” Shinji said, then looking around and nodded to an empty classroom, the two stepping inside.
“Uh…okay” Toji said with a frown. “You sure have interesting tastes in women man…I mean Misato is…well…”

You don’t know the half of it Shinji thought to himself, wincing at the memory of the pile of beer cans he had almost drowned in this morning.
Even if half of them were Pen Pen’s. How in the hell Misato had turned that bird into an alcoholic…
Oh well, one hopeless battle at a time…

“Uh, no it’s not like that” he said with a shake of his head and a smile, his face flushing slightly, before looking back up and forcing a serious expression on his face. “Listen…Rei is an Eva pilot”. Toji’s eyes went wide at that, but Shinji pressed on, giving a quick explanation and finishing with “and that’s why I arrived, to pilot Unit One”.
“Well that explains why she keeps vanishing” Toji muttered as a piece of the puzzle clicked into place in his head. “But uh…why are you telling me this?”

Again Shinji glanced around the room, before deciding to risk it.

“Because the city might come under attack today”. Toji’s eyes went even wider somehow, but Shinji pressed on. “Don’t worry; there will be plenty of time to get everyone into the shelters…Kana is downstairs isn’t she?”
“Yeah” Toji nodded, then crossed his arms and smiled at the mention of his sister. “You know, you’ve been avoiding her for the last couple of days”.
“Sorry she’s just a little…” Shinji hesitated, completely unable to express himself to Toji, who laughed.
“Hey its okay Ikari, it’s just a little crush, I’m not going to hit you….unless you try anything stupid with her” he said, his tone turning deadly, but his expression and eyes remained amused.
“What? No! I would never do something like that!” Shinji spluttered, ‘old’ Shinji instantly stepping to the forefront and taking the bait hook, line and sinker.
“Why? She isn’t good enough?!” Toji demanded with a bark, causing Shinji to jump back a half meter in fright and Toji to burst out laughing for a second, before the heavy weight of the immediate future and Shinji’s revelations settled back on his shoulders. “Eh…yeah sorry, I didn’t-“
“It’s okay” Shinji assured him, glancing at his watch –five minutes. “Look I’ve got to go, do me a favor and keep an eye on Kensuke. I don’t want him sneaking out to get a look at frontline combat or anything stupid if something does go down”.
“I’d never let him do anything that stupid” Toji assured him with a superior look.
“No…I’m sure you wouldn’t” Shinji muttered, nodding at his friend and following him back into the corridor, Toji heading back the way he came, probably to pick up Kensuke then find his Sister.

Well, he had a ‘Sister’ to find as well for that matter.
.
The passage was now nearly empty and Rei was nowhere in sight, but it was an easy guess as to where she was going. Hurrying down to the end of the corridor, he turned the corner to the main stairwell, but instead of heading down to the school grounds like most people, he leapt up the stairs and eventually reached the roof.

Rei had clearly just arrived. She was only a matter of meters away, walking towards the edge of the roof where she often stood and stared out at the silver and white buildings of Tokyo 3 in the distance, much as she did in class.
”Pilot Ikari” she said without turning or breaking her stride.

How does she always know he wondered?

“Hello…Ayanami” he said in return awkwardly, shutting the door behind him and stepping up to walk next to her in silence, until they reached the railing at the edge of the roof.
The view was impressive, he had to admit that. The Valley that Tokyo 3 was situated in was something of a concave bow, broken only on the South side which slopped downwards towards Lake Ashi. The lowest point of the ‘bowl’ was directly above the center of the Geofront while the outer ring of the wide valley marked the absolute diameter of the massive underground cavern. Tokyo-3 High number 4 was situated just behind the Western edge of the ring, mostly because on the reverse side of the slope and a hundred meters under the school was a massive survival shelter capable of supporting sixty thousand people over several weeks if need be, where the school kids were expected to hunker down and wait out an Angel attack until the all clear was given..

Well, with two current exceptions anyway.

“The flowers are in my room” Rei spoke up quietly after several seconds of silence, startling Shinji until his mind finally caught up.
“Uh…that’s great” he nodded. “Did you put them in water?”
Rei inclined her head in a way that told him his answer without her needing to say anything.
“You uh…should put them in a vase of water, it helps keep them alive for longer” he explained. Rei considered his advice, and then nodded slowly before turning her eye back towards the city.
“Penny for your thoughts” Shinji suggested as he leaned down next to her, looking over the fortress city in front of them…then at the look on her face, he had to laugh.
“I am sorry Rei, its just a saying…I was wondering what is on your mind”.
Rei lowered her head to study some spec on the metal railing in front of them for a few seconds, before she looked back out at the city again with a slight sigh.
“I am…confused”.
“About what?”
Rei turned to look at him steadily, as if seeking something in his expression, before she decided to answer his question.
“About…my purpose in life”.
Now that is interesting Shinji thought to himself.
“You are hardly alone in that Rei” Shinji replied honestly with a sigh he didn’t really feel. No, his purpose was all too clear, equally majestic and terrifying, in his mind at all times of the day and night…
Not that that those thoughts would help Rei right now.
“Why are you confused about your purpose?” he asked instead.
Rei blinked.
“To have a reason to exist” she replied as if he had asked ‘why do things fall down’. “Life without purpose is merely…existence” she declared after some thought, her tone suggesting she no longer found ‘mere existence’ especially relevant or satisfying.
It was all Shinji could do not give her a hug then and there.
“That’s a…deep thought, Ayanami” Shinji replied as he considered her position. “But…a purpose to me, suggests that you have a reason for existing…that you exist, you have been…created for a purpose in life, if you will”.
“Yes” she responded without hesitation.
“Why?” he asked mildly.
Rei frowned, then paused, her single scarlet eye fluttering slightly as she considered her response.
“Rei” he continued after the silence stretched uncomfortably without a reply, “a purpose suggests that you exist to fill some kind of external use, something you have no control over, something you are used for” Shinji said gently, his mind in overdrive. “You are a unique, free, individual. By definition, your purpose is to live life as you wish to live it!”

Silence.
Okay, new approach Shinji he thought with a sigh.

“You told me a few days ago…that you pilot Unit Zero because you are bonded to it” he said after a few seconds, trying a new tactic.
“Yes” she agreed softly.
“To protect mankind from the Angels”
Rei nodded again.
Shinji smiled as he turned to look over the city again. “Why?”
Rei opened her mouth, then paused and closed it, a slight wave of frustration moving across her face, for reasons he could guess at quite easily as the contradiction of doing her job because Father told her to do it crashed right up against her newfound ability to define herself as a unique individual, whom he was now telling didn’t need to simply follow orders…time to push a little deeper.
“I pilot my Evangelion to protect you” he said softly, causing a rather charming flush of red to appear on her face as she looked away. “But I was initially brought here by my Father, he told me to pilot Unit One…simply because he ‘had a use’ for me, that he had found a purpose for me”. Shinji paused, surprised to find that just thinking about his Father still made him shudder.
“I mean, I only exist because of him, I am his Son. His DNA runs in my blood Rei” Shinji exhaled, noting out of the corner of his eye that Rei was focused completely on him, turning back to face her again.
“But I owe him nothing for that in of itself” he almost spat, causing her eye to blink at the bold statement. “Regardless of how it came about, my existence is my own; I do not belong to him. I chose to pilot Unit One to protect you, and everyone else in this city for that matter, not to serve his whims”. He paused to take a breath and calm down, before adding in a softer voice “and you Rei have the same ability to choose your own purpose in life, irrespective of the wishes of anyone else”.
Rei’s expression didn’t shift in the slightest. Her single uncovered eye burned into his own as he returned the stare levelly, time all but crawling to a stop as neither of them dared to flinch from the intensity of the gaze passing between them, Shinji all but daring her to reject his position-

Then their phones both beeped.

