Disclaimer: I own no characters in this story. They are property of Gainax/Anno etc.

Past

"Speech"

'Thoughts'

CHAPTER 1

Asuka Strikes!

It was a hot day in Tokyo-3. The school year has just started and summer was still in full swing. It was almost noon and afternoon classes at the Yui Ikari Memorial High School were under way. Behind a door on the third floor adorned with a black plaque with "2-A" in large white font, a young teacher, about 30 years of age, was giving a lesson on limits. It was still early days in the school year, so most of the class was eagerly concentrating on the work, scribbling down notes from the board at speed. However, not all of the students shared that enthusiasm.

Right next to the window sat Rei Ayanami, whose distinctive short blue hair could be pinpointed even in the school's main hall when it was packed full by students for the weekly assembly. Like most school days, she was absent-mindedly staring out of the window at the streets below. The unchanging landscape of trees, buildings and high-voltage lines was hardly an exciting replacement for Honekawa-sensei's mathematics lesson, but she enjoyed it anyway. She managed to get really good marks on every single exam she has ever taken at school, so the teachers didn't mind her spacing out so often either. Everyone considered her a genius, but a bit on the weird side. The incident with the props from the school play last year didn't help her cause either - she convinced the history teacher, Katsuragi-sensei, that she was in love with a hollow papier-mâché horse head, which was used in the school play.

"B-but I really like it. A lot. It would be most agreeable if you could let me keep it" - she told her in a soft, sultry voice, cheeks flushed and eyes turned down, as if confessing to a lover.

Katsuragi-sensei was taken aback by her love of the prop and really just wanted to end the awkward conversation there and then, and had no choice but to let the blue-haired beauty happily skip away, holding the head high above her head in a victory gesture. The teacher was soon made to regret that decision, as a few days later, it turned out all she needed it for was taking discrete naps wearing it in her own class. The dangerous trend was also catching on amongst other students, so the teachers had to ban all forms of animal heads from school grounds. Even today, one can see the sign outside the main gates, hastily painted together - "No animal-shaped headgear allowed on premises. Neither is betraying the teachers' trust." - a little frowning face with long purple hair gave a hint to its author's identity. Rei's coolness points went up from almost non-existent to a nice round number that week.

Two years ago, she was a shy girl. Perhaps reserved is a better word. So reserved she never spoke to anybody and nobody else would take note of her. She was as much part of her class as the desks and chairs. In the morning she would be there, and in the afternoons she would leave. Nobody knew anything about her. It started to change when she stopped showing up to class in bandages every week. When the Angels suddenly stopped appearing, the NERV pilot simply had nothing to do. The first month her schedule was still the same - sync tests, simulations, training. But the pilots trained less in the second month after the encounter with the sixth angel, Gaghiel, and even less in the third. Halfway through a year, Asuka Soryu, the second child just gave up on training and would not be seen inside the headquarters except for the occasional weekly sync test. Her scores remained excellent, so the nobody was really concerned. Everybody there wanted a break from a job as stressful as protecting the world. By the end of the first year saw Gendo Ikari, the commander of NERV Japan, throw the mother of all tantrums at the bridge.

"Why am I surrounded by idiots? Not even the angels are doing what they are supposed to do! Stupid immortal knobs, can't they read or something?! I have the scenario right here, you know!" The poor bridge technician Shigeru Aoba took the full frontal force of Ikari's mental assault. All efforts from Kozo Fuyutsuki, his second-in-command, to calm him down ended with failure, and he was now storming around the lower level, patronizing the bridge bunnies. In his hands he clutched a heavy file saying "The Dead Sea Scroll Scenario". "Worthless junk!" - He held out the scrunched up papers in his hands and shook his fist, as if threatening God himself. "That ginger brat had the right idea - I'm leaving for Okinawa. Screw Yui, there are hotter chicks there." - he decided, and rushed out of the maintenance access hatch on level 3, tossing off his shirt as he ran. "OKINAWAAAA!"

