Dedicated To:

ObeliskX

For giving me the inspiration to write this fanfic. That is, I can

now blame you for anything I write.

"So, there's a new pilot?" Shinji asked Misato.

"Yep! They should be arriving any time now."

"Really?" The three of them had been waiting for some time now, and Toji and Kensuke were getting bored. Suffice it to say that when Toji and Kensuke were bored, they wished for a breeze to come through.

"Then they've been missing for... almost half an hour," Shinji said testily.

"Did somebody call for a pilot?" someone drawled.

"Ah, here he is," Misato said with an air of relief. "Finally. Meet the Second Child, Asuka Sohryu."

==0.0.0==

Eva One-Half

==0.0.0==

"Hmm... not that impressive," Asuka said casually. "Why did they pick you for an Eva pilot?" he asked, staring at Shinji as if to say, What was Gendo thinking?

"Oh-Oh yeah?" Shinji said, trying to fight back. "Well, why did your parents give a boy a girl's name?" she retorted hotly.

"Because boys with girl's names are always the hottest ones. Didn't you know that?" Asuka smiled coldly at the Third Child. "Same can't be said for girls with a boy's name," he sniped.

"OK, OK, OK," Misato said. "Would you two stop bickering for just one moment?"

"I wasn't fighting," Asuka replied cooly. "Fighting a punching bag is just practicing."

Misato glared pointedly at him. "Let's at least have a truce until we have some lunch, would we?" she said, trying to defuse the situation. "And don't flash Shinji," she retorted, causing Asuka to redden and quickly do up his fly. Then she noticed who was accompanying the Second Child, and her face quickly turned sour.

"Ah, Misato," Kaji said, flashing her a winning smile. "Beautiful as always."

"Oh, for the love of f*ck!" Misato swore, before storming off to the mess hall.

"Would you two stop fighting," Asuka mimicked in a high-pitched voice. "Hypocrite."

Lunch on board the ship was chilly to say the least. Not helped by the lack of a microwave.

"So, you're the Third Child, Shinji Ikari," Kaji said, taking a bite of his salad.

"How did you know my name?" Shinji didn't know she was so famous, given that Nerv didn't exactly send The Tokyo-3 Times articles on Eva.

"Well, word spreads around fast in Nerv. Helps that you're such a good pilot too."

"Oh. Thanks," Shinji said, blushing. "Um. It's just good luck, really," Shinji said.

"That's not good luck." Kaji smiled. "That's your talent, and speaking of talents..." Kaji considered the possibility of death by Misato, before going ahead. "...is Misato still so wild in bed?"

Asuka spat out his omelette and excused himself to go to the toilet, while Toji and Kensuke both had simultaneous heart attacks and collapsed.

"The hell?!" Misato slammed her hands on the table. "Kaji, you are disgusting!" she roared.

Shinji simply smiled as if nothing was wrong. "Good banter."

At that stage, Asuka was thinking, If you can keep your head while others all around you are losing theirs, you don't understand the severity of the situation.

Asuka returned from the bathroom, his face still a shade of pale green.

"Asuka, could you please kindly show Shinji around the Eva?" Misato asked sweetly. "Be a dear, would you," she said, voice dripping with charm.

The Second Child would've liked nothing more than to leave the room, what with Misato giving Kaji a glare that should've killed him. So he gratefully accepted the chance to escape, while Shinji also took the chance to run away.

Kaji was sweating bullets at this stage, being alone in a large room filled with sharp objects with an angry Misato (who also had a gun).

Misato was about to throw a knife or seventy-five at Kaji, before the ship rocked to one side.

"What the hell was that?" Misato asked.

"Just a bit of chop," the captain informed them. "Hopefully," he mumbled.

"So, this is Unit-02," Shinji said lamely, staring up at the giant red metal behemoth. "It's very... red..." she trailed off, not knowing what else to say about it.

"Of course," Asuka replied. "Among its many other improvements, like not goingberserk every half-hour, the color scheme is better by far," he said sarcastically. "Green and purple is disgusting. Reminds me of the time somebody put food coloring in the lager at Oktoberfest."

"Wait, what?" Shinji blinked. "Did you just say, Reminds me of the time somebody put food coloring in the lager?" she said in disbelief.

"Some idiot pranker," Asuka said in disgust. "They decided it would be a good idea to put in purple food dye and IPECAC in the beer, and soon everybody was throwing up their small intes-"

"-Too much information." Shinji said, blocking her ears with her hands. "I don't even need to know," she said.

