Long before the numerous radar installations and outposts belonging to the Japanese Strategic Self Defense Force—the JSSDF—detected the alien signal when it penetrated the Earth's upper atmosphere, the experimental paramilitary extraterrestrial research and defense organization known only as NERV had used its own satellite network to track and predict the hostile entity's trajectory as it rocketed toward Tokyo-3 at speeds in excess of twenty kilometers per second. In a matter of seconds, the blindingly fast hypercube processors of the MAGI—a trio of what were arguably the most sophisticated and powerful supercomputers on the planet—predicted, calculated, analyzed, and issued an excruciatingly detailed list of possible scenarios that were likely to occur once the enemy crossed the thin red line of interspecies warfare. The results were relayed nanoseconds later, in real time, up to NERV's Command Suite, a naval-style bridge equipped with fully-functional, interactive volumetric displays which allowed trained senior technicians and command staff to operate swiftly and efficiently within a three-dimensional, autostereoscopic environment. The largest of these screens was projected through a parallax barrier several dozen meters before the central dais, atop which the Commander of NERV, Gendo Ikari, lorded over the rest of his subjects like a king on his throne. Currently, both he and the full ensemble of his court had their collective gazes fixed upon the video feed being transmitted to them simultaneously from innumerable sources and locations. At the moment, the view screen displayed a panoramic shot of two giant, bipedal machines of war, crouched, weapons primed and ready to engage.
"Report," the senior Ikari said, his tone serene but perplexingly loud enough to be heard over the screeching of the alarms.
Without so little as sparing a glance back toward the bespectacled man who had given the order, First Lieutenant Makoto Hyuga ceased typing and put his hand to his Bluetooth headset. There was no physical microphone; instead, the device operated by sensing the vibrations in the air caused by the natural effect of speaking and reconfigured the vibrations into a much clearer, more discernable signal. Nevertheless, the first lieutenant didn't possess the confidence in his own voice that Commander Ikari enjoyed. "I've never seen anything like it, sir," he confessed. "The angel has two complimentary yet unique patterns."
After the First Contact Experiment, Earth had been shaken by the notion that not only were they not alone in the cosmos, but they were apparently fairly low on the galactic food chain as well. Initially, the invaders who had begun to systematically threaten the planet after the impact of the meteorite in the South Pole had been given a long list of rather unflattering nicknames. Some likened them to the Godzilla of classical Japanese cinema history; others claimed they were aliens hell-bent upon Earth's destruction, and that it was they who launched the asteroid at the planet to begin with. It was in fact NERV who had taken the bold and radical position of calling them angels, due largely to the fact that they nearly always appeared from either the sky or the deep, and that each possessed some kind of aura or halo that protected them from most conventional human weapons. Incidentally, NERV's specialty was non-conventional human weapons, and because they were the only military agency with a proven track record of taking the enemies to task, the catchwords coined by the organization easily stuck with the media.
Major Misato Katsuragi leaned over the young analyst's terminal, seemingly oblivious that her current posture treated the officer to a dangerously close viewing of her shapely breasts. Despite the fact that Hyuga's ears turned carnation pink, the analyst did a remarkable job of sticking to task. He wrapped quickly and furiously at his keyboard, quickly sorting and isolating each registered pattern on two different, adjacent screens. His superior officer was hardly a computer whiz, but she knew how to read data, how to react quickly, direct and dispatch military protocols. Such was her official duty at NERV Headquarters. Lately, however, it had become increasingly difficult to reconcile her primary mandates with the protection of the adolescent children—the EVA pilots—that had been released into her care at the behest of the organization and legally approved by a legion of psychologists and social workers, all of whom were, in one way or another, employed by NERV. "Two patterns? What's that mean for the EVA pilots?"
As if sensing her concern for the wellbeing of each fourteen year-old child sitting in the LCL-filled cockpit of a multi-million dollar war machine, the first lieutenant ran her through the facts systematically. "First is blue. Like most of the A.T. fields we've encountered with the angels previously."
"And the second?"
"That's the conundrum. We can't make heads or tails of it. Structurally, it looks like a clone of the first field, but mirrored in the reverse."
"What do the MAGI indicate?" the senior Ikari interjected, ignoring his colleague's line of questions.
"Not much else," Hyuga replied. "The second field is red in color though. That's a first for me, sir."
Gendo simply nodded, interlaced his gloved fingers, then rested his thinly-bearded chin atop them. Misato took his silence as her cue to continue.
"A new type of A.T. field, do you think?"