The two jumped slightly, breaking the frozen moment. Shinji was already holding his phone, having expected the call all morning. Flipping it open, he saw the text message from NERV he had been dreading.

[CENTER][CENTER]ALERT CONDITION ONE.[/CENTER]
[/CENTER]
[CENTER][CENTER]REPORT TO HEADQUATERS.[/CENTER]
[/CENTER]
[CENTER][CENTER]IMMEDIATELY[/CENTER]
[/CENTER]
[CENTER][CENTER]ACKNOWLEDGE CASPER-7399[/CENTER]
[/CENTER]

“Angel” he muttered, thumbing in his acknowledgment code that sent a return message back to the MAG, letting NERV know he had received the message. Rei also glanced at her own phone, replied and carefully replaced it into her bag, before standing up straight.
“We…must report in” she said, finding herself surprisingly glad for the interruption.
Shinji nodded and the pair swiftly made their way back to the stairwell without comment, down the stairs to the main schoolyard and towards the front gates. Shinji felt the eyes of many of his classmates wondering why he and Ayanami were running together towards the school exit and cursed, knowing the rumor mill would put two and two together and get six.
Or perhaps not.
A howling scream arose from around the school, causing the laughter and noise of children at play to reduce and then fall off into a strained silence. Seconds later, an announcement came echoing from the distance about a Special State of Emergency being declared as teachers and Class Representatives swung into action, but the two pilots were already clear of the grounds.




Two Hundred Kilometers off Japans Western Coast and fifteen minutes in the past, two JSDF F-15J interceptors pointed their noses into a long descending dive towards the pacific ocean, breaking through cloud layers with a precision and ease that spoke of pilots with long years of experience at the controls, their wings heavy with long range fuel tanks and Air to Air missiles.

“Ronan One flight of Two, Atsugi” the voice of their distant controller game into their headsets with perfect clarity. “Bogy is at your three O’clock Angels base plus fifteen, twenty miles”.
“Ronan copies, request clearance for intercept” the ‘lead’ fighter in the two pair element radioed back, trying to keep the boredom out of his voice. He had been doing the exact same thing every time he had gone up since that blasted first Angel attack two weeks ago. Apparently the brass were concerned something else was going to just come flying in, making them jump at every unexplained radar blip and contact.
All but one of which had been commercial airliners –hundreds of them-on proper routings, well outside the Air ID zone which they were required to check in.

What a waste of fuel the Colonel thought to himself with a sigh. Its not like after Second Impact, with much destruction of the worlds oil producing infrastructure, that the stuff was exactly cheap.Still, it was a wonderful day to fly, perfect weather and perfect visibility, so he couldn’t really complain about being given a chance to go for a flight.
“Ronan is cleared interception” the controller from the distant Naval Air Base came back finally.
“Roger” he replied, switching frequencies to his own flights private channel. “Two, combat spread, breaking left”.
“Two’s in” the curt reply came back from his wingman. Checking his straps one last time, he pulled his Oxygen mask firmly onto his face and disconnected the autopilot, curving smoothly down and away towards the deck cloud layer. The glare of the ocean from the sun made trying to find even a 747 difficult, so he slapped his sun visor down, cutting back the glare and letting him sigh in relief. A quick glance over his shoulder –yes the Captain was properly tucked in a combat spread behind and above him- and he was focused back on the intercept. He broke through the low cloud hanging well off the coast-

And his eyes went wide in shock.

Flying perpendicular to his course was a gigantic purple…thing. From his vantage point above his target, it looked like a kind of giant spear, a pointed head and a long shaft of a body behind it, with what looked disturbingly like eyes at the front, barely above sea level and motoring along at a good speed straight for Japan.
“Two, breaking right!” he said hurriedly, pulling into a turn to the right which his wingman skillfully mimicked, counting to ten before pulling into a long 180 degree left hand turn, bringing him up behind and above the bandit at a good distance.
“Lead, Two is that...”
“Yes” he said curtly, judging its speed at about Mach zero point eight and it’s distance at five kilometers. “Maintain radio silence” he ordered, switching his frequency back to his controller.
“Atsugi, Ronan lead is declaring case FIREFLY, I say again, Ronan lead is declaring case FIREFLY”.
There was a startled silence of four or so seconds over the channel, before the calm voice of his controller returned.
“Confirm FIREFLY Ronan. Say speed and heading”.
“Target heading two five ninner at mach zero point eight, speed and course steady”.
“Maintain position and report any changes Ronan. Do not engage”.
“Hai, maintain position, Ronan understands.
The General in charge of the duty staff at Atsugi swore, ripping off his headset and grabbing a red and white stripped phone.
“Get me the Tokyo 3 Operations! Now!”




A NERV car was waiting right at the front gate of the school for them with a pair of Section Two agents inside who said nothing, but drove down into the Geofront at high speed as sirens howled across the region. Shinji had expected the trip to crawl, instead it moved by in a blur as worries and fears he had felt since this morning started to rise to the forefront of his thoughts.
Approaching Tokyo 3 was a…thing, intent on killing him and everything he cared about before it exterminated his race. He had fought against it once before and come within a hundredth of a second of loosing, and despite telling himself that he was much more skilled then he had been the first time he had come up against it, that tiny spark of terror he felt at going into combat refused to be put out, slowly starting to smolder into his confidence as he clenched and unclenched his right hand, well on the way to working himself into a nervous wreck…

At which point a hand gently came down upon his.

If not for the seatbelt, Shinji decided he probably would have jumped out of the window at the unannounced contact, his eyes flicking over at the person next to him in the back seat.
To his astonishment, Rei had placed her hand on top of his own, stilling its movements with a gentle, cool and surprisingly soft touch that drained his tension, leaching it from his body like she was somehow absorbing it even though she was in fact looking out her window and paying no attention to him at all.
Shinji had no clue what to say or do to the almost casual response…so he just sat back and enjoyed the peace he suddenly found.
And when she intertwined her fingers with his, again without looking, he gripped back gently.
At least until the car screeched to a halt a few seconds later just outside the Eva cages, at which point they mutually let go, but the memory of her hands remained…

“Let’s go Kids!” a gruff voice came from beside him with a tap on the window. Blushing slightly, Shinji slapped his seatbelt release and opened the door, jumping out into the roaring noise of the cage as they worked to prepare Unit One for launch.
“Pilot Ikari” Rei called suddenly, causing him to turn towards her.
“Yes?’
“…Good luck” she said with some difficulty, before whirling and running away with a light grace towards an elevator.
Controlling the smile that threatened to work its way onto his face, Shinji slammed his own door shut and ducked through an open blast door to the base of the Eva cage, grabbing his plug suit from a technician waiting for him and struggling to change into it as the lift ascended the size of the cage towards the gantry
The ‘cage leader’, the senior NERV officer in charge of operations for Unit One was waiting for him as the lift opened, hurrying him down the catwalk suspended above the long, long, long drop to the ground, to his entry plug as Shinji depressed his wrist switch, causing the plug suit to hiss and contract into a skintight seal.
Without ceremony he jumped into the plug which was already in place behind Unit One’s neck, which smoothly sealed, then tilted and locked into place, the armor plates on the back of Unit One sealing him in with a muted thud, as the entry plug flooded with LCL.