"Thank goodness they actually stopped me from drinking the beer that time," Asuka said with an air of relief. "Although I didn't enjoy it as much."

Shinji rolled her eyes and sighed. No wonder he gets along so well with Misato, she thought.

There was suddenly a loud BOOM and the ship rocked to one side, sending the two pilots sliding across the deck.

"Oh, crap..." Asuka said, as he watched the large dark shape that was Gaghiel smash into the side of the ship again. "It's an Angel, isn't it."

No, really! Shinji thought to herself.

Asuka led them down the stairs to the locker rooms and pulled out two red plugsuits.

"Get changed," he ordered. "Quickly, before the whole ship... goes... down..." Must... control... the urge... to look...

"Quit staring, I know this thing is tight," Shinji snapped, unimpressed with Asuka's lack of professionalism. "Let's get to the Eva already!"

Gaghiel seemed to have grown bored of bumping the ship and instead was deciding to wreak havoc upon the other ships as well, giving them enough respite to get in the mecha.

"Right then." Asuka intoned something in foreign before saying the only thing Shinji really understood. "Synchro-start."

The Eva made a sound like a car stalling, before finally falling silent again.

"Technical difficulties?" Shinji asked drily.

"Shut up," Asuka said, flushing red. "It's your thought-noise. If you have to think, do so in German!" he barked.

"OK, then. Baumkuchel. Uh, guten tag." Shinji tried, counting off the words on her fingers. "...I got nothing."

Asuka smacked his head on the console and switched the language to Japanese.

"Right, you wanna play, Gaghiel?" Asuka cracked his knuckles and gripped the controls of the Eva. "Then let's play hopscotch," he grinned.

The Eva swung around with his movements before launching itself into the air in a display of gymnastics that would've won the Olympic games. (That is, if the Olympic games still existed.) Pulling off a backflip just to rub it in, it landed on the deck of the Cymbeline with a mighty thump.

Shinji turned a pale shade of green and struggled to hold in her vomit, while Asuka merely looked around for another ship to jump onto. Swinging the Eva around, he frantically looked around for the next jump.

"Come on!" he growled. "Can't you just sail slightly closer to this thing!" Gaghiel was approaching fast, and taking a hit would've been suicide. "Just because I was good at long jump doesn't mean I can jump a damn kilometer!... Ah, there we go!" Asuka gritted his teeth and leaped again, right as Gaghiel burst from the water and tore through their power cable with the weight of a couple of thousand tons.

There was a loud flickering noise and the Eva's screens flared with white static, before returning to normal.

"Scheiss, scheiss, scheiss!" Asuka cursed loudly, before checking the timer on the screen. "How are we gonna kill this ugly schweinhund now?" he muttered.

The radio buzzed.

"Hello?" Asuka asked, picking up the reciever.

"It's Misato here," a voice said. "I have a plan to kill Gaghiel!"

"Do tell."

"The Over the Rainbow has a nuclear reactor in it! We can-"

"- use it for a power source so that I can kill it using my Prog Knife! Thanks Misato!" Asuka cut in. "Bye-bye!"

He hung up the receiver and sighed with relief.

"That wasn't very nice," Shinji scolded. "She's the tactical director of Nerv!"

"All I know is that she's slightly crazy and that her plans don't go as planned, excuse the pun," Asuka said flatly. "My plan is at least slightly better."

"AAAAAAAAAAhhhh!" Shinji screamed, as the Evangelion took off once more. "Why did I let you think up these plans in the first place?" she mumbled. "Feel... sick..."

"If you don't want to let humanity die, suck it up," Asuka replied. "There are some things the filtering system can't remove."

"Could you... give me a warning... next time?" Shinji said weakly. "That would help..."

"Sure. Warning!" Asuka shouted, before yanking the controls violently upwards.

"What? WHAAAAAAhhhh!"

The Evangelion took off like a rocket and finally touched down on the Over the Rainbow, where the emergency power cable was waiting to be deployed.

"They plugged this thing into a nuclear reactor?" Shinji shook her head. "We couldn't've just put this into mains?" she mumbled.

"Quit talking to yourself and help me out with this, wouldya," Asuka ordered, trying his best to untangle the cable (which like so many others had twenty-seven different knots in it).

"Sorry."

Pretty soon they had the cable untangled and plugged into the back of the Eva.

"We got power!" Asuka fist-pumped the air and drew the Prog Knife. "Now, come at me, Gaghie-"

Gaghiel obliged and leapt from the water, snapping up the mecha like a delicious bite of food.