The next day Gendo Ikari assembled the staff of the HQ to issue a formal apology for his mental breakdown, but nevertheless announced that active personnel will be cut down to just those who were absolutely necessary for keeping the base at level 5 battle readiness. The sync tests would also be on hold until further notice. Gendo decided to scrap the scenario. If he could not get what he wanted, neither would SEELE, the committee - or "old farts" as the commander always used to call them - behind the funding of the Instrumentality project.

Rei, among the others pilots, was to stop reporting to the HQ, stop taking her drugs, and until the angels would return - pretty much free to try living. Her senses sharpened, her mind was clearer, and her body became restless. At the start of freshman year in high school, she surprised everyone by showing up to the start-of-the-year meetings for 52 different clubs. When students inquired why, all of a sudden, the formerly indifferent girl was taking such an unhealthy interest in school life, after some thinking, she just replied " I'm bored." with a signature blank "I don't care what's happening around me" Ayanami expression. With piloting duties now not weighing on her shoulders as heavy as they used to, she was indeed bored. Now, when she would go home after school, there was practically nothing for her to do. Ayanami's room remained half-empty - no TV, no PC, no PS, no other abbreviations. Even though all the children were rewarded handsomely with cold hard currency for their risky duties, Rei's room has remained the same as years ago, and did an awful job at containing the new, livelier first child. In the end - she settled on two - the cooking club and the firearm enthusiast club. The two were populated by two entirely different kinds of people.

The second consisted of bespectacled scrawny guys, led by Kensuke Aida, another one of Rei's classmates. Even though the pilot of unit-00 no longer went to NERV on a daily basis and participated in marksmanship training, she was very attached to her SCAR-H automatic rifle. Apparently, it was something akin to a favourite teddy bear to her.

The first consisted of cutesy, shy, homely girls, and one Asuka Langley Soryu, who was dragged to the club room one day by her friend and class rep of 2-B Hikari Horaki - who also happened to be club president due to her commanding nature and extraordinary cooking skills. While everyone was happy to a new member into the somewhat scarcely-populated cooking club, the pilot of unit-02 was less than enthusiastic about Rei. She came here to learn to cook and not to spend time with that doll! To make matters worse, their cooking skills were almost identical. As Honekawa-sensei was saying at this moment - albeit about a different matter whatsoever - both are infinitely close to zero. Because of their cluelessness, Hikari often paired them together so they could learn faster, without tying up too many of the other members with assisting the newbies. Hikari of course tried to keep a tight watch on the duo, but occasionally, even that failed. Half the school still had pictures of an angry-looking redhead missing half an eyebrow. Some students' cell phones even captured the moments before her fists impacted with their owners faces on video.

But both Asuka and Rei continued to show up at the club without fail. Rei showed much more ability at cooking than the second child, so at one point Asuka stopped showing up completely, deflated by the fact that the "emotionless doll" was better at her than something. But Hikari continued dragging her friend along to the club after school days ended.

The students sniggered at the unusual sight - a dark haired girl with pigtails held another tightly by her arms and pulled her towards the far end of the corridor. The other girl kept screaming "I DON'T WANNA!" while throwing her head around violently, her long red hair flailing around. The rest of her body offered little resistance, her legs stretched out limply, shoes dragging, and her bottom gliding along the tile floor, dirtying the backside of her skirt."Get up Asuka!" - the other freshman yelled - "I'm making you go whether you want to or not!" - "NO!". Hikari Horaki was running out of ideas. Sure, she could pull Asuka's light body across the whole corridor, but this was the second floor. The club room was next to the home economics class, which was on the third. No way she would be able to carry her up a flight of stairs. But she was class rep for a reason. "Asuka, you have to learn how to cook! You can't keep eating that garbage! To be honest, I didn't want to tell you, but I could really see your stomach bulging out in class today!" Hikari made an effort to focus on enunciating the last few words as best she could. Immediately, the numbers on the thermostat on the opposite wall registered a sharp drop. One of Asuka's wrists twitched in Hikari's hands, a signal the pig-tailed girl's brain interpreted as 'START HAULING ASS'.

"WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!"

The laughter around them stopped, replaced by cries of worry. Things like "RUN HORAKI-CHAN!" "DON'T LET HER CATCH YOU!" and "500 YEN ON THE DEVIL!" could clearly be heard. Hikari ran the fastest she ever had in her life. When Hikari reached the staircase at the end of the hallway, her feet skidded slightly in front of the stairs as she rapidly changed bearings to climb up to the third floor, her legs using only every second step.

"HIKARI HORAKIIIIII! GET BACK HERE!"

She knew any misstep at this stage would be fatal. At the end of a twelve-stair fall, a fiery devil awaited her. Hikari thanked her lucky stars that the club room was just to the left of the stairs as she ran through its door. Only when Hikari jumped out from behind her and locked the door did Soryu realize where she was and the steam stopped escaping from her nostrils.

"That was really mean, Horaki!"

"Gomen, Asuka-chan, but I really want you to keep coming to this club!" - the black haired girls face pleadingly "Lying to make you embarrassed in front of everyone was the only thing I could think ofto drag you here.. Gomen, ne"

Asuka pursed her lips and turned away from her with a huff, but turned not towards the door, but towards Ayanami standing in the corner, and with arms folded and stomach drawn-in, proceeded in her direction. Asuka, despite being really tsun on the outside, was not the kind of person to hold a grudge against a friend. Even If they did embarrass her in front of a full hallway of students. Well, maybe she did hold a little grudge. But one thing she gave up on caring long ago about was what the other students thought of her.

"I'm Asuka Langley Soryu. Charmed, huh!"

Those words seemed very distant to her. Back then, everybody WAS charmed. She was a new face at the school, and being the only foreigner there, everybody was fascinated with her. Transfer students usually cause a stir in schools, but this one made even more of an impact. She was not only half-European, but she also happened to have a college degree. Asuka's pretty face, slender body and long hair earned her dozens of love confessions in her first week there alone. Her intelligence and book smarts put her in good stead with the teachers too. And even though nobody outside of NERV was to know of her successes as a pilot, inside NERV she was a hero. A brave AVE unit-02 pilot, who dispatched the Gaghiel, the seventh angel, without any trouble, on her very first real anti-angel combat mission.

No sooner has the UN First Fleet has just finished towing the second child - Asuka Langley Soryu - and her AVE equipment halfway across the globe, and docked in Tokyo-3, than the fleet admiral received a call.

"Sir!" - a young Midshipman stretched to attention in the corner of the cabin, his right hand tapping away at the controls - "NERV's director of operations, Lieutenant Katsuragi on the line. She says it's urgent!"

"Ugh, what does that crazy woman want now? Haven't I humiliated the pride of our Navy enough by using half our fleet to tow some kid's electronic toys, and now I have to - " - the admiral was cut off by a cheery voice from the video screen on his panel.

"This crazy woman wants you to immediately execute directive "Interception-1"! And just by the way" - she lowered her voice to a teasing whisper - " this crazy woman is also your superior at the moment." Misato Katsuragi gave him a wing and raised her hand in a playful victory sign.

"Grrrragh!" - was all the admiral could muster in return."All hands, alert level two! Begin operation "Interception-1"!" - he roared into the vessel's intercom - "Now she's giving ME orders as well! What a ridiculous notion! Why I ought to.."

"No need admiral" - the voice comms stirred again - "Your gratitude is thanks enough." And with that the channel cut to [SOUND ONLY].

A few minutes later, Asuka was already ashore. NERV HQ's Sakashima Monitoring Station detected a blue pattern right off the shore of Japan's new capital. AVE-02 had to be activated remotely, so there was no way for the staff back at base to monitor the proceedings. The only link Asuka had to the outside world was Misato's voice to guide her.