“The target has been sighted by our cameras. It's already penetrated into our territorial waters” Aoba called out as the main screen in the operations centre switched to a long range view from a shore camera, looking out over the ruins of Japans old coastline to the bizarre thing inbound, being paced by a pair of F-15’s.
There was no way the gigantic purple…thing, cruising at just under supersonic speeds couldn’t be anything but an Angel, but they had just received confirmation from the MAGI of a blue pattern, letting NERV swing into full scale action.

“All personnel assume Battle Stations, level one!” Fuyutsuki ordered curtly, resisting the urge to bite his fingernails. In the absence of the Commander, he was now in charge of the entire military response. And unlike Gendo, he held no illusions that he was any kind of military genius.

He was a professor of meta-biology, not a soldier for Gods sake.

Still, at least he had a solid group of people working for him …
“Roger” Misato answered his order smoothly, turning towards her staff. “Prepare for anti aircraft interception!”
“Tokyo-3 transforming to battle formation” Hyuga nodded, typing away on his keyboard.
“Initiate accommodation of the central block” another operator called.
“Bringing UN forces to full battle conditions” said another.

Far above them as the streets emptied, buildings moved. Some descended into the ground, others, with far fewer windows and a much more sinister and utilitarian look, rose into the sky in their place. On the outskirts of the city, UN vehicles rolled into position, mostly comprised of tanks and general purpose missile launchers. Weapons emplacements built into the side of the mountains exposed themselves and even on the Hakone Ropeway, ‘special’ cable cars mounting autocannons instead of sightseers were strung into place like Christmas decorations across the verdant hills.

Within five minutes, Tokyo 3 had transformed from a busy modern city into the most heavily defended location on the planet, with only a handful of grim camouflaged troopers ducking through the city streets to their posts.

“Accommodation of central block and the first through seventh districts has been completed. The evacuation is complete and the Government and other related ministries have been notified” Hyuga said as his board went green.

“The target is still advancing” Aboa called out as the main screen switched to new camera, this one on one of Tokyo-3’s own buildings. “Time to engagement, two minutes sixty seconds”.

“The entry plug has been inserted into Unit One, we are ready for startup” Maya broke in.
“Do it” Akagi ordered, her hands in her lab coats pockets as she stood behind her protégé, watching over the readings but letting Maya do the job herself in a subtle sign of confidence in her subordinates abilities.
“Roger” she replied, tripping the main power circuit. “Commencing A-10 nerve connections…link active, bio readings stable”.
“Initiate second connection”.
“Second connection levels stable, synchronization ratio at ninety four percent” Maya confirmed, once again causing Ritsuko to shake her head in astonishment and exasperation.
“Very well, commence third connection”.
“Absolute borderline in zero point three…zero point one…cleared, Unit one has been activated!”

“Understood” Misato called, spinning around to the main screen. “Shinji?”
A window popped up, ‘picture inside picture’ style on the main screen that was tracking the Angel as it crossed the coast, showing the Third Child inside his entry plug, looking confident.
“Right here, Misato”
“We’re going to do this just like we practiced Shinji” she said as the giant he was inside was shuttled to the launch pad.
“I’m ready” was all he said with a nod.
“Good” she smiled, not able to think of anything else to say that would sound trite to a fourteen year old kid going into battle. But once again the near overwhelming pride in her young charge came flooding to the forefront, as Shinji Ikari once again took up the gauntlet thrown down by the Angels.
“The target has entered the mountains” Aboa warned. Engagement in fifteen seconds”.
“Stand by to deploy Unit One to surface, access Sixteen Bravo” Misato ordered, citing a launch exit on the Eastern most edge of the city, right at the head of a valley the Angel was probably going to come flying down if it held its course.
“Roger” Maya said, tapping her keyboard and arming the system as Aboa looked from his board.
“Target entering outer engagement zone!”
Misato snarled with a wolfish grin.
“Launch Eva! Commence firing!”

In one of the more impressive showings of firepower in the modern world, hundreds of auto-cannons, missile launchers, rocket launchers and heavy guns opened fire simultaneously for the first time in anger, pounding the incoming Angel with enough ammunition to shred a battleship, all of it exploding harmlessly dozens of meters away as the hostile flew serenely through the curtain of firepower towards the urban sprawl ahead of it, towards the shadow of the Black Moon and the echo it sensed deep under Central Dogma.

Below ground, Shinji’s jaw rattled as Unit One thundered towards the surface, his mind body moving through the motions, arming the Type – 4 Evangelion rocket launcher beside him and holding his AT field in readiness.

Batter up Shinji, he thought, going over everything he remembered.

Forth Angel. Flies or hovers to get around, doesn’t have legs. Has a tough core, the progressive knife took half a minute of sustained cutting to cut through. Two cutting ‘tentacles’ for weapons, both capable of punching through one side of Unit One and out the other without slowing down. No ranged weapons I ever saw…but Angels can adapt and evolve.
A loud buzzing started to echo in his cockpit, the six second warning and he took a deep breath.
Okay. Keep it at range, nullify its AT field and direct as much firepower as possible into it.


The blurred tunnel of the launch tube vanished to be replaced by the bright green foliage of the outer ring of Tokyo-3, followed by the crunch as the lift crashed to a halt. Directly ahead only kilometers away, the gigantic, snake like figure of the Angel bore down on Tokyo-3, ignoring the streams of tracers and smoke trails directed at it from arsenal buildings, missile launchers and other defensive emplacements, the ordinance either bouncing off its AT field or just exploding with no effect well short of the target.
Well, we’ll just see about that! Shinji decided, shouldering the missile launcher that had been deployed with him and expanding his AT field to maximum range.

The Angel, as quick as the snake it looked like, turned directly towards him and dove the instant he unfolded his AT field, bearing down as if it wanted to ram him. It shuddered slightly as it hit his AT field, but pushed onward, a pair of bright pink links uncoiling from its ‘arms’ as it approached at a terrifying rate-
Shinji jumped to the side as hard as he could, barely avoiding the twin whips as they scathed through the area he had just vacated, slicing the launch cradle into dozens of chunks of metal with perfectly clean cuts as it passed overhead, pulling its own AT field back away form Unit One’s as it banked into a curve. A handful of shots from the defensive batteries closer to the city managed to connect before it’s AT field shifted, denting the thick purple ‘skin’, but doing depressingly little damage as it majestically came about.
“It’s fast!” Shinji coughed as he heaved Unit One to its feet.