Both Asuka and Shinji were tossed around in the Entry Plug like snow in a paperweight.

Asuka hit the back of the wall with a thud, before Shinji slammed into him, compacting him between the wall and herself.

"Ow... Pervert!" Shinji smacked Asuka. "Trying to cop a feel already?" she asked hotly.

Asuka would've said something smartass had his breath not been nonexistent and his concentration been focussed on not dying.

"What's the Angel doing?" he asked, looking around frantically. "Oh, no... we're underwater, aren't we?"

"And we're too heavy to swim," Shinji completed. "Which means we're doomed."

A couple of silent minutes passed, allowing the realisation to finally sink in.

The radio buzzed again.

"Hello?" Asuka said.

"Hahaha, didn't think you could survive long without me," Misato said smugly over the radio.

Asuka slammed down the receiver, causing Shinji to flinch.

Then the intercom crackled with static, before Misato screamed, "LISTEN TO ME FOR ONCE!"

Asuka glared pointedly at the speaker. "What do you want?" he asked testily.

"I have a plan to get you two out of there. Just for Asuka's benefit, I'll explain it in simple words." Misato fought to contain her giggles. "We have many ship. Two ship sinky-sinky, go down and try to get inside Angel. You hold Angel mouth open so that ship can go inside. Blow up ship. Boom! Boom! Angel dead."

Shinji took one look at Asuka and wondered why the Eva hadn't gone berserk at this stage.

"Fine," Asuka said, throwing his hands up in the air. "I get it. Now if we make it back alive, could you please stop giving me crap?" he asked.

"Absolutely." Misato smiled evilly. "Now what are you waiting for! Put it into action!" She hung up... and burst into fits of giggles.

"I don't think she knows we can hear her," Shinji whispered.

"OK, so we just... heave the mouth open, is that it?" Asuka asked, scratching his head. "Pretty sure she copied the idea off an old Steven Spielberg movie," he mumbled.

"Who cares how bad a plan it is?" Shinji replied carelessly. "If we don't follow it, we'll die. If we do follow it, we might die. But we might also live, too!"

"Thanks for that, Ms. Positivity," Asuka said, glaring at Shinji. "All right, then, 3... 2... 1... HEAVE!" Asuka strained with the controls of the Evangelion. "A little help here..."

Shinji floated over to the controls and joined in the effort to prise open Gaghiel's gigantic jaws.

Servos whined and creaked, but agonisingly slowly, the jaws slowly opened.

"We haven't got much time! Dammit!" Asuka cursed, staring at the incoming metal ships. "Hurry up!"

The two of them struggled against the crushing force of Gaghiel's teeth and slowly, achingly managed to pry them open.

"Here goes," Asuka mumbled.

There was a mighty explosion and the Evangelion was launched into the air, before landing onto the deck of the Over the Rainbow with a thud.

"I think you guys can only violate the law of incredible coincidences once," Misato said, glaring at Asuka. "Don't pull a stunt like that again," she warned, subtly gesturing to the gun at her belt.

"Yes ma'am," Asuka replied carelessly. "Even though it was my idea that saved humanity," he deadpanned, earning him an elbow in the ribs from Shinji.

"As an appropriate punishment, I have suggested something to the heads of Nerv that both of you I'm sure would enjoy very much."

Shinji would've run, but she was frozen to the spot.

"Because Kaji will be... doing other business..." Misato said with an air of disgust, "... he will no longer be able to chaperone you around, Asuka. Thus, we've decided... that you two will be living together."

Omake!

1 - How This All Started (For Steins;Gate Fans)

Ruka hit the SEND button on the phone as the microwave crackled with static.

There was a long silence as everyone waited for something to happen, and then... nothing.

"What happened?" Okabe asked, scratching his head. "Did something go wrong?"

"Nope, just wrong number," Kurisu said, checking the phone screen.

Bzzt. Bzzt. Bzzt.

Yui Ikari woke up in the middle of the night and checked her pager.

"What the...?" she wondered, looking at her pager.

She read the text, and shook her head.

"So, that whole eat vegetables stuff really is true..." she said to herself.

Bzzt. Bzzt. Bzzt.

Kyoko Sohryu woke up in the middle of the night and checked her phone.

"What the...?" she wondered, looking at her pager. "Eat... meat... not... vegetables. Huh. Dietary advice, perhaps? Wait... maybe this'll help my child grow up healthier."

Okabe typed in the phone number and handed it to Ruka. "Try it again, maybe this time it'll work," he said, not knowing that in the Evaverse, something had gone horribly, horribly, wrong...