"You're heading in the right direction Asuka. Keep going along the embankment, we believe this angel is stationary at the moment, but that can obviously change, so keep your guard up, Asuka-chan!" - the same voice that drove the admiral out of his normal, ice-cold self, now penetrated Asuka's mind. This was one aspect she hated about piloting AVE. When they talk to you, it sounds like it's boring directly into your skull. There was no other way to communicate with somebody piloting AVE - the Artificial Virtuality Environment. At this moment, Asuka laid in her capsule, unconscious, neural transmitters clipped to her hair and her earpieces were in place as well. To put it simply, at this very moment, the red haired girl in the tight red plug suit was asleep. The red-haired girl in the red armour, looking around with a daring smile on her lips was Asuka Langley Soryu as well - she looked like Asuka, she behaved like Asuka, her thoughts were Asuka's. But they were also not the same. The second Asuka strode confidently through the deserted streets in the direction of the port. This was angel territory - a twilight world right between the angels' world, and humanity's own. This was an exact copy of Tokyo-3, except for the people. Asuka could not see anybody, and nobody could see her. This was the nature of the Interim, as NERV scientists called it. Angels were omnipresent and could see humans no matter in which world they were, meaning they could act upon humans in whichever way they wanted .

But Asuka should have no trouble seeing the angel either. Her mother, Kyoko, was a Seer. Since the ancient times, only Seers could physically experience any live angel or angel remains. Most of the Seers around the world were with NERV, where they were needed most. It was also where they felt the most at ease at. Back in the year 2000, something terrible happened. According to the history books, a pandemic of a never-before-seen virus ravaged most of the earth, leaving hundreds of millions dead just in the first week. But there were some who have seen the truth. The Seers around the world saw what really happened. Those visions were not something a human mind could deal with easily, and today there were only several thousand Seers left around the world. Most of them are either dead or at mental institutions. Asuka's mother was sadly no exception. One day she just hung herself. And the first one to discover the ghastly site was her tiny five year old daughter.

A decade later, that same girl is confidently striding along a walkway on the Tokyo-3 cargo embankment. As opposed to the "real" her, all the way in a different dimension inside a steel capsule aboard the USS "Over the Rainbow", she was not wearing a red plug suit. Asuka's long, slim legs were now covered on top by a rather revealing red skirt, and going up from her feet were thigh-high tights, covered in several solid crimson-red metal plates. Her upper body was protected by a modest metal-plated leather corset, which continued into something like an armour sleeve from shiny medieval armour onto her right arm. In Asuka's right hand, covered by a velvet white glove, she grasped a sizable war hammer. The red neural clips on her head were also gone, in their place were two red swept-back wing shapes, holding her hair in the exact same way their plastic predecessors did. The hammer swung wildly in Asuka's hand as she continued down the road, to her, it was not particularly heavy, and she was used to it after years of practice, and simulations. The intricate design on the weapon glowed with light as she gripped it.

"Misatooooo! I've been searching for ages, and I still don't see anything on the shore. Should I turn back? Maybe it sensed me and ran away?" - She stopped and looked out towards the sea from the pier she was on, surrounded by dozens of nameless rusting ships. She didn't remember there being that many when she looked out at the docks from the UN ships. As much as this world was supposed to be a copy of the human world, sometimes it was off just enough to make it rather unsettling. -' I wonder if there are dead bodies aboard the'm - was one of the thoughts jolting through her consciousness, but she quickly shook it off. Besides the fact that Misato et al. could probably hear every little thing she was thinking, she couldn't allow herself to become even the least bit scared. Not on angel territory.

"No can't do, Asuka. Our maps show you are really close to the source. Just keep looking around, it has to be there somewhere." - Asuka wasn't listening anymore. Her thoughts were concentrated on the water down below her feet and the metal dock she was standing on. There was someone there. A teenage boy's face peeked out from under the small waves in the calm bay water. The face was framed by light blonde, almost ashen wet hair, and was barely floating above the water. Several things immediately connected in Asuka's mind.

