Neon Genesis Evangelion: Propinquity
Chapter 2
Inversion
Bah! Why I put up with some people never ceases to puzzle me. You know who I mean, Third!
So, I've found Shinji's little essay about that day in Old New Tokyo-3, and frankly, I think a thousand monkeys working at a thousand typewriters may not necessarily have done better, but probably would have managed to hold my interest for slightly longer.
Here he is talking about a day upon which I took my own personal time to liven up his humdrum little life, and all he does is whine about it and make several, not so subtle, references to his nether regions.
Hentai.
Actually, I was a good person back then. Better than he deserved, some might say. I put up with his insignificant existence didn't I? Not to mention Misato's crapulous behaviour. And, on the day in question I was actually doing him a favour and being nice to him. It was kind of like a Community Service.
Ingrate.
Meh.
Anyway, why don't I carry on this story for the time being?
So actually, I will admit, I really didn't have anything 'cool' to show Shinji that day. I was just BORED out of my brain at that stupid school. I had a College degree for fuck's sake! Sure it was a Liberal Arts degree from Schweinfurt Polytechnic, but still, it was more than any of my fellow drones in that classroom had. Including that fossilised old Sensei.
I needed to get out of that God-awful stifling city, and checking out the site of one of my early victories seemed as good an idea as any at that time. Hiking had been something that I had always enjoyed in Germany. So, I thought, why the Hell not? It might tell you a little about how boring a company town like Tokyo-3 could actually get that a hole in the ground seemed like a viable option for a day's outing.
And also, the truth be told, Shinji was actually quite pleasant company in those days. Apart from his endless whining and apologising. Not to mention the lust and perversion that is endemic to all males that age. All of that aside, Shinji was actually ok.
It didn't do to let him know that though.
But enough of that…
Finding a way further down into the crater proved almost impossible, so eventually I spotted a likely place to stop on the crater's edge across on the other side. Leading the way, with Shinji still whining about carrying both of the packs, we began our trek around it.
"Asuka, why are we doing this?" Shinji asked me, gingerly stepping amongst the scree and rubble.
"I told you, to see something cool!"
"You said that, but… "
"Don't you dare spoil this with your nit-pickery Third Child! Anyway, we're almost there!"
Shinji, displaying rare common sense, kept quiet.
We finally arrived at the spot on the edge of the crater. The blasted remains of an old tree providing a semblance of shade. The crater sloped down and away from us like the caldera of an enormous volcano. The rocky surface of the sloping sides gave way to what looked like a smooth perfect circle in its centre. The rock there had almost a glassy look to it, possibly, I guess, from the heat of the Angel's exploding core.
We halted. I held my hand out for my back pack, which Shinji handed over. Unzipping it and reaching into it I pulled out a large tartan, rubber backed, picnic rug, and spread it on the ground. I motioned for him to sit. He sat. All the while looking up at me with those big puppy dog eyes of his. I smiled at him. He cringed like a frightened bunny for a moment before smiling back. Weirdly I could feel my heartbeat pounding in my chest like a jackhammer with ADHD.
Come on, keep it together Soryu!
I sat across from him on the rug, still smiling. Reaching into the bag I produced a large thermos filled with hot water. Followed by two polystyrene containers of a generic brand cup noodle I had stolen from Misato's personal stash. I peeled the lids partly off, poured the hot water into the containers and handed one to him.
"Ta da!"
"Huh?" Shinji said, appearing to be genuinely confused.
"Well, is this cool, or is this not cool?" I asked, not wishing to show the anxiety I was feeling about how he would answer.
"Am I missing something?" He said looking a little anxious himself. "You said you going to show me something cool. Um… I-I don't see…"
Oh, the poor clueless fool. I guess I had to spell it out for him.
"Shinji." I said, putting my serious voice on for the moment. "Think about this for just a second would you? Instead of being trapped in that mind destroying dump of a Middle School you're out here with a beautiful and popular girl. A girl that has not only seen fit to invite your sorry butt out for the day, but who has also provided all of the trappings of a lavish picnic for you! Tell me, is that, or is that not the coolest thing that you have ever seen?" I leaned forward, giving him a perfect and unmissable opportunity to look down the front of my yellow sundress. "Hmm, Shinji-kun?"
Noting with some degree of satisfaction that Shinji's eyes wandered downward before snapping back to my mine I continued to stare intently at him. 'Come on' I thought, 'say something!'
"Um… Sorry Asuka."
Say anything but that.
I 'Hmphed' and sat back on the rug. He really was hopeless. I will admit to more than a little annoyance that all I had achieved for my days efforts so far was to make Shinji sorry and myself cranky. What a waste!
We sat in silence for several minutes, the only sound was Shinji slurping at his cup noodles and the wind whistling over the side of the crater, creating small eddies in the dust and causing the remaining boughs of the old tree behind us to creak and sway. Across the crater we could see down the hillside and in the haze the gleaming buildings of Tokyo-3 shone like a crystal palace in the distance.
Shinji lowered his chopsticks and looked at me with a nervous smile.
"You know, Asuka, this is actually kinda cool!"
I really wanted to toy with him just a little more, but I couldn't stop the grin that I could feel spreading across my face. Genuine warmth spread from my chest and throughout my whole being
"Told ya, Third! Stick with me, my boy, and you can never go wrong!"