“The armor on that thing is incredible” Hyuga bemoaned as the Angel came about over the very outskirts of Tokyo 3. AAA and SAM batteries continued to blaze away with perfect accuracy, but no real effect now that Unit One was no longer neutralizing the AT field. “Its moving too fast to get in any real damage with conventional weapons when it’s AT field drops”.
“And those whips it’s packing are deadly” Aboa agreed, his hands flying across his keyboard as he worked to analyze what little data he had. “They can probably slice right through his armor if they connect”.
“Sassy bastard” Misato growled as her mind whirled. “We need to make those few hits we get count for more. What do we have that’s heavier then what we’re throwing at it?” she demanded, spinning to face her technicians.
“Well…apart from N2 weapons, just the Type 20 positron rifle“.
“Perfect” she declared. Deploy it to Shinji’s location stat!”
“Roger” Aboa said, reaching for his microphone and barking orders.
“But the type 20 hasn’t been field tested yet!” Ritsuko protested, spinning around from Maya to face the Operations Director. “It might just blow up in his face for all we know”.
“We don’t have a choice” Misato snapped back, not taking her eyes off the screen as the Angel finished a smooth turn to head back the way it had come, towards the Valley at Shinji, who was sighting down the barrel of his rocket launcher at the incoming target with a coolness that enflamed the pride she felt for him.
“You’re out of line Captain!” Ritsuko snapped, causing the temperature to drop ten degrees in the operations centre. “Your risking catastrophic damage to Unit One-“
“I am the Operations Director Doctor” Misato snarled back, surprised at the edge in her voice. “And I am not going to carry on a running argument with you during a battle. Now if you have a better idea, say so. Otherwise, clear the bridge!”
Ritsuko worked her jaw, but turned back to her console without protest, though Misato felt a slight pang as their friendship –damaged after her revelations about what had happened to Shinji and Asuka’s mothers and Misatos gut feeling that that was only the tip of the iceberg- frayed a little more.
“The Type 20 is being loaded onto the linier carriage, two minutes to the surface” Maya said in a level voice, breaking the sudden tension and focusing everyone on their jobs.
“Two minutes…this thing will be over in two minutes!” Misato growled at the screen, even though she knew it wasn’t anyone’s fault.
The Angel accelerated into the attack again on the screen, this time with its tentacles snapping ahead of it gleefully as it bore down on the suddenly tiny looking Unit One, which stood fearlessly in its path.




It’s a good thing I don’t have a very high fiber diet Shinji thought to himself as the ‘Angel of The Morning’ dove towards him, its ‘arms’ hungrily reaching ahead of it.
The heavy guns and high velocity rocket launchers that could be brought to bear once again opened fire, unleashing volley after volley at the intruder with perfect accuracy.
What a waste of the taxpayer’s money Shinji laughed humorlessly to himself before the weapons emplacements ceased fire, the Angels path taking it too close to Unit One to risk shooting. Part of his mind followed the shouting back at headquarters as Misato tried to find him a bigger gun, but Shinji had more immediate concerns and he tuned it out. The Angel itself was playing a much more cagy game then he remembered it doing last time. Shinji didn’t know if that was because he had intercepted it short of the city, or if this was an indicator that Adams offspring were going to start playing rough.
He prayed to a God he really didn’t believe in that it was the former.
Its tactics were almost perfect though, by flying by so fast it only left him about a half second to neutralize the AT field and get a shot in, while in return he would be damned lucky to avoid getting decapitated, slices in half or just picked up and thrown around at will by those deceptively fragile looking ‘arms’.
It wasn’t fair damn it!
And when Asuka faced down Evangelions Five through Fourteen with three minutes of power and nothing but a progressive knife, did she stand around and cry about how unfair life was? a part of his mind asked with a sneer.
Okay, fair point…
What would Asuka do in this situation?
A memory flicked into his mind, Asuka leaping into combat with absurd glee on her first sortie, jumping high into the air and cleaving 7th Angel in two.

Concentrating harder; Shinji surrendered his perceptions to those of the Evangelion, feeling himself almost melt into the giant cyborg. Instantly, he wasn’t in the entry plug, suddenly he was standing in the valley, he was gripping the rocket launcher in his hands, he was in the line of fire as the glowing ‘whips’ swung towards his head…and it was his head they were swinging towards.
So it was time to be somewhere else.
Unit One squatted then jumped as hard as Shinji could make it, leaping into the Angels path as the two AT fields again crashed together, momentum transferring slightly to push him backwards as vents on the lower rear of the Evangelions shoulder blades snapped open and a series of rockets ignited for a split second, throwing him high above the Angels line of flight and into a slight forward tumble. The Angel, committed on its run was unable to adjust fast enough to the completely unexpected tactic, its tentacles shredding his power cable but missing the Evangelion as Shinji’s roll brought his launcher, still firmly in his hand to bear at point blank range.
Fire exploded from the circular tube as the magazine emptied in rapid fire, one, two three of the massive 16 inch rockets connecting and clobbering the ‘top’ of the Angel, blasting huge craters down its side.
This time, the Angel didn’t simply fly away unharmed but violently rolled to the right and down, its ‘head’ crashing into the rice paddies that lined the bottom of the valley and digging in, sending thousands of tons of dirt flying into the air.

Leaving Shinji just the slight problem of being in an uncontrolled airborne spin as Gravity reclaimed its hold.

Unit One slammed into the Northern hill lining the valley in a half crash, half crouch of a landing, leaving two footprints embedded on the rock face above a major highway that would become quite the tourist attraction over the next few months, and eventually part of a major Nike marketing campaign.
Recovering, Shinji rebounded off the Cliffside and down to the valley to another half stumble, but quickly recovered and spun around to face the Angel, discarding the empty launcher.




“Wow” was the only word any of the operations staff could come up with, in this case coming from the lips of Misato as the staff watched the stunned Angel try to pick itself up after Shinji’s utterly insane, if effective move.
Then, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say, she said it again.

“Type 20’s almost ready” Maya shouted, breaking the silence as she hurriedly worked her magic. Technical Division Two had broken records in getting the weapon dragged over to the launching catapult to Shinji’s current location; a swarm of workers were even now setting it into place to be launched, knowing the outcome depended on them. Misato was proud of how well everyone was performing…but time wasn’t on their side here.




The Angel had already risen to its horizontal hover by the time Shinji had turned around, then it slowly, but malevolently started to pitch backwards towards a vertical position, its ‘head’ and ‘shoulders’ rotating into place as it completed the transformation into the Angels more familiar, vertical stance.

It wasn’t all bad news though. To Shinji’s surprise as the Angel slowly turned to face him, he noticed one of his hits had blown the left tentacle clean off.
Only one arm, this I can handle he decided, releasing his Progressive Knife with a thought. The Angel, its courage –or wind- back, floated forward with its single remaining ‘arm’ waving around violently like a shield, daring him to attack it.
If that’s the way you want it he shrugged, easing forward.
At once, the tentacle shifted in a blur, snapping back, then forward at incredible speed right at his head. Shinji instinctively raised his Eva’s left hand to intercept the strike and cried out in pain as metal plates of armor started to drip into molten slag to the ground, the hand and tentacle mutually gripping around each other in a deadly bond, his hand feeling like someone had wrapped white hot barbed wire around it.
Not…smart Shinji snarled silently in between gasps at the Angel, bringing his Progressive knife to life with its thunderous roar. You just screwed up, leaving your core unprotected big boy!
With a roar, the progressive knife crashed into the side of the core. Unlike the Third Angels, the core of this Angels was slippery, only very slowly yielding to the force but as the seconds ticked away, the core continued to slowly fracture, the grip on his left hand becoming increasingly frantic as Shinji increased the pressure -
Then ten seconds in, another whip slapped into his right hand wrist, sending the progressive knife spinning off over the hillside.
“What the-“ he demanded, then finally noticed to his horror that the Angel had somehow regenerated the damage to its shoulder that had blown the whip away, a brand new glowing thread of energy, which was already curving back around from its strike.
“Oh, give me a-“
Unit One’s arm moved almost without him being aware of it, intercepting the Angels follow up strike at his head and holding it at bay, but jolts of energy rolled down his arms as the circuit was completed, causing his muscles to spasm painfully with his high Synch Ratio, an involuntary scream ripped from his mouth as he furiously pushed back against the pain.