1) It was windy.

Her long red hair was being thrown around by wind for a while now, but this was the first time the German girl noticed it. Her hair was not the only thing on her flapping gratuitously at the moment. Nudge-nudge, wink-wink.

2) The boy's face was flushed red.

While it was certainly unusual for somebody to appear from underwater, that definitely did not look like a face of a normal boy - pr any kind of normal human. Unless he has been floating like that with his face turned towards the hot summer sun the whole morning, it is very unlikely it would achieve such a pigmentation on its own.

3) He was staring at a point in space for a very long time now.

With some simple geometrical calculations, it did not take Asuka very long to figure out just what exactly this strange boy had been staring at. With a lee way of +/- 5 degrees, it was her panties.

"W- What do you think you are doing, baka?!" - Asuka's own cheeks went into heat production overdrive, and her girl chastity-preservation instincts kicked in - " Dirty pervert!" - The hammer drew a wide arch over the now-completely-red girl before crashing into the strange boy's head.

-ZZZZINNGGGG-

Asuka quickly realized what was going on. Quickly putting even more of her strength and embarrassment and the swing, she tried to force her weapon through the AT-field. For a fraction of a second, the two struggled to overpower each other before one finally broke. With a loud clang, the hammer connected with the perverted angel's head. The boy's expression could only be described as anime-esque, as he sank back underwater with a whimper - "W-worth... it... glug-glug" - he breathed , going under.

"Where do you think you're going? You still haven't paid the viewing fee!" - Asuka felt a sense of urgency, her simulations in the Munich labs have taught her one thing - once you get an advantage - pursue it. She glance at her left arm. Unlike her right, it was not protected by armour. On the pale skin, something akin to a tattoo glowed with light. Along the length of her slender arm, a single design with intertwining lines and cursive writing that said 'lux illustrans' ran from her elbow to the tips of her glove-covered fingers. As she had done so many times before in simulations, she focused of the burning sensation she got from the light embedded in her forearm. She was smack dead in the middle of Tokyo-3, so drawing power for the blast should not be a problem.

As she focused on the current flowing around her in the wires of Tokyo-3 more and more, the pain in her arm got worse . The red-head simply clenched her teeth tight and pointed her arm downwards - in the direction where she last saw the angel. Asuka steadied her arm a bit, and then let go. Her eyes automatically shut closed from the bright light pouring out of her arm, which was so intense that her retina has never gotten used to seeing it. The pain momentarily got worse, before receding completely.

In his flat in Tokyo-3, Kensuke Aida was skipping school. While he didn't do it often, when one needs a break - one needs a break. Nothing could be done about that.

"Arrrgh, move it, you noob! Stop blocking me, dammit!" - He was using that break to immerse himself in a World War 2 setting - by playing a popular online game - World of Panzer. He was finally about to kill the annoying enemy Tiger tank. - "Five seconds until reload, come on! Two! One!" On the count of 0, there was no shot. The only sound the budding tank MMO enthusiast heard was the soft hum of his PC shutting down. He looked over to the right at the TV - it stared back with a blank expression on its dark screen. "THE POWER IS OUT?! FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUU-"

Thoughts about her first - and only - time battling an angel flooded into Asuka's mind as soon as she remembered the SMS she received that morning. Even though she hated it when she pitied herself, she couldn't help but be a little bit nostalgic about her first days over in Japan. She was popular at first, but soon, adoration was replaced with suspicion. Asuka was reminded of it every day in class, where, on her desk, a tiny faded carving slanted across it - "Gaijin wh*re" - it said.

Asuka paid no heed to it, like she has for the past two years. Instead, with a practiced swipe of her arm, she unsheathed her cell out of her bag and into her lap. The red-head opened up her contacts list, selected the name Yuuna, and clicked 'Send message'. As her long fingers worked away on the on-screen keyboard, a sentence started appearing above it.