This time, it was Shigeru Aoba who offered his two cents. The second of a trio of highly-gifted technicians each uniquely qualified in areas vital to the general daily operation of NERV's central network, Aoba had, like his two companions, been hand-picked by NERV's lead scientist and project director, Dr. Ritsuko Akagi for his peerless skills in higher level algorithmic mathematics. He was also a synesthete, able to discern patterns in colors and shapes that others simply could not. This made him a prime candidate for analyzing the geometric complexities of extraterrestrial energy and ordinance that the MAGI collectively recorded in wave forms and 3-dimensional graphs.
"That's not likely," Aoba began, brushing his long bangs from his face. Because of his genius, his non-standard appearance was generally tolerated. "The atomic structure of the angels is what gives their biological signatures the blue reading. We already know that angels can't survive without the blue field, so we can proceed safely on the assumption that the angel does have an A.T. field."
"The one we detected first," Hyuga reminded Major Katsuragi.
"We can discount the idea that the second reading is an anti-A.T. field; the two would cancel each other out, and the angel would die."
"No, it's much more likely we're looking at two distinct A.T. fields. We just don't know what the second one does because we have no baseline to compare it to," the first lieutenant surmised.
"But then there's the geometrical mirror of the second field's structure. One would think that if they were both simply inverses of each other, they'd resonate with each other harmoniously."
"But they don't, I'm guessing?" Misato said quickly, making a point at distinguishing herself as intelligent amongst Ritsuko's cadre of savants.
Shigeru Aoba shook his head. "Negative. Not even close. The two fields are acting like one is consistently trying to phase out the other. Almost like the angel has a split personality."
"Will this affect the Evangelion units in combat?" the senior Ikari wondered aloud, returning to the debate.
"Unknown."
"Danger to the pilots?" Misato pushed anxiously.
"Also unknown."
A silence fell over the bridge for half a minute while the senior staff contemplated the data they had gathered and the reports their support staff had issued. Misato bit her lower lip tenderly in thought. She deeply loathed the fact that even after all the time, money and work that had been invested into Project-E, the most formidable alien response team on the planet knew so utterly little about their foes. And she truly detested the fact that the individuals chosen to engage the invaders head on were children. Children who were just starting high school, hormonal and, at times, infuriatingly stubborn and rebellious. They were perhaps the farthest from the sensible ideal for an Evangelion pilot one could possibly imagine. They were also the only ones capable of operating the giant colossi of mechanical soldiers that now served as the front line of defense in the battle for humanity's continued existence.
Predictably, it was Commander Ikari who broke the silence. "Can it be destroyed?" he asked flatly.
"The MAGI report that though there are two fields, each of them is relatively thin, possibly due to the dense field of mass the entity is maintaining. A well-placed shot from either of the EVAs positron rifles or a couple of rounds from the pallet gun at close range would be enough for a depleted uranium hollow-point shell or similar ordinance to punch through the kinetic barrier. It'll do some serious damage, sir."
"Thank you, lieutenant," Gendo said without a hint of emotion in his voice. "Evangelions Unit-01 and Unit-02—sitrep."
There was about half a second's latency while the message was transferred from Gendo's Bluetooth headset, piped up through NERV's private, encrypted trunk-line, dispatched with military-grade priority to a low-orbiting communications buoy, then bounced back to the internal sat-link inside each Evangelion's cockpit. Both children responded in unison.
"Evangelion Unit-01 in position. Awaiting orders."
"Evangelion Unit-02 in position. Weapons primed and waitin' to kick some ass."
Misato spared a hard, baleful glance at the commander. His glasses gleamed in the light of the holographic displays, and she could not tell if he had noticed her withering stare at all. She knew on some level that even with a loaded gun to his head, Gendo Ikari was not a man whose mind was easily changed. Still, the second and third child had both been placed in her care. It was only natural she'd want to keep them from unnecessary harm to the fullest extent possible.
"Time to impact?"
"Approximately thirty-eight seconds, sir," Aoba reported nervously.
"Course and speed both unchanged," Hyuga added.
The senior Ikari unfolded his hands and fixed his glasses firmly upon his nose. In that brief moment, Misato realized his eyes were in fact fixed directly upon her, sending a frightening chill up her spine as he gave the order she had been dreading.
"Take it down."
Asuka didn't need to be told twice. Her positron rifle was already loaded, but not locked. And it had been aimed directly skyward at the exact moment that the sky darkened, becoming a sickly shade of yellow-green. A terrifying roar split the silence of the wooded hillocks surrounding Tokyo-3, and moments later, a gargantuan ball of fire tore through the murky veil of bilious clouds.
"Target in sight," Asuka smirked from inside the cockpit of Evangelion Unit-02.
"Range to target, 200 kilometers," Shinji reported.
The radio crackled. It was Hyuga. "Evangelions 01 and 02, be advised, target has begun rapid deceleration, course and heading unchanged."