It was pure luck that Fuyutsuki happened to be looking at Rei as Shinji’s scream filled the command centre. The First Child had been watching the battle with her usual “empty” but curious expression, staying out of the way as she studied the enemy she would have to fight one day. But when Shinji’s cry of pain ripped through the command centre…
Her fists clenched.
Tightly.
This for Rei, was about the equivalent of a normal person getting a bullhorn and screaming loudly into NERV’s public address system that they were rather concerned about Shinji.
This behavior needs investigation he decided. The idea of Shinji and Rei forming some kind of friendship was slightly disturbing, mostly because of the implications of where it might lead…but this barely qualified as a suspicion. A true, platonic friendship could be quite beneficial for both of them if properly managed, but things were starting to move too quickly to risk playing around with a key part of Gendo’s plans…
He decided to have a quiet talk with Rei after this battle was over, but put her out of his mind for now, returning his attention to the screen where it belonged.
Back at the battle, Shinji had managed to plant his feet in a wide stance, then with an almighty, almost Herculean effort and a roar of anger, he spun, centrifugal force sending the Angel flying down the Valley as he threw it by its ‘whips’ away from Tokyo 3 to crash in a rather undignified position on its back, its arms flailing and turning several abandoned houses into free firewood.

“Maya!” Misato shouted as Shinji’s power timer slipped under three minutes. The young technician furiously taped her keyboard-
“Ready!”
“DO IT!”
The catapult fired instantly, the gigantic rifle roaring skywards.




Shinji retreated to the lift as the Angel got back to its ‘feet’, like a champion Boxer that had taken a blow you hoped would knock it out but actually did little more then tick it off. Interestingly, it didn’t look like it had regenerated the damage he had done to the core and he wondered if there was some kind of limitation to that, but forcibly put all thoughts out of his mind.
“Shinji, the positron cannon is arriving. Just point and shoot, but you’ve only got seven shots!”
“Roger” he acknowledged as the gigantic weapon rose from the depths of the Earth. Picking it up, he swung the cannon onto his shoulder, grunting slightly at the weight, and brought it into line with the Angel as it floated back towards him.
Centering the crosshairs, he pumped the trigger. Twice.
Twin balls of white light burned downrange and smashed into the core of the Angel. The ‘positron rifle’ wasn’t really a dedicated antimatter weapon as its name implied. In fact, only a tiny percentage of each shot was made up of positrons, a tiny sphere of them, encased in a magnetic field and cocooned in high energy plasma, which in turn was cased in yet another magnetic field to keep the whole package together. As each bolt crashed into the Angel, the plasma did its usual thing and burned into the target the target for a split second…
Then the antimatter impacted.

Mutual annihilation was not a pleasant thing to happen to any kind of matter, but the Angels electron rich core was really not the best place to be hit by the positron cannon.
The core shattered into chunks and Shamshel crashed down a dozen meters to hit the ground. Operating on pure reflex Shinji brought the cannon back down from the recoil and triggered a third shot that sent the purple figure reeling back to crash into the ground of the Valley, completely unmoving. Cautiously walking forward, he held the cannon ready for another volley, but as the smoke cleared, he saw that while the Angel had apparently regenerated the rest of its damage, the core was simply now a blackened, charred wasteland, the tentacles hanging from its shoulder blades now nothing more then dark cables.
“The target has gone completely silent” Aboa called as the smoke continued to clear. “Energy readings have dropped to zero”.
And the best part about going back in time he thought, switching his radio over to the general frequency, all those lines you came up with too late…
“Anyone for fried squid?” Shinji asked brightly into the brittle silence, causing hundreds of UN and NERV personnel to burst out laughing.

With the exceptions of Rei Ayanami, who let the slightest ghost of a smile pass over her face before she turned and left the command centre, Kōzō Fuyutsuki who bemoaned that the kid was embarrassing NERV and Misato who just sighed and gave a smile of thanks that Shinji had survived.

“Funny. Now get your ass back down here” she ordered.
“Yes Mam” he replied. Unit One tossed a salute to the cameras point of view as UN troops advanced towards the downed Angel, many of them waving or cheering as the giant made its way back to the lift, set the Positron rifle down carefully next to it, then bolted itself on and was retrieved, vanishing back into its lair below ground.




“That…was the most awesome cool super amazing thing I have ever SEEN!” Kensuke Aida half whispered and half shouted as Unit One dropped back down towards the Geofront, packing his camera back into his backpack with a grin on his face. Sneaking away hadn’t been easy, but damn if it wasn’t worth it.
“That was the most insane and stupid thing you have ever done” Toji snarled without warning. The younger man yelped in surprise as Tokji’s hand grabbed a fistful of Aida’s shirt and yanked him from his place of concealment, a hill behind, but looking down into the Valley Unit One and the Angel had fought through.
“Toji!” he said in astonishment, ”what, when-“
“I promised Shinji that I would keep an eye on you” the rather intimidating jock snapped as he hauled his protesting classmate back over the top of the hill he had been standing, “to make sure you DIDN’T do anything stupid like this!” Toji all but flung the protesting Aida down the slop to the nearby stone stairs that led back to the shelter. “I told you to stay in the shelter but no, you had to go and be an idiot!”
“I can take care of myself!” Kensuke protested, causing Toji to slap him over the head again.
“Wrong answer! What would have happened if Shinji had seen you up there when he was fighting! A split second distraction, a hesitation that that…thing he was fighting could use against him! What if he didn’t take a shot because he thought he might miss and hit you and he lost the battle!”
Kensuke opened his mouth to protest…then closed it as the words started to sink in, unable to meet Toji’s glare.
Toji forced himself to close his eyes and take a deep breath. Kensuke hadn’t meant any harm after all, but despite the fact that he was one of the smartest kids in the class, he could be a dense as a brick when it came to thinking things through!
“This isn’t a game Kensuke” he said in a more level voice. “Real people are fighting and dying out here to protect us. I made a stupid mistake when the last Angel attacked, my Sister and I almost died because of it. I thought you were smarter that”.
“I...I’m sorry” Kensuke muttered, suddenly feeling miserable. Toji was right, he realized, kicking himself for making such a stupid decision. He had gone up, deciding to take the risk to try and get some footage of the battle after finding yet again nothing but propaganda on the TV channels, reasoning that he was only risking his own life.
But if he had caused Shinji to loose, get hurt or do something that hurt other people....
“Look, your right. It was stupid…I won’t do it again” Kensuke said as honestly as he could.
Toji grunted as they hurried down the steps as fast as they could, hoping against hope to get back before they were missed.
“Its okay, look just don’t do it again K”
They reached the door to the shelter, a thick vault like construct. The two grunted as they pulled it open, jumping inside-
“YOU IDIOTS!”
“YOU MORONS!”
Kana Suzuhara and Hikari Horaki stood just inside the door, apparently having just run around the corner into the access corridor themselves, looks of simultaneous anger, relief, fury and exasperation warring on their faces as they bore down on the suddenly terrified young men, who froze like dears in headlights.
“Uh…we just had to go outside and AHAHH-“
Toji’s rather lame attempt to explain what they were doing outside in a military emergency ended abruptly as his sister seized his ear in one hand and pulled, dragging him furiously back towards the shelter, followed by Kensuke, who’s ear was in the firm grasp of the Class Representative.
“Ease up Kana” Kensuke begged, to the surprise of everyone, especially Hikari who had an irrational surge of anger and wondered if she was causing her charge enough pain, given he was worried about Toji over himself. “It was my fault” he pleaded, “I ran off and he just came looking for me”.