"Come outside after class, have something to tell you"

Asuka gave it one last glance, she hated sending texts with errors in them. And she hated getting texts with errors back even more. Satisfied with it, she tapped her finger on the 'Send" button. The teacher was still going on about the maths that the red-head has already done twice in Germany - once in school, and in university the second time.

'Ugh, how can he be so enthusiastic about this& this is so BORING.' - she thought about the teacher, and rested her head on her hands, so that it tilted in such a way in which her eyes could see the window. 'What is so interesting in that window, Wondergirl?' - Asuka was starting to get annoyed at Rei, who hasn't so much as moved for most of the class, and kept staring outside. Her eyes wandered past the first child and onto the third. Shinji Ikari, who was sitting just behind Rei, was diligently copying from the blackboard, his head jerking up and down to relay the information from the board into his notes. 'Pathetic' - she thought - 'The world could be ending any time, and he is taking notes. I guess I was right after all. That little WORM! The nerve, to just..'

-Burrrrrrrr-

A vibrating noise interrupted her irate train of thought. Without lifting her head off her arms, Asuka glanced to her right, towards her iPhone which just alerted her to the fact that she got a message.

"Haaaai~ ^_^"

'I wish Yuu-chan would stop typing like that, gosh!' - Asuka slowly closed her book, halting mid-way in her movement to give the page designated for today's lesson a look. The only writing on the blank page was today's date. 'What a pointless day' - with that thought, she closed it, tossed it in her bag, strapped the bag over her shoulder and got up. There was still some time left in the period, but she didn't care. And neither did the teacher, who was used to such acts of disregard by her. With a practiced motion, Asuka flipped her hair back. Without her neural clips, which some time ago formed an integral part of her hairstyle every day, hair got in her eyes constantly. But a promise was a promise, and she didn't intend to go back to piloting AVE. Not now, not ever. The clips were a symbol of everything associated with piloting - being a sort of elite human, selected for a unique duty - protecting the world. But after she quit NERV, she decided they weren't that great. What was the point in even wearing them if nobody was allowed to know her secret? Nobody outside NERV even knew what NERV did, besides the official version that they were a PMC - a private military company with the latest self-developed weaponry, to which governments around the world often turned to in this post-second impact era of non-stop crises. But without any angels to fight, the clips, like her life, had no meaning to her.

As she walked past Yuuna Miyazaki, the girl she messaged earlier, Asuka was on the end of a disapproving look from both her and Hikari, the class rep. In return, she could only offer a shrug to her close friends, which told them - 'No reason for me to be here, really.' Hikari could only give a quiet sigh and returned to writing her notes. She, like everyone was used to Asuka's slack attitude to class attendance. Yuuna, on the other hand, gave her a grin and a thumbs up.

On the right-hand side of the class, Shinji only noticed Asuka's absence when he saw a red flash in the doorway out of the corner of his eye. He turned his head and just caught the sight of the girl walking out into the corridor. He hasn't really even spoken to her after their falling out long ago.

"You won't even hold me!" - she screamed, her red dishevelled hair stuck to her face, as she thrashed around the room, knocking stuff over. Her voice descended to a harsh whisper - "Are you that disgusted with me?"

"Sorry, Asuka, I.." - Shinji didn't really know what to say. He did not know what would make her calm down. Was there even a point in calming her down? He was completely unaware of what made this strange girl tick.

"Don't even say anything to me!" - her voice escalated up to a shrill scream, which would have surely alerted the neighbours to their fight, if they had any in this empty building. "I Don't ever want to see your face again, idiot!" Her door slammed shut for the whole day and evening. When morning came she was gone. The only possession Asuka left in her room was a pair of red neural clips, lying half-broken in the centre of the empty room.