"Range to target, 100 kilometers."
Asuka grinded her molars together in concentration, leveling the barrel of her rifle toward the center of the whirling nexus in the clouds. "No visual. Range less than 100 kilometers."
"Target's A.T. field is showing fluctuations," Aoba barked over the comms. "Course and heading unchanged."
"Range to target, less than 50 kilometers! Asuka!" the pilot of Unit-01 screamed.
The red-headed, spitfire German girl smirked, taking a deep breath and steadying her rifle one final time before gently pulling back on the trigger of the giant rifle mounted upon her EVA's shoulder. "Target acquired! Lighting him up!"
The impact of the slug from Asuka's positron rifle could be heard impacting against the target's A.T. field before she even felt the recoil of the weapon rumble through the cockpit, dissipating seconds later as the machine's internal shock absorbers and rebalancers stabilized her unit. The positron rifle, contrary to popular opinion, was not a true particle beam; rather, it functioned by propelling 175mm warheads at hypersonic speeds utilizing a high-velocity partial stream of metal in a state of superplasticity to punch through the most dense materials known to modern science. In the wake of each round the weapon left vibrant, indigo tracer trails through the air due to the supercooled holo-targeting system which was likely the source of the misnomer. The real purpose of the holo-targeting system was to minimize the wasteful use of the shells themselves which, due both to size and cost, were limited to a loadout of eight rounds per unit.
When the smoke cleared, it became immediately clear that the shell had met its mark, but no structural damage to the entity had been inflicted. A blindingly-bright red sphere now engulfed the alien invader as it barreled towards the Evangelions engaging it from the hillside to the east of the city.
"It's no good!" Shinji Ikari squawked over his comm from inside Unit-01's cockpit. "Asuka! Get out of there!"
"Scheiße!" Asuka cursed in her native tongue as she did whenever she was truly furious, particular at herself. Shinji watched in abject horror as the stubborn young girl began to empty the chamber of the positron rifle and load a second round. He'd known even before she began that she wouldn't have enough time to reload, properly acquire her target and fire. He knew that unless he did something, in less than ten seconds Asuka was going to be slammed at full force by an alien being with enough power to protect itself from being torn to pieces by a depleted uranium warhead travelling nearly thirty times the speed of sound.
Even as he called out to her, Shinji sprang into action. He knew his verbal protestations would be in vain—Asuka was far too competitive and obstinate to allow him to take the credit for an angel kill, especially after her initial attack had failed. Given the time constraints he had to work with and the extremely limited options left available to him, he figured the only thing he could do to protect his friend and fellow EVA pilot as simply to throw himself in the path of the fireball and pray that his Evangelion was strong enough to shelter Asuka from the ensuing explosion.
The entire incident played out in a matter of seconds. Asuka had fired a single round. It was ineffective, and she'd begun to reload almost immediately, ignoring the frantic radio chatter from the command suite ordering her to withdraw to a safe distance and that the JSSDF ground forces were already activating to buy NERV time to reform. Shinji had propelled himself into a furious sprinter's dash, and was now heading right toward the location where the angel was certain to make its landing. It all happened so quickly that by the time Asuka realized what was happening, it was entirely too late.
"W…w-wait! Shinji, what in the hell are you doing?! Baka!"
At only ten kilometers away, Shinji no longer needed the enhanced topographical displays at his disposal upon the HUD of the EVA's cockpit. He saw the giant ball of hellfire plummeted down from the heavens directly toward him, and he simply took a deep breath and braced for impact. It was madness. It was suicide. It was the only thing he could do. And suddenly a strange calm fell over him as he came to terms with what he figured would seal his fate. At least he'd buy Asuka whatever time she needed to finish the job. Maybe he'd even save lives with his sacrifice, not only NERV personnel but potential civilians too. And maybe if he died doing it, his father would, at least momentarily, be proud.
The final second of the battle was the most critical. Three events occurred simultaneously. Asuka Langley Sohryu, the transfer from NERV's German division, snapped off a second round with her positron rifle. At the same moment, the massive being from beyond the void of space collided with Evangelion Unit-01. Lastly, the twin A.T. fields surrounding the angel threat detonated simultaneously, engulfing both EVAs in a blinding flash of white light. The immense heat from the instantaneous destruction of the fields generated a temporary vacuum, and for the first few moments when the red spherical energy barrier mushroomed outward and vaporized every biological signature within ten circular blocks of ground zero, everything was completely silent and still. Shinji screamed as he experienced what he thought was the sensation of the LCL bath in the cockpit coming to a boiling temperature just before he passed out into unconsciousness.