Kana, whose terror at finding her brother had vanished during an Angel attack was still rather potent at least was calm enough to stop and turn to face her brother with a surprised expression, before –grudgingly- letting go of his ear along with Hikari, the two men making rather pathetic whimpering noises as they rubbed their ears.

“Is this true?” Hikari demanded with a raised eyebrow at Toji. Kensuke gave him a slight nod.
“Yes…but it was my choice to go after-” he tried to protest, but was cut off by the indignant Class Rep.
“YOU don’t make that choice Suzuhara” she snapped, “you scarred your sister to death running off like that!”
“I didn’t have time” he protested lamely. “I couldn’t just stand here and let him get killed” Toji protested.
Hikari now looked mad enough that Toji, if asked, would have given even odds on a showdown between Shinji in his Evangelion and Hikari with her bare hands, but the Class Rep stopped at his protested long enough to close her eyes and take deep, long breaths.
“You two stooges are the biggest idiots I have had the misfortune of meeting” Hikari said, turning to face Toji. “If we ever come down here again, you will sit in a corner where we can watch you the entire time, you will not move, you will not blink, you will not talk without my express consent. Am I clear?’
“Yes Mam” he barked like a recruit at boot camp, fear still lacing his voice at the look on her face. She held her expression, trying to hide her own terror at the thought of anything happening to Toji under the persona of the Class rep before swinging around to face the second Stooge.
“Kensuke. I am going to have to report you leaving the shelter without permission”. She struggled however as she considered what that meant, her intellectual honesty warring with her sense of ‘rightness’, before continuing with a slight sigh. “But I won’t say you left the complex itself, I’ll say you just ran off to the bathroom without permission or something”.
“Th…thank you!” he spluttered. Kensuke had expected to be hauled off to the Principals office, suspended or expelled or even locked away by the military…the possibilities had kept growing at the look of anger in the two Girls eyes.
But he was off the hook and the group started back towards the main part of the shelter, Kana holding her brothers hand almost gently and Kensuke trying to make himself as small as possible, catching the not so subtle threat in the class Reps eyes.
Betray this trust…and you will wish that the military had locked you up…


“Get up Shinji! You’ll be late for school!”
Shinji groaned, feebly reaching to try and get out of the bed.
He succeeded. But rolling out onto the floor with a loud thud was not the way he had intended to do it.
He had stayed up late last night at a victory party at NERV in the main cafeteria, mostly an excuse for the hard working adults to drink reasonable amounts of Alcohol –when Gendo was away, NERV would play after all- but he had enjoyed it, even if he hadn’t been allowed to drink anything but soft drinks.
It had been more then anything, the outpouring of goodwill from all the personnel, their constant thanks, hugs from more then a few women which had caused him to blush, even the slight smile and comment of ‘Excellent work, Shinji’ from the Vice Commander, that had made it such an enjoyable night.
And the outpouring of approval was so horribly addictive…it wasn’t so long ago that everyone had abandoned him, even if they really hadn’t and he had been just as much at fault for pushing them away…it was almost like a drug.

Of course, despite the fact that he had killed an Angel, despite the fact that he had stayed up to about two before he went home with Misato –or more accurately, before he and some NERV personnel got a somewhat tipsy Misato home- and into bed, Shinji cursing all the way up the stairs internally that Kaji wasn’t here to do it yet, he still had to go to school today.

Nuts to that! he thought, reaching for his pillow and placing it over his head, willing the bliss of sleep to come from his position on the floor.
It wasn’t to be however, as Misato cracked open his door and ripped off his blanket.
Luckily, he did have clothes on.
That could have been an interesting twist…
“Oh come on Shinji, if I have to go to work today, you can go to School!” she declared.
Shinji, his eyes only opened to cracks right now could only think that Misatos legs, now only a foot length from his head really WERE perfect from up close. Not a mark, not a hair at all on them anywhere he could see.
Did he dare tilt his head to look up the legs, past the knee length dress…
No.
He did not dare.
“Hmmmreeshhhhssseeepoooodyyyyy…”
“Eh?” Misato blinked in confusion. Shinji sighed, shut his eyes and marshaled some little bit of energy to try and form the words properly.
“I’m too tired to go to school today” he moaned. “Don’t I get a day off for stopping mankind’s destruction for another week or two?’
“This is Japan Shinji-Kun” she said sweetly, reaching down and yanking him to his feet with a surprising, but not a violent show of strength, indicating to Shinji she must have already had her ‘wakeup beer’ for this morning. “You’re expected to go into work, or school, unless you have a legal document declaring you clinically dead”.
“Call Ritsuko” he moaned, rubbing his head gingerly. “I think I qualify”
Misato laughed, teasing him for having a hang over without drinking, before half guiding and half pulling him out his room towards the bathroom.

Fifteen minutes of cold water later and he was awake and mostly alert, changing into his uniform with a sigh. Worst case, he could always catch up some of his sleep in one of the lectures about Second Impact.
He grabbed some of the breakfast Misato had made –and managed not to completely destroy, chewing down enough food to get him through the day, when the doorbell rang.
Slipping on his shoes, Shinji picked up his bag and headed for the hallway.
The door to Misato’s apartment slid open, showing Toji and Kensuke, both utterly immaculate, both utterly beaming.
“Good morning Shinji” they said before shoving their heads in to look down the entranceway. “GOOD MORNING MISATO!” they then bellowed in perfect unison.
“Heeyyy guys” she replied in a purring voice, an arm wrapping around the doorway to the kitchen and waving generally in their direction.
Even that was enough to cause the eyes of the two young men to start watering.
“I’ll see you later Shinji! No tests today”
“Right!” he called back, then none to carefully stepped forward, letting the door close behind him and forcing the other two kids to back off.
“Oh man she is so hot!” Toji bemoaned. “Her voice is like that of an Angel”.
“And her apartment is like that of a slob” Shinji said dryly…but in a soto tone, not willing to risk the wraith of his Guardian this early in the morning, as the trio descended the stairs.
“I could live with that!” Kensuke protested with a snort. “You have the hottest, coolest guardian in the history of guardians Ikari, you don’t know how lucky you are!”
“Oh yes I do” Shinji smiled suggestively, causing the two to stop dead.
“No…you wouldn’t-“
“You couldn’t-“
“You can’t!-“
“And I didn’t Shinji laughed.
“I knew it” the two said simultaneously with a mixture of disappointment that there were no steamy details coming and elation that they might still have a ‘chance’.