"Ikari-kun!" - in an instant, he was snapped back to reality by a sharp flick on his forehead. A beautiful face framed by messy blue hair smiled at him with mischievous red eyes - "It's too late to still be sleeping and too early to begin sleeping. Therefore, sleep would be counter-productive at this time." Shinji couldn't switch his thoughts from his memories to the present situation, so his only reply was a weak smile. Ayanami turned back around to face her desk.

"Are you thinking about her?" she asked in a soft voice.

"K-kind of. I guess I feel bad about it, I haven't even apologized or anything after such a long time, and" - he was cut off in mid-sentence by Rei, who spoke up again wit her back to him.

"Ikari-kun."

"Hai?" - Shinji stared at the back of her head, feeling a bit awkward that she was not facing him when talking.

"One should not apologise for what one's heart feels. Or doesn't feel." - Rei continued in the same soft voice, which calmed his thoughts a bit.

"I.. see." - Shinji had to think about that one. Nowadays Ayanami's speech was filled to the brim with sayings that she herself has made up, and some of them only made sense after a while. Something the heart does or doesn't feel?

"I LOVE how half the time you are not in class, Asuka-chan!" - Yuuna teased her friend from meters away, "And now you're making me skip it with you! Not the best influence in the world, are you?" she plopped down on the bench next to the red-head, her long ash-blonde hair flew up relative to her head as she did, to settle down half a second later in a messy pattern over her shoulders.

"Please, you know I am more entertaining than that boring old fart in English, that's why you agreed to come meet me!" - with a haughty smile, Asuka teased her in return.

"Obviously!" - Yuuna laughed -"So what did you want to show me?" - she turned her head to Asuka and smiled.

Asuka hesitated for a second. Even though Yuuna was her only friend who knew she piloted AVE, she still wasn't sure if the History Research club president should hear her news. Officially, she could not tell anyone any details about NERV or what they did, and Asuka knew it was with good reason.

"I... I got this message from Misato this morning" Asuka pulled her cell out of her bag, unlocked the screen and went into the messages folder. The one from Misato Katsuragi, dated 14/08/17 7:49AM said the following -

"Morning Asuka! :) Hope everything is well, just wanted to say that Sync tests resume Friday at 4. And if I don't see you there, I'll drive over and drag you by force :) Love, Misato-san" - the blonde read as Asuka held her cell in front of her face. Yuuna remembered about the vow Asuka had given, and a serious expression crept onto her face - "And? Are you gonna go?"

The German girl stared at the empty blue afternoon sky overhead. "I've thought about it" - she sighed - "I don't think I can actually get out of physically being there. Misato knows I still live in the same building, and she IS stronger than me. I would not actually put it past her to drive all the way back from NERV, just to pin me down and wrestle into one of the back doors of a car. NERV was a military-style organisation, after all. Who knows, maybe just for telling you what I already have, someone, somewhere, might point a gun to our heads and pull it."

"So.. are you?"

Asuka paused. "Yes." Yuuna looked in her eyes and saw conflict, the deep blue eyes into which her own green eyes stared conveyed their owner's confusion - "I thought I could just do poorly on the tests from now on, so they think I've lost it and that I can't fight properly."

Yuuna turned her head and now stared at the sky in the same direction that her friend has been staring at for a while.

"Asuka.. I'm.. glad. That you are going to go." She turned her head right again and looked at the red-head "Even though I know how you feel about AVE, and it's fine with me that you are going to try and get out of it, but deep inside I am happy that you will even do that much. As corny as it sounds, I truly believe it is your destiny to pilot AVE. If it is somebody like you protecting the world, I can sleep soundly at night." Yuuna smiled and turned back to the sky. A foreign object in that sky has caught the girls' attention.

A single blip was moving diagonally across the blue canvas of the sky, leaving behind a long white stroke.

Her friend's words rang through her head. 'My .. Destiny?' Asuka thought about it as she stared down the twin-jet airplane moving overhead. To the right of the two friends, a clock bell from the school chapel rang three times. The afternoon heat hasn't receded one little bit.