When his eyes finally fluttered open again, Shinji Ikari was absolutely certain that he was either dreaming or dead. The last thought he could concretely recall was his attempt at trying to place himself between Asuka and a massive fireball from space determined to wipe the human stain from the planet. There had been the hellish sounds of gunfire, screaming and shouted over the radio channels, and of course the intense heat he'd felt before he'd lost consciousness. Now he found himself staring directly upwards at an unfamiliar ceiling. It was white, shiny, and paneled, but otherwise nondescript. The room was air-conditioned, perhaps a bit too cool for his own liking, but the feeling was not altogether unpleasant. The third child exhaled deeply, stretching his arms and legs to rid himself of the peculiar stiffness he had suddenly become cognizant of plaguing his extremities. Satisfied, he pushed his head back down against the soft pillow on the bed on which he lay, and ran his hands nonchalantly through his hair. His long, red hair.
The junior Ikari's eyes went wide with shock as he realized then that something wasn't quite right. He pinched his abnormally long locks between thumb and forefinger, pulling a clump of strands in front of his face for a better look. It was long, silky and russet—the way he'd always imagined Asuka's hair would look and feel like if he could ever be lucky enough to get close enough to the girl to leisurely inspect it. As he did so now, he slowly became aware of the rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor fixed above the bed opposite him. His gaze wandered over to the bed—and to the individual lying unconscious upon it.
"W… wait, what?" he gasped astonished. But the voice that issued forth from his lips was not his own. And yet, it was a voice he recognized instantly. In a blind panic, Shinji took a more thorough accounting of his current predicament. His hands, arms and legs had become smaller, shorter, or more slender. His skin now looked porcelain and was dappled with a light smattering of pale brown freckles. Then he noticed the changes he had incurred to his chest, peeked down the hospital gown he was now dressed in, and screamed.
Instantly, the biometric lock to the medical recovery room beeped. A neon green light suddenly emanated from the locking panel on the wall, and the door hissed open a moment later as a handful of NERV medical staff rushed in and began to busy themselves immediately, either trying to restrain Shinji to the confines of his bed or to digest the readings being sent from the electrodes stuck to his body back to the dozen machines and monitors that encircled him. Major Katsuragi was among them, and the sight of her was just enough to keep Shinji from backsliding into unconsciousness.
"Misato!" he shrieked helpelessly, swatting at the nurses who buzzed around him. "Misato! What's happened to me?! Why do I look like Asuka?! Somebody tell me what's going on!"
"Shinji," Misato soothed, placing a soft hand upon his chest and gently pushing him backwards down onto the bed. "Shinji, focus! Focus on me! Everything's going to be just fine, OK? Trust me! Right now, I just need you to cooperate with the medical staff. Do you think you can do that for me?"
The third child ignored her, and pointed the unconscious body of the fourteen year old Japanese boy asleep on the bed across from him. "Misato, why the heck am I… is my body… is this… am I dreaming?" He felt like he was about to heave all over the floor, but his purple-haired guardian took her hands and placed them tenderly upon each of his cheeks.
"Shinji, please, just calm down. I promise I will tell you absolutely everything, but you need rest right now, and you're extremely dehydrated and you haven't had a real meal in a few days."
The third child shook his head, disoriented, confused, scared. "A… a few days? M-Misato, what—?"
The woman looked at him with a mixture of hurt, doubt, anxiety and disbelief. "Shin-chan, I… I know this will be difficult to understand… to accept… but… well… uh, there's… there's sort of been… an accident."
The junior Ikari didn't know what sort of accident could result in him waking up trapped in somebody else's body while his own was lying not 10 feet away, possibly dead, on a hospital bed. "An 'accident'?" he panted, desperate to get his breathing under control.
Misato Katsuragi nodded. "Yes, Shinji. An accident. And we're doing everything we can to fix it, I just want you to know that."
"Just tell me!" Shinji cried out. "What's happened to me?! Why do I look like Asuka?!"
The woman scratched the back of her neck awkwardly. "Well there's just no good way to say this, so I'll just say it." She stared into Shinji's bright blue eyes, gulped, and gave it to him straight. "Shinji, the angel you and Asuka were fighting… when the two A.T. fields the enemy had detonated at the same time, somehow… um… damn it, Ritsuko made it sound so easy when she said it before…"
"It would serve you well to take notes on things you don't quite grasp," Dr. Akagi jabbed cynically as she entered the room and strode past Misato, ignoring Shinji completely and checking the readings on the monitors. "I'll spare you the science since I know the academia of the situation would just be wasted on the two of you. Shinji, when the two A.T. fields reacted to your Evangelions, it caused some sort of inexplicable transference between your cognitive functions and behavioral patterns. You're both alive and no apparent physical or psychological damage has been sustained, but the short of it is that you and Asuka, for better or for worse, have ultimately switched places."