Misato sighed as she cracked open a fresh can of bear, speed dialing Section 2 – Delta, the protective detail that covered the two Evangelion pilots deployed at Tokyo 3. A quick confirmation that Shinji was on the way and she could relax in the knowledge that he was now better protected then any other kid in the country, excepting Rei of course.
There were six Agents in Shinji’s detail who shadowed him from the time he left the apartment both in cars and on foot, to when he arrived home at night, with another ten men spread throughout the school to watch Shinji and Rei while they were there, plus a quick response team at headquarters with heavy weapons.
Just in case.
With only three people out of three billion so far identified as capable of piloting Evangelions, the UN and NERV were not shy about ensuring their safety, albeit from the shadows to let them have as normal life as possible. To this end, Tokyo-3 High was probably the most secure high school in the world.
After all, not many schools employed janitors who were ex-military and carried around MP5-K submachine guns in their cleaning supplies.

Flipping her phone closed and grateful that she didn’t have to be at work for another hour and a half, Misato turned on the TV with a sigh switching to the news channels, mostly for curiosity. The MAGI always presented her with anything she needed to know about around the world, she had come to rely on the semi-sentient computers for keeping her up to date.

Unsurprisingly, the Japanese news was again focused on the ‘special state of emergency’ that had been declared for the Kanto and Central regions centering on the Tokai area yesterday, with each channel she flipped through reporting the same story NERV’s propaganda department had cooked up, so she started to surf through the other 24/7 channels.
“The Prime Minister remains tight lipped about the events-“
“rumors of military engagements of another hostile attacker of unknown origins-“
“statement from the 3rd district JSDF General, about the sequence of-“
“UN forces successfully engaged and defeated the hostile with superior firepower and tactics, while-“
Misato sighed and flicked off the screen, taking another sip of beer. She loved mornings.




A standing ovation greeted Shinji as he passed into classroom 3-F with Toji and Kensuke behind him, stopping him dead in his tracks in surprise.
“Thank you, thank you Ladies, I would like to say on behalf of”- Toji began in a dramatic voice, only to have a half dozen books, lunchboxes and items of stationary fly through the air and knock him into the front wall of the class with a yelp, putting the class focus back on their true and somewhat surprised target.
“You ROCK Ikari-“
“I mean wow, that jump was AWESOME-“
“What was that gigantic gun you used at the end? Oh man that thing was so-“
“Thank you SO much-“
“Can you sign my lunchbox-“
“NO! Sign mine-“
“Shinji-Kun I’m free this Saturday-“
A loud CRACK cut off any further speculative questions, praise or date requests as a half meter ruler held loosely in Hikari Horaki’s left hand crashed down onto a desk just in front of Shinji, instantly cutting off all conversation as if a switch had been thrown.
“Seats!”
No-one crossed the Class Rep when she used that voice.

“Uh, thanks Hikari” Shinji muttered as everyone moved back into their own seats.
Hikari offered him an impish but honest smile, which was a nice change from the rest of the girls in the class, who disturbingly he felt were all speculatively undressing him…
Not that the attention wasn’t flattering, but his heart had long since become the personal legal property of Langley Soryu Corp.

A No-Liability Company he thought with a smirk.

“Let’s uh go outside for a second” Shinji sighed to his friends, ducking out into the hallway and making for the rooftop, luckily finding it empty.
Shinji waited until the door shut behind them, before raising an eyebrow. “Well?”
Kensuke and Toji exchanged a look.
“It was my fault, I snuck off-“
“And I uh went looking without telling anyone, so its my fault as well-“
“-top of the hill with the camera and saw-“
“-trying to find him when-“
“-so loud from all the explosions-“
“-at the top of the hill-“
The two continued to talk over and apologize for each other in rapid fire mode as they tried to rapidly fill him in on what had happened. Shinji did feel somewhat exasperated by the stupidity of Kensuke in going out alone, but couldn’t stay angry with him given the look of utter misery on his face as he admitted how badly he had screwed up.

God only knows he was hardly the person to shout at someone for making a stupid decision in his life...or lives for that matter.

“Its okay, look, I’m sure you’re not going to do anything like this again” Shinji assured him, to a surprised but frantic nod of agreement in return.
“Then let’s just go to class” he declared as the school bell rung in the day.

[Chris OFarrell]

Classes passed somewhat better then he had hopped, he was even able to catch up on his sleep for an hour or so. Rei wasn’t present which was hardly abnormal, but Shinji couldn’t help but worry about her as he knew his Father had returned to Tokyo-3 last night, and some of the questions the Vice Commander had asked him after the battle had been about Rei.

Kensuke extended an invitation to both him and Toji ‘camp out’ with him over the coming weekend up in the mountains, which both declined, Toji because he didn’t relish the idea of playing soldier and ‘roughing it’, and Shinji because it brought back too many memories of the last time he had run away.
Kensuke didn’t appear to be put down in the slightest though. Kensuke was utterly capable of fighting a pitched battle that would make Waterloo look like a slight skirmish entirely by himself, Shinji knew.

Finally the last bell of the class ended and the school day ended.
“Oh thank the LORD!” Toji shouted with a whoop as the class finished Hikari’s perfectly choreographed ‘stand, bow, sit!’ routine as their teacher left. “Lets get out of here, that new arcade opened today and Shinji has money to burn-“
“Not so fast” Hikari cut in suddenly, appearing magicly out of nowhere and freezing the trio of young men as they stood “You three are on cleanup today”.
“Oh come on class Rep, I just DID it!” Toji bemoaned.
“You haven’t done it in a month” Hikari said without the slightest hint of mercy in her tone. “Now GET TO WORK!”
Toji whimpered rather pathetically, strangely Shinji noticed both Toji and Kensuke’s hands almost unconsciously moved up to protect their right ears for a second at Hikari’s tone.
That he had to ask about later, he had a feeling it would be amusing.
In the meantime…he sighed and headed for the cleaning supplies. This shouldn’t take too long. He had gotten very good at cleaning, living with Misato after all.




A significant distance away, Rei Ayanami floated in a tank of LCL in the basements of Central Dogma. The tube was small enough and Rei was inside it for long enough that if she had suffered from claustrophobia, it would have been a most unpleasant experience, but such concerns were mostly an irrelevancy to her.
It was her first time back inside the tank since her injuries during Unit Zero’s activation tests and she had found it slightly painful to remove the bandages that had swathed her body, then expose the still tender new skin to the cool LCL, but she had endured it and put aside the pain. Indeed, if anyone had stopped to look at her, they would have probably guessed she was asleep, her eyes shut and her hair lazily moving in the tank currents.
Rei in fact wasn’t asleep, just in a state of deep contemplation, grateful for the time alone to think, helping to put her thoughts into order…especially her increasingly confusing thoughts about Shinji…

When did I start thinking of Pilot Ikari as Shinji? Rei asked herself with a slight amount of confusion, before putting that question aside to continue her train of thought.

