"Hey."

"Hey..."

"Hey dumkoph!"

Another day, another aural assault by the girl who serves as his alarm clock. Half-delirious with lingering strands of sleep, the boy rolls out of bed.

And onto an insensate blue surface.

"Oh son of a-"

Evangelion 9.99: You Are (Not) Unique

Sprawled face down on 25 episodes of squandered budget, the protagonist takes a moment to reflect. And as ways to spend moments go, this was rich with possibilities. He could go with his mother: who caught a bad case of death, and how he had to ride her in Oedipus Robo. Or how his father couldn't get any more unnerving without a Swastika in his forehead or a bodypillow. Or the fact that they shipped him off to the boonies while they raised/grew/whatever the poster child for broad spectrum Autism in his stead. The boy shivered; speaking of complexes, God knows how deep that rabbit hole between her and his father went. And that girl; did she love him, was she his mother, was she *him* in some weird, surrogate manner? Is this all her fault? Is he even alive? Like most people, the boy had no earthly idea what transpired in the last few moments of his life.

Unlike most people, he was still experiencing it.

"Are you retarded or something?"

The boy rolls his head to the side in response, one weary eye fixed on a pair of alabaster legs.

"Oh god, this is Hell isn't it? Look, I'm sorry for rubbing one out to you okay? It was a desperate time, and I hadn't done it for like a week and-"

"Ew!" The girl recoils, ruffling her butter yellow sundress for maximum fanservice. "You sick fuck, I was in a coma! I had been *raped* for Gott's sake and you couldn't keep it in your pants?" She tenses, a sneer of revulsion dripping off her face. "That probably got you off, didn't it? You creepy nerds are all alike: 'oh she's so willful, so powerful, so cute. I know, let's degrade her sexually and mentally, make her our cumdumpster! What fun that shall be, ohohoho~'" Scene change: efficiency apartment, overturned table, general disarray. The girl's hands are around his throat, blue eyes screaming hate. "I should snap your neck like a twig."

The boy's soft face bulges like a balloon, which is rather funny given the fact no air is entering his body. He struggles against his captor, kicking and making mewling noises.

"W-wait, this isn't how it happened, that's not how it's supposed to work!" Scene change: same place, different positions. Now it is he who is doing the choking, holding the girl up like a malicious child with a new toy. "Much better." He shakes the girl with a fervor only years of pent up sexual frustration can provide. The boy turns yellow, gains an overbite; the girl follows suit. Her face expands and contracts with each choking cry; more comedic than tragic now.

"I'll teach you to be the poster child for bitchy girls who can't spit it out!"

"Gaaaa~ck"

"The proper term is 'tsundere', Shinji-kun."

Stop. Actors look to the camera. Slow pan to 4th wall.

See.

See Rei.

See Rei as the 1st Angel.

Go screamingly insane.

"What"

"The"

"Fuck. I forgot to take a more normative form for this portion. My apologies, Shinji-kun" Scene change, empty street. Blue blazer over white blouse, blue pleated skirt. Red string bow in short black hair. Something's not quite right here.

"Um, Rei? Why am I wearing the girl's uniform?"

"It appears that this reality is unstable," a meek voice states. She is wearing her hair short and messy; straight down instead of in a bowl cut. It's turned a pleasing shade of lavender as well. Her uniform is now a grey seifuku with teal and white collar. There's a Sagittarius symbol on the cravat, and she seems to have shrunk a few inches. She pushes her round, rimless glasses over red eyes. "Are there any otaku surrogates around?"

Shinji blinks twice, trying to parse the meaning behind Ayanami's words. A certain yellow ribboned godling pokes her head out from behind a streetlight; face censored for security reasons. A masculine hand pulls her back out of view, as Shinji raises his hand tentatively.

"I think I fit that bill," he says, now in his proper attire of black slacks and a white dress shirt, "Seeing as how we seem to be in my fantasies right now."

"And what makes you say that?" queries Asuka, her skin tone back to it's idealistic German fairness. A disembodied hand scribbles a Hitler mustache on her, only to get smacked away by the masculine hand from before.

"Because you're in that Test plug suit they made for the movie. And there's an errant Haruhi reference that won' t go away, right Yuki?"

Asuka looks down, translucent orange material showing off ludicrously developed curves. She turns bright red, shut eyes melding into a heavy black X. She runs back behind a streetlight, and after a brief struggle, returns with black censor bars covering her womanly indiscretions. "I knew you were a pervert, and now you have me prancing around in this slutsuit? Can we go back to the scene where I'm wringing the life out of you again?"

"Negative, Shikinami-san"

"You mean Sohryu-Langley."

"No, it's Shikinami now, Asuka Sohryu-Langley-Shikinami-san," says Rei, back to her normal look. "We seem to have entered a reality dreamt up by you, Shinji-kun." She sips daintily from a glass of orange liquid, "This is one of many realities that could have happened; other options include a romantic comedy, a fantastically overhyped trendsetter-"

"Aren't we that already?"

"Shut up Shinji-kun. Or even one where none of our parents die and humorous political ideologues run the United States of America." Another sip of the orange liquid. Scene change. Same apartment, in order this time. There's a game going on, on top of a table no less. The three Children stare confusedly at their dopplegangers; similar, yet wildly different.