The Third Child's eyes softened and he returned to slurping on his instant cup noodles. I watched him covertly from behind my own polystyrene container. You know, looking at him like that, relaxed, in one of those rare moments when the uncertainty and fear no longer marred his face, he really did have some potential as a bit of a bishonen. Sure, a kinda scrawny and needlessly apologetic one with boring hair, but a bishonen none the less. At those times he radiated a sort of inner calm that I always found comforting. Maybe it was Alpha Waves or Pheromones or some such mumbo-jumbo. Who cares? I would never have admitted it, but those moments, moments like this one, were oddly precious to me in the psycho-existential cluster-fuck that was life in Tokyo-3 in those days.
Oh crap, I realised, He's looking back at me! There was no way on Earth I could allow him to think that I, the mighty Asuka Langley Soryu, was gazing dreamily at his scrawny body, with those unexpectedly broad shoulders tapering down to what would be, what with all of the training we did, a toned abdomen and rippling… FOCUS ASUKA! Brain returning to default settings I haughtily 'Hmphed' and stuck my nose in the air and quickly shovelled a large helping of cup noodles out of my container and into my mouth.
Big Mistake.
BLEARGH! Gott im Himmel! What the Hell was this crap? Almost immediately I unceremoniously launched the offending noodles and accompanying slurry out of my mouth and back into its cup. Self-preservation winning out over years of etiquette training and natural good grace. I looked at the foam cup, "BEST-EVER BARBEQUE CURRY PORK FLAVOUR!" Proclaimed the overly exuberant Katakana on the side. With an anthropomorphic family of piggies gazing out ravenously at me while clutching forks and knives.
Barbeque Curry Pork? It tasted like soot, and poo.
"Asuka? Are you okay?" Shinji asked with what I could tell was genuine concern.
"Of course I'm okay!" I replied blustering, trying to cover up my embarrassment. "Why wouldn't I be okay?"
"No reason. It's just that you've got a noodle hanging off your chin."
I wiped at my chin. I tried to be embarrassed, I tried to be angry. No dice. The ridiculousness of the situation started to get the better of me. It started as a snort, grew into a titter, a chortle, a chuckle even. Before I could help myself I was laughing, guffawing even, as if what had happened was the funniest thing since flatus met elevators.
Shinji initially just smiled at me as I found myself unable to stop laughing. That was until I threw the offending noodle at him of course! It landed deftly on his nose, hanging there until he tried to bat it away, tenaciously it stuck to his fingers as he shook his hand desperately, but vainly, trying to rid himself of it. Soon he was laughing completely unselfconsciously, in fact we both were.
Eventually, after several minutes, we calmed down, but I had to admit that at that moment I was definitely feeling what could only be described as a sense of warmth and happiness that was rare in my life at that time. I watched as Shinji finally gave up on the noodle still stuck to his fingers and sucked it off and into his mouth. He grimaced slightly at the flavour.
A comfortable silence settled over us as we sat there. His dark blue eyes met mine. He quickly looked away before looking back at me and holding my gaze. The silence grew more profound and decidedly less comfortable. Even the wind had died down. I could feel a trickle of sweat run down into the small of my back as I leaned forward, my left hand within a mere couple of centimetres of his right.
"Shinji, " I began finally, my mouth suddenly bone dry. "Do-do you think that… "
A distant rumble interrupted me in mid question. It certainly couldn't have been thunder. The day was sunny and quite hot, with not a cloud to be seen. Also, this was more insistent and continuous than thunder was wont to be.
And it was coming from the direction of Tokyo-3.
I looked around, unable to see the source of the noise until Shinji's arm pointed straight out in front of me. The JSSDF gun emplacements that surrounded Tokyo-3 were opening up for all they were worth at something that was out of sight to us behind the foothills to the west of the city.
"Do you think it could be an Angel?" Shinji asked.
"I doubt it." I replied uncertainly. "If an Angel got this close to Tokyo-3 our cell phones would have gone off. Anyway, they always retract the main buildings at the slightest hint of an Angel, and they're still standing, it can't be!"
In unison we both whipped out our NERV issued cell phones.
"Ach! No signal!"
"Me neither!" Said Shinji.
"Shit!" I said. "We'd better get down to the Geofront and find out what's going on before they sic Section 2 onto us!"
Shinji went to gather up our picnic, but I stopped him.
"Leave it there, baka!" I said more harshly than I meant to. "It'll just slow us down. It's all Misato's stuff anyway!"
Shinji frowned. "I'll come back for it afterwards." He said.
"Fine, whatever. Let's go already!" The JSSDF artillery was growing louder and more insistent by now.
With Shinji trailing behind me we set off as quickly as we could through the rock and debris, making our way back down into Tokyo-3 and what would become one of the worst days of my life.
END CHAPTER TWO
A/N: From here on the format will be alternating POVs from Shinji and Asuka. My take on it is that in their early episodes together, even though Asuka was still ultra competitive, she seemed to be quite drawn to Shinji and even seemed to quite like him in her own way. It was mainly later, as things turned ugly, that her own self-hatred caused her to lash out in a more openly abusive fashion. I'm very much more focussed on the early Asuka and that is the basis for my interpretation of her character.
That's my take on it anyway. As Always I ask for: 1) forgiveness for changing canon to suit my story, and 2) reviews, because I crave the attention!
Toodles... Donderkind.