She did not understand why she had felt the emotions she had yesterday, as both of them had hurried to NERV headquaters, nor why she had felt an overwhelming compulsion to touch him…
She had studied his face out of the reflection of the window as they had driven down, mostly out of curiosity following their talk on the rooftop. His claims that he owed his Father nothing, despite the fact that Shinji would not exist without him had troubled her deeply for some reason she did not understand.
She had seen the lines of emotions passing across his face, the way his right hand kept becoming a fist…

Fear…
This she understood.

Rei understood fear, but she had always suppressed hers as an irrelvency that hindered her purpose of piloting Unit Zero. Could not Pilot Ikari do the same?
He could not.
But perhaps she could help him…
And so she had reached out her hand, slowly and almost unsure, laying her hand across his warm, sweat covered palm…
She had felt his muscles tense, as if she had touched him with a live power cable…but then she had felt his racing pulse slow under her hand….the muscles slowly relax, as the pilot of Unit One mastered his fear.
Then, because she had seen other students in her class do it, she had gently held his hand with hers.
He had not resisted.
It was not an unpleasant feeling she decided, recalling the shiver of contact that had passed through her body as they had intertwined their fingers and their hands had become one, letting the memory of that feeling wash over her again as she floated.
Is this what it feels like to…care…for someone? Ikari’s stated purpose is to protect me…is mine to protect him?
“Rei…”
She let the memory go as she recognized the voice, feeling it recede like a leaf on the wind before opening her eyes.
The Commander was standing in front of the tank, a slight smile on his face that Rei returned, almost automatically…but strangely, no more feeling then that.
“Commander” she said softly in greeting.
“How are you?”
“My recovery is approaching completion” she replied, audio pickups inside the tank broadcasting to outside and vice versa. “I expect to be ready for piloting duties ahead of schedule”.
“This is good” the senior Ikari said. “Doctor Akagi has informed me that thanks to the less then expected damage to Unit One in both combat deployments, more resources have been allocated to re-activating Unit One, we are bringing the schedule forward by three days”.
“Yes Sir” she acknowledged a tiny thrill of the fear she had felt from Shinji shivering through her body before she suppressed it.
“And…how are things going at school?” Gendo asked in a tone that caused Rei to incline her head ever so slightly. There was some kind of strange…note in his voice at that question.
“There is little change. The Third Childs identity was uncovered within seconds of his arrival by several classmates…and I believe the probability is my own identity was compromised when we left the school headquarters”.
“Unfortunate, but irrelevant” Gendo dismissed her report with a flick of his fingers, crossing his arms. “And how are you and the Third Child getting along?”
Rei almost replied with the truth, that he had suggested she was unique, that he owed nothing to his father and by logical extension, neither did she...but something stayed her response.
She traced the feeling and came up with a tiny sliver of doubt, like a pebble in a lock that prevented a door from closing.

This doubt whispered that his viewpoint was fundamentally incompatible with the reality she had accepted; that she was logically proven to be a unique individual, where as the Commander had suggested he would replace her without question.
This doubt hinted that if she suggested she might not owe her life to the Commander…he would replace her with another one of her Sisters who did.
This doubt suggested a slightly different answer might be justified and Rei Ayanami did something she had never done before.
She omitted information from her commander.

“The Third Child is a skilled pilot” Rei answered instead. “I believe I have learned significantly from his combat sorties”.

“Has he made any attempts at romantic involvement ?” the Commander asked bluntly.

Rei inclined her head with a curious look.
He has not…but would my initiation of hand holding count as romantic involvement? It does appears to count as a romantic gesture with many students at school.
But he did not initiate the contact, I did she decided. And my contact was not romantic…was it?
“No” she simply answered, then waited a few seconds. “Should I initiate romantic contact with pilot Ikari?”

Gendo blinked.
“No…that will not be necessary” he managed to say in a level tone. “That is enough for today Doctor”.

Akagi didn’t answer, but simply triggered the draining sequence that removed the LCL, then opened the tube. Rei, naked buy as always utterly unconcerned, stepped down and headed for the nearby changing room, the scars on her body now far less visible then they had been.

“Well?” Gendo asked coldly after the door shut behind Rei.
Akagi sighed and brought up the readings.
“Its difficult to tell, but I can say that the right hand side of Rei’s brain is far more active then it ever has been, suggesting a great deal more emotional activity then before”.
“Why?”
“It would only be speculation”.
“Then speculate” he ordered, sounding impatient. Akagi sighed.
“My guess is that she has developed some level of feelings and emotion, though she is still suppressing them to a large extent”.
“Why?” Ritsuko shrugged, leaning back against the console.
“Impossible to say at this time. She is still mostly human, despite the DNA from Lilith that was spliced into her genome and she is starting to go through puberty”.
“Her medication is supposed to suppress her reproductive systems” Gendo glared at her, as if it was all her fault.
“And it is, her menstrual cycle has been effectively halted, but she retains elevated levels of hormones running through her bloodstream I can’t suppress without a massive chemical assault that might cause major damage”.
“Unacceptable” he declared.
“Unavoidable” she retorted.
Gendo simply stared at her, before nodding curtly.
“Very well. What are the chances that this increased activity is being stimulated by her interactions with the Third?”
How the hell should I know was the answer that came to mind. Are you jealous your Son might be playing with your dolls behind your back?
Akagi wasn’t stupid enough to say that of course.
“I have no idea, though in his initial time at NERV he was quite insistent in seeing her. Why do you ask?”
“Never mind” Gendo grunted in a tone that dismissed the whole line of thought. “Have the Dummy Plug basis framework ready within two weeks” he ordered, turning without waiting for a reply to swipe his card through the reader on the wall, then step through the blast door into the brightly lit passageway, his glasses tinting deeper to adjust for the light as he left to the nearest elevator to his office.

He decided to not act on the disturbing report from Fuyutsuki for now. Shinji’s effectiveness in battle could not be denied, not the fact that the primary motive he had undertaken for piloting Unit One was to protect Rei, his amusingly transparent ‘blackmailing’ for a significant financial gain aside. Upsetting that balance could have very significant negative repercussions down the line.

He would watch Rei carefully. If Shinji wished to pilot to protect her and stand by her, he did not find it problematic at all with his scenarios.
But he would have to watch Rei carefully. There were things about NERV and herself that it would not do for Shinji to find out.
If she ever got close to that point of revelation, he would simply arrange a replacement.




Nothing much happening this chapter, sorry But you'll see some major changes next chapter, then when the Red Terror enters the mix the chapter after that.... *snickers*

[Sidewinder]

“Doctor Akagi has informed me that thanks to the less then expected damage to Unit One in both combat deployments, more resources have been allocated to re-activating Unit One, we are bringing the schedule forward by three days”.

I think you mean, "more resources have been allocated to reactivating Unit Zero..."

Despite the spelling and grammar errors, I found this chapter entertaining. I'm curious how Shinji deals with Ramiel.

Keep up the good work.

[Vehrec]

I wonder how long Shinji can keep going before he breaks down and confesses to someone when and how he knew all this stuff. And who will it be to? Rei seems to be developing feelings, but maybe not in a direction anyone else is comfortable with. Ahh, timetravel. Is there any problem you can't create?