"Heeee~ey"

Scene change. Different apartment, in youthful disarray. The shock of unmitigated *wrongness* of that last scene prevents them from fully taking in the current one.

The moaning quickly fixes that.

All three of them are watching the Big Loud Show take place in front of them, a toe-curling performance. Dim recognition plays upon Shinji's face; he's been here before. This is Misato's memory, the surrogate for her urge to be defiled and/or her love of Ryoji Kaji. He doesn't remember Misato having orange hair though. Or screaming obscenities in German. And when did Kaji dye his hair bla-

"Oh dear god..."

"We're rutting like beasts!"

"Very impressive Shinji-kun. Look, she even has an ahegao and everything."

"I look retarded..."

"Well that's implied with an ahegao, Shikinami-san. You see, when a man with a very large penis loves a woman-"

"B-but Asuka! I'd never do that to you! It looks so painful..."

That last piece of dialogue earns the pilot of Evangelion Unit 01 a good hard smack across the face, with enough power to send him through the paper thin walls and back into the blue zone in a heap. He groans, his final resting place upside down in his metal folding chair. Asuka storms through the worlds after him, dragging the Kaji replacement with her. Her face is alight with offended indignation, and she shares this with both Shinjis through intense foot to testicle negotiations. Repeated and vigorous negotiations they are, and things do not go smoothly for the men.

"You filthy schwein-Shinji!" she says to the bedcloth swathed alternate Ikari, "Using me like a sex doll like that. I guess your hand wasn't good enough anymore huh, you sleazeball! Had to get a taste of real German confections ja?" She turns on her heel to the real Shinji, or as real a Shinji as you can get. "And you! How dare you reject my womanly charms? Am I not good enough for you, the great and mighty pilot of Unit 01? Or is it that you need your women to be submissive and share blood before you want to stick your-OOF" Her rant is cut off midstream by the alternate Shinji, a fist to the solarplexus making for impromptu punctuation. He shakes his hand out and sighs, eyes drawn to the...interesting position that Asuka collapsed in.

"Huh, she's still a bitch in this world."

Shinji just stares at the upside-down buffet of manliness before him. Is that really him? I mean, he's always wanted to sock Asuka one, but saw it as ungentlemanly. That, and he feared for his life any time Asuka went into one of her moods. He gobs a few times, trying to form words for this situation. What do you say to yourself, especially the self that is so much cooler than you?

"She's a squirter, right?"

"A-Ayanami!"

She turns back to Shinji, index finger against her lips to hiss out a soft "Shhh". Without missing a beat, she turns back to the shiny new Shinji. "And you didn't have to work to get into her pants. Or the equivalent of mine, or Katsuragi-san's, or Akagi-san's, or...Tabris's?" A small smile creeps across her porcelain face. "Kinky."

"Well yeah," the new and improved Shinji says with the same diction one would give to the question 'Is the sky blue?': "I mean, I'm Shinji Ikari: Hero of NERV, defender of Earth, multiple time Nobel Prize winner, and all around bad mothercanucker."

"You're also a Gary-Stu."

"A hubidiwha?"

"A Gary-Stu." Rei, now with shoulder width black hair and rectangular glasses, raps a yardstick against an inexplicably placed blackboard. "Gary-Stus are paragons of wish fulfillment; manliness taken to overblown extremes. He always gets every girl, wins every fight, and never shows weakness. Perfect, powerful, pointless."

"But, but, I'm the greatest thing since Gurren-Lagann! I mean, come on, you know you want to access my Dummy Plug." He blows a kiss to Ayanami, bringing all his charm to bear. Alternate Shinji's face is the picture of harlequin romance; chiseled features, strong jaw with perma stubble, soulful eyes. A dramatic wind blows behind him from nowhere, bringing with it a rain of cherry blossoms and the bag they came in. He literally sparkles: like diamonds in the sun, or Mormon vampires, as the case may be.

Hey, gotta play to the audience.

A fragile female fist shatters his smolder, and probably his nose; the impact sends him whirling back into the floating world of Misato's subconscious in a VCR reverse of the actual Shinji's travels.

Hey, gotta play to the rest of the audience.

"You're running out of material, to be reusing the same breach within a paragraph," Ayanami coughs, eyes darting to the audience. I think we'll continue this later, Shinji-kun."

Shinji, still upside down, begins to kick and flail in comic consternation. Nothing has made anything remotely resembling sense, and he feels like a bad experiment in postmodernism. Not to mention his balls are still somewhere in his lungs right now. "Wait, Ayanami! What do you mean, we're running out of material? Why am I still upside down? Does the bus run through here?"

"All will be revealed once we can be arsed to continue Shinji-kun."

"But how do we get out of here? Do we even get out of here? I mean, where the fuck do we go? We're on a big blue ball!"

"Oh yeah, definitely out of material. Be sure not to make the next one hot, hot Mari x Pen Pen hetfic, okay?"

Close up. Extreme close up. Red eyes, glowing like miniature furnaces. Hands resting past the edges of the screen. Fourth wall, what's that?

"I'll be watching you."

Freeze. Scene change. Playing to an empty theater. Lights out except for house spotlight. Ayanami, bow to the audience. Good girl. House light off. Title Card.